Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

“Mmm. Thank you,” she whispered. “What a treat.” Having Christopher do what he was doing reminded her that Mgina had failed to bring her shower water yesterday. In fact, she hadn’t seen her all day, now she thought of it. Not more trouble at home, she hoped.

“Jack will be here soon. Maybe he will be able to help out.”

“What do you mean? What does Jack have that you don’t?”

“He’s an honorary Maasai. He’s a bit older than me and when he was growing up, there were some Maasai boys in the camp and he and they became firm friends—he speaks Maasai as well as Swahili and as well as he speaks English. One of the boys he grew up with was Marongo, who is now head of the local village, Ndekei’s village. Jack used to stay with Marongo and his family, in their hut, and took part in a celebrated battle when another tribe tried to steal their cattle. That’s when they made him an honorary Maasai.” Christopher pointed to his own forehead. “Jack has a famous scar where he was hit by a lion cub. He was lucky not to be blinded.”

“Where is this hero now?”

“Nairobi. He’s always been more politically involved than either my mother or me. There’s a lot of pre-independence maneuvering going on, a lot of black–white tension, as you can imagine and he’s—look!” he cried. “Richard is waving. They seem to have found something.”

Natalie followed the line of Christopher’s outstretched arm. Sure enough, about a hundred yards away, Richard was waving, beckoning them.

Natalie set off towards him. Her own shirt was just as stained with sweat as everyone else’s.

Christopher went with her.

As they approached, they could see Russell and Daniel gently lowering an animal skull on to a sheet on the ground.

“This is just up your street, Natalie,” said Richard warmly. “Do you recognize it? I think it’s some sort of horse, or zebra.” He smiled.

She knelt down. Russell and Daniel crowded round. A cloud obscured the sun and, temporarily, the temperature eased.

“Richard, you’re right,” she breathed after a moment. What they had was almost half the skull of a horse-type creature, even containing a few teeth.

“I’ll have to check, back at camp,” she said eventually. “But it looks to me like a skull of Equus plicatus , an early form of zebra.”

“So it’s not new?” Richard sounded disappointed.

“What’s the level here?”

“Same as the tibia and femur. Two mill.”

“Then if I’m right, it is nice confirmation of what we think we know, which is that the zebra moved into Africa from India about two million years ago—and then went extinct in India. We’re not talking hominids here, but this is an important discovery. A letter to Nature maybe.” She stood up and smiled at Richard and Russell. “Well done.”

“I told you I have an eye.” Russell turned. In the heat of the day, with his pale skin, he was well covered up against the sun. But that only meant he was sweating more than most. “And Dick here has the hands. Look at how beautifully he carved that out of the rock. And what a pity it isn’t new.” He smiled at her and put his hand on her shoulder. “If it had been, Dick suggested we name it after you: Equus nelsoniensis . It’s big, isn’t it?”

She nodded, wiping her brow with her sleeve. “You’re right again and that’s an interesting theoretical issue. We now know extinct species of hippo, of giraffe, of pig, of horse, of zebra, and of elephant. They all have one thing in common: the extinct forms are larger than the modern forms. Why should that be? What evolutionary significance does that have? And why is the opposite true for hominids? Modern man is larger than the extinct forms. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It doesn’t make sense to discuss such a heavy issue in the baking sun,” said Russell. “But let’s explore that at lunch. It will help break the ice with Eleanor. We can include that in our theoretical paper. Maybe you’d like to draft that part, Natalie?”

“Yes,” said Richard. “Good idea.”

Natalie was flattered. Then, again, she checked herself. What did a prehistoric zebra have to do with an early form of man? And why should it be named after her? Was she being dragooned on to their side, and against Eleanor? Were Russell and Richard still intent on publishing their paper quickly, despite all that had happened? She couldn’t believe it.

She looked at Christopher but couldn’t read his expression.

“I can make a draft,” she said. “Of course I can, and I’d be pleased to. But there are other books I’d need to check, back in Cambridge, I mean, before I could go into print. And other colleagues I’d like to consult.”

Richard looked at her and nodded.

What did that mean? she wondered. Did it mean anything? Why was everything to do with this dig, even important discoveries, now complicated by layers and layers of speculation? She had never anticipated this.

“Let’s take it one step at a time,” she said in a measured way. “I do have a few books back at camp. I’ll give you a more considered response at dinner. How’s that?”

“Fine,” said Richard, “just fine.”

When Natalie got back to her tent there was still no sign of Mgina. The bed had been made, but from the different way the fresh towels had been folded and laid out, she could tell that someone else had done the cleaning that morning. So she just dumped her hat and sleeveless vest, in which she kept her bits and pieces, and left her tent, aiming for the area of the camp behind the refectory, near the storeroom, where the laundry was done. What had happened? One of the cleaning staff should know.

She was halfway across the clearing when she saw Jonas Jefferson getting down from a Land Rover. He saw her at the same time as she saw him and immediately set off towards her. As he drew close, he took off his hat and growled, “Odnate’s dead.”

“What? No, please no!”

He wiped a hand across his face. “The family stopped giving him the pills.”

She stared at him. Her throat was damp.

“I’ve come across this before. Even in Britain, people don’t always complete the course of antibiotics. Some of the time, if you’ve a bad dose of flu, say, it may not matter, it delays recovery but that’s all. With more serious diseases, however, it matters very much.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “What you saw in Palestine wasn’t Africa. Palestinians are quite highly educated, relatively speaking, but here … here, traditional ways are still very powerful and they can, and do, reassert themselves. Once Odnate was feeling better, he got up, started playing, looking after the goats, and stopped taking his antibiotics. The family let him. Then, as soon as the symptoms reappeared, his parents concluded that Western medicine was no better than their own remedies. They resorted to their herbal cures, and didn’t bother to tell us—it was their affair. The poor boy died yesterday.”

Natalie couldn’t think what to say. It was as if there was a big, empty space in her brain. It had happened before, when her mother died. “When is the funeral?”

Jonas stared at her. “He wasn’t a chief or a warrior … He was a child.” He passed his hand over his face again. “I’m sorry, Natalie, but his body was left out in the bush last night, to be eaten by predators and scavengers. There’s nothing left of him to be buried … it’s the tradition here.”

Natalie felt out of breath. This was a bad business and it had just got worse. “Did you see Mgina?”

He nodded. “She’s upset but it’s a large family—I’m not saying the Maasai don’t feel grief the way we do because they do, keenly, and he was a lovely boy. But mortality is high in the bush. That’s not supposed to comfort you, but it is a fact. Mgina says she’ll be back in a day or so.”