The Beautiful Mother

by Katherine Scholes

  Instead of raising objections, though, Julia just nodded slowly. She stubbed out her cigarette, then placed her hands on her knees as if ready to spring into action.

  ‘There’s money,’ she said. ‘Diana gave it to me to run the place while they were gone. We can get more at the bank.’

  Essie looked at her in confusion. ‘We?’

  ‘I’ll drive you to Nairobi,’ Julia stated. ‘It makes more sense than going to Arusha and catching a train to Dar es Salaam. The border is only a three-hour drive from here if you take a shortcut. And I need to go over to Kenya, anyway.’ She gestured towards Tommy, who was sitting on the rug nibbling at one of the fringed ends. The sun glanced off the shiny tips of his horns. ‘I’ve been thinking about him. I want to take him to a wildlife sanctuary I’ve heard about, before this place fills up with visitors.’

  Essie frowned, struggling to absorb Julia’s train of ideas. Then she stared mutely at the gazelle. A lump rose in her throat. The plan for him was right and necessary, but picturing it happening was painful. It would have been comforting to know that even though she was leaving Magadi, Tommy would still be here. Now he, too, was moving far away.

  ‘The dogs can come with me,’ Julia added. As she spoke, she looked to the north-east – the direction in which they would travel. Her eyes brightened. ‘I might stay a while. The garden can wait till I get back. There are people I could visit. They might still remember me.’ She got to her feet, suddenly energised. ‘We’ll go in the new Land Rover. Kefa and Daudi can take over here. Between them they know how to run the place.’

  Essie felt a rush of excitement, the reality of the scenario filtering through. But then anxiety stirred. She knew that if she didn’t go now, she could easily lose her nerve. Just one more radio call from Ian might be all it would take. ‘I don’t want to wait.’

  ‘There’s not much to organise,’ Julia responded. She was bending over her suitcase, which was still serving as a makeshift side table. She removed an empty whisky glass that was resting there, as well as a saucer sprinkled with crumbs. She planted them both in the middle of an abandoned card game. Grasping the handle of the suitcase, she lifted it up.

  ‘I’ve got what I need in here.’

  As Julia tested the weight in her hand, Essie remembered what she had said – days ago, when Essie was working on the Sivatherium: ‘I’m finished with all this.’ It was almost as though the suitcase had been kept here, still packed, ready for this moment. Could it be that the idea of leaving Magadi had begun with Julia and found its way to her? Essie imagined the thought alighting on her shoulder like a bird, whispering in her ear. It didn’t seem completely impossible – if time went in circles, who could say where an idea had first been born?

  Crossing to stand at her work table, Essie looked down at the skull, still missing some key fragments. The reconstruction would not be high on Ian’s agenda, she knew; all the focus would be shifting to the cave. Perhaps some student volunteer would take over the task. Essie waited to feel a pang of jealousy, but it barely registered. After taking a last look at her handiwork, she picked up a couple of tools and tidied them away. Then she brushed a dead fly onto the floor.

  She walked over to Tommy and bent down to pat his head, her hand lingering on the smooth warmth of his coat. Then she moved on past Julia. Emerging from the hut, she skirted the fireplace and went to stand at the edge of the clearing – the same spot where Milena had appeared. She looked towards the korongos, where Simon, Mara and the others had headed. In the far distance she could just glimpse the edge of the plateau where the flint factory was located. She thought back to the morning, just a few months ago, when she’d encountered the two Hadza hunters there, and been led off to the Painted Cave.

  Essie remembered the moment when she’d seen Mara for the first time – a small curled shape, asleep on a baboon pelt. It was only a dim impression; she hadn’t known, then, the import the memory would one day have. The backdrop to the scene, though, Essie could visualise in intricate detail. She’d studied every brush mark and dab of pigment that made up the paintings on the wall of rock.

  Now, as she pictured the place in her mind, Essie imagined her own story recorded there. The figure of a woman drawn in white clay. A baby formed from black pigment. The tribe gathered around them, lean bodies carrying long bows – men, women and children – all captured in sparse but powerful detail. What would an archaeologist make of the image, Essie wondered: the story of a woman who was given the gift of a baby and became – for one season – a mother.

