Promise the Night (22 page)

“Good heavens!” she exclaimed in a near-falsetto, “I wonder how that got here. It’s a joka! It’s not poisonous, except for its skin. Anyone who touches it will break out in boils soon after. And if they don’t wash their hands constantly for two days…” She paused.

A strangled voice, just barely identifiable as Mary’s, asked, “What? What will happen?”

With a solemn air, Beryl said, “She might lose the hand.” She picked up a ruler and, with exaggerated care, slid it under the snake
to lift it by its middle and headed out of the dormitory. She closed the door behind her and listened to Mary’s panicked voice and the splash of water in the washbasin.

Giggling to herself, Beryl draped the snake around her shoulders and sneaked down the hallway, grateful that she had learned to walk so silently. She tiptoed past Miss Seccombe’s study and ran down the back stairs to ease herself and the snake into the pale darkness of the Nairobi night.

Beryl walked down the road, away from the city lights and the school. She stopped next to a stand of trees with a thicket of flowering bushes underneath. Sinking down to the ground, she crossed her legs underneath her ridiculous billowing nightgown.

“I wish I could have seen Mary’s face,” she confided to the snake. “But I didn’t trust myself not to give the show away.” She ran a forefinger across the back of its head. “I wish you could talk. I could use a friend.” The snake gave a convulsive shudder, took a last snap at her finger, and slithered off her shoulders to disappear into the thicket.

Beryl leaned back against the tree and looked up at the night sky. She and Kibii used to look at the stars together. She knew that home was only ninety miles away, but her old friends, the constellations, shivered in the pale sky like strangers, obscured by the lights and smoke of Nairobi. What was Kibii doing now? she wondered. Was he a warrior yet?

“Beryl! Beryl!” A voice whispered her name. Startled, Beryl looked up at the sky. Then she realized the voice was coming from a small figure walking toward her. Her hand went to the dagger she had secreted in the pocket of her nightdress.

“It’s me. Doris. Are you all right?”

“Of course I am,” answered Beryl. She took her hand off her knife. “What could hurt me out here?”

“Oh Beryl. You shouldn’t just leave like that—if Miss Seccombe does a bed check, you’ll get into trouble.”

“So will you.” Beryl looked at Doris warily. “Why are you out here?”

“I was worried about you.”

Beryl nodded and, to her surprise, tears swam in her eyes.

Doris couldn’t see the tears in the dark. She went on, “Mary is an absolute witch. I could have told her that a little sand boa wouldn’t scare you, but she was so sure you would scream.”

“What’s she doing now?” Beryl asked slyly.

Doris clasped her hand over her mouth to keep back her giggles. “She’s washing her hands like mad. None of the other girls will come near her. She’s in hysterics.”

Beryl and Doris laughed quietly together.

“Doris,” Beryl began.

“Call me Dos,” Doris interrupted. “All my friends do.”

Warmth spread through Beryl. “Dos, why do they hate me?”

“They don’t hate you. They don’t understand you. Or what it’s like to live in the bush. They all come from the city.”

“But you understand, don’t you?” Without knowing how, Beryl was certain that Dos had lived someplace wild.

Dos nodded. “My father has a farm out by Thika. My mother and I joined him two years ago. I loved it out there. Coming here felt like going to jail.”

“Even my skin feels different here,” Beryl said. “I don’t know how I can last a whole year!”

Dos grabbed Beryl’s hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Beryl squeezed it back and said, “But you look like them. You talk like them. Dos, how do you do it?”

“My mother insisted that I be ladylike. She said someday I would go back to England, and she didn’t want me to shock society. What about your mother?”

“I don’t have one. Not really.” In the darkness, Beryl could feel Dos’ questioning look. “She’s in England. She left when I was little.”

“Oh.”

“Can you help me?” The unfamiliar words felt strange on Beryl’s tongue. “I promised my father I would go to school for a year, but I’m not sure I can last. If I get expelled, he’ll send me to England. Tell me how to get along here.”

Dos leaned back against a tree trunk to think. Finally she said, “Your main problem is Mary. She’s used to bossing everybody around. Take care of her, and the others will go where they’re led.”

“I don’t want to lead them!” Beryl cried. “Let Mary do that.”

“You don’t have a choice. Either lead them, or keep finding who knows what in your bed.”

Beryl nodded. She would use her Nandi skills. She would watch carefully and study the enemy. Then she would make her move.

LOCATION: Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

DATE: Midmorning, 5 September, 1936

I made it to North America. Not quite as far as New York, but at the moment, I’m quite happy to be on terra firma. I lift my foot out of the bog and it squelches. I could have used some more firming in my terra. I breathe deeply and savor the silence and fresh air.

Now, to more practical matters. How am I to get out of here? A quick glance tells me that my poor old Messenger won’t be flying me out. The propeller is buried in mud, and the engine has been ripped from the chassis. I feel much the same way.

No one knows to look for me, much less where. I’ll have to rescue myself. It won’t be the first time.

Easier said than done. I must have covered three miles, up to my waist in this nasty bog. The gash on
my head has started to bleed again. Finally, I see a fisherman. He stares at me as though I’m that monster they found in Loch Ness.

“I’m Beryl Markham,” I say. “I’ve just flown in from England.”

He takes me to a godforsaken hut on a deserted stretch of coast. To my delight, there’s a telephone. I turn to ask how a phone came to be there, but the fisherman answers first. “To report shipwrecks. You’re the first plane crash.”

I’m not one for looking in a mirror, but I suspect the expression on my face can best be described as rueful.

Within a day, I’ve been cleaned up and supplied with new clothes. There’s a dashing bandage across my
forehead. I’ll have another scar to add to my collection. A plane, a Beechcraft, comes to collect me. The pilot lets me take a turn at the controls. To my relief, he doesn’t say anything about the last plane I flew. I’m heading to New York City, where I’m told a crowd of well-wishers has been waiting for over a day. I’m being hailed as a great success.

