A Change in Altitude (18 page)

(The following day, Margaret examined the photograph in the newspaper and then read the text below it. There was no photo credit or byline on either the photograph or the very short piece.

EAA has had a good year—more of that on page 34—and one of the people responsible for this is Mt. Kevin Britt, who was the airline’s Marketing Manager on a 2-Year secondment from Eastern Airlines which has just ended.

The entire story had only two more sentences, but much was revealed in just the first sentence, not least of which was the awkwardness of the writing. Was the reader to think that Eastern Airlines had just ended? Margaret noted the capitalization of
Marketing Manager
and the suggestion that the reader turn to page thirty-four for a fuller story about EAA. She deduced that EAA must have made a terrific ad buy to merit two stories. Referring to Kevin Britt as a mountain, she guessed, would have been a copyeditor’s mistake.)

Jagdish and she left the hotel and drove back to the
Tribune
office. Along the way, Margaret heard the sorry tale of his elder son, who was fat and doing poorly in school. He was about to start on his daughter when they pulled into a spot in front of the
Tribune
. They went upstairs, Margaret to surrender the film, Jagdish to type up his story. But as they entered the
Tribune
office, they could see Mr. Obok, who was speaking animatedly to someone on the telephone, through his open door. He beckoned to them.

“Plane crash,” he said when he put down the phone. “Thika Road. Fifteen miles out of town. Flying Doctor Service.”

He pointed to Margaret. “You, too,” he said, and tossed his head in the direction of the door.

Jagdish turned and started jogging, and Margaret followed him. She gave the film of the marketing manager to the receptionist on the way out. When they got to the Peugeot, Jagdish stood at the driver’s side and asked for the keys. He seemed to have come alive.

“Shouldn’t I drive?” Margaret asked.

“I know the way,” he said, sliding into the seat.

Margaret held on to the dashboard as Jagdish took the Thika Road like a rally driver. More than once they passed a full matatu on the wrong side, catching the ditch as they did so. Mud splattered over the windshield, over the side window. Margaret didn’t ask Jagdish to slow down. He was a shrewd driver, despite the speed and a few near misses. She didn’t need to be told that getting there first was paramount.

Margaret had never seen a plane crash, not in real life.

On the way, she had fifteen minutes to prepare herself for the scene that awaited them. When Mr. Obok had said the Thika Road, she’d imagined that the plane could be seen from the highway. What she hadn’t envisioned was that the plane had crashed directly onto the tarmac, suggesting a botched emergency landing. Traffic had begun to thicken. Jagdish took to the ditch again, swerving the Peugeot back onto the road as close as he could get to the plane before stopping. He slid out of the car and began running. Margaret grabbed her camera and followed.

Onlookers stood about fifty feet away. Local askaris guarded the plane. No help had yet arrived.

The plane had taken most of the impact in the nose. A wing had been torn off. The pilot would have had to make a crucial decision to land in the scrub or on the tarmac. The scrub, though softer, was rife with obstacles. The road might have promised a better landing, except for the oncoming traffic. It looked as though the pilot had picked a moment when there hadn’t been any vehicles nearby. Margaret saw no other wreckage. Perhaps the pilot had run out of fuel or the landing gear had not descended.

Margaret could see a torso in the plane itself. White shirt and blue tie. A second body, shrouded in a sheet, lay half in and half out of the wreckage. A third body had been tossed twenty feet away.

She stood immobile as Jagdish hurriedly spoke to the askaris and showed his credentials. He signaled to Margaret with impatience. He wanted pictures of the crash at once.

“Shouldn’t we see if anyone needs help?” Margaret asked. “One of them could still be alive.”

“They’re all dead,” Jagdish said. “Don’t think, just shoot.”

When Margaret hesitated yet again, he came forward as if to wrest the camera out of her hand.

She moved closer to the plane. When she peered in, she could see the torso, as she had before. She could even see the legs. It took a few seconds for her brain to register what the eyes clearly saw, that the pilot had been beheaded.

