Читать книгу War Cry - Уилбур Смит, Wilbur Smith - Страница 6

Two months had passed since war had been declared and the autumn sun that shone down from the clear blue skies over Bavaria was so glorious that it seemed to cry out for beer to be drunk and songs to be sung in hearty, joyful voices. But the Oktoberfest had been cancelled and the Double Phaeton limousine proceeding up the short drive of the villa in Grünwald, just outside Munich, bore tidings that were anything but joyous.

The car pulled to a halt. Its chauffeur opened the passenger door to allow a distinguished gentleman in his late sixties to disembark and a uniformed butler admitted him into the house. A moment later, Athala, Countess of Meerburg, looked up as the family lawyer Viktor Solomons was shown into the drawing room. His hair and beard might now be silver and his stride was less vigorous than it had once been, but the impeccable tailoring of his suit, the gleaming white of his perfectly starched collar and the flawless shine of his shoes reflected a mind that was still as precise, as sharp and as insightful as ever.

Solomons stopped in front of Athala’s chair, gave a respectful little nod of the head and said, ‘Good morning, Countess.’

His mood seemed subdued, but that was only to be expected, Athala reminded herself. Solomons’s beloved son Isidore was away at the front. No parent could ever be light-hearted knowing that their child’s very survival now lay at the mercy of the gods of war.

‘Good morning, Viktor, what an unexpected pleasure to see you. Do please sit down.’ Athala extended a dainty hand towards the chair opposite her. Then she turned her attention towards the butler who had shown the guest in and was now awaiting further instruction. ‘Some coffee, please Braun, for Herr Rechtsanwalt Solomons. Would you like some cake, Viktor? A little strudel, perhaps?’

‘No thank you, Countess.’

There was a sombre tone to Solomons’s voice, Athala realized, and he seemed uncharacteristically reluctant to look her in the eye. He has bad news, she thought. Is it the boys? Has something happened to one of them?

She told herself to remain calm. It would not do to betray one’s fears, especially not while a servant was still in the room. ‘That will be all, Braun,’ she said.

The butler departed. Athala felt a sudden desire to postpone the bad tidings for just a few seconds. ‘Tell me, how is Isidore getting on? I hope he’s safe and well.’

‘Oh yes, very well thank you, Countess,’ Viktor replied, with a distracted air, as though his mind was not fully engaged. But he took such pride in his beloved son that he could not resist adding, ‘You know, Isidore’s division is commanded by Crown Prince Wilhelm himself. Imagine that! We received a letter from him just last week to say that he has already seen his first action. Apparently, his major declared that he conducted himself admirably under fire.’

‘I’m sure he did. Isidore is a fine young man. Now … what is it, Viktor, why are you here?’

Solomons hesitated a second to gather his thoughts and then sighed, ‘I fear there is no other way of saying this, Countess. The War Office in Berlin informed me today that your husband, Graf Otto von Meerbach, is dead. General von Falkenhayn felt that it was better that you should hear the news from someone you knew, than simply receive a telegram message, or a visit from an unknown officer.’

Athala slumped back against her chair, eyes closed, unable to say a word.

‘I know this must be very distressing,’ Solomons went on, but distress was actually the last thing on her mind. Her overwhelming feeling was one of relief. Nothing had happened to her sons. And finally, after all these years, she was free. There was nothing that her husband could do to hurt her any more.

Athala controlled herself. She had been trained from her earliest girlhood to compose her fine, porcelain features into an image of calm, aristocratic elegance, no matter what the circumstances. It was now second nature to hide her true feelings behind that mask, just as the waters of a pond cover the constantly paddling feet that enable a swan to glide with such apparent ease across its glittering surface.

‘How did he die?’ she asked.

‘In an air crash. I have been informed that His Excellency was engaged in a mission of the greatest importance to the German Empire. Its details are classified, but I am authorized to inform you that the crash occurred over British East Africa. The Count was flying aboard his magnificent new airship the Assegai. This was her maiden voyage.’

‘Did the British shoot him down, then?’

‘I do not know. Our ambassador in Bern was informed by his British counterpart merely that the Count had died. This was a gesture of courtesy, in honour of your late husband’s eminence. I gather, however, that the British do not have any Royal Flying Corps units in Africa, so we must assume that this was an accident of some kind. The gas used to elevate these “dirigibles” can, apparently, be very unstable.’

Athala looked Solomons straight in the eye and very calmly said, ‘Was she on board the Assegai at the time?’

The lawyer did not need to be told who ‘she’ was. Nor, for that matter, would anyone remotely acquainted with German high society. Count von Meerbach had long been a notorious philanderer, but in recent years he had become obsessed with one particular mistress, a ravishing beauty, with lustrous sable hair and violet-blue eyes called Eva von Wellberg. The Count had begged Athala to divorce him, so that he could make the Wellberg woman his wife, but she had refused. Her Catholic faith would not allow her to end her marriage. And so they had come to an arrangement. Countess Athala lived, with their two young sons, in her perfectly proportioned classical villa in the chic little town to the southwest of Munich where the smartest elements of Bavarian society could be found. Meanwhile, Count Otto had retained his family castle on the shores of the Bodensee. And there he kept his mistress, or as Athala thought of her, his whore, and saw his sons on the rare occasions he was able, or remotely willing to spare the time to attend to them.

‘The Assegai was housed within the grounds of the Meerbach Motor Works,’ Solomons said, referring to the gigantic industrial complex on which the family fortune was based. ‘I am told by senior company officials who were present at the airship’s departure that a woman was seen going aboard her. I was also informed by the War Office that the Assegai went down with all hands. No one survived.’

Athala allowed a slight, bitter smile to cross her face. ‘I will not even pretend to be sorry that she is dead.’

‘Nor can I pretend to criticize you for that. I am well aware how much you have suffered on her account.’

‘Dear Viktor, you are always so kind, and so fair. You are …’ She paused to correct herself, ‘You were my husband’s lawyer, yet you have never done anything to hurt me.’

‘I am the family’s lawyer, Countess,’ Solomons gently corrected her. ‘And as long as you were, and remain part of the von Meerbach family, then I will always consider you my client. Now, may I ask, are you ready to discuss any of the consequences of your husband’s tragic demise?’

‘Yes, yes I am,’ said Athala and then, for reasons she could not quite explain, she suddenly felt the loss to which she had been numb up to that point. For all that she had suffered, she had always prayed that one day her husband might see the error of his ways and devote himself to his family. Now all hope of that had gone. She began to cry and started rummaging through the bag at her feet, trying to find a handkerchief.

‘May I?’ asked Solomons, reaching into his pocket.

She waved him away, shaking her head, not trusting herself to speak. Finally she found what she was looking for, pressed the handkerchief to her eyes, dabbed her nose, took a deep breath and said, ‘Please forgive me.’

‘My dear Countess, you have just lost your husband. Whatever difficulties you may have faced, he was still the man you married, the father of your children.’

She nodded and ruefully said, ‘It seems that I do not have a heart of stone after all.’

‘I, for one, never supposed that you did. Not for a single moment.’

She gave him a nod of thanks and then said, ‘Please continue … I believe you were going to describe the consequences of …’ She could not bring herself to use the word ‘death’ and so just said, ‘Of what has occurred.’

‘Quite so. There cannot be a funeral, sadly, for if the body has been recovered, the British will by now have buried it.’

‘My husband died serving his country overseas,’ Athala said, straightening her back and resuming her air of poised composure. ‘That is to be expected.’

‘Indeed. But I think it would be entirely appropriate, indeed expected, to have a service of remembrance, perhaps at the Frauenkirche in Munich, or you may feel that either the family chapel at Schloss Meerbach, or even a service at the Motor Works, would be more appropriate.’

‘The Frauenkirche,’ said Athala, without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I don’t think a factory is a suitable location at which to commemorate a Count of the German Empire and the chapel at the schloss is too small to accommodate the numbers of people who will wish to attend. Could someone from your firm liaise with the Archbishop’s office, to secure a suitable date and assist with the administration of the event?’

‘Of course, Countess, that would be no trouble. Might I suggest the Bayerischer Hof for the reception after the service? If you give the hotel manager your general requirements, the hotel staff will know exactly how best to provide exactly what you need.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t even begin to think about that just now.’ Athala closed her eyes, trying to put the jumble of thoughts and emotions in her head in order and then asked, ‘What will become of my sons and I?’

‘Well, the extent and variety of the Count’s possessions mean that his will is unusually complex. But the essential facts are that the family estate here in Bavaria, and a majority share in the Motor Works, all go to your eldest son, Konrad, along with the title of Graf von Meerbach. Your younger son, Gerhard, will have a smaller shareholding in the company. The various properties and the income they generate will be held in trust for each son until he is twenty-five. Prior to that point, they will each receive a generous allowance, plus the cost of their education, of course. Any additional expenditure will have to be approved by their trustees.’

‘And who will they be?’

‘In the first instance, you and I, Countess.’

‘My God, fancy Otto allowing me such power.’

‘He was a traditionalist. He felt that a mother should take charge of her children’s upbringing. But you will note that I said “in the first instance”. Once Konrad is twenty-five, and takes control of the family’s affairs, he will also assume the role of trustee to his brother, who will then be eighteen years old.’

‘So for seven years, Gerhard will have to go cap in hand to Konrad if he ever needs anything?’

‘Yes.’

Athala frowned. ‘It worries me that one brother should have so much power over the other.’

‘His Excellency believed very strongly that a family, like a nation, required the strong leadership of a single man.’

‘Didn’t he just … I take it that I am provided for.’

‘Oh yes, you need not worry on that score. You will retain your own family money, added to which you will keep all the property, jewellery, artworks and so on that you received during your marriage, and receive a very generous annual allowance for the rest of your life. You will also have a place on the board.’

‘I don’t care about the damn board,’ Athala said. ‘It’s my boys that I worry about. Where are we meant to live?’

‘It is entirely up to you, whether you wish to reside here in Grünwald, or at Schloss Meerbach, or both. His Excellency has set aside monies that are to be spent on the maintenance of the castle and its estate, and on employing all the staff required to maintain the standards he himself demanded. You will be the mistress of Schloss Meerbach once again, if you choose to be so.’

‘Until Konrad’s twenty-fifth birthday …’

‘Yes, he will be the master then.’

When Solomons had gone, Athala went upstairs to the playroom where Gerhard was playing. She looked on him as a gift from God, an unexpected blessing whose birth had brought a rare moment of joy to a marriage long past rescuing. Gerhard had been conceived on the very last night that Athala and Otto had slept together. It had been a short, perfunctory coupling and he had been away with Fräulein von Wellberg on the night Gerhard was born. But that only made her baby all the more precious to Athala.

She wondered how she was going to explain to him that his father was dead. How did one tell a three-year-old that sort of thing? For now, she didn’t have the heart to interrupt Gerhard while he played with the wooden building bricks that were his favourite toy.

Athala always found her son fascinating to observe as he arranged the brightly coloured bricks. He had an instinctive grasp of symmetry. If he placed one brick of a certain colour or shape on one side of his latest castle, or house, or farm (Gerhard always knew exactly what he was building), then another, identical one had to go on the opposite side.

She leaned over and kissed his head. ‘My little architect,’ she murmured, and Gerhard beamed with pleasure, for that was his favourite of all her pet names for him.

I will tell him, Athala told herself, but not yet.

She gave the news to both her boys after Konrad had come home from school. He was only ten, but already regarded himself as the man of the house. As such, he made a point of not showing any sign of weakness when told that the father he took after so strongly was dead. Instead he wanted to know all the details of what had happened. Had his father been fighting the English? How many of them had he killed before they got him? When Athala had been unable to give him the answers he required, Konrad flew into a rage and said she was stupid.

‘Father was quite right not to love you,’ he sneered. ‘You were never good enough for him.’

On another day, Athala might have smacked him for that, but today she let it go. Then Konrad’s fury abated as fast as it had risen and he asked, ‘If Father is dead, does that mean that I am the Count now?’

‘Yes,’ said Athala. ‘You are Graf von Meerbach.’

Konrad gave a whoop of joy. ‘I’m the Count! I’m the Count!’ he chanted, marching around the playroom, like a stocky little red-headed guardsman. ‘I can do whatever I want and nobody can stop me!’

He came to a halt by Gerhard’s building, which had risen, brick by brick, until it was almost as tall as its maker.

‘Hey Gerdi, look at me!’

Gerhard looked up at his big brother, smiling innocently.

Konrad kicked Gerhard’s wonderful construction, scattering its bricks across the playroom floor. Then he kicked it again, and again until it was completely obliterated, and nothing remained but the colourful rubble carpeting the room.

Gerhard’s little face crumpled in despair and he ran sobbing to his mother.

As she wrapped her arms around her baby, she looked at the boy count now standing proudly over the destruction he had wreaked and she realized with bitter despair that she had been freed from her husband, only to be enslaved anew by her even more terrible son.

The skinny little girl wore a pair of jodhpurs that flapped around her thighs, for she lacked the flesh with which to fill them. Her short, black bobbed hair, which was normally unconstrained by bands or clips of any kind, had been pinned into a little bun, to be worn beneath her riding hat. Her freckled face was tanned a golden brown and her eyes were the clear, pure blue of the African skies that had looked down upon every day of her life.

All around her the grassy hills, garlanded with sparkling streams, stretched away to the horizon as if the Highlands of Scotland had been transported to the Garden of Eden: a magical land of limitless fertility, incomprehensible scale and thrilling, untamed wildness. Here leopards lounged in the branches of trees that were also home to chattering monkeys and snakes, like the shimmering, iridescent green mamba, or the shy but fatally poisonous boomslang. The head-high grass hid lions sharp in fang and claw and, even deadlier still, the buffalo, whose horns could cut deep into a man’s guts as easily as a sewing needle through fine linen.

The girl barely gave a thought to these hazards, for she knew no other world than this and besides, she had much more important things on her mind. She was stroking the velvet muzzle of her pony, a Somali-bred chestnut mare from which she had been inseparable ever since she had received it as her seventh-birthday present, eight months ago. The horse was called Kipipiri, which was both the Swahili word for ‘butterfly’ and the name of the mountain that stood tall on the eastern horizon, shimmering in the heat haze like a mirage.

‘Look, Kippy,’ the girl said, in a low, soothing murmur. ‘Look at all the nasty boys and their horrid stallions. Let’s show them what we can do!’

She stepped around to the side of the pony and, waving away the offer of a leg-up from her groom, put one foot into the nearest stirrup, pushed off it and sprang up into the saddle as nimbly as a jockey on Derby Day. Then she leaned forward along Kipipiri’s neck, stroking her mane, and whispered in her ear, ‘Fly, my darling, fly!’

Possessed by an exhilarating swirl of emotions in which pride, anticipation and giddy excitement clashed against nervousness, apprehension and a desperate longing not to make a fool of herself, the girl told herself to calm down. She had long since learned that her beloved Kippy could sense her emotions and be affected by them and the very last thing she needed was a nervous, skittish, over-excited mount. So she took a long deep breath, just as her mother had taught her, before letting the air out slowly and smoothly until she felt the tension ease from her shoulders. Then she sat up straight and kicked the pony into a walk, stirring up the dust from the peppery red earth as they moved towards the starting gate of the show-jumping ring that had been set up on one of the fields of the Wanjohi Valley Polo Club for its 1926 gymkhana.

The girl’s eyes were fixed on the fences scattered at apparently random points around the ring. And a single thought filled her mind: I am going to win!

A loudspeaker had been slung from one of the wooden rafters that held up the corrugated iron awning over the clubhouse veranda. The harsh, tinny sound of a man’s amplified voice burst from it, saying, ‘Now the final competitor in the twelve-and-under show jumping, Miss Saffron Courtney on Kipi-pipi-piri …’ Silence fell for a second and then the voice continued, ‘Awfully sorry, few too many pips there, I fear.’

‘And a few too many pink gins, eh, Chalky!’ a voice called out from among the spectators lounging on the wooden benches that were serving as spectator seating for the annual gymkhana the polo club laid on for its members’ children.

‘Too true, dear boy, too true,’ the announcer confessed, and then continued, ‘So far there’s only been one clear round, by Percy Toynton on Hotspur, which means that Saffron’s the only rider standing between him and victory. She’s much the youngest competitor in this event, so let’s give her a jolly big round of applause to send her on her way.’

A ripple of limp clapping could be heard from the fifty or so white settlers who had come to watch their children compete in the gymkhana, or who were simply grasping any opportunity to leave their farms and businesses and socialise with one another. They were drowsy with the warmth of the early afternoon sun and the thin air, for the polo fields lay at an altitude of almost eight thousand feet, which seemed to exaggerate the effect of their heroic consumption of alcohol. A few particularly jaded, decadent souls were further numbed by opium, while those who were exhibiting overt signs of energy or agitation had quite likely sniffed some of the cocaine that had recently become as familiar to the more daring elements in Kenyan society as a cocktail before dinner.

Saffron’s mother Eva Courtney, however, was entirely clear-headed. Seven months pregnant, having had two miscarriages since her daughter’s birth, she had been forbidden anything stronger than the occasional glass of Guinness to build up her strength. She looked towards the jumps that had been set up on one of the polo fields, whispered, ‘Good luck, my sweet,’ under her breath, and squeezed her husband’s hand.

‘I just hope she doesn’t have a fall,’ she said, her deep violet eyes heavy with maternal anxiety. ‘She’s only a little girl and look at the size of some of those jumps.’

Leon Courtney smiled at his wife. ‘Don’t you worry, darling,’ he reassured her. ‘Saffron is your daughter. Which means she’s as brave as a lioness, as pretty as a pink flamingo … and as tough as an old bull rhino. She will come through unscathed, you mark my words.’

Eva Courtney smiled at Leon and let go of his hand so that he could get to his feet and walk down towards the polo field. That’s my Badger, she thought. He can’t bear to sit and watch his girl from a distance. He has to get close to the action.

Eva had given Leon the nickname Badger one morning a dozen years earlier, soon after they had met. They had ridden out as dawn broke over the Rift Valley and Eva had spotted a funny-looking creature about the size of a squat, sturdy, short-legged dog. It had black fur on its belly and lower body and white and pale grey on top, and was snuffling round in the grass like an old man searching for his reading glasses.

‘What is it?’ she had asked, to which Leon replied, ‘It’s a honey badger.’ He told her that this unlikely beast was one of the most ferocious, fearless creatures in Africa. ‘Even the lion gives him a wide berth,’ Leon had said. ‘Interfere with him at your peril.’

He could be talking about himself, Eva had thought. Leon had only been in his mid-twenties then, scraping a living as a safari guide. Now he was just a year shy of forty, the look of boyish eagerness that had once lit his eyes was replaced by the calmer assurance of a mature man in his prime, confident in his prowess as a hunter and fighting man. There was a deep groove between Leon’s brows and lines around his eyes and mouth. With the frustration felt by women through the ages, to whom lines were an unwelcome sign that their youth and beauty were fading, Eva had to admit that on her man they suggested experience and authority and only made him all the more attractive. His body was a shade thicker through the trunk and his waist was not as slender as it had once been, but – another unfairness! – that only made him seem all the stronger and more powerful.