Ha! If I had been successful, I’d be flying The Messenger out of here, instead of leaving her behind in a cold bog. At least I didn’t drown. I’m one up on Icarus.

FOR THE NEXT WEEK, BERYL KEPT TO HERSELF AS SHE WATCHED the other students. Her first mistake, she decided, was trying to impress them at all. With the exception of Dos, she had never had any luck with girls. Everything she had ever learned from the Nandi was about being the best among the boys. She would start there.

She walked up to Sonny Bumpus on the makeshift cricket field marked with chalk lines. He was the most popular boy at school.

“I want to play, too,” she said. Her words fell like coconuts from the palm trees—with a thud. The last time she had heard such deafening silence was the day she asked Arap Maina to let her hunt lion.

“No,” Sonny said flatly. He was dressed in clothes that were slightly too small, and his pale complexion was pink and peeling from the sun. “You’re a girl.”

“I can bowl and hit as well as you can,” Beryl insisted.

“Not likely.” The other boys had gathered round. They laughed and congratulated Sonny as though he had said something clever.

Beryl took a deep breath. “If I can bowl, can I play?”

Sonny stared at her, then around the circle of boys. With their tacit approval, he said, “If you can stand at one end of the pitch and knock the bails off the other wicket, you can play.”

The boys nudged each other and whispered excitedly. Beryl could guess what they were saying—the distance between the wickets was more than twenty yards. But Beryl had not learned to throw a spear at a moving animal for nothing. A wicket that stayed in one place and couldn’t think for itself was an easy target.

“It’s a bet,” she said.

Beryl took up a bowling position at the wicket. She squinted into the sun to judge the distance to the other end of the field. Beryl tried to wiggle her toes in her tight shoes. It would be easier if she were barefoot, but she didn’t think the boys would wait for her to unlace them.

The boys stood on the edge of the field, making rude comments.

“I bet she’ll bend her elbow!”

“Who does she think she is? Jack Hobbs?”

And most infuriating of all, “Girls can’t play cricket.”

Beryl took the ball Sonny handed her. She examined it closely. Arap Maina had taught her to respect the special properties of a spear. Surely the ball deserved the same treatment. She weighed it in her hand, feeling the rough leather and the raised stitching. Holding the ball lightly by her fingertips, she swung her arm back in a windmill motion, without bending her elbow, and let it fly at the opposite wicket.

The ball sailed through the air and knocked off both bails on the distant wicket with a satisfying thump.

Beryl turned triumphantly to the boys as the ball bounced back toward the center of the pitch. “So, which team am I on?” she asked. Her smile faded when she saw the dismay in their faces.

Shoved forward by the others, Sonny spoke for all of them. “That didn’t count. You—you…stepped outside the creases.”

“I did no such thing!” Beryl narrowed her eyes and stomped over to him. “Sonny Bumpus, you made a deal. Are you welshing?”

There were few more insulting things to say to an Englishman, but to Beryl’s mind, she had nothing to lose.

“Who are you calling a bloody Welshman?” Sonny said indig-nantly, his face turning brick red. But he wouldn’t meet her accusing eyes. “You didn’t do it right. How could you? Girls don’t have the brain capacity to learn cricket.” And with that, he turned his back to her.

“You can keep your stupid ball,” she growled, throwing the ball into the dirt and walking away. Skip rope and cricket had been disastrous. It was time to play her own game.

Beryl waited for a day when it was raining too hard for outdoor recess. Finally, after a week, the moment was right. After Miss Seccombe left to take her tea, Beryl grabbed Dos by the arm. “Keep them here!” she whispered fiercely.

Puzzled but curious, Dos kept the other girls from leaving.

“What does she want now?” asked Mary.

“I don’t know, but I’m not afraid to find out,” Dos shot back. “Are you?”

Mary grimaced, but she stayed.

Beryl deliberately stood by the window, her tall figure framed by the gray light outside. “What do you know about steeple chasing?” she asked the group.

The girls murmured among themselves, confused.

“Isn’t that when the horses jump the fences?” Doris asked.

“It’s when the jockey races the horses over fences,” corrected Beryl. “I do it all the time.”

Mary couldn’t stay silent. She strode over to confront Beryl. She stared into Beryl’s blue eyes and accused, “You’re lying again. Girls don’t ride, and they don’t race.”

Beryl held onto her temper and said, “Girls ride on my father’s farm. Or, at least, I do. I train the chasers for my father.”

Mary drew in her breath, ready to denounce Beryl again, but Beryl interrupted, as though the idea had just occurred to her, “Why don’t we do a steeplechase here?”

The girls looked at her blankly.

Dos began to giggle. “How? We have no horses.”

“We race each other. We’ll use the desks as fences.” Beryl grabbed the nearest desk and started to drag it to the edge of the room.

“Why bother?” asked Mary. “It’s so muggy.” She twisted a limp curl around her finger.

“Is there anything better to do?” dared Beryl. No one had an answer to that. “Right then. Let’s bring the next one over.”

Caught up in Beryl’s enthusiasm, Dos and the other girls began building a steeplechase course with ten desks around the edge of the classroom. One of the girls fetched the boys from their side of the
school. Sonny Bumpus watched Beryl curiously, rocking back on his heels with his thumbs hitched in his trouser pockets.

Beryl stood in the center of the room and dictated the rules of the race. “Five times around will be the course. You must clear the desks. Touching the desk is all right, but if you knock over the inkwell, you’re disqualified. Who’ll be in the first heat?”

At first there were no takers. Beryl stared at each one of them, challenging them in the way Kibii had taught her. Finally, Sonny stepped forward and two other boys followed his lead.