Numbly, she shot from many angles, Jagdish pointing there and there and there. After a dozen shots, she put the camera down. She couldn’t take any more pictures; she was certain she was going to be sick. It wasn’t obvious what had sheared the man’s head off. She coughed and bent over. Jagdish was at her side, holding her elbow. “This is your first body?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “It’s just…”

“Shoot,” he said. “In minutes they will take away the bodies. Come with me.”

He dragged Margaret to the body that lay on the tarmac twenty feet from the crumpled plane. Overhead, buzzards circled. A group of Africans in Western dress surrounded the corpse. Beyond them was a flat, bleak plain of dust and scrub. In the distance, Margaret could see a wooden building with a red sign out front. She couldn’t read the writing on the sign.

Jagdish pushed his way through the gawkers and knelt over the body. He never stopped writing.

“Here,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “This one. Do it now.” He fanned the onlookers away. Margaret took the shots she was asked to take. She bent to the body. It was an African woman, and she wore the insignia of the Flying Doctor Service. Her neck was twisted in such a way that it was clear she was dead. The body in the sheet would have been the patient, then.

Why had help not arrived yet? Margaret marveled that she and Jagdish had been permitted such ghoulish access. In the States, she reflected, first the police and then aviation officials would have locked up such a scene at once. A reporter’s access would have been limited to the remarks a spokesman made.

Margaret’s hands began to tremble, and she couldn’t hold the camera steady.

Jagdish, jacket gone, shirt in disarray, came to her side.

“You are going to be sick?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “My hands are shaking.”

Margaret wondered if Jagdish would report this fact to Mr. Obok.

“You will get used to it,” he said. He reached into his pocket and removed a vial of small white pills. “Take one,” he insisted. “They’ll make the hands stop shaking.”

Margaret had no idea what the pill contained, but she didn’t hesitate. She swallowed it dry.

“Give it one minute,” he said. “Then go back to the plane and shoot from the other side.” He looked up. In the distance, they could hear the faint wail of a siren. “No, go now!” he urged.

A special edition of the paper was printed in the evening, the front page covered with Margaret’s photographs. They were gruesome, and she was glad that no credits had been awarded.

Still, she had some pride in her work. The quality of the photographs was sharp, the composition alone revealing the story. No one offered her a compliment, not even Mr. Obok, who’d been able to print a separate edition only because of her pictures. The story of the crash without the photos would not have merited the rushed edition. The
Tribune Extra
hit the streets an hour earlier than the
Evening Standard
. There were handshakes all around.

Margaret had the relevant pages of the special edition folded and tucked into the bottom of her camera case. The pill that had made her hands steady had begun to wear off. She tried to wipe the slickness from her palms onto the skirt of her dress. As she drove to Nairobi Hospital to pick up Patrick, she thought about the three dead bodies she had seen. The pilot, the patient, the doctor. The story, of course, had been sensational but then had taken an unusual turn at the end. Margaret had thought that the message would be one of people perishing while trying to perform a heroic service. But her photographs had been used to illustrate the need for more oversight of the Flying Doctor Service. She could hear Patrick’s cynicism already.

As she entered the road to the hospital, she remembered that the Peugeot was covered with great splashes of mud.

A month after the plane crash (and Margaret was to see many dead bodies during her time at the
Tribune:
six dead at the East African Safari Classic; seventeen dead when a matatu overturned; an Asian family macheted to death while sleeping), Patrick made an announcement. He would be away for two weeks. He had to visit the coast, specifically the medical facilities in Mombasa and Malindi. There would be a conference in Lamu. Patrick and Margaret had not yet been to the coast, though she remembered their earlier wistful exchange. She wanted to go with him but couldn’t because of a job that was growing busier and busier.

“We’ve never been apart this long,” Margaret said, moving toward him.

He wrapped his arms around her. “You’ll be okay,” he said. “And besides, we can work it out so that I’ll be on Lamu during a long weekend. You can join me there.”

Margaret noted that his tone was similar to the one she’d employed while telling him about her new job. He was selling her on this trip.

“We’ll spend a night or two in town at Petley’s,” he said, “and then we’ll stay at the beach at Shela. We’ll take a trip on a dhow,” he added, referring to the ancient sailing vessels the Swahili of Lamu had been making their living from for eons.

