Circling the Sun by Paula McLain Read Free Book Online Page A

swollen feeling.
    “It’s not up to you,” my father said, his mouth stern and unyielding.
    —
    The next morning I woke at first light and rode to Equator Ranch to see Lady D. She was the kindest and most reasonable person I knew. She would have some sort of solution, I believed. She would know what to do.
    “Daddy seems set,” I began to rant before I was halfway through the door, “but he’s only going along with Mrs. O. She told him that I’m going to be torn to ribbons by another lion if I keep going like this, but she doesn’t really care. I’m in her way. That’s really what it is.”
    Lady D led me to a comfortable place on her carpet and let me spit out everything without stopping for breath. Finally, when I had settled down a little, she said, “I don’t know Emma’s reasons, or Clutt’s, but I for one will be proud to see you come back a young lady.”
    “I can learn what I need to learn here!”
    She nodded. She had a way of doing that, warmly, even when she disagreed with every word you said. “Not everything. One day you’ll think differently about education and be glad for it.” She reached for one of my hands, gently pried it from my lap, and turned it over in hers. “Proper learning isn’t just useful in society, Beryl. It can be wonderfully yours, a thing to have and keep just for you.”
    I probably scowled at her or at the wall because she gave me a look flooded with incredible patience. “I know this feels like the end of the world,” she went on, “but it isn’t. So much will happen to you.
So
much, and it’s all out in the world ahead of you.” Her fingertips moved in slow circles in the centre of my palm, lulling me. Before I quite knew it, I began to nod off, tucking in beside her, my head on her lap. When I woke a bit later, she got up and asked the houseboy to bring us tea. Then we sat at her table, thumbing through the giant atlas I loved, the page falling open to a broad map of England, green as a jewel.
    “Do you think I’ll ever go there?” I asked.
    “Why wouldn’t you? It’s still your home.”
    Running my fingertips over the page, I traced the names of towns that were both foreign and familiar, Ipswich and Newquay, Oxford, Manchester, Leeds.
    “Does your mother ever write to you from London?” she asked.
    “No,” I said, feeling a little disorientated. No one ever mentioned my mother, and life was so much easier that way.
    “I could tell you things about her if you ever want to know.”
    I shook my head. “She doesn’t matter now. Only the farm does.”
    Lady D looked at me for a long moment, seeming to mull this over. “I’m sorry. It’s not my place to pry.”
    A short while later, D blustered in, kicking off dust and talking to himself. “My favourite girls,” he cheered.
    “Beryl’s had a bit of a day,” Lady D warned him. “She’s going to go off to school soon, in Nairobi.”
    “Ah.” He settled himself gruffly in a chair opposite me. “I wondered when that would come up. You’ll be grand at it, girl. Really you will. I’ve always said you were as sharp as a tack.”
    “I’m not so sure.” I made a half-hearted attempt to finish my tea, which had grown cold.
    “Swear you’ll come and see us whenever you can. You have a home here, too. You always will.”
    When I said goodbye, Lady D walked me out to the stable and put her hands on my shoulders. “There’s no girl quite like you, Beryl, and you’re going to do well in Nairobi. You’ll do well anywhere.”
    —
    It was nearly dark when I reached the farm, and the mountains were an inky blue and seemed to shrink and flatten against the distance. Wee MacGregor crested our hill, bringing us to the edge of the paddock, and I saw Kibii heading off towards the path to his village. I thought of calling out to him, but I’d had enough difficult talking for one day, and didn’t know how to tell him I would be leaving soon. I didn’t know how to say goodbye.

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