A Spear of Summer Grass. Deanna Raybourn
was testing out the lie, I could tell, seeing how well it fit his tongue before he tried it at home. I shrugged. I wasn’t his wife; it didn’t matter to me what he’d really been up to in Mombasa, but even I knew it wasn’t exactly a hot spot for horse-trading.
I told him about Fairlight and he leaned forward, almost dragging a cuff in his custard. “Hold on, now. You know Sir Nigel?”
“He was my stepfather,” I explained. “He has very sweetly put Fairlight at my disposal while I rusticate.”
“But we’re neighbours!” he exclaimed happily. He had drunk the better part of a bottle of gin at that point, which might have accounted for his excitement, or maybe a new face in the Kenyan bush was just that much of an event. Either way, it was nice to be welcomed, and I told him so.
“More than welcome, my dear. You must come to dine with us at Nyama Ranch.”
“Us?” I teased.
He had the grace to smile. “Yes, us. Nyama is owned by my wife’s aunt. Jude and I live there with her. Sort of keeping the old girl in line, you understand. Not as young as she used to be.”
Oh, I understood perfectly. Poor feckless Wickenden had gambled himself into the poorhouse with his farming experiments and had no choice but to live off his wife’s money now. I wondered who was footing the bill for the racing stables.
We finished our drinks and towed Dora onto the veranda for brandy and cigars. I liked my Sobranies, but I loved a good cigar. It was like French-kissing fire. Dora had long since grown immune to my occasional indulgence, but Wickenden lit up like a boy who had just seen his first naughty photograph.
“How deliciously scandalous,” he breathed. He leaned close to my ear, whispering a few inappropriate suggestions, but I pretended not to hear. A steward rang the veranda bell just then, sounding the signal for passengers to board the train. Dora hurried on, but Wickenden caught my hand.
“Silly girl. We needn’t go yet. It takes ages to warm those damned engines up. Unlike mine,” he finished, sticking a fat, limp tongue in my ear.
I turned to smile at him as I took the end of my cigar and held its glowing tip to his trouser leg. It took less time than I would have thought. The linen of his suit was excellent quality, woven so fine the cigar burned right through and singed his skin before he realised what was happening. He jumped up, scattering sparks and swear words into the darkness.
I swayed off towards the train as he hurled a variety of names at my back. As usual, they rolled right off, and I returned to the carriage to find that the beds had been made up with fresh linen and blankets and Dora was already tucked up for the night. She had left out my night things as well as a jar of my cold cream from Elizabeth Arden. A better lady’s maid would have stayed up to put away my clothes, but I had to make allowances. She was family after all. I stripped off my dress and underthings and began to wash.
“Did he make a pass?” She didn’t look up from her book, but the fact that she was reading meant she was feeling better. I glanced at the title. Meditations on the Song of Songs.
“He did, and a clumsy one at that. No finesse at all.” I dried myself and began rubbing in the cold cream.
“What did you do?”
“Burned him with my cigar.”
She smothered a laugh and returned to her book as I snuggled down in the covers. The train pulled away, blasting its whistle into the long African night.
* * *
The next morning we stopped for breakfast at another of the innumerable stations, and I ate a plate of surprisingly tasty eggs with a few questionable sausages and a bowl of cut tropical fruits spritzed with lime. Dora nibbled at corn gruel and weak tea, and when it didn’t immediately reappear, she added an egg and some toast.
“Do you realise that’s the first full meal you’ve eaten since Marseilles?” I asked, helping myself to a slice of her toast.
She perked up. “Really? Do you suppose I’ve lost weight?”
Dora’s hips were the bane of her existence. She spent most of her time slimming – a vain effort in more ways than one.
“Hard to tell in that frock,” I answered, slathering the toast with passionfruit jam.
She pulled a face. “I don’t suppose it’s very becoming, but you know I don’t really understand clothes.”
I shrugged. “You’re fighting a losing battle anyway, Dodo. Straight lines don’t flatter your figure,” I told her. Dora’s shape might have been fashionable in Edwardian times, but fashions had changed and unfortunately Dora’s body didn’t. The pouter-pigeon silhouette which came naturally to her – heavy breasts and rounded hips – was hopelessly out of date. There wasn’t a dress to be had in all of Paris that would have complemented her small waist and Junoesque curves. It was all slim seams and clinging fabrics that conspired to make her look lumpy and dull. Her hair didn’t help. It was nice enough – the colour of dark honey and rippling like a windy pond when she took it out of the pins. But it was long enough she could sit on it and the roll she wore at the nape of her neck made her look like someone’s grandmother. All that hair gave her a perpetual headache, too, but it just went hand in hand with her digestive troubles.
“Then there’s no point to my bothering about clothes since nothing looks good on me anyway.”
I didn’t trouble to respond. Usually Dora had as much vanity as a dust mop, but every once in a while she got onto the subject of her own dowdiness and when it came to feeling sorry for herself, Dodo could ride that hobby horse until the paint wore off.
After we boarded the train again with the other passengers – I was amused to see that Mr. Wickenden was markedly less friendly when he was nursing a small burn and a large hangover – we set off on the last leg of our trip to Nairobi. Here the plains were vast, opening up before us like an invitation. There were clusters of bushes and in the distance I could make out moving shapes I was certain were herds of wildebeest. I pointed out to Dora the sight of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the distance to the south, just over the border in German-controlled Tanzania.
“Look at its snowy peak,” I instructed her as I thumbed through the guidebook. “It’s as if the mountain were wearing a clever little nightcap. It says here that Mt. Kilimanjaro used to belong to the Kenyan side of the boundary until Queen Victoria decided to smudge the border a bit to give the mountain to her grandson for his birthday.”
Dora was fixed on the view. “That explains a good deal of what was wrong with the Kaiser. If the Queen of England and Empress of India is willing to redraw a map to give you an entire mountain as a birthday present, it’s just a small step from there to thinking you have a right to plunge the whole world into war and kill thousands of people.”
I didn’t say anything, but Dora was familiar enough with my silences to know a sharp one.
“I’m sorry, Delilah. I didn’t think.”
I shrugged. “It’s been nine years since Johnny died. I should be able to talk about the war without falling to pieces.”
We were quiet a moment, then Dora sat up, exclaiming, “Zebra! A whole herd of them, running alongside the train — look, Delilah, here they come!”
Sure enough, an entire herd of zebra had apparently decided to keep pace with the train, which wasn’t very hard to do. The poor old engine could have been outrun by a small child with a limp. But the zebra were making an event of it, tossing their short manes and snorting as they ran alongside. They were so close I could almost put a hand out and touch one stripy coat. Dora and I hung out the window to yell encouragement to them as they kicked up clouds of fine red dust that settled in our mouths and ears.
“We look like red Indians,” I told her.
“Don’t smile so much — it’s getting in your teeth,” she answered, smiling just as broadly.
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