A Dangerous Crossing

by Rachel Rhys

  ‘Oh!’ She has said it aloud and, instantly, Edward is by her side.

  ‘Are you all right, Lily?’

  ‘Yes, perfectly all right.’ She is embarrassed and forces herself to laugh to show that she is not in the slightest perturbed. ‘It’s just the heat and the climb.’

  But as they make their way along another narrow, steep passageway, through a second, less impressive chamber, and then down again, almost crouching, until they finally reach the entrance, Lily cannot shake off the oppressive sensation she’d felt in the King’s Chamber, something dark pressing down on her, nor the image of Mags’s face superimposed over it, like a double-exposure photograph.

  Outside once again, she breathes in great gulps of hot, sand-saturated air. ‘I should like to spend a night in that room, wouldn’t you, Lily?’ asks Eliza, coming to find her. ‘What bad luck they’ve stopped allowing people to do it. It would be a hoot. We could have a little party. Why do I always seem to arrive places just as the fun is finishing?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, darling,’ says Max, strolling over. ‘You don’t seem to do too badly when it comes to fun.’

  As the group gathers outside figures emerge from the dust-hazed air and converge on them, holding out souvenirs – carvings, necklaces. Their guide, whose name, one of the other passengers has ascertained, is Anwar, makes a flapping motion with his arm and talks in that throaty language that makes it seem, to Lily, as if every word is threatening some violence.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if anyone is feeling as if they have not yet exercised sufficiently’ – there is a dutiful groan at Anwar’s little joke – ‘it is possible now to climb a little on the outside of the Great Pyramid. The rest of us will rest a while before moving towards the next pyramid and, of course, the world-famous Sphinx.’

  A couple of the younger men break off from the party and begin to scale the monstrous blocks. Lily, still agitated, gazes around. A second group of passengers from the ship, who have travelled on a different coach with their own guide, has joined them. Lily feels her already heated cheeks burn when she spies among them the elderly woman who had approached her in the gift shop in Pompeii to warn her about the Campbells. The woman is carrying a parasol and looking pained, as if the visit to one of the Wonders of the World is something to be endured rather than enjoyed. She catches Lily’s eye and purses her lips in disapproval.

  Eliza has now made her way over to Anwar and is engaged in animated conversation. She throws back her head and laughs at something he says, and the sound travels through the dust and sand, arriving gritty in Lily’s ear. Max stands watching, arms folded, his presence, tall and broad as he is, suddenly almost as overwhelming as the pyramid that looms up behind them. Lily remembers how his body had felt pressed up behind her in the passageway.

  ‘I think I’ll go for a climb,’ she tells Edward.

  He looks startled and immediately glances around the company, his eyes coming finally to rest on Max. He does not want to be left here alone, the only outsider, Lily realizes, recognizing his thought processes as if they were her own.

  ‘Why don’t you …’ he starts, but she is already pulling herself up on to the lowest block, and then up again, her need to get away from Max and the confusion he brings out in her overcoming her fear of standing out and her worry over her cotton dress revealing her bare legs as she lifts her feet from step to step. Lily has always been athletic. With a competitive younger brother, she understood early she had either to learn to be interested in the things he liked – running, football, tennis – or resign herself to playing always on her own. She is already thirty feet up before she becomes aware that Edward is following her, and struggling to keep pace.

  He came after me, she thinks. The thought breaks over her like a warm bath.

  ‘You could have told me you were related to the mountain goat,’ he gasps, arriving finally on a level with her. Damp with heat, he looks down and briefly closes his eyes. ‘Please tell me we’re high enough now. We’re practically airborne.’

  Lily follows his gaze to the knot of people below. There’s Max, staring upwards, though she cannot see his expression. And Eliza, still standing beside Anwar, her hand on his arm, her yellow dress blooming like an unlikely flower in the desert.

  ‘Not yet,’ she says, and begins once again to climb, on impulse grabbing hold of his hand to pull him along with her. His palm is pillow-soft, the bones of his fingers fragile as twigs. Immediately, she is embarrassed. She drops his hand and stares fixedly ahead.