  Essie turned back to the eastern horizon. She traced the pyramid shape of the mountain set against the crystal sky. There was no wind this morning – smoke and steam rose straight up from the crater forming a tall pillar of cloud. She could feel the brooding power of the place. There was a strange, taut stillness, as if time had been suspended. A breath drawn in and held. Like the Maasai who’d walked away from Ol Doinyo Lengai with their faces averted, she lowered her eyes.

  Essie looked instead towards the silver gleam of the lake with its curved white shoreline. Then she picked out the rooftop of the Mission house nestled among the trees. Finally, her gaze settled on the plains. As she scanned the wide swathe of stony land – from the Steps to the grass-ringed pools – the scene transformed in her mind. She saw the vast stage of an ocean – steely blue, white-capped, wind-scraped. Thousands of birds formed a dense black pattern against a pastel sky, flying so low that their wingtips skimmed the tops of the waves. She heard the seabirds calling to one another, and the rhythmic hush of their wings as they floated on currents of air – returning from the far end of the earth, heading home.

  POSTSCRIPT

  Ants abandon their castles of dried mud, swarming over the stony ground. Snakes emerge beady-eyed from their burrows, writhing towards open spaces. The ground begins to move – a tiny tremor leading to a rolling shudder. In the foothills of Ol Doinyo Lengai, boulders shift and stones topple.

  Within the volcano, molten rock seethes. A fierce energy builds, rising to a crescendo. With a roar of thunder the lava bursts out – not from the crater at the peak, but through a chasm that opens up halfway down the side of the mountain.

  Lightning dances against the sky as the torrent of lava flows. It slides down into the foothills and on, lining the gullies, settling in the gaps between the broken rocks. It fills the spring-fed pond, anointing the standing stones on its banks. The opening to the cave is sealed over, the tunnel choked with rubble.

  In the new world that is created, no map holds meaning. There are no landmarks. What has become hidden can never be found.

  The rivers of lava reach all the way down to the lake. They pour onto the abandoned shores, hissing as they meet the tranquil, salt-oily water. Clouds of steam rise into the air, like prayers.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  At the time when this novel is set, Tasmanian schoolchildren were being taught that the island’s Aboriginal people had ‘died out’ and disappeared. In fact, the unique culture and identity of the first Tasmanians was still being handed down from generation to generation, in the way it always had been for tens of thousands of years. Many decades passed before this truth became widely understood. Today, in the thriving Indigenous communities across the island, Aboriginal languages are being revived and the state’s landscape officially renamed. Lots of gatherings and events, private and public, now begin with an acknowledgement of Aboriginal people as the traditional owners and ongoing custodians of the land.

  The archaeology explored in this story reflects what was known in 1970. Later discoveries of fossils and stone tools pointed more and more to what the Lawrences and Leakeys had always believed: that Africa was the first home of all humans. DNA evidence has finally proven this to be true. Homo erectus migrated from Africa, moving up into Europe and beyond. Over time, the species evolved further. Exactly how this played out is still the subject of research, with the picture becoming increasingly complex as new discoveries are made. What used to be c
alled the human family tree is now more aptly described as a tangled bush. It is known that there were at least three distinct human species living on the planet at the same time: Neanderthals, Denisovans and our own kind, Homo sapiens. They interbred with one another and today nearly all of us have a small percentage of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in our genes.

  The Hadza are the last surviving hunter-gatherer people in East Africa. Only a few hundred of them still maintain a fully traditional lifestyle. Gene mapping has supported what has been long supposed: that the Hadza people have one of the oldest human lineages on earth. They are not closely related to any other peoples. Their ancestors may well have been living in their current territory for tens of thousands of years. Hadza oral history contains no stories of migration from another place. It was only around ten thousand years ago that Homo sapiens began settling down in villages and farming the land. Since our journey as the Homo genus began around two million years ago, this means that for ninety-nine per cent of our history we lived as hunter-gatherers. Most of the qualities we possess evolved in that setting.

