The Clouds Beneath the Sun (26 page)

Natalie bit her lip. “He’s written me one letter, yes, but that’s all. He’s still as raw and as sore as the day he left. I can
try
to … to calm him down, but I’m not sure it will have any effect.”

“Give it a go, please. I can’t believe he won’t listen to you.” She gripped her spectacles in her fingers. “I’ve also heard from the Maasai elders. Their next ‘propitious’ date, when they feel able to see outsiders, is ten days from now. The fact that they’ve agreed to see us is a good sign, but they
are
unpredictable.” She tapped her chin with her spectacles. “You’ve never wavered, have you?”

“No.”

“And you’re not going to waver now, even after all the new discoveries?”

Natalie shook her head and kept looking into the fire. “I think I have right on my side, Eleanor, but there’s something else, too. In the war, my mother’s family—who were French, as I think I told you—were part of the Resistance, and one of them was betrayed,
trahit
, that’s a French word I can’t forget. He was killed. So my mother was always very patriotic, very anti-
collabo
, as the French call it. That’s why I’m like I am, I suppose. Or one reason.” She didn’t mention the anger within her, the fire which now, as often as not, was directed
against
her mother.

That had all happened earlier. Now, sitting outside her tent, Natalie reached for her whiskey. Had she told Eleanor too much? Was her mother’s influence too strong? What was the difference between resistance and stubbornness? Was there one? Once upon a time, Dominic would have helped her.

She heard a footfall and half turned. It was Jack.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered, standing over her. “I haven’t come to disturb your precious late-night privacy. Or not for long anyway.”

She smiled and held out the cigarette. “But I’ll bet you’d like to taste this.”

He took the cigarette from her and drew on it before handing it back. “Can it be good for you, all that smoke in your lungs?”

She shrugged. “It’s very relaxing, don’t you find?”

He nodded. “Did you see that article in
Nature?
About the link between smoking and lung cancer?”

“Yes. But it hasn’t been confirmed.”

“It has,” said Jack. “In Germany and in America. But I agree—the experiments weren’t very well designed.”

He pointed to the whiskey on the table. “I don’t like to intrude on your evenings, but… but, what I came to say is this: as it’s Sunday tomorrow and my mother’s going to Nairobi, and there’s no digging, I wondered if you wanted to go flying. There’s somewhere near here—a mystery destination that I’d like to show you. Interesting geology, masses of animals, perfect picnic spot …”

“Are there any hairdressers or shoe shops?”

“There’s a lake where you could wash your hair. Other than that, no.”

“Then I’d love to.”

“Good. I’ll say good night then.” He waved and was gone.

•   •   •

“That’s the Bololedi River—it’s like a dry ditch from up here.” Jack leaned across Natalie and pointed. “We’re now just entering Tanganyika airspace, about sixty miles to go.”

“To where? Or is it still a secret?”

He nodded. “You’ll see why.”

He identified himself to air-traffic control at Kilimanjaro Airport and, on their instructions, climbed the plane by a couple of thousand feet. “I prefer to fly low,” he said. “You get a much better view, but there are some Tanganyika air-force planes in the vicinity. We have to keep out of their way.”

She nodded. She liked flying, she had decided. It put everything into perspective, she thought. She had always been good at reading maps and she had one on her knee now. It was fascinating to see how the map related to the actual topography of the land.

“Over to the left!” Jack shouted, to make himself heard above the engine noise. “Lake Natron. It looks pink because it’s a soda lake.”

“Meaning?”

“There’s no inflow of water, or outflow. So it tends to evaporate, and there’s a buildup of sodium carbonate and that encourages a special bacteria, called halophilic bacteria, which are pink. It’s that pink which gives flamingos their color. Lesson over.” He grinned.

They crossed some low hills, the shadow of the plane rising to meet them.

“Loliondo,” shouted Jack. “Look out for elephant and the wildebeest migration route.”

But Natalie could see neither. She hadn’t yet developed what Daniel called her “bush eyes.”

