Mackenzie Ford

by The Clouds Beneath the Sun (v5)

  Eleanor heard him out in silence, at least to begin with. But, as he went on, she drew herself up, made herself taller, held herself more erect, her body trembling with tension. As Jack finished his account, she transferred her gaze to Natalie. “So, the situation gets worse and worse. We’ll discuss it at dinner. You must both be dusty and sticky, and I want to fix that new battery for the radio. Have a shower and I’ll see you later.”

  At dinner Eleanor had put her hair up in a chignon. She wore a pale green shirt and her wraparound khaki skirt. Her stylish dressing, Natalie had decided, was a form of self-discipline. Eleanor, she understood, dressed with men in mind, even here in the gorge. It was an aspect of her self-respect which Natalie admired.

  Naiva had prepared a simple roast chicken, roast potatoes, and carrots. Plain water was a relief: Natalie had drunk too much whiskey in Nairobi.

  “Tell me again what Nshone told you,” said Eleanor once they were settled. She was seated between Arnold Pryce and Jonas. Natalie and Jack sat together, opposite her. Daniel was nowhere to be seen. Kees was there, Christopher too. He smiled.

  Natalie still hadn’t made up her mind what she thought about Jack’s fishing/hippopotamus adventure.

  Jack repeated his story for Eleanor’s benefit, and the others’, adding in details about Natalie’s deposition, the choice of John Tudor as judge in the case, and Maxwell Sandys’s curious behavior.

  Eleanor listened in silence, chewing her chicken, sipping her water.

  “What was Nshone’s tone?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Was he confident, cocky, was he opening a negotiation?”

  “I’m not experienced enough to know. They are planning to call more than one Maasai chief, as witnesses, to explain their laws—”

  “Will that be allowed—?” Natalie interjected.

  “It doesn’t matter,” snapped Eleanor. “If the court refuses to hear the chiefs, that merely rubs in the Maasai argument.”

  Natalie’s anger flared briefly, at Eleanor’s tone.

  Silence around the table.

  “And you say Maxwell was acting … shiftily?”

  “That’s how it seemed to me. I think a racist judge has been chosen so as to make Natalie think twice about giving evidence.”

  “If Beth were here, she might be able to get something out of her godfather.”

  “Well, I couldn’t, that’s for sure. Why don’t you have a go? You’ve known him far longer.”

  Natalie noticed a flash of something pass across Eleanor’s face, un coup d’oeil, as the French said. What was it? An instant softening? A fond memory? Jack had raised the thought, the evening before, that Eleanor and Maxwell Sandys had once been lovers. As he had insisted, Nairobi was a small place, especially the society of whites. Was the idea so far-fetched?

  But the flash of something, whatever it was, had melted away immediately, and Eleanor was growling, “I can try, I suppose, but I doubt he’d say anything over the radio-telephone, where everyone can hear. And I’ve no plans to go to Nairobi anytime soon.”

  She placed her knife and fork together with her food half finished. “I’ve no appetite tonight. I can’t eat, I can’t relax, I can’t concentrate. What a mess this is.”

  She took off her spectacles and rubbed her eyes.

  “This has all the makings of a first-class catastrophe. The destruction of the gorge! Thirty years of work overturned in a few moments.” She fiddled with her hair and sighed. “Here we are, on the verge of not one but two major discoveries, two epoch-making announcements, that will put Kenya on the map internationally—and what happens? This site, this gorge, this marvel of nature and science, where it all takes place, which in a few years could become a major tourist attraction, and a major revenue earner, is to be destroyed, vandalized, any possibility of new discoveries thrown to the lions—literally.”

  Eleanor was looking intently at Natalie as she said this, and Natalie felt herself coloring.

  “The Maasai visit the gorge almost daily now. And not children, with goats, but warriors, with spears. They just watch, but it’s enough, for now.”

  “I … I can understand your anger, or disappointment, Eleanor. But … but you’re not suggesting I don’t give evidence, surely?”

  “It wouldn’t work, anyway,” interjected Arnold Pryce. “If Natalie withdrew her evidence, think what a fuss Russell and Richard’s parents would make.”

