Alice said uncomfortably: ‘But Em says——’
‘Em!’ interrupted Gilly rudely. ‘Em’s as bad as any of them. Worse! It was silly old bitches like her who caused half the trouble. “My Kukes are loyal. I’ll stake my life on it.” So they lose – Bah! You’re not going, are you?’
Alice had put down her half finished glass and stood up. She said coldly: ‘I’m afraid I must. I only came over with a message for Lisa, but if she’s out perhaps you’d give it to her.’
‘She isn’t out. She’s only gone down to the shamba with the Brandons and Drew Stratton. Here, don’t go! Have the other half of that. I didn’t mean to get your goat. I know how you feel about Em. You’re fond of the old battle-axe. Well, so am I – when she isn’t tearing a strip off me! So’s all Kenya. Protected Monument – that’s Em! Apologize, if I hurt your feelings.’
‘That’s all right, Gilly,’ said Alice hurriedly. ‘But I don’t think I’ll wait, all the same. It’s getting late. And if Lisa has guests——’
There was an unexpected trace of embarrassment in her quiet voice, and Gilly’s shrewd, pale eyes regarded her with observant interest. He said: ‘Ken’s not with them, if that’s what’s worrying you.’
His laugh held a trace of malice as he saw the colour rise in Alice DeBrett’s pale cheeks. ‘There’s no need for you to blush like that, Alice. We all know that you’ve done your best to snub the poor boy. That is, all except Mabel. But you can’t expect Mabel to believe that every woman isn’t crazy about her darling son. He’s her blind spot. Funny about Ken: I wouldn’t have thought you were his type at all.’
‘I’m not,’ said Alice with a trace of a snap. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Gilly. I’m old enough to be his mother!’
‘Here! Give yourself a chance! You can’t be much more than thirty-five!’
‘I’m twenty-seven,’ said Alice slowly. ‘And Ken isn’t twenty yet.’
‘Oh well,’ said Gilly, dismissing it, and unaware of the blow that he had dealt her. ‘Chaps always fall in love with someone older than themselves to start with, and they always fall hard. He’ll get over it. Hector ought to send him away. God, I only wish I could get the hell out of this Valley! Did you know that Jerry Coles is going to retire soon? You know – the chap who manages the DeBrett property out at Rumuruti. That’s the job I’m after. But Em’s being damned obstinate. Suit me down to the ground. Nice home, good pay and perks – and no Em looking over my shoulder the entire time, carping and criticizing. Heaven!’
Alice smiled a little wanly and said: ‘Wouldn’t you find it rather lonely? I shouldn’t have thought Lisa would like living so far away.’
Gilly scowled, and his pale eyes were suddenly brooding and sombre. He said: ‘That’s another reason. It’s far away. Over a hundred dusty, uncomfortable, glorious miles away. Far enough, perhaps, to keep her from making an infernal fool of herself over——’
Alice did not let him finish. She walked towards the door, her face white and pinched, and spoke over-loudly, as though to drown out words that she did not wish to hear: ‘I really must go. It’s getting late and I ought to get back. Will you tell Lisa that——’
Gilly said: ‘You can tell her yourself. Here they are now.’
There were footsteps and voices in the verandah, and a moment later Gilly’s wife and her guests were in the room. The Brandons, whose property touched the western borders of Flamingo and who were such a strangely assorted pair – small, soft-voiced Mabel with her kind, charming face and grey curls, and her choleric husband, Hector, who lived up to his name and was large, loud-voiced and ruddy-featured. Drew Stratton, whose farm lay five miles further along the shores of the lake. And Lisa herself, her bright brown hair bound by a satin ribbon and her wide-skirted dress patterned with roses.
Gilly rose unsteadily and dispensed drinks, and Lisa said: ‘Why, hullo, Alice! Nice to see you.’
Her violet eyes slid past Alice with a quick eager look that turned to disappointment, and was neither lost nor misinterpreted by Eden’s wife.
Lisa and Eden – ! thought Alice. She pushed away the thought as though it had been a tangible thing and said a little stiffly: ‘I only came over with a message from Em. She said that you’d asked for a lift next time she went into Nairobi, and to tell you that she’d be going in on Thursday to fetch her niece from the airport.’
