The Clouds Beneath the Sun (49 page)

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this!”

“I’m not saying it will happen—there’s a lot of fight in the Deacons yet. But it’s one scenario.”

Natalie was breathing heavily, hating what Jack was saying. “Give me another scenario, please. Something more upbeat.”

Jack finished his whiskey and refilled his glass with water. But he didn’t say anything for some time.

When he did, he said quietly, “I would very much like to make love to you again, Natalie—”

“Jack!” She colored. “What has that got to do with—?”

“Hear me out. I’m not about to jump on you.” He gulped his water. “The night we spent together in Lamu was … well, it was memorable, despite those goons under the lamplight. I am not going to embarrass you by talking about the lovemaking, other than to say that the whole experience was … it sure beats finding fossils.” He grinned. “Or flying your own plane, and I’d swap my Ph.D. for it several times over.”

He grinned again but she said, “I still don’t see what—?”

“I’m getting there. I know Natalie Nelson, a bit anyway. I know who she is, what moves her, what matters to her. And I know that you agreed to spend the night with me in Lamu for a variety of complicated and simple reasons that might never come together again.”

She was listening now.

“I know some of those reasons, I can guess at others, still more are locked away inside you and are none of my business. But what I do know, Natalie, and I’m very sure of this, I know I can’t let you get away. If you want an upbeat scenario—I think it’s upbeat anyway—try this …” He paused. “Marry me.”

She colored again. But she didn’t say anything. Her throat was dry.

“Come and live in Africa, where there are lots of Lamus. Make it your life. Whatever happens in the gorge, there are other places to dig—the Rift Valley is thousands of miles long, there are plenty of places for other discoveries to be made. Learn to fly yourself—if Christopher can do it, you can.” He smiled. “Learn about African music, have your father come out here and listen to what the local tribes can do. Bring up some babies in the bush with all the wildlife and butterflies, the warmth—and the dung!” He swallowed what was left of his water. “Let’s have enough babies to start a choir.” He grinned. “You know how I am about children. How’s that for a scenario?”

Silence in the room. Downstairs the British journalists were growing rowdy.

When Natalie did speak, it was to say, “In a month or so I shall give evidence that could, if your bleak scenario proves accurate, drive the Deacons from the gorge that has been their life for decades. How would certain other Deacons feel about me
becoming
a Deacon under those circumstances?”

He shrugged. “You can keep your own name if you wish. I like Natalie Nelson, it suits you. I told you that, the first time we met.”

“That wasn’t so long ago. How can you be so certain of your own mind so soon?”

“You were immediately certain of seeing Ndekei.”

“Not the same thing at all.”

“Maybe not, but when you fly airplanes you have to be certain of a specific number of things—lives depend on it. That habit grows. I’m certain of what I feel for you.”

“I’m like altitude, am I? Or barometric pressure?”

He grinned. “No, you’re more like a weather pattern, a configuration, basically the same sunshine, a little cloudy at times, squally at others, the occasional growl of thunder … help me out here, I’m not sure I can keep this up much longer.”

Another silence.

“You’re right about Lamu. A weather pattern formed there, it built up—it did for me anyhow.” She reached across and laid her hand on his arm. “It was lovely. But—”

“I knew there was a ‘but’ coming. ‘Buts’ have peppered my life, they are up there with ‘howevers’ and ‘nonethelesses.’ ‘Buts’ have presaged every disappointment, ignited every setback, begun the destruction of every hopeful scenario. I loathe ‘buts.’”

“I won’t use that word, then. And I won’t give you an answer tonight. I won’t say no and I can’t say yes either, not right now.” She thought. “Did you really expect me to say yes this instant, to so sudden and so big a question?”

Natalie swallowed what was left of her whiskey.

“What a day. I need to go to bed—I’m mentally exhausted, though I’m sure I shan’t sleep.” She stood up and kissed him on the forehead. “A choirload of babies. That’s quite a scenario, Dr. Deacon.”

•   •   •

She had been right. Sleep wouldn’t come. It was hot in the room; the overhead fan was working but not being at all effective. It had started to rain outside—the short rains had reached Nairobi. The weather in her head was changing too.

She had never hit a man before. She had never hit anyone before. She had never imagined doing so. But Russell … She didn’t want to think about Russell but she couldn’t avoid it. How could he conceive—plan, plot, precipitate—what he was trying to make happen? Jack and Russell were as different as could be. Jack—so far as she knew—was not at all the jealous type. But, like Jack, Russell thought politically. It was, as Jack had shown her, a dimension missing from her own makeup. Natalie had been brought up to avoid jealousy and revenge but she knew, from her own unavoidable feelings when she had been going out with Dominic and he spoke about his wife, what an unmanageable monster jealousy could be. Mgina had been right: like termites, jealousy corrodes even the strongest timber.

Jealousy might even be the very foundation on which this whole terrible scenario was built
.

She heard shouting in the street. What was it? Drunken revelers? A political demo? Not at this hour surely, but that just showed how on edge she was, how much her life was determined by …

Around three, the solution came to her. It was like a flower unfolding in her brain. Something that had always been there suddenly grew bigger, more colorful, more attractive, more appealing, took on a form all its own.

She would change her story
.

She would give Ndekei his freedom, Marongo his victory, and the gorge a future.