  “But we’d get over it.” Eleanor thrust her chin forward, the skin on her throat stretched tight. “Yes, there’d be a stink, a big, unpleasant explosion of self-righteousness … but, at the end of it all, there’d still be a gorge. The site would still exist. The discoveries would go on.”

  Silence around the table.

  Natalie looked at each of the other diners in turn. “I saw what I saw, Eleanor. That’s all. You told me to write it down immediately, which I did.” She hesitated. “Richard did wrong—yes. But did he deserve to die? You can’t believe that he did.” She took a deep breath. There was something she had to say. “You all seem to be taking Richard’s death very lightly. So lightly that, if you must know, I am shocked by your attitude. It’s not right, it’s not normal … it’s not human.”

  Eleanor curled her fingers around her spectacles, mangling them out of shape. “I was born in Africa, my dear. I’m an African. I live with African ways and I understand and sympathize with a lot of them. What is happening here in the gorge is, in my view, one of the most important intellectual activities in the entire continent. It is helping to make Africa more important, more interesting, more attractive, more a part of the wider world—and that far outweighs one death, however regrettable.”

  She brushed a strand of hair off her face. “Yes, I told you to write down what you had seen immediately. But I didn’t know then what I know now—that this whole venture is at risk. I responded as anyone would have responded on hearing of Richard’s death, and then learning what you had seen. But now … now the situation has changed—and my view has changed with it. To put the gorge at risk, all the discoveries that have been made and remain to be made … I shudder and despair at the idea. I repeat: intellectually, the gorge is at the heart of Africa, of the world, it is where man began, all mankind. Very little is more important than that—”

  “Mother—!” began Christopher.

  “It’s all right,” said Natalie quickly. “I can defend myself.” She gripped her water glass tightly and hunched forward over the table. Her anger was rising and she fought to control it. “Paleontology is a Western idea,” she said at length, “not an African custom. If Kihara is at the heart of Africa, of the world as you put it, then it’s thanks as much to modern Western notions as to anything else. The Maasai have grazed cattle in the gorge for generations but have shown not the slightest interest in the fossils here or the stratigraphy. So the very fact that the gorge is emerging as important is due to a mix—a marriage, a symbiosis—of African and modern realities. Eleanor, you are not an African in the sense that the Maasai are.” She gulped some water. “I can’t withdraw my evidence.”

  “You mean you won’t.”

  “Won’t, can’t … it’s the same thing. I saw what I saw—you want me to unsee that? What Richard and Russell did was foolhardy—and yes, wrong, very wrong. How many times do I have to say that? But what Mutevu did to Richard was worse, much, much worse—and before you say anything, yes, I can see the Maasai point of view, I can even sympathize with it.” Her fingers touched her mother’s single pearls at her ears. What she would give to talk this over with her father, or with Dom. They were both clear thinkers, with a well-developed sense of right and wrong. They would surely agree with the stance she was taking.

  Or would they? Dominic had a very strong practical, pragmatic streak. He was aware of how the world worked, the real world of give-and-take, of cutting your losses when it was impossible to do otherwise. Her father was more idealistic and, had what happened with her mother not happened, would surely take
her side now. But Dominic? Now she thought of it, she couldn’t be so sure.

  Natalie cupped her hands around her water glass. “I’m not sure there’s anything new to say tonight. In Nairobi, Jack and Maxwell Sandys tried to dissuade me by saying I will be vilified by political militants. You appeal to a different aspect of my makeup.”

  Natalie sighed. “I understand both arguments. I don’t want to get involved in a political cause célèbre and I’ve grown to love the gorge. But …” She bit her lip. “Our tradition … of independent witnesses, juries, rules of evidence … I mean … it may be called modern but it’s just as old as Maasai ways. Their traditions are no more than a couple of hundred years old, aren’t they? Ours, in fact, are older.” She clenched her clammy fist. “That doesn’t make them any more right, but it doesn’t make them any more wrong either.”

  She rubbed the palms of her hands on her trousers. “So I’m sorry if you feel I am betraying you—that’s not how I see it, and I hope you can too, in time.” She looked directly at Eleanor. “You selected Richard. He, with Daniel and Russell, made a great discovery. Significant. Don’t you feel you owe him something? The dig, Kihara … we all benefit from Richard’s work.”