Eva looked around at the other men of the expatriate community gathered in this particular corner of Kenya. Her eyes came to rest on Josslyn Hay, the 25-year-old heir to the Earl of Erroll, the hereditary Lord High Constable of Scotland. He was a tall, strongly built young man and he wore a kilt, as he often did in honour of his heritage, with a red-ochre Somali shawl slung over one shoulder. He was a handsome enough sight, with his swept-back, matinee-idol blond hair. His cool blue eyes looked at the world, and its female inhabitants in particular, with the lazy, heavy-lidded impudence of a predator eyeing its next meal. Hay had seduced half the white women in British East Africa, but Eva was too familiar with his type and too satisfied with her own alpha male to be remotely interested in adding to his conquests. Besides, he was far too young and inexperienced to interest her. As for the rest of the men there, they were a motley crew of aristocrats fleeing the new world of post-war Britain; remittance men putting on airs while praying for the next cheque from home; and adventurers enticed to Africa by the promise of a life they could never hope to match at home.

Leon Courtney, though, was different. His family had lived in Africa for two hundred and fifty years. He spoke Swahili as easily as English, conversed with the local Masai people in their own tongue and had excellent Arabic – an essential tool for a man whose father had founded a trading business that had been born of a single Nile steamer but now stretched from the gold mines of the Transvaal to the cotton fields of Egypt and the oil wells of Mesopotamia. Leon didn’t play games. He didn’t have to. He was man enough exactly as he was.

Yes, Badger, I am lucky, Eva thought. Luckiest of all to love and be loved by you.

Saffron steadied herself at the start of her course. I’ve simply got to beat Percy! she told herself.

It was Percy Toynton’s thirteenth birthday in a week’s time so he only just qualified for the event. Not only was he almost twice as old as Saffron, both he and his horse were far larger and stronger than she and Kipipiri. Percy was not a nice boy, in Saffron’s view. He was boastful and liked to make himself look clever at other children’s expense. Still, he had got round the course without making a mistake. So she absolutely had to match that and then beat him in the jump-off that would follow.

‘Don’t get ahead of yourself,’ Daddy had told her over breakfast that morning. ‘This is a very important lesson in life. If you have a big, difficult job to do, don’t fret about how hard it is. Break it down into smaller, easier jobs. Then steadily do them one by one and you’ll find that in the end you’ve done the thing that seemed so hard. Do you understand?’

Saffron had screwed up her face and twisted her lips from side to side, thinking about what Daddy had said. ‘I think so,’ she’d replied, without much conviction.

‘Well, take a clear round at show jumping. That’s very difficult, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Saffron nodded.

‘But if you look at a jump, I bet you always think you can get over it.’

‘Always!’ Saffron agreed.

‘Very well then, don’t think about how difficult it is to get a clear round. Think about one easy jump, then another, then another … and when you reach the end, if you jump over all the jumps, why, you’ll have a clear round and it won’t have seemed difficult at all.’

‘Oh, I understand!’ she’d said, enthusiastically.

Now Saffron glanced at the ragged line of her fellow competitors and their parents that ran down one side of the ring, and saw her father. He caught her eye and gave her a jaunty wave, accompanied by one of the broad smiles that always made her feel happy, for they were filled with optimism and confidence. She smiled back and then turned her attention to the first obstacle: a simple pair of crossed white rails forming a shallow X-shape lower in the middle than at the sides. That’s easy! she thought and felt suddenly stronger and more confident. She urged Kipipiri forward and the little mare broke into a trot and then a canter and they passed through the starting gate and headed towards the jumps.

Leon Courtney had made sure not to convey a single iota of the tension he was feeling as Saffron began her round. His heart was bursting with pride. She could have entered the eight-and-under category, but the very idea of going over the baby jumps, the highest of which barely reached Leon’s knee, had appalled her. She had therefore insisted on going up an age group, and to most people that in itself was remarkable. The idea that she might actually win it was fanciful in the extreme. But Leon knew his daughter. She would not see it that way. She would want victory or nothing at all.

‘Come on, Saffy,’ he whispered, not wanting to shout for fear of spooking her pony.

She cantered up to the first fence; steadied Kipipiri then darted forward and sailed right across the centre of the jump, with masses of room to spare. Saffron smiled to herself. She and Kippy were both strong-willed, stubborn characters. As her mother used to say, ‘You two girls are both as bad as each other!’

On days when Saffron and her pony were at odds with one another, the results were invariably disastrous, but when they were united and pulling in the same direction, it felt as though they could take on the world. The energy with which Kippy had jumped, her perfect balance on take-off and landing, the rhythm of her strides, and the alert, eager way her ears were pricked gave Saffron hope that this could be one of the good days.

Now, however, the challenge became much harder. The next fence was a double: two railed fences with a single stride between them. ‘Good girl!’ said Saffron as Kippy scraped over the first element of the pair, took her single stride perfectly then jumped the double rail too.

Now all the nerves had gone. Saffron was at one with the animal beneath her, controlling all the power that lay coiled up in the muscles bunched beneath Kippy’s rich, dark, glossy coat.

She slowed the pony, turned her ninety degrees to the right and set out along the line of three fences that now presented themselves to her. The first was a plain white gate and she made easy work of it. Saffron had long legs for her age, even if they were as thin as a stork’s, but she kept her stirrups short, all the better to rise out of the saddle as she jumped and drive her pony up and over the obstacle. Next came another single rail, although it was placed over bundles of flame-tree branches, still bedecked in their blazing red and yellow flowers: again it proved no match for Saffron and Kipipiri.

I say, Courtney, that girl of yours is as light as a feather in the saddle,’ said one of the other spectators, a retired cavalry major called Brett, who also served as the local magistrate, as she tackled an oxer, comprised of two railed fences side-by-side. ‘Lovely touch on the reins, too. Good show.’

‘Thank you, Major,’ Leon said, as Saffron brought Kipipiri round again to tackle the next couple of fences strung diagonally across the ring: a wall and the water jump. ‘Mind you, I can’t claim any credit. Saffron’s absolutely her mother’s daughter when it comes to riding. You wouldn’t believe the hours that Eva’s spent with her in the schooling ring, both as stubborn as each other, fighting like two cats in a bag, but by God it pays off.’ Leon smiled affectionately at the thought of the two most precious people in his life then said, ‘Excuse me a moment,’ as he switched his full attention back to the ring.

For some reason, his daughter’s pony had a terrible habit of ‘dipping a toe in the water’, as Leon liked to put it. She would leap over the highest, widest, scariest fences, but it was the devil’s own job to persuade her that the water was an obstacle to be avoided, rather than a pool to be dived into.

As Saffron steadied herself before the challenge in front of her, Leon took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing pulse.

I don’t know how Saffy feels jumping this course, he thought. But I’m absolutely shattered watching it.

One fence at a time, one fence at a time,’ Saffron repeated to herself as she fixed her eyes on the wall. ‘Here we go, girl!’ she said and urged Kippy on across the parched turf. The wall was high. They got over it without knocking any of the painted wooden tea-chests from which it had been improvised, but the pony stumbled on landing and it took all Saffron’s skill to keep her upright, maintain their forward momentum and have her balanced and moving strongly again by the time they approached the water jump.

Saffron was absolutely determined she wouldn’t make a mess of the water this time. She galloped at full pelt towards it, misjudged her pacing, had to take off miles away from the jump, but was going so fast that Kipipiri flew like a speeding dart over the rail, and the shallow pool of muddy brown water beyond. It was all Saffron could do to slow her down and turn her again – hard left this time – before they charged out of the ring.

Saffron was out of breath, but inwardly exultant. No faults! Almost there!

In front of her stood a low fence made of three striped poles on top of each other. The polo club’s gymkhana committee had decided to make this a particularly gentle challenge to the riders, for just beyond it stood the last and hardest jump: a vicious triple combination of a plain rail fence, another hay-bale and rail, and finally an oxer, each with just a single stride between them. Some competitors had scraped the first element of the triple, hit the second and simply crashed into the third, completely unable to manage another jump. None apart from Percy had managed to get through without at least one fence down.

Saffron had to clear it. She summoned every shred of energy she still had in her and rode along the side of the ring nearest to the spectators, her mind replaying the pattern of steps she would need to enter the triple combination at the perfect point, going at just the right speed. She barely even thought of the poles as Kipipiri jumped over them.

As the pony’s hind hooves passed over the jump, Saffron thought she heard a bump behind her. She glanced back and saw that the top pole had been rattled but it seemed to still be in place, so she thought no more of it. She barely even saw the people flashing by beside her, nor did she hear the faint gasp they emitted as she approached the first element. She met it perfectly, jumped the rail, kept Kippy balanced through her next stride, made it across the second rail, kicked on and then pulled so hard on the reins that she more or less picked up her pony and hauled her over the oxer.

I did it! I did it! Saffron thought exultantly as she galloped towards the finishing line. She crossed it and slowed Kipipiri to a trot as they exited the ring. She saw her father running towards her, dodging in and out of the applauding spectators and gave him a great big wave. But he didn’t wave back.

Saffron frowned. Why isn’t he smiling?

And then she heard the loudspeaker and felt as though she had been kicked in the tummy by a horse’s hoof as the announcer called out, ‘Oh, I say! What awfully bad luck for plucky Saffron Courtney, hitting the last-but-one fence when she was so close to a clear round. My goodness, that pole took an age to fall off! So that means the winner’s rosette goes to Percy Toynton. Well played, young man!’

Saffron hardly knew what was happening as her groom took hold of Kipipiri’s bridle. All she could think was, How could I knock down that silly, stupid, simple little pole? Her eyes had suddenly filled with tears and she could barely see her father Leon as he lifted her out of the saddle and hugged her to his chest, holding her tight before gently putting her down on the ground.

She leaned against him, wrapping her arms around his legs as he stroked her hair. ‘I’m better than Percy, I know I am,’ Saffron sobbed. And then she looked up, her face as furious as it was miserable and wailed. ‘I lost, Daddy, I lost! I can’t believe it … I lost!’

Leon had long since learned that there was no point trying to reason with Saffron at times like this. Her temper was as fierce as an African storm, but cleared as quickly and then the sun came out in her just as it did over the savannah, and it shone just as brightly too.

She pulled herself away from him, tore her hat off her head and kicked it across the ground.

Leon heard a disapproving, ‘Harrumph!’ behind him and turned to see Major Brett frowning at the display of juvenile female anger. ‘You should read that little madam some Kipling, Courtney.’

‘Because she’s behaving like a monkey from The Jungle Book?’ Leon asked.

The major did not spot the presence of humour, or perhaps did not feel this was the time and place for frivolity. ‘Good God, man, of course not! I’m referring to that poem. You know, triumph and disaster, impostors, treat them both the same and so forth.’

‘Ah, but my daughter is a Courtney, and we’ve never been able to live up to such lofty ideals. Either we triumph, or it is a disaster.’

‘Well that’s not a very British way of seeing things, I must say.’

Leon smiled. ‘In many ways we’re not very British. Besides, that poem you were quoting, “If”—’

‘Absolutely, that’s the one.’

‘As I recall, Kipling wrote it for his son, who died in the war, poor lad.’

‘Believe he did, yes, rotten show.’

‘And the point of the whole thing is summed up in the final line which is, if memory serves, “And – which is more – you’ll be a man, my son.”’

‘Quite so, damned good advice, too.’

‘Yes, to a boy it is. But Saffron is my daughter. She’s a little girl. And not even Rudyard Kipling is going to turn her into a man.’

Darling Leon, how good of you to come,’ said Lady Idina Hay.

‘My pleasure,’ Leon replied. A select few members of the gymkhana crowd had been invited back to the Hays’ house, Slains, which was named after Josslyn Hay’s ancestral home, to have dinner and stay the night afterwards. Leon had thought twice before accepting the invitation. Idina, a short, slight woman with huge, captivating eyes, who matched her husband in his appetite and seductive power, had swiftly become as much of a source of scandal to Kenyan society as she had been in London. Now on her third marriage, with armies of lovers besides, she was apt to greet guests while lying naked in a green onyx bath; to entertain while wearing nothing but a flimsy cotton wrap, tied at the bust in the native style, with nothing underneath; and to hand guests a bowl filled with keys to the Slains’ bedrooms, invite them to take one, inform them which room it opened and suggest that they slept with whomever they found within it.

‘Apparently it’s impossible for the servants,’ Eva had said, when she passed on the gossip on to Leon. ‘They pick up all the dirty laundry off the floor, get it all cleaned and pressed but then have absolutely no idea whom to return it to.’

Tonight, however, Idina was on her best behaviour and was dressed as if for the smartest salons of Paris in an impossibly short, translucent but just about decent dress of fluttering, champagne-coloured silk chiffon. Leon felt sure Eva would be able to identify it in an instant as being the work of some celebrated designer of whom he had never heard.

‘So sorry to hear that Eva wasn’t up to it,’ Idina said, as if reading his mind.

‘Well, she gets jolly tired, lugging the baby around inside her,’ he replied. ‘She swears it must be a boy, says it’s twice the size Saffy was at the same stage. So she’s gone back to Lusima with Saffy and the pony.’

‘She’s not driving, I hope!’

‘She wanted to, you know. Absolutely determined to get behind the wheel. But I put my foot down and said absolutely not. So Loikot, my estate manager, is taking her back in the Rolls. He’ll be back for me tomorrow.’

Idina laughed. ‘You’re the only man in Kenya who would even think of driving on the appalling, unmade roads in such a wildly extravagant car!’

‘On the contrary, it’s an extremely tough, practical machine. It was built as an armoured car, spent the war charging around Arabia and Mesopotamia. When peace came the army had far more than they needed, so I bought one. I smartened it up a bit, but underneath it’s still a military vehicle,’ Leon grinned at Idina. ‘If the balloon ever goes up again, I can weld on some armour plating, stick a gun turret over the passenger seats and drive straight off to war.’

‘Perhaps I should get one,’ Idina mused. ‘I have my Hispano–Suiza, of course and she’s a wonderful thing.’

‘I’ll say. At least as grand as my Roller, and that silver stork on the bonnet rivals the Spirit of Ecstasy for style.’

‘True, but she’d still rather be toddling around Mayfair than bumping about on the dirt tracks of Africa … Now I must get on and make sure dinner is being prepared properly,’ Idina concluded. ‘Just because one is a long way from home, that’s no excuse for lowering one’s standards.’

Apart from swapping the room keys, thought Leon, heading off to get dressed for dinner. Unless they do that in Mayfair, too.

The guests had gathered for drinks before dinner and split along gender lines, with the men, all dressed in white tie and tails, engaged in one set of conversations and the ladies, like a flock of brilliantly plumaged hummingbirds, all gathered in another. Leon Courtney was cradling a whisky in his hand as he talked with a small group that included his host, Josslyn Hay. The two men stood out from the rest, both because they were taller than the others, but also because they were so obviously the dominant males in that particular pack: a pair of magnets for watching female eyes.

‘I rather think I’m going to make a play for Leon Courtney,’ said the Honourable Amelia Cory-Porter, a well-dressed, brightly painted young divorcée with fashionably short, bobbed hair who had decided to lie low in Kenya until the fuss over her marriage, which had been ended by her adultery, died down. ‘He is quite utterly scrumptious, don’t you think?’

‘Darling, you’ll be wasting your time,’ Idina Hay informed her. ‘Leon Courtney’s the only man in the whole of Kenya who refuses to sleep with anyone other than his wife. He barely even eyes one up. It’s quite disconcerting, actually. Makes me wonder if I’m losing my touch.’

Amelia looked startled, as if confronted by an entirely new and unexpected aspect of human behaviour. ‘Refuses sex? Really? That hardly seems natural, especially when his wife is in no condition to oblige him. You don’t suppose he’s secretly a queer, do you?’

‘Heavens, no! I have it on good authority that in his younger days, he was quite the ladies’ man. But the moment he clapped eyes on Eva, he fell head over heels in love and he’s been besotted ever since.’

‘I suppose one can’t blame him,’ said Amelia, though her air of disapproval was plain. ‘I saw her at the gymkhana and she’s perfectly lovely. What is it they say in romantic novels – eyes like limpid pools? She has those, all right. But even so, she’s enormously pregnant. No one expects a chap to live like a monk these days just because his wife’s blown up like a barrage balloon.’

‘Well perhaps Leon Courtney’s just an old-fashioned gentleman.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly. You know as well as I do that there’s never been any such thing. But anyway, darling, do tell all about Eva. It’s very strange. I thought I could detect a Northumbrian lilt in her voice – Daddy used to go shooting up there and we’d all go up with him, so I know the accent from the staff and gamekeepers and so forth. But I’ve heard that she’s actually a German, is that so?’

‘Well,’ said Idina as the two women moved fractionally closer together, like conspirators sharing a deadly secret, ‘the real British East Africa hands, like Florence Delamere, who’ve been here for years and years, can still remember the first time Eva pitched up in Nairobi, about a year or so before the war. Some ghastly German industrialist arrived in town on the most lavish safari anyone had ever seen, accompanied by a magnificent open motor car in which to go hunting, numerous lorries to cart all his baggage and two huge aeroplanes, made by his own company.’

‘Good lord, what an extraordinary show,’ Amelia said, clearly impressed by such a display of power and wealth.

‘Absolutely,’ Idina agreed. ‘Of course, the whole town turned out to see the flying machines, but by the end of the day there was just as much talk about the ravishing creature who was parading around on the industrialist’s arm, making no bones whatever about being his mistress and calling herself Eva von something-or-other.’

‘And that was the same Eva I saw today?’

‘Indeed she was. And guess who was the white hunter acting as the Germans’ guide?’

‘Goodness, was it Leon Courtney?’

‘The very same. Anyway, Eva and the industrialist – apparently he was the absolute picture of the bullying, bullet-headed Hun – went back to Germany, and that seemed to be that. But then, really very soon after the start of the war, she was mysteriously back in Kenya, having parachuted down to earth from a giant Zeppelin.’

‘Oh, don’t! That’s just too extraordinary!’ Amelia laughed.

‘Well, that’s the story and I’ve heard it from enough people who were here at the time to believe it. Apparently, the Zeppelin crash-landed deep in the heart of Masailand. And it was shot down by …?’ Idina paused, teasingly.

‘No! Don’t tell me! Not Leon again?’

‘Absolutely … and out of the wreckage, looking as pretty as a picture and as fresh as a daisy, steps the lovely Eva and falls, swooning into his arms!’

‘Lucky girl. I’d happily swoon into his arms right now, if he’d have me.’

‘Well, he won’t, so you’ll just have to find another man to swoon at!’

‘Are you sure?’ Amelia asked, wrinkling her porcelain brow with a little frown. ‘It really is too bad to give up without a fight. After all, Leon’s rich as well as divinely handsome. Lusima must be one of the biggest estates in the country.’

‘He paid cash for the land, you know,’ Idina said. ‘Half a million pounds for a hundred and twenty thousand acres, didn’t have to borrow a penny. I know that for an absolute fact because I heard it from the chap who conducted the sale.’

‘Half a million? Cash?’ Amelia gasped.

‘Absolutely. I once plucked up the courage to ask Leon where his money came from it, but he was very coy. First he described it as “war reparations” and then he said it was payment for various patents that had belonged to Eva’s father.’

‘Perhaps he’s a gangster and it’s all the proceeds of his evil crimes!’ said Amelia, excitedly. ‘I rather like the idea of being – what’s the phrase? – a gangster’s moll.’

‘I’m sure you do, duckie, but whatever else he might be, Leon Courtney’s not a criminal. My guess is that it’s something to do with the war.’ Idina’s eyes suddenly sparkled with mischief. ‘I tell you what, darling, I shall set you a challenge. I’m going to change the placement I’d planned for the dinner table tonight and put you next to Leon. If you can find out where he got his gold by the time we retire to leave the men to their brandy and cigars I shall be very impressed indeed.’

