Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

Back at the camp, most of them took a shower. It was always dusty in the gorge and, with water limited, a shower at this time of day was much more useful than first thing or in the early evening.

Mgina, the slender Maasai woman Natalie had told Russell North about, brought her shower water in two galvanized iron buckets. Although she was uneducated, Mgina had picked up a stilted English in the few years she had been working at the camp, and, despite her cheeks being stippled by tribal cut marks, she was pretty, Natalie thought, and had a natural, slow-moving, languid grace. She was slight but still wiry enough to carry the water with which she filled the canvas shower cistern. Natalie had established that Mgina came from a village about five hours’ walk from the camp, where she had numerous sisters and brothers.

While Natalie took a shower, letting the hot water chase the sand and grit out of her eyelids and ears and sluice down the back of her neck, while she lathered her arms and thighs and let the smell of the soap, which she had brought with her from Gainsborough, remind her of the rainy Lincolnshire fens, Mgina collected up her used shirt and trousers and underwear, and set out fresh ones on the bed.

When she had used all the available hot water, Natalie half dried herself, so she didn’t drip water everywhere, but then she let the remains of the water evaporate on her skin as she sat on her towel on the chair of her dressing table, combing her hair. Evaporation was deliciously cooling.

She had always had a thing about her hair, ever since she was a girl. She never felt properly dressed unless her hair was brushed and brushed and brushed again. Her fellow undergraduates at Cambridge had teased her about it but she hadn’t minded. And they had given up in the end, and accepted her for what she was. In the gorge, she realized, brushing her hair was even more important: with water strictly rationed, brushing kept the dust to a minimum and she needed to feel that her hair was as clean as could be.

Mgina watched as Natalie did this, as fascinated by her straight hair as Natalie was with Mgina’s close-cropped curls.

“What is your comb made of, Miss Natalie?”

“Tortoiseshell.”

“It is very beautiful.”

Natalie nodded her head. “Yes, it was my mother’s—she gave it to me.”

“Does she have hair like you?”

“She did. She’s dead now. She was killed, an accident.”

“I am sorry for you. They go fast, these cars.”

“They do, yes.” Natalie put down the comb. “And your family, Mgina? How are they, they are well?”

Mgina made a face. “Not the little one, Odnate. He has the flu, I think, but also spots under his tongue.”

“Oh,” said Natalie, quietly. “Oh dear.” She frowned and stopped brushing her hair. “When did this flu start, Mgina?”

“The day before yesterday. There was a feast the day before that and it was the first time Odnate had been old enough to attend. The next day he was ill—it was too much for him.”

Natalie had stood up and was toweling herself dry. “What did you eat at this feast?”

“Corn, berries, meat of course. Fruit. What is it, Miss Natalie?”

Natalie had thrown the towel on the bed. “Just wait there, Mgina, while I get dressed.”

In front of the other woman, Natalie stepped into her underwear, put on her fresh set of trousers and shirt, laced her boots. She fastened the cuffs of her shirt at her wrists, so her arms were protected from the sun.

Then she said, “Come with me. Leave the laundry on the bed. Quickly now.”

Frowning herself, Mgina did as she was told.

Natalie led the way along the row of tents to where she knew Jonas Jefferson was billeted.

“Jonas!” she half shouted when they reached his tent. “Are you there?”

A short pause, then the flap was pulled back. “Yes—what is it?”

Natalie turned to Mgina, then back to Jonas.

“Mgina’s brother has ‘flu,’ she thinks. But he also has spots under his tongue.”

Jonas looked from Natalie to Mgina and back again. “Anthrax?”

“He woke up with it the day before yesterday, after a big feast. The meat could have been contaminated.”

Jonas nodded. “You could be right. How do you know about anthrax?”

“I saw it on a dig in Israel two years ago. Do we have any penicillin?”

“Yes, of course, but it’s precious. Where does Mgina’s family live?”

“The village doesn’t have a name, but it’s five hours’ walk away—ten to twelve miles.”

“Okay. I’ll get the antibiotics; meet me at the Land Rovers in ten minutes.”

“Anthrax?” said Eleanor, helping herself to water from the jug, as Mutevu Ndekei began serving dinner—lamb chops. “That can be serious, right?”

“Oh, yes,” said Jonas. “If you don’t catch it in the first couple of days, the patient can be dead inside a week.”

“Nasty,” said Eleanor with a shudder. “And how do you catch such a disease?”

“It varies. Through an open wound, from someone else who has it … in this case by eating contaminated meat.”

“And penicillin cures it?”

Jefferson nodded. “I’ll be driving over to see the boy again tomorrow.” He looked across to Natalie and smiled.

“You saved the boy’s life,” said Eleanor, addressing Natalie. “How do you know so much about disease?”

Natalie was helping herself to chops. “As I told Jonas, I was on a dig in Israel, with Ira Ben-Osman, two years ago. There was an outbreak among the local Palestinians. Three died but we managed to save another fifteen. They had all eaten contaminated meat.”

The business with Mgina and Mgina’s brother had been quite an episode. Natalie didn’t feel as though she had saved someone’s life, but the boy—when they had reached him—obviously didn’t have flu. He was vomiting blood and had severe abdominal pains and a fever. It was right that they had gone when they had. Mgina’s family had clearly been worried—their traditional herbal remedies were not working. Of course, the penicillin hadn’t produced any immediate effect, so the family had still been anxious when Jonas and Natalie had left. They had done their best to reassure Odnate’s parents but had not wholly succeeded. Hopefully, tomorrow would bring better news.

The lamb had reached Eleanor. She inspected it doubtfully. “How can you tell if meat is contaminated?”

“It’s not easy,” said Jonas. “Animals that have anthrax collapse, so they mustn’t be used for food, which is probably what happened in this case. If the spores are dense enough, you can see them with the naked eye—they are gray-white and resemble ground glass.”

Eleanor picked up the chop in her fingers and turned it over. “Hmmm. Did anyone else in the village contract the disease?”

“Not so far as I could see,” replied Jonas. “Odnate was the youngest at the feast, with the least resistance. If the animal they were eating was not badly infected, and well roasted … he was unlucky.”

Eleanor nodded. “So is the boy out of the woods?”

“Not necessarily. His family must be disciplined and give him the full course of antibiotics.”

“Is that going to leave us short? You know, in case we have an accident here?”

Jonas shook his head. “We’re fine, unless we have our own epidemic. But next time anyone goes to Nairobi, they should top up our supplies.”

Eleanor nodded again. “If I talk to Jack, I’ll mention it. I’m not sure when he’s planning to come. He’s on some political committee in Nairobi.”

She sat up and her gaze took in Natalie and Jonas. “Well, I’m glad you two could help. Anything that brings blacks and whites closer is important right now. I’m told there’s been more oath-taking up north in Nakura, where a thousand Kikuyu were gathered in the bush for a bloodletting ceremony. And it’s the third time in the past two months. A curfew has been imposed and two newspapers closed for publishing coded notices telling people where the oath-taking would take place. It’s going to be like this in the runup to the independence conference in London in February, I am afraid.”