Jack rubbed his chin with his fingers. “We were both devastated, of course, and in those circumstances I couldn’t leave her. It would have been too cruel. So I never said anything, I lived a lie—for fifteen months as it turned out, as I watched Roxy sink and die.” He put on his headphones. “That felt like a failure, not being able to come clean.”
“I’m not sure that qualifies as real failure,” replied Natalie. “It wasn’t very brave, perhaps. On the other hand, it was kind. My point is that the psychologists say the most important years for determining character are the early ones, when we are infants. Others say our teens are important but I think that our twenties are the most important decade. Why? Because that’s the first time that most of us fail in life. Your twenties are when life gets real. Families and school protect you from reality, to an extent. They are designed to do so, quite properly. But in your twenties you have your first job, you tend to get married, have children, you are finally an adult. And, for the most part, and for the first time, you have to confront failure. How you cope with your first real failure is all-important for how life will turn out.”
“And your failure …?”
“You know about.”
“How are you coping?”
“…I’ll get by.”
“You’re very beautiful. With longer hair you could be Veronica Lake. That must help. You’ll always have men chasing you.”
She shook her head. “Looks are a start, that’s all, as I told you in Nairobi. There are all sorts of things that make up me that you don’t know about. For instance, I was a difficult birth—in fact, I was a caesarean that went wrong. Because of my difficult birth, my mother couldn’t have any more children.” She eyed Jack. “My parents called me ‘Natalie,’ they said, because my birth was precious, the only one God gave them. But of course, for me, even my name reminds me of what happened then, why my birth was so precious. Even my name is a reproach. That doesn’t happen to many people.”
He nodded. “Look,” he said. “This is all very serious. This is the most serious afternoon I’ve ever spent in Ngorongoro, and I’ve loved it, but I want to take off while part of the crater is in sunshine. Otherwise, when you come out of the shadow into the warm air, you can get a few bumps. So can we continue this later?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” he said, pressing the button that fired the first engine. “If you want, on the way back you can have your first flying lesson. It will have to be now because I’m going to Nairobi tomorrow.”
The second engine fired into life.
“Can I afford you, Dr. Deacon? What are your charges?”
He was listening to the tone of the engines. Then he looked across and smiled. “I’m expensive—and I need a down payment, right now. I’ll take it in kind.” He leaned across and planted a kiss on her cheek.
• • •
Dear Russell,
Thank you for your letter. I am sorry I haven’t written before but, to be honest, I am a little afraid of your strength of feeling so far as the gorge and the Deacons are concerned, and letters always risk being misinterpreted. I understand your point of view, of course I do, and in many ways I sympathize but… well, not in all ways. I’ll come back to that.
First, professional matters. Several discoveries have been made since you left. Some of them are minor, but not all, and you should know that we have located a jawbone, three teeth, and three nicely curved skull bones which, we believe, belong to the same individual as the knee joint found by Daniel, Richard, and you. That’s what the anatomist, Jonas Jefferson—you’ll remember him—told us today, anyway.
I know that you always feared that just such a discovery might be made in the wake of your tibia and femur and that you may feel this subsequent find will overshadow yours. I am not at all sure that is true: the origin of bipedalism is much more important than fresh details about ancient man’s brain size or diet, though the overall picture is clearly important. I also think you should know, for the record and not out of any misplaced pride, that it was me who found the jaw, with the teeth and associated cranial bones.
We have also found a wall, which appears to be some kind of shelter, and have sent a paper on it to Nature.
Everyone here sends good wishes but we do all hope that you will think twice about making even more of a fuss than you have already stirred up. It is not dignified and doesn’t help in the long run. If you have any feeling for me, please bear in mind what I say.
Natalie broke off and looked across the camp. She had showered not long before and was feeling relaxed. She could see Arnold Pryce sketching outside his tent, Daniel tinkering with the Land Rovers. Kees had a collection of stones on a trestle table outside his quarters. She loved the atmosphere of quiet busyness.
No sign of Christopher or Jack. The evening before, Christopher had stopped by her tent. She had thought his visits had ended.
She had been sitting quietly, smoking, and contemplating the very letter to Russell that she was now writing. She ought to have started it before, as she had promised Eleanor she would, but Russell’s rawness was difficult to address in a letter; she risked being misunderstood.
“I hear you went to Ngorongoro,” Christopher had said, once she invited him to sit down.
“Yes. Isn’t it spectacular?”
He nodded. “Much more so than the cave at Ndutu.”
Careful. “No rock art in Ngorongoro.”
“Did you see any of those lions with their black manes?”
“Yes, we did. We had to scramble back in the plane when they turned up.”
“What else did you do?”
What did he mean by that?
“There wasn’t time to do much else. We listened to the flamingos, making their racket, and—oh, yes, I had a flying lesson on the way back.”
“Jack’s offered to teach you to fly?”
“Hardly. He just let me take the controls for a few minutes, see how the plane responded. But I loved it and, yes, I’d like to learn.”
