Page 73 of The Sun Sister

‘I can’t say, because I’ve never held one or used one.’

‘Good girl, then don’t. Animals have hearts and minds too, y’know. They feel in just the same way as we do.’

They both watched as the woman called Idina swept past them with Lynx, the man she had arrived with. The couple walked towards the lake, then disappeared into the darkness beyond.

‘Y’know, Idina was once married to the love of my life,’ Alice sighed. ‘We shared him, a long time ago...’

‘Oh...’ Cecily nearly choked on her drink. ‘Is he here tonight?’

‘No, although he used to live just around the corner from here at the Djinn Palace, on the lake. Don’t you let Joss Erroll seduce you, will you, my dear? It would be nice to know that one virgin managed to keep her virtue safe from him.’

Cecily blushed heavily at Alice’s words, not because they particularly shocked her – she was learning fast that the wild plains of Africa had nothing on the wildness of its human inhabitants – but because it reminded her of the fact that she no longer had a ‘virtue’ to lose.

‘Does America think war will come?’ Alice asked as she glanced round dreamily at the other guests.

‘I think it’s just as much in the dark as everyone else,’ Cecily said, trying to keep up with the conversation, which seemed to bounce erratically from one subject to the next. Yet there was something about Alice that she liked, however crazy she seemed.

‘I hope not, or it will be the end of everything we’ve known here. Joss will be involved in it, of course. And I just couldn’t bear for him to die, y’know?’ Alice said as she stood up. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, honey. Come over and see me soon.’

Cecily watched her float off into the crowd on the terrace. A few of the guests had started to dance to the tinny gramophone music and one woman was openly kissing her dance partner as his hands slid down the back of her dress.

‘Time for bed,’ she sighed and stood up. She heard a peal of laughter from down by the lake, turned and saw the backs of two completely naked bodies running into the water. With another sigh, she headed for the sanctuary of her bedroom.

Cecily was woken by a dawn cacophony of tweets, calls and caws of unknown birds and animals. She lay there, desperate to return to sleep. She had been awake for hours last night, disturbed by the hilarity of the guests and the gramophone, which had played beneath her bedroom window until at least four in the morning. Even after that, there had been stifled screams and giggles from inside the house. If it was possible to feel exhausted when one had just woken up, Cecily did. However, as she forced her eyelids to close, the sunrise chorus only increased in volume.

‘Darn it!’ she swore, realising that counting imaginary sheep – or lions – was not going to help, so she rose from the bed, taking a few seconds to extricate herself from the mosquito net, then walked over to one of the windows and pulled back the shutters.

‘Oh my goodness!’ she breathed, because there, standing on the grass that led down to the lake, was a giraffe nibbling the leaves of one of the flat-topped trees.

Despite the fatigue and the anxiety that was still making her tummy clench after everything she’d witnessed last night, Cecily couldn’t help but smile. She searched the room for the camera Papa had given her as a parting gift, but had no idea where Muratha had stowed it after emptying her trunk. By the time she did find it, the giraffe had wandered out of sight. Still, she thought, even without the giraffe, the view was enough to make grown men weep.

It was not even seven a.m. and the sky was already glowing turquoise, casting a shimmering light on the lake. Cecily walked to her closet to search for one of the cotton dresses Kiki had suggested she bring from New York. After dressing hurriedly, then giving her hair – which had become even more unruly in the heat – a cursory brush, she opened the door, walked along the silent corridor and tiptoed downstairs.

‘Good morning,memsahib.’

Cecily’s heart gave a small start as she turned round to find Aleeki had appeared behind her.

‘Did you sleep well?’

‘Why yes, I did, thank you.’

‘Would you like some breakfast?’

‘That’s most kind, but I was going to take a stroll down to the lake first.’

‘Then I shall set breakfast for you on the veranda, ready for when you are back. Tea or coffee,memsahib?’

‘Oh, coffee, please. Thank you, Aleeki.’

She started to walk towards the door, but Aleeki overtook her swiftly to open it for her, giving her a small bow as she walked through it. There was no sign on the terrace of last night’s festivities; all traces had obviously been cleared away by the servants. As Cecily donned her sunglasses to shield her fragile eyes from a sun that felt as though it had moved miles closer overnight, she marvelled at Kiki’s ‘houseboy’, as she’d heard her godmother call him, looking fresh as the proverbial daisy after what must have been a night of even less sleep than she’d had. At the water’s edge, Cecily glanced to her left, and saw a group of hippos sunning themselves on the bank a few hundred yards along.

‘This is just surreal,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Am I really here?’

She went to the bench positioned thoughtfully at the edge of the lake and noticed a white brassiere hanging over the back of it. She thought of Idina and her fiancé swimming naked last night and wondered with a chuckle whether she should alert Aleeki to the brassiere’s presence. He was so inscrutable that she could imagine him not batting an eyelid, even if she handed it to him over the breakfast table.

‘Maybe it was just a homecoming party that got out of hand,’ Cecily said aloud to a bird with a coat of metallic blue and green feathers sitting in a tree right on the water’s edge. She was pretty certain it was a kingfisher. This was confirmed as the bird suddenly plunged into the water beneath the overhanging branch and plucked a fish from it a few seconds later.

Cecily sat there for a while, feeling her shoulders relax as she watched the natural world go about its day around her. However the humans – still asleep in the house behind her – wished to behave, this landscape and what it contained had a heartbeat of its own, and that was what she must try to tap into.