Promise the Night (14 page)

“Why?” Kibii asked, almost in spite of himself.

“My father will be back any day now. Have you forgotten that he went to Nairobi to find me a governess?”

“A governess?” Cocking his head to one side, Kibii stumbled on the unfamiliar word. “What is that?”

“It’s not a thing, it’s a person.” Beryl gave him a baleful look. “Only white children have them. A teacher who will lock me inside and make me learn to read and do my numbers.”

Kibii focused on the essential problem. “If you are locked up with books, how will you train with me?”

“I won’t be able to.” Throwing her plaited hair over her shoulder, she dislodged a shower of dirt and bits of leaves. “I’ll be strapped into a dress and tied to a desk!”

“Then I shall go hunting without you,” Kibii said with a shrug. “It is what you would do.”

They had reached the path to Kibii’s village. He said farewell, and Beryl continued to her hut. She stopped dead at the door. At her feet lay a limp bundle of fur—a hare. She nudged it with a toe to turn it over. She drew a sharp, horrified breath.

The animal’s eyes and tender skin around its nose had been gnawed away, chunk by chunk. The underside of the hare was covered with crawling black ants.

“Siafu!” she hissed. Beryl had seen many frightening things, but nothing scared her like the siafu. When she woke sweating in the night, her heart beating fast, it was because the ants had invaded her nightmares. The black warrior ants lived only to swarm over living creatures and eat away their soft spots. A small contingent, an advance guard perhaps, left the hare to march purposefully toward Beryl’s bare foot. She jumped up and down to scare them.

“Ah, siafu.” A deep voice startled her. It was Arap Maina, looking down at the hare. He used a pitchfork to spear the carcass and toss it onto a heap of rubbish for burning.

“I hate them!” Beryl said, struggling to keep her voice even.

“Beru, answer me this. What does it mean when you see siafu?”

“Are they a bad omen?” The Nandi saw omens in everything.

Arap Maina shook his head with a small smile. “On the contrary; siafu mean the rains are coming. But if it is an omen you want, your father has come back safely.”

As Beryl ran to the main house, she wondered briefly why Arap Maina had been smiling. But the thought was quickly replaced by the more important question: What would the governess be like? In her usual headlong rush, she plunged into the living room.

“Daddy!” she said breathlessly. “When did you…“ Her voice trailed off as she saw what he held in his hands.

He was examining the skinned head of a lion. The rest of its fur was spread across his desk. The lion’s noble brow mocked her, despite its missing ears.

“Why would Arap Maina give me this valuable skin?” the Captain asked grimly.

Beryl held out her hands and shrugged.

The Captain didn’t need her to answer. “‘A remembrance of Beryl’s first lion hunt,’ Arap Maina said. He expected me to be pleased. In fact, he expected me to know all about it.”

He waited, impatient with her silence. Finally, he banged his fist on the desk. Even muffled by the lion skin, the sound threatened worse to come. “What do you have to say for yourself?” His voice was sharp, like a commander on the parade field.

“You said I could train with the Nandi, Daddy,” she said, locking her knees to keep them from trembling.

“Did I say you could go kill a lion?” he shouted.

Taking a deep breath, she said, “I didn’t actually kill that lion, Daddy.”

“Beryl Clutterbuck, I didn’t think you did. And you knew perfectly well that I never would have allowed you to go lion hunting.”

“I knew if you brought back a governess, I might never get another chance. So I asked Arap Maina, and he let me go.”

The Captain pinched the bridge of his nose. “Emma was right,” he muttered. To Beryl, he said, “Don’t you realize that you could have been maimed or even killed?”

“But I wasn’t, Daddy. Arap Maina said I did well!”

“He told me that, too.”

Beryl breathed easier; the pride in her father’s voice was impossible to miss.

“He said I was brave to rush in after he had been hurt.” His attention quickened, and she realized she had misstepped.

“Arap Maina was hurt? Protecting you?” He fixed her with a steely glance. “And now I’ll pay for that, because he won’t be able to work on the farm.”

