“Beryl, you angel,” he said when I handed him a fat cigar I’d brought him from Nakuru. “Light it for me, will you? I’m not sure I have the breath.”
“I didn’t know how bad things were. I would have come before.”
“What do you mean?” he feigned. His colouring was so off even his lovely teeth seemed grey. His voice was weak. “Do you know the farm has never been more profitable? I’m just now getting the hang of things. Just in time.” He tried to sit up, and I leaned over to help, gathering pillows to prop him up while his Somali servants looked on severely. “They’re not sure you should be touching me,” he whispered. “There aren’t usually beautiful women in my bed.”
“I don’t believe that for a second. You’re a prince, Berkeley. You really are the best of them.”
“Except for minor bits of me.” He gazed at the cigar I’d placed in his hand, the wraithlike curlicues of silvery smoke twisting higher before trailing away to nothing. “But I’ll go out like the great poets, won’t I, full of fire and deep soundings?”
“Don’t go at all, you rat. Please don’t.”
He closed his eyes. “All right. Not today.”
I found glasses for us and he told me where to search out the very best wine, at the back of a cupboard near his bed.
“It’s Falernian, this bottle.” He held it up to the light. “It’s one of the few wines that’s got the stamp of the ancient Romans. Some think it’s the best wine in the world.”
“You don’t want to waste it on me, then.”
“Poor beautiful Beryl. Are you sure you can’t marry me? You could have my fortune when I die and raise scandals as my young widow.”
“Poor beautiful Berkeley. You always talk such a good game, but tell me, who truly has your heart?”
“Ah, that.” He coughed into his shirt cuff. “That’s a very great secret.” Through dark-fringed lashes, his brown eyes had a soft fire about them, as if he already knew what waited for him, past this life into the next. “Grab a book and read something out to me, will you? I’m feeling lonely for verse.”
“I have something,” I said quietly, and began to say out my Whitman lines, from “Song of Myself,” the ones I had managed to keep close to me for years now. I didn’t think I could look at him and go on, so I focused on his fine pale hands on the snow-white blanket, the pale-blue moons low on his clipped fingernails, the small nicks of scars, the failing veins.
When I’d finished we sat quietly for a while. He swirled the wine in his glass. “It’s the loveliest colour of amber, isn’t it? Like lions in the grass.”
“Exactly like that.”
“Now begin again, but more slowly this time. I don’t want to miss anything.”
I started again from the beginning while his breath grew more and more quiet, his eyes softening and then closing. There was a slight smile on his waxen lips, and his spiked lashes were like fragile ferns on his cheeks. How could I ever say goodbye? I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. But I kissed him before I left, tasting Falernian wine.
The long rains began, with towering storms moving through every few days, but the day of Berkeley’s funeral was startlingly clear. He wanted to be buried at home, on the banks of his river, which carried, he had always sworn, perfect glacier water all the way from Mount Kenya. Along a bend that curved like a woman’s waist and hip, the river water sang over black basalt stones and riddled layers of peat. At that place, we watched Berkeley go into the ground, while starlings and flycatchers rang bell-clear scales through the canopy.
Dozens of friends were there. Blix had come all the way from Somaliland, and still wore inches of pale-yellow dust on him. D’s eyes looked sombre under his curving sun helmet, but once the final words were said and the earth mounded up over Berkeley’s coffin, he came to me and gripped my hands lightly and didn’t let them go for a long time. “I felt like a terrible shit for sending you away, you know,” he said.
“You didn’t have much of a choice,” I said. “I saw that.”
He cleared his throat gruffly, and shook his head, a long lock of his near-white hair leaping on his collar. “If you ever need anything, I want you to come to me. You’re still so young. I’ve forgotten that sometimes. When Florence and I were your age, we didn’t have enough sense combined to scratch our own backsides.” He met my eyes and I felt whatever was left of my humiliation rinse away. I had learned some hard lessons, but they had been important ones.
“I will, D. Thank you.”
