Circling the Sun

  “Beryl Clutterbuck.”

  “Clutt’s daughter?” He peered at me. “Yes, I catch the resemblance now. I know your father from the race meetings. There isn’t a man who’s better with horses.”

  “Miss Clutterbuck and I have been discussing the perils of marriage.”

  “You’re drunk, Denys.” Berkeley clucked, then turned to me. “Don’t let him frighten you.”

  “I’m not a bit frightened.”

  “See?” Denys said. He tipped the wine bottle into his mouth, and then brushed stray drops away with the back of his hand. “Have you ever seen stars like this? You can’t have. They don’t make them like this anywhere in the world.”

  Above our heads, the sky was a brimming treasure box. Some of the stars seemed to want to pull free and leap down onto my shoulders—and though these were the only ones I had ever known, I believed Denys when he said they were the finest. I thought I might believe anything he said, in fact, even though we had just met. He had that in him.

  “Do you know any Keats?” Denys asked after several minutes of stillness. Then, when I was clearly confused, “It’s poetry.”

  “Oh, I don’t know any poetry.”

  “Berkeley, give us something about the stars.”

  “Hmm,” Berkeley mused. “How about Shelley?

  “Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,

  Star-inwrought!

  Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;

  Kiss her until she be wearied out,

  Then wander o’er city, and sea, and land,

  Touching all with thine opiate wand…”

  “ ‘Kiss her until she be wearied out,’ ” Denys repeated. “That’s the best bit, isn’t it, and Berkeley does it so well.”

  “Wonderful.” My father had read the classics to me by firelight sometimes, but that had felt like school. This was more like a song, and also like being alone in the wild with your thoughts. Somehow it was both at the same time.

  While Shelley’s words still hung there, Denys began to recite something else, quietly, as if only for himself:

  “This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

  Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

  Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best.

  Night, sleep, death and the stars.”

  The words were so natural for him they took no effort at all. You couldn’t learn that, no matter how much you tried. Even I recognized it, feeling a little small. “That’s Shelley again?”

  “Whitman, actually.” He smiled at me.

  “Should I be embarrassed not to have heard of him? I told you I don’t know anything about poetry.”

  “It only takes practise, you know. If you really want to learn, do it. Take some poetry every day.”

  “Like your quinine for malaria,” Berkeley added. “A measure of good champagne helps, too. I don’t know what it is about Africa, but champagne is absolutely compulsory here.”

  Without any further ceremony, Denys tipped his hat to me, and then the two men moved off down the road, turning a corner and passing out of sight. They might have been headed to another party, or to white steeds waiting to whisk them off to an enchanted palace. I would have believed a magic carpet as well, or any storybook ending. They were that lovely, and now they were gone.

  —

  “Are you drunk?” Emma said when I went back inside.

  “I might be.”

  She pursed her lips tightly, fed up, and moved off just as Jock was stepping towards me.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he said, taking my arm.

  Without saying anything I reached for the champagne flute he held and downed it in one go. It was a dramatic gesture, but there were bits of verse still swirling in my head like the milky trails of stars. There was the picture of two beautiful men in white jackets at the untamed edge of town, and the idea that the world was far bigger than I’d ever imagined and that all sorts of things would happen to me. Things already were happening to change my life for ever, even if I didn’t quite know what they meant. There was only the promise for the moment, as exhilarating as the feeling of champagne fizzing and dancing on my tongue. Compulsory, Berkeley Cole had called it.

  “Let’s have some more of this,” I told Jock, lifting the glass. And then, as we made our way towards the bar, “Do you know any poetry?”

  A few weeks later, my father and I met the train from Nairobi at Kampi ya Moto Station, down the hill from our farm. The engine settled and breathed hard in place, like a small dragon home from war. Smoke chuffed and streamed out behind, marring the flat sky, while half-a-dozen men bent in two alongside the sooty freight cars, readying a wooden ramp. Six of our horses were returning home victorious from the Turf Club in town—including Cam, Bar One, and my Pegasus. Cam had taken the cup and a hundred-pound purse, but now, as we stood on the short platform and waited for Emma to come round with the Hudson, my father didn’t want to talk about our winning runs. He wanted to talk about Jock.

  “Do you like him at all?” he asked, looking up the hill into the sun.

  “I suppose he’s all right. He’ll make that farm work.”

  He chewed lightly for a moment at the corner of his lip. “He will.” And then: “He’s serious about you.”

  “What?” I spun on him. “We’ve only just met.”

  He smiled wryly. “I’m not sure that’s a detriment in marriage.”

  “Why is everyone so keen to find me a husband? I’m too young for all of that.”

  “Not really. There’re plenty of girls your age who’ve been dreaming about husbands and families for years. You’ll want to be taken care of one day, won’t you?”

  “Why? We’re doing all right as we are.”

  Before my father could say anything more, the silly klaxon punched through the air over the hill. We heard the low metallic clanking of the motorized buggy, and as it nosed into view, I saw Emma at the wheel, bouncing on the hard leather seat. She pulled up to us, idling. “Where’s your hat, Beryl? You’ll get freckles in this sun.”