  The Lawrences of Magadi Gorge live only in these pages; however, the Leakey family is real. Louis and Mary Leakey began excavating in Olduvai Gorge in the 1930s and continued working there for most of their lives. Their sons grew up spending lots of time in the camp at Olduvai and were skilled fossil hunters. The passion for archaeology has lasted through three generations of Leakeys so far. Olduvai continues to be a centre for exploration, with the work now being led by Tanzanians.

  Wolfgang Stein was not a real person, but was inspired by my readings about missionaries and other visitors to Africa who bucked the conventions of their era. Some of them ultimately found more meaning in the traditional cultures they encountered than they did in their own.

  Ludwig Kohl-Larsen was an amateur anthropologist and explorer. After joining the Nazi party in 1931 he undertook government-sponsored expeditions to what was then German East Africa in search of ‘primitive man’. He excavated for hominid remains in the Olduvai area and also collected folklore from the Hadza people. As a result of his politics and beliefs, as well as his poor scholarship, his research is not highly regarded by modern academics.

  The Painted Cave is imaginary, but was inspired by the caves at Kondoa in Central Tanzania, which were studied extensively by Mary Leakey in the 1950s. The caves are of spiritual significance to local communities, including the Hadza. I have memories of visiting the caves with my family as a young child.

  The Steps site is fictitious, but inspired by a discovery made in 1978 by Mary Leakey at Laetoli, about 45 kilometres south of Olduvai. The Laetoli Steps, a series of fossilised footprints that have been dated to 3.6 million years ago, are believed to have been made by our first upright-walking ancestors, the Australopithecines. Other fossilised footprints estimated to be between five thousand and nineteen thousand years old have also been discovered at Engare Sero next to Lake Natron. In one section of this site there are so many prints that the space has been dubbed ‘the dance hall’.

  The lake that lies at the foot of Ol Doinyo Lengai is actually called Lake Natron. In the novel the Swahili name for any soda lake – magadi – is used in connection with both the lake and the nearby gorge. There is another soda lake called Magadi in the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania, and also one in Kenya.

  My fascination with the area around Ol Doinyo Lengai and Lake Natron began with a visit I made there ten years ago with my parents and brother. Although the landscape is very different to the Ugogo plains where I was born, I felt an immediate connection to it, and the powerful presence of the place lingered with me long after I left. It became the setting for my book The Lioness, and I was drawn back to it in search of this new story as well.

  The setting of The Beautiful Mother in a paleoanthropologists’ camp is the result of a family preoccupation with the topic that was originally inspired by my husband, Roger Scholes. Twenty years ago he directed a television series called The Human Journey, which explored the origins of our species. He filmed in key locations around the world, including museums, caves and excavation sites. Re-enactments were staged abroad and also here in Tasmania, where the ancient flora is reminiscent of earlier eras in Europe. I found myself playing the part of a Neolithic hunter-gatherer in one of the scenes, along with my then young son. Many props from the shoots – including replicas of hominid skulls, stone tools and early artworks – have been on display in our home ever since. With all this surrounding me, and Tanzania being both the ‘cradle of humankind’ and my own country of birth, there was every reason for me to explore this world in a novel.

  The full meaning of the way in which Tanzania and Tasmania are linked through Essie’s story only emerged during my research. Within eyesight of my writing desk – on the clifftop at the end of the beach – is a tall sandstone shot tower. While studying European prehistory, I learned that in the early 1900s the building attached to it was home to Joseph Moir, a renowned collector of Tasmanian stone tools. This sparked the idea for Arthur Holland’s famous collection. As I continued my investigations I learned of the unique place both Tasmania and Tanzania have always held in the imaginations of paleoanthropologists across the world. As the connection between my two homelands deepened in unexpected ways, the question of Essie’s personal heritage came to the fore. The topic is a potent one for me, as a writer who was born in a land far from where I now live. The story gave me the chance to pursue questions that lie within us all. Who am I? Where did I come from? Who are my people? For Essie, the search for answers takes her beyond the boundaries of this novel – to another adventure.