  They climb for five minutes. For more. The hazy sun makes the dusty air shimmer. Up ahead, the young men from their party have disappeared from view, in competition to reach the very top. Down below, so far away they are just dots in the vast, sandy landscape, the rest of the tour group is moving away, even Eliza’s bright dress now swallowed up by the sea of beige sand.

  She stops on a wide block, aware of the aching muscles in her calves and the backs of her thighs, of her hair, damp and curling with sweat and heat. Leaning back against the warm stone of the block behind, she waits for Edward to catch up. Closes her eyes. She senses him beside her, panting from his exertions. So close to her the fine hairs on her arm rise up to meet his.

  ‘Lily?’

  Opening her eyes, she finds his face just inches from hers. His eyes are cool green pools she can sink into and feel washed clean. Who makes that first move? It is impossible to say. His mouth is suddenly on hers, and it’s as if her entire being is concentrated at the point where their bodies meet. She parts her lips and his tongue is there, gently seeking out her own.

  How different from those kisses with Robert, his mouth a gaping hole that would swallow her whole, his big hands roving over her as if he were checking over a cut of meat.

  They pull apart. Slowly, Edward opens his eyes. ‘Oh, Lily,’ he says softly, tracing her face with his fingertips as if she were made from Braille. ‘Lovely Lily.’

  Then he drops his arm to his side and his expression changes. ‘I’m sorry. I should never have …’ He leans forward and puts his head in his hands.

  Lily is awash with confusion.

  ‘Edward, it’s fine,’ she tells him. ‘I wanted to.’

  He looks up at her, his hands still resting on his knees, and she is alarmed to see how stricken he looks.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘Are you unwell?’

  And then, the thought pricking her like a needle: ‘Is there someone else?’

  Eliza dances across Lily’s vision in her yellow dress.

  There is a noise from up above, the sound of feet slapping on stone, and the young men who preceded them up the pyramid come back into view. ‘I say, is that as far as you got?’ calls one, triumph perhaps making him garrulous. ‘We’ve been all the way to the top. There’s the most marvellous view. You can see practically back to Blighty!’

  ‘I think we will take your word for it,’ says Edward, straightening up. ‘Are you ready to head back down, Lily?’

  She nods, not wanting to speak for fear that, if she opens her mouth, the lump that has formed in her throat will fall out like a lozenge.

  They begin their descent, dropping down in silence from one ledge to another. At one point, where the cement between the blocks has crumbled to loose stones, Edward offers her his hand, but Lily lowers her head and pretends she has not seen. All the time, while the voices of the young men just ahead of them echo off the stone, she is trying to make sense of what happened, but now the kiss is blurring with the heat and the strangeness of the day into a sensory maelstrom where nothing is distinct and everything hurts.

  Reaching the bottom, they set off in search of the others, and Lily is glad of the swaggering presence of the two young men, so buoyed up from conquering the summit of the pyramid they don’t notice the heavy atmosphere that has settled over their newly encountered companions like a cloud of dust.

  Dinner in the Shepheard Hotel is impossibly grand. A vast hall with pillars that prop up an ornate vaulted ceil
ing, starched white tablecloths to match the long, white robes of the waiters. Max and Eliza, however, are irritable, too wrapped up in their own squabbles to notice the subdued moods of their guests. At least, that’s what Lily thinks, until Eliza turns on her abruptly.

  ‘Such a dark horse you are, Lily. So quiet and meek and then suddenly hitching up your skirts and clambering up the rocks like a native. How many other secrets are you keeping from us? I wonder.’

  Lily feels her face flame.

  ‘I grew up with a brother,’ she says.

  ‘I think it’s admirable,’ says Max, looking Lily over until her fingers, under the table, pluck at the chiffon of her midnight-blue dress. ‘I like a woman who knows what to do with her body.’

  ‘Max!’ Eliza glares at him, though whether in earnest or in mock-anger Lily could not have said.

  ‘I was talking about sport,’ says Max, and his lips, under that moustache, widen into one of his outsized smiles.

  After dinner Lily tries to say she is tired. She is dreading the intimacy of sharing a room with Eliza and hopes that by retiring early she can be already asleep by the time her room-mate arrives.

