“I’m not sure I would have read Gisella’s letter in the first place.”
Eleanor nodded. “You are not a mother yet, Natalie. I had one son hurting. I didn’t know how deep the whole business went. Was Jack involved or not? If he really wasn’t aware of Gisella’s feelings, what would happen if and when he did become aware of them?”
She removed her spectacles and cleaned them with her handkerchief. “I sent Christopher to a conference in Paris. While he was away, I told Jack, on one of the occasions he was in Nairobi, that I had been asked to write a book on the gorge and that the publishers wanted the illustrations to be paintings and drawings, not photographs. So I asked him to see Gisella and ask her if she was interested.”
“And—?”
“And nothing. Whatever Gisella felt for Jack, and whether she felt the same after a few weeks had elapsed, Jack certainly didn’t reciprocate the feeling—nothing happened. So I concluded that Gisella had been truthful in her letter. Jack didn’t know about her feelings for him. Once or twice after Christopher came back from Paris, I introduced into the conversation the fact that Jack had seen Gisella, that nothing had come of the book project, and there had been no subsequent contact between the two of them.”
“And you think … you think that settled everything?”
“No, of course not. I’m not naive. Of course it didn’t settle everything. But, at the least, what I did showed Christopher that he had not been betrayed by his brother, rather by Gisella.”
“But … but Jack had been the catalyst. Isn’t that enough to stoke Christopher’s jealousy?”
“Yes, maybe, but that had already happened. I could do nothing about that. You can’t protect your children from everything, so you protect them where you can.”
Natalie stared into the dying fire. “And what if there had been something between Jack and Gisella?”
“Again, I’m realistic. If there had been something, better to have it out in the open. Jack is my son just as much as Christopher is. And being so obsessed by the gorge doesn’t stop me wanting to be a grandmother some day, see the Deacon name perpetuated. That’s more likely to happen with Jack than Christopher. Jack adores children.”
Natalie could still feel the glow of the campfire on her cheeks, but the heat was fading. “So it all settled down, did it, after the Gisella episode? I mean the rivalry between Christopher and Jack.”
“As much as these things ever do. There will always be some rivalry between brothers.”
Was Eleanor quite as sensitive to her sons’ rivalry as she thought? Natalie asked herself. Mothers couldn’t always second-guess their own children. Look at what had happened in her own case.
Eleanor stood up, to indicate the conversation was over.
Natalie stood up too.
“I’ve said more than I ever intended.” Eleanor smiled but sternly. “I take it you don’t wish me to intervene with your father?”
Natalie shook her head.
“You’re sure?”
Natalie stared into the remains of the fire. “My father is my problem.”
• • •
Between her fingers, Natalie gripped a cigarette. Even its smell was comforting. Before her, on the small table, the flask of whiskey was laid out where it usually was.
The moon was not up yet and so the night, beyond the reach of the camp lights, was dark, inky dark, impenetrable.
It was the following evening and, after dinner tonight, they had listened to Massenet’s Manon, about lovers and letters and misunderstandings. She had adored it but Arnold Pryce had complained again that Jack didn’t have enough jazz.
Natalie put the cigarette to her lips and drew the smoke into her lungs. At moments like this she felt a long way from that courtroom in Nairobi. She could tell herself that this was her life, the relative solitude of the bush. And that she had made a good start—she could look forward to decades of quiet evenings like this, after a productive day excavating.
Dinner, for once, had been a lighthearted affair, the conversation a million miles from the excavation or the trial. Arnold Pryce had received a letter from his lawyer in London. His last wife had decided she was unhappy with the settlement that had been agreed on and was threatening to go back to court to have their arrangement revoked.
“I may have to live here forever, Eleanor,” he had complained, in mock seriousness. “I can’t afford to return to England.”
“What if she comes looking for you?” said Jack, grinning.
“Unlikely. It’s too far from the hairdresser’s.” His face shaped itself into a rueful grin. “Or the shoe shops.”
“Tell us about your wives, Arnold,” Natalie had said. “What’s it like, being married four times?”
He had needed no second bidding. In fact, he seemed happy to get it all off his chest and, for three quarters of an hour, had regaled them with details of his four courtships, four weddings, four honeymoons, four betrayals and divorces, each of the latter seemingly more hostile than the last. Arnold Pryce, it was clear, to Natalie at any rate, loved women but tired of them all too soon and invariably became convinced that the grass was greener … He didn’t have Jock Deacon’s ability to infuse his women with a passion that would last a lifetime, but he told his story with a self-deprecating wit that suggested to Natalie at least that he knew his mind and that his fourth wife wouldn’t get very far.
Jonas had teased Kees. “It’s your turn next.”
Kees had colored. “I haven’t been married once, let alone four times.”
“You can tell us all about Amsterdam’s red-light district, then. It’s famous.”
“What makes you—?”
“Enough!” Eleanor had hissed, standing up, to indicate the end of dinner. She had again motioned Natalie to sit next to her at the campfire.
Not more talk about her father, Natalie hoped.
When the two women were settled, Eleanor whispered, “Russell’s made his first move.”
Natalie wiped her clammy hands on her trousers. “What do you mean?”
