Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

“Christopher, stop! Look, two o’clock ahead, in the tree.” Natalie’s voice was high pitched, triumphant.

Christopher brought the Land Rover to a halt. There were four of them in the vehicle. Christopher was driving, Daniel up front with him. Natalie was in the back, with Aldwai, the guard. They were on their way back to the camp after the morning’s digging. It was hot, the sun high and unrelenting, shadows almost absent.

“A lion,” said Natalie, silently patting herself on the back because her eyes were becoming adjusted to life in the bush. “But why are we stopping? Don’t we normally just drive on past lions?”

“Look at him,” said Christopher. “He’s emaciated and he’s not moving. He may even be dead.”

“Ease forward,” said Daniel softly.

Christopher put the Land Rover into a low gear and rolled forward towards the tree.

“No sign of hyenas or vultures yet. If he’s dead, he’s only just died.”

“What are we doing?” said Natalie. “Why is a dead lion so interesting?”

Daniel turned in his seat. “There’s been an outbreak of biting flies near Ngorongoro.” He inspected the lion. “These flies suck the blood of lions, who become emaciated. They climb into trees or hyena burrows to escape the flies, but many of them die anyway. If this one’s dead, we need to know. Biting flies carry diseases that badly affect horses, deer, and some cattle—”

As he said this, however, the lion moved, and fell out of the tree. They watched as it lay on the ground, wheezing heavily. It was certainly very thin, its rib cage showing through its pelt, parts of its body covered with bloody bare patches.

As they watched, it raised itself on its front legs and began to drag itself through some bushes.

“It’s lost the use of its hind legs,” breathed Christopher. “It looks like Stomoxys calcitrans to me.”

“Is that the name of the fly?” said Natalie.

Daniel nodded. “And there’s no hope. The hyenas will be here soon. We need to shoot it and take it back to camp.”

“Is that necessary?” said Natalie.

Daniel turned in his seat again and reached up to the bracket where the guns were kept. “This lion won’t see out the day, Miss Natalie. Either we kill him, quickly and painlessly, or the hyenas or wild dogs will tear him into a dozen pieces, slowly and agonizingly.”

Christopher took the other gun. “Aldwai, keep an eye on us, will you? Natalie, stay in the Land Rover and keep all the windows closed, for now anyway. If hyenas or wild dogs come this way—and with an ailing lion it won’t be long—they can be quite inquisitive.” He got out of the car.

Daniel and he moved off slowly. Aldwai followed them at a distance, but stopped when he was about fifty yards from the vehicle, so he could keep an eye on Natalie, too.

It was stifling in the Land Rover. When Natalie had first arrived in Kihara she had assumed she would get used to the heat. She had, but only up to a point. The midday temperatures in the gorge were just too hot for any human being to be truly comfortable and in a closed Land Rover, under full sunshine, it was worse.

But at least she had—for the most part—stopped shaking.

How her life was changing. As a young girl, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, at the beginning, she had hardly ever thought about sex. That side of her had been awakened by Dominic but for years Dominic and sex had been closely associated. She couldn’t imagine having sex with anyone else: her head ruled her body—her head and her heart and her body were all one and the same entity. Not anymore. Since Jack had pulled her out of the river, during the wildebeest stampede, when she had enjoyed his hands on her breasts, her body had reasserted itself and no longer obeyed either her heart or her head.

Her nights were complicated affairs now. Her solitary whiskey, and her solitary cigarette, her close-of-day ritual, had now become instead the prelude, the calm before the storm, an aperitif, the sensual overture to a much more important main event. What would her father make of her behavior? What would her mother have made of her behavior? God forbid her father should ever know. What did she herself make of her own behavior? When she had first gone up to Cambridge, the idea of sleeping with someone she wasn’t married to was as foreign, as strange, as unthinkable as … well as giving evidence in a murder trial in Africa. But here she was, in Africa, being made love to by a man she’d known only a few weeks, in a tent, and looking forward to it . She couldn’t say that she did what she did, or allowed what she allowed, without certain pangs of conscience, without guilt that she was betraying some ideal her parents had for her. Nor was she oblivious to the risks. She had read, before she left for Africa, about the development of a so-called contraceptive pill but she couldn’t really believe it would ever catch on. It would be wonderful if it worked but there must be side effects, failures, problems, not least what it would do to the morals of people who—as she knew from her time at Cambridge—were much more adventurous than she.

But now, now that her body—if not yet all of her mind—had left Dominic behind, she could see that sex … sex, if it could be divorced from what one thought one’s parents would say, was … well, apart from anything else, it was a wonderful medicinal, it was like a therapeutic shower every night, that left her exhausted, but clean spirited and clear headed, cleansed . Jack was a considerate lover—at least she assumed he was, him being only the third man she had slept with.

There was invariably an air of uncertainty before Jack arrived and even after he had entered the tent. They smoked their cigarettes companionably enough, and sipped their whiskey. But their whispered conversation was stilted. It was only when he kissed her open mouth, when she felt his hands on her, when he pressed himself to her and she felt him harden—how erotic she found that word—only then did she feel the great tide of fire sweep through her body, and all nerves, all tenseness, all doubt, all reticence evaporated. That was when she was most ashamed, most embarrassed at what she had become, and when she found surrender exciting, irresistible.

The anticipation before, and the relaxation/exhaustion after, also cleared her mind of the great confusion as to the real reason Richard had been killed. She had, she decided, sat on that confusion long enough. She would contact Maxwell Sandys and tell him what she knew.

Each night now she undressed and wore just a nightdress, the only nightdress she had brought with her, rather than her pajamas. That had always been an unconscious act before, but now even the flimsiness of the garment was arousing. It showed that she was ready for Jack, half naked when he arrived. That too was embarrassing, shaming and exciting all at the same time.

But—there it was again, Jack’s least favorite word—good as Jack was in bed, clean and clear as she felt when it was over, she still couldn’t think about marriage. He had put his proposal well, she thought. It would be lovely to learn to fly, to explore the landscape of Africa in that way. A lifetime spent in pursuit of early mankind, bringing up “a choir” of children in such surroundings, was both civilized and natural—and unusual—in all the right ways. And Jack adored children; he would be a good father, she was sure. But the trial, Richard’s death, Russell’s threats … she couldn’t just dismiss those. Those bridges must be crossed before … before she could be clear enough in her mind to give Jack an answer. What should she do? Give evidence or not, save the gorge or—

She heard a shot. Then another. Then another, and she saw three hyenas break cover from the bushes ahead and scatter across the plain.