Promise the Night (23 page)

“Excellent. Dos, you’re the starting gun.” Beryl hiked up her skirt so she could jump properly. The girls giggled at the sight of her knickers and the boys looked a little too closely, but Beryl didn’t care.

“Ready, set, go!” shouted Dos.

The race began. Despite her tight shoes, as soon as Beryl began to leap the wide desks, her awkwardness melted away. Every part of her body worked perfectly. In a few seconds, the two other racers gave up to watch her.

Sonny did his best to keep up. He was a fast runner, but he couldn’t jump as high as Beryl could. At the third desk, he knocked over an inkwell, spattering black ink across the whitewashed wall. Dos rushed to scrub the stain with her handkerchief.

Beryl ignored the mess and soared over the desks as though she were flying. After two circuits, Sonny finally gave up and stood gasping in the corner. Beryl ran with only one thought: to win. She did not notice she was the only one still racing.

Finally she came to a halt. The girls gaped at her and the boys shuffled their feet. “Did I win?” she asked, forcing herself to breathe through her nose. It wouldn’t do to seem winded.

“Of course you did,” said Dos. “How did you learn to jump like that?”

“The Nandi on our farm. They trained me to jump higher than my head. A desk is nothing.”

“I don’t believe you,” Mary said scornfully. “You’re lying again.” And Sonny said, “Show us. I dare you.”

“I beat you all at your own games, and mine, too. I don’t need to prove anything else,” Beryl cried.

“Of course, you would say that,” said Mary spitefully, tossing her curls over her shoulder.

Beryl’s back stiffened and her fists clenched by themselves. “Mary, if you call me a liar one more time, I’ll…”

At that moment, Miss Seccombe returned. Her eyes darted from the rearranged desks, the ink spatter on the wall, and, worst of all, boys in the girls’ classroom. “Boys, what are you doing in here?” she spluttered. “What’s been going on?”

The room was silent.

“If no one answers, you will all lose recess.”

Beryl pressed her lips tightly together and glared at the rest, daring them to tell.

“It was Beryl, Miss Seccombe,” Mary said. “She wanted to do a steeplechase with the desks. I told her it was against the rules.”

Beryl wanted to crush Mary’s simpering face with her fist.

Miss Seccombe dismissed the other students, leaving Mary and Beryl standing in front of her. “Mary, thank you, dear, for your truthfulness. I know it’s not easy to inform on a classmate.”

She turned to Beryl. “Miss Clutterbuck, you will miss recess for one week. If there’s another incident, you will not be permitted to
be Alice in the play. Now clean up this mess.” She walked out of the room.

Beryl marveled that Miss Seccombe, who understood her so little, could devise such a galling punishment. Being trapped inside for a week would be unbearable.

She glared at Mary. “I won’t forget this, Mary Russell.”

To her surprise, Mary was nearly in tears. “I can’t understand it. I thought for sure she would take Alice away.”

“You turned me in for a part in the stupid play?” Beryl asked incredulously.

“It’s my part!” Mary cried.

“Alice is a sissy girl who doesn’t have enough sense to get out of a bad dream.” Beryl had finally read the book. She liked the shrinking and expanding, and thought the Cheshire Cat had possibilities, but she considered Alice a poor excuse for a heroine.

“She’s a proper young lady. An English lady. She wears a pinafore and behaves herself. You could never play her!”

“Take the part—I don’t care,” Beryl protested.

“It’s Miss Seccombe who decides—if she knew what a liar you were, she’d give Alice back to me.”

Beryl had had enough. With her flat palm, she shoved Mary against the wall. “I have never lied,” she growled. “Not once.”

“Take your hands off me,” said Mary.

“Not until you apologize.”

Mary suddenly kicked Beryl in the shin with one of her pointy-toed boots.

Beryl’s eyes watered with the pain. Without thinking, her right hand went to Mary’s throat and started to squeeze. Mary gasped
and swung her arms out wildly. She yanked a handful of Beryl’s hair. A tangle of strands came away from the scalp. With her left hand, Beryl pulled up her skirt and grabbed the small dagger she now kept in the top of her stocking. She whipped it up under Mary’s chin.

