Green City in the Sun (63 page)

     M
ONA TOUCHED LITTLE
of her dinner and wondered how her mother, considering what she was planning to do at dawn, could eat. And yet there was Rose, cutting her lamb, taking a second helping of sweet potatoes, all the while smiling, charming, engaged in small talk with Tim Hopkins.

     Grace and Sir James ate in silence, frequently glancing across the table at each other, while Valentine talked.

     "I'll tell you what the coming thing is," he said to James as he refilled his wineglass. "Groundnuts. I'm going to clear about three thousand acres and plant groundnuts."

     Mona looked at her father. "They won't work," she said.

     "Why not?"

     "The elevation here is too high for groundnuts."

     "And how do you know that?"

     "I tried it two years ago, and they perished."

     "Then you did something wrong."

     As her father resumed talking to Sir James, Mona felt the color rise in her cheeks. This airy dismissal of anything she had to say infuriated her. Mona had expected a terrible row when her father returned from the north, and she had been ready for it. Instead, to her great surprise and disappointment, he had driven over the estate, had seen what she had done, and had said vaguely, "You were lucky. But of course, all this will have to go."

     No anger, no shouting. Just a simple, humiliating disregard of her labors and accomplishments. It was worse, Mona decided, than the expected tirade.

     "You'll stay out of my affairs from now on," he had said after that.
"I'll
see to the running of this farm."

     Mona had replied, "And what am I supposed to do?"

     And Valentine had said, "Hang it all, girl! You're twenty-seven years old! Get married!"

     That was a week ago, and Mona still smoldered over it.
Get married
, he had said, meaning,
Get out of my hair and be another man's burden.
Her father had even gotten her age wrong.

     Mona thought about her mother. What a shock it had been to hear of the love affair and the plan to run away. At first Mona had been upset, and then she worried for her mother's mental state. Soon, however, Mona had begun to envy her mother's new life, her discovery of love and passion and utter dedication to one man. She recalled the look on her mother's face when she had spoken of her dear Carlo; Mona had felt a pain in her heart, and then she had felt happiness for her mother.
Yes
, she had finally said to Rose.
Do it. Follow the man you love. Get away from Father. I wish I could do as much.

     As she pushed her food around her plate and listened to
him
go on about plans for
his
farm, Mona thought of Geoffrey Donald, who was due to come home from Palestine soon. Marrying him was going to fit in perfectly
with her own plan. Geoffrey didn't want to work Kilima Simba anymore; he wanted to start a tourist business. And he could do that, Mona decided, as easily from Bellatu as from anywhere else. Instead of her moving out when she got married, as her father was no doubt anticipating, Mona was going to bring her husband
here
to live. Because Mona Treverton was never going to relinquish possession of the plantation. Not to her father, not to anyone.

     "Did you know, James," Valentine said as he poured himself more wine, "that there's talk of a
new
soldier settlement scheme? It's a plan to bolster the economy after the war. Bring in more white settlers at low land prices."

     "I've heard the rumors, and it seems to me that there isn't enough land now as it is."

     "The plan is to move the squatters back onto the native reserves. All the Kikuyu in this district will have to return to the original land the government set aside for them."

     "They won't do it willingly, not the way they did in the old days." James exchanged a glance with Grace. There was a palpable tension at the table. Valentine's amiable mood seemed forced, and he was drinking too much.

     While Valentine was in the middle of saying something further to James, Rose pushed her chair back and stood. "I'm going to say good night to you all now. But before I go up, I have something to say."

     Her guests, expectant, apprehensive, turned to her. The man at the other end of the table, they all knew, was possessed of a powerful and destructive temper.

     Rose looked beautiful. For the occasion she had put on one of her best dinner gowns; it was long and sleek and black, with rhinestones around the low neckline. She wore her hair piled on top of her head, fixed in place with an orchid.

     "Valentine," she said, "I have something to say to you."

     They all waited.

     "I'm leaving you, Valentine. I'm going away in the morning, and I'm never coming back."

     She paused. The other four at the table wanted to look at him, but no one dared to move.

     Rose was serene and in control of herself. "I have found someone who
loves me just for me, Valentine, not for what he can produce out of my body. A man who cherishes me, who listens to me, who treats me as his equal. My life with you is over. I shall start anew, far away from Kenya. I lay no claims on your money or on Bellatu. And I give you back your title. I was never a good countess."

     She stopped. She gazed down the length of the table at him. Those near to Rose could see the thumping of her heart beneath her breast.

     "No, Rose," Valentine said with a sigh. "You're not going anywhere."

     Grace looked at her brother. She saw the fire in his eyes, the throb at his temple.

     "Yes, Valentine. I am leaving you, and you cannot stop me."

     "I will not allow it."

     "You can't bully me anymore, Valentine. I am no longer afraid of you. Carlo taught me that. He also taught me how to love. It was something I have always thought myself incapable of, because you killed it in me years ago. I could have loved you the way you wanted, Valentine, but your impatience and disregard of my feelings drove me away from you. Even my own daughter, whom I could have loved if you had but made one gesture when I arrived here with her. If you had acknowledged my baby, uttered one word of appreciation or affection, then I would have let myself love her. Instead, you made me feel guilty for having produced her. And so I punished myself, and her, for it.

