Mackenzie Ford

by The Clouds Beneath the Sun (v5)

  “They all run into one,” she replied. “Sit down.”

  He did so and lit his own cigarette. “You were quiet at dinner. I didn’t understand that. You’ve been quiet a lot lately, since the press conference in fact. Events are getting to you.”

  She let a pause elapse. “You’re right, but only half right.” She inhaled her cigarette smoke. “Events are getting to me, yes. I am very on edge, I hate all this talk of racism and my so-called but in fact nonexistent love affairs with Russell and Richard. I can’t stop shaking, I can’t sleep, and I’ve lost most of my appetite. I’m finding it hard to concentrate on our work.”

  “And my proposal didn’t help, of course.” He crushed out what was left of his cigarette. “I’m sorry if I’m part of the problem.”

  Another pause, before she said, “Since you mention it, Jack, I don’t know whether I am going to have a clear enough mind this side of the trial, to give you an answer about … about my potential name change.”

  He nodded.

  “But … but you might also like to know that there’s a weird weather pattern building up inside me right now, all sorts of complicated and simple emotions are swirling around in my system—clouds, squalls, more than a hint of thunder—and not a few memories, old memories, recent memories.”

  He nodded, then said, “I’m nodding as if I understand, but I don’t. What are you saying? What are you trying to say?”

  She finished her cigarette. “What I am saying, Dr. Deacon, is that I can’t yet give you an answer on marriage. But, at the same time, I would like you to go back to your tent now, wait until everyone else has gone to bed, and turned out their lights, and I then want you to sneak back here, so no one sees you, and I’d like you to spend the night here. I want to be made love to. Don’t ask any more questions. Just come back and make love to me like you did in Lamu.”

  • • •

  “Christopher, stop! Look, two o’clock ahead, in the tree.” Natalie’s voice was high pitched, triumphant.

  Christopher brought the Land Rover to a halt. There were four of them in the vehicle. Christopher was driving, Daniel up front with him. Natalie was in the back, with Aldwai, the guard. They were on their way back to the camp after the morning’s digging. It was hot, the sun high and unrelenting, shadows almost absent.

  “A lion,” said Natalie, silently patting herself on the back because her eyes were becoming adjusted to life in the bush. “But why are we stopping? Don’t we normally just drive on past lions?”

  “Look at him,” said Christopher. “He’s emaciated and he’s not moving. He may even be dead.”

  “Ease forward,” said Daniel softly.

  Christopher put the Land Rover into a low gear and rolled forward towards the tree.

  “No sign of hyenas or vultures yet. If he’s dead, he’s only just died.”

  “What are we doing?” said Natalie. “Why is a dead lion so interesting?”

  Daniel turned in his seat. “There’s been an outbreak of biting flies near Ngorongoro.” He inspected the lion. “These flies suck the blood of lions, who become emaciated. They climb into trees or hyena burrows to escape the flies, but many of them die anyway. If this one’s dead, we need to know. Biting flies carry diseases that badly affect horses, deer, and some cattle—”

  As he said this, however, the lion moved, and fell out of the tree. They watched as it lay on the ground, wheezing heavily. It was certainly very thin, its rib cage showing through its pelt, parts of its body covered with bloody bare patches.

  As they watched, it raised itself on its front legs and began to drag itself through some bushes.

  “It’s lost the use of its hind legs,” breathed Christopher. “It looks like Stomoxys calcitrans to me.”

  “Is that the name of the fly?” said Natalie.

  Daniel nodded. “And there’s no hope. The hyenas will be here soon. We need to shoot it and take it back to camp.”

  “Is that necessary?” said Natalie.

  Daniel turned in his seat again and reached up to the bracket where the guns were kept. “This lion won’t see out the day, Miss Natalie. Either we kill him, quickly and painlessly, or the hyenas or wild dogs will tear him into a dozen pieces, slowly and agonizingly.”

