The Clouds Beneath the Sun (52 page)

Natalie nodded. She still couldn’t stop smiling.

“After the exchange was over, she came back into my study, where I was working, and told me I was being inhuman. That was bad enough but she added that unless I started building bridges … towards you, she meant… she would quit her job. She said she wouldn’t leave me in the lurch, she would wait until I found a replacement, but that she wanted to go, unless I made it up with you.”

Two couples came into the bar and he looked up before going on.

“By Christmastime, I had done nothing about anything. I have to admit that I didn’t like the idea of Mrs. Bailey giving me an ultimatum but then neither did I like the idea of her leaving. She and I are used to each other.” He chuckled. “And then came all the news reports about your press conference, the one where you announced your discoveries, but also where it was revealed that you, you personally, had become a witness in a murder trial and that the case was dividing all the people on your dig.”

He smoked his cigarette for a moment. “That’s when I decided to write to you, to suggest that I come for the trial, to support you—”

“I never got any letter!”

“Because none was ever sent. While I was looking into the whole business, buying tickets, fixing a leave of absence with the bishop, making sure Mrs. Bailey would look after Noah, deciding how to say what I wanted to say in a letter, I had this phone call—from Eleanor Deacon.”

“This is the part I don’t—”

“No, Tally, no. Don’t go off the deep end. I know you think she interfered, meddled, in your private affairs. That’s what she said you’d say—”

“Dad! That’s exactly what she did!”

“But I’m here. It worked! She convinced me
not
to send you a letter, that what would have the most impact on you was if I
behaved
, acted, did something, and came here myself.” He crushed his cigarette out into the ashtray. “We must have had the most expensive phone call in history—thank God she was paying—because we talked for almost half an hour. The operator kept asking if she wanted three more minutes and she kept saying ‘Yes, yes, get off the line.’ She’s very …
forceful
, isn’t she?”

Natalie nodded. She was angry with Eleanor for interfering but couldn’t stop smiling because her father was here.

He lit another cigarette. “Anyway, we spent a lot of time just talking about what you are all doing in the gorge. She told me about her own father, who was a missionary and who had his faith crushed, she told me about the discoveries you have made personally, what their significance is, she told me that she has written to the head of your college about how good you are—”

“She hasn’t told me—!”

“No. I shouldn’t be telling you this, really. She says it’s better if these things are confidential, it’s the way things work in Britain, but she thinks you are professor material and she wants to prepare the ground.”

Natalie was half flattered by this news, but still astounded by Eleanor’s interference.

“Then we talked about the trial, what you saw, the threats to the gorge—which I knew about, briefly, from the reports of the press conference—and the fact that you are under a lot of pressure, from both sides, and that the trial may become a circus. She convinced me I should come for the trial, as I had been meaning to do anyway, and that to alert you in a letter would only add to the pressure. That to surprise you like this would be the best kind of support.”

He sipped more whiskey. “So I took her advice—and here I am.”

She was still holding his hand, so she raised it to her lips and kissed his fingers. “It’s lovely, lovely. Thank you for coming.”

He disengaged his hands from Natalie’s, twisted in his seat, and picked up a package he had with him. “When I talked with Eleanor Deacon, she happened to say that one of her sons has a gramophone in that gorge, so I’ve bought you these.” He handed her three slim brown-paper packages and kissed her cheek. “Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, ‘In fernem Land’ from Wagner’s
Lohengrin
, and Glinka’s overture to
Ruslan and Ludmilla.”

Natalie took them. “Dad, that’s wonderful. Thank you.” She told him about Jack’s wind-up gramophone, how they sometimes played music after dinner, with the roars of the lions and the chatter of the baboons as a backdrop.

“I’d like to hear that,” he said. “See if I can recruit any baritones.”

She laughed out loud, leaned forward, and kissed him.

How her fortunes had changed during the day.

They had left the gorge early that morning—Jack doing the flying, with Eleanor, Daniel, Christopher, and Natalie and quite a few bags filling the plane. It had been a bumpy ride, there were plenty of short-rains storm clouds about, but they had flown at only two thousand feet, so there had been some good views of the wildlife.

