Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

As Natalie walked across the camp ground towards the refectory area, a great gray shadow swept across the row of tents and the trees where the Land Rovers were parked. Clouds. Huge white and slate-colored balloons billowed one upon the other high in the sky, like giant sailing ships. The short rains were arriving.

Most of the others were already there when she reached the main tent and the meeting had started.

Eleanor, dressed today in navy chinos and a white shirt, was holding the draft press release in front of her. This was a business meeting to finalize the details of the press conference before they all dispersed for the Christmas break.

She was already speaking. Or rather, shouting. At Christopher.

“I cannot believe it… I repeat: I cannot believe it! After all this time, after weeks of delay, you have only just found out … what were you thinking? Did you think? Did your father and I not teach you anything?” She threw her spectacles on the table in front of her. “Words fail me.”

Natalie sat down. Puzzled, she transferred her gaze from Arnold Pryce to Jack to Daniel. Jonas had followed her in and sat next to her.

“I’m sorry,” said Christopher. “I didn’t think to ask. I never imagined—”

“You should have imagined. It was your job to imagine, to anticipate any likely difficulty.” Eleanor slapped the table. “What are we going to do?”

No one answered.

Seeing Natalie and Jonas’s bewilderment, Jack leaned forward and said, gently, knowing he could set his mother off again at any moment, “The Coryndon museum, where the press conference was to have been, has separate lavatories for blacks and whites.”

He let this sink in.

Outside, rain began to fall. Natalie stared at it. Rain in Africa—this was a new experience for her.

“How did you manage to overlook something so basic?” cried Eleanor, again addressing her remarks to Christopher. “I told you to steer clear of the main hotels, for the very reason that they are whites only.” She thrust forward her chin in the manner she had. “The whole message of the research we do here is that mankind had its origins in this part of Africa, that the whole globe was peopled by migrants from here, that we are all one people!” She took a deep breath, her chest heaving. “That is what we stand for, Christopher, and it’s an important something that can’t be exaggerated.”

She wiped her neck with a handkerchief. “Think of the wars that have been fought, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, over nationalism, because one set of people thought that they, or their way of life, was better than others. We are all one people —that is conceivably the most important message there has ever been. We can’t announce our results in a place, even a museum, where that message is contradicted in the most … basic, humiliating way.” She shook her head. “What are we going to do? I just hope this news doesn’t get out—think what the press would do with it.”

“Have we lost any money?” said Jack. “Did we have to put a deposit down?”

Christopher nodded gloomily. “Yes, but not much.”

“Well, I don’t see a problem with the press, if they find out. We just tell the truth, that we discovered, late in the day, that the museum has a racial policy we can’t agree with, so we did what we did. Nairobi’s got lots of buildings—cinemas, school halls, churches … it can’t be difficult to find a replacement.”

He turned to his mother. “Do you want me to—?”

“No, it’s Christopher’s job. He’s made the mess, let him clear it up.” She turned in her seat so that she was facing Christopher. “Do you hear? It’s your mess, so it’s your Christmas that is going to be spoiled. You can drive to Nairobi tomorrow morning and, whatever it takes, you will find another place for the press conference, somewhere that is available to blacks and whites equally, somewhere that’s easy to find, somewhere that holds enough people, somewhere with proper electricity, so we can show slides, and where the rental isn’t an arm and a leg. Talk to Jack, he’s on this KANU education committee, he must know about the schools and colleges, at least.”

She put her spectacles back on and picked up the papers in front of her. “Now, let’s go through our argument, make sure it’s watertight, try to think of all the potential criticisms.”

Natalie looked at Christopher. He looked wretched. His mother had all but humiliated him in front of the rest of them. Yes, he had made a mistake, but was it anything more than that? Had Natalie herself been organizing the venue for the press conference, would she have thought to ask if the lavatories were segregated? She supposed not. On the other hand, she told herself, she was new to Africa, whereas Christopher had grown up here, so maybe Eleanor had a point.

Did Eleanor pick on Christopher more than she picked on Jack? Was Jack his mother’s favorite? Natalie couldn’t honestly say that Eleanor was anything other than scrupulously fair—scrupulously hard —on both of them.

But she couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for Christopher.

Eleanor was speaking again, as she pushed her eyeglasses back up her nose. “The press release itself, I think, is more or less on the right lines. The right information in more or less the right order. The one change I’d like to make is to adapt a suggestion of Natalie’s.”

The two women exchanged glances.

“It would be inappropriate to name our new hominid after either Richard Sutton or Kees van Schelde, and we all know there are unbeatable reasons for calling him, or her, Homo kiharensis.” She paused, briefly. “But Kees did identify a new form of hand ax—smaller, finer, sharper than what came before. With everyone’s agreement, therefore, I intend to name this new culture ‘Scheldian.’ It’s easy on the ear and ensures that Kees will be remembered, at least by his colleagues.”

She looked around. “Are we agreed?”

“Well done, Eleanor, good idea,” said Jonas. “It’s the right thing to do.”

“What about Richard?” said Arnold.

In reply, Eleanor looked at Daniel. “With your agreement, I’d like to name the gully in the gorge, where you and Russell and Richard found the knee joint, RSK, for ‘Richard Sutton’s Korongo.’ That too ensures he will be remembered.” She looked around the table. “Are we agreed?”

Natalie had a question. “In theory I approve, wholeheartedly. But isn’t that… aren’t you being a little bit—what’s the word?— forward , aggressive, attaching English-language names to parts of what is, after all, a Maasai gorge? Aren’t you being deliberately confrontationist?”

Eleanor nodded. “A good point and the answer is—yes, I am. We’ve pussyfooted around this for too long. Kenya is going to be independent soon. Black people will regain what they say is theirs. But this gorge, and what it stands for, is just as much the work of white people as black people. It is, in itself, and as I said earlier, a monument to the fact that we are all one people. So that’s what I am going to add to your press release, that’s the gloss I shall tack on at the end.” She took off her spectacles, and let her gaze take in the whole table. “Since we are in this fight, we may as well punch as hard as we can. I’m not just aiming at Marongo. If we get the kind of press I’m hoping for, it will be very hard for the foundation to pull out now.”

“Okay everybody, just sit quietly while I fill her up with Avgas—we don’t want to run out in midair, do we?—and then I’ll be ready for the first group.”