Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

The evening before the trial started, she had learned from Daniel that the concert to aid Ndekei had passed off without incident. Atape and her children had been paraded onstage, Marongo had made a fiery speech, but had announced no “deal” with anyone. He was wily enough to keep Russell and Richard Sutton Senior waiting until the trial was ended. A collection had been taken at the concert for Ndekei’s family, and pictures of him, Atape, their children, and Natalie were all over the front pages of this morning’s Nairobi newspapers.

The various lawyers—Hilary Hall, Maxwell Sandys, their respective juniors—were arrayed along the polished benches immediately in front of the judge, boxes and papers on their desk lids. Immediately behind them sat a good-looking man with a face Natalie knew but couldn’t put a name to. When she looked at him he smiled back.

Over on the far wall were two benches filled with the press. They were not smiling. It was the only mixed-race part of the court. What struck Natalie most was the fact that up in the public gallery, where she could just make out Atape, in a yellow and red wrap-around dress, the faces were all black. In the well of the court, behind the lawyers, sat Eleanor, Jack, Christopher, Daniel, and her father. Another group was made up of Richard Sutton Senior, Russell North, head and shoulders above everyone else, and a barrister in a gown and wig who must be Sutton’s counsel. All those faces, save for Daniel’s, were white.

The usher was standing before her. “Do you wish to take the oath or to affirm?”

“I will affirm,” said Natalie and he turned the card over so she could read from it.

She knew her father would be disappointed that she had affirmed rather than taken the oath but it couldn’t be helped.

She had another headache this morning, though it had only started after she and Max had fought their way through the crowds outside the courthouse. What an ordeal that had been, people shouting, throwing tomatoes. She had, she thought, caught sight of the ebony walking cane carried by the man who had nearly assaulted her when she had gone walking late at night near the hotel, the evening after her first dinner with Jack.

Her hands were tingling but not badly. The most worrying thing was her skin, which had not regained its old tone since the tick typhus. No one else knew as much as she did about her symptoms, because only she saw herself naked and in full daylight.

Jack saw her naked but not in full daylight.

She thought of the night before and blushed inwardly. What they had done with each other’s naked bodies … what he had done to her with his hands, his lips, his tongue. In the hotel they had been able to make more noise than in the camp, in the tent. How erotic noise was, how liberating. How could she think about sex at a time like this? She knew by now that she could think about sex under almost any circumstances.

Maxwell Sandys rose. “For the record, Dr. Nelson, could you please state your full name and age.”

She did so.

He then carefully took her through her story. As he had said, he asked his questions in such a way that she recounted what she had seen several times, on each occasion using different wording.

As Sandys put the questions, Natalie’s eyes roamed the courtroom. It was the cleanest, coolest, most freshly painted room she had been in since she arrived in Kenya, save for the Rhodes Hotel. She had been in one or two courtrooms in Britain, once when she had acted as a character witness for an employee of her college who had been caught shoplifting, and once as a witness to a car accident. This courtroom had exactly the same feel as its British counterparts, the atmosphere being one of quiet but cold efficiency.

She understood that, and she approved the idea that justice should be efficient. But cold? It crossed her mind then, as it had crossed her mind before, that barristers and judges, all the people who frequented the courts every day, found that the cold routine helped them in their work, but that it made them insensitive to the needs of other people who, whether as a witness, a victim, a culprit, or a relative, used the courts much less often and for whom the outcome was much more important.

While she replied to Sandys’s questions, Judge Tudor made copious notes and asked one question of his own. “What lighting is there in the camp?”

He had a small voice to match his small stature.

Natalie had replied that there were usually a lot of hurricane lamps, two to a tent, five or six in the refectory tent, plus the light from the campfire, but that at the time she had seen Ndekei the only light was moonlight, starlight, and the embers of the fire. The judge nodded and resumed his note taking, yawning as his pen scratched across the page.

Natalie’s evidence took about an hour. Then Maxwell Sandys sat down and Hilary Hall stood up.

“Dr. Nelson, I have a few questions, so would you like a glass of water before proceeding?”

“Yes please.”

Water was brought. It was a small relief to drink water that didn’t smell of purification pills.

Then, “How far is it, would you say, how far is it from where you were sitting that night to where the man you say was Mutevu Ndekei was crossing the camp?”

Hall was no less English than the judge, no less British than the courtroom itself, come to that. His voice was very mellifluous. He was tall and stringy and had a long neck. She noticed that he wore an expensive watch. His pockmarked skin was slightly incongruous. She remembered thinking that the first time she had met him, for the deposition.

“I can’t be certain exactly. Perhaps a hundred yards.”

“Would it surprise you to be told that it is exactly one hundred and forty yards?”

“I’m not very good at distances. If the distance has been measured, I accept it. And it was dark.”

“Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” He paused. “We’ll come back to that.”

He brought out a large white piece of card. “I have here a map of the camp, I mean the way the tents are laid out. Would you look at it, please, and tell me if you agree it is an accurate map.”

The card was handed to her.

Natalie inspected it and said, “I can’t be sure the proportions are right but, yes, the overall shape is correct.”

Hall addressed the usher. “Please show the map to his honor and then to Sir Maxwell.”

They all waited while these maneuvers were completed.

Natalie used the time to look to where her father was sitting. He seemed comfortable enough and, now and then, he bent his head in a huddle with Eleanor and Christopher.

Her gaze fell on Richard Sutton Senior. Earlier, outside the courtroom, he had made a point of approaching her.

“So,” he said. “You kept your promise. I’m grateful.”

Natalie nodded. “There’s nothing for you to be grateful for. I promised myself that I would give evidence, not you. It’s the way I was brought up, the way I am made. There was never any need for your bullying or your famous friends in the construction business. There was never any need to have me followed. I shall give evidence today and I hope never to see you again.”

Russell had been listening to this exchange. He moved forward, towards Natalie, but she had walked on, down the corridor, turning her back on him.

Her exchange with Christopher the evening before had upset her. Not so much because she had had to … to face him with some harsh realities but rather because only then had she realized what jealousy had done to Christopher. She wasn’t an especially jealous person herself, though she had known jealousy only too well when she had been with Dominic. But to be jealous of your brother, as Christopher was of Jack, and to have to live with it, over many years, to have your parents reinforce their preferences every so often, must have been a living hell, an ordeal she had never known. Even if your parents favored your siblings unconsciously … well, wasn’t that worse? Unconscious behavior was in many ways more honest than conscious behavior. Christopher must have suffered in silence for years.