The Clouds Beneath the Sun (7 page)

She looked at Christopher but couldn’t read his expression.

“I can make a draft,” she said. “Of course I can, and I’d be pleased to. But there are other books I’d need to check, back in Cambridge, I mean, before I could go into print. And other colleagues I’d like to consult.”

Richard looked at her and nodded.

What did that mean? she wondered. Did it mean anything? Why was everything to do with this dig, even important discoveries, now complicated by layers and layers of speculation? She had never anticipated this.

“Let’s take it one step at a time,” she said in a measured way. “I do have a few books back at camp. I’ll give you a more considered response at dinner. How’s that?”

“Fine,” said Richard, “just fine.”

•   •   •

When Natalie got back to her tent there was still no sign of Mgina. The bed had been made, but from the different way the fresh towels had been folded and laid out, she could tell that someone else had done the cleaning that morning. So she just dumped her hat and sleeveless vest, in which she kept her bits and pieces, and left her tent, aiming for the area of the camp behind the refectory, near the storeroom, where the laundry was done. What had happened? One of the cleaning staff should know.

She was halfway across the clearing when she saw Jonas Jefferson getting down from a Land Rover. He saw her at the same time as she saw him and immediately set off towards her. As he drew close, he took off his hat and growled, “Odnate’s dead.”

“What? No, please
no!”

He wiped a hand across his face. “The family stopped giving him the pills.”

She stared at him. Her throat was damp.

“I’ve come across this before. Even in Britain, people don’t always complete the course of antibiotics. Some of the time, if you’ve a bad dose of flu, say, it may not matter, it delays recovery but that’s all. With more serious diseases, however, it matters very much.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “What you saw in Palestine wasn’t Africa. Palestinians are quite highly educated, relatively speaking, but here … here, traditional ways are still very powerful and they can, and do, reassert themselves. Once Odnate was feeling better, he got up, started playing, looking after the goats, and stopped taking his antibiotics. The family let him. Then, as soon as the symptoms reappeared, his parents concluded that Western medicine was no better than their own remedies. They resorted to their herbal cures, and didn’t bother to tell us—it was their affair. The poor boy died yesterday.”

Natalie couldn’t think what to say. It was as if there was a big, empty space in her brain. It had happened before, when her mother died. “When is the funeral?”

Jonas stared at her. “He wasn’t a chief or a warrior … He was a child.” He passed his hand over his face again. “I’m sorry, Natalie, but his body was left out in the bush last night, to be eaten by predators and scavengers. There’s nothing left of him to be buried … it’s the tradition here.”

Natalie felt out of breath. This was a bad business and it had just got worse. “Did you see Mgina?”

He nodded. “She’s upset but it’s a large family—I’m not saying the Maasai don’t feel grief the way we do because they do, keenly, and he was a lovely boy. But mortality is high in the bush. That’s not supposed to comfort you, but it is a fact. Mgina says she’ll be back in a day or so.”

He took his hand off her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I have some sedatives if you’d like one.”

Natalie still felt winded, but she shook her head. “No, no thanks. I’ll just lie on my bed for a bit. It’s so … so
disappointing.”

He nodded. “That’s the right word. It’s one of the first things you learn when you qualify as a doctor, that there are some people you can’t save, even though, according to the book, according to the rules, they should survive. It’s harder here because local traditions are so strong, and so different from ours. You’re not a doctor, so it’s hit you harder. Pity there’s no hard liquor on this dig—otherwise, I could prescribe a shot of brandy for you.”

He smiled.

3
WITNESS

N
atalie looked at the packet of cigarettes she held in her hand. The moonlight was so bright tonight that she could read the writing without the aid of the hurricane lamp. The campfire was alight—just—but its crimson glow was dim. She took a cigarette from the pack and slipped it into her mouth. When she flicked open her lighter, the flame jumped up and caught the tobacco. She didn’t know which she liked more, the first taste of her first cigarette of the day, or the first sip of whiskey.

