Free The Clouds Beneath the Sun by Mackenzie Ford Page B

least.” He pointed to the bicycles. “This was always … you’ll be Dr. Nelson soon, moving on.” He wiped his lips with his hand. “It’s time, Natalie. I can’t take you with me.”
    Just then, they heard—very faintly—the choir in King’s College Chapel. It was the middle of the afternoon, on a weekday, so it must have been a rehearsal. But the voices reached them, clear enough to be heard, but faint enough that she couldn’t make out what was being sung.
    “I am sorry, Tally,” he had whispered, using the name her family and friends had used since she was a girl. He had leaned across the bicycles and kissed her cheek. “Music comes first for me, you know that. You’ve always known that. More than marriage, more than children …” He took her hand where it rested on the bicycle handlebars. “More than this.”
    He had kissed her hand. More had been said, much more, but Natalie wouldn’t plead, so they had talked around the subject. One of the things she had always loved about Dominic was his voice, mellifluous, milky, melodic, and even that afternoon, amid her anguish, she had loved the sound of him speaking. But all she had achieved, really, was delaying his departure. She knew that couldn’t be delayed forever and she let him kiss her on her cheek a second time before turning, mounting his bicycle, and riding off.
    She had remained where she was, the sound of the choir still clear, still faint.
    She had never discussed divorce with Dominic, never pressured him in that way. But she had imagined it—oh, how she had imagined it.
    Her distress that afternoon had soon given way to anger. Anger was never far away for her, as she realized all too well. And she knew where it came from. While Owen Nelson had been away in the war, Violette had had an affair. It had lasted for months, but Violette had assumed that Natalie was too young to understand, or even to notice. But Natalie was not too young, and she had noticed. The man was an RAF pilot stationed near Gainsborough and although the affair had gone on for months, it had ended long before Owen returned, slightly wounded. But that wasn’t the point. Natalie had always been angry at her mother’s betrayal, angry that she couldn’t tell her father without wounding him still further, and doubly angry, triply angry, that Violette had taken her daughter’s affair—Natalie’s—so badly, so much to heart, when she had done the same thing herself, only worse, because she had been already married herself. That was one of the reasons Natalie had followed a science career and not a musical one, to get back at her mother, to spite her. The fact that her mother’s death was a mystery angered her too. Was her mother having the last word? In coming to Africa, Natalie hoped she was escaping her anger.
    Eleanor had mentioned a fresh mystery at dinner. A small plane had crashed near Mutonguni, east of Nairobi, killing the pilot and two passengers, who were senior members of KANU, the Kenya African National Union. Although the crash had been blamed on the fact that the plane had been refilled with the wrong kind of fuel, jet fuel not propeller-type Avgas, and was therefore an accident, the possibility remained that the switch had been deliberate, and politically motivated. With independence not far off, almost any event now threatened to have political overtones. If Richard and Russell’s invasion of the burial ground should be discovered …
    Natalie pulled on her cigarette and observed Russell’s outline as he moved silently across the ground between his tent and hers. He was wearing his usual white shirt and jeans. He slumped into his usual chair.
    He sat for a few moments without speaking, until his breathing became more regular.
    Natalie had already laid out the whiskey and what remained of the chocolate on the writing table. Russell snapped off a piece and slid it into his mouth.
    Chewing, he said softly, “A better day today.”
    Natalie said nothing.