Monty could not take his eyes off her. Her face on the pillow looked wretched. Her creamy skin was burnt by the sun and her lips were Parched and cracked, but the doctor had given her something to make her sleep and something for the pain. She was lying quietly now. The terrible moaning had stopped and her head lay still, instead of tossing from side to side
‘The doc said it’s a bloody scorpion sting but she should recover in a few days. So don’t look so grim.’ Maisie cuffed his shoulder. ‘You got to race through the desert on a bloomin’ camel, didn’t you? A great Lawrence of Arabia story to tell her when she wakes up.’
‘I know. She’s strong.’ But still he could not take his eyes off her. He softly rubbed ointment onto her lips. ‘But her arm is bad.’
‘Like a bloody plank. Poor kid.’
‘Maisie.’
‘What is it?’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t be a daft bugger.’ She cuffed him again. ‘You’re the one who did the hunting.’
‘I’m sorry they wouldn’t let you come with me, but you might have found it tough.’
Maisie grinned. ‘Anything you can do, Sir Montague bey, I can do just as good, I tell you straight.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Silly towel-headed camel-drivers! Why did they think I’d be unlucky for them?’
‘Just an excuse, Maisie. They didn’t want a woman along.’
She huffed and puffed her annoyance, but he knew it was more for show than anything else.
‘I still don’t know how you found her out there at night.’
‘I did what you said, I followed the hounds. I paid Yasser handsomely to find me a local man brave enough to take me out into the area around the caves. He was an expert tracker, even by moonlight.’
‘You were lucky that the moon was full.’
‘Yes.’ He picked up Jessie’s bandaged hand in his. ‘I was very lucky. The devil looks after his own.’
Maisie laughed. ‘You toffs! You’ve got more brass than sense. You could have got yourself killed.’
He stroked the swollen fingers. ‘I was lucky.’
He didn’t want to tell the truth. That he had stood in the aching silence of the desert and listened for her heartbeat.
42
Georgie
Egypt 1932
I beg. I plead. You sigh and say yes.
You take me up to the tomb. I am not good at climbing, I slip and slide, and I panic when the gravel under my feet starts to roll down the hillside, taking me with it. So you attach a rope around my waist.
‘Take it slowly,’ you tell me.
But I am so frightened of the hill that I rush at it and nearly drag us both down to the bottom.
‘Teamwork,’ you say as you haul me up again.
I have no idea what that means.
I scramble through the narrow slit in the fawn hillside, thankful to escape into the gloom. Outside, everything is too big. There is too much sky and too much desert and far too much air. It crawls inside my lungs and gets stuck there. You tell me to breathe more deeply, but you don’t seem to understand the impossibility of breathing deeply if your lungs are filling up with layers of sand. I know that if I stay here long enough, the sand will win. When I look at the hills and the crevices and the eerie desert landscape, I know that the sand will always win.
Inside is different. Inside the rock, the sand cannot win. One step is all it takes and the burning sun is no more, its light denied access as the passageway descends through the rock. The tunnel is so narrow and so low that I have to duck my head and at first I was frightened by it, but now I have been here five times. You promise me that the limestone rock above my head will not collapse on me, and despite my knowledge of roof falls in coal mines like the one in the Easthouses Colliery on 14th January 1930 or in the Deans pit at Bathgate on 15th October 1930, I decide to believe you. If I don’t, I will never get to see the tomb.
‘Ready?’ you call out.
‘Yes.’
‘Watch where you put your feet.’
I watch.
‘Don’t hurry,’ you tell me.
I always hurry.
The ground slopes down in a frighteningly steep staircase cut inside the rock. But you are not frightened. You are never frightened. I realise here in Egypt how brave you are and it makes me love you even more, because you have enough bravery for both of us. That’s why I go down the staircase.
‘If you fall,’ you say each time, as you descend in front of me and my torch beam bobs on your yellow curls, ‘fall on me, not on the rocks. I don’t want you breaking anything.’
But what if I break you?
‘You have thirty minutes,’ you say.
It’s not enough. It is never enough.
We have passed through the huge outer chamber with its massive stone pillars in the papyrus bud form. Twenty-two columns, one for each year that Wahankh was an army general under the rule of King Tuthmosis III during the 15th century BC. He lived at the time of the New Kingdom, the greatest period in Egyptian history, and must have spent most of his life preparing this tomb for his death.
We are in the burial chamber. I could live here. The silence is so intense that it crushes everything and all that is left is a clarity in my head that enables me to think with precision. I want to spend a night here but you won’t let me. You say it is bad for my lungs. It may be. But it is good for my brain, and my brain matters more to me than my lungs.
The chamber is so full of colour from floor to ceiling that I am glad we have not lit the lamps this time. I like to study the decorations a piece at a time with my torch; that way my mind does not feel as if Wahankh is laying siege to my head with his army. But I like his life. The wall-paintings show it to me. I see Wahankh as a boy on a farm, sowing grain in the fields where crows peck at what they can steal. I think I might like that life. But he is not satisfied. He makes offerings to the falcon-headed Horus, the god of war, and Horus grants his wish. He becomes a great general with the Eye of Horus, the Wedjat, painted on his chariot for protection.