“Christopher went into Karatu this morning, shopping for supplies and to collect the post. There was a copy of a solicitor’s letter, from Russell to the secretary general of the foundation that funds the dig, formally complaining about me, and my allegedly ‘high-handed authoritarian behavior’ in insisting he leave the excavation after his ‘seminal’ discovery. He sent me a copy and he sent the foundation a copy of the paper that has gone to Nature, on the knee joint. A paper that, of course, ignores the whole burial-ground business.”
“What will the foundation do?”
“I don’t know for sure but they won’t like it.” She stopped and fixed Natalie with a stare. “Russell writes to you … he seemed—fond of you. Can you …? He needs to be softened.”
Natalie bit her lip. “He’s written me one letter, yes, but that’s all. He’s still as raw and as sore as the day he left. I can try to … to calm him down, but I’m not sure it will have any effect.”
“Give it a go, please. I can’t believe he won’t listen to you.” She gripped her spectacles in her fingers. “I’ve also heard from the Maasai elders. Their next ‘propitious’ date, when they feel able to see outsiders, is ten days from now. The fact that they’ve agreed to see us is a good sign, but they are unpredictable.” She tapped her chin with her spectacles. “You’ve never wavered, have you?”
“No.”
“And you’re not going to waver now, even after all the new discoveries?”
Natalie shook her head and kept looking into the fire. “I think I have right on my side, Eleanor, but there’s something else, too. In the war, my mother’s family—who were French, as I think I told you—were part of the Resistance, and one of them was betrayed, trahit, that’s a French word I can’t forget. He was killed. So my mother was always very patriotic, very anti-collabo, as the French call it. That’s why I’m like I am, I suppose. Or one reason.” She didn’t mention the anger within her, the fire which no
w, as often as not, was directed against her mother.
That had all happened earlier. Now, sitting outside her tent, Natalie reached for her whiskey. Had she told Eleanor too much? Was her mother’s influence too strong? What was the difference between resistance and stubbornness? Was there one? Once upon a time, Dominic would have helped her.
She heard a footfall and half turned. It was Jack.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered, standing over her. “I haven’t come to disturb your precious late-night privacy. Or not for long anyway.”
She smiled and held out the cigarette. “But I’ll bet you’d like to taste this.”
He took the cigarette from her and drew on it before handing it back. “Can it be good for you, all that smoke in your lungs?”
She shrugged. “It’s very relaxing, don’t you find?”
He nodded. “Did you see that article in Nature? About the link between smoking and lung cancer?”
“Yes. But it hasn’t been confirmed.”
“It has,” said Jack. “In Germany and in America. But I agree—the experiments weren’t very well designed.”
He pointed to the whiskey on the table. “I don’t like to intrude on your evenings, but… but, what I came to say is this: as it’s Sunday tomorrow and my mother’s going to Nairobi, and there’s no digging, I wondered if you wanted to go flying. There’s somewhere near here—a mystery destination that I’d like to show you. Interesting geology, masses of animals, perfect picnic spot …”
“Are there any hairdressers or shoe shops?”
“There’s a lake where you could wash your hair. Other than that, no.”
“Then I’d love to.”
“Good. I’ll say good night then.” He waved and was gone.
• • •
“That’s the Bololedi River—it’s like a dry ditch from up here.” Jack leaned across Natalie and pointed. “We’re now just entering Tanganyika airspace, about sixty miles to go.”
“To where? Or is it still a secret?”
He nodded. “You’ll see why.”
He identified himself to air-traffic control at Kilimanjaro Airport and, on their instructions, climbed the plane by a couple of thousand feet. “I prefer to fly low,” he said. “You get a much better view, but there are some Tanganyika air-force planes in the vicinity. We have to keep out of their way.”
She nodded. She liked flying, she had decided. It put everything into perspective, she thought. She had always been good at reading maps and she had one on her knee now. It was fascinating to see how the map related to the actual topography of the land.
“Over to the left!” Jack shouted, to make himself heard above the engine noise. “Lake Natron. It looks pink because it’s a soda lake.”
“Meaning?”
“There’s no inflow of water, or outflow. So it tends to evaporate, and there’s a buildup of sodium carbonate and that encourages a special bacteria, called halophilic bacteria, which are pink. It’s that pink which gives flamingos their color. Lesson over.” He grinned.
They crossed some low hills, the shadow of the plane rising to meet them.
“Loliondo,” shouted Jack. “Look out for elephant and the wildebeest migration route.”
But Natalie could see neither. She hadn’t yet developed what Daniel called her “bush eyes.”
They were now crossing a shallow valley between two sets of hills as Lake Natron curled round towards them. Jack kept looking over the instrument panel at the land ahead.
“Don’t you navigate by instruments?” she said.
“No, by the seat of my pants,” he replied, looking across and grinning again. “I know it round here, don’t worry, we’re not lost.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Telegraph poles, alongside a road—ah, there they are.”
As he said this, he banked the plane to the left and began to climb again. “As you have noticed, we use the latest navigational techniques on this aircraft, following the road for a bit until it disappears into the rainforest on the side of that mountain.”
