Contents
Cover
About the Authors
Also by Barbara & Stephanie Keating
Map
Dedication
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Glossary
Copyright Page
Barbara and Stephanie Keating grew up in Kenya. One sister now lives in France and the other in Dublin. Their first novel was the bestselling To My Daughter in France, which was followed by the acclaimed novel Blood Sisters.
To My Daughter in France . . .
Blood Sisters
FOR CHRISTOPHER
Kenya, September 1970
She would never go back. That was the promise she had made to herself, but now she could not quell her excitement as the plane began plunging through layers of cloud towards the parched earth. She closed her eyes and turned her head away from the window in case it might distort, in some way, her first view of the land. Then she felt the thud of impact, and later Edward reached out his hand to help her up from her seat. There was a clunking sound as the heavy door swung open and Camilla took the first deliberate breath, savouring the unmistakable scent of Africa, dragging the familiar taste into her mouth and lungs.
The runway was like a mirage in the shimmering heat. Before them sprawled the glass and concrete of Nairobi’s airport buildings, but she barely noticed them. Her gaze devoured the bleached plains beyond the security fence, the empty blue of the morning sky, the flat tops of thorn trees, the swirl of dust as a truck made its way across a dirt track to reach the main road into the city. Tears blurred her vision as she followed Edward down the aircraft steps, placing her feet deliberately and slowly, like a pilgrim, on to the Kenyan soil. It had been so long, each year a kind of lifetime. And now she was returning for the wrong reasons, but it didn’t matter because she was here.
They had arranged with the airline that there would be no press interviews, and she was grateful when they were escorted across the tarmac into a private lounge. The handling of formalities had not changed. She could sense Edward’s irritation as he stood waiting for their passports to be stamped, shifting his weight from one leg to another. He hated bureaucracy. The immigration officer seemed bored and surly as he read the passports from cover to cover, making Camilla feel like a criminal. Or a fugitive whose disguise must be penetrated. She looked at him, deeply weary and a little afraid. Her head was aching and she tried to ignore the anxious fluttering in her stomach. The man’s brow wrinkled in a frown, nostrils flaring for a moment in the broad nose as he glanced up at her and then went back to the slow turning of pages. Eventually he lifted a rubber stamp from its pad and banged it down, on to the visa forms. She had begun to turn away when suddenly he smiled at her, his black face breaking into a flash of white teeth and humorous eyes.
‘Welcome to Nairobi, madam. Sir. Enjoy your stay.’
A porter appeared with their bags and they followed him to the customs area. An Indian couple stood beside an inspection bench, the woman stoical and silent, the husband arguing volubly. His gums and teeth were stained red from chewing betel nut and a speck of foam appeared at the corner of his mouth. His wife sighed and pulled her sari over her long hair. The customs official was turning out all their possessions, refusing to meet their gaze or to heed their pleading explanations. With five suitcases they were going to be there for a while. That evidently hadn’t changed much either. Camilla felt a rush of sympathy for them as a member of the airport staff arrived to usher her away. She felt Edward’s hand beneath her elbow as they passed through a side door marked ‘Staff Only’ and found themselves outside in a private car park.
She saw Sarah at once. They ran towards one another and embraced in silence, moved apart to study each other and then hugged again.
‘I’m so sorry.’ Sarah tucked a strand of unruly hair behind her ear. ‘It shouldn’t have taken this to bring you back.’
Camilla nodded, raising a hand to brush away tears of a different origin. They walked the short distance to the waiting car with Edward close behind them. Already the outsider. There was nothing he could say. On the twenty-minute drive into the city, a deluge of humanity spilled from houses, buses and cars. Hundreds of schoolchildren clogged the dusty paths. Office workers in crisp, starched clothes clutched briefcases and plastic bags. Older women, wrapped in brightly printed kitenge cloth, still carried bundles of sticks on their backs, the leather straps that bound the wood pressing deep into their foreheads. A herdsman in a scarlet shuka guided scrawny cattle across a ditch, tapping them with a long stick, whistling his commands. Young men swerved close on bicycles and ramshackle cars belched poisonous fumes. Uniformed drivers slid past in Mercedes cars bearing perfectly groomed black men and women. Politicians, probably; Camilla had rarely seen an African woman riding in the back of a Mercedes or even driving a car. Tilting buses overtook them, careering past at breakneck speed, packed with people, topped with a swaying cargo of sacks and bales roped on to the sagging roofs.
‘So many people! I didn’t expect so many people.’ Her voice was choked, and she found herself slightly breathless. ‘All these houses and shacks in every direction. My God, where have they all sprung from?’
‘You’ll see it everywhere, and you’ll feel it too,’ Sarah said.
Camilla turned to Edward. ‘All this space used to be empty, remember? Beautiful, empty Africa. I saw lions on the edge of this road once. And plenty of plains game, always.’
‘It’s called progress.’ Sarah’s tone was resigned.
