The Hunters

‘Edie took him to The Norfolk,’ she said, and smiled wickedly. ‘He kept stealing all the ladies’ hats.’

‘And wearing them,’ Maia said. ‘The worst of it was he looked better in mine than me.’

‘Baloney. You look lovely.’

‘You’re too sweet, Sylvie.’

‘You know what to do with monkeys who steal?’ Carberry said.

‘What?’

‘Chop their paws off. Same with the natives, they won’t do it again.’

Sylvie looked sickened. Freddie raised an eyebrow.

Carberry jerked his thumb in my direction. ‘Speaking of natives, don’t you think this one here could almost pass for one of them? He’s got the thick lips and the crafty eyes.’

‘Is that meant to be an insult?’ Sylvie said icily. She put her hand up to touch her thick, dark hair, and I wondered if anyone had ever made the same comparison with her.

Carberry leered at me. ‘I bet I know what happened. Grandfather probably fucked a slave-girl.’

I’d heard this sort of thing from boys at school, but never from an adult, and my ears burned in shock. I saw Carberry’s face crease up with laughter. Maia looked embarrassed.

Freddie put his hand firmly on my shoulder. ‘See you around, Carberry.’

There was a moment of silence. I could feel Freddie’s fingers gripping me hard.

‘Pompous Brits,’ Carberry said at last. He took Maia by the elbow and steered her away. She looked back at us and mouthed ‘sorry’ over her shoulder. I felt Freddie relax.

Sylvie swung around to face us, eyes black in anger.

‘I know, I know,’ Freddie said, although she hadn’t said anything. ‘I feel sorry for Bubbles.’ He took his hand off me, and I felt a surge of relief – Freddie was still my friend, he’d saved me from Carberry.

‘Are you alright, Theo?’ Sylvie asked.

‘Is he alright?’ Freddie said. ‘I had to physically restrain him, or he might have beaten Carberry to a pulp.’

I looked down and saw my body was shaking, and my hands were in fists. I hadn’t even realised.

The races started just after one pm, by which point my head was pounding from the gin and the closeness of the air. I’d no idea what excuse I could give my mother for staying out so long – that was a problem some other Theo would have to deal with. This Theo sat between Nicolas and Freddie in the grandstand, with Sylvie on Freddie’s other side. First up, Nicolas told me, was the divided pony handicaps. I could barely watch. The thundering of the horses’ hooves as they swept past made my headache a thousand times worse, and I closed my eyes so their blurred forms wouldn’t make me feel too sick. I desperately wanted some water, but no one had offered me any, and it seemed childish to ask.

Next was the jumps racing. Nicolas and Freddie argued good-naturedly over whether it was called steeplechasing or National Hunt racing. I dozed off in my seat, and woke even thirstier than before.

The feature race was the Jardin Lafitte Cup, a 1400m course. Wiley Scot was running.

‘What about a bet on him, Theo?’ Freddie asked. ‘A simple win-bet?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, still sleepy. ‘What are the other horses like?’

They laughed.

‘Very smart,’ Nicolas said.

‘A disgusting level of pragmatism,’ Freddie said. ‘Where’s your faith?’

‘Will they let me bet?’ I asked.

‘I’ll place it for you,’ Freddie said. He stood up and held out his hand. I gave him the notes my father had slipped me on Christmas Day. Freddie counted them, then slapped me on the back.

‘You’re either a bloody idiot or a confident genius,’ he said.

Sylvie leaned over and put her hand on my arm. My skin tingled where she was touching me. ‘Don’t do it if you don’t want to,’ she said.

‘It’s just a bit of fun, darling,’ Freddie said to her.

‘It’s fine,’ I said.

She moved closer to me to let Freddie pick his way out of the grandstand, and her thigh came to rest against mine. I prayed I wouldn’t make a fool of myself, and tried to think of distracting images – suet pudding, my grandmother’s bunions, my father in his undergarments.

‘I hear you had a run-in with Carberry, Theo,’ Nicolas said on my other side.

