‘Utterly fascinating, Georgie.’
I feel so good that I bang my hand on the maple arm of my birthday chair, the way you do when you’re pleased. I expect you to do the same but you don’t. Instead your foot starts to tap on the floor. I study it in its brown leather brogue, uncertain how to interpret the movement. I feel my right eye twitch. It has taken to doing that recently. Dr Churchward pointed it out to me and made me take a yellow tablet instead of a blue one. As long as it isn’t red, I don’t fight it.
I recite Frege’s mathematical Theory of Aggregates but this time you say nothing. I try to understand your body movements without looking at your face but you have not yawned yet, so I have to rely on your hands. They are fiddling with your shirt buttons. Not a good sign. Fiddling equals bored. You told me that.
I shift from science to the arts.
‘Today is December the seventh,’ I point out.
‘So?’
‘So on this day in 1783 Emperor Joseph the Second engaged Amadeus Mozart as chamber composer at court.’
‘How nice for him.’
‘Yes, it was. He was paid eight hundred gulden a year. But when he died on the fifth December 1791 he was penniless and was buried the next day with only the gravedigger in attendance.’
‘That’s sad.’
‘Why?’
You shake your head slowly like you do when your cricket team loses and I know you are not going to try to explain. All you say is, ‘He was a great composer.’
‘I know. But I’ve never heard his work.’
Suddenly you beam at me. ‘Next week I will bring you music. Yes! We shall have music and you will dance.’
I try. For you I try my hardest. But my feet and the music and my counting out loud all get jumbled up together and I step all over your shoes.
‘You are an uncoordinated dunce!’ you say but you laugh, really laugh, as you say it, so I know you’re not cross.
This is what I do not understand. You call me an uncoordinated dunce, when we both know I am not a dunce. So it is rude, yet you are laughing. So you mean it kindly. Yet downstairs one of the whitecoats, the one who arranges the pathetic group quiz on a Friday, is always saying ‘You’re a right clever dick, aren’t you?’ and you tell me it is an insult. Even though he calls me clever. I do not understand. Words have so many meanings that don’t make sense.
You arrive with a dark blue box in your arms, the size of a child’s suitcase, and you ask permission to place it on my desk. I want to say no. My papers are all lined up in a special order on my desk, with my pens and pencils neat as a row of soldiers on the right, my stack of spiral-bound scrapbooks on the left. They are full of photographs that I have cut out from the newspapers and magazines you bring me. You call it Georgie-land, my version of the world out there. I worry that I might have got it wrong, so I am protective of my spiral-bound scrapbooks. If anyone touches them, I … say it, say it … I have an episode.
But I lift the scrapbooks and place them in a corner of the room. Then I cover them. With my striped dressing gown. You place the dark blue box on my desk and open it. I am fascinated. It is a gramophone. I stroke the chrome arm, feel goosebumps up my wrist when I finger the velvet turntable and squeal with joy when you let me wind up the spring motor using the handle at the side. You take a record out of its brown paper sleeve and hand it to me.
It is the most beautiful object on earth, even more beautiful than the chairs. I tell you this.
‘You haven’t seen enough objects,’ you say in an odd voice. ‘Or touched enough things, my dear brother.’
But I scarcely hear. I am holding the record and I know I will never want to let it go. It is perfect. A perfect twelve-inch circle with another perfect circle at its heart, black and shiny, flat but ridged. It is the ridges, the grooves, that bring a strange peace to my mind. A blankness sweeps through me and my limbs lose the muscle spasms that afflict them when I am excited. I imagine that this is what Bernadette felt when she saw her religious visions in Lourdes in 1858.
But it is not God I worship. It is the grooves. They turn in a tight-fitting spiral until they reach the outer edge. A spiral is a plane or curve that extends in length and width, but not in height as it winds around a fixed centre point at a continuously increasing form. I touch it with awe.
‘Don’t touch,’ you say. ‘Grease and sweat from your fingers can block the grooves and then it doesn’t play properly. It’s a 78.’
‘78 what?’
‘78 rpm. Revolutions per minute.’