Camilla shivered, unable to come to terms with the daunting glut and press of bodies. She had been steeling herself to accept whatever changes she might find. So much had happened since the night she had fled the land of her childhood. It had taken a long time for Edward to draw her out of the protective shell she had built around herself, but he had been patient. When the phone call had come, out of the blue, she had initially been torn apart by grief, then filled with guilt and foreboding.
‘You must go back now, darling. I know that,’ Edward had said, holding her steady in a world that was spinning away. ‘But I could take a few days off and come with you. Would that help?’
Camilla had been surprised by his offer. He seldom set aside any time for himself. It was something she had never learned to deal with well, this dedication that excluded everything and everybody when he was working. She had never believed he would get away until the moment of leaving for the airport last night. But here they were in Kenya, the land of her earliest memories, her childhood dreams and later failures.
They came to a halt outside the Norfolk Hotel and she stepped out of the Land Rover. The manager was waiting for them, all smooth assurances. They could fill in the registration cards later, he said, and he had banished the press for the time being. Camilla shut her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, before walking through the lobby and into her past. She had stood in this courtyard so many times. As a child gazing at the brilliant plumage of the birds in the aviary, as a teenager in her first ball gown, as a young woman in the throes of her first love affair. She looked at the twisted trunk of the bougainvillea that still clung to these same walls, showering the balconies with purple splendour. There were weaver birds nesting in the acacia tree and a sunbird hovered, iridescent, over the hibiscus flowers.
‘I’ll find a table for breakfast,’ Sarah said, and disappeared in the direction of the dining room.
Camilla followed Edward into their cottage suite. The room smelled of floor polish and there was a large vase of roses with a card. She read the note and placed it face down on the sideboard. Not yet, she told herself. You don’t need to deal with this now. She unlocked her suitcase, tossed a layer of clothes on to the bed and found a clean shirt and slacks. The black dress was near the top and she lifted it out and held it for a few moments, wondering if she was in the middle of a bad dream. Then she shook her head and put it on a hanger in the wardrobe. Her hand luggage was on the chest of drawers and she snapped open the locks, searching for the basics that would help her to freshen up for breakfast.
‘Hodi! Hodi, memsahib?’
The soft call was both comforting and familiar and she smiled a greeting at the room boy. They weren’t called room boys any more, of course, and Camilla wondered what the correct term was these days. She asked him to take the black dress away for pressing and to turn down the bed. It was a moment or two before she realised she was addressing him in Swahili, as though she had never left. Edward emerged from the bathroom.
‘Good God! I wondered who was out here, chattering away,’ he said. ‘You haven’t forgotten, then.’
‘I thought I had, but it was just waiting to be reawakened,’ she said. ‘I must say it’s very irritating, the way you always manage to look like that after a long flight. As if you’d come from some grand hotel where they press your suit and polish your shoes every hour. Give me a moment before we join Sarah. I need strong Kenyan coffee and a wedge of pawpaw with lime. In fact, why don’t you go on ahead to the dining room, and I’ll follow in a few minutes.’
In the bathroom mirror her reflection was not encouraging. ‘The red-eye, dead-eye look of overnight travel,’ she said aloud. ‘And my hair – full of static, like dried twigs. I hope I don’t see anyone I know.’
She washed her face and combed her hair back, twisting it into a smooth, pale gold knot on the nape of her neck. There was an outsize pair of dark glasses in her handbag and she put them on. Then she crossed the courtyard in the bright sunlight and picked her way through the morning frenzy of the lobby. A large man was standing close to the reception desk, uncomfortable and self-conscious in a bush jacket that was new and shiny. His perfectly coiffed wife watched and counted, pointing with manicured fingertips as their baggage was loaded into a safari vehicle. Camilla smiled. Soon the lacquered hair would become a helmet of trapped dust. New travelling companions introduced themselves, outwardly courteous but already vying for the best places in the safari cars. Drivers revved engines and tour guides checked their lists. Husbands chided wives lingering in the boutique, riffling through displays of shirts and hats and African jewellery. Camilla moved on. Too many reminders here.
In the comparative quiet of the dining room, Sarah and Edward were already working their way through coffee, tea and bacon and eggs. Sarah was smiling, her face open and friendly, green eyes shining as she leaned forward, explaining something with enthusiasm. She looked well, Camilla thought. Tanned and full of energy. Her brown hair was streaked with sunshine and her nose was a little burnt and beginning to peel, just as it had always been when they were children. Camilla glanced around the room. No familiar faces, thank God, and no one had recognised her.
‘Did you order for me? I’m rather hungry.’ She did not want to talk about the days ahead. It was too raw, and she needed time to compose herself.
‘You didn’t eat anything on the plane, so I’ve ordered you the works,’ Edward said, pouring coffee. ‘Then you’ll need to rest. Tomorrow will be long and demanding. I suggest we stay here today, and choose somewhere quiet for dinner this evening.’
‘No.’ She looked at him a little wildly, her distress evident. ‘I can’t lie around all day, doing nothing. I want to spend time with Sarah. This evening too. It’s been so long. And I haven’t seen Hannah since – well, since another age.’