‘Done!’ said the Hon. Amelia. ‘And I’ll seduce him, too, just you watch me, wife or no wife.’

Idina arched an eyebrow and concluded their little chat: ‘Now, now, darling, let’s not be greedy.’

Thanks to the combined efforts of Idina Hay and her formidable housekeeper Marie, the kitchen staff at Slains had been trained to produce French cuisine that would not have shamed the dinner table of a château on the Loire. The wine, notoriously difficult to keep in good condition in the tropics, was of equally high standard. Leon had long ago learned to pace himself when drinking at altitude, but the woman sitting next to him, who introduced herself as Amelia Cory-Porter, seemed determined to force as much Premier Cru claret as possible down his throat. She was attractive enough, in an obvious, uninteresting way, and covered in far too much make-up for his taste. She was also very clearly determined to get something from him, but Leon was not yet sure quite what that might be.

At first he’d thought she was flirting, for everything he knew about women told him that if he made a pass at her she would very happily oblige. But as the starter of confit duck breasts served with a salad of vegetables from Slains’ own gardens gave way to superb entrecôte steaks served in a pepper sauce, he realized that Amelia was not after his body – or not at this precise moment anyway – but was instead angling for information. It was, of course, good manners to show interest in one’s dining companions and any woman with half a brain knew how to make a man feel as though he was the wisest, most fascinating and witty fellow she had ever met. But Amelia was not flattering, so much as cross-examining him, working her way through his life and becoming more intense in her questioning as she went on. His war service seemed to be of particular interest to her. Leon had done his best to fob her off by saying he never talked about the war, adding that in his experience any man who did was a bounder who was almost certainly lying. ‘Unless, of course, he’s a poet,’ he’d added, hoping she might, like many an idealistic young woman, be distracted by thoughts of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and the other bards of war.

Amelia, however, wasn’t distracted for a second. She was like a terrier with the scent of a particularly juicy rabbit in its nostrils. ‘I heard the most extraordinary story about how you’d shot down a giant Zeppelin, single-handed. Do tell, that sounds so brave, is it actually true?’

‘That sounds pretty improbable to me,’ Leon said. ‘Damned hard thing to shoot down, a Zeppelin, just ask any pilot. Now, I’ve talked far too much. You must tell me everything that’s happening in London, what’s new and interesting and so forth. Eva will be thrilled if I can pass on any news of home.’

Leon had been telling the truth, up to a point. It really was extremely hard to down a Zeppelin with machine-gun fire, which was one reason why he had never done any such thing. And Eva would indeed be keen to hear about the latest clothes, plays, novels and music that were captivating London society.

Amelia, however, was having none of it. ‘Oh, who cares about silly dresses and even sillier books? I want to hear about that Zeppelin.’

Leon sighed. This was not a subject he had any intention of discussing, but how could he evade this woman’s steely clutches without being unforgivably rude? He was just pondering his next move when he heard a man’s voice, clearly somewhat the worse for wine, braying across the table.

‘I say Courtney, is it true you have a Masai blood brother?’

The voice belonged to a newcomer to Kenya, who called himself Quentin de Lancey and affected the mannerisms of the upper class, though his appearance was far from noble. He was overweight and prone to become both red-faced and very sweaty in the heat, which caused his thin, reddish-brown hair to lie in damp strings across his pale, flabby skin.

‘Something of that sort,’ Leon replied, noncommittally.

When he was a nineteen-year-old Second Lieutenant in the Third Battalion of the King’s African Rifles his platoon sergeant had been a Masai called Manyoro. Leon had saved Manyoro’s life in battle, and when Leon had then been court-martialled on trumped-up charges of cowardice and desertion it had been Manyoro’s evidence that had saved his neck. There was no man on earth whose friendship he valued more highly.

‘And a coon name? Bongo-something, was what I’d heard.’ A few people smiled at that, one of the women tittered. ‘Bongo from Bongo-bongo-land, what?’ de Lancey added, looking delighted by his own rapier wit.

‘The name I received was M’Bogo,’ said Leon, and a wiser, or more sober man than de Lancey might have heard the note of suppressed anger in his voice.

‘I say, what kind of name is that?’ de Lancey persisted.

‘It is the name of the great buffalo bull. It represents strength and fighting spirit. I count myself honoured to have been given it.’

Again, it took a fool not to heed the warning contained in the phrase ‘strength and fighting spirit’, and again de Lancey was deaf to it. ‘Oh, come-come, Courtney,’ he said, as if he were the voice of reason and Leon the common fool. ‘It’s all very well getting on with these people, I suppose, but let’s not pretend that they are anything but a lesser race. A chap I know was up-country a few months ago, looking for a good spot to start farming. He hung a paraffin lamp by his tent when he stopped for the night. The next thing he knew there were half-a-dozen nig-nogs coming up out of the bush, absolutely stark bollock naked apart from those red cloak things they wear.’

‘It’s called a shuka,’ said Leon.

Beside him, Amelia Cory-Porter’s eyes had widened and she was breathing just a little more heavily as she sensed that the man beside her was readying himself to impose his authority, possibly by force.

‘Yes, well, whatever it’s called, the poor chap was absolutely terrified, real brown-trouser time,’ de Lancey said. ‘Turned out the niggers just wanted to sit by his tent, cocks swinging gently in the breeze, gawping at the light – my chum didn’t know where to look! They’d never seen anything like it, thought it was a star trapped in a bottle.’

Leon realized that he had clenched his napkin in his right fist and recognized the signs of an imminent explosion. Control yourself, he thought. Count to ten. No point making an exhibition of yourself over one blithering idiot.

He consciously relaxed his body, much to Amelia’s disappointment as she felt her own gathering anticipation subside.

‘It’s true that the first sight of a white man and his possessions comes as a surprise,’ Leon said, as dully as possible, hoping to close the subject and move on.

‘Of course it does,’ said de Lancey, who was equally keen to prolong the thrilling sensation of being the centre of everyone’s attention. ‘These people haven’t developed anything that remotely passes for a civilization.’

Leon gave an impatient sigh. Damn! I’m just going to have to put this buffoon in his place.

‘The Masai have no skyscrapers, or aeroplanes, or telephones in their world, that is true. But they know things that we cannot begin to understand.’

‘Go on then, what sort of things?’

‘Even a Masai child can track a stray animal for days across open country,’ Leon said. ‘They’ll spot the faint outline of an elephant’s footprint on a patch of rock-hard earth where you or I would see nothing but dirt and stones, and identify the precise animal to which the print belongs. If the Masai soldiers I once had the privilege to command came across the trail of an invading war-party from another tribe they would at once know the number of men in the party, the length of time since they had passed and the destination to which they were heading. And if you doubt the capacity of the African brain, de Lancey, answer me this: how many languages do you speak?’

‘I’ve always found the King’s English perfectly adequate, thank you, Courtney.’

‘Then you are two behind a great many Africans, who speak three languages as a matter of course: their tribal tongue; the lingua franca spoken by everyone in the nation of which their tribe is part; and the language of their colonial masters. So the particular Masai who calls me M’Bogo grew up speaking Masai. As a young man he joined the King’s African Rifles where the ranks spoke Kiswahili, which he swiftly mastered. In recent years he has become fluent in English. These men are not niggers or coons, as you like to call them. They are a proud, noble, warrior race who have grazed their cattle on these lands since time immemorial, and in their own environment they are every bit our match and more.’

‘Well said,’ said a small man, with a bald pate and a scattering of silver hair, peering across the table through a pair of steel-framed spectacles.

‘Well, I still say that there is a reason why we are their masters and they our servants,’ de Lancey insisted. ‘They’re just a bunch of bone-idle savages and we are their superiors in both mind and body.’

Having dismissed the option of beating de Lancey to a pulp, Leon had been wondering how he could teach him the lesson he so richly deserved, and now a stroke of inspiration came to him. ‘Would you like to put that proposition to the test?’ he asked.

‘Ooh …’ purred Amelia. ‘This is going to be fun!’

‘How so?’ de Lancey asked, and for the first time a note of caution entered his voice as it occurred to him he might just have blundered into a trap.

Leon thought for a moment, working out a way to draw de Lancey in, while still ensuring his ultimate humiliation. ‘I will bet that one Masai from my Lusima estate can outrun any three white men you put up against him.’

‘In a race, do you mean?’

‘In a manner of speaking. What I have in mind is this …’ Leon leaned forward onto the table so that everyone could see and hear him clearly. He wanted this to be public. ‘One week from today, we will all meet up again at the polo field. String a rope around all four sides of one of the fields. The competitors will run around the field, outside that rope. D’you follow?’

‘Yes, I believe so,’ said de Lancey. ‘They all run round the field and if a white man wins the race I win the wager, and if your darkie wins, you do?’

Leon smiled. ‘Actually, that would be too easy for the Masai. They would be insulted by the very idea and say that one of their young boys, or even a woman, could win.’

‘Listen here, old man, you sound like you hate your own race.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. I just think that you’re either a good man or you’re not and skin colour’s got nothing whatever to do with it. The most appalling bully and bounder I ever met was a white man.’ Leon paused for a moment and looked around the table at the disapproving faces. Then he added, ‘Mind you, he was a German.’

The frowns turned to smiles and laughs at that and someone called out, ‘I say, what happened to this horrible Hun?’

‘His chest got in the way of a bullet from a .470 Nitro Express hunting rifle.’

‘Was that what passed for your war service?’ asked de Lancey acidly. ‘Better than nothing I suppose.’

The man in the steel-rimmed glasses cleared his throat. There was a philosophical, almost sad look in his eyes and a wry cast to his mouth, as if he were all too aware of the imperfections of man and the shortness of his life. Yet at once the table fell silent. This was the Right Honourable Hugh Cholmondeley, Third Baron Delamere and the unquestioned leader of Kenya’s white population. He had been among the first British settlers in British East Africa, owned two huge estates and was famed for the fortune he had spent trying to establish cattle, sheep and grain farming on his farmland, while preserving the wildlife in the vast areas of country that he left untouched. There was a cane resting on the back of his chair, for he walked with a limp, the result of being mauled by a lion. Yet there was real strength behind those faraway eyes.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, let’s not have any unpleasantness,’ Delamere said. ‘I can testify to the fact that Courtney here served alongside me throughout the war, chasing that infuriating German rascal von Lettow back and forth across East Africa. It may also interest you to know that Mrs Courtney assisted us as an aircraft navigator and pilot and was, at my particular request, awarded the Military Medal for her courage under fire. The Courtneys did their bit, you have my word on it.’

Leon gave a little nod of gratitude. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Think nothing of it, dear boy. Now, pray finish telling us about your wager. As you know, I rather share your opinion of the Masai.’

That, too, was something known to all the British in Kenya. Delamere even built his homes with the same mud and thatch that the Masai used for their huts. ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘I maintain that our European civilization as a whole is more advanced than the native African. Still, the individual Masai is a fine man and I might even put a guinea or two into the pot, once I know what I’m betting on. Courtney?’

‘Very well then,’ Leon began. The argument about the war had been entirely forgotten and there was a palpable air of growing excitement as he spoke. ‘I propose that the three white men run in a relay against the solitary Masai. One of them will start alongside him, the starter will fire his pistol and they will both set off around the field. The white man keeps running until he either gives up, or the Masai laps him.’

‘Is that really likely to happen, Courtney?’ Josslyn Hay asked. ‘A polo field must be twice the size of a football pitch. It’s a long way round.’

‘Possibly not,’ Leon replied. ‘I just don’t want anyone to get away with walking. This has to be a race that is run.’

‘Fair point. But I take it your rules apply the other way around, as well. That is to say, you lose the wager if the Masai stops first or is lapped.’

‘Of course.’

‘I see, so then what?’

‘Then the second man takes the first one’s place, under the same conditions, then the third. My wager is very simple. I will bet you five thousand pounds de Lancey, that when the last of the three white men either stops or is lapped, the Masai will still be running.’

The blood drained from de Lancey’s face as all eyes were fixed on him. ‘I say Courtney, five thousand’s a bit steep,’ he objected. ‘Rather beyond my means, what?’

‘All right,’ said Leon. He took a thoughtful sip of his claret, trying to suppress a huge grin as inspiration struck him. ‘I suppose you don’t want me taking the shirt off your back, eh?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t, old boy.’

‘But that’s exactly what I’d like to take. Here’s my wager. If I lose I won’t give you five thousand pounds. I’ll give you ten.’

There was a gasp around the table. Idina Hay smiled to herself. Ten thousand pounds, given to her by her mother, had bought her car, Slains and the dresses she took such pride in receiving direct from the couturier Molyneux.

‘And if you lose, de Lancey,’ Leon went on, ‘you will indeed give me the shirt off your back, and every other stitch of clothing that you are wearing, and you won’t get them back until you’ve completed a lap of the polo field.’

‘What … run around the field? In my birthday suit?’ de Lancey gasped, as the other diners each formed their own mental picture of him naked and on the run. Laughter began to spread around the table.

‘As naked as God made you.’

‘He’s got you there, de Lancey,’ said Joss Hay, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Ten thousand pounds against a trot round a field, you can’t say no to that … What was that splendid phrase you came up with? Oh yes, with your cock swinging gently in the breeze. I’ll bet every white woman in Kenya will be there, just to see the view.’

De Lancey could see that his only hope now was to brazen it out. ‘Let me get this straight: you are betting me ten thousand pounds against a run round a field that one African native can beat three British gentlemen?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘I see … oh, one last thing.’ De Lancey paused for a second and then asked, ‘Will your chap run naked too? Isn’t that what the natives do?’

‘I should imagine so,’ Leon replied. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘Worried that the Masai might make you look small, de Lancey?’ one man asked to more peals of laughter.

‘No, of course not. Just thinking of the ladies. Don’t want them getting upset.’

As a number of the female diners glanced at one another with rolled eyes and little shakes of the head, Leon made an offer. ‘I’ll tell you what, I will provide a pair of shorts for my chap to wear, how’s that?’

De Lancey looked around the table, knowing that his name in the Colony depended on what he said next. Like a man jumping into an ice-cold pool he steeled himself, breathed deeply and took the plunge: ‘Then in that case Courtney, you’ve got a bet,’ he said as a cheer went up, more drinks were called for, and the night’s festivities began in earnest.

Leon Courtney emerged from the Great War with a fortune even bigger than Amelia or Idina had imagined. Having once been close to destitution he found himself with the means to buy one of the finest estates in East Africa. He named it Lusima, in honour of Manyoro’s mother, whose skills as a healer, counsellor and mystical seer he had come to cherish deeply. Leon planned to follow the example of Lord Delamere who kept much of his land untouched, for use as a nature reserve, and gave over the rest to agriculture. When it came to setting up a safari business that would attract rich customers from Europe and the Americas, Leon was in his element, but the farming was a different matter. He could not help noticing how many British settlers lost everything they had trying to marry European agricultural techniques with African land, weather and pestilence. He therefore decided to work with the grain of Kenyan life, rather than against it. So he made an agreement with Manyoro, by which he and his extended family could have the freedom of the entire Lusima estate, provided that they also herded and cared for Leon’s cattle alongside their own. Since the Masai measured a man’s worth not in money, but by the number of his cows and of his children, Leon paid his people in their preferred currency. For every ten calves born to Leon’s cows, the Masai kept one for themselves.

This arrangement had a few teething problems. The Masai believed that every cow on earth belonged to them and, as a consequence, felt perfectly entitled to rustle from non-Masai. They also lived off their animals’ blood and milk and so kept their cattle alive for as long as possible, rather than sending them to the slaughterhouse. The concept of keeping another man’s cattle until such time as they were taken away to be sold and killed struck even Manyoro, accustomed as he was to British customs due to his time in the army, as bizarre.

On the other hand, the offer of huge areas of grazing and a guaranteed increase in his and his people’s herds was too good to turn down. As the years had gone by, he had prospered mightily, particularly once he had seen how much money his cattle could fetch and how useful money could be in a world now run by white men. The arrangement had worked perfectly for Leon, too, since his herds did not suffer anything like the same rates of disease as those of his fellow farmers. His Masai herdsmen knew which ground was corrupted by plants that produced poisonous feed or insects that carried disease and so they kept to areas of safe, sweet grass. They guarded their animals and Leon’s against lions and other predators and they lived well on the blood and milk that they took from the animals they were herding, a practice to which Leon turned a blind eye once he realized that it did the cattle no harm whatsoever.

In time Manyoro had handed over the day-to-day running of the estate and its buildings to his kinsman Loikot, whom Leon had watched grow from an impish boy to a young man worthy of his trust and respect. Manyoro now lived in the village where his mother had raised him. It stood atop Lonsonyo Mountain, a mighty tower of rock that rose from the plains by the eastern escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, at one corner of the Lusima estate. Two days after the dinner at Slains, Leon drove out to the mountain. He left the Rolls at its foot, guarded by two of his men (their job was to deter curious animals, rather than larcenous humans, for no man who valued his life would touch M’Bogo’s property and thereby risk Manyoro’s wrath). Then he set off up the footpath that zigzagged back and forth across the steep slope, recalling, as he always did whenever he visited, the first time he had made the journey. He had been half-starved and parched with thirst, his feet bloody and blistered, the skin flayed from his heels, the wounds so severe and the pain so great that he had managed no more than a couple of hundred feet up the climb before he had collapsed and been carried the rest of the way on a mushila, or litter, borne on four men’s shoulders.

That had been twenty years ago, yet the memories of that time and his first encounter with Lusima were as vivid as if mere days, not decades had elapsed. He remembered too the times he had spent with Eva in this, their secret shelter from the outside world, the love they had made and the times they had swum in Sheba’s Pool, a crystalline sanctuary nestled beneath a waterfall that fell from the mountain summit. He smiled as he recalled the sight of her, dashing down the path towards him, heedless of the precipitous drop that fell away beside her, then throwing herself into his arms. He felt himself harden and it was not the climb that made his heart beat faster and his breathing deepen as he thought of her naked body, so lithe and graceful in the water, her legs locked around his waist and her soft warm lips pressed to his.

Oh, Eva, my darling, my love, you were so beautiful then, so delicate, so fragile and yet so fierce and so strong. And then he smiled to himself as he thought, And I’d still rather make love to you than any other woman on earth.

They had both grown older since then, but the mountain itself remained as it had always been. On the lower slopes the path was shaded by the groves of umbrella acacias, whose branches flared upwards and outwards from the trunk, like the spokes of an umbrella, before bursting into a broad, but virtually flat canopy of leaves at their top. But as he climbed higher the air cooled and grew moist, almost like mist, and the plants around him became more lush. Tree orchids bloomed in vivid hues of pink and violet in the branches of tall trees where eagles and hawks made their eyries. Leon watched the birds wheeling in the vastness of the cloudless sky scanning the bush far below them for any signs of prey.

When he reached the top he was greeted by a gaggle of small children, grinning with delight and squealing, ‘M’Bogo! M’Bogo!’ A young woman, whom Leon knew to be one of Manyoro’s new wives, looked at him with unabashed appreciation, for it was the custom among the Masai for a man to share his wives with valued guests, but only if the wife liked the look of the guest in question. She had the final and decisive say in the matter.

