Mackenzie Ford

by The Clouds Beneath the Sun (v5)

  “But you know that’s not true!”

  “I know it, yes. And Ndekei knows it. But they’ve obviously heard from someone within the camp, or Mutevu himself, about your late-night whiskey sessions with Russell. They’re going to make this a racial thing, a tribal thing—modern Western law against traditional custom. You are the only witness and you will be caught in the middle. With these independence talks in the background, it could get … unpleasant.”

  The solid mass of foreboding in Natalie’s stomach had grown denser and expanded. “Tombe told you all that?”

  He nodded, let a pause go by, then said, “Okay, okay. Enough. Let’s change the subject. We can’t take this further tonight in any case.” He paused to chew some beef. He signaled the waiter for another round of drinks. His previous order seemed to have been overlooked.

  She didn’t stop him.

  They ate in silence for a while.

  Another plane went by overhead. From the straining sound it was taking off, not landing, probably bound for Europe, maybe London. What had happened to her call to her father?

  Eventually, Jack said, “I saw the CV you sent my mother, so I know about your schooling and your degrees, I know you’re a Gainsborough girl and that your father is a choirmaster, but what else? Never been married? Never sung in a rock band? Never swum the Channel?” He smiled, doing his best to relax her. “All right, I’ll make a guess that you have never swum the Channel. But what about marriage—ever been close?”

  “Why don’t we start with you, instead?” Natalie wasn’t calm yet, but she tried to appear so, resting her chin on her fist. “You go first. I haven’t even seen your CV, so we need to even things up a bit.”

  The fresh drinks arrived. She tried her fish again. The ball of foreboding still clogged her stomach.

  Jack seemed to have an appetite for both of them. He chewed his beef with gusto, washing it down with the new glass of beer.

  “I was brought up here,” he said when he could. “In Africa. The local schools were pretty primitive, so for the first few years my parents taught me at home. I have two sisters, one two years younger, the other three years younger. I was allowed to dig very early on and both my parents spoke fluent Swahili, as well as English, so I did too, when I was fairly young. I know a good bit about wildlife as well, growing up in the bush. But just before war broke out, in 1939, the family moved to England. My father had an appointment at Cambridge and for the next seven years we lived there. After a childhood in the bush, I found Cambridge irksome. I liked the fens well enough, and the coast, watching out for German planes and submarines, the way boys imagine these things. But it can get pretty cold in Cambridge and I hated things like the Boy Scouts and doing a newspaper round, and once the war was over, I couldn’t wait to get back to Africa.”

  He ran his fingers around the rim of his glass. “We returned in 1946, when I was eighteen, so I never went to university, not then anyway. I came back to the gorge, started digging again, learned to fly, traveled a bit—America, with my father, who was fundraising, met a Canadian woman, a doctor, but she didn’t fancy the idea of coming to live in Africa. I finally went to university in 1950, when I was twenty-two, Columbia in New York. Then my father died, just before I finished my Ph.D., and I zoomed back to support my mother. I stayed a couple of years and only finished my doctorate, as I told you, about the time you did.” Absently, he touched a scar above his eye.

  Natalie hadn’t noticed it before. “And you never played in a rock band?”

  He grinned. “No, but … as it happens … I can sing. That’s how I met my Canadian medic—we both sang in the same church choir in Manhattan. I had sung in one of the college choirs at Cambridge as a boy, and when I asked they gave me an introduction to the American Choral Society in New York, who directed me to Riverside Church, which is the church attached to Columbia.”

  Natalie had given up on her fish. Truth to tell, she rather fancied some of Jack’s beef but it didn’t look as though there was going to be any left. “Bit odd, isn’t it—a paleontologist spending so much time in a church?”

  The restaurant was filling up. All the diners were white.