‘She hasn’t changed. She’s very anxious to get here,’ Sarah said.
‘Is she, really?’ Camilla saw that Edward had registered the anxiety in her voice.
‘Those were bad days for all of us. Full of confusion. And fear. We were too young for what happened. None of us could have been prepared.’ Sarah reached out a hand. ‘Of course we can spend the day together. I’m here only for you.’
‘We were unbelievably close, weren’t we?’ Camilla twisted the gold bangle on her wrist and tried to smile. Sarah was so straightforward, so guileless. Totally unlike everyone in her London circle. It had taken her some time to navigate the loaded sentences of apparently innocent conversations, searching for a give-away inflection to guide her to the real meaning behind every line. ‘We’re older now, and maybe wiser,’ she said. ‘Less idealistic at any rate.’
‘When is Hannah coming into Nairobi?’ Edward said.
‘Maybe this afternoon, if she can get away. Otherwise first thing tomorrow. She said she’d ring when she got here.’ Sarah tried to sound casual, but she had noticed Camilla’s tight grip on her knife and fork and the apprehension in her eyes.
Camilla stared at the glistening eggs on her plate. So yellow, the yolks here. She wasn’t hungry any more and she wished Edward had not ordered such a large breakfast. Her stomach was churning and her courage had evaporated. She was not ready for Hannah. For any of it. She wondered if she would ever be ready to pick up the threads that had never quite broken, in spite of the years and the miles that had stretched the distances between them. They had been inseparable once, the three of them, in spite of their different backgrounds and the diverse paths they had followed since leaving school. They had believed then that nothing could destroy the bond between them. At least Sarah would be here when they were finally reunited. That would smooth over the first, difficult steps towards understanding and forgiveness.
‘How about a little shut-eye, darling? Even an hour would be good for you.’ Edward’s voice sounded very loud, crashing through her thoughts.
‘No, thank you. I told you, I don’t want to sleep.’ She was aware that she sounded shrill, that the tension between them was obvious. ‘I thought Sarah could take me to the hospital this morning,’ she said. Her heart had begun to jump, and she put down her cup to hide the tremor in her hands.
‘I don’t think you should do that right away.’ Edward was frowning as he signed for breakfast and rose from the table. ‘You’ve been through enough, and there are going to be so many people you’ll have to talk to tomorrow. You need to give yourself time, Camilla. Prepare for what will be pretty gruelling.’
‘I want to go to the hospital this morning,’ she said, her voice cracking.
‘Camilla – there’s something you should know.’ Sarah was sitting very straight in her chair, her body tense. ‘Before you see him.’
‘What is it?’ Camilla’s perfect skin had turned chalky. ‘He’s not going to die, is he? Is that what you’re going to tell me?’ She could hear her heart thumping, loud and much too fast. Her limbs weakened with relief as Sarah shook her head. ‘What is it, then? What’s happened that I don’t—’
‘Excuse me, madam,’ the head waiter spoke softly, ‘there is someone to see you. She says she is your friend. Your rafiki ya zamani.’
Camilla turned, unable to control the apprehension that was closing her throat. There was no doubt in her mind that it would be Hannah. She had not had time to think this through, to search for the right words. She looked around for Edward. He was standing a little apart and she resented his expression, the way that he allowed his curiosity to result in slightly raised eyebrows. She shouldn’t have come with him. It was her own journey into the past, her own all-consuming sadness, and he had no place there until she could make sense of it.
Hannah had reached the table. She stood very still, her face unreadable as she gazed at her childhood friend, her eyes level, a slight tilt to her chin. Then she reached out towards Camilla with both hands. The gesture seemed to freeze for a moment in the air between them, before they took the first steps across the scarred landscape of their past.
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Buffalo Springs, June 1966
It was the sound of cackling beyond the compound fence that unnerved her and brought back the nightmare’s full force. From the edge of sleep Sarah could hear the hyena’s maniacal laughter, the whup whup of its calling. The dream flooded her mind and she was up on the ridge once more. She could see the warrior with his feathered headdress, poised and motionless with arm raised, spear point glinting in the cold wash of moonlight. And then the hyena, crouching on the outcrop above her. Suddenly she was falling. Falling down the side of the hill with the sound of rocks tumbling after her, and she could hear screaming.
She opened her mouth to cry out in fear and pain but no sound came and she found herself awake, sitting bolt upright in her bed. There was a furtive rustling in the thatched roof and the night was all around her, smothering her in its blackness. Her hands were trembling as she struck a match and lit the kerosene lamp, keeping the flame low in case Dan or Allie were still awake and might notice her light. Sarah did not want to answer their knock on her door, or hear the kindness and concern in their voices. She sat on the edge of the bed trying to regain control of her shaking limbs, forcing herself to take long, slow breaths that might help to banish the horror in her head.