I stare at it.
You take it from me and wipe it carefully with a yellow duster. I want to snatch it back. But I don’t.
‘It’s Mozart,’ you say. ‘Waltz Number One.’
I cannot believe such perfection of sound can come from such a small blue box. The rhythms soften the raw edges inside me and when I close my eyes I am carried elsewhere, somewhere blue and sparkling where I am flying alongside a flock of gaudy blue kingfishers. I look down at a stream below me and see Dr Churchward lying on his back under the clear water. His eyes are open. He is trapped there. My heart rejoices, soaring out of my chest and …
‘You like Mozart?’ you ask.
I open my eyes. ‘Yes.’
It is all I can say. The music’s mathematical complexity enslaves me.
‘Shall we dance?’ you ask.
I nod.
You hold out your hands to me. A quiver of panic ripples through me because we never hold hands. I have never held hands with anybody, not even Jessie, and certainly never with Dr Churchward. But you have given me something huge and I want to give you something in return. So. I take your hand. My mind grows jerky. My teeth chatter. But I hold you.
‘All right,’ you say, ‘we dance to the beat of three. One, two, together, one two together … just copy me but you must move forward and I’ll move backward.’
The skin of your fingers is touching mine. How can I count when all I can think is that your skin is against mine? Sloughing off your dead cells onto me. Your body’s oil oozing onto me. Your sweat. Your heat. My feet stumble.
‘Let’s start again,’ you say and you rewind the gramophone.
We face each other, at arm’s length you take my hands once more and we dance. In a straight line across the room. Again. Again. And again. I am getting better. I am smiling. I flick a glance at your face and see that you are smiling, a big broad clown’s grin, and then we start to laugh. We are dancing and laughing, laughing so hard my sides hurt but I keep holding onto your fingers, and now we are humming the music together, humming and laughing and dancing to Mozart. My feet are disobedient. My head knows the moves but my feet flounder after yours and you tell me I am an uncoordinated dunce which makes us laugh even louder. A massive bubble of happiness floats inside my chest and makes it hard to breathe.
‘Cut it out! Stop that bloody racket!’
It is a whitecoat. He has barged into my room with a face all screwed up like a used handkerchief, and is banging his fist against the doorpost. You drop my hands and lift the needle off the gramophone record, so that Mozart is cut off and the room is suddenly bursting with silence.
‘I was showing Georgie how to …’
I start screaming. I go right up to the whitecoat and scream into his handkerchief face, ‘Get. Out. Of. My. Room.’
‘Georgie, don’t get upset,’ you say, ‘don’t …’
‘He …’ I gasp, pointing a finger like a gun at the whitecoat’s head, ‘… just ruined …’ I am clutching my chest, short of air, waves of blood charging through the blood-vessels of my ears, so that I am almost deaf, ‘… ruined the happiest moment of my life.’ I am shaking. So badly that my knees start to buckle.
Oddly, the whitecoat backs out. He leaves the room in a hurry with a narrow-eyed expression that I cannot translate, but he is staring fixedly at you. I swing round. I look you straight in the eye and my feet try helplessly to dance, but your face is all twisted. Your blue eyes are drowning. Tears
are pouring down your cheeks.
24
The Short Calcutta flying-boat smacked down on the glittering water of Alexandria’s harbour with a roar and a judder that sent Jessie’s heart skittering. She turned to Monty in the seat beside her.
‘My dear Watson,’ she declared, ‘the game is afoot.’
He laughed. ‘Any more words of wisdom to speed us on our way, Sherlock?’
Jessie leaned close to the window of the aeroplane, her heart thumping as she studied her first glimpse of an Egyptian city shimmering in the sunlight. Alexandria, one of the pearls of the colonial crown, had wrapped itself possessively around the curve of its iridescent blue bay, as though hugging it close, jealous of intruders. The Qaitbey citadel stood forlornly on guard at one end and the Corniche like a ribbon of pale silk stretched along the water’s edge.
‘Life is infinitely stranger,’ she quoted from A Case of Identity, ‘than anything which the mind of man could invent.’
