The Hunters. Kat Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ first I thought they were a young boy and an old man – since only old men wore brightly coloured African shawls – but then I reached the edge of the terrace and saw that the old man was young and blond, and the boy’s flannel shirt gave way to a long, white neck, and above that a slim face, half-hidden by a cocktail glass, but visible enough for me to see a woman’s painted mouth and elegant nose. More than that I noticed her eyes, which were fixed on me over the rim of her glass; they were the colour of the last moment of an African sunset, when the sky deepens with violets and blackish-blues, and they made me feel hollow. She was the finest, most delicate person I’d ever come across, a living china doll with porcelain skin and wide, doe-like eyes and black hair so shiny it was like an oil slick. When she smiled I felt a surge of energy in my stomach.

      He had his hand on her knee, but lightly, as if he didn’t need to keep track of it. Her body was twisted towards him, one elbow resting on the arm of her chair and her face propped up in her hand.

      When I didn’t look away she smiled, and dropped her gaze, then murmured something to the man who turned to look at me properly. He smiled too and called me over, and I felt a flush rising through my body that had nothing to do with the sweltering heat; I fled back inside the hotel, leaving them laughing at my shadow.

      That was my first glimpse of Sylvie and Freddie.

       Chapter Two

      A few days later I was sitting at one of the outer tables on the terrace with my mother and Maud. It was nine pm, the hotel busier now, and the moon was out, much lower and larger in the sky than back at home. A few feet away in the dark was the creaking sound of a calling nightjar and the buzzing of katydids. Each table had a flickering candle to see by and waiters moved silently in and out of the shadows, bearing trays of cocktails and olives. A low hum of conversation filled the air.

      ‘I don’t know where your father’s got to,’ my mother said.

      ‘Mr MacDonald probably invited him for supper.’

      She sighed.

      ‘Excuse me …’ The voice came from behind me. I turned and recognised the blond-haired man. He wasn’t wearing a shawl this time, but a shirt and dinner jacket. His face was half hidden in the darkness, but I could see a gleaming row of teeth and the whites of his eyes.

      ‘Yes?’ my mother said.

      He stepped forwards. ‘I couldn’t help noticing you’re new here.’ He winked at me as he said it, and I flushed as deeply as I had at our first meeting. ‘I’m Freddie. Freddie Hamilton.’

      ‘Jessie Miller,’ my mother said warily. ‘My husband is William and these two are Theo and Maud.’

      ‘Come into the garden, Maud,’ he said.

      ‘My favourite poem.’ My mother smiled and I realised, thankfully, that she wasn’t going to be difficult.

      ‘I should congratulate you on two very good-looking children,’ Freddie said, and I felt he was looking at me particularly when he said it. ‘But how could they be otherwise with such an attractive mother?’ He clapped his hand on my shoulder and I started. ‘How old are you, Theo?’

      ‘Nearly fifteen,’ I said, at the same time that my mother said, ‘Fourteen.’

      ‘You make friends so quickly, Freddie,’ a woman said, and I felt myself tense under his hand as she came into the light, her eyes even darker and wider than before. I caught a hint of her scent in the air – musky and fruity, and intoxicating, like her voice, which was husky, with an American twang. It was nothing like the voice I’d given her in all the conversations I’d imagined us having over the last few days.

      She was so close to me that I could have reached out my right hand and touched her. She was wearing the same outfit as before, with the addition of a small monkey perched on her shoulder. Now she was standing, I could see how long her legs were.

      ‘He’s called Roderigo,’ she said, and I realised she must have been watching me. ‘I’m Sylvie de Croÿ.’

      ‘These are the Millers,’ Freddie said. ‘Jessie, Theo and Maud.’

      ‘Can I hold him?’ Maud asked.

      ‘Of course you can.’ Sylvie offered her forefinger to Roderigo, who wrapped his paws around it, and swung him off her shoulder into Maud’s lap.

      ‘He doesn’t bite, does he?’ my mother asked.

      ‘This one’s tame,’ Freddie said.

      ‘Freddie bought him for me,’ Sylvie said. ‘He knows a man.’

      ‘You have to be careful who you buy them from. The locals know we like to have them as pets, so sometimes they wait underneath marula trees and catch them as they fall out, then pretend they’ve been domesticated for years.’

      He still had his hand on my shoulder, weighing on me. I’d come across boys like him at school – popular, witty, larger-than-life. In comparison to them I’d always felt smaller and wirier than ever, with big, clumsy hands and feet.

      I cleared my throat, trying to get my voice to sound as confident as Freddie’s. ‘What makes them fall out?’

      ‘Marula fruit gets them soused,’ he said.

      ‘He’s so sweet,’ Maud said.

      ‘He’s very naughty,’ Sylvie said, and smiled slowly.

      ‘And what brings you all to Kenya?’ Freddie asked.

      ‘That would be my husband,’ my mother said.

      ‘He’s the new Director of the railway,’ I said.

      Back in Scotland, our neighbours had been amazed at my father’s job offer. Freddie and Sylvie didn’t even bat an eye. I shrank back in my chair, embarrassed that I’d tried so obviously to impress them.

      ‘The “lunatic line”,’ Freddie said. ‘That’s what they call it around here.’

      I’d heard the name too. My father didn’t like it.

      ‘Of course it was going to be a difficult project,’ he’d said once. ‘It was the biggest we’d ever undertaken.’ The line had taken five years to construct, and he’d lost many of his Indian workers, shipped over by the British for the job. They’d been struck down by dysentery or malaria, and, in the worst cases, the malaria developed into blackwater fever, where the red blood cells burst in the bloodstream.

      ‘You have to know the symptoms to look out for,’ he’d told us. ‘Chills, rigor, vomiting. Black urine was the worst. If we saw that, we knew they were as good as dead.’

      Sylvie took a cigarette case out of the pocket of her slacks. Her fingers were slim and delicate, but her nails were ragged and unvarnished. ‘I took the train when I first got in,’ she said. There was a kind of bubble in her voice, like she was holding back laughter. ‘My husband was sick after eating that brown stuff they serve.’

      ‘Windsor СКАЧАТЬ