“So he’ll be taking you up again?”
She hadn’t replied immediately. Christopher wasn’t just making conversation. His late-night visit wasn’t a casual passing of the time.
On their visit to the cave at Ndutu, he had kissed her cheek. The day before, as they were leaving Ngorongoro, Jack had done much the same. She hadn’t come to Kihara looking for romance, but Dominic was a shadow hanging over her, a weight dragging her down, and she knew that she wouldn’t get him out of her system without … well, without someone else being around.
The cave at Ndutu had been a magical experience—the shadows cast on the stone walls by the firelight had been like giant butterflies opening and closing their wings, the roar of some nearby lions had been close enough to shake the ground, and the crowds of wildlife at the lake below the cave, the next morning, reminded Natalie of what she had imagined Eden to be when she was a girl. But, if she were honest with herself, it didn’t begin to compare with the moment they had crested the ring of Ngorongoro in Jack’s plane and she had seen what was below and beyond. Nothing had given her the sense of freedom, of exhilaration, of cleanness, nothing had ever thrilled her like that moment. She had met women at Cambridge who described taking drugs as getting “a high.” But that was only metaphor: Ngorongoro had been the real thing.
And, she couldn’t help but notice, Christopher had faded into the background since Jack had arrived, until tonight, save for that remark to Jack the evening before they left for Nairobi for the deposition, when he had admonished his brother to bring Natalie back “in one piece.”
Two kisses on the cheek, by two brothers, didn’t amount to very much, but the fact that they were brothers and that Christopher was here, asking the questions he was asking, suggested that something was going on inside him. Both Eleanor and Jack had spoken of Christopher’s jealousy—was that what this late-night visit was all about?
She said, “You’re learning to fly—you told me. Why shouldn’t a woman?
” That distanced the conversation from the three of them.
“It’s a pity I haven’t qualified yet. Otherwise, I could teach you. Lucky Jack.”
He had got up and left then. Not in a huff exactly, she thought, but certainly rather brusquely.
She told herself she’d have to do something to make Christopher feel easier, with her and with himself. She didn’t want to pit the brothers against one another, or get caught in the crossfire. She needed to be gentle but firm. With Christopher she could never—
She looked across to the refectory area and smiled. Some monkeys had got into the camp and Naiva was chasing them away.
Natalie went back to her letter to Russell.
I can’t face the way I used to face when I sit and wind down at the end of the day. Since Richard’s death, I don’t want to relive what I saw that night. You’ve probably not heard but the local Maasai have said that if Ndekei is convicted, and hanged, they will reoccupy the gorge and destroy it. Only in that way, they say, will the crime that Richard and you committed not be repeated. Of course, we are all devastated by this news, if it is actually carried through, but from it you will see that, first, it was right for Eleanor to send you away: you were definitely in danger. And two, you can perhaps imagine what it has done and is doing to my peace of mind. I must give evidence: it’s the way I am made, the way I was brought up, and I owe it to Richard and to you, Russell, but the dilemma is horrible, irreconcilable. In my first season of digging, amid all the exciting and important discoveries, I am going to be instrumental in destroying the very place that makes everything possible.
And I have to live with it every moment of every day. Every night, when I relax, or try to, it’s all I can think of.
I repeat: if you have any feeling for me, Russell, think very hard and do not make more of a fuss than you have already made. You will be doing more harm than good.
I look forward to your next letter.
Natalie
• • •
“Natalie, look down now. That’s a sight you can’t see anywhere else in the world.”
Natalie did as she was told, and looked down to her left. Set against the champagne color of the grass was a long, luscious, red-brown streak, black in parts, shining and moving in the sun. Thousands and thousands of animals—wildebeest, zebra, impala—all on the move, all nose to tail, all moving at a pace somewhere between a trot and a gallop, stretched out like a great stain on the landscape.
She judged that the aircraft they were in was flying at about a thousand feet, though as this was only her fourth time in Jack’s Comanche she was hardly an expert. He had told her he liked to fly low, unlike Maxwell Sandys, who liked to fly high, above five thousand feet, where the air was thinner and faster, but the view of the animals nowhere near as good.
It had been Jack’s idea that she come. He was giving Christopher a flying lesson—his brother was at the controls right now—and Jack had combined it with an overflight of the great animal migration that took part in the Serengeti and Maasai Mara, more or less throughout the year. Kees van Schelde was also with them.
“Where are they going?” asked Kees. “Why are they going?”
“Just keep her as she is,” said Jack to Christopher. “Keep on a bearing of a hundred and ten degrees.” He turned in his seat, so he could address Kees and Natalie together. “They go in search of rain-ripened grass, that’s what ungulates—hoofed mammals like wildebeest and zebra—feed on. The rains go in a rough circle—north at one point in the year, east at another, south later in the season, and so on—so the animals do too. Right now, they’re heading east and south, back out of Kenya down into Tanganyika.”