Monty bent forward to peer over her shoulder. She could feel his breath on her cheek and sense it speeding up, though he made no comment. Together they watched the minarets of Alexandria drift closer.
*
Tim, I’m here.
Help me.
The first thing she noticed was the smells … and then, a heartbeat later, the heat. What is it about the warmth of the sun that alters the component parts not only of the skin, but also of the brain? As Jessie stepped off the plane her mind seemed to shed the London fog that had been swirling through it, clinging damp and cold to her thoughts ever since she’d heard her that brother was missing.
Here her mind gained a clarity that increased with each lungful of Egypt’s air that she drew in. At this time of year it was as balmy as an English summer’s day but that’s where the similarity ended abruptly. This air was as bright as if it had been polished, so bright that it felt like fireworks going off around her, making her blink. And each breath was impregnated with the scent of sea and shellfish, heavy with invisible grains of sand and unknown spices. She could taste them on her tongue.
Oddly, she wanted to laugh. To shout. To send her voice booming down the valley of the Nile ahead of her to let Tim know she was coming.
Tim, I’m here.
Help me.
It was as the passengers were steered towards the customs building – it sat squat and official ahead of them – that a tall woman fell into step alongside Jessie.
‘Holy Moses,’ the woman exclaimed, making Jessie smile. ‘Just look at this place. I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole straight into the Bible, I swear.’
It was Mrs Maisie Randall. Monty had introduced them on the train and Jessie had instantly taken a liking to her fellow passenger’s ready laugh and frank manner. It made a change from the stiff demeanour and poker-faces of many of the other British travellers. Yet the woman had kept herself to herself for much of the time, a lone female adventurer who liked it that way, it seemed.
Her tall shadow pushed ahead of Jessie’s, eager to get wherever it was going, as she strode out in a loose flowered dress and gigantic straw hat with scarlet silk peonies on it. She was staring at the throng of workmen who bustled around the harbour in their long flowing robes which gave them a grace of movement that was immensely pleasing to the eye. Out on the dazzling blue water a mix of large ships and small pleasure craft rode at anchor, and in the quayside a string of dusty camels was being loaded up with bricks, turning each of the animals into a long-legged pyramid of sorts. Jessie was tempted to duck over there with her sketchpad, but Monty had this morning delivered two stern instructions with his brown eyes fixed on hers, as if he would drill his words into her head.
‘Rule number one: Don’t wander off.’
She had sighed at him, but he hadn’t finished.
‘Rule number two: Don’t wander off – for any reason.’
She didn’t sigh a second time or shake her head at him. She could sense the urgency behind his words and she was touched by the concern that was stamped in every line of his face. As she looked around her now at the crowds of Egyptians, she saw no women, just men wearing the long galabayas with a turban or round cloth cap and open sandals. Many had beards obscuring their faces. At first glance she would be hard pushed to pick out one if she had to.
‘This is just the beginning,’ she commented, more to herself than to Maisie Randall.
The woman gave Jessie a quick interested glance. ‘Stopping here in Alexandria, are you?’
‘No. We go straight on to Cairo by train.’
‘For the pyramids?’
Jessie nodded. ‘Of course. Aren’t they what everyone comes to Egypt to see?’
‘Me too. Off to Cairo. I wonder what the native trains are like. I bet a pound to a penny that it’ll be a right old bone-shaker.’
‘If you ask me, I reckon that the whole of Egypt is going to shake up our bones. It will change us. I am expecting …’
Jessie let her eyes travel inland, skimming the tops of palm trees that swayed their long silky leaves in the breeze off the sea. She could feel the land drawing her, pulling at something within her so strongly that she wanted to break into a run.
‘Expecting what?’
Jessie blinked and brought her gaze back to Maisie Randall. The grey eyes were bright with curiosity. ‘Expecting to be amazed by Egypt’s wonders,’ Jessie finished.
She quickened her pace and saw out of the corner of her eye one of the camels lash out a hind leg with such a force that a couple of porters collapsed yelping to their knees. Just at that moment the haunting call to prayer of the muezzin drifted like the wings of birds over the rooftops.