From Berkeley’s long shaded veranda, I heard the slow melodic strains start up from the gramophone. Denys stood over the flared cone and hissing needle, and D and I walked over together to join him.
“Don’t you hate Beethoven?” D asked.
A faint pink blaze of feeling moved over Denys’s high cheekbones. “Berkeley doesn’t.”
We stayed for a long time, toasting Berkeley’s fineness and his life, lingering over every story of him we knew, until the sky thickened with grey-clotted clouds and the light began to fail. When nearly everyone else had gone, Denys said, “Come back to Ngong with me.”
“I have Pegasus.”
“I can bring you back for him.”
“All right,” I answered, as if this happened all the time, and I wasn’t crumbling inside, full of confusion and lingering hurt, disappointment and desire, all of it swirling riotously through me.
On the drive, we talked very little. The threatening sky finally opened properly, and a slow, constant equatorial rain began. It rinsed over the window glass and pattered soft drums over the leather top. He didn’t take my hand, didn’t say a word about what he wanted, nor did I. There was so much unspoken terrain between us that we couldn’t make our way to the simplest phrases.
When we drew close to Karen’s farm, he veered off the main road early, towards Mbagathi, and I understood. He wouldn’t be with me in her house, with her things looking on. That was their space together. We would have to make a place that was new and only ours.
Denys cut the engine, and we ran into the house, dripping, but it was wet there, too. More than a year had passed since my mother’s strained visit and, if anything, the roof was even less reliable. The rain came in everywhere, and we ducked and dodged as we built a fire. It fretted and smoked, the wood damp. He searched out a bottle of good brandy, and we drank without glasses, passing the neck back and forth between us. Even with the rain and the hissing cedar wood in the hearth, I could hear us both breathing.
“Why didn’t Berkeley ever marry?” I asked him.
“He did, in his way. There was a Somali woman in his household he was involved with for many years. They were devoted to one another.”
“What, for years? And no one knew?”
“There’s tolerance in the colony for certain things, but not for that.”
It all made perfect sense now, how Berkeley had kept his distance from the women in the colony, how coy he always was when I questioned him about romantic entanglements. It made me happy to know he’d had love in his life, but what had it cost him? How heavy was the secret he kept? “Do you think there’ll ever be room in the world for that kind of attachment?” I asked.
“I’d like to think so,” he said, “but the odds don’t look very good.”
When the brandy was nearly gone, he led me to the small back bedroom and wordlessly peeled off my clothes, his lips on my eyelids, fingertips stroking the insides of my wrists. We lay down in a crush of warm limbs. He buried his face in my hair and neck, his movements so tender I could barely stand it. As desperate as I was for his nearness, I was haunted by the last time we were together, and all the days between. My heart galloped loudly. I worried it might burst.
“I don’t know what this is between us,” I was able to say, finally. “Maybe we’ll never have anything beyond this moment.” I touched him, the cage of his ribs and chest rising and settling with his breathing. Our shadows painted the wall. “But I do care for you, Denys.”
“I care for you, too, Ber
yl. You’re an extraordinary woman. Surely you know that.”
Part of me wanted to lay everything bare then—to tell the truth about London. To ask him about Karen, and just how he made sense of it all for himself. But in another way I didn’t believe anything would be solved by talking or explaining. We’d made our choices, separately and together, hadn’t we? We were who we were.
Coming to my knees, I traced the hollows of his collarbones, cupping shadows, his broad neck and shoulders and forearms. I was memorizing him with my hands. “If you had another life to live,” I asked him, “would you change anything?”
“I don’t know. Maybe our mistakes make us who we are.” He fell quiet for a few minutes, and then said, “The only thing I’m really afraid of is shrinking away from life, not reaching for the thing…you know?”
“I think so, yes.” I rested my hand on his heart. Its soft drum sounded through my palm. It was true that many of the twists and turns that had led me to this room had been painful and costly, and yet I hadn’t ever felt more fully alive. I was terrified, but I didn’t want to run from him. I wouldn’t…not if I could help it. “Denys?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m glad we’re here now.”