She put the cigarette pack in the breast pocket of her shirt and leaned forward to light the hurricane lamp. After it had caught, she turned the flame down low and savored the tang of kerosene in her nostrils. In the distance she could just make out the skyline of the Amboseli Mountain, its smooth shoulders sinking into the maroon gloom of the plain.

She knew that as soon as Russell saw the glow of her lamp he would be over. Tonight, she definitely needed company. Odnate’s death had upset her. Having, as she thought, rescued him, she felt as if part of herself had died with him. She felt partly cheated and partly foolish for thinking that it was so easy to save a life, and she also felt naive that she had been so ignorant of the local customs that, in the end, had won out.

Naïveté. It was the curse of her life. It was her naïveté that had got her involved with Dominic and had, in the end, been responsible for his moving on, moving on without her. For the umpteenth time she relived that last afternoon, by the river in Cambridge, against the backdrop of Trinity and King’s College Chapel. By Cambridge standards it had been a sunny day, gloriously warm but with clouds too, blotting out the sun from time to time. They were walking but both wheeling bicycles, planning to ride into the countryside, as they sometimes did. She still wasn’t sure whether what had come next was sophisticated or cruel, or both.

Dominic would often hum or softly whistle tunes and it had become their private game for Natalie to guess what he was humming or whistling. If she couldn’t guess the tune, she would try for the composer.

“Oh, I know that,” she had said enthusiastically that day. “It’s from that new musical … what’s it called? … that’s it,
West Side Story
. Leonard Bernstein, that’s the composer.”

“Well done … and the tune?”

“America.”
She sang the words, “I-want-to-be-in-Ame-ri-ca, Okay-by-me-in-Ame-ri-ca …”

Dominic had smiled and said, “Bernstein’s asked me to play with him.”

She had stopped in her tracks. “Dom! That’s wonderful! When? Where?”

“New York. Just before Christmas.” He had stopped too. “It’s part of a tour I’m going on. A year on the road … Canada, Mexico, twenty-seven of the United States.”

“A year?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Starting when?”

“I leave for Vancouver next week.”

A plane droned by, overhead.

“How long have you been planning this?”

“A few months.”

It was a warm day and the skin on Natalie’s throat felt clammy. But she had shivered. This was the first she had heard of any tour.

“Vancouver couldn’t be further away.”

He had nodded. “I like it that way. I’ll be there a month, rehearsing and giving master classes, before moving on. A fresh city every three or four days, for months on end. A complete break.”

The last three words were spoken as the clouds cleared the sun and his face was suddenly on fire. But she could see that it wasn’t just the sunshine.

“A complete break?” she had repeated.

He nodded. “Susan and I are getting divorced. I need to devote myself to music for a year, at least.” He pointed to the bicycles. “This was always … you’ll be Dr. Nelson soon, moving on.” He wiped his lips with his hand. “It’s time, Natalie. I can’t take you with me.”

Just then, they heard—very faintly—the choir in King’s College Chapel. It was the middle of the afternoon, on a weekday, so it must have been a rehearsal. But the voices reached them, clear enough to be heard, but faint enough that she couldn’t make out what was being sung.

“I am sorry, Tally,” he had whispered, using the name her family and friends had used since she was a girl. He had leaned across the bicycles and kissed her cheek. “Music comes first for me, you know that. You’ve always known that. More than marriage, more than children …” He took her hand where it rested on the bicycle handlebars. “More than this.”

He had kissed her hand. More had been said, much more, but Natalie wouldn’t plead, so they had talked around the subject. One of the things she had always loved about Dominic was his voice, mellifluous, milky, melodic, and even that afternoon, amid her anguish, she had loved the sound of him speaking. But all she had achieved, really, was delaying his departure. She knew that couldn’t be delayed forever and she let him kiss her on her cheek a second time before turning, mounting his bicycle, and riding off.

