As Natalie reached the first finger and swam over it, she saw her own shadow cross the rock.
Suddenly, a large turtle was swimming rapidly towards her. It had been quietly minding its own business in the cave and must have felt trapped by Natalie’s arrival, or her shadow, for it suddenly made a dash towards the other turtles, out to sea. The creature—as big as Natalie in terms of bulk—came very close and, as it did so, turned its head towards her. Fearing it would snap at her, Natalie thrashed to one side, nearer the rocks of the cliff, and in no time a bolt of sharp pain exploded in her right knee.
She had collided with the stone of the cliff and in the process landed on a sea urchin.
She cried out. Salt water filled her mouth, she choked and jerked her head above water, snatching at her mask and snorkel. All thought of the turtle went out of her mind and she broke the surface of the water, gasping for air and clutching her knee.
Jack was with her immediately. “I saw what happened!” he shouted. “The turtle’s gone. If you can swim to the end of the cliffs, I have some ammonia in my bag. That will help the pain. I’ll go and get it.”
Natalie nodded. She was hurting too much to say anything, but the end of the cliffs wasn’t far off and she knew she needed to get there.
Jack had stopped snorkeling and was swimming crawl as fast as he could, the flippers helping his speed. She followed, swimming breaststroke but hardly using her right leg. If she moved her knee joint, the pain was even worse. She just let her injured leg trail in the water.
In her state, it took her ten minutes to reach the end of the cliffs and limp ashore. Although the pain was such that she just wanted to lie on the first soft sand she came to, she knew she had to reach shade, for safety’s sake. It was after three o’clock by now but the sun was still high in the sky. She could see Jack in the distance; he had reached the spot where they had left their belongings, and he was beginning to run back towards her, carrying his bag.
There were some trees and bushes at the edge of the beach and a small patch of shade. With relief, she slumped on the sand. She looked at her knee but didn’t touch it. It was impregnated with a dozen or more tiny black spikes which had broken off. She couldn’t straighten her leg—it hurt too much.
Jack arrived. “Let me look.”
She pointed.
He whistled. “Nasty.” He took a jar from his bag and a small towel, the kind of towel they had with them in the gorge, kept in the back pocket of their trousers.
In the jar was a yellow-white liquid, transparent, which he now poured onto the towel.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Liquid ammonia, ammonia dissolved in water. It helps salve the pain, with jellyfish stings and with sea urchins.”
Gently, he laid the damp towel on the flesh of her knee.
Immediately she felt the pain ease.
“Ah!” she said. “That’s better, much better.”
He wetted the towel with the ammonia a second time and again laid it on her knee.
She made a soft sound, somewhere between a sigh and a groan.
He wetted the towel a third time, pressed it to her knee and left it there.
“The worst of the pain is over,” he said. “Your knee will be sore for two or three days and it will hurt to touch. In a minute I am going to use these tweezers to pull out those spikes that I can—that will help your recovery. The rest will be rejected by your body over the next two to four weeks.”
“Have you got a Ph.D. in this as well?”
“It happened to me once. Never again. It’s not the sort of mistake you make twice.” He took the towel away. “Kenya has a shortage of doctors, outside Nairobi. You’re lucky I know what I’m doing.” He grinned. “Now, let’s see how many of these little monsters I can operate on.”
He took the tweezers and knelt in front of her.
She winced as he prodded her flesh with the tweezers. “Are those what you pluck your eyebrows with?”
“Careful. I only have to press—just here—and you’ll be in agony all over again.”
“Can’t you take a joke?”
“If you can take the pain, I can take a joke.” He bent to get a closer look at Natalie’s knee. “There,” he said after a moment. “That’s one gone. Lie back if you want. This could take a while.”
She lay back in the sand.
“Two.” He held up the black spike in the tweezers, then threw it away.
“Turtles apart, how did you enjoy the swim?”
“Wonderful. I’ve never seen such colors. Turtles apart, what a good idea this was. Thank you.”
“Three. You are not maimed for life. Your knees will regain their former glory.”
“Leave my knees alone. They have never done you any harm.”
“Four. You look very good in a bathing costume, Dr. Nelson.”
“So do you.”
“Five. Have you never tried one of these new bikini things?”
“I might have.”
“You don’t have one with you, on this trip?”
“I might have.”
“Six. You could risk it tomorrow. It could be your Christmas gift to me.”
“You’re easily pleased. What are you giving me?”
“It’s a surprise. Seven—and I think that’s it. Two others broke off and if I fiddle with them any more I’ll make matters worse. But I’ve got about half of them out, meaning you’ll have half the soreness and recover in half the time.” He put the tweezers in his bag. “Think you can walk back to the hotel, or shall I send for an express donkey?”
She lifted herself up from where she’d been lying. “How do I know I can afford a donkey until I know how much this treatment has cost?”
“True enough. I’m not cheap.”
“If I promise to wear a bikini tomorrow, will that affect the price?”
“Are you haggling with me?”
“You taught me, in Nairobi, remember?”
“And I taught you too well.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet. How will this affect the price?”
She leaned forward and kissed him.