“Yes,” he said against my lips, while above us the rain thundered on. The whole roof could have come down on our heads for all I cared. I was in Denys’s arms. I would happily have drowned.
From the first trumpets to the roar and release of the grandstand, races are quick and ephemeral things. Ten horses galloping with everything they have in them. A mile and three-quarters, no time at all, and yet enough time—curled and poised and expanding like breath—for the race to be won and lost many times over.
At the Produce Stakes, Wrack went like the wind and like pure unfettered courage, thundering out in front the whole way. I kept him in my glasses, afraid to look away for even a moment. Ruta stood beside me, as still as a prayer, while the lead was stolen from Wrack, one hair’s breadth at a time. He never relinquished anything, never stopped pulling. But at the tape, a quick-boned gelding took it and I finally breathed, deflated.
“Did you see how close it was?” Ruta said when the dust cleared and my heart had started again. “The next time he runs, Wrack will remember this and give more.”
“I don’t think it works that way for horses, Ruta.” I was trying to collect myself, thinking of next time, too—if Wrack’s owner, Ogilvie, would let us have him again.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. They don’t have memories like we do. Every race is new for them.”
But when we went to Ogilvie, he was far more inclined to side with Ruta. “Did you see how close that was? He’ll win next time.”
And he did.
—
For the remainder of 1925, my horses won and placed often enough so that Nairobi’s close-knit racing world finally seemed ready to let me in, and to believe I belonged there. D asked me back to Soysambu, telling me, whether it was now or later, there would always be a place for me in his stables. Ben Birkbeck wrote to say he was keen to give me horses, and that I appeared to be on track to take over my father’s reputation in the colony. At one of my events, I spotted my mother in a towering feathered hat, cheering me on. I hadn’t seen her for over a year, and felt a jolt, stinging and complex. I still didn’t know who she was in my life, or how to be anywhere near her without feeling waylaid. Maybe I never would.
“It makes me proud to see you doing so well,” she said when she searched me out afterwards. “Congratulations.”
I watched her sip at a carnation-pink cocktail and listened to her news. She was living up near Eldoret with Dickie and the boys, and trying to find some way to help Dickie make ends meet, but having very little luck.
“I’m sorry things are difficult,” I told her, and was surprised to find I actually meant it. Maybe Berkeley had been right about family—maybe we never survive them, or anyone we love. Not in the truest way. My feelings for Clara were tangled at the root, unresolvable. Whether I liked it or not, I would always carry the ghost of her leaving. But it also didn’t seem right somehow to walk away and ignore her need. “Is there something I can do?”
“We’ll manage,” she said, curiously stoic. She finished her drink and readied herself to leave, saying, “It is wonderful to see you’re getting what you deserve.”
—
With my string of wins, I could finally begin to pay Ruta what he was worth, and pamper his wife with new shoes and cooking pots. I could buy a proper bed for my tent under the stands, too, and put away money for a car—but I wasn’t going to rest on my efforts or trust that the flush days would last.
I felt the same way about Denys. Every hour with him was sweet and stolen. I began to borrow a motorcycle of Karen’s, to visit him when he was at Mbogani—and somehow the thrill of the motorbike beneath me, bouncing over the hard red dust, careening past deep potholes and stones, was like the sensation of being near him. Both were dangerous, both a bold and unforgivable form of trespass. Karen would have died a dozen times over to know I was at Mbagathi under the holey roof, in her lover’s arms, while she was away in Denmark—but I couldn’t think of that, or of her. If I did, I couldn’t have any of it, and that would be so much worse.
Karen would be coming home soon. When Denys began to talk of a scouting trip he was going to take near Meru, I knew he was really saying this might be our last chance to be together. “You could ride over and join me.”
There were logistics to sort out. I would ride to Solio, Berkeley’s old farm. I could leave Pegasus there, and we would go on together in Denys’s Hudson. When we returned, we’d be heading our separate ways.
