A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,130

known. I thought once that there might be something good in you, something worth saving. But now I think there isn’t, there can’t be, if you could look at this place and how wretched it is and turn away. There is real good we could do here if you would only stop feeling sorry for yourself and have a care for anybody else. But you would rather dance off and leave it all behind, let someone else clear it up. Well, what if no one else will? What if you’re the only one who could make a difference and you don’t? It’s sinful, that’s what. And I don’t use that word lightly. I’m barely religious. I hardly say my prayers and I almost never go to church, but I do believe in God and I believe some things are flying in his face. Walking away from here now is one of those things.”

I opened my mouth to answer him, but I never got the chance. A cloud of dust was rising on the savannah, and as we rose and watched it started moving closer. Whatever it was, it spooked the tommies and they hurried on, dragging their gangly offspring with them. By the time the cheetah had left, picking her way delicately across the savannah, the apparition was almost upon us. It was the motorbike. Mr. Patel was riding it, his eyes shielded by his motoring goggles, his robes fluttering behind him like a knight’s pennant. We descended from the rock as he skidded to a stop and jumped from the bike, heading straight for Ryder.

“This came and it was most urgent,” he said, proffering a telegram. Ryder went to take it, but Mr. Patel shook his head. “For Memsahib Delilah,” he corrected, nodding towards me.

I stepped forward and took the envelope. The ripping sounded unnaturally loud in the wide emptiness of the plain. Ryder had moved behind me, shielding me from Patel with his body. It was an exquisitely considerate gesture and a futile one. There is no such thing as privacy in Africa.

I read the lines twice, then three times.

“Who?” Ryder said quietly. I turned to him and he was staring at me intently. I don’t know how he understood. Cables bring good news just as often as bad. But not this one.

“My stepfather, Nigel. He suffered a heart attack at his club in London. He died almost immediately.”

Ryder said nothing. He opened his arms and I went into them. There was nothing in that embrace beyond what a parent might offer a grieving child. It was comfort and solace, and after a long moment he released me.

“Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you home. To Fairlight.”

But he was wrong. Fairlight was part of Nigel’s estate. It belonged now to his eldest son, Edgar. It would never be my home again.

We made our way slowly back. There was nothing to hurry for. I could not make it to England for Nigel’s funeral in any event. I sent cables via Mr. Patel to Mossy and to Edgar and turned my attention to the scenery itself. I did not expect to come this way again, and I found myself staring at the horizon, memorising Africa against the day when all I would have were my own sepia recollections.

We parted at Ryder’s boma, each of us heading our separate ways and saying nothing. I stripped off my filthy clothes and tossed them in the corner, too tired to care. I barely washed before I fell into bed and down into a heavy sleep.

I awoke suddenly, startled by the screech of a monkey in the garden. A leopard must be roaming, I thought sleepily, but there was no familiar rasping cough. Instead, there was a strange, silken noise rustling in my ears and the smell of smoke in the air. I decided someone must be up early, starting a cooking fire against the morning chill, but even as I thought it, I knew it was wrong. It was the middle of the night, far too early for the hearth fires.

I sat bolt upright, throwing off the blanket and calling out. “Ryder!” I don’t know why I shouted his name. He hadn’t come home with me, but in that moment of horror, his was the name that I shouted.

I ran through the house and to the outbuildings, screaming for the men. The barn burned hot and high, and the harsh light against the western sky must have alerted Ryder at his rondavel. By