  But the Campbells will not hear of Lily leaving early. ‘We did not kidnap you and bring you all this way just so that you can go to bed at nine o’clock,’ says Eliza. She is smiling, but Lily can’t help feeling like a pet monkey, expected to perform for its keep.

  They repair to the Long Bar, which Eliza informs her is now known as St Joe’s Parish in honour of the legendary barman Joe Scialom. One of Eliza’s friends, who was here earlier in the year, has told her she simply must try one of Joe’s signature cocktails.

  ‘We’ll have four Suffering Bastards,’ Eliza asks the dapper man in the white jacket and black bow tie behind the bar.

  Lily gasps, but the man behind the bar merely flashes a gleaming smile and begins mixing up a seemingly lethal combination of gin, cognac, lime cordial and ginger beer.

  ‘Divine!’ Eliza declares, draining hers and instantly ordering four more, even though Lily has not had more than two sips. Though she is used to wine and the occasional beer, Lily rarely drinks spirits, and she can already feel an unfamiliar warmth seeping through her veins.

  Seeing Anwar, the guide, standing at the bar talking to one of the hotel staff, Eliza calls him over and insists he join them for a drink.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t drink alcohol,’ says the guide, but while his words are apologetic, his eyes, travelling over Eliza in her coral silk dress, are anything but.

  A band starts playing as the barman mixes Anwar a cocktail made from fruit juices and cordials, and Eliza moves closer to him so she can hear what he is saying, their conversation drowned out for the others by the sound of a saxophone.

  Max looks at his wife’s back, which is now fully turned towards them, the spine gracefully curved as the frame of a harp, and Lily sees how a muscle is moving at the side of his cheek. She glances over towards Edward, hoping he might step in to end the awkward silence, but Edward is frowning into his drink, his expression closed. Already she is doubting what happened up there on the pyramid. Could this man with his dark head bent over his glass really be the same man who pressed his lips, his tongue, to hers?

  Max snatches Lily’s glass out of her hand and slams it down on the bar, together with his own empty one.

  ‘We’ll dance,’ he says. And it’s not a question. Lily has the sense of things being expected of her, payment due in kind for the fact of their being here in this bar, in this hotel, in this strange, exotic city, instead of back on the boat tucked up alongside Ida and Audrey, or giving moral support to Maria, as they chug through the darkness in the Suez Canal.

  Even so, she hesitates, throwing a helpless look to Edward, who gives her a small, tight smile and raises his glass.

  On the dancefloor the band breaks into a popular swing number that Lily has heard before. She usually enjoys dancing, but now she cannot seem to find the rhythm. Max’s hand on her waist burns through the thin material of her dress until she feels certain it must leave a scorch mark on her skin. Please let this be over, she thinks, as she lets herself be led around the floor, her gaze fixed on Max’s white bow tie so she won’t have to look up and catch his eye.

  Edward stands to the right of the dancefloor, drinking and following their movements intently. She imagines how different it would feel to be holding his soft hand in hers instead of Max’s.

  ‘You’re so stiff, Miss Lily Shepherd,’ says Max. ‘You need to relax. Let yourself go a bit.’

  ‘I’m quite relaxed, thank you. Maybe just a little tired.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, after all your exertions up that pyramid.’

  Lily’s heart stutters in her chest. Did he see what happened between her and Edward? The thought of it makes her feel weak.

  The song finishes, to Lily’s immense relief. She is just turning away back towards the bar when the band strikes up again. This time it is a slow melody which she recognizes as the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers hit ‘The Way You Look Tonight’. Max tightens his grip on her hand and around her waist and pulls her towards him so that their upper bodies are pressed together. She remembers the passageway inside the pyramid, something hard against her back.

  ‘You’re blushing, Lily. Are you hot?’

  It is as though he can read her body’s responses, just as Edward so often seems able to read her mind. Robert was the same, although she was too young then to recognize it. Something brushes the top of her forehead and, from the warm, damp breath that accompanies it, she knows it to be Max’s moustache, and that his mouth is just a hair’s breadth from her skin.