She had remained where she was, the sound of the choir still clear, still faint.

She had never discussed divorce with Dominic, never pressured him in that way. But she had imagined it—oh, how she had imagined it.

Her distress that afternoon had soon given way to anger. Anger was never far away for her, as she realized all too well. And she knew where it came from. While Owen Nelson had been away in the war, Violette had had an affair. It had lasted for months, but Violette had assumed that Natalie was too young to understand, or even to notice. But Natalie was not too young, and she
had
noticed. The man was an RAF pilot stationed near Gainsborough and although the affair had gone on for months, it had ended long before Owen returned, slightly wounded. But that wasn’t the point. Natalie had always been angry at her mother’s betrayal, angry that she couldn’t tell her father without wounding him still further, and doubly angry, triply angry, that Violette had taken her daughter’s affair—Natalie’s—so badly, so much to heart, when she had done the same thing herself, only worse, because she had been already married herself. That was one of the reasons Natalie had followed a science career and not a musical one, to get back at her mother, to spite her. The fact that her mother’s death was a mystery angered her too. Was her mother having the last word? In coming to Africa, Natalie hoped she was escaping her anger.

Eleanor had mentioned a fresh mystery at dinner. A small plane had crashed near Mutonguni, east of Nairobi, killing the pilot and two passengers, who were senior members of KANU, the Kenya African National Union. Although the crash had been blamed on the fact that the plane had been refilled with the wrong kind of fuel, jet fuel not propeller-type Avgas, and was therefore an accident, the possibility remained that the switch had been deliberate, and politically motivated. With independence not far off, almost any event now threatened to have political overtones. If Richard and Russell’s invasion of the burial ground should be discovered …

Natalie pulled on her cigarette and observed Russell’s outline as he moved silently across the ground between his tent and hers. He was wearing his usual white shirt and jeans. He slumped into his usual chair.

He sat for a few moments without speaking, until his breathing became more regular.

Natalie had already laid out the whiskey and what remained of the chocolate on the writing table. Russell snapped off a piece and slid it into his mouth.

Chewing, he said softly, “A better day today.”

Natalie said nothing. Russell almost certainly didn’t know about Odnate and if he did his priorities were elsewhere. The discovery of the ancient zebra skull had brought about a lively discussion at lunch, and then again at dinner. There had been no mention of the tibia and femur, or of the burial ground, and to an extent the unpleasantness of a few days before, if not forgotten, had been put aside.

At dinner there had also been some light relief. Arnold Pryce and Eleanor had been into the nearby town of Karatu earlier in the day to refill one of the Land Rovers with diesel and top up the spare cans, and they had found a week-old copy of the London
Times
, which they had bought secondhand from a local white farmer they had met at the filling station. Russell North had observed Arnold reading the paper and snatched it from him. At dinner he had asked, “How can you have a newspaper that only has adverts on the front page? Adverts for schoolteachers, for tickets to the opera, for secondhand Rolls-Royces, for pity’s sake? Is that what the British think is the most important news?”

“It’s meant to calm you down,” replied Arnold testily. “Most news is bad news and that only upsets people.”

“And there’s a half page devoted to dances. Why are the British so interested in dancing?”

“That’s the ‘season,’” said Arnold. “Mothers give dances for their eighteen-year-old daughters, so they can meet the best young men in London. It’s an ancient tradition.”

“Sounds like anthropological gobblydegook to me,” said Russell. “No wonder you Brits have lost an empire.”

“For traditions to
be
traditions,” insisted Arnold, “to last they must be successful at some level. But then we know you are not a great respecter of tradition, Russell.”

That had closed the conversation.

Today’s discoveries also showed that, so far as Natalie was personally concerned, she was now much more a part of the team. At the table, Eleanor had deferred to her superior knowledge on extinct forms of life, and the others too had heard her out in respectful silence when she was explaining about ancient forms of horse and zebra. She had felt good about that.