     "And your son, Arthur, whose only desire in all his short life was to please you—you drove him away also. He was killed because he was trying to be brave, to make you proud of him. I have found love again, and I am not going to let this chance pass me by. I do not hate you, Valentine. I simply do not love you. And I don't want to live with you anymore.

     She looked at the others, said, "Good-bye," and walked from the dining room.

     The five at the table sat motionless, listening to the whisper of rain. Grace waited for the explosion from Valentine, braced herself for the fury.

     But all he said was "It's late. And it's raining, so you'd best all stay here tonight. No use getting wet!"

     They watched him stand up from the table and walk to the whiskey
cart. One by one they slowly rose. Mona and Tim left first, to their separate rooms; then Grace murmured to James that she was going up to Rose.

     When the two men were alone, James tried to say something.

     But Valentine turned a gallant smile to him. "She won't go, you know. She doesn't really mean it. Rose doesn't have what it takes."

     "I think she means it, Val."

     He tossed back the whiskey and poured another. "Well, she might think she means it now, James, but you'll see. Come morning, Rose will still be here. I guarantee that."

     James stepped up to him. "Valentine," he said, "why not just let her go?"

     Valentine laughed, softly and without rancor. "You just don't understand, James," he said, dropping a heavy hand on his friend's shoulder. "I built this house for
her.
All this—for my lovely Rose. You surely don't think she's going to leave it, do you? Now go to bed, my friend. Tomorrow my coffee trees will start blooming with white blossoms. Think of it! Thousands of acres of them!"

     He smiled. "Sleep well, James. And don't worry about Rose and me."

     G
RACE WOKE UP
suddenly.

     She blinked in the darkness, trying to think what had wakened her.

     Then she realized it was the sound of a car motor.

     She tried to read the dial of her bedside clock. It was either five past four, or one-twenty, she couldn't tell. Had she only dreamed of hearing a motor? Or had someone actually driven away from Bellatu in the middle of the night? Tim, perhaps, worrying about his sister alone on their farm.

     Grace looked at the head sleeping on the next pillow. The sound hadn't wakened James.

     She listened to the silence of the big house and thought:
The rain has stopped.

     As Grace drifted off to sleep again, she thought the floorboards in the hallway creaked, as if someone were tiptoeing by.

E
ARLY IN THE MORNING, JUST BEFORE DAWN, ON
A
PRIL
16, 1945, A European midwife from Grace Treverton Mission was driving her car down the deserted road from the town of Kiganjo, where she had labored all night delivering a baby. In the darkness ahead she saw a car parked on the right side of the road, facing away from her, its motor running, and its taillights casting two red beams on the muddy road. As she slowed down and drew near, she saw that someone sat inside the car, in front on the right side, the driver's seat. She pulled up alongside and found a man asleep. Recognizing him as the earl of Treverton, the nurse called to him and asked if he required assistance. When he didn't wake up, she got out and looked through the passenger window.

     The earl was slumped against the driver's door with a bullet hole in his left temple, a gun in his hand.

     She drove immediately to the Nyeri police post, where she roused Third-Grade Constable Kamau, who then woke the corporal on duty. Together with two askaris they followed the memsaab back to the Kiganjo
Road, where, a mile beyond the turnoff from the main Nyeri road, they found Lord Treverton's car.

     In the feeble light of dawn the policemen circled the car and argued among themselves over what should be done. The nurse noticed, in the meantime, fresh bicycle tire tracks in the mud, leading up to the passenger side of the parked car and then doubling back toward the direction they appeared to have come from—Nyeri. But by the time the corporal acted and returned to the post to put in a call to Inspector Mitchell, who lived in Nyeri, and by the time the inspector was on the scene, all evidence of the bicycle tracks had been trampled away.

     "Good God," Mitchell said when he looked into the car, "the earl's shot himself!"

     Having to report such a thing to the family was unpleasant duty. And what a sensation this was going to cause! Why, the earl was even in his uniform! It must have been depression over the war that had driven him to it, the inspector decided as he followed the winding drive up to Bellatu. Not a few fighting men had come home to commit suicide. But Lord Treverton?

     It was nine o'clock in the morning when Inspector Mitchell of the Nyeri police knocked on the front door of Bellatu and told the African houseboy he wished to speak to Lady Rose.

     Dr. Grace Treverton came into the living room instead. "My sister-in-law isn't home, Inspector," she said. "Lady Rose left for a trip early this morning. Perhaps I can help you?"

     "Well, Doctor," he said as he turned his homburg around and around in his hands; Inspector Mitchell hated this part of his job, "it's about His Lordship the earl."

     "I'm afraid my brother hasn't come down to breakfast yet. So far Sir James Donald and I are the only ones up."

     The inspector nodded. He was well acquainted with Sir James. "Well, Doctor, since you're the earl's sister, then I can tell you, and you can inform Lady Rose when she returns."

     "Tell me what, Inspector?"