‘I don’t think he liked me.’

‘He was despicable as usual,’ Sylvie said. She took out a cigarette and Nicolas lit it for her.

‘Maia’s pregnant, you know,’ he said.

‘Oh God. The poor woman.’

‘What did he say to you?’ Nicolas asked me.

‘He was talking about my appearance.’

‘He did that to me as well,’ Nicolas said. ‘The first time we met, he insinuated I was a closet homosexual. I said, if only I were that interesting.’

He smiled at me and I returned it.

‘You’re a hundred times more interesting than John Carberry,’ Sylvie said.

Their easy conversation confused me, knowing what I did about Sylvie feeling trapped. Nicolas was the nicest person I’d met, I thought, and I wondered what it was about him that was wrong for her.

Freddie returned with more pink gin for everyone and a ticket for me. ‘They’re leading them on now,’ he said.

I looked over and saw the eight horses being walked onto the course, saddled and draped with rugs to keep their muscles warm. I recognised Wiley Scot immediately. Even from a distance he seemed to be quivering.

‘Bonne chance,’ Nicolas said.

I made the effort to tear my eyes away from the animals to look at him and offer a smile, although it felt more like a grimace. The blood was thundering through my body as loudly as the horses had sounded earlier, but otherwise everything was strangely quiet. The crowd was waiting, tense. When the grooms removed the rugs and the jockeys sprang up into the saddles, I was convinced I could hear the creak of the leather, and the murmurs as the men tried to calm their mounts. Wiley Scot bucked and did a side-step, looking like he was trying to shake his rider off.

‘He doesn’t want to race,’ Sylvie said.

‘Of course he wants to race,’ Freddie said. ‘It’s all he knows how to do. He’s just picking up on the atmosphere.’

The jockeys were lining up on the other side of the course now like coloured specks of dust; red, green, yellow, and Wiley Scot’s in dark blue. Nicolas handed me a pair of binoculars and I trained them on the figures with wet hands.

‘They’re off,’ someone called. People were clambering to their feet around me and I jumped up too. The horses were all clumped together at first, but soon they separated out and I picked out Wiley Scot in third place.

Now I saw the elegance in the horses’ movements. Their bodies hardly seemed to move at all; heads and chests thrust forward they cut a streamlined shape through the air as their legs curled and stretched out below, each hoof only touching the ground for a fraction of a second before they were flying again.

‘Come on, Wiley Scot,’ Freddie shouted near me.

He was coming up on the outside of the horse in second place. Now they were closer I could see the sweat darkening his brown coat, and his muscles rippling with each stride, and my throat began to close up with a lump of excitement and fear. I was keenly aware of the ticket between my fingers, the enormity of the money it represented for me. The ground was shaking and the wind that had sprung up blew back the jockeys’ jackets like sails. I tightened my hold on the ticket, half-hoping, half-afraid it would be carried away.

Wiley Scot’s jockey kicked at him and he passed the second horse. He was gaining on the horse in first place now, with less than fifty yards to go. I was clenching my entire body, my teeth pressed together as if that would spur my horse on, when I saw the first horse stumble and fall, the jockey rolling off his back right into the path of Wiley Scot. I heard Sylvie cry out just as Wiley Scot leaped gracefully, gathering up his legs to clear the figure in front of him, and then he was galloping past us in a cloud of red dust, his head bent down as if for a charge. I only realised I’d stopped breathing when he passed the finishing post and I found myself gasping for air.

‘You’re rich, young man,’ Freddie said, clapping me on the back as the grandstand erupted around us.

The outside of the Muthaiga Club was pink pebbledash and white stone, turning red and gold in the setting sunlight. Freddie guided me up its colonnaded walkway and paused for a moment so I could lean against one of the ivy-covered pillars. After my win, and with Freddie’s encouragement, I’d had several more gins, and now the ground seemed dangerously unsteady beneath my feet. Any thought of getting home soon had long since vanished.

