“Awful foggy, ain’t it? They’ve suspended the shipping again.”
Louisa handed over the half-sovereign, climbed the wooden steps, and let herself out. Pulling her wrap over her shoulders as she closed the door behind her, drawing it up around her cheeks, she groped her way back along Antigua Street toward the terminus.
She had a peculiar feeling of recognizing nothing, of the way back being different from the way out, as if already she had traveled far from everything that was known to her.
THREE
Harriet lay back on a pile of feather pillows, staring at the window. The fog hung like a dirty curtain on the outside of the glass, and in his basket by the fire, the dog snored softly, sounding as if he were far away. Shifting her gaze, Harriet looked about the room at the familiar faded white of the walls, the dark wooden footboard of her bed. The attic bedroom had been the night nursery; Harriet had slept in it for as long as she could remember, had spent long stretches of her life confined to the same bed looking at the sky.
Whether she was well or ill, she thought of it as a sickroom. The air weighed more than air in other rooms; it bore the memory of the repeated burning of niter papers, fumigant powders of belladonna or carbolic, stramonium cigarettes made from the dried roots and stems of thorn apple that she was required to inhale, alternated with vaporous basins of menthol, camphor, and eucalyptus, emergency whiffs of chloroform from a sprinkled handkerchief. The smoke and steam cleared but the odors lingered on, clinging to each other in the walls and blankets, the old red rug that waited in front of the tiny fireplace.
A quill was poking into her back through her nightgown and she shifted her position on the pillows. Her breath was shallow and her heart still beat fast. She could feel it thudding away, scurrying along like a friend running ahead on a pavement, in more of a hurry than she was herself. Harriet had read once that every person was born with an allotted number of heartbeats. That when the count was reached, the person died. Her heart was hastening toward the total, careless of the cost to her in days.
All winter, she’d urged Dr. Grammaticas to recommend going away. Every time she raised the subject, he refused. It would be dangerous. Reckless. The death of her, perhaps. Then, the previous morning, he had arrived early. After he’d examined her, he sat down on the chair drawn up to her bed and looked at her with his soft brown eyes.
“What is it, Grams?”
“It’s you, Hattie.”
“What of me?”
“There is a thickening of the membranes of the bronchial tubes. Percussion of your chest reveals emphysematous hyper-resonance. Forced respiration produces rhonchus and sibilus.”
“Speak to me in English.”
“Your condition’s worse, Harriet. It saddens your old doctor to see it.”
Harriet pressed her hand against her chest. The bones under her skin felt sharp and light as wishbones, lifting slightly as she breathed in, falling almost imperceptibly as she breathed out, the effort unmatched by the movement. No one knew better than she the state of her health. This winter, more than ever before, she’d wearied of the struggle for breath; no one wanted to hear that the thought that she could cease to struggle, could one day stop breathing, was a comfort to her. Only Dr. Grammaticas nodded his old head when she told him that she was tired.
“Help me, then,” she said. “Help me to get away.”
“Where did you want to go? Bournemouth? Bath?”
“D’you mean it?” She pulled herself up on the pillows.
“Boscombe? Broadstairs?”
Harriet took hold of his liver-spotted hand with both of hers and kissed it. Shook her head.
“Where, then? Menton? The Riviera?”
“Far—” She broke off in a fit of coughing. “Farther.”
Dr. Grammaticas removed the rubber tubes of his stethoscope from around his neck and stowed the instrument in a case, fitting its curves to the empty, waiting spaces.
“I’ve a nephew in Sydney.”
“Egypt. I want to go to Egypt.”
The doctor barked with laughter. “Sightseeing amid the tombs.” Closing the brass clasp of the case, he sat down again, resting his elbows on his knees. “A tonic climate might benefit you, Harriet, but it’s risky. My opinion is that you’re not well enough to travel.”
“I’m not well enough to stay here.”
“You may rally, when spring comes. You have before.”
Harriet met his eyes with her own and the doctor looked away first.