  Christopher took the other gun. “Aldwai, keep an eye on us, will you? Natalie, stay in the Land Rover and keep all the windows closed, for now anyway. If hyenas or wild dogs come this way—and with an ailing lion it won’t be long—they can be quite inquisitive.” He got out of the car.

  Daniel and he moved off slowly. Aldwai followed them at a distance, but stopped when he was about fifty yards from the vehicle, so he could keep an eye on Natalie, too.

  It was stifling in the Land Rover. When Natalie had first arrived in Kihara she had assumed she would get used to the heat. She had, but only up to a point. The midday temperatures in the gorge were just too hot for any human being to be truly comfortable and in a closed Land Rover, under full sunshine, it was worse.

  But at least she had—for the most part—stopped shaking.

  How her life was changing. As a young girl, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, at the beginning, she had hardly ever thought about sex. That side of her had been awakened by Dominic but for years Dominic and sex had been closely associated. She couldn’t imagine having sex with anyone else: her head ruled her body—her head and her heart and her body were all one and the same entity. Not anymore. Since Jack had pulled her out of the river, during the wildebeest stampede, when she had enjoyed his hands on her breasts, her body had reasserted itself and no longer obeyed either her heart or her head.

  Her nights were complicated affairs now. Her solitary whiskey, and her solitary cigarette, her close-of-day ritual, had now become instead the prelude, the calm before the storm, an aperitif, the sensual overture to a much more important main event. What would her father make of her behavior? What would her mother have made of her behavior? God forbid her father should ever know. What did she herself make of her own behavior? When she had first gone up to Cambridge, the idea of sleeping with someone she wasn’t married to was as foreign, as strange, as unthinkable as … well as giving evidence in a murder trial in Africa. But here she was, in Africa, being made love to by a man she’d known only a few weeks, in a tent, and looking forward to it. She couldn’t say that she did what she did, or allowed what she allowed, without certain pangs of conscience, without guilt that she was betraying some ideal her parents had for her. Nor was she oblivious to the risks. She had read, before she left for Africa, about the development of a so-called contraceptive pill but she couldn’t really believe it would ever catch on. It would be wonderful if it worked but there must be side effects, failures, problems, not least what it would do to the morals of people who—as she knew from her time at Cambridge—were much more adventurous than she.

  But now, now that her body—if not yet all of her mind—had left Dominic behind, she could see that sex … sex, if it could be divorced from what one thought one’s parents would say, was … well, apart from anything else, it was a wonderful medicinal, it was like a therapeutic shower every night, that left her exhausted, but clean spirited and clear headed, cleansed. Jack was a considerate lover—at least she assumed he was, him being only the third man she had slept with.

  There was invariably an air of uncertainty before Jack arrived and even after he had entered the tent. They smoked their cigarettes companionably enough, and sipped their whiskey. But their whispered conversation was stilted. It was only when he kissed her open mouth, when she felt his hands on her, when he pressed himself to her and she felt him harden—how erotic she found that word—only then did she feel the great tide of fire sweep through her body, and all nerves, all tenseness, all doubt, all reticence evaporated. That was when she was most ashamed, most embarrassed at what she had become, and when she found surrender exciting, irresistible.

  The anticipation before, and the relaxation/exhaustion after, also cleared her mind of the great confu
sion as to the real reason Richard had been killed. She had, she decided, sat on that confusion long enough. She would contact Maxwell Sandys and tell him what she knew.

  Each night now she undressed and wore just a nightdress, the only nightdress she had brought with her, rather than her pajamas. That had always been an unconscious act before, but now even the flimsiness of the garment was arousing. It showed that she was ready for Jack, half naked when he arrived. That too was embarrassing, shaming and exciting all at the same time.

  But—there it was again, Jack’s least favorite word—good as Jack was in bed, clean and clear as she felt when it was over, she still couldn’t think about marriage. He had put his proposal well, she thought. It would be lovely to learn to fly, to explore the landscape of Africa in that way. A lifetime spent in pursuit of early mankind, bringing up “a choir” of children in such surroundings, was both civilized and natural—and unusual—in all the right ways. And Jack adored children; he would be a good father, she was sure. But the trial, Richard’s death, Russell’s threats … she couldn’t just dismiss those. Those bridges must be crossed before … before she could be clear enough in her mind to give Jack an answer. What should she do? Give evidence or not, save the gorge or—

  She heard a shot. Then another. Then another, and she saw three hyenas break cover from the bushes ahead and scatter across the plain.

