Kat Gordon - The Hunters

‘Good shot,’ Delamere said reluctantly.

We stayed on our boundary line, watching as Carberry played the blue ball through the third and fourth hoops and hit Delamere’s red ball. On either side of me, Delamere winced and Freddie murmured, ‘bad luck’. I went to take another mouthful of champagne and noticed my glass was empty.

Carberry lined up the next shot more deliberately than any of his others, taking several practice swings to test the angle before smacking his mallet so hard against the blue ball that the red bounced completely out of court. The blue ball rolled forwards to rest in front of the fifth hoop. Carberry looked up at us, smirking.

‘Sorry, old boy. It’s just so easy to teach you all a lesson.’ He puffed out a cloud of smoke. ‘Strutting around as if you owned the place.’

‘We built the place,’ Lord Delamere said.

Sylvie took his arm. ‘Don’t listen to him, darling.’

Carberry snorted. ‘You and your bunch of amateurs. Most of them went back home with their tails between their legs, if I remember rightly.’ He came towards us and stopped just in front of Sylvie. ‘They’ve told you about J.D. Hopcraft, of course.’

‘Should they have?’ She crossed one slender leg in front of the other and I noticed the men’s eyes following her movements, especially Carberry’s.

‘He applied for land on the west side of the lake,’ Freddie said. ‘But unfortunate things kept happening to his surveyors.’

Carberry put his hand on Sylvie’s other arm, smiling unpleasantly. He was close enough to smell the sickly sweetness of booze mixed with tobacco on his breath. ‘His first surveyor, or the second, went swimming in the Malewa River,’ he said. ‘A python took him while he was in the water – held him with its teeth and wrapped its body around him, and killed him.’ He inhaled, flaring his nostrils. ‘Some people think that constriction breaks your bones, but it doesn’t. I’ve heard two theories: the snake holds you just tightly enough to prevent you from taking air into your lungs, and you slowly run out of oxygen and suffocate. Or the pressure from the constriction raises the pressure inside your body until your heart explodes.’

He pinched Sylvie’s arm then withdrew his hand. An angry red mark appeared on her skin, but she didn’t react; no one else along the line spoke.

‘Either way,’ Carberry said. ‘The man was gone, and his report went with him, and Hopcraft had to find another surveyor.’ He smiled again, showing his pointy eye-teeth.

I turned my head to face the garden. The lawn was blue in the moonlight, and rippling gently. The automatic sprinklers had come on, and the soft hiss of the water soothed my ears. I breathed in the scent of eucalyptus, frangipani, fuchsias, lilies, far stronger now in the cool dark than during the day.

‘Why did he go swimming with his report?’ I asked Carberry.

‘What?’

I raised my voice. ‘Why would he take the report in the river?’

Carberry narrowed his eyes and started to say something, but Lord Delamere drowned him out with a roar of laughter.

‘By God, he’s got you there, Carberry,’ he said, and clapped me on the back.

‘No one believes the story anyway,’ Carberry said, waving his hand dismissively.

‘You seemed to believe it,’ Nicolas said.

‘Just trying to scare the ladies.’

‘More champagne for the boy genius,’ Delamere said.

Carberry’s hands were gripping the mallet so hard they’d turned a greenish-white. ‘Don’t spoil the brat.’

‘You’re just jealous,’ Freddie said. He and Nicolas and the two nameless ladies raised their glasses to me. Carberry threw the mallet down and stalked off, looking disgusted.

‘Our saviour,’ Sylvie said to me. She came round Delamere and kissed my cheek, sending a shiver up my spine.

We left the croquet court and sat back down at our table. They toasted me, my head spinning, then we toasted the Muthaiga Club, then Kenya, then the King. The champagne seemed never-ending. The nightly ball started and the ladies, laughing, disappeared to change into their ballgowns. We moved to the bar. More men joined us, more names I didn’t catch, and a friendly debate started. Freddie was asked to weigh in, held up his hands and made a joke. I noticed the men all laughed loudest at his jokes. Nicolas draped his arm around my shoulder, and one of the new men gave me a cigar. Delamere was in good spirits, and demonstrated it by shooting at the bottles of spirits on the shelves with his revolver. The bar staff didn’t protest; they handed him a fine on a club chit and went back to serving other drinkers.

‘Let’s have a rickshaw race,’ Delamere’s son said, or at least that was what I thought he said. Everything was becoming strangely muffled, and the ground had started to move underneath me again. The ballroom doors were open, and through them I could see a blur of colours and movement – pink faces, blue gowns, yellow gowns, black tails, waiters in white carrying silver trays of honey-coloured whisky and golden champagne.

‘Boy Genius doesn’t look like he’ll make it,’ Delamere said.

‘Jack’s gone to get a rugby ball,’ someone said. ‘We’ll have a game in the ballroom.’

‘Not before I dance with my wife,’ Nicolas said, hiccupping. ‘I promised her we’d dance.’

‘Well I’m down a wife,’ Freddie said. ‘So I think maybe I should take our young friend home.’

My head, which had been getting heavier by the minute, finally became too much for my neck and I dropped it onto the bar in front of me.

Water was brought, and hands tipped my head back and held the glass out to me. For a moment I thought I was back in the dormitories at school, and I started to struggle, but then I remembered I was in Africa, among friends, especially Freddie.

The water tasted strange. There was a cry of alarm, then I was looking at the floor and there was a puddle of red and yellow on it that smelled like the inside of my mouth.

‘Put it on my chit,’ Freddie said, then he was steering me through the bar, while the other men laughed and clapped. I was going to tell him that I was alright, and I wanted to stay and see Sylvie in her ballgown, but I was strangely sleepy, and I must have drifted off while he was loading me into his car, because the next thing I knew I was back at the hotel, sitting in an armchair in the lobby, and Freddie was talking quietly to my mother, who must have waited up for me.

‘It’s my fault, completely,’ he was saying.

‘Thank you for bringing him home,’ my mother said. Her eyes were rimmed with red, as if she had a cold.

‘He’ll be fine – maybe a little delicate tomorrow, but he’s tougher than he looks.’

‘We’ve been beside ourselves all day – he said he was just going out for a walk.’

‘I’m afraid he’s been at the races,’ Freddie said. ‘I almost forgot.’ He rummaged around in his pocket and brought out a handful of notes. ‘He made a bit of money, actually.’

‘Well.’ My mother took the handful. ‘This might soften the blow for his father a little.’

Freddie laughed. ‘I’d better get back.’

‘Thank you again.’ She put out her hand and he shook it. ‘Really.’

When Freddie had left, my mother stuffed the money into my trouser pocket, then leaned over me, her hands resting on my knees. I had a burning sensation in my throat, and tried to keep my mouth closed to stop the smell of sick escaping.

‘Can you walk?’ she asked me.

‘I think so.’

‘Good.’

She walked next to me all the way to our rooms. I noticed that I was taller than her now, when she didn’t have her shoes on.

At the door she turned me to face her. I flinched as she ran the back of her hand along my jaw-line.