We were set to meet in February. In the meantime, he was going off on a long safari with a wealthy client from Australia, and I was working on getting Wrack ready for the St. Leger, Kenya’s premier race. With his recent successes, Wrack was the favourite, and I planned to put everything I had into making sure he would do all he was expected to and more.
—
On the afternoon I meant to head out to meet Denys, the sky opened with a crack and it began to rain as if it never planned to stop.
Ruta looked out of the stable door at the sheets of grey water. “You’ll stay then, msabu?” He knew my plans; I kept no secrets from him and never had.
“No, I can’t do that, but I’ll delay. You don’t approve of my being with Denys. I know that.”
He shrugged and then sighed out a well-known native proverb. “Who can understand women and the sky?”
“I love him, Ruta.” After everything, I hadn’t admitted this yet, even to myself somehow.
His inky eyes cut through the dense pooling air and the drizzle. “Does it matter whether I approve or not? You will go to him anyway.”
“You’re right. I will.”
All day I watched the rain and the rivulets of red-running mud. Finally, when there was a small break on the horizon, and I was able to see paler clouds and a sheer hint of sunlight, I tacked Pegasus and made off. Solio was on the far side of the Aberdares, thirty-five miles straight east. Under perfect conditions, I would have spared Pegasus and ridden around the mountain to the north. As it was, I was making such a late start that I thought to shear off hours by heading over the top on a small snaking trail.
That I was on horseback alone in the middle of the night didn’t frighten me. I’d ridden in the dark before, without half so much provocation. Pegasus could get me there. He had always had wonderful instincts in the hills, as sure on his hoofs as a mountain goat.
At first we made good time. The weather had cleared, and the night air felt good on my skin. As the narrow route doglegged upwards, climbing steadily, town lights were sprinkled here and there beneath us. Merchants slept in cramped beds, and children bundled on the floor on cane mats, snug and sound. I could scarcely begin to imagine that kind of quiet life with Denys. Neither one of us was cut out for sameness or routine, the pinchings of domesticity—but there was
this night and the next one. Pirated kisses. Sweet and terrifying happiness. To have even one more hour in his arms, I knew I would do almost anything.
We were perhaps halfway to Solio when I began to smell water. Soon I could hear the river, too, just ahead. Pegasus and I approached it slowly, having only a little moonlight to steer by. As we came nearer, I could see the swirling movement of the current, ghost shadows twisting and eddying. The banks were steep and sheer. There was no way even Pegasus would make it down safely, and then how deep would the river be? Could we swim or wade through? I couldn’t even guess in the dark. We picked our way north instead, scouting the bank for a way across, and then doubled back to the south.
Finally I made out the faintest sketching of a bridge. As we came closer, I saw it was fashioned of bamboo and thick twisted rope, only a few feet across, the kind local tribes built and tended for their own use. I didn’t know how strong it was, but these things usually held small carts and oxen. It would probably do.
I dismounted and took his reins, and we began our descent, Pegasus sliding a little in the pebbled gravel. He whinnied, then startled. The bridge felt solid but loose on its ropes, so that it swung under our movement. I had a swaying, seasick feeling and knew Pegasus wasn’t any happier.
Yard by yard, we crossed it. I could hear the water roaring maybe twenty feet below. White foam shifted in the moonlight, looking alive, and darker water jumped, silvered on its edges. When I spotted the pale bank I felt pure relief. I’d begun to have the feeling that we’d come too far and were risking too much, but we were nearly there. Nearly on solid ground.
The ropes groaned, making a sawing and ripping sound, and then the bamboo began to snap. Pegasus dropped with a lurch. He cried out, falling, and for a moment I was sure I’d lost him, then the bridge shuddered as he stopped. His legs had punched right through the bamboo bracings. He was up to his chest, the slats holding him, just. Below us, the river roiled and sent up a terrible sound. I was probably in danger of crashing through myself, but I could only think of Pegasus and the mess I’d got him into.