  “She’s right, mother.” Jack offered his support before anyone else could speak.

  But Eleanor was in no hurry to be heard. She rubbed the back of her neck with her hand, revealing a damp patch on her shirt under her arm.

  “Natalie,” she said quietly after a moment, “I’m sorry if you think I’m an ogre. Of course I’m grateful for what Richard—and Russell—did for us, for the dig, for the gorge. I understand very well your feelings. I can see what a quandary it must be for you. I understand all that, believe me.” She helped herself to more water. “And you know, I think—I hope—that I am not a stubborn person.” She half smiled. “Remember what happened with the whiskey flask?”

  She ran a finger around the rim of her glass tumbler. “So I’m trying not to be stubborn on this matter, either. Really, I’m not.” She pushed her plate from her. “I also know that when contentious matters are argued over too much, people—and that includes me—can be driven into a corner, into a cul-de-sac, making change, and therefore agreement, even more impossible. So, I will just say three things, and then we can move on.”

  She raised a thumb. “First, I repeat my thinking that the situation has changed. We couldn’t anticipate when Richard’s body was first found how the Maasai would respond. They have responded cleverly, from their point of view, and have in effect outmaneuvered and outthought us. I think that you should withdraw your evidence, but if you can’t or won’t, so be it.”

  She raised her forefinger. “Two, we must proceed with our digging, as if nothing were happening. Nothing is to be gained from calling a halt at this stage.”

  Her middle finger went up. “Three, we shall make yet another approach to the elders of the Maasai, the loibone, to see if they can be prevailed upon to change their minds. I’m not hopeful it will work, but you never know. Maybe they have their elders who are not stubborn too.”

  She looked around the table. “I think we all know where Natalie and I stand. But we haven’t heard from you, Kees, or Jonas, or Arnold. This is not something we can put to a vote, but do any of you want to say something? Or you, Christopher?”

  No one did.

  Naiva noiselessly removed the plates from the table. A buffalo called out somewhere in the distance. Smoke from the fire drifted into the dining tent, casting fuzzy shadows. The crackle and spit of the logs filled the silence that remained.

  • • •

  Natalie lay in bed in the dark. She had so looked forward to her late-night smoke and whiskey when she had been in Nairobi, but tonight, after her tussle with Eleanor, she was too much on edge and she longed for the oblivion of sleep. Dinner had been finished quickly, after Eleanor’s little speech, and Natalie had returned to her tent and undressed in no time. She’d hardly slept in Nairobi so she was tired enough but, even so, sleep wouldn’t come.

  Before her arrival at the gorge, she’d been nervous, unsure whether she would be up to the mark academically speaking. Oh, for that sort of problem now. Nothing could have prepared her for the conundrum she was now facing—and facing, very largely, alone. The irony was that she hadn’t, actually, done anything. She had been sitting quietly, smoking, enjoying the night, hardly moving, totally silent, staring into the darkness, when she had seen Ndekei. She had been as passive, as unproactive as it was possible to be. And yet her total inaction was the cause of all the trouble.

  She turned on her side. She smelled the canvas of the bed, the detergent the sheets had been washed in. She recalled her first nights at college in Cambridge, the first strange bed she had ever slept in. God, she had been innocent. She recalled Dom’s smell. That had always troubled her in a minor way. The reason she always noticed Dom’s smell was that she was never with him long enough to take it for granted. She supposed that happily married couples—or at least those who managed to stay married for any length of time, or just lived together, as more and more people were doing—stopped noticing each other’s smell.

  Jack had his own smell too, of course. He smelled ever so slightly of his airplane, the leather seats, kerosene or Avgas, whatever airplane fuel was called.

