Kat Gordon - The Hunters

‘How about a quick tour of the garden?’ Edie asked. ‘I’m crazy about gardening.’

‘Of course,’ my mother said. She led the way down from the veranda, looking uncertain. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know where everything is.’

‘The roses are at the bottom of the hill,’ Maud said. ‘Next to the hydrangeas. The gardener puts coffee in the soil so they turn blue.’

‘You show us, darling.’

Maud led us down the lawn and stopped in front of a rose bush. ‘This one’s my favourite.’

‘I can see why.’ Edie leaned forward, eyes closed, and sniffed the biggest flower. ‘It’s so good to be able to bend over without a giant belly getting in the way.’

‘Edie gave birth to our daughter on the fifth,’ Freddie said.

‘Congratulations,’ my mother said.

‘Nan,’ Edie said, opening her eyes. ‘She’s called Nan.’ She put out a finger and gently touched the rose, which bowed slightly then sprang back up. Her expression was blissful. ‘Isn’t this beautiful?’

‘ She’s beautiful,’ Freddie said, and kissed his wife. ‘And what a pair of lungs.’

‘Where is she?’ Maud asked.

‘She’s at home with her nurse,’ Edie said.

‘Probably making this face,’ Freddie said, and scrunched up his nose and eyes.

We laughed, even my mother, and Freddie turned and winked at me. I wished the boys back at school could see me now. They’d never have believed that someone so charming, so attractive, could be friends with me. It was intoxicating, and I almost forgot Sylvie wasn’t with us.

‘So you’ve just got these two beautiful children?’ Edie said. She moved on to the hydrangeas and repeated the smelling and touching routine. We stood behind her in a semi-circle. Maud watched her with a serious expression.

‘Yes,’ my mother said.

‘You must have been terribly young when you had them.’

‘I’d been looking after my little brother for a few years by then – I didn’t feel young.’

‘And where’s he now?’

‘In a field in France.’

Edie pulled a face. ‘I’m so sorry. That bloody war.’

‘He was at university when it started – Edinburgh. His tutors all said he was doing very well, but Percy always had such a clear sense of duty.’

Freddie looked sympathetic. ‘I’m sure we would have loved him.’

‘Everyone did,’ my mother said. She smiled – a different smile to before, but it reached her eyes. I felt dizzy all of a sudden and realised I’d been holding in my breath.

After we’d finished looking around the garden I walked Freddie and Edie to their car. My mother and Maud had already gone back inside, leaving the front door open for me. I could hear my mother calling to Maud from one wing to another, and the cook, in the kitchen, clanging pots and pans together, preparing supper for that evening.

‘It’s beautiful here,’ Edie said, ‘Aren’t you glad you came?’

‘Yes.’

‘Africa suits you,’ Freddie said.

I opened the passenger door for Edie and she slid in gracefully.

‘We’ll have a get-together soon,’ she said. ‘You’re invited, of course.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘What’s wrong? You don’t look very sure.’

‘Carberry won’t be there, will he?’

She laughed. ‘No. I hear you’re not exactly firm friends.’

‘Someone should shoot him.’

It came out less witty than I’d hoped, and Freddie raised an eyebrow, but Edie laughed louder. ‘Not you,’ she said, ‘or you’ll miss all the fun at the party. Do come.’

‘As long as you stay away from the gin,’ Freddie said, wagging his finger at me.

‘And the champagne,’ I said.

‘Oh darling, we’re not barbarians,’ Edie said. ‘It’s a party – of course you’ll have champagne.’

Freddie grinned. ‘See you around, Boy Genius,’ he said.

He started the engine, reversed the car up the driveway, and then they were turning the corner and out of sight.

I couldn’t sleep that night, and around eleven I got up to fetch a glass of milk. My mother and father were talking on the veranda, and I paused in the sitting room when I heard Freddie’s name mentioned.

‘Just turned up,’ my mother was saying. ‘I don’t even know who he was here to see. He seems pretty experienced for a twenty-five-year-old, too experienced for Theo.’

Freddie’s face danced before me – his wide smile and straight white teeth, his raised eyebrow and smooth skin. My heart thumped painfully in my side, and I moved closer to the screen door, staying out of sight. It would all be fine, I tried to tell myself – Freddie didn’t think I was too young and immature. My mother couldn’t stop us being friends if we both wanted to be.

‘He’s changing.’

‘Well that’s natural, my dear. I know mothers want their children to stay children forever –’

‘You know Theo’s different. I don’t want him influenced in the wrong direction. Not when I’ve worked so hard on him.’

‘Of course you have,’ my father said soothingly. ‘But Lord Hamilton seemed alright to me. A little bohemian, maybe. Was he alone?’

‘No – with his wife. Lady Joan mentioned her in Nairobi.’

‘Not complimentary?’

‘Not very.’

‘Women never approve of other women.’

My mother’s voice changed. ‘What’s that?’

‘Oh this? I picked it up today – MacDonald said every household needs one.’

‘I don’t want it indoors.’

‘It’s for the leopards.’

‘What if the children see it?’

‘They won’t know what to do with it.’

‘I don’t want it indoors.’

‘It’s for our own protection, my love.’

‘It’s asking for trouble,’ my mother said. ‘Hide it.’

‘As you wish.’ My father must have recognised the danger in my mother’s voice, as I did, because he changed the subject. I silently thanked him for whatever purchase had distracted my mother from deciding to end my new friendship, and went back to bed.

Miss Graham, our tutor, was tall, with overlapping front teeth and eyebrows that met in the middle. She’d come out to Kenya with a family from Edinburgh, but they’d gone back and she’d stayed out for her painting.

Maud adored her, but I got the impression that Miss Graham didn’t like me, and I didn’t warm to her either. Three weeks after she started she complained to my mother about ‘disturbing images’ I’d drawn on my exercise books. They were doodles I’d done without thinking, but my mother sided with Miss Graham, although all she did was look at me coldly and tell me if I wanted to be treated as an adult I had to act like one. I lingered after she’d left, scuffing my shoe against the dining table, reluctant to go back to the classroom. I might have escaped a beating this time, but her words still stung, and the thought of Miss Graham’s satisfied look made me rigid with anger.

We woke every weekday for breakfast at eight. Lessons were between nine and twelve, then our mother joined us for a hot lunch. Afterwards, there were more lessons until two, when we had a bath. The totos ran the bath for each of us, which took nearly an hour: first they drew the water from the well – at least ten buckets per bath – then heated it in a cauldron kept in the kitchen hearth. Afterwards, they transferred it from cauldron to bath in ten more trips with the bucket. Sometimes they forgot to heat the water for long enough, and we had to sit in ice-cold water, our lips and fingers turning blue.

In the afternoons, my mother napped, and we would row out onto the lake, or go for a walk, or watch Miss Graham painting. Her fingers were surprisingly delicate when they held a paintbrush. We were silent around her, unless she started the conversation.