  Shortly after that, Aldwai started to move back toward the Land Rover, and then Christopher and Daniel appeared, both with ropes over their shoulders, pulling the dead lion behind them. The ropes were tied around the animal’s hind legs, his head churning up the ground as it was dragged across the soil-sand of the plain.

  As they came closer, Natalie was surprised at how large the lion was. She had never been this near to one before.

  Aldwai fired his gun and two of the hyenas, which were following Christopher and Daniel, scattered again.

  “Can you let down the back of the Land Rover?” Christopher shouted.

  She got out and went round to the rear of the vehicle, pulling out the bolts that kept the back flap in place. She let it down.

  When the two men reached the Land Rover, Daniel climbed up and hauled the lion’s hind legs on board.

  “Give me a hand here,” breathed Christopher, holding one of the animal’s forelegs.

  Natalie took the other one. The animal’s fur certainly was mangy but it was surprising how warm the lion still was. There was a big black-red patch where it had been shot in the neck.

  With Daniel pulling, and Christopher and Natalie lifting, the lion was hauled onto the back of the Land Rover. They could fit it in only by bending its spine. They shoved and pushed and pulled, till it fitted the space. Clouds of flies were already buzzing round the bloody patch where it had been shot. It was still stiflingly hot.

  One more time Aldwai had to fire at the hyenas to keep them away.

  How ugly hyenas were, thought Natalie, not for the first time. How different from the magnificence of lions—lions other than the poor creature they had manhandled into the Land Rover.

  Christopher and Daniel slid back the bolts of the flap at the rear end of the vehicle and stood for a moment, resting after their exertions.

  Daniel went to the backseat compartment of the Land Rover and took from it a bottle of water which he handed round. They were all sweating copiously.

  Christopher, looking intently at Natalie, said, “I’d say we’ve earned our showers today—eh?” He smiled.

  Following his gaze, she looked down, at her own shirt front. The khaki was stained dark with sweat all over and clung to her breasts. So tightly slight bulges were prominent where the wet cotton hugged the outline of her nipples.

  • • •

  “You’ve got tick typhus.”

  “What?” Natalie, lying on her back in bed in her tent, was sweating but feeling a chill all at the same time. She looked up at Jonas with alarm.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, somewhere between a growl and a chuckle. “It’s not typhus like the nineteenth-century, industrial Charles Dickens variety. It’s tick typhus, more like a cross between a very bad dose of flu and chicken pox.”

  “No! Isn’t that bad enough? How did I get it?”

  Jonas rummaged in the bag he had brought with him. “I should imagine it was handling that emaciated lion you brought back to camp the other day. It’s been confirmed that it had biting sickness. Christopher’s gone down with it, too.”

  “Oh dear. What happens now?”

  “Tick typhus usually lasts twelve to fifteen days. The rash on the palms of your hands is the telltale sign. It might spread to your arms and legs, even the soles of your feet, which is where Christopher is most affected right now. You’ll feel some muscle pain and probably more than one headache.” He lifted a small brown glass bottle from his bag. “Aureomycin, an antibiotic, take it twice a day, beginning right now, and be sure to finish the course—remember what happened to Mgina’s little brother.”

  She nodded. “The trial is only—what?—nineteen days away.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine by then, trust me. But no digging in that time. Have lots of rest—you’ll feel tired anyway—and keep out of the sun, try not to sweat, that makes the rash worse. I’ll tell Mgina to bring you water for a shower three times a day instead of the usual once. Shower when you have a fever, not when you feel a chill. Showers keep your skin clean and cool.”