This land had laid down its marker. She must walk with care.
The train ground to a halt. Grey steam belched from its heaving engine and the ten carriages behind bucked and rattled as they lurched to a standstill in Cairo’s busy Misr station. It was evening. A darkness so solid that Jessie could touch it.
‘We’re here,’ Monty announced when she didn’t rise from her seat on the train.
He lifted down her small case from the luggage net above their heads and then helped Maisie Randall and an elderly German couple with theirs, ever courteous. When he turned back to Jessie she saw the surprise on his face that she was still seated, her hands tucked between her knees.
‘Ready?’ he asked.
She nodded. She was ready. More than ready. But she waited while the other passengers tumbled down onto the crowded platform outside, leaving only herself and Monty inside for a moment before the crush of new passengers barged their way on board the train. Just one brief moment. In her head she imagined Tim here. On this train. Arriving in Cairo, his whole body aching from a hundred and twenty-five miles of being shaken and jostled all the way from Alexandria. His hair as dusty as hers was now, his shirt sticking to his back with sweat because of the heat from the bodies crammed into the compartment.
She closed her eyes. Pictured him. What did you feel that day? The same dry throat, the wide-eyed excitement, the heart jittery in the chest? Or was someone beside you in your stuffy compartment, someone who was dictating your moves? Someone you care for or someone you hate?
A hand was under her elbow, drawing her to her feet, and Monty’s arm encircled her shoulder. For no more than it took her to draw a deep breath, she leaned against him, feeling the steadiness of him, absorbing the calm strength of him. He positioned himself in the doorway of the carriage, barring the incoming tide of humanity, and smiled at her.
‘If you don’t come now,’ he said in mock alarm, ‘I shall be torn to pieces and fed to the chickens.’
A bearded man was trying to push a crate of poultry through one of the windows and the birds were squawking in panic. The shouts from outside broke like a tidal wave of sound as Jessie stepped forward and jumped down onto the platform, case in hand.
‘Now,’ she called out to Monty above the noisy stampede for seats, ‘a taxi is what we need.’
Vendors swarmed around he
r the moment her feet touched down.
‘Pretty lady, you buy postcards?’
‘Shai, drink shai, tea, you like?’
‘I carry suitcase?’
‘Baksheesh?’
‘Necklaces, lovely necklaces.’
‘You want bastet? Fine price! No rubbish.’
‘Min fadlik?’ Cupped hands pushed against hers. ‘Pleese? Baksheesh? You give?’ The ancient plea of beggars.
For a moment, Jessie was overwhelmed. She stood immobile while they surged about her, faces lined by generations of sun and poverty, hands thickened by a life of hard labour. Yet their dark eyes were good-humoured and hopeful, and the child with the postcards smiled at her shyly.
She opened her purse, aware that she had no small coins, just notes of large denomination, but before she could settle her dilemma, Monty came wading through the crowd to her side. From somewhere he had acquired an ebony walking cane and he prodded them with it, cutting a swathe for her to pass through. He tossed a handful of piastres at them and gathered Jessie to him, linking her arm through his.
‘Don’t,’ she said, ‘ever let me do that again.’
‘Do what?’
‘Have no coins in my purse.’
He laughed. ‘My dear Jessie, you will go home a pauper if you give to every beggar who wriggles into your heart. The children are especially adept at it.’
He bounced his cane lightly on the head of a young boy who was walking backwards in front of them, hand extended, hoping for more.
‘Imshi!’ Monty bellowed but without rancour. ‘Go away!’
‘Mrs Randall,’ Jessie called out to their travelling companion further down the platform. ‘Would you care to share a taxi?’
‘No thanks, dearie. I’m all fixed up.’
The tall woman was ploughing her way towards the long row of taxis and horse-drawn cabs outside under the yellow glare of the street lamps. Behind her, two grinning porters were touting her suitcase and holding her big black umbrella over her, though it was neither raining nor even daylight. A silvery gleam of moonlight robbed everything of colour.
Shadows on the Nile Page 19