She would say, simply, that she had had second thoughts, that in her heart she could no longer be certain that the figure she had seen that night was Ndekei. She had not seen his features, so he could have been anyone. Yes, he was wearing a white T-shirt of the kind worn by Ndekei, but was he really shuffling, as she had thought? How could she tell, at that distance, in the dark?

If she changed her story Russell would be stymied and a career in the gorge was hers for the asking, even marriage to Jack.

There was the problem with Richard Sutton Senior, but what, despite his threats, could he
do?
Given the discoveries she had already made—some of which she hadn’t made when he had threatened her—could he really damage her?

Should she tell Richard Sutton Senior that his son was a homosexual? Did he know? If he didn’t, it might make him angry, upset at the least. But the doubt that existed in her own mind, that the passions aroused by homosexuality might have been the real reason why Ndekei killed Richard, operated both ways. In one sense, it made Ndekei
more
guilty, doubly culpable. He had his own, personal private reason for killing Richard but was hiding behind tribal customs. But if that were true, the Maasai didn’t deserve the chance to threaten the gorge, Ndekei’s deception mustn’t be allowed to succeed. Yes, he would go free, both his crimes—murder and deception—would go unpunished, but justice, in the wider sense, would be done.

The main thing was the gorge. She must learn to think politically, prioritize, compromise. She twisted and turned on the bed. The bedclothes clung to her damp skin. Maybe she could persuade Eleanor to honor Richard Sutton Junior’s memory much as his father planned. She hadn’t pressed enough for the new species to be named in his honor. They’d announced the new name in the press conference, yes. But they hadn’t gone into print yet. Maybe if she suggested it now, did a deal with Eleanor …

At four o’clock she changed her mind again. Of course she would give evidence.

Several more times that morning she changed her mind. The rain abated, the dawn came, the sun edged over the rooftops and flagpoles. She saw it all.

11
FEVER

“I
’ve said this before: there’s good news and bad news.” Eleanor sat in her usual place at dinner. It had been two weeks since the headlines about the press conference, and the associated accounts of the upcoming trial. They were now all back in the gorge, digging, and trying to ignore the fuss that was building up in Nairobi.

Eleanor coughed and said softly, “I spoke at length on the radio-telephone with Harold Heath—in case you don’t know, he’s the editor of
Nature
. He has of course seen the reports of the press conference and is as horrified by the murder of Richard as he is intrigued and impressed by what he knows of our discoveries.” Her hands closed over her spectacles on the table in front of her. “I couldn’t resist telling him about Jonas’s latest find, that we may have mankind’s oldest pregnancy to report. I think he was almost as excited as I was. He is therefore willing, on this occasion, to overlook the problematic protocol issues, as he put it, and is prepared to publish our reports as usual.”

The new discovery was three days old. Jonas had discovered an ancient pelvis—at the same two million level—with an associated minuscule skull, which he was convinced was embryonic.

Eleanor smiled as she looked around the table but then grew serious. “Now, Natalie, the bad news is that there’s another attack on you in the Nairobi press, I am afraid. I haven’t seen it, but I was told about it by Maxwell Sandys when I spoke to him earlier, again on the radio-telephone.”

Natalie couldn’t speak. She felt sick.

“What are they saying now?” said Jack. “Anything new?”

“Well there is something new, yes, something new to me anyway, and it’s distressing.” She paused and looked at Natalie with concern. “They are saying that Natalie and Richard were lovers, and so were Natalie and Russell, and that Richard was killed because of sexual jealousy, and they imply—but can’t say outright—that she has … if not made up her evidence, then embellished it for personal reasons, that there is a racist element in the fact that she is giving evidence at all. Ndekei, they are saying, has been set up.”

“How can they get away with all that?” said Jonas. “Isn’t that against the laws of libel, and contempt of court?”

“Theoretically, yes,” said Jack, leaning forward. “The law here is based on British law. But… with independence in the offing, everything is in flux and the rules are being relaxed all over the shop. Not that that’s much comfort to Natalie.”

“What also bothers me,” said Eleanor, “is how they are finding out things about camp life. Who is leaking all these details? Do we have a traitor—a Judas—among us?”

Silence around the table.

Then Eleanor said, “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, Natalie, but I thought it better to tell you what is happening in Nairobi, what is being said, rather than have you ambushed later on, nearer the time of the trial. You’re a strong person, I’m sure you can cope.”

In fact, Natalie was close to tears. Not for the first time, she told herself that this was not what she had come to Africa for. She was not a racist. Or promiscuous. Given what Kees had told her about Richard, the idea of an affair with him was laughable. The press were worse than snakes. More politics.

Dinner was breaking up, there was talk of music.

“Do you want to choose tonight?” said Jack, who could see how upset Natalie was.

She shook her head, finished her water, and got up. She smiled at Jack, at Eleanor, and at Christopher. Then, without saying a word, she walked past the campfire towards her tent.

She untied the tapes that closed the main flaps. She lit a cigarette. In the darkness, she heard voices. Were they coming from the gorge? Were the Maasai there even now, and if so what were they doing at this hour? The Maasai had been taking more and more interest in the gorge recently, as they all knew, but what could they be doing in the darkness?

“Is this a good time or a bad time?”

Jack stood over her. She hadn’t heard him approach, but then all manner of things were going on inside her.

“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 confusion 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.