The images would gradually fade, Dr Markham had told her. Her father had said the same thing during their telephone conversations. But several months had passed and the dreams continued, always vivid and terrifying. She had refused sleeping pills and tranquillisers, rejected her parents’ urgings to come back to Ireland where she could distance herself from the pain. Finally, Raphael and Betty Mackay had travelled to Buffalo Springs, arriving unannounced at the research camp where their daughter lived and worked.
It was a modest compound, rather like a manyatta, with a thorn fence surrounding the rondavels in which they lived and ate. The Briggses had set up their office in the largest building. The main room was protected from rain and heat by a woven thatched roof, and the large windows had shutters that were almost always open, to allow every possible hint of breeze into the area. The furniture was old and chipped, but Allie had spread colourful kangas over the chairs to disguise their lumpy upholstery. The inside dining table doubled as her desk, and one end of it was piled with notes written in her neat hand. The back wall served as a giant noticeboard on which Dan had pinned up a series of charts, showing the numbers and movements of the elephant herds they were studying. He updated them each day, moving the coloured pins that indicated the size, age and sex of the members in each family group. Before dinner each evening he would type up the day’s observations on an ancient typewriter which made a high-pitched pinging sound each time he pushed the carriage return. A good deal of the floor space was taken up with boxes of reference papers and piles of books. Their bedroom was on one side of the living room, and they relied on the low thatch to keep out the heat and also the rain.
Sarah had been allocated her own rondavel which contained a wooden bed set beneath a cloud of mosquito netting, a roughly made desk and chair, and a cupboard with some hanging space and shelves. On the other side of the compound was a mud and wattle building that housed the kitchen and stores, and provided rooms for the staff. Two simple enclosures contained showers, with big canvas buckets hanging from overhead branches, the dangling chains ready to release hot, wood-scented water that washed away dust and sand and sweat, and always made Sarah feel newborn. The tents enclosing the long-drops were discreetly situated to one side of the sleeping huts. There was a second rondavel for the occasional guests, and Allie had planted a few hardy flowers and shrubs outside the modest buildings, adding a splash of colour to the dusty surroundings. Some three hundred yards away, the Uaso Nyiro River flowed past them, sometimes blue and silver, more often muddy and turgid in the dry heat. At night Sarah could hear the sound of hippos snorting and wallowing in the cool hours of darkness. From the day of her arrival she had loved her simple home, and her research work with Dan and Allie Briggs was the fulfilment of her childhood dreams.
After the tragedy she had returned to the camp, flayed by loss and grief but sure that her only chance of sanity lay in her work. She had been sitting under a tree, reading through her notes for the day, when the cloud of dust announced the arrival of a car. It was late afternoon and a light breeze riffled her papers, scattering several pages on the dusty ground. She bent to retrieve them, half listening to voices that were oddly familiar. Then the wooden gate creaked open and she found herself staring in amazement at her parents. On that first night she had poured out the whole story as they sat on camp chairs around the fire. She was grateful for the comfort of their presence, although there was really nothing they could say to alleviate her suffering. It was only a year since Raphael’s health problems had forced him to leave Kenya, and he was plainly overjoyed to be back in the country. But Betty was anxious about the risk of his contracting malaria again – something they all knew would be fatal. It was clear to Sarah that they had made the journey with the express purpose of persuading her to come home.
They remained in camp for a week, going out in the Land Rover each day, learning about Sarah’s work as she followed her group of elephants. She was glad that they could see her here, know that she was safe and well looked after, that this was the best place for her to be right now. But on the night before their departure, she saw that she had failed to convince them of her certainty. Betty pleaded with her to return to Ireland, to spend time at the family home in Sligo, and Raphael tried his own gentle form of persuasion.
‘We’re going to Mombasa for ten days now,’ he said. ‘We’ll visit old friends and walk the beach and swim, before heading back to Sligo. And we’d like you to come back with us when we leave for Ireland. Come home, for a while.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘I can’t leave here now,’ she said. ‘It isn’t the right time, Dad.’
‘It’s peaceful there,’ he said. ‘A good place to think. A healing place, with the sound of the sea and the strand, and the green fields and hills around you. We’ll all be there to get you through any bad patch, especially Tim. You’ve always been close to your brother.’
But after that first recounting of the horror, Sarah’s nightmares had redoubled and she did not want to talk about it any more. She knew that in Ireland she would be unable to deal with their continuing compassion, their hushed sympathy. Nor could she cope with the questions, the bewildered sorrow in the faces of relatives and friends. On the morning of their departure for the coast, Raphael and Betty finally accepted that she would not come back with them to Sligo. Dan and Allie had supported her decision, sitting up late into the night with the Mackays, trying to put their minds at ease, promising to watch over their daughter and to send her home if they thought it had all become too much. As they said their goodbyes, Sarah was torn between the longing to have them near and the need to escape into her own world. She was sure that total immersion in her work would prove the best way towards healing, towards filling the bottomless void of loss.
