Green City in the Sun (5 page)

     She tried to relax, keeping an eye on Rose, who appeared to be sleeping, and thinking of what she would do tomorrow.
We will stay in Nairobi, she decided. We will not continue on until after the baby is born.

     Valentine would be petulant, of course, because delay in Nairobi could mean a delay of three or more months, as the long rains were due to start soon and all travel into the Central Province would then be impossible. But Grace would deal with her brother. She was no less anxious than he to have his wife established in the big house he had built, but for the safety of mother and child Grace was going to insist that they wait.

     Knowing that she would not be able to sleep, Grace decided to begin writing in her new journal. It had been a gift from one of her professors in medical school, a handsome volume bound in Moroccan leather with giltedged
pages. She had waited until now to start it—waited for the first day of her new life.

     She had just written "February 10, 1919" on the opening page when Rose screamed.

     The baby was coming.

S
HE WAS FURIOUS WITH HER BROTHER
.

     Black clouds hung over the hills, threateningly, like vultures. And here they were, two women, six servants, and fourteen Africans, inching their way up a perilous dirt track in five wagons loaded with all their worldly possessions. What protection were the canvas covers going to be against a sudden torrent? What was Valentine going to say when he saw the ruined Aubusson carpet, the sodden paintings from Bella Hill? How was he going to soothe Rose when she saw that the lace tablecloth and silk gowns were destroyed by rain? This was a preposterous undertaking, bringing all this useless clutter into a wilderness! Valentine was insane.

     Grace looked at her sister-in-law, who was bundled up in a fur coat and staring ahead as if she could see what lay at the end of this trail.

     Rose was still very weak; she was shockingly pale. But she had refused to stay in Nairobi, especially after she had received the message from Valentine telling her to come ahead. Grace had tried to stand her ground, but there was Rose, the next morning, giving orders to her English servants to
have the wagons loaded. Grace could not dissuade her sister-in-law from going, and so now here they were, in the middle of a wild land, hacking their way through mango trees and banana plants, fighting insects and being kept awake at night in their tents by the roar of lions and cheetahs. And the heavy rains about to break!

     The sound of the baby crying made Grace turn around and look at the wagon behind her. Mrs. Pembroke, the nanny, produced a feeding bottle and quieted it.

     Grace frowned. The way that baby had survived was a miracle. When the lifeless little form had appeared on the sheets, Grace had thought certain it was dead. She had not found a heartbeat, and its face was blue. But she had blown into its mouth all the same—and it lived! A small, weak baby girl, but alive and growing stronger every day.

     Grace thought about the young woman at her side. Except for the episode at the Norfolk Hotel, when she had insisted they continue on to Nyeri, Lady Rose had been silent since the birth of the baby. No, Grace reminded herself now, there had been one other exception: When pressed to give the child a name, Rose had said simply, "Mona." Grace had not known what to make of it until she had seen the romantic novel Rose had been reading on the journey. The heroine's name was Mona.

     Grace had had no choice but to allow it to stand as the baby's name because her brother had made no provision in the event the baby should be a girl. In his vanity and single-minded obsession to found a dynasty, Valentine had never dreamed that he would produce anything other than a son. Grace had the baby baptized and had then sent word to her brother.

     His response had been: "Come at once! All is ready!"

     In the ten days since leaving Nairobi, Lady Rose had spoken not one word. Her eyes, large and dark and looking feverish, remained fixed ahead while her small white hands worked themselves inside the ermine muff. She sat inclined forward as she rode in the wagon, as if urging the oxen on. When spoken to, she did not reply; when the baby was put in her arms, she regarded it vacantly. The only interest she had shown, besides her determination to see the new house, was in her rosebushes, which rode beside her in the wagon.

     
It is the trauma of the birth that has caused this
, Grace decided.
And the shock of so many changes all at once. She'll be better once she's in the new house.

     Before meeting Valentine on her seventeenth birthday, three years ago, Rose had lived a sheltered life. And even after her engagement to the young earl Rose had been exposed to little social life; she married him three months after the first meeting and moved into Bella Hill to be swallowed up by its Tudor shadows.

     It was a mystery to everyone why Valentine had chosen shy, dreaming Rose when he had his pick of every eligible young woman in England. Valentine was dashing, handsome, wealthy and had recently inherited a title. Granted, Rose was beautiful, in an insubstantial way—she reminded Grace of the tragic maidens Poe wrote about—but she tended to live in another world, and Grace feared she was no match for a force like Valentine.

     Yet he had chosen her, and she had accepted him at once. And she had brought her incandescence into the dark, stately halls of Bella Hill.

     Grace was anxious to see what her brother had accomplished in these past twelve months. People had voiced skepticism, declaring that he had taken on what looked to be an impossible task. But Grace knew that her brother was capable of incredible things.