“All right. I’ll do my best for you.”
He stood up and when he spoke again his voice was loud, filled with artificial cheer.
“Meanwhile, rest! Do you hear me, young lady? Rest.”
• • •
Groping under the bed, Harriet picked up a book. The corners and spine were bound in leather the color of fallen leaves, the nap worn to the texture of peach skin. Lying back on the pillows, she balanced the volume on her knees and opened it. Her books were her medicine. It was her books that kept her alive.
Great-Uncle Redvers had instructed in his will that his collection on ancient Egypt be passed to Harriet’s three older brothers. Not one of them was interested. The books remained on a high shelf in the study, dusted and unread, until the day Harriet happened to retrieve one and began turning the pages.
In it, she found a dictionary of the hieroglyphics used in the writing of the ancient Egyptians. Looking at the tiny images of birds and beetles, stars and moons, legs walking, Harriet was entranced. The pictures were thousands of years old yet many were as recognizable as if she’d drawn them in her own hand. There were horned vipers and serpents, sickle moons and sun disks, stems of lotus flowers.
Some of the meanings were transparent. A man with upraised arms meant to praise, an eye to see. Others could not have been guessed at: a bird with a human face represented the ba, the aspect of a person that made them different from all others. Immediately, the ba bird became one of Harriet’s favorites.
Losing herself in the dictionary, Harriet had a sense of having come home. The ancient Egyptians had named things that still needed naming; there were dogs and cats, sparrows and swallows, loaves of bread. They depicted the male phallus, a woman in childbirth, prisoners of war. And in their language, breath was life, the gift of the gods, symbolized by the ankh, a cross with a rounded top.
She began to make up her own symbols. A cup-shaped crinoline for her mother, who in those days had still worn them, and for her father a sovereign bearing the profile of Queen Victoria. A four-fingered hand for Rosina, who’d lost a digit in childhood to an iron gate. Boots for her three brothers, in three sizes. A stethoscope for Dr. Grammaticas.
Aunt Yael had a symbol straight from the hieroglyphs. The drooping ostrich feather stood for Maat, goddess of truth, and symbolized balance and justice. To Harriet, the feather represented the bonnet festooned with bedraggled gray plumes that her aunt wore winter and summer alike.
As Harriet grew older, she understood more clearly that the pictures did not always stand for themselves. Some indicated sounds or had a general meaning. Over the years, the signs she devised for herself became more opaque. An open book signified a kind of escape for which in English there was no satisfactory term. She drew narrowed eyes for envy and weeping ones for grief, official, justifiable grief such as that felt after a death. A head resting at a slant on a hand for the other kind, the kind she mainly felt, sadness that had no cause, that crept into her like the fog crept into the house. She used the symbols, mixed with words, in her journals to ensure no other eyes could read what she wrote.
Harriet closed the book and inhaled its odor of dust and gravitas, felt its familiar weight and heft in her fingers. Along with the elation prompted by Dr. Grammaticas’s words, she felt another, more mixed, emotion. All the while traveling to Egypt had been an impossibility, she’d been certain that she w
anted more than anything to go there. Now that it had become a possibility, she felt a sense of apprehension that was new to her.
FOUR
“Yael! What a pleasant surprise.”
Louisa hadn’t expected her sister-in-law. She’d been upstairs in the old day nursery, looking at the globe, when the girl had announced Yael’s presence in the drawing room. It was late for calling and the smell of roasting beef was escaping from the kitchen downstairs.
“What does Blundell wish to see me about?” Yael said, glancing at the nearest of the several clocks that ticked at discordant intervals. She removed her gloves. “I’ve a meeting to attend but he said in his note that it was urgent.”
Louisa felt further taken aback. She had no idea that Blundell had summoned his sister, or why.
“Father, probably,” she said, tugging the thick silk tassel on the end of the bell pull. “I hear he hasn’t been well.”