‘Come on, I’ll give you the tour,’ Freddie said.

We pushed through the glass door into an airy lobby with a parquet floor and cool cream and green walls. Freddie continued towards the back; I tried to follow him without falling, Sylvie and Nicolas walking behind me.

‘Ballroom,’ he said, pointing through a set of double doors. ‘Bar – no tall stools allowed. Squash courts here, and golf course at the back.’ We stepped through a set of French doors onto a covered veranda, and I had an impression of a perfectly manicured lawn, sprinkled with banana plants, ferns, flowerbeds and avenues of eucalyptus trees. Several people were in the middle of a croquet game, and the thud of the mallet meeting the ball carried over to us as we hovered on the step leading down to the garden. I clutched my head and hoped it would stop reeling soon.

‘They call it the man’s paradise,’ Freddie said. ‘No Jews allowed, of course.’

‘Although they’ve had to let women in,’ Sylvie said. ‘The balls were a little lonely beforehand.’

‘I think I should sit down,’ I said.

‘You do that,’ Freddie said. He helped me back onto the veranda and into a deep wicker chair then called a waiter over.

‘We’ll have some coffee,’ he said. ‘And then some champagne.’

I rested my elbows on the table, propping my head up in my hands and massaging my temples with my fingertips. From the ballroom came the sound of a band tuning up.

Sylvie leaned against the pillar to my left and Nicolas came to stand beside her, one hand resting on the small of her back. Her amber smell seemed more powerful than before and my mind was fugged up with it.

Freddie pulled out the chair next to me and sat down. ‘You’ll feel better soon,’ he said, grinning. ‘I remember the first time I got tight – even younger than you. I ended up passing out under my friend’s parents’ bed. No idea how I got there.’

‘I’m sure there was a female involved somewhere,’ Sylvie said, and Freddie laughed.

The drinks arrived and I grabbed at the coffee, then swallowed it in four gulps.

‘That should do the trick,’ Freddie said. I looked up and he grinned. ‘What about a game? Played croquet before?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on then. The four of us versus the four of them.’

I followed him onto the lawn. A waiter followed with our champagne in an ice bucket and placed it at the edge of the croquet court.

There were two men and two women already in the game, and introductions were made, although I only remembered Hugh Cholmondeley – Lord Delamere – who had a large nose that overshadowed all his other features, and a high forehead covered in papery skin. He looked to be in his late fifties, frailer than my father, but still authoritative.

‘Mind if we join?’ Freddie said.

‘We’ll start again,’ Delamere said. ‘Only just got going, anyway.’

He tossed a coin and Nicolas called correctly. Freddie handed me a mallet. ‘We’ll be blue and black,’ he said. ‘Association rules here. You know them?’

The coffee was mixing uneasily with the contents of my stomach but at least it had cleared my head. ‘I think so.’

‘Good. You play first. Start with the south-west hoop.’

The court was rectangular, with a peg driven into the grass at the centre, and three hoops on either side. Four of the hoops stood almost at the corners of the rectangle, with the two inner hoops on each side slightly closer to the peg. I vaguely remembered having to follow a pattern of the outer hoops first, then the inner hoops, then playing another circuit in semi-reverse before you could hit the peg. My hands felt hot and slippery with sweat. It was a long time to keep upright and sober.

Freddie placed both our balls on the ground near the south-west hoop. I gripped my mallet and swung gently at the blue ball. There was a thunk as it made contact, and I felt a momentary wash of relief, but the ball rolled uselessly to the side of the first hoop.

‘Never mind,’ Freddie called out behind me.

I turned around, face burning, and handed the mallet to Nicolas, then went to stand with the other players, a few yards away from the first hoop.

Lord Delamere took the first turn for the other side and the red ball sailed through the hoop. ‘I hear Black Harries was at Kariokor today,’ he said, lining up for a continuation stroke.

‘I didn’t see him,’ Freddie said. ‘And I’m surprised – I thought he never left Larmudiac.’

‘He sounds like a pirate,’ Sylvie said, lighting a cigarette.

