Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

The slow string sounds of the Adagio slipped into the night, the deeper register of the cellos and basses gradually winning out, slowing down and keeping in check the more sinewy, lighter strains of the violins and violas, which threatened to break out and soar high above the campfire. For a moment equilibrium was attained, a sound that reminded Natalie of the sea swelling and rolling, swelling and rolling, as calm as the deep ocean ever gets. Then the tones turned darker, slower still, the initial motif repeated in a lower register, as if to mark a burial at sea. So it seemed to Natalie.

As the final sounds died away, a rumpus could be heard across the gorge. A fight had broken out among some animals and it took a while to resolve itself.

Natalie smiled at Jack, who smiled back. “Doesn’t sound as though the baboons care for Samuel Barber. Shall I play it again?”

She grinned and nodded.

He lifted the arm, cranked the machine again, and carefully laid the needle on the edge of the record. For a big man he was surprisingly gentle with the needle, she thought. The ring on his little finger caught the light from the flames of the fire.

As the strains of the Adagio spread through the night for a second time, Natalie looked around her. Arnold Pryce had his eyes closed and his head was thrown back. Jonas stared into the fire, its shadows moving across his face. Kees also stared into the fire and for some reason looked cross. Christopher was talking to his mother, but she had her hand on his arm, as if to quieten him. Once or twice he glanced across to Natalie.

Their trip to the cave at Ndutu, the previous Sunday, had been as engrossing as Christopher had promised. The lake had been much as she had imagined Eden to be when she was a girl, with hundreds of different species of animals, all drinking side by side, as if the struggle for existence had been put on hold for a couple of hours. The rock art had been very vivid—with large, mysterious figures fighting smaller ones. Christopher had explained that no one, not the archaeologists, not the locals, knew whether they were Zulus, not normally found in this part of Africa, or gods. There had been mild excitement when, as it seemed to Natalie, a lion had roared its head off right near the cave, but Christopher had reassured her it was a lioness separated from her pride and only trying to locate them. Once or twice he had stood very close to Natalie but each time she had moved smoothly away.

The Adagio was over for the second time. Jack lifted the needle, gripped the record, and slid it back into its sleeve. Again, she noticed how gentle his movements were.

“Got any jazz?” shouted Arnold Pryce, breaking the mood entirely.

“Basie and Beiderbecke, will they do?” Jack shouted back.

“They’re my choice, when it’s my turn,” said Pryce, getting up from his chair and heading for his tent. He waved good night.

Jonas was still staring at the fire, his thoughts far, far away by the looks of it.

Kees got up and waved good night.

“I hear you went to the rock shelter with Christopher.”

“Yes, it was wonderful. You’ve been?”

“Of course. I showed it to him in the first place. The Maasai showed me, when I was a boy. You spent the night there?”

“Isn’t that the point? So you can see the animals early the next morning, when they visit the water?”

He nodded. “See any lions?”

“No, but we heard some, just as we were going to sleep.”

“Did that frighten you?”

She nodded. “To begin with, but Christopher explained what was happening—a lioness had got separated from her pride. She called out, they answered, she went off to join them.”

“It all sounds very cozy.”

“It was. We built a fire, Christopher cooked. He says you used to call him ‘Christine’ when you were boys, because of his cooking. Brothers can be a bit cruel, yes?”

He looked at her, a slight smile along his lips. “Did he tell you what he called me?”

She shook her head. “What was it?”

He didn’t reply directly but said, “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

“No.” Obviously, Eleanor hadn’t told him much. She had kept the confidence Natalie had asked her to.

Jack stifled a yawn. “Christopher and I have rarely seen eye to eye. We rub along for our mother’s sake, for the sake of the gorge, but we flare up from time to time. We’re like a couple of water buffalo who square up to each other now and then but don’t do too much damage, not these days. But it’s not nice to be near, when it does happen.”

She shrugged. “I’m tough enough. Don’t worry about me. Being an only child doesn’t mean I’m soft.”

“Did I say you were soft? No—and I wasn’t thinking it. I think there’s something sad about you, and you are certainly not as tough as my mother, not by a long way, not yet anyway. But you’re not soft, no. In fact, so far, Dr. Nelson, I’m impressed.”

“Sad? Why do you say that? Because I chose the Adagio?”

He looked at her. “I’m not going to argue with you but, for what it’s worth, your eyes, your face—your very beautiful face, I have to say—is like a shield. You smile, you don’t smile, but whatever you do your eyes don’t change. I’ve watched them, around the dinner table. They’re like an eland’s eyes, or a kudu’s, when they lift their heads to look for predators. Have you been preyed on?”

He leaned forward and kicked the fire, so that the logs burned better.

“I hope your brand-new doctorate wasn’t in psychology—because if it was, you didn’t deserve it. You are way off.”

“Am I?” He pulled his chair closer. “Am I? Is it the trial? Is it getting to you? Or is it something else?” He leaned forward; their knees were nearly touching.

Oh dear, thought Natalie. First Russell, then Eleanor, now Jack. Did she give off some subliminal chemical—what was the word? pheromone—that encouraged people, newcomers, people who didn’t know her, to charge in where her private life was concerned?

“Whatever you think you see, whatever fanciful theory you are developing, based on what I think of one eight-minute adagio, forget it. Just because we are stuck out here in the bush, with no one but each other for company, just because I made some off-the-cuff remark about music that you have made more of than I ever intended, that doesn’t mean … that doesn’t mean … you remind me of Montgomery Clift, that film star, but you’re behaving like Anthony Perkins in Psycho.”

“Didn’t see it,” said Jack. “Was it bad?”

“Scary.”

He leaned back and grinned. “Have it your way. But I’m telling you, Natalie Nelson, Doctor Natalie Nelson, you’re getting over someone or something. You’re holding yourself in. There’s anger there, as well as sadness. If you had brothers or sisters you’d have to share it, you couldn’t help it. And the burden would be eased. That makes me think that it’s not the trial, that it’s something you arrived here with.”

She stared into the fire. She didn’t like what she was hearing. He was right, of course, damn him, but she wasn’t for the life of her going to say so.

She hadn’t realized she was so obvious. Was she? No one else had said what he had said, not Christopher in the cave, when he had all night to talk, not anyone. Was Jack so much more observant than anyone else, or just less discreet? Had all the others observed what he had, but failed to say anything? How embarrassing, if true.

“Your silence tells me quite a lot,” he said softly when she didn’t reply, but she gave him such a glare that he quickly added, “Okay, okay, let’s drop it. I’m told you like a late-night smoke, so I won’t go on. Just one housekeeping point. My mother’s had word from the court in Nairobi. They want you there sometime in the next week, to make a deposition—”