  “I’m not religious, not in the slightest. You’re right there. But the music … it’s not just beautiful, but stirring, don’t you think?” He rubbed his chin where his beard was beginning to show. “I remember once being in South Africa, swimming on the east coast, the Indian Ocean. Late one afternoon, a shoal—or whatever you call about three hundred dolphins—came by. They saw us, came over and played with us, breaking the surface of the water, arcing through the air, surfing on the waves, brushing against us underwater but never in a threatening way. Everybody loved it, children and adults.” He took his hand away from his chin. “A dose of dolphin makes you feel so good, in an uncomplicated way. Church music is a bit the same.”

  She tipped the ice from her dead whiskey glass into the one that had just been brought. “You’re right about the effect it has. It’s like a mental shower—it wakes you up and cleans you inside all at the same time.”

  Jack finished his dinner. All the beef had gone. He finished chewing. “Do you know Luitfrid Marfurt’s Music in Africa?”

  “No, no I don’t.”

  “He compares African choral music with the European tradition. African songs are much more about farming, bravery, and the land than straightforward religion. And technically, they are more about singing and response. His argument is that African music is much more sophisticated than white people think.”

  Jack was a baritone, she guessed. He had a mellifluous voice that she enjoyed listening to. And his conversation didn’t travel in straight lines either, it didn’t follow obvious routes. He had a self-confidence but wasn’t knowing or pushy. He talked like he flew, with authority, without fuss, like he knew what he was doing. Dare she say it, he was a bit like Dominic.

  Jack was doing his best to make Natalie warm to him. But the truth was, tonight, for this dinner, nothing—not even the sudden arrival in the restaurant of Dom, or her father, or three hundred dolphins—could have taken her mind off the trial and what Jack had just told her. He took the lead in the conversation, talking about music, concerts he’d been to, operas he had seen, choirs he had heard, and when it came to her turn she uttered a few sentences and then faltered into silence, like an engine running out of diesel.

  She refused dessert and cheese. And coffee. Jack paid the bill and then, on the way out of the restaurant, asked her if she’d like a nightcap at the bar. She nodded, but as soon as he had ordered she made him cancel it.

  “I’ve had enough whiskey,” she sighed. “What I really need is a walk.”

  He was perched on a bar stool and got down off it.

  “A walk? Under the stars, like your late-night session in the gorge? Would you like to be alone?”

  Briefly, she nodded. She had the fist of foreboding in her stomach—that was more than enough company.

  At least Jack was sensitive to that.

  She went out through the main door.

  Jack made no attempt to follow her.

  • • •

  Natalie turned left out of the hotel. It was still warm despite the lateness of the hour. The road itself was dusty but she crossed to the far side because there was more light. The shop windows were lit, showing women’s fashions, rather outmoded fashions as far as she could tell—long skirts, wedge heels, hairstyles piled up in a way that Eleanor Deacon would not have looked twice at, and suggested the war was still on.

  The pavement on this side of the street was raised high and made of wood. The wood magnified the sounds her footsteps made. The shop windows now showed furniture—sofas, wardrobes, beds made of what looked like laminated plastic.

  She turned and looked back the way she had come. No sign of Jack Deacon.

  She was interested that he was so involved in politics. Politics had never interested her, but she could concede that it was a dimension of life that put the rest into context, f
orced someone to sort out his or her priorities. Jack Deacon had set her thinking.

  She thought back to the conversation she had had with Sandys earlier in the day. She had put on a good show, she thought. She hadn’t thought twice about giving evidence. It was the tradition she had been brought up in. But was she being fair to herself? After all, she hadn’t seen Mutevu’s face, just his strapping frame and his characteristic shuffle. She was as certain as could be that it was him—it was him—but would a court see it her way and was it worth putting herself in the limelight?

  There was a red neon sign a few yards ahead, and what looked like a bar. There was the sound of music.

  Eleanor had made plain her views and so had Jack. He said that neither he nor his mother wanted—or expected—Natalie to change her testimony but she wasn’t sure she bought that argument entirely.

