Mackenzie Ford

by The Clouds Beneath the Sun (v5)

  “Oh, you know, fine. Same old aches and pains.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Is my father there?”

  “Hold on, I’ll see. Where did you say you are?”

  “Nairobi, in Kenya.”

  Mrs. Bailey put the phone down and Natalie had heard her walk along the hall. She was gone an age. When Natalie next heard footsteps approaching the phone, she tried to assess whether they were Mrs. Bailey’s or her father’s.

  “Are you there?” It was Mrs. Bailey’s voice. “He can’t come to the phone.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “He said to say he had someone with him.”

  “And does he?”

  “That’s what he told me to say, Miss Natalie. And I’ve told you. Now you look after yourself.” And she had put the phone down.

  Natalie had gulped her first whiskey in the bar. She needed it. What would have happened, she had often wondered, if she had told her father about his wife’s wartime betrayal? How well she remembered, even now, the afternoon she had heard noises from the upstairs bedroom, when she was supposed to have been at a picnic with friends but had felt unwell, coming down with what would turn out to be chicken pox. Although she hadn’t really understood what her mother and the pilot were doing with each other in the bed, when she had seen them through the open door from across the upstairs landing, the very fact that her mother had been too preoccupied to notice she was there told her a lot. And the noises her mother made … had puzzled her for years, but not anymore.

  Thank God for Jack. He had been on hand last night when she had needed him and he was definitely helping tonight. A couple of whiskies and an hour or so with Jack and the unpleasantness with her father was undoubtedly eased.

  She leaned forward. “I might be prying again but … you talk much more, and much more fondly, about your sisters than about Christopher. Do you and he not get on? I noticed a certain—fire—between you two at the publications meeting.”

  He looked at her, holding his glass to his lips but not drinking.

  “We get by,” he said at length. “We didn’t get on as children—I’m surprised it still shows, but if you’ve noticed it, others will have too.”

  She said nothing.

  “I am the oldest, the most wizened of the Deacon gang.” He grinned. “So, as we grew up I was the first to have a bike, for example, the first to be able to fire a gun, ride a pony, I was the first to cross all those growing-up benchmarks. My sisters took it in their stride—they laughed when I fell off my bike and grazed my knee, or when my pony threw me and I broke a collarbone.” He wiped his lips with his napkin. “But not Christopher. Christopher was always an angry child, certainly where I was concerned. He hated being number four, the smallest, the slowest, the weakest.” Jack hunched forward in his seat. “When the rest of us climbed trees, for instance, and he was simply too small to do it, he would scream and yell and cry his eyes out. That only made the rest of us tease him, of course, and that in turn made him even more miserable. As he grew up, he grew out of it, but he always contained a competitive streak—and, I have to say, a jealous streak.”

  He drank more water. “There was a time when we used to fight a lot, and he would play not-very-funny practical jokes on me, like loosening the wheel of my bicycle, or cutting partway through the strap of a stirrup.” Jack folded his napkin and set it to one side. “The worst was when I was about fifteen, and he was twelve, and we’d had a fight. I can’t remember what it was about but I can remember we were on holiday at Lake Naivasha—that’s a stretch of fresh water about forty or fifty miles north of Nairobi. I think we may have argued about whether the Kikuyu were better long-distance runners than the Luo—it doesn’t matter, but it was one of those things that boys take seriously. Anyway, we were both sent to our rooms.

  “Next day we were going fishing, with Matoga, well into his sixties, who had been with the family for years. Christopher had been up early but said he wasn’t feeling well and decided not to come.

  “Matoga and I set off, but only after lunch, and took the skiff to Kangoni Point. It’s a trip of about an hour but that’s where the best fishing is. Once you are there, however, you have to be careful because it’s quite near to a place where the hippos like to bathe.” Now he did sip some beer. “The prevailing winds take the boat towards the hippos and every so often you need to start the engine and putter back to the Point and start fishing again from there.”