She had watched with tears in her eyes as their small aircraft vanished into the piercing blue of the afternoon, and then headed back to the camp. Driving through the bush in the ancient Land Rover, watching the spin and flash of an eagle in the bleached-out sky, following the herds of game through the coarse, yellow grasslands, she knew that this was the way to navigate her altered life with some sense of purpose. But the nights still lay in wait for her. Her once-welcoming hut had become a place of menacing shadows, filling her with dread each time she closed the door on another day.
Alone now, in the flicker of lamplight, Sarah heard the hyena call again and she shivered in spite of the heat in the night air. There was no point in trying to sleep. She pushed her feet into her sandals and lifted the mosquito net. Her hand was not quite steady as she picked up the lantern and went to the jumble of research papers on her desk. A folder of her most recent photographs lay on the top of the pile and she took the pictures out one by one to look at the elephants, hoping to draw strength from their ancient wisdom.
She found her work completely satisfying, thinking of it more as a vocation, relishing each new experience as she recorded the behaviour of the great creatures, in her notebooks and with her camera. And she had been more than fortunate in her employers. The Briggses had taken her on as a raw recruit, a newly qualified graduate with no experience outside of a dissecting dish in the laboratory of her Dublin college. But they had decided to give her a chance because she had spent her childhood in Kenya, already spoke fluent Swahili and was an exceptional photographer. They paid her very little, but she had a place to live and they supplied food, and she had the use of a battered Land Rover and unlimited supplies of film. Since she spent almost all of her time in the area around Buffalo Springs and the adjacent Samburu Game Reserve, Sarah had little need for money and the arrangement suited her perfectly.
During the past eight months Dan and Allie had taught her the science of observing their fascinating subjects, shown her how to write up her notes with scientific discipline, and helped her to devise a system of cataloguing her pictures. From Erope, her Samburu tracker and trusted friend, she had learned to follow the herds without intruding, and to anticipate the direction in which they might travel next in search of food and water. Slowly she had begun to understand their actions, to respect their intentions and to admire the order of their family and social structures. The team worked well together, and Sarah was proud of the fact that her talent for photography had become a new and valuable part of the project.
She sat down at her desk and began to put yesterday’s notes in order. Her eyes prickled with exhaustion and she blinked away the sensation of grit and burning, determined to focus on her papers, to obliterate the nightmare. But after half an hour she abandoned any attempt at concentration and went back to bed, turning down the lamp until it was barely a flicker, lying stiffly under the mosquito net, eyes still open. Her alarm clock told her that the dawn would not come to her rescue for another three hours. She wished that she could pray, but her childhood faith in a merciful God had been extinguished during that one, terrible night, and now she could only clutch at the sheet with anxious fingers and count out the minutes until a fractured form of sleep enveloped her.
Sarah joined Dan and Allie at the breakfast table under the acacia tree, squinting in the bright light and pulling her chair into a puddle of shade. She was too tired to eat more than the slice of pawpaw on her plate, and she crumbled some toast into small pieces and fed it to the noisy starlings strutting at her feet, waiting for any offerings and quarrelling over the spoils.
‘We need to talk about our presentation in Nairobi next week.’ Allie had noticed the shadows beneath Sarah’s eyes and the jerky movements of her strung-out body. ‘It’s shaping up to be extremely important. We’re going to put forward our budget for next year as planned, and Dan is pretty sure the African Wildlife Federation will back us for the same amount as before. But we have to expand the study now, and we badly need a new vehicle. That rattletrap you’re driving will collapse one of these days, Sarah, and land you in big trouble. You and Erope will end up trekking through the bundu past a few very unfriendly creatures, just to get back into camp.’
‘You’ve put in for more money, haven’t you?’ Sarah said.
‘We have. Although the A.W.F. aren’t too encouraging,’ Allie said, but her eyes were bright with excitement. ‘Dan has had another letter from the Smithsonian, and they’re going to have one of their chaps at the meeting. If they like what they see and hear, he may come up here afterwards.’
‘They’ve hinted that they’re willing to offer us some funding, at last,’ Dan said.
‘A published paper would bring Dan the recognition he deserves,’ Allie said, looking at her husband with pride. ‘And that’s not all. There will be press people there, including someone interested in doing a feature on us for a London paper. Plus they’ll see your photographs, Sarah. It would be fantastic if they were willing to use some of those with an article.’
‘This is our plan,’ Dan said. ‘We’re going to present our annual report as usual. But the A.W.F. has invited a couple of Nairobi-based journalists to the second half of the meeting. Guys that write articles for Time magazine and one of the British newspapers. So, after our budget discussions, we want to show some of your slides. Pictures which will catch the interest of the press, and which are not aimed only at a bunch of dry old scientists and committee members.’
‘In fact, we’d like you to make the presentation,’ Allie said. ‘You have that native gift of the gab, Sarah. No, it’s much more than that. You have a poetic turn of phrase that fires people’s imagination, makes things come alive. I’ve seen it when you talk to tourists and other visitors who come here. And since we’re using your pictures, you should be the one to talk about them.’