  Jack. She had enjoyed their dinner. She was pleased they had flown up together from the gorge in his small plane. Funny how something like that could affect the impression one got. The Comanche seemed Jack’s natural habitat, an extension of him. It was only the second time she had flown in a small plane, or any kind of plane, come to that, but it had felt natural, she had felt—yes—at home almost. It was as if her life had suddenly acquired another dimension. Jack and his plane had enlarged her life.

  She was just approaching the bar. The heavy sounds of the music sent reverberations along the wooden boards of the pavement.

  The call to her father still hadn’t gone through. So she was still on edge about that, whether he would agree to talk or not—

  Two men—two black men—almost fell out of the bar as she came abreast of the door. Two heavily made up women followed them, dressed in long, African-style, multicolored skirts and headbands.

  Natalie stepped off the pavement out of their way, but one of the men shouted something in her direction, in a language she didn’t understand.

  The other man joined in. They were grinning, obviously drunk, and sweating. The two women were watching this exchange but talking to a third man, who seemed to be guarding the door to the bar.

  Natalie tried to move beyond the two drunken men and resume her walk on the pavement, but they had followed her, still shouting words she didn’t understand, and forced her to remain in the road.

  More people had drifted out of the bar. All of them were black, all of them were looking in her direction, and several of them were shouting.

  Natalie felt the sweat on her throat. She decided to cut her losses and head back to the hotel. She turned, crossed the road, and sprang on to the pavement. But now more than half a dozen of the revelers, all obviously the worse for wear, were crossing the street, moving towards her.

  She sensed it would be a mistake to run but she couldn’t avoid quickening her pace. The hotel was two hundred yards away. She had brought a wrap, draped around her shoulders, but now she lifted it and covered her head.

  The group—seven or eight of them—were heading her off. She would be trapped unless she ran. But something stopped her. It would, she knew, be a defeat. It would spark something. But she was getting angry.

  Suddenly, above the shouts in Kikuyu, or Swahili, or whatever language was being spoken, she heard a voice in English. “Hey, whitey lady, you looking for black sex? You want king-size liquorice? Whitey men no good?”

  The others cackled and she saw two of the men make lewd gestures.

  “Hey whitey, whitey lady, you want ebony stick?”

  More laughter.

  And now the men were blocking the pavement. The women were standing in the road. They were humming, and swaying in time to the song.

  But the men weren’t singing. Four of them blocked the pavement. Two just stood still, looking serious. A third man, she could see, held a walking stick, a carved ebony stick with an animal head—a lion?—at one end. He held the stick in one hand and beat the animal head repeatedly into the palm of his other hand. The fourth man had extended his arm and was leaning against the window of the shop before which this was all taking place. He was gulping in air in big breaths.

  The stench of sweat, tinged with alcohol, passed over her in waves.

  Her own sweat dripped down the sides of her cheeks, down her throat and between her breasts, inside her dress from under her arms.

  The man with the stick pointed it at her. “You looking for trouble, whitey lady? You want Nairobi nightlife?” He cackled. “You found it!”

  He moved towards her, still brandishing his stick.

  As he did so, one of the other men said something in the language Natalie didn’t recognize, but it was obviously aimed at her because the man with the stick laughed and half turned his head to acknowledge what had been said.

  Quickly, Natalie leaned forward and snatched the stick from his hand.

  Surprised by the suddenness of her movement, he couldn’t prevent her taking it.

  Natalie raised the stick. She held it so that the animal head was at the far end.

  The man looked at her. He had stopped smiling. The other two men stood next to him.

  It was a standoff and there was nowhere she could go. She was surrounded.

  Sweat ran down her cheeks, between her breasts. Her anger was on the rise.

  The man reached down, unbuckled the belt of his trousers and unthreaded it from the loops that held it in place. He wrapped part around his hand and let the buckle hang free.

  He took a step forward and raised his arm.

