Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

He took his hand off her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I have some sedatives if you’d like one.”

Natalie still felt winded, but she shook her head. “No, no thanks. I’ll just lie on my bed for a bit. It’s so … so disappointing.”

He nodded. “That’s the right word. It’s one of the first things you learn when you qualify as a doctor, that there are some people you can’t save, even though, according to the book, according to the rules, they should survive. It’s harder here because local traditions are so strong, and so different from ours. You’re not a doctor, so it’s hit you harder. Pity there’s no hard liquor on this dig—otherwise, I could prescribe a shot of brandy for you.”

He smiled.

Natalie looked at the packet of cigarettes she held in her hand. The moonlight was so bright tonight that she could read the writing without the aid of the hurricane lamp. The campfire was alight—just—but its crimson glow was dim. She took a cigarette from the pack and slipped it into her mouth. When she flicked open her lighter, the flame jumped up and caught the tobacco. She didn’t know which she liked more, the first taste of her first cigarette of the day, or the first sip of whiskey.

She put the cigarette pack in the breast pocket of her shirt and leaned forward to light the hurricane lamp. After it had caught, she turned the flame down low and savored the tang of kerosene in her nostrils. In the distance she could just make out the skyline of the Amboseli Mountain, its smooth shoulders sinking into the maroon gloom of the plain.

She knew that as soon as Russell saw the glow of her lamp he would be over. Tonight, she definitely needed company. Odnate’s death had upset her. Having, as she thought, rescued him, she felt as if part of herself had died with him. She felt partly cheated and partly foolish for thinking that it was so easy to save a life, and she also felt naive that she had been so ignorant of the local customs that, in the end, had won out.

Naïveté. It was the curse of her life. It was her naïveté that had got her involved with Dominic and had, in the end, been responsible for his moving on, moving on without her. For the umpteenth time she relived that last afternoon, by the river in Cambridge, against the backdrop of Trinity and King’s College Chapel. By Cambridge standards it had been a sunny day, gloriously warm but with clouds too, blotting out the sun from time to time. They were walking but both wheeling bicycles, planning to ride into the countryside, as they sometimes did. She still wasn’t sure whether what had come next was sophisticated or cruel, or both.

Dominic would often hum or softly whistle tunes and it had become their private game for Natalie to guess what he was humming or whistling. If she couldn’t guess the tune, she would try for the composer.

“Oh, I know that,” she had said enthusiastically that day. “It’s from that new musical … what’s it called? … that’s it, West Side Story . Leonard Bernstein, that’s the composer.”

“Well done … and the tune?”

“America.” She sang the words, “I-want-to-be-in-Ame-ri-ca, Okay-by-me-in-Ame-ri-ca …”

Dominic had smiled and said, “Bernstein’s asked me to play with him.”

She had stopped in her tracks. “Dom! That’s wonderful! When? Where?”

“New York. Just before Christmas.” He had stopped too. “It’s part of a tour I’m going on. A year on the road … Canada, Mexico, twenty-seven of the United States.”

“A year?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Starting when?”

“I leave for Vancouver next week.”

A plane droned by, overhead.

“How long have you been planning this?”

“A few months.”

It was a warm day and the skin on Natalie’s throat felt clammy. But she had shivered. This was the first she had heard of any tour.

“Vancouver couldn’t be further away.”

He had nodded. “I like it that way. I’ll be there a month, rehearsing and giving master classes, before moving on. A fresh city every three or four days, for months on end. A complete break.”

The last three words were spoken as the clouds cleared the sun and his face was suddenly on fire. But she could see that it wasn’t just the sunshine.

“A complete break?” she had repeated.

He nodded. “Susan and I are getting divorced. I need to devote myself to music for a year, at least.” He pointed to the bicycles. “This was always … you’ll be Dr. Nelson soon, moving on.” He wiped his lips with his hand. “It’s time, Natalie. I can’t take you with me.”

Just then, they heard—very faintly—the choir in King’s College Chapel. It was the middle of the afternoon, on a weekday, so it must have been a rehearsal. But the voices reached them, clear enough to be heard, but faint enough that she couldn’t make out what was being sung.

“I am sorry, Tally,” he had whispered, using the name her family and friends had used since she was a girl. He had leaned across the bicycles and kissed her cheek. “Music comes first for me, you know that. You’ve always known that. More than marriage, more than children …” He took her hand where it rested on the bicycle handlebars. “More than this.”

He had kissed her hand. More had been said, much more, but Natalie wouldn’t plead, so they had talked around the subject. One of the things she had always loved about Dominic was his voice, mellifluous, milky, melodic, and even that afternoon, amid her anguish, she had loved the sound of him speaking. But all she had achieved, really, was delaying his departure. She knew that couldn’t be delayed forever and she let him kiss her on her cheek a second time before turning, mounting his bicycle, and riding off.

She had remained where she was, the sound of the choir still clear, still faint.

She had never discussed divorce with Dominic, never pressured him in that way. But she had imagined it—oh, how she had imagined it.

Her distress that afternoon had soon given way to anger. Anger was never far away for her, as she realized all too well. And she knew where it came from. While Owen Nelson had been away in the war, Violette had had an affair. It had lasted for months, but Violette had assumed that Natalie was too young to understand, or even to notice. But Natalie was not too young, and she had noticed. The man was an RAF pilot stationed near Gainsborough and although the affair had gone on for months, it had ended long before Owen returned, slightly wounded. But that wasn’t the point. Natalie had always been angry at her mother’s betrayal, angry that she couldn’t tell her father without wounding him still further, and doubly angry, triply angry, that Violette had taken her daughter’s affair—Natalie’s—so badly, so much to heart, when she had done the same thing herself, only worse, because she had been already married herself. That was one of the reasons Natalie had followed a science career and not a musical one, to get back at her mother, to spite her. The fact that her mother’s death was a mystery angered her too. Was her mother having the last word? In coming to Africa, Natalie hoped she was escaping her anger.

Eleanor had mentioned a fresh mystery at dinner. A small plane had crashed near Mutonguni, east of Nairobi, killing the pilot and two passengers, who were senior members of KANU, the Kenya African National Union. Although the crash had been blamed on the fact that the plane had been refilled with the wrong kind of fuel, jet fuel not propeller-type Avgas, and was therefore an accident, the possibility remained that the switch had been deliberate, and politically motivated. With independence not far off, almost any event now threatened to have political overtones. If Richard and Russell’s invasion of the burial ground should be discovered …