He turned back. “Okay,” he said to Christopher. “Climb to three thousand feet and then turn for home—that will be a bearing of one hundred and ninety-five degrees.”
Christopher pulled back on the control stick and the aircraft began to rise.
“Christopher!” said Jack in an irritated voice. “What did I tell you? Say out loud what you are doing, so air-traffic control at Kilimanjaro knows what to expect. There are other people in the sky, you know.”
“Bugger! I forgot again. Sorry,” said Christopher. “Can’t they see us on the radar?”
“Yes, but all pilots try to make it easy for them. Our lives may depend on them someday.”
Christopher held the speaker to his lips. “Tango Zulu Delta one-one-niner Echo, rising to four thousand feet,” said Christopher.
“Copy,” said a disembodied voice.
“See?” said Jack. “They are paying attention.”
Natalie looked down again and the wildebeest grew smaller as the aircraft rose. She was feeling good. She loved flying, she had decided, and, as she had told Christopher, one day she would learn to fly herself.
“Now turn for home,” said Jack to Christopher, “and don’t forget to announce your move in advance.”
“Tango Zulu Delta one-one-niner Echo, turning for home on bearing one-niner-five,” said Christopher.
“Copy,” said the voice. “Happy landings.”
“We are about thirty-five miles from the gorge,” said Jack. “At this speed, that’s about fourteen minutes. Lose altitude to two thousand feet and then stay at that height until you have the strip on visual.”
Natalie kept looking out of the window as they came in to land. She could see Ngorongoro in the distance, the shimmering surface of Lake Natron, the escarpment of the Rift Valley itself. How she was coming to love this landscape.
“I have the strip on visual,” said Christopher.
“And there are the tents of the camp, to the left,” replied Jack, gesturing. “Lose altitude to a thousand feet and fly over them. Then climb to two thousand feet, bank to the left and come in again.”
Natalie looked down as they buzzed the camp; she could make out Daniel and Arnold Pryce looking up. She waved.
The aircraft climbed again, and Christopher followed a smooth circle till the red-brown strip was ahead of them.
They lost height and speed, and the tone of the engines changed as the wing flaps went down to keep the nose of the aircraft in the correct “attitude,” as Natalie had heard it called.
“What’s that!” cried Christopher suddenly. “On the runway!”
“It’s the cheetahs,” said Jack with a chuckle. “Throttle forward, let your wheels bounce on the strip, and go round again. The noise will frighten them away.”
Just then, however, two large cormorants flew across the strip and Christopher cried out. “What—!”
“Give me the controls,” said Jack, reaching across and putting his left hand on Christopher’s right arm. “I have command,” he added, as he pulled back on the control stick and pushed forward the throttle.
The sound of the aircraft’s engines deepened as its wheels touched the strip and the plane started to rise again. The fuselage creaked and Natalie felt a sinking in her stomach as the aircraft banked up into the sky. She hadn’t really had time to be frightened as Jack had taken over, but the skin on her throat now broke out in a sweat. She looked across to Kees: he rolled his eyes and rubbed the palms of his hands on his trousers.
After rising a few hundred feet, Jack throttled back and banked the plane to the left again, steering a smooth circle until they were again approaching the strip.
“Come on, Christopher. Try again.”
“No, Jack, please!” Natalie wanted to cry out. But all she did was look at Kees again. Again he rolled his eyes.
“No, I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. There are no cheetahs this time—look, the strip is clear. And all the birds will have gone, too.” He sat back and took his hands off the controls. “Come on.”
The plane lurched and Natalie was immediately sweating all over again.
But Christopher took the stick and lowered the wing flaps; the tone of the engines changed for their final approach.
They lost height.
Natalie spotted the family of cheetah
s, well away from the strip this time.
The plane’s wheels bumped down, once, twice, three times, and then the engine sound changed again as they slowed on the empty clay strip.
“Not the smoothest of landings,” said Jack to no one in particular. “But we’re safe enough.” He turned in his seat and smiled. “No extra charge for two landings instead of one.”
• • •
“Park the car here, Daniel. Away from all the children.” Eleanor was sitting in the front of the Land Rover, with Natalie and Christopher in the back. Daniel pulled the vehicle over onto the edge of the track and switched off the engine. They all got down.
There was about an hour of daylight left. About two hundred yards in front of them was a large boma, or village. Perhaps as many as fifty mud huts, shaped like upside-down cups and built entirely, as Natalie now knew, of dried cattle dung. There had been a time when the very idea would have turned her stomach but not anymore. It was amazing how herbivore dung, once it had dried out, became inoffensive. It didn’t smell, it was soft and pliable and served admirably as a building material.
The huts were surrounded by the gray-white bulk of dead acacia thorns, fashioned in exactly the way the fence around their Kihara camp was built. Deep inside the boma was another ring of thorns: this inner fence protected the tribe’s cattle and goats. That’s where their wealth was concentrated and any predator—lion, leopard or other tribes—would have to break down two rows of defenses.
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