Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

Natalie stirred in her chair and turned towards Jack. “Yes, I’d been subjected to the Sutton Senior species of charm when they visited me this morning. Even though I had told them I was giving evidence, Sutton still felt the need to—” She formed her fingers into a pistol shape and pointed them at her head.

“You are still determined to give evidence then?”

“Jack—please!” She stubbed out the end of her cigarette and reached for another. “I have to. I must. Please don’t try to—”

“I won’t, I won’t,” he said quickly. He rubbed his eyelids. “It’s just that we’ve all had a wearing day—a difficult few days, in fact. I just wondered if you’d wavered, that’s all.”

Natalie couldn’t let even Jack see that she had doubts. The moment she did that, she knew, she was lost.

She shook her head firmly. “No. It’s funny … I see the arguments of the other side very clearly and, intellectually speaking, they worry me. But in here”—and she pointed to her heart—“I have never wavered. Years of upbringing, I suppose, and, yes, maybe, having a father who’s religious. I saw what I saw and it’s my duty to tell it in court. I know what the consequences are likely to be—and I’m far more worried about the threats from the Maasai than from Sutton. But I have to give evidence. It’s the tradition I was brought up in.” She pulled on her cigarette. “I can’t change.”

She breathed the cigarette smoke out through her nostrils. Was that true? she asked herself. Was that true?

“There, look at that.” Jack pulled on the hand brake of the Land Rover and switched off the engine.

“What, exactly, is it that I am looking at?” replied Natalie.

They were on their way to Karatu to shop for supplies, visit the pharmacy, and to collect the post—some deliveries were made by air, when it was convenient to do so, otherwise regular post came by road to a poste restante in Karatu.

Jack had pulled up near a thicket of acacia trees and thorn bushes.

“You haven’t been working on your bush eyes lately,” he said softly. “Follow the top line of those flat-topped acacias, from left to right. About a third of the way along, there are the heads of two giraffes—”

She followed his directions. “Oh yes,” she breathed after a moment. “Cute.”

“Don’t you think,” murmured Jack, sipping water from a bottle, “don’t you think that, from a distance, the way giraffes stand, the way they are built, it always looks as though they are kissing, or about to kiss, or whispering in each other’s ear?”

Natalie smiled. “I hadn’t thought about it, but now that you mention it, I suppose so.”

“And they’re usually in twos, not herds. That strengthens the impression. And look—” He pointed. “Lower your eyes, underneath the adults, see … a young infant giraffe.”

Sure enough, Natalie could just make out a baby giraffe caught up between the legs of the adults.

“I’ve always thought it would make a good book,” said Jack. “How the so-called wild animals of Africa look after their young. They can be quite ferocious about it, though it’s mainly the mothers of course. Fathers don’t seem to have that instinct so much, though in humans we do.”

“You think so?”

“Oh yes, don’t you? Even if a father’s instincts are not as strong as a mother’s, human males take a much greater interest in their offspring than, say, male lions or baboons do in their young. How and why and when did that feeling evolve, I wonder?”

She weighed what he had said. “You are feeling broody.”

He laughed, put the Land Rover in gear, and waved farewell to the giraffes.

They drove across the plain for a while before joining the tarmac road from Elangata. They saw more people now, walking along the road, and working the land. There was more traffic too. Most of it drove along the smooth central crown of the road, just as Jack did, almost until a collision seemed certain, then pulled off to the rougher edges.

And then, laid out before them, about half a mile away, were two rows of buildings, set back from the road. Dust was being churned by the amount of traffic in the town and a spindly radio mast shot up above everything else.

“Welcome to Karatu,” said Jack, as he pulled the Land Rover off the highway and into a filling station. “Can you fill her up with diesel while I go across the street to the post office?”

“Sure.”

They both got down, Jack taking with him the leather pouch he’d been keeping behind the driver’s seat. He handed her some money. “That should cover it.”

“Where do I find you when I’ve filled up?”

“Well, don’t forget you need to fill up all the spare cans in the rear, as well. That will take a while. But if I’m not back, the post office is that green-painted building over there.” He pointed. “The one with all the security grilles.” He made off.

A group of small children had gathered to watch Natalie, and a wizened old man, with no teeth and gray hair, who appeared to be the attendant. At her request he started filling the Land Rover’s tank, while Natalie laid out all the spare cans in a line, so they could be filled afterwards. As the attendant held the nozzle of the hose wedged in the Land Rover’s pipe, Natalie looked about her.

All of the buildings were the shape of shoeboxes—there was no architecture, as such, in Karatu. There were several shops, selling food or hardware, a hairdresser’s, a shop where you could have letters written, a shop with a display of boots outside, and a pawnbroker’s.

No bookshops. The only books she had brought with her to Africa were work-related. But she found she had warmed to Jack’s idea of spending an hour or so a day off their main concern. It made sense. Like his interest in politics, it enlarged him.

The attendant transferred the nozzle to the first of the spare cans.

A bus chugged into town, billowing black diesel exhaust from somewhere deep underneath. It stopped and countless people were disgorged, several of whom climbed up a ladder at the rear of the bus to reclaim their belongings on the roof. In no time the bus was on the move again.

The cans were filled. The attendant helped Natalie lift them into the back of the vehicle and she handed over the money. There was a little change and she waited while it was brought.

She drove over to the post office and parked in front of the building. Another bus, just as laden and swathed in black exhaust as the first, was pulling up. Natalie locked the doors of the Land Rover, but as she did so, Jack appeared through the door of the post office. He held up a bundle of letters.

“Look,” he said, holding out a long air-mail envelope. “It’s from Russell.”

The California postmark was not the only giveaway. Russell had scrawled his name and address on the envelope, as Americans tended to do.

She felt the paper between her fingers. A couple of pages at least. Or else he had enclosed something in addition to whatever he had written.

She folded the envelope and put it in her pocket.

“We’re all set with the diesel,” she said. “By the way, why so many spare cans? I thought Land Rovers came with especially large tanks of their own.”

“They do,” said Jack, throwing a bundle of letters onto the backseat. “But some of the cans are for use with the plane. I have to fortify it with tetraethyl lead, but if I refuel myself, at least I know the right type of juice is being used.” He opened the door to the driving seat. “You do hear stories of people getting mixed up at big airports and confusing jet fuel with Avgas. It happened not long ago near Mutonguni. Two KANU politicians and their pilot were killed. They still don’t know if it was an accident or deliberate.”