“When do you leave?” Margaret asked.

“In two days.”

She lifted her head from his chest. “That soon?” she said.

“The project got moved forward. It’s something I have to do. I’ve spoken to Moses, and he’ll take good care of you.”

It meant nothing to Patrick, but the echo of the phrase Arthur had used so often was unsettling.

That night, when Patrick and she made love, she sensed repair and apology. There was also, she was certain, the electric current of a future adventure.

Patrick left two days later by train. Margaret stood at the station with him. He had bought her ticket to Lamu, he said. She would fly because a train would take too long. There was a small airport on Manda; she would leave from Wilson. He had given her directions and cash. He had had Moses stock the fridge and the cupboards. He had taken the Peugeot in for a tune-up and had filled it with gas. He had done all of the things a loving husband would do for a wife except hide from her his tremendous impatience to get going.

Margaret often thought about Diana. She replayed the scene in her head a thousand times. Sometimes she could see the moment the guide missed the fur of Diana’s hood; at other times, Margaret could feel the way they’d all gone down, right there on the ice, all hooked to the rope. Margaret could hear Arthur in her dreams, his howl waking her. Had he gone to London as planned? Were he and his children living with his sister? Did he have a job with Colgate-Palmolive UK? Margaret wanted to talk to him, to reassure herself that he was all right, though she knew that no one could be all right after such a horrific accident. She remembered the moment they had locked eyes outside the church. Margaret thought of the terrible conversation Patrick and she had had after the accident.

As time went on, Margaret began to hope for a letter from Arthur. It might be addressed to Patrick, and that would be fine. Even more, she wanted to see Arthur and speak to him. There was much she had to say. It wouldn’t help Arthur at all, but it might help her.

After a few phone calls, Margaret learned that Diana’s body had been located after all and sent to London for a proper burial. Margaret thought that Diana wouldn’t have liked that, that she’d have preferred to be buried in Kenya, the country of her birth. Diana had hated London, and Margaret could not imagine that she would rest easy there. Margaret wished that Diana’s ashes had been scattered on a field where her dogs had run free, or on one of the knuckles of the Ngong Hills.

T
he task was to photograph a teacher. Margaret expected Jagdish as she chatted with Lily, the receptionist, a woman with an acerbic wit worth hanging around for. Margaret was taken by surprise when a tall Asian man stood in front of her, held out his hand, and introduced himself.

“Rafiq Hameed,” he said.

Margaret said nothing.

“And you are Margaret,” he said.

“Yes. Sorry. I was expecting… No, this is good,” she babbled.

“And we are to interview a teacher.”

“Yes.”

He smiled, whether at her sudden awkwardness or simply because he was looking forward to his interview, Margaret couldn’t tell.

“Well,” she said.

Though Rafiq’s skin was the light brown of the Indian or Pakistani and his hair the thick black Margaret had become familiar with (Rafiq had neither mustache nor beard, however), his features were distinctly European.

Rafiq checked his watch. “We should get going. We’ll take my car. It’s just outside.”

Rafiq had a car. This would make a pleasant change.

Margaret said good-bye to Lily while Rafiq held the door, an unexpected gesture. Jagdish more often than not had barreled through a door, leaving it to shut in Margaret’s face. He was either a thoroughly evolved male or simply rude. Margaret had decided on the latter.

“This interview is part of a larger piece I’ve been working on for a few weeks about the state of education in Kenya,” Rafiq explained as they jogged down the three flights of stairs. “Apparently, the Ministry has been eager for the
Tribune
to do such a piece, since it’s the one thing the government offers that actually works. A hundred problems, of course, but all children want to go to school.”

“I’m surprised I haven’t seen you before,” Margaret said.

“Well, I’ve seen you,” Rafiq said with a tilt of his head. “Hard to miss a young white woman in a sea of brown and black.”

Margaret was about to protest that there were several (well, two) white women who contributed to the paper besides her, but she let it go.

“What is this?” she asked about his car when she was inside.