The Clouds Beneath the Sun (23 page)

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 scampered 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.

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.”