When Leon had first known Manyoro he had but one wife, for that was all the army would allow. She had produced three fine sons and two daughters. The Masai were, however, polygamous by tradition and it was an unspoken part of his bargain that Leon allowed them to live as they wished on his land. Having prospered mightily, Manyoro now had four wives to his name and a dozen or more new children, all of whom lived under the command and supervision of his first, senior bride. This had always been a prosperous community, whose inhabitants had been well-fed and housed in finely built huts. When Leon first arrived there, the women were bedecked in splendid ornaments of ivory and trade beads and the cattle were fat and sleek. All that was still true, but now Leon noticed a couple of paraffin lamps and, placed outside the largest and most splendid of all the huts, the incongruous sight of a set of rattan patio chairs arranged around a glass-topped table.

Manyoro was sitting in one of the chairs drinking a bottle of Bass pale ale. He must, Leon realized, be more than fifty now and had put on a good deal of weight over the years, as the visible proof of his power and prosperity. Yet there was no sense of softness about Manyoro and when he stood to greet Leon, the Masai was still the taller of the pair.

‘I see you, Manyoro, my brother,’ Leon said, speaking in Masai.

Manyoro’s face broke into a huge grin. ‘And I see you, M’Bogo, and my heart sings with joy.’

Manyoro lifted a bottle of beer from a metal wastepaper basket filled with ice-cold spring-water and offered it to Leon. He was delighted to accept, for the walk had given him a powerful thirst.

‘You are the only Masai I know who always has a crate of pale ale ready to hand,’ said Leon as he took the cold, wet bottle.

‘More than one crate, I assure you,’ Manyoro replied. ‘It is a habit I learned in the army. They served this beer in the sergeants’ mess.’ He smacked his lips with relish. ‘This is the best thing you British ever brought to Africa. Cheers!’

‘Cheers!’

The two men raised their bottles in mutual salute, and then savoured their drinks in silence for a moment. After a while they began to speak in English about their wives and children, Leon feeling almost embarrassed at having just one of each in this company, though Manyoro was keen to hear news of the son that he felt sure Eva was bearing, and of Saffron’s near-victory in the show jumping.

‘Ah, she has her father’s spirit, that one,’ Manyoro said, approvingly, when he heard how Saffron had responded to being beaten. ‘I have never understood how your people talk of being a “good loser”. How can losing be good? Why would a man take pride in accepting defeat? Miss Saffron is right to feel anger and shame. That way she will not make the mistake of losing a second time. Ah, but you must be proud of her, brother. She will be as beautiful as her mother, when she is grown.’

‘Not quite as beautiful as a Masai maiden, though, eh?’ said Leon, knowing Manyoro’s unshakable faith in the superiority of his tribe’s females to all others.

‘No, that would be impossible,’ Manyoro agreed. ‘But a great beauty among her own people, and with that fighting spirit in her heart … Believe me, M’Bogo, it will take a strong man to win her heart.’

Next they moved on to the latest developments on the Lusima estate. Though he seldom ventured down from his mountaintop, and the estate covered the best part of two hundred square miles, Manyoro still knew everything that happened on it and there was never any need for Leon to discipline any of the herders. In the extremely rare event that one of them did anything wrong, Manyoro would already have dealt with the matter himself before Leon even heard about it.

‘So, Bwana, what brings you here today?’ Manyoro asked, calling Leon ‘Master’ not out of servility, but respect.

‘I come to you with a request, one that I hope you will find of interest,’ Leon said. ‘I dined at Bwana Hay’s house two nights ago, and talked to a man by the name of de Lancey. He was disparaging of the Masai. He said they were lesser men, inferior to his own white tribe.’

‘Then this man is no more than a baboon, and a very stupid baboon at that. He should count himself lucky that I did not hear him say those words.’

‘Indeed he should,’ Leon agreed. ‘I, however, know the truth. So I assured him that my Masai brothers were proud warriors who have ruled this land since time began and I suggested a way in which I could prove their strength.’

Manyoro grinned. ‘Will there be a fight? It has been too long since my assegai tasted blood. It keeps moaning to me, “Give me blood, for I am thirsty!”’

Leon fought back laughter as he adopted a pose of outrage at such rebellious sentiments. ‘Sergeant Manyoro! Have you forgotten the oath you swore to defend my people? Have you become a rebellious Nandi, slithering like a snake upon the dirt?’

Manyoro’s broad shoulders broke into a regretful shrug. ‘You are right, M’Bogo, I have given my word and I will stand by it. But please, never compare me to a Nandi, not even in jest. They are the lowest people on all the earth.’

‘I apologize,’ said Leon, reflecting that it had been a Nandi arrow, stuck in Manyoro’s leg, that had first brought him here to Lusima. ‘But let me assure you that neither you nor any of your people will be called upon to fight anyone. The morani will keep their blades sheathed. All I need is a man who can run.’

Leon began to explain what he had in mind. But Manyoro’s reaction was not what he expected. Far from being amused by the challenge, still less inspired by it, he seemed offended.

‘M’Bogo, forgive me, but I am insulted to the depth of my soul. Why did you only pit three whites against one Masai? It is too easy. Ten would be more of a contest, possibly twenty.’

‘Now you insult my people, Manyoro. We are not all weak or lacking in endurance. I carried you on my back for thirty miles to this very mountain, when you were too badly wounded to walk.’

Manyoro nodded. ‘That is true. But you are not like the others. You have the strength of the buffalo himself. That is why my people consider you our equal.’

‘I am proud to bear that honour,’ Leon replied. ‘That is why I have set this challenge, so that the Masai should receive the respect that they are due.’

‘For one day maybe,’ said Manyoro, and suddenly Leon heard the voice of a proud man whose people were reduced to second-class status in their own land. ‘But that is better than no days at all. Who will de Lancey find to run against my man?’

‘No one that you need fear, but some whom you should respect,’ Leon replied. ‘De Lancey is putting the word out. He’ll round up some pretty tough customers, don’t you worry about that. We’re not all bone-idle idiots from Happy Valley, you know.’

Manyoro thought for a moment then asked, ‘You say you will lose ten thousand pounds if De Lancey’s man wins?’

‘Yes.’

‘So if my man wins he will save you that amount. He will have done all the work. Should he not receive some reward for his efforts?’

Leon inwardly winced. Brother or no brother, Manyoro was always determined to wring the most out of any negotiation. ‘Good point,’ he conceded. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘A man who performs a great feat should have a wife to mark his triumph.’

‘Sadly, I can’t provide one of those.’

‘Then give him the cattle with which he will attract a bride and make her father think, “This is a man who deserves to have my daughter beside him.”’

‘Very well, I will give him a bull and three cows …’ Leon could tell from Manyoro’s face that the offer, which he had thought generous to a fault, had somehow fallen short of the mark. And then it occurred to him and he wondered how he could ever have been so stupid as he said, ‘And a bull and five cows to you too, though heaven knows your herds are already so mighty that you will not notice a few more.’

Manyoro smiled with delight, both at the offer and the fact that Leon had understood that it should be made. ‘Ah, M’Bogo, a Masai always notices a new cow. You, of all men, should know that!’

‘So, can I count on you to bring one of your best men to the polo fields?’

‘You can count on me to bring a man. And you can count on him to win your bet. But whether he will be my best man, that I cannot say. My best might feel that this challenge is too easy. But fear not, M’Bogo, your money is safe … and so are my five cows and my bull besides. Now, come with me. You know there is someone else here who would rage like thunder if you should leave without seeing her.’

‘You know that I would never dream of doing that.’

‘Then come …’

Like an empress on her throne, Lusima Mama was sitting on a chair cut into the stump of what must once have been a towering tree. She rose as she saw Leon, her face wreathed in a loving, maternal smile, for since Leon had saved her son Manyoro’s life he had become a son to her too.

Leon had no knowledge of Lusima’s exact age, but she could not be less than seventy and was probably a good many years older than that. Twenty years ago she had seemed entirely impervious to the passing of time, but not even her wizardry could keep it at bay forever. Her hair was white now, her bare breasts a little saggier and less full than they had once been and her tattooed belly was just a fraction softer, the skin like crepe paper. But she held herself as tall and straight as ever, her walk still possessed a feline grace, and though there were lines around her dark eyes, their gaze could still look right through Leon, into the very depths of his soul.

A sense of great peace and security came over him, as it always did when he met Lusima. Being with her felt like stepping into a sanctuary, a place where he was always safe and cared for and he returned her smile with a warm and open heart. He held out his arms to hug her.

And then he saw something flicker in Lusima’s eye and she halted in her approach towards him. Everything about her posture and expression tightened, as if she were suddenly aware of danger: as if the devil had crossed her path and something evil was prowling through the trees, waiting to attack.

‘What is it?’ asked Leon, alarmed by the change that had come over Lusima and conscious that it had happened while her eyes were focused on him.

‘It … it is nothing, child.’ Lusima forced a wan smile. ‘Here, come and let me hold you.’

Leon held back. ‘Something happened. You saw something. I know you did.’ He paused, summoning up his courage as if he were still a boy, rather than a grown man at the height of his powers. ‘You have never been false with me, Lusima Mama. Never. But I fear you are being false with me now.’

Lusima dropped her hands to her side, her shoulders sagged and when she looked at him again the years seemed suddenly written upon her face. ‘Oh my child,’ she said softly, gently shaking her head. ‘You will be sorely tested. You will know pain such as you have never endured before. There will be times when you will not believe that you can survive it, times when you will pray for the release of death. But you must believe me …’ She reached out, took Leon’s hands and looked at him with feverish, imploring eyes, ‘You will find peace and happiness and joy one day.’

‘But I have those things already!’ Leon cried. ‘Are you telling me that they will be taken from me? How? Tell me, for God’s sake … what is going to happen?’

‘I cannot tell you. It is not in my power. My visions come to me in riddles and half-formed images. I see a storm coming for you. I see a dagger in your heart. But you will survive, I promise you that.’

‘But Eva … and Saffron … and the baby. What about them?’

‘Truly, I do not know. I see blood. I feel a great emptiness in you. I wish I did not. I wish I could have lied to you. But I cannot deceive you M’Bogo, and I cannot deny it. I see blood.’

Leon spent the next few days with his stomach in knots and a permanent sense of suppressed anxiety dragging on his mind like a dog on a lead as he tried his best not to dwell on Lusima’s intimations of disaster. He did not doubt that she was absolutely serious nor that there was truth in her words, for she had been right too often in the past for him to doubt her powers now. Yet experience had also taught him that there was nothing he could do to alter what fate had in store. So there was no point fretting over matters that he could not control. Even so, when Eva reported feeling dizzy he insisted on driving her to see Doc Thompson.

Before the war, Dr Hector Thompson (to give him his proper title) and his wife had provided the expatriate community’s medical care virtually single-handed. Since then, however, a European Hospital had been set up to care for the white community and the Thompsons had moved into semi-retirement, running a small general practice up-country. The Doc, a genial, reassuring Scotsman with a full head of white hair and a neatly clipped beard to match, took Eva’s blood pressure and murmured, ‘Hmm, one-thirty-five over eighty-five, a little on the high side. Tell me, my dear, have you had any other symptoms apart from dizziness? Headaches, for example, or blurred vision?’

‘No,’ Eva replied.

‘Not felt sick or vomited?’

‘Not since the morning sickness passed, but that was a couple of months ago.’

The doctor thought for a moment. ‘You have had trouble in the past carrying a baby to term and we don’t want to lose this one. On the other hand, we live at a much higher altitude than our British bodies were designed for and in a tropical climate, so there are all sorts of reasons why you might feel off-colour. I advise plenty of rest and no great exertions of any kind. I’ll also give you some aspirin. Take two if you feel either a headache or nausea and if symptoms persist for more than an hour or two, get in touch. Don’t worry about calling me out in the middle of the night. That’s what I’m here for.’

The wager with de Lancey that Leon had thought so important now seemed entirely irrelevant. ‘I’m going to call him to say that the whole thing’s off,’ he told Eva when they got home from their visit to Doc Thompson. ‘If he makes me forfeit the money, so be it. What matters is staying here with you and making sure you’re all right.’

‘But I am all right,’ she insisted. ‘I felt a little dizzy, that’s all, and you heard what Doctor Thompson said, it was probably just a spot of altitude sickness. I want you to win your wager. And I want to be there to see you win.’

‘Absolutely not!’ Leon insisted. ‘You’re not supposed to have any great exertions, those were the doc’s own words.’

She laughed, ‘Being a passenger on the drive down to the polo club is hardly an exertion, and nor is sitting in a comfortable chair in the shade when I get there. In any case, where do you think the Thompsons will be on the great day? Watching the race, just the same as everyone else for miles around. So if I do happen to feel a bit poorly, that will be the best place to be. Won’t it?’

Leon could not dispute his wife’s logic. And so, on the seventh morning after the dinner at Slains, he, Eva and Saffron, who was bouncing up and down with excitement at the thought of the event, set off before dawn and drove through the cool morning mist to the Wanjohi Valley Polo Club. Loikot came behind them, driving one of the estate’s trucks, filled with everything the family would need to get them through the day and as many of the domestic and estate staff who could cram into the cabin and cargo area, or simply cling on to the outside of the vehicle.

The whole country seemed on the move. Farms and businesses stood deserted by their managers and workers alike. Shops and restaurants had put ‘Closed’ signs in their windows. Many of the chefs and shopkeepers, however, had simply shifted their operations to the polo club where an impromptu market had mushroomed, with stalls selling parasols, folding chairs and bottles of pop, alongside pits where fires were being stoked as whole sheep and great sides of beef were rotating on spits, while chops and sausages sizzled on griddles.

It was not just the colonists who had come to witness the spectacle. Once word had reached the native Kenyan population that one of their number was taking on their white masters, tribal antagonisms had been set aside, for the time being at least, and half the country seemed to be on the move – men and women of the Masai, Kikuyu, Luhya and Meru peoples – coming by foot, ox-cart, bus, or any other means they could find to join the carnival.

The settlers were all arrayed along one side of the polo field around which the race would be held, in front of the clubhouse, with native Kenyans massed opposite them on the far side. The actual field itself had been kept empty, so that the competitors could be seen at all times, to prevent any possibility of cheating. The team principals would remain in the centre of the field, with those of the white runners who were still awaiting their turn to compete. Major Brett was serving as umpire while a dozen African police constables, arrayed around the course and supervised by a single white sergeant, would have the dual tasks of reporting any breaches of fair play, and also keeping the crowd in order.

‘I’ll be frank, Courtney, I’m not entirely happy about this whole palaver that your damned wager has sparked,’ Major Brett told Leon soon after he, Eva and Saffron had arrived at the club.

‘I had no idea there would be quite such a turnout,’ Leon replied.

‘Well, that’s as may be. I’m a fair man, have to be in my position, so I accept that you could not reasonably have anticipated this level of public interest in a private wager between two gentlemen at dinner.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Nevertheless, I foresee the potential for considerable unrest when the native is defeated. John Masai’s an excitable chap when his spirits are inflamed, particularly if he’s got his hands on alcohol. I banned sales to the native population, of course, but I don’t doubt they’ll find a way to have a drink or two. And if they think that we have in any way conspired to make their chap lose, well, I just hope you don’t have anything serious on your conscience when the day is out, that’s all I can say.’

For a second, Leon suddenly wondered whether the blood Lusima had been talking about might be that of the spectators. He was shocked to realize that he felt relieved at that possibility. It seemed almost like a reprieve for his family.

Major Brett interpreted Leon’s silence as a refusal to accept any responsibility.

‘For God’s sake, man, you can’t possibly believe that three Englishmen can’t beat a single native, can you?’

The question dragged Leon’s mind back to the here and now. ‘I would hardly have staked ten thousand pounds, Major, if I didn’t think the Masai would win.’

Brett shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Don’t have much time for de Lancey. He strikes me as a bit of a bounder, not pukka at all. But he’s got a point when he says you love the black man more than your own race. Wouldn’t put it quite that strongly myself. But he’s got a point.’

The major took out his pipe and started stuffing it with tobacco, tamped it down, put a match to the bowl and started puffing away, encouraging the tobacco to burn. Leon was looking around, trying to spot Manyoro, but it was his competitors who appeared first.

‘Speak of the devil,’ said Brett, looking past Leon. ‘De Lancey’s arrived. Got his team with him too, by the look of it.’

Leon turned and, sure enough, there was de Lancey, already red-faced and sweaty though the sun had barely begun to burn away the cloud that tended to hang over the valley in the early part of the day. Behind him were three men arrayed in various combinations of tennis shoes, boots, shorts, vests, shirts, scarves and cricket jumpers. A couple had actual running spikes hanging from laces tied around their necks. One wore a jumper with dark blue stripes around the V-neck and the waist and the letters ‘OUAC’ surmounted by a laurel crown on the chest. The other had an almost identical jumper, save that the stripes were a pale sky-blue and the letters on his chest read ‘CUAC’. Leon was familiar with the traditional rivalry between Dark Blues and Light Blues: these two were Oxford and Cambridge men, and that being the case, the letters ‘UAC’ would surely stand for ‘University Athletics Club’.

You never know, they might just be long jumpers or javelin throwers, he thought, cheering himself up as de Lancey stuck out a moist palm and gave Leon one of the softest handshakes he’d ever experienced. ‘Morning, Courtney, hope you’ve brought the lolly,’ de Lancey said. ‘I’ve recruited as good a team as you’ll find south of Suez. Would you care to be introduced?’

‘By all means,’ said Leon.

‘Right-ho! Well, first I’d like you to meet Jonty Sopwith, though everyone calls him “Camel”, you know, after the fighter plane.’

Leon nodded. ‘Yes, even we Africans are aware of the Sopwith Camel. Good to meet you, Sopwith.’

He exchanged handshakes, a much firmer one this time. Sopwith was pale-skinned, ginger-haired and blue-eyed. He was tall and rangy, with long legs and a barrel chest, suggesting that he had a good stride, with the heart and lungs to power it. He looked as though he was in his early to mid twenties, just young enough to have missed the war, but in the prime years for an athlete. ‘You’re an Oxford man, I see.’

‘Yes, sir. Ran in the Varsity team all three years I was there.’

‘What was your event?’

‘I’m a pretty decent half-miler, turned out a few times at the three-A’s, got to the final twice, actually.’

So you’re good enough to reach an Amateur Athletics Association final, competing to be British champion. No wonder de Lancey looks so cocky, Leon thought.

‘And this is Dr Hugo Birchinall,’ said de Lancey proudly as the man in the Light Blue jumper held out his hand. ‘Birchinall works at the European Hospital – his specialty was the sprint back at Cambridge.’

‘Good morning, doctor,’ Leon said, sizing Birchinall up. As befitted a specialist in the longest of the sprints, Birchinall was slightly shorter than Sopwith, but more powerfully built, heavier in the hips and the shoulders. He had short dark hair, and a swarthy complexion so that he seemed an altogether more brooding, almost menacing figure than his more boyish teammate.

A smirk crossed de Lancey’s face, as if to suggest that while he had begun his introductions with two renowned athletes, he had left the very best till last. ‘Now for the final member of our team. I confess, he is not an Englishman, but he is white, and very proudly so, which was, I think you will agree, the essential element in our wager. So, Courtney, may I present a gentleman who has recently arrived in Kenya in search of opportunities as a farmer, Mister – or should I say Mijnheer – Hennie van Doorn. He’s like you, old boy, a bit of a native African.’

