—
It was two years ago when the challenge first came up, in the noisy, cedar-panelled bar of the White Rhino in Nyeri. There were tournedos of pepper-flecked beef on my plate, blanched asparagus spears, each as narrow as my smallest finger, and deep-stained claret in all our glasses. Then a dare thrown out like a last course from JC Carberry. No one has managed the Atlantic solo from this side, England to America, not man or woman. What do you say, Beryl?
Two years earlier, Mollison had fallen short in a similar waterjump, and no one had done much more than imagine the aeroplane that could accomplish the distance, but JC had more money than he could ever spend and the spark of a Magellan or a Peary. And there it was: the boundless ocean, thousands of miles of icy virgin air, a clear frontier, and no plane. Want to chance it?
JC’s eyes were like agates. I watched them glitter and thought of how his beautiful wife, Maia, should be there in white silk with perfectly marcelled hair, but she had died years ago in a simple flying lesson near Nairobi, on a day with no wind or weather. She was the first air tragedy that hit close to us, but not the last. Many other dear ghosts were glinting from the past, winks of light playing along the rims of our wineglasses, reminding us of how reckless they’d been and how magnificent. I didn’t really need reminding. I hadn’t forgotten those ghosts for a moment—and somehow, when I met JC’s gaze, I felt ready to pull them even closer. Yes, I said, and then said it again.
—
It’s not long at all before the last bits of light rinse from the ragged edge of the sky, and then there’s only the rain and the smell of petrol. I’m flying at two thousand feet above sea level and will be for nearly two days. Dense clouds have swallowed the moon and stars—the dark so complete I have no choice but to fly on instruments, blinking away fatigue to peer at the dimly lit dials. I have no wireless, so the sound and force of my engine and the wind blowing back against my nose at forty knots are soothing. The gurgle and sway of petrol in the tanks are soothing, too, until four hours into my flight, when the engine begins to falter abruptly. It sputters and whistles, then gives out. Silence. The needle of my altimeter begins to spiral downwards with shocking speed. It puts me into a kind of trance, but my hands know what to do even as my mind remains muffled and still. I only have to reach for the petcock and switch over the tank. The engine will start again. It will. I steady my hand and make my fingers find the silver toggle. When I do, it clicks reassuringly, but the engine doesn’t budge. The Gull keeps losing altitude, eleven hundred feet, then eight hundred. Lower. The clouds around me part briefly, and I can see terrifying glints of water and foam. The waves reach up and the fathomless sky pushes down. I flip the toggle again, trying not to shake or panic. I’ve prepared for everything as well as I can, but is anyone truly ready for death? Was Maia when she saw the ground flying up to meet her? Was Denys, that awful day over Voi?
A bolt of lightning crackles near my left wing, bright as Christmas trimmings, electrifying the air—and suddenly I have the feeling that all of this has happened before, perhaps many times over. Perhaps I’ve always been here, diving headlong towards myself. Below me, heartless water lashes, ready for me, but it’s Kenya I’m thinking of. My Rift Valley—Longonot and the jagged rim of Menengai. Lake Nakuru with its shimmering pink flesh of flamingos, the high and low escarpments, Kekopey and Molo, Njoro and the Muthaiga Club’s glittering lawn. It’s there I seem to be going, though I know that’s impossible—as if the propeller is slicing through years, turning me backwards and also endlessly forward, setting me free.
Oh, I think, hurtling down through the dark, blind to everything else. I’ve somehow turned for home.
Before Kenya was Kenya, when it was millions of years old and yet still somehow new, the name belonged only to our most magnificent mountain. You could see it from our farm in Njoro, in the British East African Protectorate—hard edged at the far end of a stretching golden plain, its crown glazed with ice that never completely melted. Behind us, the Mau Forest was blue with strings of mist. Before us, the Rongai Valley sloped down and away, bordered on one side by the strange, high Menengai Crater, which the natives called the Mountain of God, and on the other by the distant Aberdare Range, rounded blue-grey hills that went smoky and purple at dusk before dissolving into the night sky.
When we first arrived, in 1904, the farm wasn’t anything but fifteen hundred acres of untouched bush and three weather-beaten huts.
“This?” my mother said, the air around her humming and shimmering as if it were alive. “You sold everything for this?”