Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

Natalie pulled on her cigarette and observed Russell’s outline as he moved silently across the ground between his tent and hers. He was wearing his usual white shirt and jeans. He slumped into his usual chair.

He sat for a few moments without speaking, until his breathing became more regular.

Natalie had already laid out the whiskey and what remained of the chocolate on the writing table. Russell snapped off a piece and slid it into his mouth.

Chewing, he said softly, “A better day today.”

Natalie said nothing. Russell almost certainly didn’t know about Odnate and if he did his priorities were elsewhere. The discovery of the ancient zebra skull had brought about a lively discussion at lunch, and then again at dinner. There had been no mention of the tibia and femur, or of the burial ground, and to an extent the unpleasantness of a few days before, if not forgotten, had been put aside.

At dinner there had also been some light relief. Arnold Pryce and Eleanor had been into the nearby town of Karatu earlier in the day to refill one of the Land Rovers with diesel and top up the spare cans, and they had found a week-old copy of the London Times , which they had bought secondhand from a local white farmer they had met at the filling station. Russell North had observed Arnold reading the paper and snatched it from him. At dinner he had asked, “How can you have a newspaper that only has adverts on the front page? Adverts for schoolteachers, for tickets to the opera, for secondhand Rolls-Royces, for pity’s sake? Is that what the British think is the most important news?”

“It’s meant to calm you down,” replied Arnold testily. “Most news is bad news and that only upsets people.”

“And there’s a half page devoted to dances. Why are the British so interested in dancing?”

“That’s the ‘season,’” said Arnold. “Mothers give dances for their eighteen-year-old daughters, so they can meet the best young men in London. It’s an ancient tradition.”

“Sounds like anthropological gobblydegook to me,” said Russell. “No wonder you Brits have lost an empire.”

“For traditions to be traditions,” insisted Arnold, “to last they must be successful at some level. But then we know you are not a great respecter of tradition, Russell.”

That had closed the conversation.

Today’s discoveries also showed that, so far as Natalie was personally concerned, she was now much more a part of the team. At the table, Eleanor had deferred to her superior knowledge on extinct forms of life, and the others too had heard her out in respectful silence when she was explaining about ancient forms of horse and zebra. She had felt good about that.

She passed the whiskey across.

Russell just wet his lips. “Eleanor is warming to you.”

She had been ice cold where Richard and he were concerned.

Natalie said nothing. It wasn’t her fight and she wanted to keep it that way.

He wet his lips with whiskey a second time. “I saw you talking to Christopher in the gorge today. He seemed very animated.”

She let a long pause elapse, to emphasize that her privacy was her own affair. “He explained the noise the thorn bushes make, and was telling me about his brother, Jack, that’s all.”

Russell suddenly reached down between his legs, picked up some sheets of paper he had brought with him, and handed them across. “Here.”

“What is it?” she said, not taking them but guessing what the papers were.

“It’s the first draft of the article. Richard’s typing, with my corrections in blue. We thought you’d like to see it. He’s going over it again, right now.”

“Article? You’re going against Eleanor’s wishes?”

“No. Well, not entirely. We’re going to wait a bit, for her anger to subside, then try again. Once she sees the paper’s written, she’ll be excited, as excited as we are.”

And by showing it to her now, before Eleanor saw it, Russell was trying to enlist Natalie as an ally, a co-conspirator.

She took back the whiskey cup with one hand and dabbed at her damp neck with a handkerchief in her other one. “No, Russell. I don’t want to look. Not yet. You’re trying to … it’s as if you’re trying to solicit my support, coerce me, make me take your side. I don’t want you to do that. Leave me out of this, please.” She took a deep breath. “Christopher was telling me this morning that the Maasai are a very proud people, fierce even. He’s worried what they might do—”

“Another reason for publishing quickly.” Russell laid the papers next to the chocolate. “As soon as they see how important the site is, they’ll see the point of our raid.”

“The point! Russell!” Natalie let out a loud exasperated sigh. “Even now, you don’t seem bothered by what you did. It’s … it’s awful!” She banged the flask on the table. “Here, have another drink. Let’s break our one-nip-a-night rule and talk about something more pleasant. This conspiracy talk upsets me.” She poured a second nip of scotch and handed it to him.

As he took it, he held her hand and brushed her fingers with his lips.

She snatched them away.

They were both breathing heavily.

“Don’t be so locked away,” he whispered, after a while. “Loosen up.”

She was surprised, shocked even, by his choice of phrase, exactly the words she had used herself to describe her father.

Is that the impression she gave?

“I … I’m not locked away,” she faltered. “I’ve only been here a few days … I … I’m not ready.”

She knew it was inadequate as she said it. But it was, in a sense, true enough. Her very presence in this camp, among this elite team, might be a feather in her cap academically speaking, but she was here too because … because of some weird psychological arithmetic, a form of emotional calculus that began with Dominic Fielding, took in her mother’s death, her father’s grief, the anger that she rode with difficulty, and ended with her late-night winding-down sessions, when she faced her demons, alone, as she knew she had to, and tossed and turned in bed until oblivion overcame her.

That was more than enough emotion for now.

“You’re not ready? That sounds … that sounds like a long story, with a bad ending.”

Russell waited, breaking off some chocolate with his long fingers, but she didn’t respond.

He nodded. “Let’s not fight, Natalie. That’s not what I want.” He paused. “What I want, what I would really like is—”

“Russell—!”

He stood up and raised his hand. “Okay, okay, enough for tonight.” With his complexion, she couldn’t tell whether he was blushing, or if his face was flushed with anger at her reaction when he had tried to take her hand. But all he said was “Let’s sleep on it.”

He went to brush her cheek with his fingers but she moved her head away. He turned, walked back down the line of tents, and disappeared.

The moon had moved on in the sky and Natalie turned her chair so she could sit facing it. She lit another cigarette and picked up the whiskey. Russell had hardly touched the second nip. She held it to her nose, smelling the liquid. She wasn’t a drinker but she did like her nightcap. Russell’s visits just pushed back these quiet moments that she loved.

How different he was from Dominic. Dominic had been fulfilled by his music and that had given him an inner certainty that she had loved, as if he knew some great big secret about life, about how to enjoy what life had to offer, about how to slow it down as it went by. That was the effect Dominic had had on her. When she was with him, life slowed down, its details were magnified, it was like living in a novel. Dominic had even made love slowly, knowing they would get there eventually, that it was worth the wait.