Van Doorn did not shake Leon’s hand. ‘You any relative of that bastard Sean Courtney?’ he said, in his guttural Afrikaaner accent.

‘Distant cousin, why?’

‘Because I lost most of my family in the war against the British, that’s why.’

Leon knew he meant the Boer War, rather than the more recent conflict.

‘My father died fighting men like General Courtney,’ van Doorn went on. ‘My mother and my baby brother perished in the Bloemfontein concentration camp. Now I do not have any family left. Not even distant cousins.’

‘I’m truly sorry that your family suffered so badly,’ Leon said. ‘But I was born in Egypt. My father made his money trading up and down the Nile, and when he went to war, it was against the Mahdi at Khartoum. We had no part in what happened in South Africa.’

‘You have a big estate here, jah?’

‘Yes.’

‘We had ’n klein plaas, a small farm. It was on the Highveld, sixteen hundred metres up, not much lower than it is here, eh. Every day I would walk to school, six kilometres there, six kilometres back. Every day. But most of the time I did not walk, because if I walked I had to start before the sun was up and I did not like walking across the veldt in the dark, with all the wild animals out there, just waiting to have little Hennie for their breakfast. So I stayed in bed until the sun came up. But now I have a problem, for if I am late for school my teacher shall beat me and when I get home my father shall beat me even harder. So therefore I must run to school. Every day. Six kilometres there and six kilometres back. At sixteen hundred metres’ altitude. So maybe this kaffir of yours can beat these rooinek Englishmen. But trust me, Courtney, he cannot beat me.’

Leon could not deny that de Lancey had rustled up a strong trio to win him his ten thousand pounds. But where were Manyoro and the man he was bringing to be de Lancey’s opponent?

Leon looked around, scanning the crowd for the two tall, imperious Masai he expected to see striding towards him. Then he heard a voice shouting across the polo field, ‘M’Bogo!’ Leon turned and spotted Manyoro, emerging from the natives’ side of the ground. As was his custom when venturing into the white man’s world he had pinned the regimental badge of the King’s African Rifles to his red ochre shuka. The badge was polished as brightly as if Company Sergeant Manyoro were stepping out onto the parade ground and beneath it were arrayed his many medals for bravery, campaigns against the enemy and long service. The message was very clear: I have served the British Empire with honour and distinction and I deserve respect.

Leon was about to call out his own greeting, but then he paused, dumbstruck. For Manyoro was not accompanied by a proud morani warrior who had earned his right to be considered as a true Masai man by killing a lion with nothing but his assegai to defend him. Instead there was a diminutive figure who could barely be twenty, if that. He was far shorter than any normal Masai, the shiny top of his shaven head barely reaching Manyoro’s shoulder. And while the Masai tended to be both taller and much more slender than typical Europeans, this profoundly unimpressive specimen was not so much slender as scrawny, a fact made all the more apparent by the absurdly over-sized pair of British army shorts, presumably loaned to him by Manyoro, that were tied around his waist with string and hung down to halfway down his twig-like calves. This unlikely garment billowed around him as he walked so that he looked like a small child who’d dressed up in a pair of granny’s old bloomers.

‘I see you, Manyoro,’ Leon replied, and did not bother to hide the irritation in his voice as he said, in English, ‘You promised me a good man.’

Manyoro looked back at him and flatly said, ‘No, I did not promise, brother. You demanded. And I told you that my best men would think this challenge beneath them. And so I have given you a runner and Bwana de Lancey can decide if he wants to race against him or not.’

‘He’s hardly going to say no to that, is he?’ said Leon, pointedly.

‘Shall I take him away, then? You can forfeit the wager if you wish.’

Leon forced himself to take his time and calmed down before he or Manyoro talked each other into a corner from which they could not extricate themselves.

‘Very well, then, you had better introduce us.’

Manyoro switched to Masai as he said, ‘M’Bogo, this is Simel. He is the son of one of my sisters. Simel, pay your respects to my brother M’Bogo. When you run for him, you run for me too, and for all our people. Do not let us down.’

‘I see you, Simel,’ Leon said.

‘I see you, M’Bogo, and I promise you I will run like a wind over the grass that blows all day without ceasing.’

Aye, you might at that, thought Leon. For when he looked more closely he saw the lad had a flat, well-muscled stomach hidden behind the absurdly bunched-up waistband of his shorts. And he certainly seemed healthy. He stood as straight-backed as a guardsman and his eyes were bright with life and youthful optimism. Ah well, nothing for it now. Better introduce him to the opposition.

Leon walked Simel over to the part of the polo field where de Lancey had set up his camp. A large tent had been erected, within which stood a couple of camp beds on which his runners could rest before their exertions, or recover after them. There were deckchairs for de Lancey and his cronies – a thoroughly rum crowd of chancers and remittance men, so far as Leon could see – and the women they had brought with them. A steady stream of porters had brought crates of champagne and Tusker, Kenya’s first brand of locally brewed beer. A campfire stood ready to provide sustenance to his opponent’s entire party. A large iron kettle was coming to the boil and the smell of sausages sizzling on the grill, the whole set-up under the control of a couple of totos, suggested a late but hearty breakfast was being prepared.

A female face that Leon half-recognized caught his eye. It took him a second to place, but then he realized it belonged to Amelia Cory-Porter, his dinner companion a week earlier. He waved politely at her and she very pointedly did not wave back. Leon grinned to himself: Hell hath no fury, eh? Fair enough, I showed her no interest, so now she’s pitching her tent in de Lancey’s camp. At least she’ll be well fed.

‘Here’s my man,’ said Leon once he had found de Lancey. He could practically see the cogs working in the other man’s mind as he tried to decide whether this was some kind of set-up. Simel was grinning at de Lancey in an amiable, unthreatening fashion. He was so diminutive that his three competitors, who were now emerging from various corners of the camp to discover what they were up against, looked like champion middleweight boxers up against an untrained flyweight.

De Lancey gave Simel one last once-over, saw no threat and said, ‘Very well, then. You’re on.’

Jonty Sopwith had been running long enough to know that good athletes came in all shapes and sizes. This little Masai had the look of a distance runner about him. He’d said as much to Hugo Birchinall who’d agreed. ‘Looks like a classic Nilotic ectomorph to me. That means thin, Camel,’ he added, knowing that Sopwith had studied Land Economy and was unlikely to be familiar with physiological terminology. ‘Their light body-mass sheds heat more quickly than a more burly chap like me. Also helps them run long distances because they don’t overheat, the way we do, like a car engine boiling over.’

‘Then we’d better get this done as quickly as possible,’ Sopwith said. ‘I’m going to take it out hard. Then he has to decide whether to match me or not. If he doesn’t he’ll fall way behind. If he does go with me, I reckon I can run the strength out of him, same way I did to Bobby Snelling in the ’21 Varsity match, do you remember?’

‘I certainly do. Dear old Snellers hung on to your coat tails right up to the final bend, then you kicked again and he practically collapsed on the spot. Poor chap just didn’t have another ounce of energy left in him.’

‘Exactly. Now, I reckon I’m good for a pretty sharp mile, at the very least. So I’m going to give it absolutely everything and hand over to you when I feel myself start to weaken.’

‘And then I’ll come on and pick him off. Good work, Camel. That’s a damned sound plan.’

‘So let’s do the job ourselves, eh? Can’t let it be said that two good Varsity men needed help from the hoi polloi.’

‘No, we certainly can’t.’

The tall, fair-skinned figure of Jonty Sopwith stood on the starting line beside the diminutive Simel. The two men shook hands and Sopwith said, ‘Good luck, old man,’ because it was the done thing to treat one’s opponents with good manners and respect even if you then intended to grind them into the red African earth.

The starter fired his pistol and the two men set off to the sound of great roars of encouragement from the native Kenyans along one side of the polo field and the settlers on the other. As promised, Jonty Sopwith began at a punishing pace. In his introduction to Leon Courtney, he had understated his achievements, for he had a very good chance of making the British team for the Paris Olympics, two years earlier, until a badly twisted knee rendered him unable to compete. Sopwith therefore had every reason to believe that he could beat Simel, and get the job done pretty quickly too.

For a few seconds, Simel tried to keep up with the man whose hair was the colour of flame-tree flowers. But then he remembered the words that Manyoro had told him, just as they were walking to the start. ‘Do not try to race any of them. Just run. And keep running. Think to yourself, “I am running back to Lonsonyo Mountain to see Lusima Mama and so I must run all day.” But do not let the white men make you run any more quickly or slowly than you want to go. You must be a wildebeest, not a cheetah. Just run.’

Now Simel understood the point of Manyoro’s words. This man who had introduced himself so politely was trying to tempt him into running fast, like a cheetah. But a cheetah could not run for long at top speed. If it did not catch its prey within a few seconds it stopped, gathered its strength and then tried again, some while later. The wildebeest, on the other hand, kept moving, running all day with its brothers and sisters, from one horizon to the other.

Now I will be the wildebeest, Simel thought, and he slowed from the near-sprint in which he had started and settled into an apparently effortless, loping stride, his feet springing as lightly as an antelope’s hooves from one step to the next and his hands held up high by his chest.

Within a matter of seconds a gap of five yards had opened up between the two runners. It grew wider, to ten, then twenty yards. The cheering in the white stands rose in volume. In de Lancey’s camp the hangers-on were all slapping him on the back, while the women shrieked encouragement to Jonty Sopwith.

This man’s even better than he said he was, Leon thought to himself. Sopwith’s stride was much longer and more powerful than Simel’s, like a stallion on the gallops.

Hugo Birchinall was already warming up. They’re going for the quick kill: the middle-distance man breaks him then the sprinter runs him down. Good tactics. They might just work.

Leon looked at Manyoro. He was watching Simel intently, giving away no trace of emotion.

‘You see what he’s doing?’ said Leon, looking towards Sopwith, who had opened up a gap of the best part of fifty yards.

‘Of course.’

‘And will it work?’

Manyoro looked at the two runners out on the course then glanced across to Birchinall. ‘He certainly thinks so. He is singing his victory song before the lion has been killed.’

‘That’s never a wise thing to do.’

‘No, M’Bogo, it is not.’

Jonty Sopwith came round the final bend of the polo field and headed towards the finishing line at the end of the first lap, with the main mass of the settlers clustered in front of the clubhouse just ahead of him to his right. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the distant figure of Simel, barely passing the corner, half the length of the polo field behind him, falling further back with every stride.

‘Right, Sonny Jim, let’s see how you like this,’ Sopwith muttered. And then he kicked again, an athlete of Olympian quality revelling in his God-given ability.

Simel felt a shot of alarm when he saw this opponent speed up again. He did not seem to be tiring like a cheetah. On the contrary, he was gaining in strength. He heard a deep sigh, almost a groan, coming from his people on their side of the field which was quickly swallowed up by the shouts and cheers of all the white bwanas and their women.

Fighting the urge to try and keep pace, Simel told himself that all was not yet lost. He still felt as fresh as he had when the race had begun, and although the gap between him and the man in front was widening, still it was not even half the full distance around the field. As he ran past the whites a few of them shouted insults at him. The words meant nothing to him, for he did not speak English. But he did not have to. The looks on their faces, the waving of their fists and the way the men shouted and the women screamed at him bore an unmistakable stamp of hostility, even hatred.

Then a thought struck Simel. These people fear me. They are scared that I might be as good as them, or even better.

Though he showed no expression in his face, in his heart Simel smiled. For he knew that the white men were right to be afraid. All his life he had been ashamed of being so small, but now he had a chance to prove that he could do as much for his people as any man among them.

I am a Masai. Now I must show these people what that means.

In the clubhouse Saffron was jumping up and down with excitement and attracting pursed-lipped looks of disapproval from the women all around her as her high, piping voice shouted out encouragement to the Masai runner. She had a problem, however. It was very hard to see the race. There were too many grown-ups in the way.

Saffy had been told to stay with her mother and was positioned beside the chair in which Eva was sitting as calmly as she could so as to expend the minimum possible energy. As determined as she was not to let Leon treat her like an invalid or be made to stay at home, Eva could hardly disobey a doctor’s orders, even if her natural inclination was to leap to her feet and shout just as excitedly as her daughter for the little man who had been given the role of acting as her husband’s champion.

As the runners disappeared off towards the far end of the field, Saffron turned to Eva and begged her, ‘Please Mummy, may I go and stand by Daddy in the middle of the field?’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea, my darling,’ said Eva, reaching out to take Saffron’s hand. ‘I don’t want you getting lost or trampled in the crowd. And I’m not sure Daddy really wants to have to worry about you when he’s trying to concentrate on the race.’

‘Oh, I can get through all those people!’ Saffron insisted, looking dismissively at the human barrier created by the grown-ups all around her. ‘And I promise I’ll be as good as gold with Daddy. I won’t be naughty at all.’ She fixed her huge blue eyes on her mother, almost daring her not to be charmed and repeated, ‘Please Mummy … please!’

Eva smiled. I pity any poor man who tries to resist those eyes, she thought, suddenly seeing an image of exactly how Saffron would look when she was grown into womanhood. I certainly can’t.

‘Do you absolutely promise me that you’ll go carefully?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Mummy,’ Saffron nodded with a look of the utmost sincerity.

‘And do you promise to be good and not to cause Daddy any trouble?’

‘Yes, Mummy.’

‘Very well then, you can go.’

‘Thank you, thank you!’ Saffron squealed, smothering her mother in kisses. ‘You are the kindest, nicest, sweetest mummy in the whole wide world!’

‘Oh, and one last thing …’

Saffron paused in mid-stride and turned back to Eva: ‘Yes?’

‘Tell Daddy not to worry about me. He needs to concentrate on his race. So tell him I’ve got a very comfortable chair and plenty of staff to look after me if I need anything. I will be quite all right. Can you remember all that?’

‘Daddy’s not to worry because you’ve got a comfy chair and everything’s all right.’

‘Very good. Now, be gone with you!’

Eva watched as her little girl disappeared into the crowd, fearlessly darting between the adults around her. Then she gave a sharp little sigh, closed her eyes and dropped her head for a moment as a sudden sharp stab of pain struck her, like a dart thrown at her forehead, hitting right above her eyes.

It’s just a little headache, she told herself as it was followed by a slight sensation of nausea. A migraine, probably. Nothing to worry about.

She thought for a second about sending one of the club’s staff to take a message to Leon and then immediately rejected the idea. No, I mustn’t bother him. He has other, much more important things on his mind.

Saffron sneaked under the rope and dashed across the track and onto the polo field before anyone could stop her. She paused for a second and looked around. It was only a week since she and Kippy had been jumping on this very same field, but it seemed like years ago. Everything looked so different now. There was a crowd of people clustered round a large tent, and she scanned them all in case she could see her father. Then she saw him a way off to one side, talking to Manyoro, and she realized she’d been looking at the enemy camp and scampered off in the right direction.

‘I see you, little princess,’ said Manyoro as he spotted Saffron running towards him. She stopped in her tracks, two or three paces away from him and, with the utmost seriousness replied, in Masai, ‘I see you, Uncle Manyoro.’

The tall, stately African’s face broke into a broad, affectionate smile, for he considered this little white girl just as much of a niece as any of his Masai brothers’ and sisters’ offspring.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ Saffron said, turning to her father.

‘Saffy!’ Leon exclaimed. He picked her up and swung her into the air, laughing as she squealed with excitement. He hugged her to his body, planting a kiss on the top of her head and then put her down on the ground.

‘So, what brings you here, eh?’ he asked.

‘Mummy said I could,’ said Saffron, wanting to establish that she had permission. ‘I couldn’t see the race from the clubhouse because of all the people in the way. But I promised Mummy I’ll be very, very good and won’t cause any trouble at all.’

‘Hmm … I doubt that somehow. So, tell me, how is Mummy feeling?’

Saffron dutifully repeated Eva’s message, virtually word for word.

‘Good,’ said Leon, putting his daughter down. ‘I’m very pleased that Mummy is so well set. And very well done to you for remembering everything.’

Saffron beamed with pleasure at her father’s praise. ‘What’s your runner called, Daddy?’ she asked, once her feet were back on terra firma.

‘Simel.’

‘He’s very small.’

Leon gave a rueful chuckle. ‘Yes, that’s what I thought, too, when I first saw him. But I think he’s putting up a pretty good show.’

Saffron looked at the two runners who were now separated by slightly more than the length of the back straight. Sopwith had completed his second lap while she had been negotiating with her mother and making her way to where her father was standing, and was now halfway around the third. He no longer appeared to be running ahead of Simel so much as chasing him from behind.

‘Is that man going to catch up with Simel?’ Saffron asked.

‘I hope not, my darling. But if he doesn’t then Mr Birchinall – he’s the chap over there doing stretches and looking terribly keen – is going to take over.’

‘Oh,’ said Saffron, thoughtfully. ‘That doesn’t sound very fair.’

‘Well, those are the rules I created.’

‘Well I think those rules are beastly to Simel. I’m going to go and cheer him up.’

Saffron raced off to the far corner of the field and waited for Simel to run past. When he was a few paces away from her she cried out, ‘Come on Simel! Come on Simel!’ and then dashed along beside him. Saffron could only keep up with him for a handful of strides, but the sight and sound of her encouraging their man brought heart to his supporters and they raised their voices again to urge him on.

Manyoro, however, had his eyes elsewhere. ‘Look at Bwana Sopwith, brother. His stride has shortened and his pace has slowed.’

‘By God you’re right,’ Leon agreed. He had brought a pair of field glasses with him and he trained them now on Sopwith, who would shortly cross the line for the third time. ‘He’s gasping for breath. It’s the altitude, probably, he’s just not used to it.’

‘But Simel keeps running,’ said Manyoro. ‘Soon the gap will start to open up again.’

Birchinall had now taken up his position on the track at the end of the clubhouse straight, urging his teammate on. Sopwith made one final effort, summoning every last ounce of strength as he ran to where Birchinall was standing with his hand held out behind him, as if waiting for a baton. Sopwith reached out, slapped the hand and then fell to his hands and knees on the grass, his head slumped down and his chest heaving.

Now it was Birchinall’s turn and he was a very different kind of athlete. He ran like a true sprinter, arms pumping, back straight, knees up high and suddenly the gap between him and Simel up ahead seemed to be narrowing again, and even more quickly this time. The spectators on the colonists’ side of the field roared for their man. They flooded forwards towards the rope that marked the track and the few police constables detailed to cover that side of the course – for no one had even considered the possibility that the white crowd might give way to disorder – found themselves trying to hold back a tide of shouting, fist-pumping farmers and businessmen.

Within the length of the back straight, right in front of Simel’s own supporters, Birchinall had taken another fifty yards out of the gap. By the time he had run across the width of the polo field and turned the corner into the clubhouse straight, Simel was only just passing the finishing line.

The little Masai was starting to worry, darting nervous glances over his shoulder, but still he did not increase his pace.

‘For God’s sake, run harder, man!’ Leon shouted, though he knew that Simel could not possibly hear him over the noise of the crowds.

Manyoro shook his head. ‘No, he must hold his nerve. That is his only hope.’

‘Tell that to de Lancey. He thinks he’s in the money.’

Sure enough, the opposition camp was already celebrating. A crate of champagne had been dragged from within the tent and the totos were busy opening bottles and pouring glasses. The victory toasts were just about to be poured.

Simel rounded the turn at the end of the clubhouse straight, his eyes wide with the fear of defeat, but sticking to the instructions Manyoro had given him, for he was even more scared of disobeying his chief than of losing the race.

