knowledge was somewhat fresher and he offered me his guidebook as a reference.
“Be careful with the natives,” he warned. “Don’t let them take advantage of you. If you need advice, find an Englishman who’s been there and knows the drill. Make sure you visit the club in Nairobi. It’s the best place to get a bit of society and all the news. They won’t let you join, naturally, since you are a lady, but you would be permitted inside as the guest of a member. You will want to mix with your own kind, of course, but mind you steer clear of politics.”
“Politics! In a backwater like this?” I teased.
The captain had lovely eyes, but the expression in them was so serious it dampened the effect. “Definitely. Rhodesia gained its independence from the Crown last year, and there are those who feel that Kenya ought to be next.”
“And will England let her go as easily as she did Rhodesia?”
A slight furrow plowed its way between his brows. “Difficult to say. You see, England doesn’t care about Africa itself, not really. It’s all about control of the Suez.” He flipped open the guidebook and pointed on the map. “France, England and Germany have all established colonies in Africa to keep a close eye upon the Suez. At present, we have the advantage,” he said with a tinge of British pride, “but we may not keep it. It all depends on Whitehall and how nervous they are about India.” He traced a line from India westward, through the Arabian Sea, into the Gulf of Aden and then a sharp turn up the slender length of the Red Sea to the Suez at the tip of Egypt. “See there? Whoever controls Egypt controls the Suez, and through it, all the riches of India.”
I picked up the long slender line of the Nile. One branch, the Blue, curved into Ethiopia, but the other snaked through Uganda and trailed off somewhere beyond. “And whoever controls the Nile controls Egypt.”
“They do,” he conceded. “For now, we Brits control Egypt and the Suez is safe, but matters could change if the ultimate source of the White Nile is discovered to be in hostile territory.”
“Reason enough for England to hold onto Kenya,” I observed.
“Not just that,” he said, slowly folding up the map. “England has an obligation to the Indians who have come to settle here.”
“Indians? In Kenya?”
“Thousands,” he said grimly. “Now, they did their part during the war and no doubt about it. But one cannot deny that it has complicated matters here to no end. They are agitating for the right to own land, and some at Whitehall are inclined to give it them.”
“That can’t make the white colonists very happy.”
“Tensions are running high, and you’d do well to avoid any appearance of taking sides. Not that anyone would expect so lovely a lady to trouble herself with such things,” he added. I was a little surprised at his gallantry.
“Now, don’t you even think of flirting with me,” I warned him with a light tap to the arm. “I know you have a wife back in Southampton.”
He gave me a rueful smile. “That I do. But I can still appreciate innocent and congenial company.”
“So long as we both understand that the company will remain innocent,” I returned with an arch glance.
He laughed and freshened my drink. “My vessel and myself are at your disposal, Miss Drummond. How may we amuse you?”
I cocked my head to the side and pretended to think. “I would like to steer the ship.”
3
I did steer the ship, and very nearly ran her into an island, but the captain was most understanding and we parted as friends. When I disembarked with Dodo – still looking a bit worse for wear – the crew assembled to wave us off and even fired a salute. I blew kisses to them until Dodo jerked my arm nearly out of the socket.
“Delilah, must you always make such a spectacle out of yourself?” she hissed. I tried not to take it personally. She still looked peaky and clutched her basin fervently.
“It’s not me, darling. The boys gathered to see us onto shore. It would be rude not to acknowledge them.” I waved one last time as I climbed into the car waiting to transfer us to the station. Dodo heaved into her basin while she juggled my jewel case and a strap of books the crew had given me, all inscribed with thoughtful messages.
The town of Mombasa was just as strange and wild as I had expected, the air damp and heavy with the scent of spices and smoke and donkeys. I lifted my nose, sniffing appreciatively, but Dodo just moaned softly until we were safely ensconced on the train and pulling away from the city.
I lowered the window, letting in the fragrant spices and the tang of the woodsmoke that poured from the engines. “Here, Dodo, sit by the window and stick your head out like a dog. The fresh air will sort you out.”
She did as I told her to and soon her colour came back, although that might have been the red dust blowing into her face. She sat back after a while and we passed the next hours peacefully. Dodo dozed and I watched Africa reveal itself. First came the mangrove swamps with their sinister-looking roots. They reminded me of the bayous back home, the branches twisting out to catch at a person and hold them fast. The roots thrust up through the muck, looking as if the trees had gotten up and walked around when no one was looking and had just come to rest.
After the mangrove swamps, there were acres of orchards thick with tropical fruits – coconuts and mangoes, bananas and papayas, all ripening like jewels as monkeys frolicked through their branches, plotting and pilfering like highwaymen. Beyond the fruit trees, the country opened up to wide prairie, tilting upward like an angled plate and each mile carried us higher. We crossed a few bridges I didn’t like the looks of, and I liked the sound of them even less. Each one swayed and creaked in protest, and I held my breath until we made it to the other side.
We stopped at every small station on the line to fill the boilers of the steam engines, and at every station women peddlers with sleek black skin wrapped bright calico fabric about their bodies and sold wares from baskets on their heads. I bought bananas and mangoes and devoured them, licking mango juice from my hands as Dora continued to moan.
I pointed out one bridge from my guidebook as we crossed it. “This is the Tsavo bridge, Dodo. When it was built, a pair of man-eating lions spent nine months gobbling up the crew. It says here they ate more than a hundred men.”
She gave a delicate hiccup and fixed me with a hateful look. “What are you reading? The Ghoulish Guide to Kenya?”
I waved the book at her. “It’s the guidebook the captain gave me, his own personal copy. Baedeker’s. Ooh, and it says that the lions would creep into camp and carry off victims, staying just close enough that their companions could hear the beasts crunching into the bones in the night.”
“Stop it, Delilah. You’re just as bad as you were when we were children, always reading those horrible ghost stories out loud just to frighten me.”
“Don’t be stupid. I read them to you because you never owned you were frightened. If you’d shown the slightest fear I would have stopped.”
“I used to lock myself in the bathroom and sleep in the bathtub. Of course I was frightened,” she argued. “You just liked to torment me.”
“Possibly,”
