Page 191 of The Sun Sister

September 1940

Cecily sat back and wiped her sweating brow, stuck the trowel into the soil, then stood up and walked into the house to pour herself a glass of cool lemonade from the refrigerator. She stepped out onto the veranda to drink it and admire her handiwork. The garden was really starting to take shape now; the green lawns that swept down towards the valley were edged by beds of hibiscus and clusters of white and red poinsettias.

She heard Wolfie barking from his pen at the side of the house and left the shade of the veranda to go and release him.

‘Hello, darling,’ she said, as she knelt down and the enormous dog smothered her in wet kisses. She almost lost her balance as he reared up to place his great paws on her shoulders; she smiled as she remembered the tiny puppy that Bill had presented her with a few days after they’d buried Fleur, her daughter.

‘He needed someone to take care of him,’ he’d said as he’d handed the squirming, furry bundle to her. ‘He’s a cross between a husky and an Alsatian, so the owner told me. In other words, dependable and loyal – but aggressive if he needs to be.’

Wolfie – who’d been named very unimaginatively for his resemblance to one – was certainly no beauty, with his strange mixture of white and black markings, not to mention one blue and one brown eye, but there was no doubting his affection for his mistress. At the time, so drowned in grief, and not caring about anything at all, Cecily had found his late night and early morning whining irritating, until she had discovered that he slept peacefully if he was allowed into her bedroom. She’d often wake up in the morning with him sprawled belly-up next to her, his head mimicking hers as it lay on the pillow. Despite her determination not to love the puppy, Wolfie had been equally determined to demand it of her. And slowly, with his endearing nature and antics that made even a sullen Cecily crack a smile, he had won.

Wolfie bounded around her as she walked with him back to the veranda to finish her lemonade. He had a horrible habit of digging up seedlings, so he had to be restrained while she was gardening, but the rest of the time, he followed at his mistress’s heels.

‘I’ll take you for a walk in a minute,’ she told him. ‘Now sit down and be quiet.’

Cecily drank the remains of the lemonade and thought that she had more conversations with Wolfie – however one-sided – than she had with any human being. War in Europe had broken out only a couple of weeks after she had lost Fleur; she’d still been in the hospital at the time. When she’d eventually returned home, the black fug of devastation had hung so thickly around her she’d barely registered the start of the conflict. All it had meant was that Bill was away even more than he had been before, though in truth, she didn’t much care. Whilst her body had had the time to recover, her spirit had taken far longer.

She remembered the day when Kiki had driven up to see her at Paradise Farm, and she’d hidden away behind the closed shutters in her bedroom, begging Bill to say she was too ill to see her godmother. Kiki’s hampers of champagne and pots of caviar, let alone her enforced air of jollity, were anathema to Cecily. The only person she had been able to countenance seeing was Katherine, who had been so very kind and patient with her. With Katherine nearby, she had holed up in the comfort and safety of Paradise Farm while the rest of the world went to war. Her mother and father had been desperate for her to come home to the sanctuary of America, but by the time she’d been well enough to contemplate it, even Bill had admitted that it was just too dangerous a journey.

‘Sorry, old thing, no one wants to risk you being blown to bits by either a German bomber or one of their U-boats. I’m afraid you’ll just have to stick it out here until things calm down a little.’

‘Things’ hadn’t calmed down, but at least she could hide away here, gardening as well as ploughing through Bill’s extensive library of books. If she’d been in New York, she knew her mother would have done her best to rehabilitate her, getting her ‘out and about’, the thought of which horrified her. However, a year on now from her loss, the numbness she’d felt had lifted just a little and she found she missed her family...

Not that she spent time focussing on them, or on anything else that went near the emotional bone – she had learnt that life was simply to be endured, not enjoyed. Any loving relationship she had ever tried to forge outside her family had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

‘Except for you, Wolfie darling,’ she said, dropping a kiss on his head. Apart from Wolfie, Cecily knew she was alone. Even though Bill had stood by her side and held her hand when they had lowered Fleur’s tiny coffin into the red earth, she thought he’d been relieved that he wasn’t saddled with bringing up another man’s child. Or any child, come to that; the doctors might have saved her life, but they had destroyed it again only twenty-four hours later by telling her that she would never bear further children. Bill had seemed genuinely sad about this – and to be fair to him, he had insisted on staying at home with her until war had forced him to Nairobi. Cecily was sure the gesture was borne of a guilty conscience – Dr Boyle had let it slip that Bill had been uncontactable when she’d been taken ill. He had been on a game drive, and it was only when Bobby had finally hunted him down that he’d come to the hospital.

These days, she no longer listened to Bill’s explanations of where he was when he was away and how he could be contacted if he was needed. She was cordial to him when he was home, but no longer wished that he would wrap his arms around her or join her in the marital bed. Whether she could have children or not was irrelevant, given that they had never even attempted the process of making them.

Cecily was pleased that Katherine was coming over tonight for supper and a chat. She too was currently husbandless, Bobby having joined up. Due to his asthma, he served in an administrative capacity in the Agricultural Office in Nairobi.

‘Thank heavens for Katherine,’ she sighed. ‘Come on, Wolfie, let’s go and prepare supper.’

‘Help yourself to casserole.’ Cecily indicated the steaming dish she’d placed on the table.

‘Thank you. It looks delicious. At least we’re not on rations like everyone in Europe is anyway,’ Katherine said as she cut the freshly baked bread that Cecily had made. ‘By the way, Alice has asked me to invite you to a party she’s having up at Wanjohi Farm. She’s been so very lonely. Will you come?’

‘I really don’t think so.’

‘Cecily! You haven’t been out now for a year. It might do you good to come and have some fun.’

‘Not the kind of fun Alice and her friends indulge in, but thank you anyway.’

‘Goodness, you sound prissy. Just because you’ve forgotten how to enjoy yourself, you shouldn’t hate the rest of the world because it still tries to remember.’

Hurt by her friend’s words, Cecily lowered her eyes and buttered her bread in silence.

‘I...oh, forgive me, please. I do understand that you’re still grieving and that Fleur’s first anniversary was so recent. It’s just that...you’re only twenty-four, for goodness’ sake. You have a lot of life left to live and I don’t want to see you waste it.’

‘I’m perfectly happy living it the way I do. How’s Bobby?’ Cecily swiftly changed the subject.

‘Bored with organising his crop rotas and wishing he could get back to our cattle full-time.’

‘Bill said he’d be checking on them while he’s out on the plains this week. He had a few days’ leave.’

‘So I heard. Thank goodness they can look out for each other. I was wondering,’ Katherine added as she toyed with her food, ‘why didn’t you go with him?’

‘Because he didn’t ask me.’