painting will be the latest in a long line of scandals for you. And then it proceeded to list them.”
“I’m surprised the good people of Nairobi have nothing better to read about than my little peccadilloes.”
“Kit said it would be the making of his career.”
I stopped halfway through blowing another smoke ring. It fluttered away like a stillborn angel. “Kit was quoted?”
“Lavishly.” Crack. Crack.
“Bastard,” I said softly. I stubbed out the cigarette. “Well, I shouldn’t have expected any different from him. In my experience, all artists would sell their own mothers for a bit of publicity.”
She yipped again and I respected her for not trying to say something consoling. I reached out with my napkin and wiped the custard off her mouth. “If you’re going to sit there cracking pistachios, at least eat them.”
She crunched a few and slipped the rest into her pocket. “For my new filly. Special treat.”
“How did you get the name Tusker?”
“When I was newly married, I went on safari with Balfour. I killed an elephant with one shot, and me not nineteen. It was the talk of the colony—or the protectorate, as it was then. I was even written up in the Standard for it. The governor himself sent me a letter of congratulation. But I didn’t realise the elephant was a mother. She had a calf that had got separated, and when I killed the mother, I orphaned the calf. I cried all the way home. Balfour had taken the tusks and I took the tail. The calf followed along, trailing the smell of its mother’s blood. Balfour said we ought to just shoot it, but I wouldn’t let him. I fed it and taught it to use its trunk and what plants to eat and how to scratch itself on a tree. I even shot a leopard that sprang at him and tried to take him when he went to drink. Years passed and that elephant followed me everywhere. He grew the most beautiful set of tusks you ever saw—a hundred and fifty pounds if they weighed an ounce. And when he was fully grown and ready to mate, I walked him out into the bush where he could live out his life with his own kind.”
“A sweet story,” I said.
She cracked another pistachio. “Oh, not so sweet. Hunter took him a month later for those tusks. Just carved them right out of his head and left him there. He died not a mile from my house. I think he might have been coming back to see me.” She ate the nut slowly. “That’s why I’m peculiar about ellies.”
“Peculiar?”
“Ask anybody. They’ll tell you I’m mad, but I’m not. It’s just that I can’t bear to see the tuskers hurt. They’re so big that people forget how gentle they are. And how much like us.”
“Elephants are like us?”
“More than most any other animal I’ve ever seen. They live in families, and when one dies, the others pay their respects. They grieve. I’ve seen them do it. And I’ve seen them keep on mourning for years afterwards. They’ll go miles out of their way just to pass a place where one of their own died, and their memories are always green. They are the gentlest creatures on earth if you know how to handle them. But that sentiment gets me into trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“I’m banned from Government House, for starters,” she said with a mischievous grin. “I wanted the governor to sign a mandate creating a sanctuary for them and banning elephant hunting. Of course, he refused. So I took a leaf from the suffragettes’ book. Chained myself to his desk.”
“I don’t imagine that pleased him.”
“Not by half. It took them almost a day to find bolt cutters big enough to sever the chain. I looked like the world’s biggest paperweight.” She laughed at the memory. “Ryder understands. I think he’s the only one who does.”
“Odd that he would, since his livelihood depends upon hunting them.”
She snorted. “Ryder is tricky as the devil and twice as clever. He always manages to guide his clients to shooting problem animals that ought to be put down anyway— man-eaters or a cat that has taken to preying on Masai cattle or Kikuyu goats. He tells them a good yarn about how vicious the animal is and how everyone else is too frightened to track it. Then he and his boys guide them right to it and when the client shoots it, Ryder has the natives stage a