She passed the whiskey across.

Russell just wet his lips. “Eleanor is warming to you.”

She had been ice cold where Richard and he were concerned.

Natalie said nothing. It wasn’t her fight and she wanted to keep it that way.

He wet his lips with whiskey a second time. “I saw you talking to Christopher in the gorge today. He seemed very animated.”

She let a long pause elapse, to emphasize that her privacy was her own affair. “He explained the noise the thorn bushes make, and was telling me about his brother, Jack, that’s all.”

Russell suddenly reached down between his legs, picked up some sheets of paper he had brought with him, and handed them across. “Here.”

“What is it?” she said, not taking them but guessing what the papers were.

“It’s the first draft of the article. Richard’s typing, with my corrections in blue. We thought you’d like to see it. He’s going over it again, right now.”

“Article? You’re going against Eleanor’s wishes?”

“No. Well, not entirely. We’re going to wait a bit, for her anger to subside, then try again. Once she sees the paper’s written, she’ll be excited, as excited as we are.”

And by showing it to her now, before Eleanor saw it, Russell was trying to enlist Natalie as an ally, a co-conspirator.

She took back the whiskey cup with one hand and dabbed at her damp neck with a handkerchief in her other one. “No, Russell. I don’t want to look. Not yet. You’re trying to … it’s as if you’re trying to solicit my support, coerce me, make me take your side. I don’t want you to do that. Leave me out of this, please.” She took a deep breath. “Christopher was telling me this morning that the Maasai are a very proud people, fierce even. He’s worried what they might do—”

“Another reason for publishing quickly.” Russell laid the papers next to the chocolate. “As soon as they see how important the site is, they’ll see the point of our raid.”

“The
point!
Russell!” Natalie let out a loud exasperated sigh. “Even now, you don’t seem bothered by what you did. It’s … it’s awful!” She banged the flask on the table. “Here, have another drink. Let’s break our one-nip-a-night rule and talk about something more pleasant. This conspiracy talk upsets me.” She poured a second nip of scotch and handed it to him.

As he took it, he held her hand and brushed her fingers with his lips.

She snatched them away.

They were both breathing heavily.

“Don’t be so locked away,” he whispered, after a while. “Loosen up.”

She was surprised, shocked even, by his choice of phrase, exactly the words she had used herself to describe her father.

Is that the impression she gave?

“I … I’m not locked away,” she faltered. “I’ve only been here a few days … I … I’m not ready.”

She knew it was inadequate as she said it. But it was, in a sense, true enough. Her very presence in this camp, among this elite team, might be a feather in her cap academically speaking, but she was here too because … because of some weird psychological arithmetic, a form of emotional calculus that began with Dominic Fielding, took in her mother’s death, her father’s grief, the anger that she rode with difficulty, and ended with her late-night winding-down sessions, when she faced her demons, alone, as she knew she had to, and tossed and turned in bed until oblivion overcame her.

That was more than enough emotion for now.

“You’re not ready? That sounds … that sounds like a long story, with a bad ending.”

Russell waited, breaking off some chocolate with his long fingers, but she didn’t respond.

He nodded. “Let’s not fight, Natalie. That’s not what I want.” He paused. “What I want, what I would really like is—”

“Russell—!”

He stood up and raised his hand. “Okay, okay, enough for tonight.” With his complexion, she couldn’t tell whether he was blushing, or if his face was flushed with anger at her reaction when he had tried to take her hand. But all he said was “Let’s sleep on it.”

He went to brush her cheek with his fingers but she moved her head away. He turned, walked back down the line of tents, and disappeared.

The moon had moved on in the sky and Natalie turned her chair so she could sit facing it. She lit another cigarette and picked up the whiskey. Russell had hardly touched the second nip. She held it to her nose, smelling the liquid. She wasn’t a drinker but she did like her nightcap. Russell’s visits just pushed back these quiet moments that she loved.