  Lying in bed, in her pajamas, she put her hand on her chest where she had inadvertently left her shirt button undone. She hadn’t really shown too much of herself, not at all. But the very fact of the button being undone made her think of the first time she had unbuttoned her shirt for Dominic. She had been embarrassed then but excited too, the first real thrill of sexual anticipation she had known. With Dominic she had peeled off her shirt, then her bra, to let her breasts hang free, loose, the first time she had known that physical freedom in the presence of a man, in front of a man. Dominic had groaned and buried his face in her flesh, kissing and licking and sucking her nipples. That was when she had discovered how sensitive her nipples were—how, when Dominic had bitten them between his lips, she had chewed in air and wrapped herself around him. There were tears in her eyes, spittle at the corners of her mouth, from their kissing. Dominic had licked her nipples again. She had never expected she could feel so wet.

  When Jack had looked at her undone button, the feelings she’d had couldn’t be compared with that day in her rooms at Cambridge, with Dominic. But, along with her embarrassment, there had been excitement too. An excitement she hadn’t known in months.

  She dragged her mind away from Dominic and Jack. Eleanor had said tonight that they must dig on, as if the situation were normal. Yes. Yes, please—but was that practicable, given what was hanging over them all now?

  She heard a noise outside the tent. Footsteps. Did she have a visitor? From the footfall, she sensed it might be Christopher. She held her breath.

  The footsteps went away.

  In Nairobi, she had thought about Christopher even less than she had thought about Dominic.

  That told her something.

  6

  THE SKULL

  “Look, vultures.” Jack stood over Natalie as she crouched in the gorge, teasing the rock with a small pickax.

  She stopped what she was doing, sat back on her haunches, and looked up, shielding her eyes from the sun with her gloved hand.

  “Must be a buffalo that’s got into trouble,” said Jack softly, handing her a water bottle. “Like to go see?”

  She gulped at the water and then shook her head. “I don’t want to witness any more crimes, Jack.” She smiled grimly, handed back the bottle, and wiped her forehead with her glove. “Besides, I’m in the middle of something.” She pointed with her pickax. “I think I may have some sort of jaw.”

  Jack was immediately attentive. He put the bottle away and knelt down beside her.

  It was already a week since their return from Nairobi. Life was normal, more or less. They spent their mornings digging, their afternoons following up with note-taking, reading, or drawing, and the
ir evenings discussing their discoveries, or the lack of them, over dinner.

  Neither Christopher nor Jack had visited her in her tent. Part of her hoped that Jack would stop by, but he seemed content with their normal exchanges during work and at meals, and left her alone in the evenings to be by herself—as he had done that evening in Nairobi, behavior that everyone else had criticized him for. But not her. He didn’t crowd her and she liked that.

  Leaning forward, Jack whistled. “Yes, that looks like the line of a jawbone. It looks hominid too. Careful how you go … you should get to the teeth soon. If there are any left.”

  She craned forward again.

  “Clever of you to spot the sweep of that jaw, Natalie. You seem to have an eye.”

  “Years of doing jigsaws as a girl,” she replied. “It gives you a taste for patterns.”

  “Hmm. Maybe. But, look, you need better tools than the ones you’ve got. You’ll never be a crack paleontologist with shoddy tools—you need some wire brushes. This jigsaw is no toy.” He stood up. He had leant his shotgun against the wall of the gorge and he reached for it. “There’s a troop of baboons not far away, so the Land Rover’s all locked up. I’ll have to go and get the key from Daniel. I’ll be as quick as I can. Okay?”

  She nodded and carried on picking away at the lining of the gorge. Fossilized bone tended to be softer than the surrounding rock and, in general, that could be felt through the tools they all used. The bone she was picking away at now she had noticed about two hours before. It was the curve that had caught her eye, smooth and sweeping like the keel of a model boat. Definitely not natural.

  As she chipped, the rough rock fell away and revealed more of the smooth line of jaw. She took a regular small brush from her pocket and swept it over the bone. Small crumbs of rock still adhered to the jawbone and had not been dislodged by the brush—that’s why she needed something stronger.

  She took a scalpel from her pocket and pulled off the protective metal cap, shielding the blade. Now she scraped at the top edge of the jawbone. The rock broke up into smaller pieces and some crumbled away. As it did so, her heart leapt as she suddenly saw the glint of a brighter substance. Could it be …? She was a novice still but … were those the remains of some teeth? She looked over her shoulder. Jack was nowhere to be seen, just Aldwai, the guard, with his gun. She bent back to her work.