“He wasn’t hurt badly. He didn’t even cry.”

“Of course he didn’t, Beryl.” The Captain looked down at the hide on his desk, his hand absently stroking the rough fur. “The Nandi train from boyhood to not react to pain. It’s part of their rituals.”

Beryl jumped in, eager to show her father how much she had learned. “I know all about it. The boy gets soaked with cold water. Then the boy’s family chants, you know, to encourage him. They shout things like ‘Don’t flinch!,’ ‘Don’t be a coward!,’ and ‘Make the cut sharp.’ Then the ol-oboini, he’s the elder, takes a sharp knife and cuts the boy…down there.” Beryl gestured to below her
father’s waist. He pinched his nose harder, but his mouth twitched with laughter.

“Clutt!” Beryl looked up to see Emma standing in the doorway, her hands on Arthur’s shoulders. Arthur’s eyes were wide as saucers, and his hands were pulling at his trousers. Emma’s face was pale. In a tight voice, she asked, “How in God’s name can you let her know such things?”

“Daddy, I’ve never seen the ceremony,” she assured him. “Girls aren’t allowed.”

Emma ignored Beryl, speaking only to the Captain. “What will Miss Le May think?”

Only then did Beryl see the stranger hovering behind Emma and Arthur. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with red hair and freckles. She wore a starched white cotton dress, now limp in the afternoon heat, and laced-up boots like Emma’s. But her pock-marked face wasn’t nearly as pretty as Emma’s.

Beryl felt like a gazelle at the watering hole once a predator has come. Every instinct screamed, “Run!”

Flustered, Emma performed the introductions. “Beryl, this is Miss Le May. She will be your teacher.”

“How do you do?” Miss Le May’s voice was very proper. She said “How” very deliberately, as though she had to concentrate.

Beryl looked down at the floor and said nothing. Sighing, the Captain abandoned the lion skin and moved behind Beryl. He pressed his strong fingers into her shoulder blades.

“Howdoyoudo?” she mumbled, trying not to wince at his painful squeeze.

The Captain pulled out his watch to check the time. “Excellent,” he pronounced, as he turned to leave the room. “Now I can concentrate on getting my mills up and running.”

Running away is more like it, Beryl thought. From Emma’s sour expression, Beryl suspected that she was thinking the same thing.

LOCATION: Eight thousand feet over the North Atlantic

DATE: 07:10 P.M. GMT, 4 September, 1936

My little Messenger stinks of petrol. Eight thousand feet above the sea, tossed about by the North Atlantic winds, I wonder what makes me think this tin box can make it across the wide ocean. I think back to all those hours poring over blueprints and calculations. My engineers say the plane will fly because the mathematics prove it.

When I was a child, my father hired a governess to teach me arithmetic and multiplication. I didn’t see the point. I’ve always trusted my instincts over the mathematics. I’ll fly, not because of numbers scribbled on a piece of paper, but because I think I can.

CLASSES STARTED THE NEXT MORNING IN THE MAIN ROOM OF the Captain’s house. The atmosphere resembled the stillness before a storm. Captain Clutterbuck was out on the farm. Emma and Arthur also made themselves scarce.

Miss Le May placed a stack of yellow books on the table. “I’m prepared for my duties,” she began brightly. “I’ve brought the Crown Readers, the Fundamentals of English Grammar, and Exercises in Practical Arithmetic. I’ve been told they’re the correct texts.”

“I thought you were supposed to be a teacher?” Beryl asked suspiciously.

Miss Le May pinched her full lips together. “I can read and write—apparently that’s more than you can do. Each morning we will do reading, and in the afternoon mathematics.”

Narrowing her eyes, Beryl said, “Early mornings won’t work. My father needs me to ride out every morning at six.”

“Where are you riding out to? What about your schooling?”

“Riding out means to exercise the horses,” Beryl explained in a scornful voice. “They’re racing horses—not just anyone can ride them.”