  He put his glass down.

  “Everything went well for about an hour. We fished and regrouped twice or three times, and we caught some decent perch. But then, the next time we came to start the engine it wouldn’t fire, it was completely dead. Worse, only then did we notice that the fall-back oars weren’t in the bottom of the boat as they were supposed to be, in just such a case of engine failure. Someone had removed them and, in our eagerness to get out on the water, we hadn’t noticed.”

  He leaned forward. “And so, there we were, just as the sun was setting, drifting helplessly towards Hippo Point. I don’t know if you are aware of this, but more people are killed every year in Africa by hippos attacking small boats than by any other animal. Lions or snakes or elephants or buffalo don’t kill anywhere near as many. Hippos are the most dangerous animals on the continent.”

  “What happened?” Natalie fingered the ring her mother had given her. “You’re here to tell the story. And what does this all have to do with Christopher?”

  “Matoga saved my life. Just south of Hippo Point, where we could see three or four hippos basking in the shallow water, about sixty or seventy yards away, a rock broke the surface of the lake. It was itself fifty yards or so offshore. Matoga used his rod and cast his line at the rock. Time and again he tried as we drifted closer and closer to the hippos, until the hook finally caught on the jagged edges of the rock. The fish you catch in Naivasha—Nile perch—are big, so the breaking strain of the line was quite strong.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Even so, Matoga told me to sit quite still. Any sudden movement could have rapidly increased the strain on the line and it would have broken, when there would not have been enough time to fix another hook before we were among the hippos.”

  He drained his beer glass. “Anyway, we sat very still and clung on to the rock, via the fishing line, as the darkness closed in around us. We were both very frightened—terrified—but we knew that, by then, my parents would have realized that something must have happened, and would come looking for us. Even so, it took them about a couple of hours to find us, by which time Matoga, poor man, was exhausted from hanging on, resisting the effect of the wind.”

  Jack passed a hand over his face. “What does this have to do with Christopher? Next morning, Matoga and I took the boat’s engine apart. There was dirt—soil, earth—in the carburetor, that’s what clogged the engine and stopped it working. How did it get there?”

  “Couldn’t it have been an accident?”

  “Yes, but unlikely, and Christopher chose not to come on the trip. He said he didn’t feel well, but he had been up early and by all accounts he ate a hearty dinner while we were clinging to the rock and no one had yet realized we were in trouble.”

  “You think he tried to kill you?”

  Jack shrugged. “I’m not sure what he intended. I’m not sure he knew himself. I can’t really believe that he tried to kill me—us—but he did have that anger in him then. And he knew where we were going and what would happen if the engine gave out. Why were there no oars in the boat? I should have spotted that, and so should Matoga, so we were partly at fault ourselves, as my parents reminded us in rather blunt terms.”

  “What did they say—or do—about Christopher?”

  “They never knew what we had discovered. I decided that it would look as though I was trying to blame him for my own incompetence.”

  He reached for his napkin again and wiped his lips. “But he and I have never … something snapped between us that day. Christopher knew what he had done, how close he
had come to … He’s a lot calmer now, lost a lot of his anger, but things have not really been the same between us since then.”

  Natalie wasn’t sure what to make of Jack’s story. It didn’t sound like the Christopher who had taken her to the rock shelter above the lake, who sluiced water down her neck to cool her, who persuaded his mother to give her back her whiskey flask. At the same time, on the night of the publications meeting, there had definitely been friction between the two brothers. She needed time to digest what she had just been told.

  She was an angry person herself, at times, and it could make her reckless. She had never seen recklessness in Christopher.

  She moved the conversation forward. “I understand you lived in a Maasai village as a boy and were involved in resisting a raid. What was all that like?”

  He was sipping his coffee and replaced the cup in its saucer before replying. “Living in the village was … revealing, I think that’s the word. Boys are much more favored in the Maasai way of life than in the world of white people. Boys play, while the girls work—and they really do work, washing, cleaning, carrying. Boys sometimes run errands but if a boy takes hours to do it, all day, no one worries. If it’s urgent they send the girls.”