They were now crossing a shallow valley between two sets of hills as Lake Natron curled round towards them. Jack kept looking over the instrument panel at the land ahead.

“Don’t you navigate by instruments?” she said.

“No, by the seat of my pants,” he replied, looking across and grinning again. “I know it round here, don’t worry, we’re not lost.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Telegraph poles, alongside a road—ah, there they are.”

As he said this, he banked the plane to the left and began to climb again. “As you have noticed, we use the latest navigational techniques on this aircraft, following the road for a bit until it disappears into the rainforest on the side of that mountain.”

Natalie looked down and could see a thin strip in the red-brown soil where, here and there, vehicles raised the dust. But then the road disappeared into the lush undergrowth.

The land was rising to meet them quite rapidly now. She could clearly make out distinct trees—what she knew as
Kigelia, Euphorbia
, and more fever trees.

She still had complete faith in Jack as a pilot, but the ground was now not at all far below them. She looked ahead and could see a skyline of bushes and trees—they were clearly approaching some sort of escarpment though she couldn’t, as yet, see what was on the far side.

The ground rose and rose towards them, the treetops got closer and closer to their undercarriage. The shadow of the plane was almost as big as the real thing. The sound of the engines changed as they echoed off the ground just below them.

“Now!” cried Jack as they crested the escarpment and the engine noise and the land fell away together.

Natalie stared ahead of her. She didn’t speak. Before her was one of the most extraordinary sights she had ever seen.

Ahead of her was a ring of mountains forming a complete—and an almost perfect—circle. The circle must have been ten miles in diameter, more, much more. Below, hundreds of feet below, thousands, was a plain and a lake, completely cut off from the outside world by the mountains—a vast, secret place.

“Ngorongoro Crater,” said Jack. “A dead volcano but the biggest crater on earth, save for that one in Japan whose name I forget, and that doesn’t have the wildlife that you are about to see.” He started to bring the plane down. “I always follow the road here, because it gives someone new like you the best—the most dramatic—introduction. Are you knocked out?”

“I think it’s … I’m speechless. How can something so big be so secret?” She shook her head. “Can you get here by road?”

“Yes, of course, but it takes forever and you’re likely to meet elephants and that can be tricky. Flying in is the best way, and not normally allowed. But I did one of the rangers here a favor some time back and he promised to turn a blind eye. The crater is over three thousand square miles, more or less the size of Crete.”

“Are we going to land?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see. There’s no airport, not even a strip, but there’s a stretch of road that runs by the lake. We’ll land there.”

“Is it safe?”

He nodded. “Provided there’s no other traffic and the lions aren’t sleeping there today. We’ll buzz the place first, to make sure it’s all clear.”

He leaned across her again. “Look down there … lions—the black dots. With a herd of wildebeest nearby.”

She looked down. “And are those flamingos?”

“Yes. They make more noise than a trainload of children.”

He brought the plane down still further, approaching the lake.

Natalie could see that, straight ahead, a gravel road ran alongside the lake, next to a beach of sorts.

Jack flew along the road, on the lake side, about a hundred feet from the ground. The road seemed clear and he banked the plane and began to go round again.

Their second approach was bumpier than the first but they landed safely enough.

“Landing’s not the problem,” said Jack as they got down from the aircraft. “If some lions come by and occupy the road now, how do we scare them away, so we can take off again?”

Seeing her alarm, he grinned. “Just teasing. The rattle of the engines is usually enough to send anything running for cover.”

He went to the back of the plane. “Help me with the picnic?”

She stood next to him.

“Arriving by plane is much more dramatic than coming in a Land Rover, but the drawback is that we have to picnic wherever we land. It’s too dangerous to go walking—there are not just lion here, but wildebeest, water buffalo, rhino, elephant, hyenas, all the creatures you get outside the crater but all a little bit different genetically, because they have been cut off for so long, and have inbred. That makes some of the creatures here even more quirky and skittish than usual. If we had a Land Rover we could drive around the lake, but we’re stuck.”

“I don’t mind,” she said, taking the basket from him. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment we crested the escarpment and I saw what was below. I thought the lake Christopher showed me from that cave in Ndutu was Eden, but this is even more so.”

