Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

He got behind the wheel. “Now, I have one more errand before we head back. I need to stop by at the clinic, pick up some spectacles for Daniel. They’re being repaired. Then we can hit the road home.”

The clinic was on the far side of town, down its own bumpy track, and it took them about fifteen minutes to complete the drive. The building, when they came to it, was a white-painted hut, with a thatched roof. “I shouldn’t be long,” said Jack, switching off. “You don’t need to come in.”

He was obviously sensitive to the fact that she was anxious to read her letter from Russell all alone. He entered the clinic without looking back.

Natalie took the envelope from her pocket and slid her finger under the flap.

The letter occupied one sheet of paper only, though it was written on two sides. But there were two other typewritten sheets enclosed with it. A cursory glance told her it was a copy of the raw text for his article in the Los Angeles Times , which she had already seen. She put those sheets to one side. Dear Natalie , I’m at a loss how to start. I had planned to discuss just the enclosed article, which you may have already seen, or at any rate heard about. But, having received your letter, all that has changed . I knew, I knew, when I left Kihara, that I shouldn’t go, that I should have put up more of a fight. I predicted that other discoveries would be made but you prevailed on me to leave. And now you, and her ladyship, have made the discoveries—a jaw, a skull, a construction even—that should have been mine, a whole new species, the ancient ancestor that first walked upright and created culture, that I should have found and named . Forgive me, Natalie, but right now I’m feeling very bitter and yes, for the first time, some of it is spilling over on to you. We could have found this creature together, think how that would have cemented a relationship between us. As it is, my find—Daniel’s and Richard’s and my knee joint—will be overshadowed by the rest of your discoveries. I’ll be an also-ran alongside yet another Deacon-led triumph . On top of everything, your letter was—or rather it wasn’t—the friendliest letter I have ever received. Have I not earned more warmth from you?I will give you the benefit of the doubt until I receive your next letter, to give you the chance to explain yourself, and I hope I like what I read. But until then all the promises I made to help in your career are on hold—is that clear? You seem to have changed and I need to know that you have not. Give me your views as soon as you can, please . If you haven’t had a visit yet from the Suttons you soon will. If they have been and gone you’ll know by now what a force of nature Richard Sr. is. To tell the truth, I didn’t altogether take to him. A little too controlled (and controlling) for my taste, but there’s no doubting his energy or his will. He’s not someone I would like to cross and I hope you are not planning to do so. I’d like you to reassure me on that point too, when you write . Please make that soon. My LA Times article has aroused quite a bit of interest within the profession—most of it, I have to say, sympathetic to me and, partly on the strength of it, I have been offered a place on a big dig next year at Lake Rudolf, in the northern stretch of Kenya. You could probably join me if you wanted but that rather depends on … you know what it depends on . I had wanted our letters to be more … well, softer, more intimate, cosier, not only professional, but it’s hard at the moment, with all that is happening. Your next letter is crucial, but I’m sure you sense that. I’ll be on edge till it comes. Don’t make me wait too long . My personal feelings haven’t changed; I still recall our nights under the stars, and our illicit drinking. I am back in California now, writing this in my study overlooking the bay, and feel more than ever that you would fit in here perfectly among the pine trees and the pastel colors.

I hope it’s not over between us, but that’s up to you .

Russell

Natalie looked up, to see Jack leaving the clinic and coming towards the Land Rover. She folded the letter back into its envelope. Jack threw the spectacles case onto Natalie’s lap as he climbed back into the driving seat. “Can you give those to Daniel, please, when we get back to camp? There are other things I have to do.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“How’s Russell?” Jack started the engine and put the vehicle in gear.

“Still wounded,” replied Natalie in a whisper. “Blessé . Still wounded.” She stuffed the letter into her pocket and added, half to herself, “And still dangerous.”

“Daniel? Daniel! Are you there?” Natalie stood outside Daniel’s tent, where was stored a variety of objects—what looked like spare parts for Land Rover engines, a box of maps on a table, some binoculars, an old typewriter he was repairing. There was, she knew, no end to Daniel’s talents.

He appeared, bending his frame as he ducked under the opening to his tent, then straightening up. “Miss Natalie.”

She had given up trying to persuade him to address her as, simply, Natalie. She held up his spectacles case. “These have been repaired. We collected them from the clinic.” She handed them across.

“Thank you,” he said, taking them from her.

“You are famous for your eyes, Daniel, for spotting things. Yet you need glasses.”

He nodded. “Growing up in a small village, in the bush … there was no electricity. As a boy, I used to read by the light of candles.” He grinned. “It wasn’t good for my eyes but my brothers and sisters loved the stories I read to them.”

“What sort of stories?”

He gestured for Natalie to sit down.

“Well, we didn’t have proper books. The missionary school wouldn’t let us take books away but we had what I heard Dr. Sutton one time call comic books. My brothers and sisters loved all the stories of children in faraway places, who were always winning against adults, sneaking into places that adults couldn’t get into.” He put on his spectacles, trying them out. “I liked the central pages of those comic books. They always had a cutaway drawing of some big piece of machinery—an aircraft carrier, for example, or a railway engine, or a massive tank—which showed how it worked inside. That’s how I got so interested in machines. Water?”

He handed across a bottle and she took it.

“But how did you come to be such a famous discoverer of fossils?”

He took off his spectacles again and carefully replaced them in his case. “How much do you know about the Luo, Miss Natalie?”

She shook her head and handed back the water bottle. “Not much. I know you are not the Maasai, but that’s about it.”

He nodded. “We are very different from the Maasai—our language, our customs, our religion. We are different from the Kikuyu and the Itesu too, and from the Datoga and the Luhya. Our biggest difference, perhaps, is that we do not circumcise our young boys; instead we remove six teeth from the lower jaw. That is a big thing, but another big thing is that, according to our myths, we come from the north, where we were once great fisher people. According to white scientists our language is Nilotic—from the area of the Nile.” He took some water himself. “I grew up with those legends but then I went to missionary school and I was told about Christian legends.” He shook his head. “To be honest, I believed the Christian legends much less than the Luo legends, but I also loved those cutaway drawings of the machines white science had devised. So I figured it couldn’t be all bad, that white science was better than white religion.”