Mary began to cry.

Beryl glanced from Mary’s scared face to the knife in her own hand. She heard Arap Maina’s voice clearly in her head. “Beru, be kind to those who are afraid.”

Not meeting Mary’s eyes, Beryl stepped back and put away her knife. This was not the way to solve her problem with Mary. She walked to the window and said, “You are a stupid girl. But I won’t stain my blade with your blood.”

Now that there was some distance between them, Mary looked braver. Between her sobs, she cried, “You are a savage who doesn’t belong here. The others may believe your lies, but I know better.” She ran out howling.

Beryl sank down to the floor and held her head in her hands. How was it that Mary was the witch, but it was Beryl who felt ashamed?

A week later, they began rehearsing Alice in Wonderland. Beryl reluctantly put on her costume of a red dress covered with a white pinafore and tied a ribbon in her blond hair. Looking in the mirror in the dormitory, she had to admit she looked just like the illustrations in Mr. Carroll’s book.

She tucked her latest letter from Arthur in the wide pocket of her skirt. It was short and contained many misspellings, but he
wrote of horses and home. He was most excited about how high he could jump now. She smiled as she thought of him bouncing up and down.

Taking a last look at the demure stranger in the mirror, she laughed out loud. She was finished with good behavior. She was about to introduce the real Beryl to Miss Seccombe and the Nairobi School for European Children.

The children were assembled in the yard for a cast photo. As the tallest, Beryl stood in the back. Mary, who played the Red Queen, was seated on a low throne in front of her. Mary had primped for an hour to be ready. While the photographer readied his plates, Beryl was preparing, too.

“Stop fidgeting, Beryl,” scolded Miss Seccombe.

“Everyone look at me,” the photographer said. He held up a large magnesium flashbulb. There was a flash that left them all blinded.

“Miss Seccombe, that hurt my eyes,” Mary complained.

“I’ll take one more,” the photographer said.

“Beryl, why can’t you stand still?” Miss Seccombe asked peevishly.

“Sorry,” Beryl muttered. Standing straight, she bent the other leg in front of her; her fingers busily unlaced her shoe.

Another flash and the photographer released them. The cast began to move away. Beryl straightened her shoulders, kicked her shoes off, and gathered herself for a giant leap. Like an eagle, she rose in the air and flew over Mary. Glancing behind her, she grinned at Mary’s stunned face.

She landed in front of the class. Everyone stared at her. She began to leap in place. Hopping, then levitating. No longer imprisoned in the ill-fitting shoes, her feet in white stockings felt like tiny wings propelling her higher. Her skirt swirled around her, and the pinafore
floated up like a cloud. Higher and still higher. If she tried just a little harder, she could fly.

Dos clapped her hands in delight. “She’s jumping higher than her head. I knew she could.”

Sonny’s face showed a reluctant respect. Mary sulked in the back of the crowd.

Beryl stopped suddenly and glared at everyone standing in the circle around her. “So there,” she said.

Mrs. Seccombe’s nasal voice broke the silence. “Beryl Clutterbuck, what exactly do you think you are doing? This is no place for ballet leaps.”

Beryl could see it in the others’ faces; they understood it was not ballet. It was the training that a young Nandi received to become a warrior, just as Beryl had claimed. From that moment, Beryl would always have the upper hand with Mary.

LOCATION: New York City, New York

DATE: 7 September, 1936

Now I know how Alice felt stepping through that looking glass.

When we land in New York, five thousand people are waiting to see me! I don’t know that I’ve ever seen so many people at one time. At first I can’t make out what they are chanting. Then I realize these odd New Yorkers are saying, “Hello, Blondie!”

I put my arms above my head and bow deeply from the waist. “Salaam!” I shout.

The crowd goes wild.