  From a long list of research sources used in the writing of The Beautiful Mother, I would like to acknowledge in particular:

  Rebe Taylor’s fascinating book Into the Heart of Tasmania: A Search for Human Antiquity; Mary Leakey’s detailed autobiography Disclosing the Past; and Ancestral Passions – The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind’s Beginnings by Virginia Morell.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  In tackling the research for this book, I relied very much on Roger Scholes’ vast knowledge of paleoanthropology. As the field is so complex, he had to explain many things to me over and over, yet somehow never ran out of patience. He helped with plotting and read all my work as it was being written. He also advised me on Tasmanian history. I am deeply grateful for his professional contribution and unending personal support.

  I am fortunate to have a wonderful, talented publisher in Ali Watts of Penguin Random House. This is the fifth book we’ve worked on together and each one has been an absolute pleasure. My thanks go to all involved in the publication of The Beautiful Mother, especially Julie Burland, Justin Ractliffe, Lou Ryan, Amanda Martin, Deb McGowan, Madison Garratt, Louisa Maggio, Saskia Adams and Sonja Heijn.

  As always, I am grateful to my agents Fiona Inglis and Kate Cooper at Curtis Brown for finding perfect homes for my work. Thank you to my overseas agents, publishers and translators as well.

  Many people supported me during the writing of this book. Much love and thanks go to Jonathan Scholes, Freya Sonderegger (to whom this book is dedicated), Linden Scholes, Charlotte de Jong and my whole fabulous extended tribe, especially my parents, Robin and Elizabeth Smith. Hilary Smith, Clare Smith and Freya Sonderegger all read the work in progress, and their insights were much appreciated. A particular thank you to Hilary for taking on the delicate task of reading the first drafts, and responding with such enthusiasm and love. Andrew, Vanessa and Lachlan Smith, along with Martin Kennedy, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Tim and Kate Bendall, Olivia and Nick Hitchens, and Jordan and Gemma Smith all helped in other ways.

  Thank you also to my dear friends and colleagues who are always there for me when needed, offering encouragement, advice and fun. You allow me to disappear into my eyrie for months at a time – and then welcome me back. I am extra grateful for the support of Melanie Sandford, Julian Northmore, Anna and Tim Jones, Joce Nettlefold, Claire Konkes, Stephenie Cahalan, Libby
Lester, Stefan Visagie, Heather Rose, Brian and Elizabeth McKenzie, Jane Ormonde, Bill Pheasant, Lynda House and Tony Mahood.

  Finally, a huge thank you to my readers from near and far, especially those of you who read all my books as they are published, and get in touch to convey your response. It makes for a shared journey, which is very precious to me.

  BOOK CLUB NOTES

  Did Essie have any real choice when she was handed the baby by Nandamara?

  Ian becomes frustrated to see his wife acting in unfamiliar ways, yet in his work he believes that Change is the only constant. In what ways does change come to affect their marriage?

  Do you understand Julia’s decision to live the rest of her life in Magadi, ‘the heart of their agony’, where the closest thing to happiness was a day of good, hard work and the satisfaction of seeing the camp run smoothly?

  Simon believes himself to be a ‘modern Tanzanian’. In what ways is this so? What has he rejected of his Hadza past, and what does he reclaim?

  Carl travels the world taking photographs but still feels a pull back to a single place he calls ‘home’. Discuss the notion of home as it is explored in the novel.

  In a world where our extended families may not be all that close, emotionally or physically, how do we find ‘our tribe’?

  What makes someone a mother?

  How does Essie’s time with Mara transform her?

  What roles do possessions play in our lives? Are there lessons to be learned from the Hadza, in a world on the brink of environmental crisis?

  Do you agree with Kisani’s statement: ‘The past had to be left behind, so that something new could begin.’?

  The Maasai women tell Essie, ‘You are her mother at this moment. The future is another time.’ What do you think this means?