• • •
“In … seven minutes it will no longer be Christmas day.”
“Over there, beyond the horizon, it already isn’t.”
They were sitting on the balcony that ran the length of the hotel and served both their rooms, side by side. They’d had dinner, strolled by the beach, and now sat in wicker chairs looking out at the black nothingness of the ocean.
“Sorry you didn’t get through to your father.”
“Mmm.” Natalie sipped her whiskey. “What is your mother doing right now, do you think?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. She’s known Maxwell Sandys forever, for as long as I can remember, anyway. Are they lovers—that’s what you’re asking, right? They must be but I’ve never seen any real … tenderness between them. Whatever exists between them, it’s locked away.” He looked at her. “I don’t really like talking about my mother in this way, do you mind?”
She shook her head. She had been going to tell him that she had seen Sandys enter his mother’s tent on the evening when Sandys and Jeavons had been in the camp, but she decided against it. “What will Christopher be doing now?”
“That’s not so difficult. He’ll certainly have called Beth. Since we are all scattered this Christmas, she doesn’t know where to contact us, as she loves to do, so he will have been in touch with her and brought her up to speed. I think that today he’s had the first of the flying lessons mother gave him for Christmas, so he’ll have been reading some of his manuals, and he will probably have gone last night for a Christmas Eve dinner at the Karibu Club—they always do something, a dinner dance probably, with carols, black tie, the works.”
“So you’re missing out.”
He looked at her. “Am I?” He drank some of his whiskey. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t enjoy the Karibu scene anywhere near as much as Christopher but I do
n’t dismiss it. He’ll have heard things last night, people will have had a few drinks and said things they might not otherwise have said. A lot of it will be trivial gossip but you never know—he may pick up valuable information. And it’s good for him to be seen there. We can’t afford to seem standoffish, or to look stuck up. It will be good PR, good politics. My brother has a talent for that—better than my mother or me.”
He leaned over his chair and held his face very close to Natalie’s. He looked at his watch. “It is now two minutes to midnight. I think it only fair to warn you that at midnight I intend to kiss you—and not a measly peck on the cheek, either, but the real thing, a proper Hollywood-style, no-holds-barred, all-guns-blazing, fully orchestrated, fifteen-rounds affair.”
“I think I’d rather be stung by a sea urchin.”
“In that case, I won’t wait.”
His mouth was on hers. He smelled of whiskey. He could have shaved more closely. But he knew how to kiss, he knew how to hold her, he knew where to put his hands so she would respond.
And she was ready to respond, she wanted to respond, it had been months since she had responded, and her body suddenly seemed alive as it hadn’t been for ages. She had all but forgotten that feeling. With Russell it had been over before it started, with Christopher there had been no spark of any kind. She pressed herself against Jack and held him tight. She recalled his hands on her breasts when he had rescued her from the wildebeest in the Mara River.
There were no lights on the balcony. There was one dim street light about fifty yards away; apart from that the only illumination came from the stars.
Jack was a mass of shadows; so was she.
She felt his hands moving over her. That was what she wanted and she cried out softly. But not yet. She had let Dominic make love to her on their first real evening together, but that was after how many lunches and dinners, how many concerts, how many weeks?
She gripped Jack’s wrist with one hand, to stop him going where he was going, but pulled him closer with her other arm, kissing his neck, biting his ear with her lips.
He stopped and put his arms around her, holding her tight. He kissed her again.
He rolled her off the chair she was on and they slid to the floor, the wooden boards of the balcony. The smell of polish was not unpleasant and the boards were almost warm to the touch. It had been a hot day.
He lay on top of her as he kissed her again and again. She felt him stir as he placed his mouth on her breast.
Her body said one thing, her mind another. She squirmed free from under him.
“Sorry,” she said after a moment.
He took her hand and kissed it. He rolled away from her and they lay, on their backs, on the warm boards, breathing heavily, then less heavily. When they were both more or less calm, he whispered, “Let’s get some sleep. We’ve got a big day tomorrow—”
“Oh? Why? What are we doing?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
• • •
“How many times has this bikini been in the water today?” Jack was rubbing sun lotion into Natalie’s back.
“You tell me. You’ve been ogling me every time. Reluquant, the French call it.”
“I haven’t been ‘ogling’ you, that’s a horrible word. I’ve been admiring you.”
“Nonsense. I haven’t been wearing very much, I agree. I only wore it because it’s Boxing Day, and you asked. But you’ve taken off what little I am wearing with your eyes.”
“That’s a form of admiration.”
“No it isn’t. Is your Swahili any better than your English?”
He patted her bottom. “You’re all done.” He lay down while she started on him.
“I never thought I’d be so good at doing nothing. All I’ve done for hours is lie on the sand, sleep, and swim.”
“You’d make a good hippopotamus.”
“I’ll snap at you like a turtle, if you’re not careful. And I don’t think I’ve ever been on such a beautiful beach so devoid of people.”
“And you’ve still got my Christmas present to come.”
“Why are you making me wait?”
“It’s a test of your character.”
