him apprehensive. “I am listening.”
“It came to me that I ought to tell you here. This spot is special to me. My baby was conceived here.”
Incredulous, Fitzhugh looked at the thorn trees, the sandy river bottom, the fissured banks. “The daughter you told me about? The one who was stillborn? She was conceived in this wilderness? What were you doing here? You could not have been more than—”
“Eighteen. It was two years before Kenya got its independence. My father was a colonel, royal engineers, putting in roads and bridges out here. He and my mother had a house in Lodwar. We were in school in England, my sister and I, and on the summer holidays we would come back out to Kenya to be with them. That particular summer my father had a civilian working for him, an Irish boy of twenty-two, Brian McSorley. He’d been raised in Kenya, and he was in charge of the African labor crews. Brian and I—I can’t say we fell in love, we conceived a passion for each other.”
“Yes, and out of that, the daughter,” Fitzhugh said. “Pardon my asking, but she was the reason you and this Brian were married?”
“Would you please not interrupt, darling?” she said gently. “We were quite mad to get at each other, but there wasn’t much opportunity under the circumstances. The chance came one Sunday, when by hook and by crook, we managed to get away together. Brian was driving out to inspect progress on a bridge—that one there.” She gestured at its remnants. “I went with him. We had a picnic, about where we are sitting now. There used to be a very great tree here, and we were picnicking under it when a furious rainstorm came down. There was a flash flood, and in no time at all this riverbed had twenty feet of water rushing through it. The storm passed, but we had to wait for the river to go down before we could get back across in our car—the bridge wasn’t finished. We were rather delighted with this dilemma, but you know, this was nineteen sixty-one and I was eighteen and a virgin, and as eager as I was for him, I couldn’t quite bring myself to make love to him.
“It got late, and Brian was anxious. The Turkana were as belligerent then as they are today. It was then that we heard a strange sound, quite ominous—a ragged banging and clattering mixed up with a rhythmic thudding noise, a bit like the sound of an approaching train. Brian stood to look in the direction of the noise—there was a full moon, it was almost bright as day. Immediately, he said, ‘Oh, my God!’ and went over the bank, pulling me with him. The water had gone down a few feet, but there was still a strong current, and we had to cling to the roots of the tree or be carried away. The noise grew louder. ‘Turkana war party,’ Brian whispered. We drew our heads over the bank, and it was a sight I can still see clearly today. There, hardly ten yards from where we were hiding, scores, perhaps hundreds, of men went jogging past. They were wearing nothing but loincloths, and each one carried a shield and two spears. Two spears, you see, meant a war instead of a hunting party. They were in single file, and it must have taken twenty minutes for them to go by. I wasn’t frightened. You seldom are when you’re eighteen. The spears clattering against one another, banging against the shields, the blades glinting moonlight, and all those half-naked warriors moving past us—it was breathtaking.
“When they’d passed, Brian said we must get home and started for the car, but the entire experience had overcome my schoolgirl shyness. The danger, the excitement of it made me reckless. I said I was soaking wet and had to wring out my clothes, and I pulled off my dress right in front of him. I was shameless enough to tug at the buttons of his shirt, telling him he had to dry his clothes as well. It was my very first time, right here on the wet ground, and like all first times, it was nothing like what I’d expected. A bit painful, and terribly quick. We moved to the car . . . ah, I’ve said enough. I don’t know why I went into so much detail.”
Fitzhugh was quiet, mesmerized by images of the Turkana warriors, the gleaming