over the pages, and in one exquisite drawing a leopard bowed before an elephant wearing a crown. There were tiny watercolour sketches of flowers so lush and colourful I could almost smell their fragrance on the page. Or perhaps it was from the tissue-thin petals, now crushed and brown, that Nigel had pressed between the pages. He conjured Africa for me in that book. I could see it all so clearly in my mind’s eye. I used to wish he would take us there, and I secretly hoped Mossy would change her mind and decide she loved Africa so I could see for myself whether the leopard would really bow down to the elephant.
But she never did, and soon after she packed us up and left Nigel and years passed and I forgot to dream of Africa. Until a sleety early April morning in Paris when I had had enough of newspapers and gossip and wagging tongues and wanted right away from everything. Africa. The very word conjured a spell for me, and I took a long drag from my cigarette, surprised to find my fingers trembling a little.
“All right,” I said slowly. “I’ll go to Africa.”
2
Quentin raised his glass of champagne. “A toast. To my brave and darling Delilah and all who go with her. Bon voyage!”
It was scarcely a fortnight later but all the arrangements had been made. Clothes had been ordered, trunks had been packed, papers procured. It sounds simple enough, but there had been endless trips to couturiers and outfitters and bookshops and stuffy offices for tickets and forms and permissions. By the end of it, I was exhausted, so naturally I chose to kick up my heels and make the most of my last evening in Paris. Quentin had guessed I would be feeling a little low and arranged to take me out. It had been a rather wretched day, all things considered. I had almost backed out of going to Africa a dozen times, but that morning Mossy appeared in my suite brandishing the latest copy of a scurrilous French newspaper that had somehow acquired photographs of Misha’s death scene. They dared not publish them, but the descriptions were gruesome enough, and they had taken lurid liberties with the prose as well.
“‘The Curse of the Drummonds,’” Mossy muttered. “How dare they! I’m no Drummond. I was married to Pink Drummond for about ten minutes sometime in 1891. I barely remember his face. If they want to talk about a curse on the women of our family, it ought to be the L’Hommedieu curse,” she finished, slamming the door behind her for emphasis.
With that I had given up all hope of avoiding exile and started pouring cocktails. I was only a little tight by the time Quentin picked me up, but he was lavish with the champagne, and when we reached the Club d’Enfer, I was well and truly lit.
I adored the Club d’Enfer. As one would expect from its name, it was modeled on Hell. The ceiling was hung with red satin cut into the shape of flames and crimson lights splashed everything with an unholy glow. A cunning little devil stood at the door greeting visitors by swishing his forked tail and poking at people’s bottoms with his pitchfork.
Quentin rubbed at his posterior. “I say, is that really necessary?”
“Oh, Quentin, don’t be wet,” I told him. “This place has swing.”
Behind us, my cousin Dora gave a little scream as the pitchfork prodded her derrière.
“Don’t bother,” I told the devil. “She’s English. You won’t find anything but bony disapproval there.”
“Delilah, really,” she protested, but I had stopped listening. A demonic waiter was waving us to a table near the stage, and Quentin ordered champagne before we were even seated.
Around us the music pulsed, a strange cacophonic melody that would have been grossly out of place anywhere else but suited the Club d’Enfer just fine.
As we sat, the proprietor approached. He – she? – was a curiously androgynous creature with the features of a woman but a man’s voice and perfectly-cut tuxedo. On the occasion of my first visit to the club, it had introduced itself as Regine and seemed to be neither male nor female. Or both. I had heard that Regine’s tastes ran to very hairy men or very horsey women, of which I was neither.
Regine bowed low over my hand, but then placed it firmly in the crook of his or her arm.
“My heart weeps, dear mademoiselle! I hear that Paris is about to lose one of the brightest stars in her firmament.”
Such flowery language was par for the course with Regine. I smiled a little wistfully.
“Yes, I am banished to Africa. Apparently I’ve been too naughty to be allowed to stay in Paris.”
“The loss is entirely that of Paris. And do you travel alone to the pais sauvage?”
“No. My cousin is coming. Regine, have you met Dora? Dora, say hello to Regine.”
Dora murmured something polite, but Regine’s eyes had kindled upon seeing her long, lugubrious features. “Another great loss for Paris.”
Dora dropped her head and I peered at her. “Dodo, are you blushing?”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “The lights are red.”
Regine shrugged. “A necessary artifice. One must believe one is truly a tourist in Hell at the Club d’Enfer.” With that, Dora received a kiss to the hand and blushed some more before Regine disappeared to order more champagne and some delicious little nibbles for us.
Quentin shook his head. “I must admit I’m a bit worried for you, Delilah. Africa won’t be anything like Paris, you know. Or New York. Or St. Tropez. Or even New Orleans.”
I sipped at the champagne, letting the lovely golden bubbles rush to my head on a river of exhilaration. “I will manage, Quentin. Nigel has provided me with letters of introduction and very sweetly made me a present of his best gun. I am well prepared.”
“Not the Rigby!” Quentin put in faintly.
“Yes, the Rigby.” It was the second gun I learned to shoot and the first I learned to love. Nigel had commissioned it before travelling to Africa, and it was a beautiful monster of a firearm – eleven pounds and a calibre big enough to drop an elephant.
Quentin shook his head. “Only Nigel would be sentimental enough to think a .416 is a suitable gun for a woman. Can you even lift it?”
“Lift it and fire it better than either of his sons. That’s why he gave it to me instead of them. They’ll be furious when they realise it’s gone.” I grinned.
“I can’t say as I blame them. It must have cost him the better part of a thousand pounds. I suppose you remembered ammunition?”
“Of course I did! Darling, stop fussing. I will be perfectly fine. After all, I have Dora to look after me,” I said with a nod toward where she sat poking morosely at a truffled deviled egg.
“Poor Dora,” Quentin observed, perhaps with a genuine tinge of regret. Quentin had always been sweetly fond of Dora in the way one might be fond of a slightly incontinent lapdog. The fact that she bore a striking resemblance to a spaniel did not help. She was dutiful and dull and had two interests in life – God and gardens. We were distant cousins, second or third – the branches of the Drummond family tree were hopelessly knotted. But she was a poor relation to my father’s people, and as such, was at the family’s beck and call whenever I required a chaperone. She had dogged me halfway around the world already, and I wondered if she were growing as tired