Birchinall was coming up hard, still gaining, still maintaining his pace though he was far beyond the limits of his usual racing distance. His face bore an expression of savage fury, the look of a man who is fighting past the point of exhaustion, ignoring the screaming pain of his muscles, the bursting of his heart and the desperate craving of his lungs for air.

He was going to win if it killed him. He knew it. The crowd knew it. Simel knew it.

The distance between them closed. Twenty yards … fifteen … ten …

Simel could hear the Englishman’s feet pounding towards him and the rasping of his breath, like a wild animal at his heels.

He could not help himself. He broke into a sprint.

Birchinall increased his pace still further, pushing himself far beyond his normal limits, further than he’d gone in any race he’d ever run in his life.

Still he kept coming.

Simel closed his eyes, barely even conscious that he was still running, steeling himself for the moment when Birchinall would overtake him.

And then he heard a sudden scream of pain. He opened his eyes, glanced around again, and there was Hugo Birchinall on the ground, writhing in agony, clutching the back of his right thigh, desperately rubbing at the hamstring that had given way under the intolerable stress of the race and snapped.

Simel slowed to little more than a walk. He looked back again, not knowing what to do. Another human being was injured and in pain. Surely it was right to care for him. Should he go back, or keep running?

Confused by what had happened and breathless from the additional exertion required to keep himself that fateful hair’s breadth ahead of Birchinall, Simel was unaware of the shouts and gestures of both Leon and Manyoro who were now running towards the corner of the polo field where the injury had occurred, hotly pursued by Saffron and behind her both de Lancey and Jonty Sopwith. The Masai was barely moving now and de Lancey was yelling, ‘Umpire! Umpire! He’s stopped!’ But his voice was entirely lost in the pandemonium that had broken out among both sets of supporters.

Then Birchinall displayed the depths of his courage and fighting spirit. Grimacing in agony at the effort, he hauled himself to his feet and set off after Simel once again, hobbling and hopping on his one good leg. The sight of such a mighty runner reduced to this desperate parody of his former self was enough to reduce many of the women gathered under the clubhouse veranda to tears, and not a few of the men around them dabbed discreetly at their eyes or suddenly found the need to blow their noses.

Simel, however, had an entirely different reaction. He knew that a wounded animal could be the most dangerous of all, so when he saw Birchinall coming towards him again, no matter how slowly or awkwardly, his sympathy vanished. He had a chance now to open his lead up again, and he was not going to waste it.

He did not even see Birchinall finally accepting that he was beaten and his place being taken by van Doorn. In the time it took the South African to reach the point on the track where Birchinall had finally collapsed, Simel was able to open up the gap by a couple of hundred metres.

Barely ten minutes had passed and he was two-thirds of the way to proving that even the smallest Masai was more than a match for any white man.

In her chair on the clubhouse veranda, Eva slipped into a light sleep that gave her a brief respite from the worsening headaches and nausea she had been experiencing. But her dreams were troubled, incoherent and suffused with a sense of threat so menacing that they woke her.

Now her head felt like it was splitting in two. Mustn’t trouble Leon, she thought to herself, feeling slightly dizzy, as if she’d had too much to drink, though she’d not touched anything stronger than a cup of tea with lemon all day. A couple of aspirin should make me feel better.

Eva smiled weakly at a passing waitress. ‘Do you think you could possibly get me a glass of soda water, please?’

‘Of course, Madam,’ the waitress replied.

‘Thank you so much,’ Eva replied, and slumped, exhausted, back into her chair.

Hennie van Doorn possessed the bitter, unyielding toughness of a man born to pioneering Afrikaaner stock. For generations his family had struggled to take, hold and cultivate their land on the high veldt. They fought the land itself, the elements around them and the other peoples who coveted that territory for themselves, be they Zulus who considered it theirs to begin with, or British fired by an insatiable greed for more land and a greater Empire. They prayed to a God who was as hard and unforgiving as they were themselves, a God who taught them to hold grudges, seek retribution and left the turning of other cheeks to weaker, more gullible folk than them.

Simel could feel the menace emanating from this very different breed of white man, as it did from a growling lion or an angry snake. This was not a man whose limbs would betray him as Birchinall’s had done. Everything about him told the world that Hennie van Doorn was going to win. No other outcome was possible. Every time Simel looked back, van Doorn was just a little bit closer to him.

The sun was rising now and the growing heat was making more and more people seek out shade wherever they could, be that within the clubhouse, in the shade of a tree or beneath an umbrella or parasol. But still the runners kept going. For Leon, the very fact that van Doorn was drawing out the kill over such a long period made it all the more horribly fascinating. It was like watching a spider taking hours to weave its web, knowing that the insects that were its prey would inevitably be caught and die when the task was complete. And Simel was finally starting to weaken.

Leon and Manyoro were now playing a much more active part in the race. Every time Simel passed their position, they marched to the side of the track, shadowed by Saffron trotting along beside them, and while the little girl cheered her hero on and Leon clapped and called out his encouragement, Manyoro provided instructions in Masai, urging Simel on and advising him how best to conserve his strength. At first, Leon understood everything that Manyoro said, for he had himself been fluent in Masai for more than twenty years. But then a time came when Manyoro’s words sounded foreign to him. He had slipped into some kind of slang or dialect that even Leon could not follow.

‘What were you saying to him, just then?’ Leon asked.

The big man shrugged his shoulders. ‘It was nothing, M’Bogo.’

Leon was about to pursue the matter, but suddenly he noticed that Simel’s metronomic stride had started to shorten. With his hunter’s instinct for a weakening prey, van Doorn was looking stronger and picking up pace. The gap between them was narrowing much more quickly.

Leon sighed and looked up to the heavens, as if seeking some kind of divine intervention. Something caught his eye. Far in the distance, beyond the furthest hills, a great mass of storm clouds had appeared over the western horizon and was now marching across the sky towards the polo fields. Leon could see lightning flashes many miles away.

Rain stops play, thought Leon. That might be our only hope.

Simel’s head was rolling from side to side and his stride had lost its spring. He could feel van Doorn getting closer. His looks back down the track were becoming ever more frequent and wide-eyed. The South African was actually grinning at him now, relishing his impending triumph, picking up his pace all the time.

They were running across the field, about to turn into the back straight. Van Dorn was no more than thirty paces behind him and gaining all the time. Simel saw Manyoro, Bwana Courtney and his little daughter waiting by the side of the track up ahead. He had almost reached the three of them, and the gap between him and van Doorn had halved once again when he saw his chief give a fractional nod of the head. That was the signal they had agreed over the previous circuits and Simel understood precisely what it meant.

Like a man waking from a prolonged slumber, Simel came alive again. His body lost its heavy, lifeless torpor, his head lifted and his stride lengthened. Within a dozen strides he was moving at something close to his full speed. The Kenyans massed along the back straight burst back into life as they saw that Simel’s apparent exhaustion had been a ruse to draw his opponent on. They hooted with delight at the Masai’s cleverness and the white man’s foolishness and for every one of them shouting for Simel, there was another loudly mocking van Doorn.

The Afrikaaner paid them no attention whatever. His entire being was focused on the business of running. His smile was replaced by a grimace as he forced himself to match Simel. But matching him wasn’t good enough. He had to go faster. Van Doorn had come too close to snatching an outright victory to be content with anything less now.

Simel had never known such pain. His whole body was on fire, every muscle burning, every breath a desperate, rasping inhalation, sucking air into lungs that still felt starved and a heart whose beating was like an army of drummers, pounding their sticks against his ribs.

He had been running for so, so long. And provided that he kept his pace steady, measured, moderate, he could have kept going for even longer still. But this was different. This was running like the cheetah. And the cheetah did not run for long.

Simel started to slow, and this time he was not pretending.

Eva’s headache had become unbearable. She tried to call for a waitress to get her some more water, but when she tried to speak, she could not hear herself speak over the shouting, cheering, stamping crowd. There was a roaring sound in her ears, like surf crashing on the shore, and she was blinded by a flashing, flickering sensation as if someone was shining a light right in her eye.

She gave a cry of, ‘Help!’ but the sound that emerged from her mouth was a feeble, incoherent moan.

A moment later a waitress passed by her chair, and the scream of horror she gave was enough to cut through the hubbub around her. A dozen or so of the people crammed onto the veranda turned and looked in horror at the sight of a woman jerking helplessly, unconsciously, like a marionette in the hands of a mad puppeteer while a dark crimson stain spread across the front of her skirt.

‘Doctor!’ a man’s voice shouted. ‘For God’s sake someone get a doctor!’

Van Doorn was at the very limits of his physical resources. But he saw the little man tying up and understood that if he could only keep going, just for a very short while, he could yet have his victory.

But could he keep going? He was suffering badly from the sun and heat and lack of water. His mouth was parched and a crust of desiccated white foam had formed at the corners of his lips. He felt light-headed, his vision was starting to blur around the edges and there was a rushing sound in his ears as if he were on the verge of fainting.

No! van Doorn told himself. I will not give in. Only the weak let pain or discomfort affect them. I will beat this verdoem kaffer yet!

He drove himself into one last effort and forced his shattered body to keep going, denying its pleas to slow down.

The gap was closing once again.

Well, it was a good try,’ Leon said.

‘Simel’s not beaten yet, Daddy!’ Saffron insisted, defiant to the last.

‘I’m afraid your father is right,’ Manyoro said, in a voice heavy with disappointment. ‘Simel fought with the heart and courage of a lion. He saw off two hunters, but he could not defeat the third. There is no disgrace in that.’

‘I don’t care what you say,’ Saffron insisted, folding her arms in front of her chest and glaring up at the two men, ‘I think he’ll win.’

Leon gave a rueful sigh. He was about to lose ten thousand pounds in public, and to a man like de Lancey … Let that be a lesson to you. Don’t make any more stupid bets at dinner tables.

The African faces opposite him that had been so gleeful a few moments ago were now downcast. Silence had fallen as they waited for the end.

And then, from somewhere in the crowd, a single voice sang out:

We are the young lions!

A few other men joined in, somewhat tentatively:

When we roar the earth shivers!

And then more voices, more strongly:

Our spears are our fangs!

And more again:

Our spears are our claws!

An exultant smile spread across both Leon and Manyoro’s faces. This was the Lion Song, passed down to all Masai boys as part of the teaching that would lead them towards manhood. Their fathers and brothers sang it, as they would one day too, when they went out to attack lesser tribes and plunder their cattle and women, or confront the mighty lion with nothing but an assegai in their hands. This song both celebrated strength and provided it. And Leon joined in with all the other Masai voices, coming together in the rich, sonorous, exultant harmonies that were one of the glories of Africa, from the velvety resonance of the basses to the highest, piping falsettos.

Fear us, O ye beasts, they sang.

Fear us, O ye strangers!

Across the field, Simel heard the voices of his people calling to him and now he was panting out the next lines along with them:

Turn your eyes away from our faces, you women!

You dare not look upon the beauty of our faces!

Simel was barely aware of the power surging back through him, as if carried through the air by the song itself, for his running now seemed effortless, his body almost weightless as though his spirit had left it somehow and was looking down from on high.

The Masai saw the effect of their singing on Simel, and their volume became still greater as they let him know that they and he were one:

We are the brothers of the lion pride!

We are the young lions!

We are the Masai!

Simel ran down the home straight, past the crowds of his people’s white masters, barely registering their presence. The music had filled him, refreshed him and driven him on.

He was unaware of all the people rushing towards him and when the first arms caught hold of him and broke the music’s enchantment he struggled and lashed out, shouting, ‘No! No! I must not stop.’

Then Simel heard Manyoro’s voice and felt the strength of his embrace as he said, ‘Be still, little warrior. Be still. The battle is over. The victory is won. Look … turn your head and look.’

Simel did as he was told and stared back down the track. He saw a body lying on the turf, and men rushing towards it as they had towards him. He realized that the body belonged to van Doorn and for a terrible moment thought that he might be dead.

‘Have I killed him?’ Simel panted, though he was gasping for air so desperately that he barely had breath enough to talk.

‘No,’ Manyoro reassured him. ‘Watch. He rises.’

Simel screwed up his eyes and, sure enough, arms were reaching down, grasping the fallen runner and slowly lifting him back to his feet.

‘Good,’ Simel gasped. ‘I am glad.’

‘You won,’ Manyoro said. ‘You ran like a true Masai, a true morani.’

Simel smiled. And then, only then, he passed out from sheer exhaustion.

Saffron was still filled with the excitement of the final minutes of the race and the elation of Simel’s win. But the sight of him fainting in Manyoro’s arms plunged her into an abyss of fear and concern for him until he came to, blinked a few times and looked around as if unsure where he was. And then all those bad feelings vanished and she was jumping up and down and cheering at the very top of her voice as Simel was hoisted onto Manyoro’s shoulders as even the white spectators joined in the riotous applause for what was so clearly such a mighty effort and a splendid triumph.

‘Make that ten cows!’ Leon called to Manyoro. ‘Simel deserves it. And, yes, ten for you too!’

The native crowd had burst past the police who had all been far too busy cheering the victory themselves to stop them and were now flooding across the polo field towards the clubhouse, dancing and jumping for joy as they went.

Amidst the pandemonium it suddenly struck Saffron that Mummy ought to be there, enjoying it all with her and Daddy.

I wonder if I should go and get her, she thought.

And then she saw Doctor Thompson pushing his way through the crowd. Of all the people all around her, whether black or white, his was the only face not alight with the sheer thrill of what they had all just witnessed. He looked sombre, and she could see him becoming cross as he had to force his way through all the people blocking his way.

The doctor was looking from side to side, clearly searching for someone. Then he spotted Saffron. He’d often treated her for colds and upset tummies and general bumps and bruises so he recognized her at once and came towards her.

‘Hello, Saffron,’ he said, not giving her his usual smile. And before she could even say hello back, he asked, ‘Where’s your father?’

‘He’s over there, by Manyoro,’ she said, pointing towards them. ‘Is something the matter?’

The doctor didn’t reply and suddenly Saffron had a terrible, frightening feeling that she knew what the matter was. She reached up and tugged on the doctor’s sleeve. ‘Is Mummy all right?’

He looked down at her, his face grave, opened his mouth, but then closed it again, as if he did not know what to say. He turned his head, looked towards her father and pushed his way through the mass of people lining up to offer their congratulations.

Saffron watched the doctor talking to Daddy. She saw the happiness drain from her father’s face, to be replaced by a look as sad and serious as the doctor’s. Then her father turned to Manyoro, and said something. Both men looked towards her and then they started moving: her father with Doctor Thompson, heading back up to the clubhouse, Manyoro towards her.

Saffron knew what that meant. Daddy was going to see Mummy, who must be really ill, or he and the doctor wouldn’t be looking so worried. Manyoro was supposed to be looking after her.

Saffron loved Manyoro. But she loved her mother more and she had to see her, no matter how ill she was. She just had to.

She thought for a second. Black people aren’t allowed in the clubhouse. Not unless they’re staff. So if I can get there before Manyoro he can’t come in after me.

She looked towards Manyoro. For a second their eyes met. Then Saffron turned and dashed away, nipping between the much bigger grown-ups all around her while Manyoro had to go slowly and steadily, asking permission of all the settlers to let him through. Saffron knew that she was being cruel, forcing a man as proud and dignified as Manyoro to lower himself to men and women who weren’t half as fine as him, simply because of the colour of his skin. But she had no choice. She had to see her mother.

Saffron kept moving, constantly expecting to feel the weight of Manyoro’s hand on her shoulder until she reached the short flight of steps leading up to the clubhouse veranda. She dashed up the steps, knowing that once she’d reached the top she was safe and only then looked around to see where Manyoro was.

The Masai wasn’t hard to spot. He was a good head taller than any of the settlers around him and he was looking at her with an expression of disappointment and something else Saffron had never seen in him before. She frowned, wondering what it was and then she realized that Manyoro was in pain. He clenched his fist and bumped it against his chest, over his heart.

The pain he’s feeling is for me, Saffron thought as she turned and made her way to the spot where Mummy had been sitting. Her chair was empty, but her handbag was still there, on the table beside the chair, and the book she had brought with her to read, The Green Hat.

Saffron remembered the first time she’d seen it, a few days earlier. ‘Who wants to read a book about a hat?’ she’d asked.

Mummy had laughed and said, ‘It’s not just about a hat. It’s more about the woman who wears it. She’s called Iris Storm and she’s very daring and rather wicked.’

‘Is she the baddie, then?’

‘No, she’s more like a tragic heroine – someone beautiful and rather wonderful, but doomed.’

‘Oh …’ Saffron had not been entirely sure what Mummy had meant by that, but then she’d perked up when Mummy leaned over, with a cheeky smile on her face and a wicked glint in her eye, and whispered, ‘Would you like to hear a secret about this book?’

‘Ooh, yes please!’ cried Saffron, who loved secrets and could tell from Mummy’s expression that this was going to be a really good one.

‘Well, Iris Storm is a pretend character, but she’s based on a real person.’

‘Is that the secret?’ asked Saffron, disappointedly.

‘It’s part of the secret,’ Eva said. ‘The other part is that the real woman is someone you know.’

Now that was interesting. Saffron’s eyes widened. ‘Who?’ she gasped.

‘I can’t tell you, because it’s a secret … but …’ Mummy let the word hang tantalizingly in the air, ‘In the book, Iris Storm drives a great big yellow Hispano–Suiza car with a silver stork on the bonnet. What do you think about that?’

Saffron frowned in concentration. And then it struck her. She had seen a great big yellow car with a stork. ‘I know, I know!’ she squealed excitedly. ‘It’s …’

‘Ssshhh …’ Mummy had put a finger to her lips. ‘Don’t say a word. It’s a secret.’

Moments like that, when she and Mummy were sharing things and it felt as though they lived in their own little world – although Daddy and Kippy were allowed into it too, of course – were one of the things Saffron loved about her mother. So now she smiled to herself as she picked up the book and put it into Mummy’s bag, taking care not to let the bookmark fall out, so that Mummy didn’t lose her place.

‘Hey you … Missy!’ someone called out. ‘What do you think you’re doing with that bag?’

Saffron turned and saw a cross-looking man she didn’t recognise.

‘It’s my mummy’s bag,’ she said. ‘I’m going to take it to her.’ Then she stopped and, suddenly feeling very frightened, said, ‘I don’t know where she is.’

The man’s face fell. He looked around as if looking for an escape route.

‘My mummy is Eva Courtney,’ Saffron said. ‘Do you know where she’s gone?’

‘Ah … I … that’s to say … must dash,’ the man said and disappeared into the crowd.

Saffron was surrounded by people yet utterly alone. More alone than she’d ever been in her life. She wished she’d let Manyoro look after her. She always felt completely safe when she was with him.

A waitress came up to her and got down on her haunches in front of her. ‘I will take you to your mother,’ she said, and held out her hand.

Saffron took it. The feel of the waitress’s smooth warm skin calmed and comforted her a little. She walked with her into the main body of the clubhouse, still clutching her mother’s handbag tight to her body with her spare hand. There was a bar inside where children weren’t supposed to go, filled with men talking about the race, settling up their own side bets and loudly calling for more beer. No one paid Saffron any attention as the waitress led her across the bar and opened a door with a wooden sign on it that said ‘Committee Room’.

‘You go in there, Miss,’ said the waitress, softly, opening the door and gently ushering Saffron into the room.

