Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

But how could she ever be certain that Richard was homosexual? Who could she ask? Kees had sworn her to secrecy over his own situation.

“I’ll swap you another free flying lesson for a shot of whiskey. I badly need a drink after the day we’ve had.” Jack slumped into the spare seat.

She had the small cap in front of her.

“Take it all,” she said, moving it across the table. “You earned it.”

He sipped some whiskey and looked up at the stars.

She watched the muscles in his throat as he swallowed. Tonight he looked more like Montgomery Clift than ever. “Will your mother come round, do you think?”

He shrugged. “I really have no idea. In any case, it’s not so much if she comes round, as when.”

“Oh? Why?”

He broke off a piece of chocolate and handed it to her. “We can’t just hold a press conference any old time, in any old place. It takes time to arrange and it will have to be in London or New York.”

“What!”

“Sure, the big British and American newspapers aren’t going to send reporters all the way to Nairobi for a press conference. We have to go to them. All that takes time and money to arrange and we have to prepare what we are going to say.”

Natalie listened in silence. It hadn’t occurred to her that the press conference would have to be in London or New York, but she could see it made sense both practically and politically and the thought filled her with gloom. It would take time to organize, and be costly. Then another gloomy thought occurred to her. “If you hold the press conference in London or New York won’t you only succeed in putting up the backs of all the Kenyan politicians who are in a position to help you? Won’t they see it as—what’s it called—cultural colonialism?”

He grunted. “Maybe they will, but if we can get our achievements, and our dilemma, into the London and American papers they can exert much more pressure than the local rags here. We’re in a fight and we need to use the biggest weapons available to us.”

He reached across the table and pushed the whiskey towards her. “Look,” he said softly, “I think we should take matters into our own hands.”

“What do you mean?”

“It will save time. You write up your findings on the jaw and teeth, and what you think they mean. Arnold Pryce can help you on diet. I’ll do the skull, since I’m more experienced in that department than you. Russell’s already done the knee joint. Kees can do his hand-ax analysis. We’ll get a set of papers all ready to send to Nature , technical stuff, but we’ll also collaborate on an interpretive paper. That will become the basis of any press release. That way, if and when my mother does come round, we can be ready to move immediately. What do you say?”

“Won’t she see it as us going behind her back?”

“No, it’s not as if we are planning to publish anything without telling her. This is just preparation. If she finds out, it may help her make up her mind—in our favor.”

“Our?”

He grinned.

“Don’t get me wrong, I still have that dreadful view, that the gorge is more important than Richard Sutton. I know that offends you. But in my judgment Marongo’s political ambitions are his weak point and the best chance we all have is to exploit that. Which makes you and me temporary allies.”

“Temporary?”

“For the duration of the fight, certainly.” He got to his feet and stood over her. “After that …”

He bent down and kissed the hair on her head.

Dear Natalie , I still haven’t heard from you. What am I to conclude from that? That you are too busy to write? That you have already forgotten the intimacies we shared? That you have so gone over to the other side that you now cannot be bothered to keep me in touch with what is rightfully mine?Let me ask you this, Natalie: do you really want to make an enemy of me? Paleontology is a small world, a small world in which I am not without friends, without allies, in which I am not a bit player, even if I say so myself. Remember that the future of the discipline is here, in America, this is where the funds are and therefore this is where the action will be. Do you really not understand that? Is it too much for me to ask you to write?Remember that Richard Sutton Senior used to fund the digs that his son was a participant in. So beware: he knows the score and he knows how to make things happen. If he decides to continue his interest, as a memorial to his son, you might be part of that, but not if you continue to act as you are acting—or, rather, not acting . Please write soon, or I shall conclude the worst .

Fondly, for the moment ,

Russell

Natalie put the letter on her table. Radcliffe had brought some post and Eleanor had given it to her at dinner.

Oh dear. Russell, hunkered down in California, miles from the action, as he no doubt thought of it, was growing increasingly bitter. Her letter must have crossed with his—it clearly hadn’t reached him yet. And when it did, would it help?

She stared into the darkness, listening to the theater of the night. Had she mishandled Russell? Was that question fair to her? His “stampede” mode had got the better of him. Did he know any better? Could he behave any differently? She doubted it. That was the mode that had brought this whole mess into being in the first place.

But, another thought struck her: if Kees was right about Richard, and Richard hadn’t been killed because of the break-in at the burial ground, Russell had been wronged. What a mess.

She allowed her thoughts into areas she wasn’t sure she wanted them to go. Lately, Natalie’s thoughts, some of them, had developed an energy—and a direction—all their own. She knew why, even as she was reluctant to acknowledge it.

Months ago, years, Dominic had awakened her sexual side. She had been lucky. He was an experienced man, even an expert, if such a word applied in such a context. When the affair had ended, she had resumed the existence she had had before Dominic: celibacy. She hadn’t expected anything different.

But then, totally surprisingly, amid the danger and panic and smells and shadows of the wildebeest catastrophe, Jack Deacon had rescued her and, in the process, wrapped his hands around her breasts.

And … she could admit it now, at this distance, she had enjoyed the sensation. More accurately, she had enjoyed the thrill . More accurately still, she enjoyed the memory of the thrill, for if she were truly honest the memory was more potent than the original sensation, which had been alloyed with fear. Was that normal? Was she normal? Dare she admit any of this to herself? Dare she admit that, after however many months it had been since Dominic’s abrupt and humiliating departure, her body—if not yet her mind—was giving notice that what had once been awakened could never again be entirely dead, totally inert? That there was something inside her that brought to mind a word, a feeling that she was half ashamed of, half embarrassed by, that didn’t fit the sort of person she thought she was, that she wanted to be. That feeling, that word, was craving .

Natalie was embarrassed by these thoughts, yes, but she was now beginning to realize that they were too … too recurrent to dismiss. When Jack had put his hands on her breasts, he may or may not have had thoughts other than of her immediate safety in mind, but whatever his intention, or lack of it, something had been triggered—rekindled, reignited, rescued—in Natalie. It made her uneasy to feel this way, but that she felt as she did there was no denying.

Did that mean her body had got over Dominic before her mind had? Was that how these things worked?