‘That’s right,’ Dan said. ‘Allie and I – we’re real good at what we do, wandering around after our elephants, writing things into our notebooks and all. But we don’t cut much ice on the public platform. So I reckon you could put together a slide show that gives a general picture of things up here. Something that will have a wider appeal than our usual facts and figures.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. I’ve never done anything like that.’ Sarah was alarmed.
‘And on the way back from Nairobi you could stop off at Langani for a couple of days,’ Allie said. ‘Take a break. See how Hannah’s coming along now, especially with the baby so close. What do you say?’
Sarah looked down at her plate, furiously concentrating on spreading jam on a slice of toast that she could not eat. She did not want them to recognise the panic that had begun to dry up her mouth. They were offering her a valuable opportunity to show her photographs to influential people and she was moved by their confidence, by their kindness. She owed them so much, Dan and Allie. From the beginning they had been ideal employers, and now they had become steadfast friends. But her mind and body still felt perilously close to a breakdown. Each sentence she spoke required effort, even at Buffalo Springs where she was with people who understood. She did not think she was ready to face any gathering of strangers or make a speech. Someone in the audience would be bound to know who she was, and if anyone raised the subject of the events at Langani Farm, she would fall apart.
In addition, she did not feel ready to return to Langani. It was more than three months since the wedding and she had not been able to go back, in spite of several invitations. Lately Hannah had stopped asking, and the possibility of even a weekend visit had been dropped from letters and conversations on the radio telephone. Sarah felt guilty. She knew that it would mean a great deal to her dearest friend if she drove down to the farm, but she could not bring herself to do it. On the other hand, this presentation in Nairobi was a professional matter, and it was vital to Dan and Allie. Funding for the coming year depended largely upon its success, and Sarah wanted to contribute. But if she went to pieces in the middle of it and lost them a sponsorship, she would not be able to forgive herself.
‘You know how grateful I am to both of you.’ She looked away, attempting to hide the welling of tears. ‘You’ve been so generous, and I’m touched by your faith in my powers of communication. But I can’t do it. Not yet. I could ruin things for you if I broke down, or something stupid.’
‘I can see it would be hard at first.’ Dan patted her arm. ‘But sooner or later, kid, you have to leave your sanctuary. It’s been a boon to have the bush and the elephants as a retreat. You’ve needed that during these past months. It’s not possible, though, to stay up here in isolation for ever. Otherwise I’d do it myself, for different reasons.’
‘I know that. And I will try soon to take a few days and—’
‘You’ll be among people who are working with us to protect the wildlife,’ Dan said. ‘And your fine pictures could bring us in a raft of money for the project. Allie and I are sure of that. So don’t give it the thumbs down just yet. Mull it over for a day or two. Because I do believe you’re a heck of a lot stronger than you think.’
Allie said nothing, but Sarah could read the appeal in her eyes. Even the prospect of being in the busy hum of Nairobi made her feel nauseous. Unwilling to let her friends see the depth of her fear, she mumbled that she would think things over and rose from the table with an excuse about collecting her gear for the morning’s work.
Inside her hut she remembered those first days after her return from Langani. It had been Allie who had stayed with her late into the nights, setting the lantern where it would give maximum light, making no comment when Sarah jumped at every sound and followed the room’s shifting shadows with frightened eyes. Allie, with her down-to-earth support and understanding, had allowed Sarah to make her slow adjustments and to deal with her nightmares without having to speak about the things she longed to forget. Allie and Dan had given her time to grieve, had made no demands on her since she had returned to work. Now they were asking her to do this one thing for them and she would have to refuse. It was absolutely out of the question, and in any case they could manage perfectly well on their own. After all, what had they done before she came along?
She sat down at her desk and began to sift through her slides and photographs, picking out the best shots to illustrate each aspect of their present work programme. She would write a script and Dan could read it as he showed her slides. That would have to do. But she realised that without more sponsorship for the Briggses, she herself might even be out of work and she would have to leave Buffalo Springs. To allow the research project to fail when it was so vital to the survival of the elephants she had come to love and admire – that was too awful to contemplate. For an hour she wrestled with the sentences, turning them over in her mind, trying to recapture her own awed delight as the individual characters of the herd had emerged.
She had come to know each family group, watching the huge beasts each day as they followed each other to the river with silent tread, using their trunks to drink and spray the water, digging with their tusks in the sand, rumbling to one another in conversation or trumpeting messages of warning or alarm. She had all her working notes, recorded in the precise, scientific terms that Allie had taught her to use. But they did not convey the excitement she had felt as her knowledge grew, and she had begun to understand fully the importance of protecting the magnificent animals. Finally she threw down her pen in frustration.
The idea came to her suddenly and she suppressed it at once. She knew where to find the right words, but the source was too painful to contemplate. Yet, against her will, she reached into the drawer of her desk and took out the letters. She had written them to Piet, when she had first come to Buffalo Springs and the world was a place of joy and unlimited possibilities. But she had never sent them, because she was not sure then that he loved her. Instead she had put them away, hoping that one day she might read them aloud to him. When he asked her to marry him she had decided to make the letters and her drawings and photographs into a book, and give them to him for a wedding gift.