Saffron crept in, knowing she was not supposed to be there and not wanting to disturb anyone.

She saw three people grouped around the table that stood in the middle of the room. A woman was standing at the far end with her back towards her. Saffron recognized her as Mrs Thompson, the doctor’s wife. Daddy was next to her, also with his back towards the door. Between them Saffron could just see the snowy-white top of Doctor Thompson’s head on the other side of the table. He seemed to be looking down at something in front of him. There was someone next to him and as she crabbed her neck to see better Saffron realized that it was the runner, Dr Birchinall, still in his shorts and a white cricket jumper, but with a white bandage wrapped around his injured thigh.

Only then did Saffron see her mother’s legs and shoeless feet on the table, lying between her father and Birchinall.

Mummy’s feet were jerking up and down, as if she were shaking or kicking them, but the way they were moving was really strange, not like anything anyone would normally do.

Saffron crept around the side of the room, until she was almost opposite the end of the table. She hadn’t looked up at all, not wanting to catch anyone’s eye. But finally she turned and looked down the table.

Mummy was lying on her back with her arms to her side. The Thompsons were up by her head with their arms pressing down on her shoulders. Daddy had his arms on Mummy’s legs. And the reason they were all pushing down was that she was throwing herself from side to side, her body shaking and her limbs twitching.

Saffron didn’t understand what was happening or why her mother was moving the way she was, or why her eyes were open but she didn’t seem to be seeing anything. The beautiful face that had always looked at her with such love in its eyes was twisted into something ugly and unrecognizable. Mummy’s dress had ridden up and there was a wet, dark stain between her legs and on the surface of the table. And then she groaned and it was a ghastly sound that was nothing like her mother’s normal voice but more the howl of a wounded animal and Saffron could not control herself a second longer. She screamed out, ‘Mummy!’ dropped the bag and dashed towards the table.

‘Who let that girl in here?’ Doctor Thompson shouted. ‘Get her out at once!’

Saffron saw her father let go of Mummy’s thrashing legs. He stepped towards her with such an angry desperate look on his face that she burst out crying and this time when he picked her up there was no happiness, not even any affection, just his angry face and his hands holding her so tightly that it hurt.

‘Mummy!’ Saffron screamed again and then a third time, ‘Mummy! I’ve got to see Mummy!’

But it was no use. Her father was carrying her out of the room and across the bar and no matter how hard she punched or kicked him or how loudly she shouted, ‘Let me go! Let me go!’ he would not loosen his grip on her.

He pushed his way through the crowd on the veranda, and walked down the steps to where Manyoro was waiting.

Then, and only then, did Leon Courtney drop his daughter to the ground, though he still held her arms so that she could not get away. He glared at Manyoro with fury in his eyes and there was not the slightest trace of brotherly affection in his voice as he snarled, ‘I thought I told you to look after her.’

Manyoro said nothing. He just took Saffron’s hand, a little more gently than her father had done, but still holding her just as tightly. Leon Courtney waited for a moment to see that his daughter was finally secured. Then he turned on his heels and ran back up the clubhouse steps.

As Saffron watched him go she felt abandoned, desolate and completely unable to understand what was happening. Her whole world that had seemed so secure and so happy just a few minutes earlier was falling apart around her. Her mother was desperately ill. Her father hated her. Nothing was as it should be and none of it made any sense.

Just then she felt the first drops of rain fall on her and spatter across the red earth all around her. There was a sudden explosive crack of thunder and only a couple of seconds later a dazzling flash of lightning. The wind whipped at her dress and within an instant her tears were washed from her face by torrential rain, and the sound of her crying was drowned by the roaring of the storm.

How is she?’ Leon shouted for the hundredth time, trying to make himself heard over the straining of the engine and the pounding of the rain, and received much the same answer from the back of the car as he had on every previous occasion. He was leaning back in the driver’s seat, his head half-turned to the back of the Rolls-Royce.

‘She’s very weak, Mr Courtney. But she’s still here.’ Dr Hugo Birchinall was behind him, sitting on the back seat with Eva cradled in his arms. ‘She’s a fighter, sir, you should be very proud of her. But Mr Courtney, may I give you a word of advice … as a doctor?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Your wife is very ill indeed. There’s no guarantee she’ll make it. But she certainly won’t make it if we crash. So please, focus all your attention on your driving. It’ll help take your mind off things.’

Leon said nothing, but he turned his eyes back to the road ahead. Birchinall was right. It was an act of sheer desperation even to try to make the drive to Nairobi in this kind of weather. The distance wasn’t an issue. The Rolls’s six-cylinder, eighty-horsepower engine would make short work of the seventy-five miles between Gilgil and the Kenyan capital if the journey ran along flat, straight roads. But the truth was very different.

Like most of western Kenya, Gilgil lay within the confines of the Great Rift Valley, the stupendous tear in the earth’s surface that ran in a great arc southwards for almost four thousand miles, from the Red Sea coast of Ethiopia through the heart of East Africa to the Indian Ocean in Mozambique.

Nairobi, however, lay outside the Rift and the only way to reach it by car was a dirt road, surfaced with gravel that ran up the towering escarpment, as much as three thousand feet of virtually sheer rock at its highest points, that formed one side of the valley. The road clung to the side of this gargantuan natural wall, snaking and twisting, seeking every possible scrap of purchase as it rose and rose towards the summit.

There were no barriers of any kind at its side, nor even any markings to indicate where the road ended and the plummeting drop into the void began. Occasional trees clung to the scraps of rocky soil by the side of the road and a few enterprising, or possibly just foolhardy tradesmen had set up shacks, selling food and drinks on the very few patches of flat land, just a few yards wide, that lay between the road and the edge of the cliff.

On a clear, sunny day with a dry road beneath the wheels, the view from the road, looking out across the apparently limitless expanse of the Great Rift Valley, was a sight so heart-stopping in its magnificence that it justified the nervousness that even the most cool-headed driver or passenger felt when braving the escarpment road. And the fearful could console themselves that this petrifying stretch of their journey was less than ten miles in length. But when rain fell as hard as this it might as well have been ten thousand miles, for no sensible person even attempted to negotiate what swiftly became an impossibly treacherous cross between a muddy track and a rushing stream. The water didn’t just fall onto the road from the sky. It cascaded in torrents from the heights up above. So it was by no means uncommon for sections of the road’s surface to be washed away in really bad storms and any hostess who invited guests for a weekend anywhere within the valley did so on the mutual understanding that, if the weather turned bad, they might be there for a week.

But Eva Courtney could not wait a week, or even a day. Her only hope was to get to a hospital and the nearest one of any size at all was in Nairobi.

‘I’ll try to get a message through to let them know you’re coming,’ Doc Thompson had said. ‘Birchinall, you look after Mrs Courtney along the way. Courtney, you’d better pray that fancy car of yours is as powerful as you always tell us it is. And may God be with you, for you’ll need all the luck He can give.’

It was barely midday by the time they had set off. Eva’s first fit had passed, though others could be expected. Her face had lost its normal golden tan and was a ghostly, greyish white. Yet she seemed to be at peace, as if she were just sleeping as she was taken on a stretcher to the car and then laid on her side along the back seat. Leon had relented a little and let Saffron see her mother and whisper, ‘I love you,’ in her ear, but he had resisted his daughter’s increasingly frantic pleas to be allowed to come with them to the hospital and she had been taken away, kicking and screaming, to be driven back to Lusima in the truck with Manyoro, Loikot and the staff.

The first section of the drive was relatively straightforward as the road ran southeast along the valley floor. The rain was far too much for the Rolls’s windscreen wipers to cope with, but Leon knew the route so well that he only needed a few visual clues, no matter how blurred by water, to tell him where he was, and there was almost no other traffic on the road to worry about. He was even able, in a desperate attempt to talk about something, anything other than Eva’s plight, to tell Birchinall, ‘This storm has come at just the right time for your Mr de Lancey.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, I doubt he’s stripped down to his birthday suit and run round the polo field in this weather. Even if he did there’d be no one still left to watch him.’

‘I’m glad your chap won,’ Birchinall said. ‘Pluckiest thing I ever saw, taking on the three of us like that. It would have been rotten if van Doorn had come on and beaten him at the last. Can’t say I liked the cut of that Boer’s jib, truth be told. Charmless bunch, aren’t they?’

‘True enough. But they’d probably say that charm’s a luxury they can’t afford. And to do the man justice, he’s not like ninety-nine per cent of the other white men and women who were at the race today. He’s not a settler, or a colonist. He’s a proper African.’

‘So are you, from what I hear … If you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Absolutely not, I take it as a compliment, which was how this ridiculous bet ever happened in the first place. Christ, I wish I’d never set de Lancey that wager. We’d have spent the day at home, no excitement. Eva would have been right as rain. I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to her. Never!’

‘Don’t say that, Mr Courtney. Your wife has eclampsia. It could have struck her at any time, in any surroundings. As it was, it happened at a place that was a lot closer to Nairobi than your estate is, with two doctors immediately at hand. If anything, your wager has improved her chances, not lessened them.’

The road was starting to rise upwards now, passing through groves of spiky-leaved sisal and candelabra euphorbia, whose succulent stems branched out and up from a central tree trunk like a myriad green candles. As they went higher, more and more of the valley and the hills that rose from it were displayed before them.

‘Astonishing, isn’t it?’ Birchinall said. ‘Looks like something from the dawn of time. Just the power of it all.’

Leon knew just what the doctor meant, for the sun had entirely disappeared and the only illumination came from lightning bolts that could be seen flashing across the sky, striking one mountain ridge after another with their searing blasts of pure white light – the mountains just a darker shade of black against the deep purples and charcoal greys of the sky. It truly seemed as though the bolts were being hurled down from the heavens by unseen gods, as though the vast power they contained held the spark of life itself, as well as the destructive force of death.

And then the road swung upwards again, curled this way and that and suddenly they were on the side of the escarpment, on a road that seemed barely wider than the car itself and, just at the point when the surface became most treacherous, so it was almost completely exposed to the full force of the wind and rain. Leon had ordered the most powerful headlights possible for his car, but the beams barely penetrated the watery, murky gloom. He could see a small patch of road surface directly in front of the bonnet, but beyond that there was nothing but darkness, and it was quite impossible to tell whether the blackness was simply that of the track itself, just waiting for the light to strike it, or the empty space beyond the precipice, waiting to hurl them to their destruction.

Leon longed to put his foot down on the accelerator, for every extra minute spent on the journey lessened Eva’s chances of surviving it. From time to time he would hear her groan or whimper and it struck him that these moments came not when she emitted sound, but when the chaos outside the car had temporarily abated enough for him to catch the audible evidence of her suffering. But as they crawled up and up, the road became steadily more treacherous.

The gushing water was dislodging rocks that hammered against the wheels and the underside of the chassis, and digging out potholes where just hours before the surface had been relatively smooth. Where the gravel had been washed away the earth below was dissolving into a muddy slurry as slippery as ice. More than once Leon felt the car sliding across the road, towards the side of the track, and he had to wrestle with the wheel to control the skid and keep them moving forwards.

Is this it? he asked himself. Is this the disaster that Lusima Mama foretold? But how can it be? She said I would live. She made it sound like a curse. If Eva and I could go together that would almost be a blessing.

And then he caught himself. No! Whatever happens, I have to live. There must be one of us, at the very least, to look after poor Saffy. But, oh God, please let there be two. Please, I beg you, let my darling Eva survive.

Do you believe in God?’ Saffron asked Manyoro, as they drove back to Lusima through the same storm, but on much friendlier roads.

‘Of course. I believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ replied Manyoro, whose formal education had all been provided by missionaries.

‘I’ve already prayed to them. I prayed and prayed to make Mummy better. Do you have another God, a Masai one I can pray to as well?’

‘Yes, we have a God we call Ngai. He created all the cattle in the world and gave them all to the Masai. When we drink the blood and milk of our cattle, it is as if we are drinking the blood of Ngai, too.’

‘Christians believe they drink Jesus’s blood, don’t they?’

‘Yes, and that is why I believe in your God. I think he is really Ngai!’

Manyoro burst out laughing at the cunning of his theology. Then he told Saffron, ‘Ngai has a wife called Olapa. She is the goddess of the moon. You can pray to them if you like.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Also we believe that every person on earth has a guardian spirit who has been sent to watch over us and keep us safe. So when you pray, ask that your mother’s guardian spirit is kept strong and wide-awake so that it can protect her now.’

So Saffron prayed to God and Jesus and Ngai and Olapa. She prayed for Mummy and for her guardian spirit. She promised God that she would be good all the time, and never do anything naughty ever again, if only Mummy could get better.

Then she told Manyoro all about her prayers and when she had finished listing them all she asked, ‘Do you think that will make any difference?’

The nurse standing by the main entrance of the European Hospital in Nairobi screwed up her eyes against the glare of the headlights coming towards her. ‘Look out for a big car that has a lady with wings at the front of its bonnet,’ Dr Hartson had told her. But she could not see the front of the car because the lights were so blinding. Then the car turned as it followed the drive round and now she could see it from the side and there, sure enough, was the flying lady. The nurse turned on her feet and burst through the double swing-doors into the hospital. ‘They are here, doctor!’ she called out as she ran down the corridor. ‘They are here!’

Leon saw the nurse disappear into the building as he pulled up under the awning that covered the driveway in front of the entrance. He had not spoken for the final few miles of the journey, for fear of hearing words that would be unbearable. But now, as the engine spluttered and died, he could restrain himself no longer.

‘Is she still breathing?’ he asked.

‘Just,’ Birchinall replied. ‘But her pulse is very faint.’

‘Thank God,’ Leon muttered, grateful that he had delivered Eva to the hospital alive.

‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to help lift her out,’ Birchinall said. ‘My leg has pretty well seized up.’

‘Of course.’

Leon got out of the Rolls just as the hospital doors crashed open and an orderly appeared, pushing a wheeled stretcher. Behind him came the nurse and a man in a doctor’s white coat whom Leon recognized as Frank Hartson, the hospital’s sole consultant surgeon. They had met once or twice at social occasions, and so far as Leon could tell, Hartson seemed like a perfectly decent, intelligent fellow, if not the liveliest mind one was ever likely to encounter. Now this man would have Eva’s life in his hands.

Leon ran round to the rear door of the car and opened it wide as the stretcher came to a halt just a few feet away. Then he put one foot into the well in front of the passenger seat, leaned in and placed his arms under Eva’s shoulders, between her body and Birchinall’s.

‘I have the legs, Bwana,’ the orderly said.

‘Lift on three,’ Leon told him. ‘One … two … three!’

The two men lifted Eva’s limp, unresponsive body up off the seat and Leon watched in horror as her head rolled helplessly against his arm. Her eyes were closed. There was crusted spittle at the corners of her mouth. When he looked down at her skirt it was wet and pungent with blood and urine.

‘Oh my poor darling,’ Leon murmured.

He placed her on the stretcher and watched as the orderly strapped her down. Then he took her hand and looked down at the face that had captivated him so utterly for so long. ‘Good luck. God speed. I love you so very, very much,’ Leon said and for a second he thought he saw, or perhaps it was just his longing that made him imagine a flicker of her eyelids and the tiniest fraction of a smile.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Courtney, but we really have to get your wife ready for surgery,’ Hartson said.

‘I understand.’ Leon forced himself to let go of Eva’s fingers.

‘Dr Birchinall is in the car,’ Hartson told the nurse. ‘He needs crutches. Please get some for him and then come straight to the operating theatre.’ He turned to the orderly. ‘Tell Matron I need to operate as soon as possible. So please prepare Mrs Courtney for surgery immediately. Got that?’

‘Yes, doctor.’

‘Off you go then.’

As the orderly pushed the stretcher away towards the heart of the building, Hartson turned to Courtney. ‘I’m sorry we have to meet in such grim circumstances. Look, I don’t know how much Thompson has said to you about your wife’s condition …’

‘Nothing beyond what he said when she first went to see him. We didn’t really stop and chat today, what with the convulsions.’

‘Quite so. Well, here’s the situation. As Birchinall may have told you, we’re pretty certain your wife is suffering from eclampsia, which is what we call a hypertensive disorder. In layman’s terms, she’s got very high blood pressure and excess protein in her blood and urine. The seizures she’s suffered are characteristic of the condition. But I have to warn you that eclampsia can also lead to kidney failure, cardiac arrest, pneumonia and brain haemorrhage. I’m afraid to say that these can, on occasion, prove fatal.’

‘Why in God’s name didn’t Thompson do something about it days ago, if she was so ill?’ Leon asked, failing to keep the anger out of his voice.

‘With the resources available to him he couldn’t have predicted what would happen. The initial symptoms of dizziness, headaches, mild nausea could apply to all manner of conditions, many of them relatively trivial. And your wife is a pregnant woman living at altitude. She could feel sick or have a sore head and there’d be nothing whatever to worry about. The advice he gave was entirely appropriate. It’s just rotten luck that there was in fact something serious going on.’

‘So what can you do now?’

‘Ideally I would give your wife something to lower her blood pressure, but I fear we may be past that now. With your permission I will try an emergency delivery by caesarean section. I have to tell you that there is a high chance that we will lose the baby and a somewhat smaller but still significant chance that your wife will not survive the operation, also. It rather depends on the degree of organ damage she has already suffered.’

Leon tried to cut through the emotions that were crowding out his rational mind and make some sense of what Hartson had just said: that calm, unflappable English voice delivering such devastating, heartbreaking news. Leon wanted something he could fight, an enemy he could defeat, for what in God’s name was the point of his existence as a man if not to protect his woman and his child? But there was nothing to be done, for the war was all within her, out of his reach.

‘Do I have your consent?’ Dr Hartson repeated.

Leon nodded. ‘Do whatever you think is best, doctor. And if it comes to a choice …’ Leon stopped, choking on his words as he fought back desperate tears, ‘for God’s sake, please … save Eva.’

‘I’ll do my very best, I promise you,’ Hartson said. He half-turned, about to walk away, then stopped and looked back at Leon. ‘There’s a waiting room just down the corridor. Take a seat in there, why don’t you? I’ll have someone bring you some tea, good and sweet to keep your blood sugar up, eh?’

Hartson had taken half-a-dozen steps down the corridor, when Leon said, ‘Doctor?’

Hartson stopped: ‘Yes?’

‘Good luck.’

Hartson said nothing, just looked for a couple more seconds at Leon, then went away towards the operating theatre.

Leon watched him go, gave a heavy sigh, then went in search of the waiting room.

An hour passed in the waiting room. There were four battered old armchairs and Leon sat in each one of them as he tried to find somewhere he could be still without needing to get up and pace around the room, just to work off the tension that had his guts as tight as drumskins. A low wooden table sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by the chairs. A few dog-eared old issues of Punch were scattered across its surface, next to a dirty Bakelite ashtray. Leon picked up the magazines in turn, flicked through their pages, gazed blankly at the cartoons, hardly even seeing the drawings, still less appreciating their jokes. The tea arrived after the best part of half an hour’s wait and he gulped it down in a couple of minutes. The sugar perked him up, as Doctor Hartson had predicted, but the additional energy only made his restlessness worse.

As Leon was leaving the clubhouse, back at the polo club, Doc Thompson had pressed a packet of Player’s Navy Cut cigarettes into his hand, saying, ‘These may come in handy.’