‘He looks like one too – he’s got one hell of a black beard. And he’s probably the strongest man in Africa.’

‘They say he killed a leopard with a single blow to the head,’ Lord Delamere said. The red ball continued its path towards the second hoop, but stopped just short. Nicolas took the next turn and hit the black ball so it stopped just before the first hoop, dead on; Freddie grinned at me and I tried to return it.

‘He loves horses,’ he said, ‘but he doesn’t tame them. He has acres and acres of land, and he lets them roam around, but he doesn’t geld them or break them in or feed them.’

‘What happens with the horses if there’s a drought?’ Sylvie asked.

‘They starve.’

‘He sounds cruel.’

‘But they’re free.’ Freddie caught my eye. ‘Don’t you think animals prefer to be free, Theo?’

‘But Harries isn’t an animal,’ Sylvie said. Her lips were white and pressed together. ‘He knows they’ll starve and it’s in his power to do something about it.’

‘Don’t upset yourself, my dear,’ Lord Delamere said. He nodded at the ice bucket. ‘What if we distribute some of that champagne, eh?’

The champagne was poured, candles were lit on the veranda and suddenly it was my turn again. I stood to the side of the first hoop and lined up the shot more carefully this time. I managed to get the ball halfway through the hoop but when I went to tap it again Delamere called out, ‘No continuation stroke – you haven’t run it through.’

I handed the mallet over. ‘I’m not helping much.’

‘You’re helping us,’ one of the new women said kindly. She pointed at my glass. ‘Here – have a top-up.’

We all moved to stand in a line along the west boundary now, watching Delamere’s play. The red ball was already through the second hoop, and he took it through the third and the fourth before his turn was up.

‘What do you think of that, eh?’ he said.

Sylvie had gone quiet since the argument about Black Harries, but now she swore. ‘Fucking goddamn it. Not twice in one day.’

I felt the mood change before Carberry reached us, and my heart sank. The conversation died out. Only Freddie looked comfortable still.

‘Ill met by moonlight, Carberry,’ he said.

‘I thought I’d find you here,’ Carberry said. ‘Talking about Johnny Bull.’

‘You’re British too,’ Freddie said. ‘Or Irish, at least. Have you forgotten, Baron Carberry?’

Carberry took out a cigarette. Sylvie was at the end of the line, and he leaned towards her, taking her wrist in his fingers. ‘May I?’

She shrugged, but I felt the revulsion coming off her. I took a long drink of my champagne.

Carberry lit his cigarette on hers, then stood back. ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ he said, blowing smoke out in a cloud. ‘But I got my American naturalisation papers six years ago.’

‘I hear they were revoked,’ Lord Delamere said. ‘For bootlegging.’

‘Finally,’ Sylvie said, crushing out her own cigarette in the grass. ‘Something interesting about you.’

Carberry nudged the yellow ball with his foot, sending it back towards the start. ‘I can’t wait to see your faces when your little Empire comes crashing down.’

Lord Delamere turned purple. ‘Look, Carberry –’

Carberry snapped his fingers at a waiter on the veranda and called over, ‘Bring me a whisky, boy. And don’t bother trying to cheat me on the chit – I can read.’

Nicolas stepped onto the court and picked up the yellow ball, returning it to its old spot. ‘Lucky for us I have a photographic memory. Excuse us while we continue play, Carberry.’

‘Which team are you on?’ Carberry asked Sylvie. ‘I’ll join you. One of the only good British exports, this game.’

She looked away.

‘It’s my turn,’ Nicolas said. ‘Take it if you want.’

Carberry took the mallet Nicolas was offering, held his cigarette in his teeth, and hit my blue ball cleanly through the first hoop and all the way through the second.

‘Good shot,’ Delamere said reluctantly.

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

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

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

‘We built the place,’ Lord Delamere said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What?’

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

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

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

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

‘You seemed to believe it,’ Nicolas said.

‘Just trying to scare the ladies.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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