The only sound was the wind, gently rocking the Land Rover.
When the main herd had all but disappeared across the plain, and the old male was left by himself, Mutevu’s fingers found the ignition key, he switched on the engine, and the Land Rover rolled forward.
Natalie’s mind was in a whirl. If elephants experienced grief, did they have any conception of an afterlife? Did that mean they had the rudiments of religion?
She rubbed her eyes with her fingers. She was too tired to face that kind of question just now. But it was the kind of question she liked, the kind of question she had come to Africa for. As an expert on extinct forms of life, she was hoping to make her fair share of discoveries in the coming months. The excavation she was about to join was the most prestigious in her chosen field, and the invitation to become part of the team was a big feather in her cap. So long as she didn’t make a fool of herself, and published one or two good papers, a fellowship of her college was now a distinct possibility.
Mutevu slowed the Land Rover to negotiate some dried ruts where a herd of something had churned up the ground. He stretched out his arm and pointed: “Bat-eared foxes.”
Natalie yawned, smothered it with her hand, and grinned sheepishly. She looked to where Mutevu was indicating, but she couldn’t see anything. Her “bush eyes” were still underdeveloped. The foxes’ camouflage was just too good for her.
Mutevu accelerated as they cleared the ruts. The sun was high now and hardly any shadows could be seen across the plain.
Natalie marveled at the landscape. The shimmering grass, the lush greens of the fig and acacia trees, the rust-red rocks, the wide sky—this was one of the reasons she had chosen Africa; it was so far—and so different in every way—from Cambridge.
Cambridge. She’d had to get away and the invitation to Kihara couldn’t have come at a better time. Until recently she’d never have imagined she would ever want to escape Cambridge, but then she had never imagined Dominic would do what he had done, and in the way that he had done it.
She was beyond tears now, but the skin on her throat still broke out in a sweat when she thought of … It had been this way since … since that day four—no, five—months ago, when he had told her he was going on a long tour and that—well, he didn’t want to see her again. Just like that, a guillotine, as her mother would have said, drawing a finger across her throat, a bolt from the blue.
Natalie hadn’t suspected that anything so dramatic, so final, so terminal, was in the wind when Dominic had suggested coming up to Cambridge from London for the day. It had happened scores of times before. But, she supposed, she had been naive. In her experience some people were born naive, just as some people were born knowing and others were born wise. It wasn’t true in her case, however, that she was born naive. She knew now that she had had a very naive upbringing.
“That’s the gorge there,” said Mutevu, pointing.
Natalie lifted her drowsy head and nodded. A great red-brown quartzite gash slashed through the plain ahead of them, and off to their right. She’d heard so much about Kihara Gorge and the great discoveries about early mankind that had been found there. Soon, she would be part of this landscape herself.
She yawned again, returning to her thoughts, unable to stop herself, despite the sheer grandeur of the surroundings. Many of the women she had met at Cambridge when she arrived there as an undergraduate had been more sophisticated than she, but before too much of that rubbed off on her she had fallen for Dominic. She knew she was physically attractive to men, but when she arrived in Cambridge she was totally inexperienced. However, because of her father’s involvement with church music, as the organist at Gainsborough Cathedral in Lincolnshire, and because her mother taught music as well as French and still sang in the choir there, Natalie had been much more knowledgeable than her undergraduate contemporaries about composers, opera, and musical theory. That, as much as her looks, had set her apart at the lunch where Dominic had been the guest of honor. Someone had fallen ill and withdrawn from the dinner being given for him after his