‘I don’t smoke,’ Leon had replied but in the chaos Thompson hadn’t heard, so Leon had shoved the cigarettes into his trouser pocket and forgotten all about them. Now he took out the crushed and crumpled pack. Thompson had stuck a book of matches into the pack. The words ‘Henderson’s General Store, Gilgil, Kenya’ were printed on the flap of card that covered the matches.

As a boy, Leon had grown up with the smell of the cheroots that his father Ryder Courtney kept clamped between his teeth as he navigated his river boats up and down the Nile or haggled with the men from whom he bought and sold. When the clash of wills between father and son became too intense for them to remain in the same house, Leon had left the family home in Cairo to seek his fortune in the new colony of British East Africa, as Kenya had then been known. The smell of cigar smoke had always been associated in his mind with his father, and everything he was trying to escape, and the only time he had ever smoked had been during the war when, like virtually every other soldier in the British army, he did it to pass the time and ease the tension in the long hours of tedium and apprehension that preceded the start of any battle. The day he left the army, he threw away his smokes, but now he realized that Doc Thompson had not so much given him the packet of Player’s as prescribed it for precisely this helpless period of waiting for news that might very well be bad.

Leon lit up his first cigarette, felt the familiar sensation of the smoke filling his lungs and then the long, slow, relaxing exhalation as it poured back out again. There were eight more in the packet and Leon smoked them all over the next two hours. By that point the air in the waiting room was thick with smoke, his clothes stank and his mouth tasted as filthy as the ashtray that was now half-filled with his fag-ends.

Leon suddenly felt a desperate need for fresh, clean air. He walked out of the waiting room, along the corridor and through the two swing-doors into the world beyond. The area in front of the European Hospital and the road on which it stood was laid out in a pleasant garden, bounded on three sides by the drive, and on the fourth by the wall that ran along the road on which the hospital was located. Benches had been placed for patients and their visitors to sit on. The storm had passed, night had fallen and the air was as cool and refreshing as water from a mountain stream. Leon wiped the rainwater off one of the benches with his hand then sat down on it, stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back, gazing up at the majestic, infinite beauty of the stars in the southern sky. There was no traffic on the road outside and the only sound to be heard was the noise of the insects chattering away in the bushes and trees. Leon closed his eyes and for a moment a sensation of deep peace and relaxation spread through him, easing the tension from his muscles.

Then he heard the clatter of the doors.

Leon opened his eyes, sat up straight on the bench and looked towards the hospital entrance. In the harsh white glare of the light that illuminated the spaces beneath the awning, Leon saw Dr Hartson walking towards him. His shoulders were slumped, his tread was heavy and there was an air about him that Leon had seen in soldiers who had just taken a beating and lost comrades in the process.

And then he knew the message that Dr Hartson was bearing with him on that slow, exhausted trudge across the lawn and it was as if all the constellations had suddenly vanished from the sky and blackness fell upon Leon Courtney. For he had lost the sun and moon and stars that had illuminated his existence.

Hartson had reached him now. He must have known that he had no need to tell Leon what had happened. So he just said, ‘I am so very sorry, old man. We did everything we could, but …’

Hartson may have finished his sentence, but if he did Leon Courtney never heard him. For now the dam inside him broke and all he could hear was the sound of his own sobbing.

In her room at Lusima, Saffron lay awake for what seemed like hours before she dropped into a fitful sleep, plagued by dreams that were filled with anger, danger and a terrible sense that something was missing, no matter how hard she tried to find it. Then she woke suddenly. There was someone in her room, she knew there was. She sat up straight, eyes wide, staring from side to side, straining her ears for any sound, but although that sense of another presence very close to her remained, there was no sign at all of anyone she could see or hear.

She turned on her bedside light.

The room was empty. The door was closed.

And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the presence vanished and, in a moment of absolute clarity, Saffron understood.

‘Mummy!’ she cried out. ‘Mummy! Come back!’

But Mummy was gone and she wasn’t ever coming back. Saffron knew that now, and with that knowledge all the comfort and security her mother had brought with her disappeared from Saffron’s life and an entirely new chapter of her existence began.

At the age of thirteen, Leon sent Saffron to Rodean, a girls’ boarding school in Parktown. ‘It’s time you got a proper education,’ he’d told her. ‘When I’m gone, you’ll be in charge of the estate, and all my Courtney business interests. You need to know about more than cookery, needlework and flower arranging.’

‘But why do I have to go all the way to South Africa?’ Saffron protested. ‘I’m sure there are good schools in Kenya too.’

‘Indeed there are. But I’ve asked around and it seems that none of them offers the kind of education for girls that you will get at Roedean. It’s the sister establishment of a very famous girls’ school in England. Literally so, apparently: three sisters started the place in England and then a fourth one came out to South Africa and started the place in Jo’burg with a chum. That was thirty years ago and apparently it’s gone from strength to strength since, a really top-notch place. And Saffy …’ Leon’s voice had softened as he started to speak from the heart, rather than the head, ‘it’s no life for you here, rattling around the estate with just me and the staff for company.’

‘But I like rattling around the estate! It’s my home. And all the people on it are my family,’ Saffron pleaded.

‘I know, my darling, and there’s not one of them that doesn’t love you as their own. But you need to be around girls your age, and you need women you can look up to and learn from. There are things I just can’t teach you. Things only women know. And … well … you know …’

Yes, of course Saffron knew. In the end, so many conversations with her father came back to the great hole in their lives where her mother should have been. He had never found another woman to replace her. There had been plenty of women who liked the idea of being Mrs Leon Courtney and mistress of one of the largest, best run and most breathtakingly beautiful estates in East Africa. Several of them had found their way to Lusima and done their best to impress Saffron’s father by sucking up to her.

‘If one more silly woman tells me that she’s sure we shall be the most terrific chums, I am going to scream,’ Saffy had told Kippy, during one of their daily heart-to-hearts (though in truth the pony was only really interested in the apple that she knew her mistress was hiding behind her back). But each of the women disappeared within a matter of days, weeks, or in one case a full three months, and Saffron had long since given up paying any attention to any of them.

That did not, however, mean she loved her father any less, or was bored with her home. Lusima was a magical kingdom in which she was the Crown Princess and there was nowhere else in the world she wanted to be. So she had fought with every logical argument she could muster and every emotional trick she could play, but it had done her no good. Her father had made up his mind, and when Leon Courtney did that, no force on God’s earth could budge him from his decision.

Going to Roedean meant that Saffron would have to leave home for the first time. Leon knew that the experience was bound to be hard for her, so he was keen to make it as exciting as possible, to distract her from any thought of homesickness for as long as possible. To that end, he did not take her on a steamship to Durban, the nearest port to Johannesburg, but instead booked tickets on the final legs of the brand new Imperial Airways service from England to South Africa. And he did not take her to Johannesburg. Instead, shortly after Christmas 1932, he and Saffron flew all the way to Cape Town.

‘I thought it was time you met the South African branch of the family,’ Leon told her, ‘starting with your cousin Centaine.’

‘That’s an odd name,’ Saffron replied.

‘It’s French, and it means a hundred. So “Une centaine d’années” means “a century”.’

‘Well that’s even odder. Who calls a girl “Century”?’

‘Someone whose daughter is born in the first hour of the first day of the first month of the first year of a century might, if they were French. Centaine’s maiden name was de Thiry and she met my cousin Michael in France when he was stationed there with the Royal Flying Corps during the war. Michael was a fighter pilot.’

‘Did they fall in love?’

‘Yes.’

‘How romantic!’ Saffron’s imagination instantly conjured up an image of a dashing pilot and a beautiful French girl swooning at one another, though she still knew too little about love to have much of an idea what would happen after that.

‘I’ve decided that Centaine is a lovely name,’ she said, with characteristic decisiveness. But then something struck her. ‘You said Michael was a fighter pilot, and you haven’t said we’re meeting him in South Africa. So …’

‘He died, yes. The damn Germans shot him down.’

‘So how did she end up in South Africa?’

‘Well, Michael and Centaine got married,’ Leon began. In truth, he had always had his doubts as to whether the knot had ever been tied, but the family had accepted Centaine as one of their own and any doubts had been discreetly swept under the carpet. ‘When he died Centaine was pregnant with his baby, and she had no family left in France so it was decided to send her down to South Africa because she and the child, when it came, would be safer there.’

‘Wasn’t there any war in South Africa, then?’

‘Nothing to write home about. South West Africa had been a German colony, so plenty of people there were on the Kaiser’s side. So were some of the Boers, because they hated the British. The Germans actually planned to help the Boers rise up and conquer South Africa but … well, that never happened.’

Mostly because your mother and I stopped it happening, Leon thought, but did not say. Instead he went on, ‘Anyway, there was far, far less fighting of any kind in South Africa than there was in France, so it should have been much safer for Centaine to be here, except for one thing …’

‘Ooh, what?’ asked Saffron, who was becoming more curious about Centaine by the minute.

‘The ship Cousin Centaine was on was torpedoed by a German submarine. Somehow she survived and was washed ashore on the coast of South West Africa.’

‘What a lucky escape!’

‘Yes, but her troubles weren’t over, because, as you should know if you’ve been paying attention in geography lessons, the coast there is part of the Namib Desert, which is one of the oldest and driest deserts on earth. That’s why they call it the Skeleton Coast. There’s no water there, no food, nothing. Not for a white man, anyway.’

‘So why didn’t she die?’

‘She was rescued by a San tribesman and his wife. The San have an extraordinary ability to survive in the desert and they kept Centaine alive until her baby son was born. Anyway, while she was travelling with them, she found a diamond, just lying on the ground.’

‘A diamond!’ Saffron exclaimed. ‘Who’d left it there in the middle of a desert?’

‘No one left it there,’ Leon laughed. ‘It was an uncut diamond. It was there naturally. So Centaine claimed the land and all its mineral rights and it turned out that there were a lot more diamonds where that first one had come from. So she became the owner of a diamond mine.’

Saffron’s eyes were as wide as huge sapphire saucers. ‘Goodness! Cousin Centaine must be the richest woman in the world!’ she exclaimed.

‘Well, she has been very rich, that’s true. But these are hard times for everyone and there’s not much of a market for diamonds these days, or anything else, come to that. I think she’s been lucky to keep hold of the mine at all, to be honest, but now I gather she’s putting her home outside Cape Town on the market. All its contents too, apparently: pictures, furniture, family silver, the lot. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see her. Thought I might be able to help.’

Saffron thought that this was a rather sad subject, so she decided to change it. ‘Can you tell me about Centaine’s son? What’s his name? How old is he?’

‘He’s called Shasa and I suppose he must be fifteen by now. I think you were born about eighteen months apart.’

‘What’s he like?’ she asked, really meaning to say, ‘Is he handsome?’ but not daring to be that obvious.

‘I honestly don’t know,’ her father replied. ‘I’ve met Centaine a couple of times, but not her lad. But I’m sure you two will have plenty to talk about.’

When they landed at Winfield Aerodrome, just to the east of Cape Town, the first thing Leon and Saffron saw was an enormous yellow Daimler parked on the field, barely twenty yards from where the Atalanta had come to a halt.

‘Look at that car!’ Saffron said to her father, pointing in the Daimler’s direction. ‘It’s even bigger and yellower than Lady Idina’s Hispano–Suiza!’

Before Leon could reply the driver’s door swung open. A car like this was usually driven by a uniformed chauffeur, but what emerged instead was a woman so striking that Saffron stopped dead in her tracks and simply gazed at her in wonder.

‘Is … is that Cousin Centaine?’ she gasped.

‘It is indeed,’ Leon replied.

With just one look, Saffron was lost in admiration for Centaine. She was as beautiful as a queen in one of Saffron’s old books of illustrated fairy tales, as slender as a wand, with impeccably bobbed black hair and eyes so mesmerizingly dark that they seemed almost black too. But it wasn’t just her beauty that made Centaine regal. It was the way she carried herself and the fierce determination in the line of her jaw.

Saffron had spent almost half her life without a female role model, but now, looking at Centaine, she was gripped by an emotion that she did not quite recognize at first, though she knew somehow that she had felt it before. And then she realized that this was just like seeing her equally beautiful, stylish mother when she was a very little girl: that same sense of awe in the presence of feminine beauty and grace and the same longing that maybe, just maybe, she might look a little like that herself one day.

Leon strode over to say hello and as he approached, Centaine smiled and suddenly revealed the other side to her personality: charming, flirtatious, deliciously female in the presence of a man.

What a couple they’d make, Saffron thought, looking at her tall, strong, handsome father beside this ravishing woman. Taken aback by this entirely unexpected idea she chided herself. Don’t be so silly!

Then another figure emerged from the car. And suddenly Saffron had something much more important to think about.

Shasa Courtney had not been keen on being dragged out to the aerodrome to meet his cousin from Kenya. She was being sent to Roedean, for a start, and everyone knew that Roedean girls were plain, spotty swots who all wore glasses and did nothing but read books. They weren’t interested in boys. They just wanted to go off to university and get jobs that were meant for men. Plus, this Saffron girl was only thirteen, whereas he was only a few months from his sixteenth birthday and was just about to go back to his school, Bishops, as Head Boy. Clearly she could not possibly be of any interest to him.

Then he saw a girl get off the plane. And that had to be Saffron because there was only one other female emerging from the Atalanta and she was a silver-haired granny on the arm of an equally elderly man. But on the other hand, that girl – the one with the shiny, dark chocolate coloured hair blowing against the breeze, wearing a skirt that the wind was pushing against her long legs so that he could see the shape of her slender thighs and her flat tummy and the wicked, tantalizing, infinitely mysterious bit in the middle – that girl, who had now spotted him, he could tell, and was looking at him, staring at him in fact, so that he felt as though she could see right through him … that girl couldn’t be Saffron Courtney. Could it?

Centaine! How splendid to see you again,’ Leon said.

‘And you Leon,’ she replied, kissing his cheeks with the elegant affection of a born and bred Frenchwoman.

He stepped back and gave her an appraising up-and-down. ‘You look …’ he was about to give her appearance a conventionally flattering compliment when the warmth of her smile and the way it lit up her eyes made him change his mind. ‘D’you know, you look extraordinarily happy. Good news?’

‘Yes!’ she said.

‘May I ask what it involves?’

‘Later.’ She took his arm and turned back towards her car. ‘Your daughter is quite ravishing, Leon. It will not be long before she is driving men wild. Perhaps you should forget school and send her off to a convent!’

‘Steady on, old girl,’ Leon replied. Like any doting father, he had always taken it for granted that his daughter was the prettiest little girl in the world. But the thought of her as a sexual creature, even as a hypothetical, far-distant possibility, had never occurred to him. But now he followed Centaine’s eyes and watched as Saffron and Shasa approached one another.

‘By God, you really can see the family resemblance,’ he said.

‘Mmm …’ Centaine murmured in agreement, for it was true that the two youngsters were so similar as to look more like siblings than cousins. Shasa’s eyes were an even darker blue than Saffron’s, perhaps, but they both shared the same dark hair and slim, limber build. He was only just growing out of an almost girlish beauty, but was not yet a man. She still possessed the last vestiges of her tomboy days, though faint traces of approaching womanhood were beginning to appear in the slight broadening and rounding of her hips and the first traces of her breasts.

‘Look at them, sizing one another up,’ Centaine said.

‘Like young lions.’

‘I wonder how long it will take them to realize that they share a sadness: Shasa without a father, Saffron without a mother. Both of them so rich in one way, and so deprived in another.’ She snapped herself out of her reverie. ‘Come! You must be exhausted after your journey. I must drive you back to Weltevreden.’

‘Have you had to let the chauffeur go? So many people one knows have done that,’ Leon asked, hoping that his tone was sufficiently sympathetic that the remark did not seem tactless.

Centaine laughed. ‘Heavens no! I don’t believe in having chauffeurs. I refuse to be controlled by any man. Even if he’s just driving my car!’

Saffron and Shasa spent the journey from the aerodrome to his mother’s estate talking about his school and speculating about hers. Each was forced to conclude that their prejudices were, perhaps, unfounded. As Centaine had anticipated, they soon established that they had each lost a parent. Neither of them wanted to talk about the experience, but a mutual understanding had been established: they had both been through a similar ordeal and it gave them a bond that did not need to be expressed.

Saffron was charmed by Weltevreden. Like Lusima it was set among hills, but this country was not so newly claimed from Mother Nature. Europeans had lived in the countryside around Cape Town for centuries and they had somehow softened the edges of the landscape; the earth seemed richer, the Kikuyu grass greener. Weltevreden even had its own vineyard, and pretty whitewashed cottages were dotted about the place.

‘Oh look, Daddy, a polo field!’ Saffron exclaimed.

‘Yah,’ said Shasa, coolly, ‘we run a team here, the Weltevreden Invitation. We won the junior league here a couple of weeks ago, actually. I scored the winning goal.’

‘I love polo!’ sighed Saffron.

‘A lot of girls do,’ Shasa said. ‘I think it’s a bit like the olden days. You know, medieval maidens watching all the knights jousting and stuff.’

‘’No, I don’t mean watching polo. I suppose that’s all right. But it’s not half as much fun as playing polo.’

‘But you can’t play polo!’ Shasa protested. ‘You’re … well, you’re a girl!’

Neither of the two youngsters saw Leon roll his eyes as he contemplated the terrible mistake the lad had just made, or noticed Centaine’s smile as she found her unswerving loyalty to her son being trumped by her support for a fellow female.

‘I do so!’ Saffron protested. ‘And I’ll prove it, too!’

Before the argument could go any further, Centaine was calling out, ‘We’re there.’

White-jacketed male staff and housemaids in smart black uniforms were waiting to greet them as they stepped out of the Daimler.

‘Welcome to Weltevreden,’ Centaine said.

Saffron looked around in wonder at a full-sized reproduction of a French château that made her home at Lusima look like a tumbledown farmhouse. She was led into a cool, quiet hallway lined with paintings.

‘I love your pictures, Cousin Centaine,’ she said.

‘Thank you, my dear. If you like, I can show you around some of the other ones in the house, as well. I think you would like them.’

‘Thank you, I would.’

‘Mater’s got a landscape by a chap called Alfred Sisley that was painted on the estate where she was born, and a Van Gogh picture of a wheat field,’ Shasa boasted.

Centaine flashed him a frown of disapproval and then turned to her guests, ‘Now I’m sure you’d like to freshen up and change before …’

‘Actually,’ Saffron interrupted her, earning a cross look from her father in turn, ‘I would like to play polo with Shasa. If he doesn’t mind playing with a girl.’

‘Oh, all right,’ he grouched.

‘Well you can’t play in that dress,’ Centaine pointed out. ‘You can borrow some of my riding breeches and a pair of my boots. I can’t promise that they’ll fit but it’s better than nothing.’ She signalled to one of the maids. ‘Could you please show Miss Courtney where my riding gear is kept?’

‘Yes, Ma’am. Come this way please, Miss.’

‘I’ll get changed too and meet you back here in a few minutes, then,’ said Shasa, and dashed up the stairs to his room.

‘Saffy’s mad keen to be up and doing. But I must say I would appreciate the chance of a bath, a shave, a fresh change of clothes and, if you have it, a nice glass of whisky,’ Leon said, when he and Centaine were alone.

‘Of course,’ Centaine said. She glanced at an antique grandfather clock whose gentle ticking could be heard now that their children had disappeared. ‘It’s quarter to six now, so by the time you’ve freshened up the sun will be – what is it you English say? – over the yardarm.’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Then it will certainly be time for a drink.’