A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,106

of the night your stomach turns to water and your heart beats so fast you can hear your own blood in your ears?”

“The lion scares me,” he said solemnly. “And when I was a boy, the pinching man scared me.”

“The pinching man?”

“He is like your rougarou, but he is a real man. In each village there is this pinching man, and it is his job to punish disobedient children. He takes the skin in between his long fingernails and he twists very hard. Mothers will say to their children, ‘Be good or the pinching man will make you sorry.’ I was very scared of the pinching man when I was a boy. Once I was bad, and I lost my mother’s favourite goat, a perfect goat with hair that looked like new milk. A white goat is a very special thing, and this goat was to be sacrificed for a special feast. And I had let the goat wander away. This is a very bad thing, and the pinching man heard of it. He looked for me all of the day. And I spent all of the day hiding from him. First, up an acacia tree which was very uncomfortable. Then in the home of my best friend, which was unkind to him for the pinching man would have pinched him as well if he had known. Then I hid among the cattle, which was worst of all. The cows knew I was afraid and it made them afraid. They stepped on me and poked me with their sharp horns, and by the time I crawled out from the boma, I was covered in bruises and scratches. I had spent all day wrapped up so tightly in my fear that I could not breathe. And then, when at last I came out of hiding, the pinching man was waiting for me at my house.”

“What did he do?”

“He took one look at me with the bloody scratches and the bruises and said, ‘You have pinched yourself harder than I!’”

“And did he let you go?”

Gideon smiled. “Oh, no. He pinched me twice, once for losing the goat and once for making him wait. But this is a thing that I know—to live with fear is not to live at all. A man will die every moment he is afraid.”

“So you mean I should face down the things that scare me? Stare down the rougarou and walk right up to the pinching man?”

The smile deepened. “I think that Africa is making you wise, Delilah.”

I sniffled and regretted the loss of my handkerchief. I rubbed my face on my sleeve, wondering what the habitués of the Club d’Enfer would make of me if they could see me.

“Then let’s go back and see how Moses is. We will wait together.”

19

After several hours there was no change in Moses’ condition and Gideon took me back to Fairlight. He left me at the garden gate and I went into the house alone, every bone aching. Dora had left food for me and a note saying the men had disposed of the corpses in the barn and scrubbed it out and that she was spending the night with the Halliwells. I ignored the food and poured a drink and settled on the sofa and that was where Helen found me a few hours later.

I was halfway through a bottle of gin and she helped me with the rest. She had shown up with an armful of flowers from her garden and an apologetic grin.

“I suppose you think I’m terrible,” she began.

I held up the bottle. “No worse than the rest of us. Do you want bitters or tonic?”

She sighed. “No. Straight-up is good enough for me. Shall I apologise formally, or are we all sorted?”

“Oh, I think we’re sorted.”

I had hoped that would be enough, but she went on. “Those parties, there’s nothing malicious in them, you know. They’re just a bit of fun.”

I didn’t say anything. She sipped at her gin. “Sometimes I wake up and I don’t like what I see in the mirror. And one of my little soirees just makes me feel good again. You can understand that, can’t you?”

I didn’t like her like this, pleading, looking just a trifle too intently at me. I wanted her to be careless and a little cruel, beautiful and vivacious. That was the Helen I had always known. I didn’t like seeing the cracks in the facade.

“You probably wouldn’t let me drink if you knew how bad