Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

Natalie took them. “Dad, that’s wonderful. Thank you.” She told him about Jack’s wind-up gramophone, how they sometimes played music after dinner, with the roars of the lions and the chatter of the baboons as a backdrop.

“I’d like to hear that,” he said. “See if I can recruit any baritones.”

She laughed out loud, leaned forward, and kissed him.

How her fortunes had changed during the day.

They had left the gorge early that morning—Jack doing the flying, with Eleanor, Daniel, Christopher, and Natalie and quite a few bags filling the plane. It had been a bumpy ride, there were plenty of short-rains storm clouds about, but they had flown at only two thousand feet, so there had been some good views of the wildlife.

Christopher had been a bit distant with her in the plane, although they had sat side by side, behind Jack and Eleanor.

“You seem to have recovered better than I did,” he had said.

She had made a face. “I was up and about yesterday—only a day before you.”

“Maybe I would have made a quicker recovery if Jack had brought me dinner every night.”

She had ignored that. “I still haven’t got back my appetite properly, have you?”

“Appetite for what?”

What did he mean by that? Did he mean anything? What did he know? Something was rankling with him, that much was certain.

“We can have some fish in Nairobi,” she had said, determined not to be drawn. “Maybe that will help full recovery.”

In fact, she was less fully recovered than she let on. She felt a bit sick in the plane and her hands still tingled where the rash had been, though she hadn’t told Jonas because she didn’t want anything to interfere with the trial.

Jack had again parked the Comanche in his favorite part of the airport, among the private jets. Natalie noticed that there were one or two more than before. The prospect of independence, she presumed, was attracting all sorts of businessmen to Kenya. Jack, she, and the others were staying in the Rhodes, save for Eleanor, who was lodging with Maxwell Sandys.

Her father was sipping his whiskey again but looking at her more closely. “You look pale, Tally, and a bit thin. Does that gorge really agree with you, or are you as worried about the trial as Eleanor Deacon said?”

She looked around the bar. All the customers were white, the barman black. Race in Kenya, like race everywhere, was a complicated business. The newspapers in the hotel shop were full of racial news of one kind or another. South Africa was going its own brutal way, outside the Commonwealth, and in the Deep South of the United States the desegregation of the universities was provoking riots and sit-ins. Adolf Eichmann was appealing against his death sentence after his trial in Israel for the murder of so many Jews.

“I am worried about the trial, yes, and it’s wonderful of you to have come, the best news I could possibly have—Eleanor is right there. But the reason I am pale and a bit thin is that I’m just getting over a bout of tick typhus—”

“Typhus? What—?”

“Don’t worry!” And she told him about the lion they had killed and what had happened afterwards.

“So you see, Dad, I’m over the worst and should be as good as new very soon.”

She finished her drink. “How long do you plan to stay?”

He shrugged. “My ticket is for ten days, and I can’t change it. I’d like to see the gorge, if I’m allowed and welcome. Otherwise, I’ll go to the coast.”

“Of course you can come to the gorge.” She held up her empty glass. “Shall we have dinner? Eleanor played a trick on me. She said she’d arranged for me to have dinner with the prosecuting lawyer, when in fact she planned this surprise. I should have guessed something was up when Maxwell Sandys—the lawyer—looked nonplussed for a moment when I saw him this afternoon and mentioned dinner tonight. But I would never have guessed you would be here. Let’s not lose a moment, and go and eat. You must be famished.”

He nodded. “Yes, but look, I’m here to offer moral support. We’ll have dinner now but after that I’ll take a backseat until the trial is over. You’ll be busy and you’ll be on edge. I’m here if you need me, but I realize I may not see much of you until the proceedings have been and gone. How long is the trial expected to last, by the way?”

Natalie sipped her drink. The short rains had clinched it, the night before. Rain, for her, had always been associated with her father and she couldn’t let him down, she decided. He would expect her to give evidence and she had let her parents down in so many ways already. In the rain at Kihara, naked, she had thought back to that day, years ago, when she and her father had swum, virtually naked, on the beach at Chapel St. Leonard’s, when everyone else was hurrying off the sands because of the weather. A feeling of overwhelming fondness for her father had swept along Natalie’s warm, wet skin and she had known what she must do.

How just it was that, at that very moment, he had been in the plane on his way to Nairobi, to support her. Something was coming good in her world at last.

“Not long, not long at all. The trial will last two days, three at the most. And I don’t really know how busy I shall be. There’s a rally going on tonight, a rally when the local blacks will probably attack me, as a white witness giving evidence against a black defendant.”

Her father shook his head. “Your mother and I brought you up to be anything but racist, as the Church says. People here can surely see that you are not a racist?”

“Kenya will be independent soon. Race is a very powerful political tool.”

He nodded. “Yes, I realize that. I know it somewhere inside me of course. But that it should sweep up my daughter in its … crudities—that’s hard. Is it getting to you? It must be.”

She nodded. “Yes it is. Of course it is.” She squeezed his hand. “But I try not to show it and it’s not all bad news, remember that. The discoveries we have made are very important—they will change the way mankind thinks of itself, and Nature is giving us a special edition.” She drank some whiskey. “There’s also something else you don’t know: Jack Deacon has asked me to marry him.”

Sipping what remained of his drink, Owen Nelson held the glass away from his lips.

“I haven’t given him an answer yet—and I won’t, not until the trial business is all cleared up. But … but, if I were to say yes, it would mean me living in Africa full-time. Not necessarily in Kihara Gorge—there are problems there that I’ll tell you about over dinner—but probably somewhere very like it. How would you feel about that?”

Owen set his glass down gently. “Part of me would feel widowed all over again, but you know me, Tally, I want what’s best for you, what’s best for your happiness, for your career.” He wiped his lips with his handkerchief. “But tell me, why haven’t you given Jack Deacon an answer yet? It’s unlike you not to know your own mind immediately—”

“Ah! Look who’s here.” Natalie moved away from her father as Eleanor and Jack appeared in the bar. She stood up. “Is your mysterious family meeting all over?”

Eleanor smiled. “Sorry, that was all a bit hammy, wasn’t it? But the surprise worked, I hope?” She held out her hand to Owen Nelson and he took it enthusiastically.

“Oh yes, I think so.” Natalie put her arm in her father’s and squeezed. She kissed his shoulder.

She made the introductions and then Eleanor said, “It’s very good of you to come to support your daughter, Mr. Nelson. She’s a very talented individual, and we’ve all grown very fond of her.”

“I’m pleased to hear it,” replied Owen. “She’s all I’ve got.”