She was barely able to read the first sentences, but as she forced herself to turn the pages, she understood what Allie had been saying. When she described the elephants, wrote about their lives and their surroundings, she did have a real gift for bringing to life a variety of stories and incidents in their daily experiences. Tears fell on to the pages she had written, blurring the power of the words she had set down for the man she had loved. Still loved. And she knew that neither Dan nor Allie could read them out on her behalf, knew she would have to find the courage to stand up and say them herself. Say them loud and clear, for the elephants, for her friends, and for the memory of a time when Piet’s image was a bright, shining hope in her life. She would have to steel herself. When she had folded the letters away she climbed into her narrow camp bed although the day had barely begun, and turned her face to the wall. Swallowing the sounds of her mourning, she lay curled into a ball, her fists clenched together until at last she slept.
A knock on the door jolted her into consciousness. The immediate sense of loss that always attended her wakening hurtled forward to invade her brain, and the noonday light was tainted with the darkness of her mind’s eye.
‘Lunch is ready, Memsahib Sarah.’ Ahmed, the camp cook, was carrying a tray with a cold Tusker beer and a tall glass. He peered in at her with concern. ‘I have made your best favourite. It will give you plenty of nguvu for the rest of the day. And Bwana Dan has sent you a Tusker.’
She took her place at the table that had been pushed further into the mottled shade. Even the birds were silent in the heat of the early afternoon and there was no hint of a breeze in the heavy air.
‘Thanks for the beer, Dan,’ she said. ‘I fell by the wayside this morning. Sorry.’
‘Come on now, kid,’ Dan said. ‘We have to look after you. Keep you in good shape for all our sakes. Finish up all that chow on your plate, and go find some elephants. I’ll drive with you this afternoon.’
She smiled at his gruff tone, aware of the underlying protectiveness that he offered, although he made valiant attempts to conceal it.
‘Look, there’s something I want to say.’ She rushed the words so that she would not be tempted to go back on her resolution. ‘You are both right. I have to face the world at some stage, and this is as good a time as any. I’ll put together a slide show for next week. And thanks for your faith in me. I’ll try to live up to it.’
In the days that followed Sarah whittled down her elephant portraits and shots of the dry, northern region, choosing her most dramatic pictures of the terrain and vegetation and then discarding them in favour of sharper images. When darkness swallowed the surrounding bush, she started up her projector and with Dan and Allie she studied and put aside her best slides, laughing over recollections of vehicles stuck in the sand, of narrow escapes from angry animals, of cameras and notebooks thrown aside as a young elephant rushed at the Land Rover, or times when clothing and notes were drenched through an open roof hatch by unexpected downpours.
It was important to create a balance. This was a scientific study, not a tourist promotion. But Sarah wanted her audience to feel the power and majesty of the elephants and their habitat, to immerse themselves in the complex structure of the reserve, to understand the reasons for the study and the way that Dan’s project could fill in the jigsaw of the region’s wildlife and its structure. There was a natural harmony in her wilderness, but there was ugliness too. Weaklings were left behind by the herds and died; drought brought starvation. Elephants and rhinos were decimated by poachers with lorries and guns. There was no place in the Briggses’ camp for a research assistant who used knowledge to hide reality. She remembered Dan’s stern challenge after she had witnessed the slaughter of several elephants by Shifta bandits. Seeing a fallen elephant, left to die after the tusks had been hacked from its majestic head, she had wept. Dan had asked her, on that day, if she was strong enough to live and work in Africa. She would learn that strength, she had told him wholeheartedly, little knowing that she would soon be put to the limits of endurance, to the edge of sanity. And today she still wanted to keep that resolve, to stay on, to contribute something to a world she had loved from childhood.
On the day before their departure for Nairobi, Allie asked her what she planned to wear.
‘Wear? I hadn’t given it a thought.’ Now that the question had arisen, Sarah realised that she had spent the last six months in faded khaki trousers and bush shirts, with a canvas hat pulled down over her eyes to shade her from the sun and prevent her nose from peeling.
‘I’ll bet you have something really good that Camilla gave you,’ Allie said. ‘This is one of the times when it’s handy to have a fashion model for a best friend.’
They settled on a linen skirt with a woven leather belt, and a cream silk blouse that showed up Sarah’s tanned complexion.
‘You can add some Samburu beads,’ Allie said. ‘The ones Erope had made for you. And you need to do something with your hair. It’s a beautiful warm colour, but it needs shaping. Maybe I can trim it. Come on, I can see you don’t trust my hairdressing skills, but I can do a great job on you. Sit out there under the tree, and I’ll get my scissors. You’ve seen me giving Dan a haircut, and he doesn’t look too bad.’
