Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

“Dominic was a good bit older than you, wasn’t he? Isn’t age as big a divide as race?”

She weighed this in her mind. “No, not really. I don’t think age is as fundamental a difference between people as race, though I don’t want to minimize the importance of age either.”

“How was Dominic different? What was it that attracted you to him?” He grinned. “How can I be more like him?”

She smiled. “You could dye your hair, make it a bit grayer, that would help.” She tasted her fish. “Well, he was good-looking of course—and you don’t need much help there either. I don’t want to suggest that looks are everything, because they aren’t, but good-looking people do have a head start on the rest, don’t you think? They have to follow through, of course, but that’s where it starts, mostly.”

The waitress brought some slices of lemon.

“Then there was his talent. Lots of people play musical instruments but most don’t play well enough to give public concerts. I loved that about him, that and the fact that he practiced for several hours a day. People who read music, who play well, who spend their life in music … it’s as if … as if they know some great big secret that other people don’t know. Then, and maybe this was the thing that I really fell for, when he played … when he played, he seemed to make love to his cello, he caressed it, he coaxed sounds out of it, he persuaded it to give up its secrets. When he played, when you watched him play, you could see he was absorbed by it. If you play something like Elgar’s cello concerto, at times you attack the instrument, you manhandle it, while at other times you embrace it, you stroke it. You make love to it.”

She blushed. “I’ve said more than I should. You handle your plane a bit like that, too.”

“But he was years older than you. You haven’t said anything about that.”

The waitress exchanged the empty fish plates for a bowl of fruit. “Oranges! What a treat.” Natalie took one.

“Of course, I don’t know that all older men are like Dominic was but what I liked about him was that he knew his mind. Again, it was as if he had some big secret inside him. He knew where he stood on almost everything, he had an inner coherence , that was it. He knew which books he liked and didn’t like and why, he knew which music was good and which wasn’t and why, he knew about food and diet, he took an interest in politics, and though he didn’t have the time to be involved, as you are, he had clear views about it.

“The point about coherence, if you can achieve it in your life, is that it helps you in your approach to the world, it helps you to understand the world, and to slow the world down as it goes by. That’s the most important gift of all, I think, because the slower life goes by, the more you can enjoy it, the more you can squeeze out of it, the more you can relish it, that was his word.” She sliced into her orange. “It was his coherence that I fell for. Men my own age never have that.” She peeled the skin of the fruit away from the flesh.

“I feel out of breath, just listening to you.” He grinned. “I hate this Dominic already, how can anyone live up to such perfection?”

“Who says you have to?”

“What else impresses you? Give me some hope.”

“We could start with another beer.”

“My God, yes. Sorry about that.” He waved at the waitress. “That’s done, now what?”

“Maybe I don’t want to be impressed anymore. You’re not Dominic, and I’m no longer the undergraduate who fell for him. I’ve put him behind me.”

“Have you? Are you sure?”

She nodded but said nothing.

“Are you tired?”

She shrugged. “I’ll sleep well tonight, after a long day, being by the sea—but that’s not what you meant, is it?”

He shook his head. “Lamu is mainly Muslim, as I said, but there’s a Christian church here, with nuns attached—a legacy of the missionary years. There’s a midnight carol service tonight, a chance to sing. Are you up for it?”

“What sort of voice do you have?”

“Not bad.”

“I didn’t mean that. Are you a tenor, a baritone, or a bass?”

“Baritone.”

“Then the answer is yes. My father’s choir in Gainsborough is always short of baritones. We’ll treat the carol service as an audition. After the gorge is closed down, it will be something you can do.”

The organ could have been stronger, and more in tune, and it certainly didn’t shake the ground, as the one in Gainsborough did, but the small church was cute, Natalie thought, plain but with clean, pleasing lines, no waste, the kind of simple décor that threw worshippers back on themselves.

And it was full. Nuns filled the choir—maybe twenty of them. There was a smattering of white faces in the congregation but most were black and most were old.

To begin with it seemed odd to Natalie to be singing the familiar carols on the warm edges of the Indian Ocean and she held back her voice.

Not Jack. He did indeed have a very passable baritone voice and an obviously good pair of lungs. He launched into each carol at full throttle and seemed to know instinctively all modulations of the choir.

Encouraged, emboldened, Natalie gradually moved her own singing up a gear till she was matching him note for note, sound for sound. It had been ages since she had had a good clear-out of her lungs, as she thought of it, and she realized she had forgotten how much she enjoyed—relished—being surrounded by singing voices, just as her parents had, especially now, at Christmastime. When the service ended she was more than a little disappointed.

As they walked back to the hotel, she said, “Isn’t it extraordinary how the church has dropped out of our lives so much, and so quickly? Far fewer people go to services, far more are getting married in registry offices, several of the girls I was at Cambridge with aren’t even getting married, just living together with their boyfriends.”

“Could you ever do that?”

“I don’t think so, but I don’t know, not really. It’s one of those decisions you can’t take in the abstract.”

“What’s your decision on my voice? When the gorge is destroyed, do I have a job in your father’s choir?”

He slipped his arm in hers.

“Yes, Dr. Deacon. The vetting committee has convened and your voice passes muster.” She looked up at him. “I’m impressed. I hope I can snorkel as well as you sing.”

“There’s the reef, look, where the water is breaking over it. Think you can swim that far?”

She nodded. “We cleared our lungs last night. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

The sun this morning was as fierce as ever. They had breakfasted in a leisurely way and strolled down to the beach wearing their swimming costumes under their jeans and shirts and they now got ready together. Jack had brought goggles and breathing tubes and the hotel had rented them some flippers.

“Here,” said Jack, handing over a tube of cream. “Put this on your legs and face and I’ll do your shoulders. You can do the same for me. You don’t feel the sun in the water but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

They walked down to the water’s edge and for a moment Natalie stood with just her feet in the sea.

“You’re thinking about your father, aren’t you?”

“How did you know?”

“You were thinking how clear and warm and calm this water is, how different from the North Sea in Lincolnshire, how unlike a traditional Christmas Day this is, and that made you think of your father, how he’s getting on, what he’s doing, if he’s thinking about your mother.”