“He has a sore throat from the atmosphere. He refuses anything for it but whisky and hot water. I don’t think whisky right, in the mornings. But I don’t suppose that’s what Blundell wishes to discuss.”
Yael discarded her bonnet on the chesterfield and lowered herself onto a chair, its upholstered velvet arms a snug fit around her hips. Her hair, silver since she was thirty years old, was wound into the customary coils over her ears and she was dressed in the muted grays and lavenders and mauves that she’d adopted since her mother passed away ten years earlier. Louisa found such prolonged mourning an affectation. Yael had refused outright her suggestion that she could consult Mr. Hamilton, discover whether the late Mrs. Heron might come through with words of comfort.
Louisa reached for her workbag. She’d made her decision, sitting on the omnibus the previous evening as it swayed back over the river, while a man walked in front of the horses ringing a hand bell. Despite the motion of the bus, she’d had a sense inside herself of stillness. The advice from her mother was clear. For Harriet’s sake, Louisa must take the risk and make the journey. She would travel to the ends of the earth, if need be. She would not allow her daughter to die.
The maid appeared in the open doorway. Mary. That was it. “A tray of tea, Mary. We’ll have Earl Grey. The silver pot.”
Her mind made up, Louisa had wasted no time. After dinner, when Harriet went up to bed, she’d reported to Blundell the doctor’s advice, then immediately given her own opinion—that they should waste no time in arranging the journey. She hadn’t mentioned her visit to Mr. Hamilton. That her mother had confirmed the need for the voyage could be enough for Blundell to deem it unnecessary.
Blundell had remained silent for some time, sighing occasionally. They were still in the dining room, sitting next to each other along two sections of the octagonal oak table, under the light of the gasolier, the curtains tightly drawn, the fire low. Waiting for her husband’s decision, Louisa felt the deep comfort of her home. She looked around her at the darkly gleaming sideboard, the Japanese wallpaper behind it, the set of Crown Derby dishes arranged face forward in a glass-fronted cabinet lined with soft green velvet that made her think of moss.
They’d moved to Canonbury from the house in Wren Street when Harriet was barely two years old, following Blundell’s promotion at the bank. He’d paid a thousand pounds for a ninety-nine-year lease and Louisa had felt an abiding satisfaction at the prospect that she would see out her days in the Georgian crescent.
Blundell gave another sigh.
“If the doctor recommends it, she must go.” He reached for her hand and patted it. “And you with her, of course. I’ll find a means of releasing the funds immediately. My chief concern is that I cannot come with you, Louisa. The country’s in a wretched condition, by all accounts.”
“Thank you, Blundell,” she said, relief and alarm coursing through her in equal measure. “I knew I could rely on you. We will set off after Christmas.”
“I shall miss you most terribly,” he said, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing it. “But that hardly needs saying.”
Louisa met his eyes, unable to speak. She couldn’t allow herself to think about leaving Blundell behind. If she did, she might change her mind.
Harriet’s dog began to bark downstairs. Louisa glanced up to find that, from behind her spectacles, Yael was regarding her. Her sister-in-law snapped shut a tin of peppermints.
“Is something wrong, Louisa? You look drawn.”
“I’m quite well, thank you, Yael. You?”
Yael nodded.
“Nothing to complain of, dear.”
Louisa took a needle from the little silk pouch that Harriet had made for her, more years ago than she cared to remember. She and Yael shared neither the ease nor the heartfelt quarrels that Louisa had with her own sisters and she didn’t feel inclined to discuss the events of the last two days.
The dog’s bark intensified, the front door opened, and from the street the sound of turning hooves floated up the stairs. Blundell’s voice preceded him into the room.
“Has my sister arrived? Ah, there you are.” He poured himself a measure of gin and pulled up a chair in front of Yael’s. “I expect Louisa’s told you what’s afoot?”
Louisa shook her head.
“Not yet, Blundell. There hasn’t been the opportunity.”
“I won’t beat about the bush, Yael,” he said. “Harriet’s no better. Grammaticas prescribes a trip up the Nile.”
