Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

“There was nothing to suggest anything other than an accident except that it happened a few weeks after I had told my parents about my affair with a man who was married. They had both been upset, my father more angry than anything, but my mother was shocked, devastated and, yes, disappointed.” Natalie took a deep breath. “I never thought disappointment could so ravage someone until I saw how my mother reacted. I realized then what aspirations she had for me and how important those aspirations were for her.” She closed her eyes and opened them again. She wasn’t going to talk about her mother’s affair, the reason for her anger. “People say that it is wrong for parents to live through their children, and I agree with that. But I also half think it’s natural—not un natural, anyway—and in any case for the parent concerned, and whether it’s wrong or right, living through your child can feel real enough. When I told my mother about the affair, it was like she had been punctured, as if all the air had been let out of her. All her aspirations for me disappeared in an instant.”

Her mother had had no right to feel that, Natalie felt, after her own betrayal of Owen.

Natalie shook her head in the gloom. “It was terrible. She wouldn’t look me in the eye, she wouldn’t phone back when I rang her up. I know she prayed for me in church. She had always sent me little notes to Cambridge, about pieces of music she had heard, or French fashion tips, or enclosing reviews of new plays in the newspapers, and she stopped doing that. She used to take the train down to Cambridge every two weeks to have lunch with me, or see one of the theatrical productions I was involved in—I used to find or make props for the dramatic society. But those visits stopped too. I hated it but there was nothing I could do.

“After the … after she died, I stayed at home for a couple of weeks to be with my father, but he was never there. He was either taking choir practice, or practicing the organ, or praying in the cathedral, or at my mother’s grave. When he did come home, he went straight to his room—their room—and had his dinner sent up.”

Natalie turned on her side. Eleanor was just a shape in the gloom.

“I was growing angry with him. He was grief-stricken—we both were—but he was behaving unnaturally. I was about to tackle him when he suddenly said he wanted me to leave. He held in front of me a sheaf of papers.” She paused. “They were life insurance policies. He said that, a few days before she died, my mother had confided something like ‘If anything should happen to me, don’t forget the polices in the drawer’ … she meant the drawer where their marriage certificate was kept, where my birth certificate was kept, and my degree.” Natalie wiped her lips with her tongue. “My father thought that not only did my mother commit suicide—a sin for a Catholic—but she did so in a way that made it look like an accident, so the policies would pay out. That’s what she’d meant when she had reminded him where the policies were kept.”

Natalie lay back down and stared up again at the sloping tent ceiling.

“I haven’t spoken to my father since that day. Then Dominic, my cellist lover, ditched me. Your invitation to Kihara saved my sanity. You don’t need to worry about me, Eleanor. I’m not about to do anything rash or rushed.” Was that true? she asked herself. Her anger had been known to explode into recklessness, if only in small ways. She had resigned from the drama society in Cambridge over a prop that had got lost, and she had regretted that. Once, shopping in London, she had encountered a difficult assistant and sworn at him in French, assuming he wouldn’t understand. But he had.

“I’ve told you far more than I ever intended, Eleanor, so I hope you won’t broadcast this generally. I don’t want to be thought of as the walking wounded. I’m basically fine.”

Neither spoke for a while. Natalie could again hear the wind playing with the rigging of the tent.

“I can understand that being estranged from your father must be hurtful,” said Eleanor eventually, in almost a whisper. “Especially as you have lost your mother and the man you were seeing. But I agree with you … Kihara may help with the scars.” She turned, puffed up her pillow, and lay back again. “If it is any comfort, I have always found the companionship and sociability of family life to be in large measure an illusion. Children are fine when they are young—they’re like toys. It is intellectually interesting to watch them grow, see their personalities develop. Take Jack and Christopher, for instance. They have the same parents, and grew up together, yet they could not be more different. Jack is outgoing, self-confident, what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Christopher is diffident, inward, and—I hate to say this—just a little jealous of Jack, or Jack’s self-confidence. The girls are different again.”

She paused.

“Where does Christopher’s jealousy come from and why isn’t he jealous of his sisters?” She pulled the blankets higher up the bed. “Have you never noticed how a person’s family life is a poor guide to how he or she performs in the rest of life?” She coughed. “T. S. Eliot, that American poet, said one aim in life is to escape our families, our childhood, not be conditioned by them, and I agree. Real independence is the name of the game, and intellectual work the real high point of life for people with a scientific curiosity like us. Research—discovery—is the highest calling, the enduring passion. In a world without God, without salvation, the only fulfillment is to be had from the respect of others.”

Natalie wasn’t sure how to respond. Eleanor was not at all like Natalie’s own mother but she was giving her something to aim for amid her distress.

She heard a buffalo baying far off. Maybe he was alone, too, separated from his herd. “This murder must be heartbreaking for you.”

“Yes. But what’s happened has happened. I appreciate it’s a personal tragedy for Sutton, and his parents, and to some extent for Russell, but the main thing now is to move on. Richard’s death doesn’t change the excitement or the passion. We must keep a sense of proportion. A death is a death, a terrible thing. But when I’m ready I’m going to move things forward. The needs of the gorge must come first.”

“Oh? What are you going to do?” To her surprise, Natalie was feeling sleepy. But then it had been a wearing day.

“I can’t say yet. There are ways to do these things. Just remember our chat, my dear. I’ve enjoyed it. You’ll find me hard at times … well, not hard, I hope, but strong-minded, tough. And I’m tough on myself too. All I ask is that you remember what’s underneath.” She pulled up the covers and turned her back on Natalie. “Now, I bid you good night.”

“Good night.” Natalie closed her eyes. She could smell the kerosene from the hurricane lamp outside. The buffalo moaned again in the distance.

Natalie poured her second cup of coffee from the enamel breakfast jug and helped herself to another slice of toast. In her first few days on the dig, she had lost her appetite. The coffee seemed too strong, Mutevu’s bread too doughy, she couldn’t get used to powdered milk. But she had adjusted now and looked forward to breakfast as soon as she awoke. The more so today as breakfast had been skipped in yesterday’s high drama.

It was just before seven, so the sun was not too hot. Natalie had been up nearly an hour but even so Eleanor had beaten her to it. In fact, it had been Eleanor’s voice on the radio-telephone that had wakened Natalie. Hot water had been provided in the wash basin at the side of the tent, as usual, so Natalie had at least cleaned her face and neck. Did that mean Mgina was back? Natalie wouldn’t feel really fresh until she’d showered, but a wash was better than nothing.