Christopher had been a bit distant with her in the plane, although they had sat side by side, behind Jack and Eleanor.

“You seem to have recovered better than I did,” he had said.

She had made a face. “I was up and about yesterday—only a day before you.”

“Maybe I would have made a quicker recovery if Jack had brought me dinner every night.”

She had ignored that. “I still haven’t got back my appetite properly, have you?”

“Appetite for what?”

What did he mean by that? Did he mean anything? What did he know? Something was rankling with him, that much was certain.

“We can have some fish in Nairobi,” she had said, determined not to be drawn. “Maybe that will help full recovery.”

In fact, she was less fully recovered than she let on. She felt a bit sick in the plane and her hands still tingled where the rash had been, though she hadn’t told Jonas because she didn’t want anything to interfere with the trial.

Jack had again parked the Comanche in his favorite part of the airport, among the private jets. Natalie noticed that there were one or two more than before. The prospect of independence, she presumed, was attracting all sorts of businessmen to Kenya. Jack, she, and the others were staying in the Rhodes, save for Eleanor, who was lodging with Maxwell Sandys.

Her father was sipping his whiskey again but looking at her more closely. “You look pale, Tally, and a bit thin. Does that gorge really agree with you, or are you as worried about the trial as Eleanor Deacon said?”

She looked around the bar. All the customers were white, the barman black. Race in Kenya, like race everywhere, was a complicated business. The newspapers in the hotel shop were full of racial news of one kind or another. South Africa was going its own brutal way, outside the Commonwealth, and in the Deep South of the United States the desegregation of the universities was provoking riots and sit-ins. Adolf Eichmann was appealing against his death sentence after his trial in Israel for the murder of so many Jews.

“I
am
worried about the trial, yes, and it’s wonderful of you to have come, the best news I could possibly have—Eleanor is right there. But the reason I am pale and a bit thin is that I’m just getting over a bout of tick typhus—”

“Typhus? What—?”

“Don’t worry!” And she told him about the lion they had killed and what had happened afterwards.

“So you see, Dad, I’m over the worst and should be as good as new very soon.”

She finished her drink. “How long do you plan to stay?”

He shrugged. “My ticket is for ten days, and I can’t change it. I’d like to see the gorge, if I’m allowed and welcome. Otherwise, I’ll go to the coast.”

“Of course you can come to the gorge.” She held up her empty glass. “Shall we have dinner? Eleanor played a trick on me. She said she’d arranged for me to have dinner with the prosecuting lawyer, when in fact she planned this surprise. I should have guessed something was up when Maxwell Sandys—the lawyer—looked nonplussed for a moment when I saw him this afternoon and mentioned dinner tonight. But I would never have guessed you would be here. Let’s not lose a moment, and go and eat. You must be famished.”

He nodded. “Yes, but look, I’m here to offer moral support. We’ll have dinner now but after that I’ll take a backseat until the trial is over. You’ll be busy and you’ll be on edge. I’m here if you need me, but I realize I may not see much of you until the proceedings have been and gone. How long is the trial expected to last, by the way?”

Natalie sipped her drink. The short rains had clinched it, the night before. Rain, for her, had always been associated with her father and she couldn’t let him down, she decided. He would expect her to give evidence and she had let her parents down in so many ways already. In the rain at Kihara, naked, she had thought back to that day, years ago, when she and her father had swum, virtually naked, on the beach at Chapel St. Leonard’s, when everyone else was hurrying off the sands because of the weather. A feeling of overwhelming fondness for her father had swept along Natalie’s warm, wet skin and she had known what she must do.

How just it was that, at that very moment, he had been in the plane on his way to Nairobi, to support her. Something was coming good in her world at last.

“Not long, not long at all. The trial will last two days, three at the most. And I don’t really know how busy I shall be. There’s a rally going on tonight, a rally when the local blacks will probably attack me, as a white witness giving evidence against a black defendant.”

Her father shook his head. “Your mother and I brought you up to be anything but racist, as the Church says. People here can surely see that you are not a racist?”

“Kenya will be independent soon. Race is a very powerful political tool.”

He nodded. “Yes, I realize that. I know it somewhere inside me of course. But that it should sweep up my daughter in its … crudities—that’s hard. Is it getting to you? It must be.”