I would like the Eye of Horus painted on you and me.
I sit on the rock floor in the middle of the chamber. My torch beam encircles Wahankh’s chariot where he stands with spear raised to strike his enemy. I try to imagine what it would be like to kill someone, but I cannot. Does it hurt you? Or is it like stamping on a beetle? You tell me not to stamp on the beetles in the desert, that it is their territory, not ours, but I don’t want them in my tent and anyway I like the popping noise it makes. I start to read the hieroglyphs that tell of the general’s great victories.
‘Georgie.’
I read on.
‘Georgie, listen to me. I want to talk to you.’
‘You are talking to me.’
‘I mean about something important. I want you to pay attention.’ I don’t like it when you say that. It means something bad is coming. I shuffle closer to the dramatic decorations on the wall, further away from where you stand in the shadows.
‘Are you listening?’
‘Yes.’
I hear you draw in a deep breath.
‘You like it here, don’t you?’ you say.
‘Yes.’
‘We’ve made a routine for you.’
‘Yes.’
Each morning in the house you fry me two eggs and a piece of millet bread. It is not the same as at the clinic but I like it. It is always on my special plate – used by no one else – and I sit at the table alone to eat it. I sleep in a bare room on my own, which means you have to sleep on the floor in the living room, because the two Egyptians share the other bedroom. They smell different which interests me but they do not talk much. One is an archaeologist, I think, but I don’t know what the other one does. I suspect he is a guard because he carries a gun under his jacket. I don’t look at him.
Worse is the drive out to the desert. I hide in the back of the van under a blanket; stifling, but safe. It takes a long time and the track is
rough, but when it ends the worst is to come. The climb up into the hills. I refuse even to think about it now.
‘We are working fast,’ you say.
‘The Fat Man says not fast enough.’
‘I know. We have to speed up.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s complicated.’
I hate that word. It always upsets me. I don’t ask anything more.
‘The thing is, Georgie …’
I stare harder at the painting. At the horse with a spear through its chest. Something bad is coming.
‘… we might have to leave in a hurry.’
The horse’s mouth is open, screaming.
‘I don’t want to leave,’ I say.
‘I know. You like it here. You enjoy the work.’
‘And I like you. Every day I like you. Not just Saturdays.’
You say nothing. But I hear you suck in a breath.
‘Well, I’m sorry, Georgie, but we might have to leave fast.’
‘Today?’
‘No, not today.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘No, not tomorrow.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. But I want you to be ready for it. Prepare your mind.’
I want to be the horse, so that I can stay in this tomb forever.
‘Please, Georgie, stop it.’
I am wailing. The sound of it is piercing in this place of silence. I put a hand over my mouth but it doesn’t stop. You come over and sit cross-legged on the ground next to me, though you do not touch me. You direct your torch on the horse.
‘I’m sorry, Georgie. Don’t cry. I’m sorry for putting you through all this.’
I refuse to think of the journey back to England. It will put me in hell again. You will give me drugs that make me sleep but which give me living nightmares. You said my behaviour on the plane coming here was embarrassing but I don’t care. Better to be embarrassed than to be caught in the torment of hell.
‘I want to stay,’ I say.
‘I know.’
‘We could abandon the Fat Man and stay here together. Just you and me.’ I turn my head away from the horse and look at you, hopeful.
‘Oh, Georgie, life isn’t that simple.’
‘Why not?’
But before you answer, I know what you will say.
‘It’s complicated.’
43
It was there. Each time Jessie forced open her eyes, it was there. Beside her bed. Monty’s face. Until she didn’t know whether it was inside or outside her head. There was something she wanted to ask him, but her jaw wouldn’t move and the fog in her brain got in the way. Someone was sawing off her arm.
Stop. Please, stop.
The pain made her eyes water and her blood catch fire in her veins, and far away she heard Monty murmur, ‘Don’t cry, my love.’
My love.
Time seemed to be broken. It went fast or it went slow, so slow she could hear the creak of its wheels. Then it would stop altogether. At one point it wound backwards and she was in the fierce glare of the desert again. She cried out for water and this time it came, cool and life-giving on her lips, but always there was something wrong, something nagging at her. There was something she had to do but her parched brain could not recall what it was. Except that it had something to do with the sleek and steely surface of the Nile. Purple shadows skated across its image in her mind, clouding it from her view, and she struggled to brush them aside.
‘Hush, my sweet, take it easy.’
She heard his voice, felt his hands holding her face, halting its thrashing from side to side. Felt the sweet warmth of his lips on her forehead.
‘How is she?’ A woman’s voice.
‘Not good.’
‘Not going to turn up her toes, is she?’
‘No.’
The No sounded so certain. As if Monty would wrest her from the grip of Anubis himself, if he had to. It pleased her. For a split second the person sawing off her arm paused, allowing her to smile at him before the saw dug its teeth in once more.
He told her things. Things about his life.
It was just his voice he was giving her, even in her confused state she understood that. What he said didn’t matter but the continuous unbroken sound of his voice did. It held her in place. In the room. In her bed. It didn’t let her go.