‘Great-niece, surely?’ corrected Lisa.
‘No,’ said Mrs Brandon in her gentle voice. ‘It’s her sister’s child. Good evening, Alice.’ She dropped her knitting bag on the sofa and sat down beside it. ‘Lady Helen was Em’s half-sister, and a good deal younger than her. She came out to stay with Em during the first world war, and married Jack Caryll who used to own the Lumley place on the Kinangop: Victoria, the daughter, was born out here. I remember her quite well – a thin little girl who used to ride a zebra that Jack tamed for her. He was killed by a rhino while he was out shooting, and his wife took a dislike to the whole country in consequence. She sold the farm to the Lumleys, and went back to England; and now she’s died. It’s strange to think that she must have been about twenty years younger than Em, and yet Em’s still so strong. But I am surprised that Em should have decided to bring Victoria out here. It seems rather an odd thing to do in – in the circumstances.’
For a moment her soft voice held a trace of embarrassment, and Alice’s slight figure stiffened. She said coldly: ‘Lady Emily feels that it is time she had someone to take over the secretarial work and help with the milk records. She has always done those herself up to now, but she is getting old, and it tires her.’
‘But then she has you,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘And Eden.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t type; and Eden has never been fond of paperwork.’
‘Eden,’ said Hector Brandon roundly, ‘is not fond of work in any form! And it’s no use your lookin’ at me like that, Alice! I’ve known your husband since he was in short pants, and if you ask me, its a pity his grandmother didn’t dust ’em more often – with a slipper!’
Mrs Brandon frowned reprovingly at her husband and said pacifically: ‘You mustn’t mind Hector, Alice. He always says what he thinks.’
‘And proud of it!’ boomed Hector.
Why? thought Alice with a spasm of nervous exasperation. Why should anyone consider it an admirable trait to speak their mind when it hurt other people’s feelings? – when it was rude and unkind?
‘Rugged individualism,’ murmured Mr Stratton absently into his glass.
He caught Alice’s eye and grinned at her, and some of her defensive hostility left her. Her taut nerves relaxed a little, and she returned the smile, but with a visible effort.
She liked Drew Stratton. He was one of the very few people with whom she felt entirely at ease. Perhaps because he took people as he found them and did not trouble to interest himself in their private affairs. Drew was tall and fair; as fair as Gilly but, unlike Gilly, very brown from the sun that had bleached his hair and brows. His blue eyes were deceptively bland, and if there was any rugged individualism in his make-up it did not take the form of blunt outspokenness. Nor did he find it necessary, in the manner of Hector, to dress in ill-fitting and sweat-stained clothes in order to emphasize the fact that he worked, and worked hard, in a new and raw land.
Gilly was talking again; his voice slurred and over loud: ‘Hear some of your cattle were stolen last night, Hector. Serve you right! Y’ought to keep ’em boma’d. Asking for trouble, leavin’ ’em loose. It’s men like you who play into the hands of the gangs. If I’ve heard the D.C. tell you that once, I’ve heard him tell you a thousand times! Invitation to help themselves – cattle all over the place.’
Hector’s large red face showed signs of imminent apoplexy, and Mabel Brandon said hurriedly: ‘You know we always kept our cattle close boma’d during the Emergency, Gilly. But now that it’s over there didn’t seem to be any sense in it. And anyway, Drew has never boma’d his!’
‘Drew happens to employ Masai,’ re
torted Gilly. ‘Makes a difference. Makes a hell of a lot of difference! Who owned the Rift before the whites came? The Masai – that’s who! And in those days if any Kikuyu had so much as put his nose into it, they’d have speared him! That’s why chaps like Drew were left alone in the Emergency. But more than half your labour are Kukes. You’re as bad as Em! Won’t give them up, and won’t hear a word against them.’
‘There isn’t one of our Kikuyu who I wouldn’t trust with my life,’ said Mrs Brandon, bristling slightly. ‘Why, they’ve worked for us for twenty years and more. Samuel was with us before Ken was born!’
‘Then why do you carry a gun in that knitting bag?’ demanded Gilly. ‘Tell me that! Think I don’t know?’