  He refolded his napkin. “The raid was scary. It happened at night, in the darkness of early morning, and there was suddenly the sound of shouting and scuffling. At night, the Maasai bring the cattle in, inside two ring fences each made of whistling thorns, and the raiders had forced their way inside the outer ring. Our job, as boys, and as I soon learned, was to hold on to the legs of the invaders, preventing them moving, while our warriors stabbed them with their spears.”

  “That sounds highly dangerous. Was anyone killed?”

  “Oh yes. Seven on their side, three on ours. One boy.” He smiled grimly. “But we won. They retreated and we didn’t lose any cattle.”

  “You must have been terrified.”

  “Yes, I suppose so, but it all happened so quickly and when you are a young boy you worry about pain but you haven’t thought a lot about death, and so you are not frightened the way an adult would be frightened. At least that’s how it seemed to me.”

  “And as a result you became an honorary Maasai?”

  He nodded. “No one had any sleep that night, as you can imagine. When dawn came, not too long after the raid was over, we took the bodies of their dead warriors and left them on some rocks where their tribe could find them, or the vultures or hyenas. Marongo, my friend, and I were covered in blood, and they have a ceremony, following a raid, where the chief’s wives must wash away the blood of the enemy, all the while singing traditional songs. Then they paint any scratches or wounds with a sacred paint, so you will recover quickly and your skin will be purified.”

  He finished his wine. “Then, as a reward, I was given a cow, which I gave back to the village—I knew that was expected. And I was given a Maasai warrior’s name.”

  “Which was?”

  “Ollantashante.”

  “Does it have a meaning?”

  “It is the name of a famous Maasai warrior, long dead.” He lowered his voice. “In fact, it was the warrior whose bones Richard and Russell stole from the burial ground.”

  Natalie stared at him. She had known, seconds before he uttered the words, what he was going to say.

  “All roads lead back to the murder,” she whispered in turn. “I had almost forgotten it, listening to your adventures.” She wiped her lips with her napkin and folded it next to her coffee cup. “Do you still remain friends with … what was his name?”

  “Marongo? Oh yes. He’s the chief now. He’s quite sophisticated—very bright and not a little cunning, you need that as chief. He’s a good leader, with wider political ambitions. I fly him up to Nairobi every so often.”

  “Your mother wants to see him, try to talk him round. He’s not playing ball.”

  He nodded. “Marongo’s nobody’s fool.”

  Involuntarily, Natalie yawned.

  “Sleepy—or bored?” Jack said.

  “I’m certainly not bored,” replied Natalie sharply. “And I don’t know why I should be sleepy. I’ve done very little all day.” She smiled and finished her coffee with one gulp.

  So did he.

  “Are we still in déjà vu? Are you going for a walk tonight?”

  She made a face. “Well, I would like some exercise.”

  “You’ll remember to turn right, not left?”

  “I—” she hesitated.

  “Would you like me to come with you?”

  “Would you mind?”

  “No, not all.”

  But when they reached the main door of the hotel, the doorman approached Jack and addressed him urgently in what Natalie took to be Swahili. There was a prolonged exchange and Jack began to frown and look serious. At length he turned to her.

  “There’s a demonstration in the main square, which is just off the main street where I was intending to take you. About land reform after independence. I don’t think it’s wise for us to go walking tonight. It’s late, some of them will have been drinking. There could be … Sorry. Shall we have another drink?”

  “You have one. I’ll just watch. I’ve had enough.”

  They retreated to the bar. The barman was black, she noticed. Everyone else was white.

  While Jack was getting his drink, she re-ran in her mind the conversation they had had about the judge—Tudor?—and his racist views.

  When Jack joined her, she said, “Can London really interfere in a trial here? In England we are always being told our judiciary is independent.”

  He offered her a cigarette. She shook her head. She preferred smoking out of doors.