“I see.” Yael looked startled. She sat straighter on her chair, her bulk lightly balanced. “It sounds an extreme measure.”
“Extreme measures are called for,” Louisa said. “Harriet is failing.”
“Poor girl,” Yael said. “I shall pray for her.”
Blundell got to his feet again.
“I have something to ask of you, Sis.”
“What might that be?”
Yael’s tone was wary. It was unfair, Louisa thought privately, that the care of their father fell entirely to her sister-in-law. Blundell paid the bills but it was Yael who sat with the old man morning and evening, listened to his complaints, read the newspaper aloud from cover to cover. Blundell barely sat down when he visited; he stood at the writing desk issuing checks and totting up accounts. He was speaking again.
“Louisa is ill equipped on her own to go halfway across the world,” he said, neutrally, as if he was relaying a known fact.
“What on earth do you mean, Blundell?” Louisa’s hand ceased stitching.
Yael was staring at him through the thick glass spectacles that seemed to serve the purpose of enabling others to see her more clearly, by the way they magnified her gray, serious eyes. Louisa had been unable to escape the realization, years earlier, that Harriet had her aunt’s eyes.
“It will only be for a month or two,” Blundell said. “Three at most, the doctor says.”
“Who will care for Father?”
Blundell put down his glass, lowered his hands toward the flames rising from an ash log.
“Mrs. Darke knows his routine better than anyone.”
Yael levered herself up from the seat, gripping the arms with her hands. “You wish to entrust our father to a housekeeper?”
Blundell spoke gently. “He barely knows who you are, Yael. He won’t suffer from your absence. Harriet needs you more.”
The girl had arrived with the tray and was fiddling with the teaspoons. Louisa dismissed her with a look and went to the table, carefully filled the first cup; the best pot had always had a dribble down the spout. She couldn’t imagine embarking on a journey with Blundell’s sister. She and Yael had no common ground. Louisa had time for neither charity work nor Bible study, and Yael took no pride in her appearance, nor was she interested in the spiritual realm.
Yael had retrieved her bonnet. It hung limply in her hand, the tips of the old gray feathers brushing the rug. Like a dead thing, Louisa thought, with a silent, internal sh
udder.
“Louisa?” Yael said. “What is your view of this fandango?”
“For Harriet’s health, I will do what I must.” She couldn’t think properly, felt as if the season had invaded her head. “I’m sure we shall manage perfectly well alone. Do take a cup of tea, Yael.”
Yael stared at her, then turned back to her brother.
“I have never believed Harriet ought to be encouraged in her strange ideas, Blundell. I would have thought the Holy Lands a more suitable destination. But I hope I can always be relied upon to do my duty.”
A moment later, the front door slammed again. Louisa went to the window and drew back the lace curtain. The house appeared to float in an ocean of fog and Yael had vanished. Resuming her seat, trying to gather her thoughts, Louisa held up the eye of her needle to the lamplight.
“She’s a brick,” Blundell said.
“But she didn’t agree to it,” Louisa interrupted.
“She didn’t disagree. I’ll see the shipping agent in the morning. The bank has a villa in Alexandria you should be able to use.”
“I cannot picture your sister in the tropics,” Louisa said, her tone measured.
“It isn’t the tropics. It is the Near East.”
He sounded distracted.
“Even so,” Louisa persisted, “it will be hot.”
Blundell sat down and leaned back in his chair, rested the glass on his chest.
“Yael has always been fond of Harriet.”
Louisa pulled the end of cotton through the narrow eye. It was true. Yael took more interest in Harriet than Louisa’s own sisters did, giving her prayer books with pages edged in gold leaf, a copy of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, tracts on the condition of women. Only Louisa’s younger sister, Anna, kept in regular touch with Harriet, writing long letters from whichever far-flung part of the world she found herself in, sending gifts. Louisa suspected Anna of fomenting some of Harriet’s eccentricities.
The Sacred River Page 2