Mrs Brandon flushed pinkly and looked as dismayed and conscience-stricken as a child who has been discovered in a fault, and Gilly laughed loudly.
‘Pipe down, Gil,’ requested Drew mildly. ‘You’re tight.’
‘A hit, a very palpable hit. Of course I am!’ admitted Gilly with unexpected candour. ‘Only possible thing to be these days.’
Drew said softly: ‘What are you afraid of, Gilly?’
The alcoholic truculence faded from Gilly’s pale, puffy face, leaving it drawn and old beyond his years, and he said in a hoarse whisper that was suddenly and unbelievably shocking in that frilled and beruffled room: ‘The same thing that Em is afraid of!’
He looked round the circle of still faces, his eyes flickering and darting as uneasily as trapped moths, and his voice rose sharply in the brief uncomfortable silence: ‘There’s something damned funny going on at Flamingo, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all! Know what I think? I think there’s something brewing. Some – some funny business.’
‘What d’you mean, “funny business”?’ demanded Hector Brandon alertly. ‘Em been having trouble with her labour? First I’ve heard of it.’
‘No. I could take that. This is something different. Ever watched a thunderstorm coming up against the wind? S’like that! Waiting. I don’t like it. Alice doesn’t like it. Em don’t like it either. She’s stubborn as a mule – won’t admit that anything could go wrong at her precious Flamingo. But she’s not been herself of late. It’s getting her down.’
‘Nonsense, Gilly!’ Hector said firmly. ‘Saw her myself only this morning. Top of her form! You’re imagining things. Only trouble with Em is that she’s getting old.’ He allowed Lisa to refill his glass and added reflectively: ‘Truth of the matter is, Em’s never been her old self since Gus Abbott died. She never really got over that. Felt she’d murdered him.’
‘So she did,’ said Gilly. ‘Murder – manslaughter – slip of the gun. What’s it matter what you call it? She killed him.’
‘Gilly, how can you!’ protested Mabel indignantly. ‘You know quite well that it happened in the middle of that dreadful attack. And it was largely Gus’s fault. He saw one of the gang going for her with a panga, and jumped at him just as Em fired. She’s never been quite the same since.’
‘That’s right,’ said Hector. ‘He’d been her manager since Kendall’s day, and it broke her up. You didn’t know her before – except by reputation. But we did. It did something to her. Not so much Gus’s death, but the fact that she’d killed him. The whole thing must have been a pretty ghastly experience all round. She lost a couple of her servants that night, murdered by the gang, and two of her dogs were panga’d, and half the huts set on fire. But she shot three of the gang and wounded at least two more, and held off the rest until help came. It was a bloody fine show!’
‘I grant him bloody – S-Shakespeare!’ said Gilly with a bark of laughter. ‘An’ you’re quite right, Hector. I didn’t know her before. Mightn’t have jumped at the job if I had! She’s a difficult woman to work for. Too bloody efficient. That’s her trouble. I don’t like efficient women.’
He swallowed the contents of his glass at a gulp and Lisa seized the opportunity to return to a topic that was of more interest to her: ‘Tell us about this niece of Em’s, Alice. What’s she like? Is she plain or pretty or middle-aged, or what?’
‘I’ve never met her,’ said Alice briefly. ‘She must be quite young.’
Her tone did not encourage comment, but Lisa was impervious to tone. She had, moreover, the misfortune to be in love with Alice’s husband, and was therefore interested, with an avid, jealous interest, in any other woman who entered his orbit – with the sole exception of his wife, whom she considered to be a colourless and negligible woman, obviously older than her handsome husband and possessing no attractions apart from money. But this new girl – this Victoria Caryll. She would be staying under the same roof as Eden, and be in daily contact with him, and she was young and might be pretty …
‘I can’t think why, if Em wanted a secretary, she couldn’t have got a part-time one from among the local girls,’ said Lisa discontentedly. ‘Heaven knows there are enough of them, and some of them must be able to type.’