The result was surprisingly professional, and Sarah was taken aback when she looked into the small mirror on the wall of her hut. She rarely took stock of her appearance. Her face was thinner than it had been six months ago, but she was suntanned with a smattering of freckles on her cheeks, and her green eyes were bright. She had shampooed her hair and brushed it vigorously while it was still wet, so that it framed her features in a sun-streaked mass. Sarah smiled. It seemed amazing that she could look so vibrant and still feel a cold void of loss in the pit of her stomach. An emptiness that she could not afford to dwell on, lest her determination to function normally should be derailed.
She was nervous when she arrived at the headquarters of the African Wildlife Federation. Dan and Allie were in the boardroom testing the microphone, running a tray of slides through the projector, adjusting the screen. A long table and chairs stretched down the centre of the room. Thirty chairs. Each place had a folder containing the project report; a financial statement showed their expenditure to date, and a budget estimate for the following year. Dan had been told to expect someone from National Geographic, and he was on the lookout for a director from the Research Department of the Smithsonian Institute. These were the men who decided on grants that would keep the Briggses’ research alive, and hopefully allow expansion. Sarah had never addressed a meeting through a microphone before. Her mouth felt uncomfortably dry and she looked around for something to drink. On a side table stood trays of refreshments, and the smell of the coffee was comforting. She poured herself a cup and within minutes she was anxiously searching for a bathroom.
‘Oh God,’ she muttered to Allie, ‘I didn’t realise this would be so nerve-wracking. I hope I won’t let you down. You’ve heard me rehearse it, and you could still take my place.’
‘Rubbish,’ Allie said. ‘You’re going to be fine. Just speak from your heart. Speak out for the elephants. This is not about you or me, or Dan. It’s about them. Keep that in mind and you’ll be grand. And don’t drink any more coffee, or you’ll be wanting to pee. Take small sips of water if it’s really necessary.’
Introductions were made. People gathered around the table, smoking cigarettes or pipes, and discussing conservation and politics, corruption and greed and international aid funds. Sarah began to feel more confident as she talked to Dan and Allie’s sponsors, who were openly enthusiastic and impressed by the year’s results. The man from the Smithsonian Institute was more formal, and Dan took him aside to engage him in a more detailed conversation. Allie concentrated on a rumpled man who chain-smoked and had yellow fingers. He was from The Times in London and Sarah talked to him at length, hoping that something she said would persuade him to write a feature about the elephants. She was startled when Dan suddenly asked everyone to be seated and launched into his introduction.
‘Last year we took on an extra researcher to help with our work,’ he said. ‘I’d like you all to meet Sarah Mackay. She’s a great addition to our team, and she’s going to show you some of her own photographs which will illustrate the behaviour of the herds we’re studying. Through these observations you will see the delicate and essential balance that has to be maintained between the elephants and their environment. And you will understand the all-important role of the Samburu people who share the same land, and in whose hands its future protection must lie.’
Sarah stood up beside Dan, her palms clammy, her mouth dry again. But as the blinds were drawn and her photographs appeared on the large screen, she knew that the power of the pictures had captured her audience. There were slides of the river, sometimes brown and slow and lazy, sometimes rushing over shining boulders under a rain-laden sky. She showed portraits of Samburu tribesmen in their scarlet shukas and pictures of their scrawny, hump-backed cattle and flocks of ravenous goats whose images glowed through the ever-present halo of dust. She had captured the fragility of feathery grasses and wild flowers bathed in the gold light of evening, and silhouettes of baobab trees with giant trunks and spidery arms reaching into a blue, cloudless emptiness.
But more than these, there were the photographs of the elephants themselves. Their gigantic heads filled the screen, wise and silent. Power loomed in their scale, in their great feet and the bulk of thick, cross-hatched skin, in the enormous flapping ears and the raised trunk of a charging male. But she had caught their vulnerability too, with shots of a calf huddled and protected between its mother’s legs, and a series of family pictures that showed the delicacy of a caress, the joyous splashing of a mud bath, the tiny jewel of an eye set into a massive head, the glitter of water caught on an eyelash, a small mouth curved in a smile.
Finally she described the extraordinary scene she had filmed when the group she was studying had been decimated by poachers. After the ambush, when the bandits had hacked the ivory from the dead animals, she and Erope had been separated from their vehicle by the unpredictable movements of the panicked herd. Forced to hide in the thick scrub, they had stayed there all through the dark hours of that night, watching in awe as the surviving elephants emerged like ghosts from the surrounding trees, using their feet and trunks to build a cairn from stones and branches to cover their fallen comrades, keeping a vigil over the graves they had constructed until the rising sun sent them away, in search of shade and water. The rapt attention of her audience and their gasps of astonishment indicated to Sarah the impact of the pictures taken on that fateful night. When she had finished the presentation there was a brief and total silence, and then sustained applause.
Her work was inspiring and fresh the Smithsonian director said afterwards, smiling and shaking her hand. He was impressed with the Briggses and what they had accomplished so far, and her contribution had made a real impact. He had decided to visit the camp, and would drive up with Dan and Allie in a couple of days.
‘Miss Mackay, may I have a few words?’
Sarah turned to see a tall Indian man who had been in the audience. He was regarding her with interest, and holding a notebook and pencil.
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