Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

“I’m an honorary Maasai, Mother, not an elder.”

“But they’ll listen to you. You helped them once.”

“And being even an honorary Maasai means I have to behave with their interests in mind, not anyone else’s. They’re not fools. They know what you want to see them about, what you will try to achieve, and the more you ask, the louder their denials will be, because that makes their position all the stronger.”

“So what do you suggest, if anything?” Christopher got in before his mother could.

Jack shook his head. “I have one thought, but it’s half formed. There are one or two people I need to see when Natalie and I are in Nairobi. Let’s get through that, and then we’ll see.” He smiled at Natalie.

“Make sure you bring her back in one piece,” said Christopher.

Belching exhaust fumes from buses and lorries filled the street with acrid soot. Rust-red dust from the roads caked the windows of the vehicles, grouted the faces of the pavement traders. The smell of burning corn, cattle dung, and coffee filled the morning air. Shouting on all sides. Horns honked, a loudspeaker broadcast a call to prayer, radios played in the open air. Sharp sunshine that hurt the eyes broke into splinters of light on the chrome-work of cars. Downtown Nairobi.

The flight up from the gorge had been as enjoyable as Jack had promised. He seemed to Natalie an accomplished pilot, who had been thorough in his preflight routine before they took off, checking the wings, the wheels, the fuel, all the gauges on the aircraft dashboard, concentrating hard. She felt safe. The small Comanche had flown low, at barely two thousand feet, and Natalie had looked down on herds of elephants, a long line of wildebeest, a score of hippos lurking in a sand-colored river, coffee groves, open-cast mines, villages galore. The tiny plane had landed on the huge main runway of Nairobi airport, Jack and Natalie listening in to the radio conversations between other pilots and air traffic control. After using a ridiculously tiny amount of airstrip, the Comanche had turned off, into the private terminal of Nairobi International.

Jack left his plane near a couple of private jets. “I park here so I can get a good look at them,” he said to Natalie, grinning. “You never know, maybe one day.”

They were now in a taxi, a battered black Peugeot with green writing on the bodywork. There was no air-conditioning and the rear window on Natalie’s side had broken halfway down and refused to budge. There was a smell of diesel in the car, as if the carburetor was leaking, or something was leaking. Their exhaust billowed out as black as everyone else’s.

“The courthouse is just along here,” said Jack, sensing her discomfort. “Not far.”

The traffic was inching along, the street jammed with cars and buses and lorries and little three-wheelers carrying light goods. People walked their bicyles along the pavements, ringing the bells to warn pedestrians of the change in the rules.

This was a street of shops. Hardware shops with bright silver-looking galvanized buckets and enamel washbasins hanging outside, white string-headed mops and bright saffron-colored sponges, wooden stools and ginger-tinted coconut mats. There were chemist shops with green crosses above their doors and windows lined in yellow cellophane against the sun. There were shoe shops with plimsolls hung in bunches, like white bananas, uniform shops with nurses’ outfits, gray and white, in the window, khaki shirts, Sam Brown belts, and long socks. Diffident Indian shopkeepers, in chocolate-colored overalls, watched the world go by.

“See, there’s the square ahead, the courthouse is set back.” Jack pointed past some thin trees in the middle of the expanse, to where an elegant neoclassical white mansion was coming into view. “It’ll be cooler in there.”

The road opened out into the square, but it made no difference to the speed of the traffic. Now the vehicles were choked seven abreast rather than four. Natalie noticed a dead fountain among the straggly trees, where some emaciated dogs were sniffing each other and playing. Old men were sleeping on the dried mud—the grass had obviously given up long ago. A white police box, for directing traffic, was directly ahead, raised on a dais. It was abandoned.

Outside the courthouse was a tall flagpole, supporting two flags, the Union Jack and, beneath it, the black, red, and green flag that, come independence, would represent Kenya. The taxi dropped them, they grabbed their overnight bags from the boot, and Jack paid the driver.

Inside, as he had said, it was cooler. It was also very busy. People clustered in knots, one or more of their number nervously awaiting cases to begin. Tall black policemen in white pith helmets contrasted with the occasional white barristers, incongruous in short wigs and black gowns. Jack scrutinized a directory on a wall.

“Room 208,” he murmured. “Follow me.”

He led the way up a wide staircase of polished wood, which doubled back on itself, leading to the top floor. Turning right, Jack found 208, knocked, and went through. A tall, good-looking man with iron gray hair, wearing a waistcoat, white court tabs at his throat but no jacket, stood behind a massive mahogany desk. The office was a huge, light, airy room with three broad windows that gave on to the square. A portrait of the young queen hung above the desk.

“Jack,” the man boomed. “How are you? How’s Eleanor and that lovely sister of yours?” He came round the desk and shook hands with Jack, not letting go of his hand.

“Max, you’re looking well,” said Jack. “My mother sends her love. Beth would probably have some fighting talk for you if I’d spoken to her lately but I haven’t. She’s still in Boston, finishing her Ph.D.” He half turned. “Sir Maxwell Sandys, this is Natalie Nelson. Natalie, this is Max, deputy attorney general and the man who taught me to fly.”

Outside in the square Natalie could hear a band playing. Military music, if she wasn’t mistaken. Some political event or other? She’d been so obsessed recently by her discoveries in the gorge, and so removed from civilization, at least in its modern manifestation, that she had hardly kept up with the country’s countdown to independence.

Sandys stepped forward and took Natalie’s hand. His skin was very soft.

“So you are our star witness, eh?” He had cornflower blue eyes, unblinking. “No one told me you were so beautiful, Dr. Nelson. No wonder Jack keeps you hidden away in that bloody gorge of his.” He showed her to a seat. “How are you settling in?”

Sandys’s cologne wafted over her. How much did he put on?

“Apart from the reason I’m here in this office, Sir Maxwell, I’d say my time in Kihara has been spectacularly wonderful. Jack and Eleanor don’t keep me hidden. All the wild animals in the Serengeti couldn’t drag me away.”

He let go of her hand. “Splendid. You’re a Cambridge graduate, right? Me too. Corpus Christi. Which college were you at?”

“Jesus.” Natalie hated this sort of Little England conversation.

Sandys took out the watch in his waistcoat. “How do you think the Colonial Secretary’s visit went?”

“I think he got what he came for,” said Jack. “He saw enough trouble to realize independence has to come sooner rather than later, and that KANU have far more support—and far more impressive support—than KADU. They can create real trouble if they don’t get their way. That helps him know who to invite to the independence conference in London in February. Do you see it any differently?”

Sandys shook his head. “Not really. There’ll be major land reform, of course, and the white farmers are not going to like it. But the white-collar people—the lawyers, doctors, and teachers—will still look to Britain; that influence will remain strong. I remember you said that the last time we talked. Are you still involved with KANU?”