‘Secretary, nuts!’ said Gilly, weaving unsteadily across to the table that held the drinks, and refilling his glass. ‘If you ask me, she’s getting this girl out with the idea of handing over half the property to her one day. Dividing it up between her and Eden. After all, they’re the only two blood-relations she’s got. And there must be plenty to leave. Bags of loot – even if it’s split fifty-fifty. Bet you Hector’s right! Come to think of it, can’t see why else she sh’d suddenly want to bring the girl out in such a hurry. Or why the girl was willing to come! Bet you it’s that!’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mabel Brandon thoughtfully. ‘But it’s more likely to be what Alice says. Em’s getting old, and when you’re old there are times when you suddenly feel that the years are running out too quickly, and you begin to count them like a miser and to realize that you can’t go on putting things off like you used to do – you must do them now, or you may not do them at all, because soon it may be too late.’
‘For goodness sake, Mabel!’ said Lisa with a nervous laugh. ‘Anyone would think you were an old woman!’
‘I’m not a young one,’ said Mabel with a rueful smile. ‘It’s later than you think.’
‘Don’t!’ said Alice with a shiver. The unexpected sharpness of her normally quiet voice evidently surprised her as much as it surprised Mabel Brandon, for she flushed painfully and said with a trace of confusion: ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve always hated that phrase. It was carved on a sundial that we had in the garden at home, and it always frightened me. I don’t know why. I – I suppose it was the idea that everything would end sooner than you expected it to. The day – parties – fun – the years. Life! I used to make excuses not to go near the sundial. Silly, isn’t it?’
‘No!’ said Gilly, harshly and abruptly. ‘Do it myself. Make excuses to keep away from Flamingo. Same thing. Something that frightens me, but I don’t know what. Don’t mind a poltergeist that breaks things, but when it begins on creatures, that’s different. That’s – that’s damnable. Working up to something. A sighting shot. Makes you wonder where it will end. What it’s got its eye on…’
His voice died out on a whisper and Mabel surveyed him with disapproval and said with unaccustomed severity: ‘Really Gilly, you are talking a great deal of nonsense this evening. And you’re upsetting poor Lisa. What are you hinting at? That Mau Mau isn’t dead yet and that Em’s servants have taken the oath? Well suppose it isn’t and they have? There’s hardly a Kikuyu in the country who hasn’t. But it doesn’t mean anything any more. The whole thing has fallen to pieces and the few hard-core terrorists who are still on the run are far too busy just keeping alive to plan any more murders. And if it’s the poisoning of that unfortunate ridgeback that’s worrying you, I’m sure there’s nothing sinister in that. It cannot be wise to keep dogs like Simba who attack strangers on sight, and I am not really surprised that someone took the law into their own hands. I might almost have felt tempted to do it myself, fond as I am of dogs, but——’
‘But Simba didn’t like Ken; that’s
it, isn’t it?’ said Alice, surprised to find herself so angry.
Mabel turned towards her, her gentle voice quivering with sudden emotion: ‘That is not kind of you, Alice. We all know that Simba liked you, and of course Em is crazy on the subject of dogs. But considering that he once attacked your own husband——’
‘Only because Eden was trying to take a book away from me. We were fooling, but Simba thought he was attacking me. He wouldn’t let anyone touch me, and I suppose he thought that Ken——’
She bit the sentence off short, aghast at its implications. But it seemed to remain hanging in the air, its import embarrassingly clear to everyone in the room. As embarrassingly clear as the expression upon Mabel Brandon’s stricken face, or Hector’s stony tight-mouthed stare.
There was a moment of strained and painful silence which was broken by Drew Stratton, who glanced at his wrist watch and rose. He said in a leisurely voice: ‘Afraid I must go, Lisa. It’s getting late, and my headlights are not all they should be. Thanks for the drink. Can I drop you off at the house, Mrs DeBrett, or did you drive over?’
Alice threw him a grateful look. ‘No, I came over by the short cut across the garden. And I really must walk back, because I promised Em I’d get some of the Mardan roses for the dining-room table.’
Drew said: ‘Then I’ll see you on your way. Eden shouldn’t let you wander about alone of an evening.’
‘Oh, it’s safe enough now. Good night, Lisa. Shall I tell Em you’ll go in with her on Thursday?’
‘Yes, do. I want to get my hair done. I’ll ring up tomorrow and fix an appointment. Drew, if your headlights aren’t working you’d better not be long over seeing Alice back.’