  “They wouldn’t normally interfere, no. You appoint people to run a colony and let them get on with it. They are the people on the ground; they know best. But these are not normal times. Independence is coming, tempers are running high, old rivalries and grievances are resurfacing, race is the biggest issue of our day. Black people are convinced their time is coming, and for most of them it can’t come soon enough.” He pulled on his cigarette and blew smoke into the room. “I’ve seen you looking around, in this very hotel. It’s a white world, with black staff. That has to change. It will change.”

  He blew more smoke into the room.

  “But London’s priority is a smooth transition. That’s not a small thing. Look at some of the horrors and mistakes that have happened—in Algeria, Egypt, the Belgian Congo. Seen from the Colonial Secretary’s desk in Whitehall, one murder in Kenya is small beer, small beer that puts at risk a wider picture that might—might—precipitate hundreds of deaths.”

  Natalie shook her head. “I can see that, of course I can. But I can’t go along with it. If we took that view, we could excuse any crime.”

  Jack crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the table between them. “No. All crimes have a wider context, I agree. But some trials spark sensitivities. This one threatens to snowball in a way London doesn’t like. The demonstration tonight, a demonstration that stops you and me doing something as innocuous as taking a walk, simply proves the point. In the current climate, ordinary life is suspended from time to time.”

  Natalie didn’t like what she was hearing. “May I have one of your cigarettes now, please?”

  “Of course.”

  She reached for his pack, on the table between them, and as she did so, he did too.

  His hand closed over hers and held it for a moment, squeezing just slightly.

  Then he smiled and let go.

  • • •

  There was mild excitement as Jack’s twin-engined Comanche bumped down on the red-earth landing strip at Kihara the next morning. Their first approach had been hampered by the presence of the family of cheetahs that seemed to regard the strip as their home, the mother and cubs sleeping slap in the middle of the runway. As the plane raced along, about twenty feet from the ground, the cheetahs lifted their heads, got to their feet languidly, and scamp
ered into the long grass.

  Natalie loved every moment of it. It was something that, under different circumstances, she could put in a letter to her father.

  Two of the ancillary staff had brought out a brace of Land Rovers to meet the plane, and all the supplies Jack had bought in Nairobi were transferred from the Comanche. They parked the plane where it got what shade was going, covered the cockpit with sheets, to break the worst effects of the sun, locked the doors, and ran ropes from hooks on the undersides of the wings to metal spikes hammered into the ground. Then they heaped thorn bushes around the aircraft to keep inquisitive animals away.

  As they drove into the camp, Eleanor came out of her tent to meet them. Jack and Natalie got down from the Land Rover and he kissed his mother. As the ancillary staff began unloading the supplies that had been bought, Eleanor, Natalie, and Jack stood to one side.

  “Well?” said Eleanor, addressing herself to Natalie. She was wearing a white shirt and sand-colored chinos today. “Did Jack look after you?”

  Natalie smiled and nodded. “I ran into trouble with some drunken blacks on our first night away. Jack turned up on cue.”

  Eleanor looked concerned. “He let you go walking by yourself, at night?”

  She turned to her son but before he could say anything Natalie got in first. “No harm done, Eleanor. I’m still in one piece, as you can see.”

  There had been no more bodily contact between Natalie and Jack, nothing other than the brief squeeze of his hand over hers the evening before, in the bar of the hotel. But, by mistake, she had this morning left undone one more button of her shirt than was normal, and Jack had noticed, his eye straying more than once to where the swelling of her upper breasts was just visible. As soon as they were in the plane, and he was occupying himself with his preflight routine, she had surreptitiously fixed her shirt. She had been embarrassed when he had first looked at her so frankly, but she found she enjoyed it too. Nothing had been said.

  Jack glanced at Natalie now, taking in that her shirt had been buttoned. Then he relayed to his mother what he’d been told by Frank Villiers and Maxwell Sandys in Nairobi.