“You tested my character last night, on the floor of the balcony. I came through with flying colors.”
“You mean you rebuffed me.”
“You misread the situation.”
“Meaning?”
“No, no. It was a test of your character as well. You have to work it out for yourself.”
He turned over, on to his back, and pulled her to him.
“Jack! We’re all lathered in sun lotion, and everyone can see.”
“Sun lotion isn’t lethal, and you yourself said the beach is deserted.”
He kissed her and she kissed him back. Then she turned him over again and resumed spreading sun lotion on his back.
“What time are we leaving tomorrow?”
“No hurry. Sometime in the morning, so we get to Nairobi around lunchtime. We’ll spend the afternoon preparing for the press conference.”
“You’re done,” said Natalie, lying back down on her towel alongside Jack. “The press conference,” she said, breathing out, “and then the trial. This little bit of paradise will soon be over—and then the real tests of character begin.”
• • •
“I’ve eaten too much.” Natalie patted her stomach in the darkness.
“Dinner was only fish. You’ll be hungry again at four in the morning.”
“Oh no. After all the sun and sea we’ve had, I’ll sleep like a baby tonight. With any luck, four o’clock will pass by as silently as that ship out there.”
They were sitting on the balcony that linked their rooms, as the night before. Again, only the solitary street light, and the stars, offered illumination.
“Where do you think that ship is going?”
A constellation of lights on the horizon was moving slowly right to left.
“What’s the most romantic place north of here?” Natalie stretched out her legs in front of her.
“Mogadishu, Djibouti, Suez, Karachi even.”
“Suez isn’t romantic, my father’s been—he says it’s a dump. Let’s imagine Mogadishu.”
“And I’ve been to Mogadishu. It’s more romantic here.”
“Hmm. So what cargo is it carrying? Slaves? Wild animals for a European zoo? Are they smuggling ivory?”
“It could be ivory, if it’s come from Zanzibar. That’s the center of ivory smuggling in this part of the world. More likely, it’s spices—Zanzibar is Africa’s leading exporter of cloves, also nutmeg and cinnamon. I don’t like cinnamon, and I can take or leave—”
“I don’t like those two men standing under the light, down the road.”
“What do you mean?” Jack sat up.
“There are two men, just beyond the light. They keep moving in and out of the shadows.”
He got to his feet and went to stand on the edge of the balcony. “Why should two men …? It’s Boxing Day, Natalie, you had too much whiskey at dinner. There’s a lot of unemployment in Lamu.”
She let a moment elapse as he sat down again. “I saw them yesterday, too. They were watching us as you were administering first aid, after my encounter with that sea urchin.”
“You’re making this up!”
“They were there again today, watching us on the beach. I haven’t mentioned it before because I couldn’t be certain it was the same two men—they were too far away, and there are a lot of men on Lamu who seem to have nothing to do. But, seeing them there again tonight, near that street lamp …”
“I can’t believe it. You think they are planning to rob us?”
“That’s one possibility. I can think of another.”
He looked at her.
“Maybe they are the mysterious friends of Richard Sutton Senior.”
“No! I’m going to ration your whiskey consumption.”
“Maybe they’ve established contact with so
meone on the staff at the camp in Kihara, who told them we were flying off here for Christmas. Maybe they think I was making a discreet bolt for it, stopping off here and then smuggling myself north and away, ahead of the trial.”
He shook his head. “All this sun, it’s gone to your head.”
“Look, now!” She pointed. “By the light.”
He stood up quickly. “Yes, yes, I see now. Two men. Two shapes anyway, two shadows. But you don’t know that they are the same as the men who watched you earlier today, or yesterday. I still think you are being … I can’t believe Richard Sutton would go to such lengths, or have such a reach as to have you followed to Lamu?” He shook his head. “It’s a crazy idea. You’re overreacting.”
“You weren’t there when he threatened me. You don’t know, at first hand, as I do, how … unpleasant, how crude, he can be.”
Jack sat down again. Both of them were breathing heavily. The ship, out to sea, had moved on, almost out of sight.
“Are you … are you frightened?”
She didn’t reply straight away. “A bit.”
“I can sleep on this chair, if you want—right outside your door—if that will make you feel safer.” He moved his chair closer to hers. “Of course, you’d be safer still if I was in the room with you. Think of it as my gift.” He grinned, lifted her hand, and kissed it.
“I thought you might say that.” She put her hand on his forehead. “I think the sun’s got to you, too.” She ran her fingers down his cheek. “But as it happens, on this occasion, I agree with you.”
10
WOUNDED
“Good morning, everyone, and thank you for coming. I think we are about ready to begin, if you’d all like to sit down.”
Eleanor stood on the low stage in front of the gentle rake of seats in the main lecture hall in the Royal College in Nairobi. With her silver hair in the tightest of chignons, her crisp white shirt, and her wrap-over khaki skirt, Natalie thought she looked more French than ever.
The lecture hall had no windows, so it was cool. Huge saucer-shaped lights hung from black cables anchored in the wooden ceiling. A silver-white screen stood behind the stage. There were already fifty people in the room and more were still arriving.
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