Her eyes were clamped shut and however hard she tried, she couldn’t prise them open, yet he talked to her about Chamford House, about how much he loved it. He told her of his passion for its bricks and mortar, of his love for its grotesque stone finials and his desire to see every cottage on the estate restored to its former glory for his tenants. She learned that he had built a school in the village and employed two local spinsters as teachers, at a time when schools were closing because after the Stock Market crash of 1929 there were no jobs. No jobs meant there was no money in homes, so children were pushed out to work. Monty supplied hot food to tempt the children back into school and when lessons were done, he gave them work to do on the estate, mending fences, digging potatoes or packing apples into boxes for market.
He turned a blind eye to poaching but would have no truck with stealing. He loved a pheasant shoot on a crisp winter’s day and hated with bitter enmity the towering army of factory chimneys that were marching ever closer to Chamford Estate’s fragile boundaries.
She tried to tell him he was living in the wrong century. That he was a patron of rural life at a time when rural life was in retreat. But the words emerged as mumbled murmurs and he bathed her burning neck, pressed cold compresses on her forehead and cradled the fingers of her damaged hand lightly between his own.
She couldn’t stop herself drifting far away to other places and other times – she woke up to find herself playing snowballs with Tim in the woods, and once she was feeding goldfish with Georgie in the park, tossing crumbs to Farintosh, Armitage and Hatherley, all named by Georgie after characters in Conan Doyle’s stories. She tried to stay there by the lily pond and started to explain to her little brother how she had fought to extract his address from her parents because she missed him so much but …
She woke in the bed. Her eyelids were heavy but her ears caught Monty’s voice, soft and regretful.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
For what? she wanted to ask. Why are you apologising to me? What had he said? What had she missed?
He lifted her bandaged hand and kissed her swollen fingers.
‘Don’t hate me,’ he said.
‘I insist,’ Monty said imperiously, ‘that you return to your room at once.’
Jessie was drinking morning coffee under a parasol in the hotel garden. She smiled at him. ‘Come and join me.’
‘You should not be out of bed, young lady.’
‘I’ve played the wilting flower long enough, and now we need to—’
‘The only thing you need is rest. You heard the doctor.’
‘Don’t, Monty.’
‘One more day, Jessie. Please stay in bed just one more—’
‘Let’s concentrate on finding Tim. I’ve had enough of pillows to last me a lifetime.’
She had been shocked. When she woke at five-thirty this morning and found Monty asleep in the chair next to her bed, his fine-boned face shadowed with exhaustion and in need of a shave, beside him lay yesterday’s Egyptian Gazette and she had looked at the date. She had lost a day. A whole day. Twenty-four hours gone. With a jerk she threw off the bedsheet and sat up, but she was unprepared for the impact of the movement on her skull. It took a while but now she was dressed, her arm in a sling and sipping coffee with a good resemblance to a normal human being.
‘Enough about bed, Monty.’
He studied her intently, narrowing his eyes in the way he did when he was displeased. He drew in a breath and released it sharply.
‘Very well, Jessie. What is it you want?’
‘We need a boat.’
The river moved beneath them, dark and secretive. The Nile
was broad and even at this early hour was filled with boats of all shapes and sizes, plying their business of ferrying or fishing or transporting goods from one bank to the other. A small rowboat, almost sinking under its load, manoeuvred out of the path of their felucca and Monty tightened the tall triangular sail as the wind veered to the west. He was a good sailor, which surprised Jessie. Horse-riding and shooting, yes, probably tennis and polo too. But sailing? She hadn’t expected that one.
‘I knocked around in boats when I spent time in Alex years go,’ he told her as he ran an eye over the rigging. ‘A felucca isn’t fast but it’s remarkably stable.’
Jessie wanted fast. As fast as it would go. Monty perched next to the tiller in the stern, bare foot jammed against the benching, while she sat near the bow in the shade of the sail, her eyes scouring the land beyond on the riverbank.
‘Here, use these.’ Monty offered her a pair of binoculars that seemed to materialise from nowhere.
She gave him a quick smile of thanks and adjusted them with her good hand. Oddly, talking made her arm hurt more, as if her tongue was connected to the tendons of her wrist in some strange way. Monty seemed to understand her need for silence, he didn’t press her for words, but she could feel his gaze on her when it should be on the houses visible from the river. They were searching for the broken tower of an alabaster factory and a green-painted house. Oh yes, and a curve in the river.
Even Jessie had to admit it wasn’t much to go on.
She scanned the west bank as they sailed downstream, unable to ignore the looming presence of the desert hills. Today they gleamed as tawny as a lion’s pelt, stark and naked against the vivid blue sky. She concentrated on the houses. She’d had enough of the desert and its relentless ability to win. Bright green fields of sugarcane and animal fodder bristled alongside the river, criss-crossed by sunken irrigation channels that were controlled by sluices. Fellaheen, the labourers in the fields, jumped up at her in the binocular lenses and women in black trudged the dusty paths with wooden crates of bright yellow melons on their heads.
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