Amidst the deafening sound of thousands of car horns hooting, I am escorted by a troop of police motorcycles to the Ritz-Carlton. The next day, I go to
the mayor’s reception. Mayor La Guardia is a rumpled little man. I tower over him. He is sweating and mopping his forehead with his handkerchief.

“Hot, isn’t it?” he says.

I agree politely, but honestly, I grew up in Africa!

There’s a stack of telegrams and tributes from the newspapers. From Peru, my father said, “Beryl’s a grand girl. I knew she would triumph, but in spite of my faith in her abilities, yesterday was the most anxious day I have known.”

There was even an interview with my mother, who has—irony of ironies—returned to Nairobi. She said she never had any doubts that I would do it. “My daughter,”
she said, “has always been extremely self-confident and full of pluck from the time she was a tiny tot.” I wonder what the papers would say if I told them I barely know her?

Amelia Earhart said she was “delighted beyond words that Mrs. Markham should have succeeded in her exploit.”

And Tom Black? Dear Tom, the master of under-statement. He said, “Amazing! I thought she’d do it, but the weather, on what is always a tough crossing, seemed appallingly bad.”

I’m not sentimental as a rule, but I think I might keep these scraps of paper forever.

CHATTERING LIKE MACAWS, MISS SECCOMBE’S CLASS ENTERED the foyer of the New Stanley Hotel. All the British settlers preferred to stay here in Nairobi’s finest hotel. Beryl glanced around at the tall columns and the marble expanse of the lobby, familiar to her from visits with her father. Miss Seccombe arranged the annual outing as an opportunity for the girls to practice their social skills at a very ladylike tea.

Beryl drew Dos to one side. “Dos, my head itches!” she whispered, picking at her mane, which had been tamed into a demure bun.

“I told you to wash your hair last night.” Dos elbowed her hard. “Beryl, I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. If you make a scene, I’ll…I’ll tell Sonny Bumpus you like him!”

“That shrimp? I don’t think so.”

“Then behave!”

Miss Seccombe beckoned the girls to follow her into the dining room, where three tables were waiting for them. Beryl hung back,
knowing she wouldn’t be missed for a few minutes. She slipped into the dark lounge, which was filled with men smoking cigars. The smell of fine whiskey permeated even the upholstered furniture. Reminded of her father’s office, Beryl smiled.

She walked to the bar and slapped the counter like her father did on their visits to Nairobi. The barkeep looked around and behind her, searching for her chaperone.

“You don’t belong in here, young lady,” he said.

“Don’t you recognize me?” she asked. “I haven’t been here for a long time, but you used to give me fizzy lemonades.”

The bartender looked closer. Then his face lightened and he smiled broadly. “If it isn’t Captain Clutt’s daughter!” His eyes darted around the room. “Where’s the Captain?”

“I’m here on my own,” Beryl confided. “I’m supposed to be in the dining room on a school trip.”

He winked. “Your secret is safe with me. What can I get you?”

“Do you have a newspaper I can look at?”

“Certainly.” He pulled out a much-read paper from under the bar. Then he poured her a glass of fizzy lemonade. “On the house,” he said.

Beryl thanked him, sat down on a barstool, and opened the sporting pages. The headline read, “Night Hawk Wins the St. Leger Stakes.”

“The St. Leger? But that’s run in mid-September,” Beryl said. The racing calendar in England and Nairobi was the only calendar she ever cared about.

“Every year,” the barkeep agreed. “Night Hawk was the odds-on favorite.”

“So the race ran already?” Beryl asked. “What day is it?”

The bartender laughed. “It’s the sixteenth. I guess they don’t teach you about horse racing at that school of yours.”

Beryl gulped down her sweet drink, said good-bye, and raced out of the lounge into the dining room. Her abrupt arrival drew everyone’s eyes. The girls from the school group were sitting at their tables in the corner. Miss Seccombe was nowhere to be seen. Beryl rushed over to Dos.

“Where did you go?” Dos asked. “Miss Seccombe just went looking for you.”

Beryl shrugged. “Let her. It’s my independence day!”