Read Online Circling the Sun by Paula McLain - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Paula McLain
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you’ll be young and beautiful for ever and that you’ll have plenty of chances, but it doesn’t work like that.”
“She’s only sixteen, Em,” my father said. “She has plenty of time.”
“That’s what you think. We’re not helping, keeping her out here with no company. School didn’t do a thing—not that she was there long. She’s wild. She doesn’t know how to make conversation.”
“Why are we talking about manners and society, when there are real problems to think about?” I pushed my plate away in frustration.
“One day you
will
want to attract a man,” Emma said, glaring at me pointedly. “Your father and I have to prepare you for that.”
“Emma thinks you should have a coming-out party,” he explained, cupping the heavy base of his scotch glass.
“You’ve got to be joking. Out
where
?”
“You know perfectly well these things are done, Beryl. Even here. It’s important to be known in society and to develop some grace. You might not think it matters now, but you will.”
“I have all the society I need here,” I said, meaning Buller and our horses.
“It’s one night, Beryl.”
“And a new dress,” Emma added, as if this were any kind of draw.
“We’ve already made arrangements with the hotel,” my father said with finality, and I knew it had been settled long before.
N airobi had grown in leaps since I was there at school. Ten thousand people now perched on the scrubby verge of the Athi Plains with the tin-roofed shops and public houses and the noisy and colourful bazaar. Even this much civilization was a wonder. The town had been formed accidentally when the Uganda railway was being forged between Mombasa and Lake Victoria in 1899. A flimsy headquarters went up, then an anchovy-tin shack the workers had dubbed “the Railhead Club,” then more shacks and tents, and when the railway finally moved on, a town was left in its wake.
But even then, no one guessed how important the railway would become for the British Empire and the whole of the continent. Building the route was expensive, and maintaining it even more so. Colonial officials concocted a scheme to draw white settlers to the area by offering parcels of land for nearly nothing. Retired soldiers like my father and D received additional land as part of a pension. And this was how the colony went up, man by man, farm by farm, with Nairobi as its steadily beating heart.
By 1919, there was a Government House with a ballroom on Nairobi’s central hill, a racetrack, and three good hotels. To reach town, we only had to board the train and travel one hundred and thirteen miles through dusty bush and red murram mud and papyrus swamp. A full day spent on the sooty, lurching iron contraption so I could stand in a rented room at the New Stanley Hotel, in a frock the colour of egg custard.
The frock was probably very pretty. Emma had picked it out and insisted it was perfect—but the stiff lace crimped too high on my neck and gave me a rash I couldn’t scratch at. There was a crown of roses, too—tight yellow-pink buds sewn together in a circlet. I kept looking in the mirror, wondering if I looked right and hoping I did.
“What do you think, really?” I asked Dos, who stood behind me in her slip, pulling pins from her bobbed brown hair.
“You’re lovely, but stop scratching, will you? Everyone will think you’ve got fleas.”
Dos was still a student—currently at Miss Seccombe’s in town—and we had almost nothing in common. She was curvy, brown, and tiny in her blue lace frock, good at conversation and the usual pleasantries, easy in the company of others. I was rail thin, a head taller than Dos, even in flat shoes—and far more comfortable talking to horses and dogs than people. We were as mismatched as two sixteen-year-old girls could be, but I was still fond of Dos and glad she was here.
At 10:00 p.m. sharp, according to a silly British custom, I gripped my father’s arm on the stairs. I only ever saw
“She’s only sixteen, Em,” my father said. “She has plenty of time.”
“That’s what you think. We’re not helping, keeping her out here with no company. School didn’t do a thing—not that she was there long. She’s wild. She doesn’t know how to make conversation.”
“Why are we talking about manners and society, when there are real problems to think about?” I pushed my plate away in frustration.
“One day you
will
want to attract a man,” Emma said, glaring at me pointedly. “Your father and I have to prepare you for that.”
“Emma thinks you should have a coming-out party,” he explained, cupping the heavy base of his scotch glass.
“You’ve got to be joking. Out
where
?”
“You know perfectly well these things are done, Beryl. Even here. It’s important to be known in society and to develop some grace. You might not think it matters now, but you will.”
“I have all the society I need here,” I said, meaning Buller and our horses.
“It’s one night, Beryl.”
“And a new dress,” Emma added, as if this were any kind of draw.
“We’ve already made arrangements with the hotel,” my father said with finality, and I knew it had been settled long before.
N airobi had grown in leaps since I was there at school. Ten thousand people now perched on the scrubby verge of the Athi Plains with the tin-roofed shops and public houses and the noisy and colourful bazaar. Even this much civilization was a wonder. The town had been formed accidentally when the Uganda railway was being forged between Mombasa and Lake Victoria in 1899. A flimsy headquarters went up, then an anchovy-tin shack the workers had dubbed “the Railhead Club,” then more shacks and tents, and when the railway finally moved on, a town was left in its wake.
But even then, no one guessed how important the railway would become for the British Empire and the whole of the continent. Building the route was expensive, and maintaining it even more so. Colonial officials concocted a scheme to draw white settlers to the area by offering parcels of land for nearly nothing. Retired soldiers like my father and D received additional land as part of a pension. And this was how the colony went up, man by man, farm by farm, with Nairobi as its steadily beating heart.
By 1919, there was a Government House with a ballroom on Nairobi’s central hill, a racetrack, and three good hotels. To reach town, we only had to board the train and travel one hundred and thirteen miles through dusty bush and red murram mud and papyrus swamp. A full day spent on the sooty, lurching iron contraption so I could stand in a rented room at the New Stanley Hotel, in a frock the colour of egg custard.
The frock was probably very pretty. Emma had picked it out and insisted it was perfect—but the stiff lace crimped too high on my neck and gave me a rash I couldn’t scratch at. There was a crown of roses, too—tight yellow-pink buds sewn together in a circlet. I kept looking in the mirror, wondering if I looked right and hoping I did.
“What do you think, really?” I asked Dos, who stood behind me in her slip, pulling pins from her bobbed brown hair.
“You’re lovely, but stop scratching, will you? Everyone will think you’ve got fleas.”
Dos was still a student—currently at Miss Seccombe’s in town—and we had almost nothing in common. She was curvy, brown, and tiny in her blue lace frock, good at conversation and the usual pleasantries, easy in the company of others. I was rail thin, a head taller than Dos, even in flat shoes—and far more comfortable talking to horses and dogs than people. We were as mismatched as two sixteen-year-old girls could be, but I was still fond of Dos and glad she was here.
At 10:00 p.m. sharp, according to a silly British custom, I gripped my father’s arm on the stairs. I only ever saw
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