  —

  I wasn’t sure how our success in Nairobi could dissolve so quickly, but that night at dinner my father was silent and remote, while Emma came forward, peevish about the soup. It was a thin broth with turbot and potatoes and small coins of leeks.

  “The fish is off. Don’t you think, Charles?” She pushed her bowl away and raised her voice to call the houseboy, Kamotho. When he appeared in his white coat and small velvet fez, Emma told him it should all go back.

  “And we’ll eat what, bread and butter?” My father put up a hand to stay the confused Kamotho. “Leave it alone, Emma.”

  “Now you care what I do? That’s rich.” Her words clattered in the air above the table.

  “What is this all about?” I finally brought myself to ask.

  My father looked pained. He asked Kamotho to leave us, and as the boy slunk off gratefully, I wished that I could join him. I didn’t want to hear what came next. “It’s the damned rupee,” he finally said, squeezing one of his hands in the other. “I went to bed last week owing five thousand and now it’s seventy-five hundred, with eight per cent interest on all of it. I can’t climb out this time.”

  “He’s taken a training post in Cape Town,” Emma pronounced coldly. “The farm is finished.”

  “What?” I felt myself rocking dangerously off centre.

  “Farming’s a gamble, Beryl. It always has been.”

  “And Cape Town isn’t a gamble?” I shook my head, barely able to grasp what was happening.

  “They love horses there. I’ll make a fresh start. Maybe the change will be lucky.”

  “Lucky,” I repeated flatly.

  In my room that night, I turned the lamp lower and lay there feeling stunned. Shadows came creeping and sighing over my bed, the posts still hung with beads and pouches of feathery animal bones. It gave me a kind of vertigo thinking ab
out how quickly my whole life could shift away from under me. Our stables were still filled and perfectly run—eighty-four matchless animals that had won my father a golden reputation and strings of solid wins. In the morning, the stable bell would ring and everyone and everything would wake as they always had. The mill would turn, the horses would canter and stamp in the paddock and churn loose hay in their boxes—but none of it was real any more. We lived on a ghost farm.

  When the moon climbed above the camphor trees beside my hut, light streamed in through the open windows, yellowing the tops of the shelves and boxes. I dressed quickly in trousers and moccasins and a long-sleeved shirt and then headed out into the cool dry night. There was to be a ngoma that night, as there always was for full moons—a tribal dance of the young Kikuyu men and women, up the high embankment at the far edge of the forest. I headed there with Buller at my heels, listening for anything that might want to do me harm and thinking about my father.

  Earlier that night, I’d found him behind his paper-strewn desk working on the lists he’d begun to collect of interested buyers for the horses. The surrender in it seemed to have cut new lines around his brown eyes.

  “Is Emma going along to Cape Town?” I asked him.

  “Of course.”

  “Will I go?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  Gooseflesh prickled the back of my neck. “What else would I do?”

  “Stay here and make your own start as a farmer’s wife, I suppose.”

  “Marry Jock?” My words came out in an unsteady rush.

  “It’s clear he’s ready to settle down, and he wants you.”

  “I’m only sixteen.”

  “Well”—he shrugged—“no one’s forcing you. If you want to come along, we’ll be starting all over from the beginning, working for someone else.”

  He returned to his lists and I studied the top of his head, the skin pale pink and vulnerable-looking under his thinning brown hair. Had I heard a hesitation in his voice? He said it was up to me, but something in his tone seemed to be nudging me gently away from Cape Town. “Does Emma not want me to go?”

  “Honestly, Beryl.” He glanced up from shuffling his lists, looking exasperated. “I have so much to worry about at the moment. This has nothing to do with you.”

  I went off to bed then, but I hadn’t slept much or been able to think about anything else. Maybe my father’s hard choices didn’t have anything to do with me, but they were upending my life all the same and forcing me to make hard choices of my own, ones I had hoped never to make.

  —

  Before I was even halfway up the steep ridge, I heard the ngoma. Drums set the air vibrating and rang through the ground under my feet as if something were tunnelling powerfully in every direction at once. Smoke rose in a coil above the ridge, then high-licking flames and cinders. Finally I was on level ground and could see the dancers, alive with movement, and the encompassing circle of those who watched, too young or too old to join in. At the centre of the beaten ring of earth, the fire danced, too, giving off a singed smell and painting a lustre on limbs and faces. The young women had smooth-shaved heads dressed with strings of beads. More beads swept in long looping chains over the tight leather strappings of their clothes. They weren’t much older than me, but they looked older dressed like this, and as if they knew something I didn’t, and possibly never would.

  A few of the young men wore the long white skins of serval cats on leather thongs around their waists. When the skins swung under their buttocks, the dots and dashes of the animals’ coats shone as if alive, then flicked between their legs as they pitched forward and back with the steps. The tribal chief bent back his neck and made a screeching caw I felt everywhere. The men called out and the women responded, cry and mirroring cry, high and looping, filling the sky and slicing it open. Films of sweat caught the light and the vibrating skins of the drum. My breath quickened. My heart seemed to leave my body as the verses and refrains gathered speed like a great wheel. And just when the song reached its highest pitch, I looked across the blazing circle and saw Kibii.