She nodded. “Yes it is. Of course it is.” She squeezed his hand. “But I try not to show it and it’s not all bad news, remember that. The discoveries we have made are very important—they will change the way mankind thinks of itself, and
Nature
is giving us a special edition.” She drank some whiskey. “There’s also something else you don’t know: Jack Deacon has asked me to marry him.”

Sipping what remained of his drink, Owen Nelson held the glass away from his lips.

“I haven’t given him an answer yet—and I won’t, not until the trial business is all cleared up. But … but, if I were to say yes, it would mean me living in Africa full-time. Not necessarily in Kihara Gorge—there are problems there that I’ll tell you about over dinner—but probably somewhere very like it. How would you feel about that?”

Owen set his glass down gently. “Part of me would feel widowed all over again, but you know me, Tally, I want what’s best for you, what’s best for your happiness, for your career.” He wiped his lips with his handkerchief. “But tell me, why haven’t you given Jack Deacon an answer yet? It’s unlike you not to know your own mind immediately—”

“Ah! Look who’s here.” Natalie moved away from her father as Eleanor and Jack appeared in the bar. She stood up. “Is your mysterious family meeting all over?”

Eleanor smiled. “Sorry, that was all a bit hammy, wasn’t it? But the surprise worked, I hope?” She held out her hand to Owen Nelson and he took it enthusiastically.

“Oh yes, I think so.” Natalie put her arm in her father’s and squeezed. She kissed his shoulder.

She made the introductions and then Eleanor said, “It’s very good of you to come to support your daughter, Mr. Nelson. She’s a very talented individual, and we’ve all grown very fond of her.”

“I’m pleased to hear it,” replied Owen. “She’s all I’ve got.”

Eleanor nodded and leaned towards him. “Now Maxwell Sandys, the deputy attorney general, who is a friend of mine, has arranged for me to watch the trial from a special bench. Would you like to join me—Jack, Christopher, and me, actually?”

“Well, yes, if that’s convenient. Thank you. I was just telling Tally here that I don’t want to be in the way at all. I’m here, to be used by her as she wishes, and once the ordeal is over we can spend some time together.”

“Splendid. The trial starts at 10:30 tomorrow. Why don’t we all meet in the lobby here in the hotel at, say, 9:45 and walk over together? Is that convenient for you, Mr. Nelson?”

“Fine by me. Yes.”

“Hey, are those records?” said Jack, speaking for the first time and pointing at the paper packages Owen had given his daughter.

“Yes,” said Natalie. “Look.”

“Ruslan and Ludmilla,”
said Jack, reading from the labels. “‘In fernem Land’? Isn’t that from
Lohengrin
—and isn’t that the one that includes the wedding march?”

“Yes, yes it does,” said Owen, looking bewildered. “Why?”

“Oh, no reason,” said Jack, resolutely refusing to meet Natalie’s eye. “Enjoy your dinner.”

•   •   •

Natalie stared up at the ceiling of her room. Jack had just left and, for once, lovemaking had not settled either her mind or her body. Tomorrow she was giving evidence and, as today had worn on—for her, a day of killing time as the court case opened—the tenseness inside her had mounted. She hadn’t expected that: she had thought she was as well prepared as she could be, her waverings were over, her story was a simple one to tell and though there might be trouble outside the courthouse, inside the building itself all would surely be calm and orderly. Her father was here and, at dinner the evening before, all the difficulties that had passed between them had been aired and it had felt as though the two of them were starting anew. That gave her an enormous injection of inner strength. Her anger had all but disappeared.

But as the hours had dragged on today, as the heat of the sun had built up, she had grown more and more on edge. It hadn’t helped that the doctor Jack had recommended, the expert in tropical diseases, was away on the coast and therefore unavailable for a consultation. So she was still a little anxious from the idea that had formed in her mind the day before, in the meeting with Maxwell Sandys, that Jonas, well meaning though he was, had got his diagnosis wrong so far as she was concerned, and she was in fact more ill than he thought. Her skin was still blotchy, she still got a tingling in her hands where the rash had been, and her headaches, instead of subsiding, were actually more frequent now than before.