  Suddenly, the fourth man, leaning against the shop window, collapsed to the ground and vomited all at the same time. He retched again.

  The man with the belt turned his head. One of the other men said something. One of the women called out. The man with the belt bent down next to the man retching. The woman called out again and she too moved forward and knelt next to him. All eyes had now turned to the sick man.

  Natalie guessed he was choking on his own vomit and too drunk to realize what was happening.

  She was still surrounded.

  But she was on fire with anger and she was itching to act. Without warning, she took half a step forward and leaped over the sick man’s body. Her foot slipped on his vomit and her ankle complained. But not badly and she cleared his form, her shoulder bouncing off the shop window. She winced and gasped loudly but kept going.

  Someone called out but she didn’t know who and she didn’t stop. She threw the ebony stick into the road and kept going. Thank God she had wedge heels, she thought, and not stilettos.

  Was anyone giving chase? She was breathing so heavily she couldn’t hear. The hotel entrance was a hundred yards away. She kept going. Her wrap had come off her head and was hanging down her back. If anyone was chasing her, he could grab it. But she was ready to let it go, even though her mother had given it to her.

  She kept running.

  Then she noticed a figure was moving towards her. Black or white? It was too dark to see. She was ashamed of herself for thinking in those terms but now wasn’t the time to … was he going to stop her?

  The figure was blocking the pavement.

  She leapt into the road.

  The figure moved off the pavement, towards her. If only she’d kept the ebony stick.

  She summoned a spurt of energy, of anger, and ran faster. The hotel was sixty yards away.

  “Natalie?”

  It took her a moment to realize that the figure was Jack.

  She stopped, breathing heavily, turned, and leaned into him. There was a pain in her side. Sweat shone on her skin. “Am I glad to see you.”

  He put his arm around her. “What happened? I saw a group of people, heard shouting. I saw you jump.” He reached round her and rearranged her wrap. “You’re shaking.”

  She turned again. A figure, about thirty yards away, was scurrying back to the group by the shop window. Someone had given chase but hadn’t caught her, and had given up when Jack appeared. Her anger began to subside. Her breathing came more easily.

  She was still shaking
as Jack steered her towards the hotel and again put his arm around her shoulders.

  Between sucking in huge gulps of air, she told him what had happened.

  He nodded and said, “I blame myself.”

  They had reached the hotel.

  “I had assumed you’d turn right, out of the hotel. I know, all the regulars know, that turning right leads to the main street and the bright lights, the cafés, lots of people. The other way, left, the way you went, leads to—well, Nairobi’s red-light area. It’s safe enough in the day, but not at night and I should have warned you. I’m sorry, it’s my fault. That’s why I came looking … I suddenly realized that I hadn’t warned you and that maybe you had turned left. Natalie, I’m very sorry.”

  He held the hotel door open for her. “How about a late-night whiskey, to help settle your nerves?”

  She nodded eagerly. She was still shaking.

  At the bar he ordered her a scotch and asked the barman to leave the bottle with them. “Knock back the first shot in one go, then sip the second. I find that always helps after a shock or bad news.”

  She did as she was told. The first one certainly had an effect. Her heart showed some signs of coming under control.

  “There was a lot of talk in a language I didn’t recognize. Was it all about sex, do you think, or race?”

  “They had come out of a bar, right?”

  She nodded.

  “A bit of both, I would say. The men were with women, so they were on their way to have sex with them when they encountered you. But, the black–white thing, it’s always there, isn’t it? There’s a story in the papers today about Tanganyikan troops training in Russia, and inviting the Russians back to train more of their troops. The idea is to teach Tanganyikan troops to act behind enemy lines—in this case South Africa, to make trouble. The blacks in Africa are getting more assertive every day. That is as it should be, with independence coming up, but it does mean that there’s friction everywhere.”

  Natalie sipped her second scotch. “Lucky for me you decided to come looking. Whovever was chasing me might have caught me.”