     Valentine Treverton was a passionate man with a restless nature, a man of such appetite for life that he had pronounced England stifling. He longed for a virgin world that he could make his own, where he would be the law, and where there were no traditions and precedents to tell him what to do.

     Anyone who had ever met Valentine was dazzled by him. He walked with a long stride and greeted people with arms held wide as if for an embrace. His laugh was deep and honest and spontaneous. And he was so handsome that even men were charmed by him. But Grace knew his other side: his temper; his moods; his utter conceit and belief that nearly everyone else was inferior to himself. Grace had no doubt that he was going to stamp this wilderness beneath his boot.

     The first raindrops made everyone look up at the sky. In an instant the Africans were shouting to one another in rapid Kikuyu and gesturing wildly. Grace didn't have to understand the language to know what they were saying. If heavy rain fell, this road would turn into an impassable bog.

     "Che Che!" she called to the Kikuyu headman.

     He came back to her wagon. "Yes, memsaab?"

     "How much farther is it to the estate?"

     He shrugged and held up five fingers.

     Grace gave him an impatient look. What did the man mean? Five miles? Five hours? God forbid, five days? She looked up at the sky. The clouds were low, the color of charcoal; banana fronds stirred in an ominous wind. "We must hurry, Che Che," she said. "Can't we go faster?" The lead wagon seemed to Grace to creep at a snail's pace; the two men with rifles, riding lookout for wild animals, appeared to be dozing; and the natives dressed in goatskins and carrying spears merely strolled alongside.

     The headman nodded to Grace and walked ahead to the first wagon, where he shouted orders in Kikuyu to the driver. But the wagon moved no faster.

     Checking the urge to jump down from her wagon and prod the oxen herself, Grace wished now that she had listened to the advice of a gentleman she had met at the Blue Posts Hotel in Thika. He had explained to her that her headman's name Che Che meant "slow" in Kikuyu and that no doubt there was a good reason for his being called that. But Grace had not been inclined to hire a different headman in the middle of a journey, and as a result, here she was, between the town of Nyeri and her brother's estate, in the prelude of a storm.

     She turned around and saw that Mrs. Pembroke had wisely retreated under the cover of the wagon's canvas roof, the baby in her arms, with Fanny, Rose's personal maid, sitting next to her, looking miserable. All the men were walking beside the wagons and carrying guns; even old Fitzpatrick, the butler who had come with them from Bella Hill, was looking out of character in his khakis and sun helmet.

     Grace realized she might almost think this a comical parade if she weren't so anxious, so angry.

     When she looked at her sister-in-law again, Grace was surprised to see a faint smile on the pale lips. She wondered what Lady Rose was thinking.

     In fact, Lady Rose was concentrating on the sanctuary that lay at the end of this horrible trail: Bella Two, the home Valentine had built for her. He had written in a letter five months ago:

     Our estate lies in a valley forty miles wide, between Mount Kenya and the Aberdare Range, just thirty miles south of the equator. We stand at over five thousand feet above sea level, and there is a deep, lush gorge on our property down which the Chania River tumbles and churns. The house is unique. It is of my own design, something new, for this new country. I have decided to name it Bella Two, or Bella Too; you can choose which. It is a proper house complete with library, music room, and nursery for our son.

     Valentine had not needed to say more; Rose had at once pictured the new house, the house that was going to be hers, not a place where she felt like an outsider, surrounded by the grim portraits of Treverton ancestors. It was a house where she was going to be sole mistress at last, with the keys hanging at her waist.

     Since the birth of the baby four weeks before, Rose had thought of nothing other than the new house. She had found that if she concentrated very hard and focused all her energy upon Bella Two, she would not have to think about the "other thing."

     She was fantasizing now about the hours she was going to spend directing the installation of draperies, the placement of chairs and tables, the arrangements of flowers. And most important, Rose was going to see that the correct etiquette was followed for her At Homes: the polishing of the tea service that had been given to her grandmother by the Duchess of Bedford; the baking of scones and sponge cakes; the making of clotted cream; teaching the staff the proper way to make finger sandwiches, that they slice the cucumber just so. And Rose herself would hold the key to the tea caddy, carefully measuring out the Earl Grey and Oolong.

     Just because one was in Africa, she had decided, there was no reason for one to stop being civilized. One must hold to decorum at all costs. Rose knew that her sister-in-law did not approve of, as Grace had put it, the
"monstrous collection of baggage" Rose had brought with her, but Grace did not understand social obligation. That was because Grace was not going to be mistress of a five-thousand-acre plantation or the countess of Treverton, who had a responsibility to set high standards. Grace had come to Africa with but two trunks—one for her clothes and books, the other containing medical supplies!