  We had always come to these ngomas together as children, staying late and walking back home through the forest afterwards, Kibii full of judgements about how the dancers could have been more graceful or more passionate. Now the two of us were rarely alone, and I couldn’t remember the last time we’d been easy with one another. As the firelight painted shadows on him, I saw how much older and different he’d become. Instead of his usual shuka, he wore a finer one, knotted high on his left shoulder and gathered at his waist with a beaded belt. There were black and white bands of monkey fur around both his ankles, and at his throat hung the hollowed claw of a lion. He was angled away from me, and his profile was a prince’s, as it had always been, but with steelier edges. Finally he turned. His black eyes found mine over the licking flames, and my heart jumped. He was a moran now. That’s what had changed—he’d become a man.

  I backed away from the circle, feeling hurt. We hadn’t been close for a long time, but I still couldn’t believe that Kibii could cross the most momentous threshold of his life without my hearing a whisper of it. I scanned the area for Buller, wanting to be gone as quickly as possible, but didn’t see him. I made off anyway, and had reached the edge of the ridge, readying myself for the steep descent, when I heard Kibii calling my name. The moon beamed down at the tangle of brushy plants and grasses that hid my feet from me. Even if I hurried, I knew he could easily catch me again—so I stayed.

  “They say your father is leaving Njoro,” Kibii said when he’d reached me. “Is it true?”

  I nodded. “For Cape Town.” I didn’t want to say anything about the money troubles. It was too shameful.

  “There are plenty of good horses there, or so I have heard.”

  “You’ve become a moran,” I said, wanting to talk of anything else. “You look very fine.” Moonlight showed the pride on his face, but there was something else, too. I realized he didn’t know how to be near me any more.

  “What will you do now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, actually. I’ve had a marriage proposal.”

  I thought he would be surprised or show some reaction, but he only shrugged as if to say of course, and then spoke a native phrase I’d heard before: A new thing is good, though it be a sore place.

  “Are you ready for marriage?” I challenged him, not liking the authority and confidence in his voice. As if he’d already sorted out every piece of the puzzle that had made a muddle of my life.

  He shrugged again—why not? “I will go into the world first. The ndito in my village aren’t meant for me.”

  “The world is a big place. Do you know where you’ll go?”

  “My father told me of many places he travelled to—north as far as Kitale, south to Arusha, and to the slopes of Donya Kenya. Perhaps I will begin by walking where he has walked.”

  Arap Maina’s last steps had been very far from here. I suspected Kibii was thinking of that place, too, though he hadn’t named it. “Do you still mean to find the soldier who killed arap Maina?”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps I’ll learn the difference between a boy’s dreams and a man’s.” He paused, and then said, “When I marry, my father will live again in my sons.”

  He sounded so arrogant, so sure of himself. It made me want to challenge him or put him right. I said, “The man who wants to marry me is very rich and strong. He lives near here. He built his house in three days.”

  “A proper house or a hut?” he wanted to know.

  “A real house, with shingles and a pitched roof, and glass windows.”

  He was silent for a moment, and I was sure I’d finally impressed him. “Three days,” he said at last. “There is no wisdom in such hurrying. This house will not stand long.”

  “You haven’t seen it.” My voice rose with irritation.

  “How can that matter?” he said. “I would ask him to build another dwelling, just for you, and
to take more care.” He turned away, dismissing me, and said, partly over his shoulder, “You should know I have a moran’s name now. I am arap Ruta.”

  —

  All the way back to the farm I smarted, running over the clever things I should have said to him, things that would wound him and make him feel as small as I did now, and as outmatched. Arap Ruta indeed. I had known him since he wasn’t any taller than a bushpig, and now he’d become worldly and wise after one night’s ceremony? A sharp knife and a cupful of curdled bull’s blood to drink?

  As my thoughts buzzed and grated against one another, I realized that if Ruta had even the slightest notion of how scared I was about the coming changes, I would die.

  But I was scared, and full of confusion. Cape Town was a world away, and my father was going to be busy and worried there, focused on pleasing new owners and stable managers. I could trail him, trying to stay out of the way, or throw my lot in with Emma to set up house. What a thought that was.

  England was another choice, too, I supposed, or might be if I were another sort of girl. I might have considered writing to my mother to see if there was room for me with her and Dickie—but England seemed even more foreign and distant a world than Cape Town in a way, and she had never once tried to reclaim me over the years. Asking for her help now would cost me too much and open the door for all the old hurt again. No, never that—which left Jock.

  I didn’t know the slightest thing about marriage, and the only happy union I’d ever seen modelled was D and Lady D, a foggy memory well behind me. The farm and our horses had always seemed better things to hitch my fate to. I hadn’t even let myself imagine something else, but that was all dissolving now, moment by moment. I barely knew Jock and didn’t know why I’d caught his attention in the first place, other than that I hunted well and he liked the way I looked. But marrying him would mean I could stay here in Njoro, seeing the same hills and distances, living the same sort of life. Did Jock fancy himself in love with me? Could I learn to love him?