  He handed her two tablets. “Take these. No alcohol, by the way. You won’t feel like doing much for the first few days and don’t push yourself. Sleep as much as you can. Your body will recover more quickly in that way, and you’ll scratch yourself less.”

  “Is Daniel suffering from this too?”

  “No. Being African, he may have acquired some immunity. Or he may just have been lucky. We don’t know. Now, I’ll come back before dinner to see how you are. I’m just off to give Christopher his antibiotics.”

  Jonas went out.

  Natalie had woken up the day before with a fever and a rash on the palms of her hands. She had fought off the fever for half a day but then felt too ill to continue and collapsed in bed. Jonas had been away with Jack that day, warning the nearby tribes about the biting flies that had, in effect, killed the lion Natalie had spotted. The tribes were to be on the lookout for early signs of disease among their animals. She had been asleep when they returned and they hadn’t wakened her.

  This morning the rash on Natalie’s hands had been much worse and she was shivering with a chill. Jonas had immediately known what was wrong.

  Natalie had never been so ill before and the thought of lying in bed for days on end bored her. At the same time, she had to admit, she couldn’t go out into the sunshine with her rash, nor could she quite face writing papers for Eleanor and Nature.

  She settled down, lying on her back, looking up at the roof of the tent, her hands lying on the edge of the bed where they could catch what breeze was going.

  There would be no late-night visits from Jack, not in the full sense anyway, while she was laid low.

  How could she think about sex while she was ill? she wondered. With ease, it seemed.

  How she had changed—and was that natural? Had she become a freak or had she been a freak to start with and simply matured into a normal woman? Would she ever know?

  Somehow she dropped off to sleep but was awakened by noises in the back tent which adjoined hers. Someone had brought water for her shower.

  She got up and went through.

  Mgina was there.

  “Hello.”

  “I am sorry you are not well, Miss Natalie. Dr. Jefferson says you must not shower if you feel chill.”

  “No, no, don’t worry, Mgina, I’m feeling sweaty.” Natalie stepped out of her damp pajamas and stood under the shower. The water—tepid rather than hot—was very cooling as it began to evaporate on her skin. She soaped herself carefully and let the water remove the suds. The palms of her hands still itched—worse, they were st
ill sore—but holding the soap seemed to help.

  “And how are you, Mgina? How is married life? How is Endole and where is he?”

  “He is looking after the cattle, Miss Natalie. With the biting sickness, all the cattle are being held close by the village.”

  Natalie nodded, patting herself dry with the towel.

  “And are you happy, being wife number three?”

  Mgina passed across a new towel. “This is softer, Miss Natalie, better for your rash.”

  As Natalie took it, she added, “I am pregnant, Miss Natalie.”

  “Oh, but that’s wonderful! A new life to replace Odnate and so soon. Is your mother pleased?”

  Mgina nodded.

  “As soon as I’ve got rid of this rash, Mgina, we must celebrate. Let me think what to do.”

  “Will you be well for the trial, Miss Natalie?”

  Natalie frowned. What was Mgina saying? Why was she so interested? It was unlike her to ask questions. Was she—was she the leak in the camp, the link to Marongo, and even to Richard Sutton Senior? Natalie remembered now that Mgina had been in her tent late one night, when they had all been listening to jazz, when the British minister was visiting—she couldn’t remember his name. Mgina had brought fresh flowers but… they hadn’t really been needed. Had she been snooping, using the flowers as cover? Natalie had never challenged her, the episode had slipped her mind. Mgina had known Natalie and Jack were flying to Lamu at Christmas, she had volunteered to help them pack the plane. Natalie didn’t want to think about it.

  “Oh yes,” she replied eventually. “Nothing has changed there.”

  Mgina nodded and picked up Natalie’s dirty pajamas and left the shower tent. Natalie went back to her own quarters and lay down on the bed, naked. The twenty minutes after a shower were always the most comfortable time.

  But her mind was in a swirl. Was Mgina the innocent young woman Natalie had always thought she was, or was she … something other than she seemed? Yes, she came from a different village from Ndekei but she was a Maasai; her loyalties would be the same.