He nodded but said nothing more. He took the basket from her and crossed to where the wing of the plane cast a large shadow on the ground. “Useful things, wings,” he said. He had two folding chairs and a folding table and he laid them out, in a line, so they were all in shadow. “Only water, I am afraid. But chicken—I know it’s your favorite.”

They sat down. “You sit facing one way,” Jack said. “Me, the other. If you see anything dangerous, don’t wait to holler. We leave the door of the plane open, for a quick get-in. Clear?”

She nodded, swigging some water.

He unwrapped the chicken legs, some whole tomatoes, some bread, two oranges, and that was that.

As the breeze swept around them, she became aware of a noise, a constant high-pitched hubbub. “What’s that?” she said.

He pointed. “The flamingos—it’s nonstop. That’s why they’re so thin—they expend all their energy talking, like—” He faltered.

“Like women? Were you going to say ‘like women,’ or ‘like fishwives’? You were, weren’t you?”

He nodded. “Guilty.”

She ate her chicken leg.

“Are you … what are they called? A feminist?”

She wiped her lips with her napkin. “Yes and no. I don’t make a fetish of it but… well, yes, I think it’s about time women had a fair crack of the whip, a chance to do things they haven’t had the chance to do before.”

“This new pill thing, this contraceptive pill, that’s going to change things a bit—yes?”

“I guess. Some things are already changing. A lot of my friends at Cambridge … well, girls in my year, girls I knew … some of them, when they went down, went to live with their men, without getting married. The pill will make that sort of thing easier.”

“For the couple concerned, maybe. But what about if they have children?”

“I suppose the pill makes that less likely. Women will have more control now. That has to be good, don’t you think?”

He shrugged. “In one way, yes. Yes, of course. But say we start having fewer children as a result … is
that
a good thing?”

Natalie chewed on a chicken leg. “The other night, by the campfire, when your mother shooed you away—”

“Yes, I’ve been meaning to ask … what was all that about?”

“Some of it was private, but she did say, at one point, that you are her best hope for giving her grandchildren, that you like children. Where does that come from?”

He shrugged again. “I shouldn’t have to explain that, surely. Doesn’t everyone want children? Don’t you?”

She nodded. “I suppose I do want children, yes, but I haven’t thought much about it. I had an affair with a married man. I was very happy … he had two children, there was never any question of … of me having a child with him. Children were never talked about.”

When he didn’t say anything immediately, she went on, “Your mother seems to think that neither Christopher nor your sisters is as likely to have children as you.”

Jack finished chewing some chicken. “I suppose it’s true that Christopher doesn’t have the interest in children that I have. But Virginia is a doctor, doing good works in Palestine. She and her husband think that having children now would hamper their work, and they are right. But they’ll have children at some point. And Beth … she’s impulsive, noisy, she’s just as likely to get pregnant as she is to have an abortion, or get married in Las Vegas.” He grinned, biting into his tomato. “Our mother doesn’t really understand Beth.”

“And she understands the rest of you?”

“She thinks she does.”

“Does she interfere much in your lives?”

“Why do you say that?”

“The night she shooed you away from the campfire, when she came to sit with me, she had a proposal, to intervene with my father. I thought it … I thought it well meaning but very … I didn’t welcome it, it wasn’t her place to do … what she suggested doing.”

“Oh yes, that sounds like our mother all right. She’s always matchmaking for us, when we were at school she was always writing to the headmaster if we showed some gap in our learning that she found alarming. Our mother never sits back and lets life go past. She has definite views about shaping the future. Did she agree to do as you asked?”

“What do you mean?” Natalie, in the process of chewing her tomato, spilled some juice on her hand.

“I mean: if you asked her not to interfere, did she agree not to? If you left it ambiguous, she is quite capable of taking matters into her own hands and proceeding anyway.”

“Oh no. There was nothing ambiguous about my reaction. If she
has
intervened with my father after that … I shall be … you’ll be able to hear my roar from very far away.”