“You can come here after you’ve finished.” Miss Le May’s smile was not quite as bright. “I can see we both have a lot to learn from each other.”

“I doubt it,” said Beryl under her breath.

Miss Le May went on, “We will start with the alphabet. A, B, C, D…”

“E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Zed.” Beryl rattled off the rest of the alphabet in one breath. She had the satisfaction of seeing the surprise on Miss Le May’s face.

“Your mother said that…”

“She’s not my mother!” Beryl interrupted. “She’s not married to my father, and she never will be.”

Miss Le May cleared her throat nervously. “Emma, then. She led me to believe that you knew nothing.”

“Maybe it’s Emma who doesn’t know nothing,” Beryl said crudely.

“Emma doesn’t know anything,” Miss Le May corrected.

Beryl giggled. Miss Le May didn’t see what was funny.

“Does that mean you can read, too?” Miss Le May had an eager look on her face.

Beryl shrugged.

“Read this aloud.” Miss Le May shoved one of her Crown Readers at Beryl.

Beryl looked down at the book, which must have been several
decades old. It was about small children getting a white puppy with a black spot over his eye. They called him Patches.

She tossed it aside. “Not likely. My father taught me to read much more interesting things.” She ran over to her father’s shelf, suspended midway up the wall. She pulled out a leather-bound book and carried it with reverence to lay it on the table.

Miss Le May glanced curiously at the book. “A Bible?” There was cautious approval in her voice.

“Why would I read a Bible?” Beryl asked. She opened the scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings. There was only one subject: Captain Clutterbuck. The most recent page blazed a headline: “Clutt Takes Home the Prize.” There was a striking picture of the Captain astride The Baron. Both Beryl and Miss Le May stared at the photograph.

“He’s a handsome man, your father,” Miss Le May said with a smile, her tongue darting across her lips.

“I suppose,” Beryl said acidly.

Miss Le May considered the primer and the leather book. There was no doubt which was more interesting. “Well, as you have already started with these…”

That was the morning’s lesson in reading. The afternoon’s mathematics lesson was not so smooth. From the moment it began, the battle lines were drawn.

“Beryl, if five plus five equals ten, then what does five plus six equal?”

“Why would I care?”

“Even your precious Nandi warriors must count their cattle.” Miss Le May’s voice sounded stretched, as though it might snap.

“When you know each animal’s name, you don’t need to count.”

“Well, you do. Your father has too many ‘orses, I mean horses, not to count them.”

“I know all the names of Daddy’s horses. That’s important, not stupid numbers.”

“Beryl, I will not tolerate disrespect in this ‘ouse. I mean house.”

A suspicion took root in Beryl’s mind. To test her theory, she asked, “Don’t you ‘ate ‘orrible girls who ride ‘orrid ‘orses?”

Miss Le May stood up and paced around the room like a caged animal. She took a deep breath and came back to stand in front of Beryl.

“Beryl, this is your last chance to cooperate.”

“Or else you’ll ‘it me?”

Miss Le May reached into her skirt’s deep pocket and brought out a heavy wooden ruler. “Let’s try one last time, shall we? Five plus six?”

Beryl stared at the ruler. Her father had smacked her once or twice, but no one else had ever struck her. Miss Le May wouldn’t dare…Her heart pounded and her breathing grew shallow. “I don’t care,” she whispered.

Faster than Beryl could pull her hands back, Miss Le May brought the ruler down hard on Beryl’s fingers.

Thwap!

At first Beryl was too stunned and shocked to react. Her eyes watered for a moment, but she blinked the tears back.

Miss Le May stood still, her pale eyes wide and a dreadful smile on her lips. Beryl swallowed hard and braced herself.

“Five plus six?”

“I don’t care.”

Thwap!

After half an hour, Miss Le May was exhausted and Beryl’s knuckles were cut and bleeding. But Beryl didn’t cry out, not once. Arap Maina would be proud.