  There’s a peal of laughter from behind, and Lily is surprised to turn and see Eliza in the arms of Anwar, the young guide. Such a blurring of lines here – the guests dancing with the staff. But then again, is it any more strange than her being here, with the sort of people to whom she used to serve tea, whose houses she once cleaned?

  The sight of his wife seems to effect a change in Max. He pulls Lily closer and his fingers tighten over hers until they are all but crushing them. When he speaks his voice has lost its tone of cool amusement.

  ‘I love my wife. You understand.’

  More of a croak, in fact, than a voice. Has Lily heard him correctly? She is about to ask him to repeat it when he suddenly erupts.

  ‘Why must he stare so? He is growing tiresome.’ Lily follows Max’s gaze to Edward, who is still watching them from the shadows beyond the outer limits of the dancefloor.

  Joy flares briefly and, instantly, she becomes protective, unable to bear the idea of this fragile thing that exists between her and Edward being held up to Max’s ice-blue scrutiny.

  The song finishes, and Lily pulls away, wresting her hand free.

  ‘I really am feeling terribly tired. It’s been such an exciting day. I’m very grateful to you and Eliza.’

  Max, marooned on the dancefloor, makes an impatient movement with his hand, as if slapping away a fly.

  ‘Save your gratitude, little Lily,’ he says. ‘It’s so boringly bourgeois.’

  Back in her hotel room, Lily clings to the outside edge of the bed. The events of the day are playing through her mind like a loop of newsreel and she despairs of being able to sleep. Nevertheless, she must have dropped off because she is awoken some time later by voices outside the door.

  ‘Let me come in with you.’

  ‘Goodness, you’re tiresome when you’re drunk, Max. You know Lily is in there.’

  ‘So. It’s not as if you haven’t done it before.’

  ‘Don’t be a pig.’

  There’s the sound of something moving, a grunt, a muffled ‘Don’t’. Then Max again.

  ‘Bet you wouldn’t say “Don’t” if it was that greasy guide who had his fingers in your –’

  The sound of the door opening and quickly closing again. Eliza’s breath heavy in the thick darkness.

  ‘Bitch.’

  Lily flinches at t
he word, the violence of it, even through the thick wooden hotel-room door.

  There’s a swish of satin, and the sweeping of the mosquito net along the floor, and then the mattress dips. ‘Are you awake, Lily?’ asks Eliza, in a voice that sounds surprisingly untroubled.

  Lily is tempted to feign sleep but she can’t shake off the notion that Eliza would be able to tell.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, yawning, hoping her tone sounds suitably sleep-soaked. ‘Although I’m awfully tired.’

  ‘Really? I could have danced all night, except that the orchestra packed up and Max was being such a bore. You go back to sleep, though, and if I start pushing you out in the night, just roll me right back to my side. Max maintains I’m the greediest bedmate ever. I like to colonize every single bit of the mattress, like this.’

  Eliza stretches out her arms and legs in a star shape. Lily forces herself not to recoil when she feels one of the other woman’s warm feet brushing her leg.

  She closes her eyes and tries to slow down her breathing. For a while the only noise in the room is the gentle groaning of the ceiling fan and the whine of a mosquito over by the window.

  Then comes a whisper in the darkness: ‘Lily?’ Lily grunts, as if she already has one foot into sleep.

  ‘Lily, do you ever feel as if you only exist when you see yourself reflected back in someone else’s eyes?’

  Lily remains still, keeping her breathing even. Eliza sighs, a sound as delicate as sea mist. And now the mattress moves again, and there is once more the sweeping of the mosquito net, this time followed by the padding of footsteps.

  Eliza will be going to the bathroom, Lily thinks. So she is surprised to see a shaft of light fall across the room as the door to the corridor opens, and then hear the soft click of the latch as Eliza closes it behind her.

  14

  11 August 1939

  LILY IS SO happy to see the Orontes waiting by the dock at Port Suez she almost bursts into tears. It feels as if she and Edward have been away for weeks, rather than twenty-four hours. She can’t wait to see Audrey and Helena and have a conversation where she doesn’t always feel as if there is a second conversation going on underneath the first that she isn’t party to. And she wants to check how Maria is. She feels guilty at leaving her so soon after she was assaulted. The memory of it shocks her all over again.