Natalie looked down and could see a thin strip in the red-brown soil where, here and there, vehicles raised the dust. But then the road disappeared into the lush undergrowth.
The land was rising to meet them quite rapidly now. She could clearly make out distinct trees—what she knew as Kigelia, Euphorbia, and more fever trees.
She still had complete faith in Jack as a pilot, but the ground was now not at all far below them. She looked ahead and could see a skyline of bushes and trees—they were clearly approaching some sort of escarpment though she couldn’t, as yet, see what was on the far side.
The ground rose and rose towards them, the treetops got closer and closer to their undercarriage. The shadow of the plane was almost as big as the real thing. The sound of the engines changed as they echoed off the ground just below them.
“Now!” cried Jack as they crested the escarpment and the engine noise and the land fell away together.
Natalie stared ahead of her. She didn’t speak. Before her was one of the most extraordinary sights she had ever seen.
Ahead of her was a ring of mountains forming a complete—and an almost perfect—circle. The circle must have been ten miles in diameter, more, much more. Below, hundreds of feet below, thousands, was a plain and a lake, completely cut off from the outside world by the mountains—a vast, secret place.
“Ngorongoro Crater,” said Jack. “A dead volcano but the biggest crater on earth, save for that one in Japan whose name I forget, and that doesn’t have the wildlife that you are about to see.” He started to bring the plane down. “I always follow the road here, because it gives someone new like you the best—the most dramatic—introduction. Are you knocked out?”
“I think it’s … I’m speechless. How can something so big be so secret?” She shook her head. “Can you get here by road?”
“Yes, of course, but it takes forever and you’re likely to meet elephants and that can be tricky. Flying in is the best way, and not normally allowed. But I did one of the rangers here a favor some time back and he promised to turn a blind eye. The crater is over three thousand square miles, more or less the size of Crete.”
“Are we going to land?”
“Sure. Of course.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see. There’s no airport, not even a strip, but there’s a stretch of road that runs by the lake. We’ll land there.”
“Is it safe?”
He nodded. “Provided there’s no other traffic and the lions aren’t sleeping there today. We’ll buzz the place first, to make sure it’s all clear.”
He leaned across her again. “Look down there … lions—the black dots. With a herd of wildebeest nearby.”
She looked down. “And are those flamingos?”
“Yes. They make more noise than a trainload of children.”
He brought the plane down still further, approaching the lake.
Natalie could see that, straight ahead, a gravel road ran alongside the lake, next to a beach of sorts.
Jack flew along the road, on the lake side, about a hundred feet from the ground. The road seemed clear and he banked the plane and began to go round again.
Their second approach was bumpier than the first but they landed safely enough.
“Landing’s not the problem,” said Jack as they got down from the aircraft. “If some lions come by and occupy the road now, how do we scare them away, so we can take off again?”
Seeing her alarm, he grinned. “Just teasing. The rattle of the engines is usually enough to send anything running for cover.”
He went to the back of the plane. “Help me with the picnic?”
She stood next to him.
“Arriving by plane is much more dramatic than coming in a Land Rover, but the drawback is that we have to picnic wherever we land. It’s too dangerous to go walking—there are not just lion here, but wildebeest, water buffalo, rhino, elephant, hyenas, al
l the creatures you get outside the crater but all a little bit different genetically, because they have been cut off for so long, and have inbred. That makes some of the creatures here even more quirky and skittish than usual. If we had a Land Rover we could drive around the lake, but we’re stuck.”
“I don’t mind,” she said, taking the basket from him. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment we crested the escarpment and I saw what was below. I thought the lake Christopher showed me from that cave in Ndutu was Eden, but this is even more so.”
He nodded but said nothing more. He took the basket from her and crossed to where the wing of the plane cast a large shadow on the ground. “Useful things, wings,” he said. He had two folding chairs and a folding table and he laid them out, in a line, so they were all in shadow. “Only water, I am afraid. But chicken—I know it’s your favorite.”
They sat down. “You sit facing one way,” Jack said. “Me, the other. If you see anything dangerous, don’t wait to holler. We leave the door of the plane open, for a quick get-in. Clear?”
She nodded, swigging some water.
He unwrapped the chicken legs, some whole tomatoes, some bread, two oranges, and that was that.
As the breeze swept around them, she became aware of a noise, a constant high-pitched hubbub. “What’s that?” she said.
He pointed. “The flamingos—it’s nonstop. That’s why they’re so thin—they expend all their energy talking, like—” He faltered.
“Like women? Were you going to say ‘like women,’ or ‘like fishwives’? You were, weren’t you?”
He nodded. “Guilty.”
She ate her chicken leg.
“Are you … what are they called? A feminist?”
She wiped her lips with her napkin. “Yes and no. I don’t make a fetish of it but… well, yes, I think it’s about time women had a fair crack of the whip, a chance to do things they haven’t had the chance to do before.”
“This new pill thing, this contraceptive pill, that’s going to change things a bit—yes?”
“I guess. Some things are already changing. A lot of my friends at Cambridge … well, girls in my year, girls I knew … some of them, when they went down, went to live with their men, without getting married. The pill will make that sort of thing easier.”
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