“Do you require anything, madame?”
“Dinner was excellent, monsieur,” said Louisa. “You can do nothing more.”
“Madame is too kind.”
Mr. Soane rose to his feet. “This evening is dedicated to the fine art of painting. To paintings and painters, and their subjects. As you all know, I am painting a portrait of Miss Heron. Soon she will don the embellishments.” He lifted his glass. “Then the process can be completed.”
All but Louisa raised their glasses, and before long the ladies, at Mr. Simpson’s prompting, stood up to move into the sitting room for mocha coffee. At the far end of the table, Dr. Woolfe was on his feet. Harriet felt mortified. She hadn’t had a chance to speak with him all evening. She approached him, as he stood with Eyre Soane, wanting at least to say goodbye.
“Must you leave already, Dr. Woolfe?”
Eberhardt Woolfe looked at her, his green eyes honest and troubled.
“He must,” announced Eyre Soane. “He must return to his catacombs. But I have informed him that tomorrow, at least”—he slid his arm around Harriet’s waist—“I shall not allow you to join him.”
As Harriet shrugged off Eyre Soane’s arm, Dr. Woolfe turned abruptly and left the room.
Harriet returned to the table. Louisa was still sitting in her place, as if she had not heard Jim Simpson’s invitation to withdraw.
“Come, Mother,” she said, pulling out Louisa’s chair for her. “We are retiring to the sitting room.”
Louisa turned to her. Her face glistened, despite the breeze that moved through the dining room from the open French doors, carrying the scent of jasmine.
“I have failed you, Harriet. I should never have permitted this.” They left the dining room and Harriet took her arm.
“The dinner?”
Louisa shook her head. “No, Harriet. The painting.”
“I insisted on it, Mother. It wasn’t your doing.”
Louisa took hold of Harriet’s hand, squeezing her fingers through her evening glove. “We could leave tomorrow. The paddle steamer is due in, Monsieur Andreas told me. It’s only the mail boat but they take passengers and the journey downriver is faster. We could be back in Cairo in ten days. With Aunt Yael again, inside a fortnight.”
“It’s too late, Mother.”
“Too late?” Louisa’s voice was high and strained.
“You heard what he said. Mr. Soane has almost finished. Soon the sitting will be complete. I can’t leave now. Anyway, I don’t want to go. I feel well. I can live, here.”
Louisa dabbed her forehead with her handkerchief, then wiped underneath her eyes. She refolded the scrap of lawn and closed it up in her bag. “I only ever wanted what was best for you,” she said. “Please remember that of me.”
“What are you talking about, Mother?”
FORTY-SIX
The gazebo was a rustic affair, a flat roof of woven grass mats, topped with palm branches, supported on six round and sturdy palm trunks. Two sides were walled in with more woven grass panels and two were open, looking out onto a clump of palms in a secluded area of the rambling garden. Eyre Soane had selected the spot for its privacy.
Miss Heron was standing at the far end of the gazebo in the position in which he’d arranged her at the beginning of the sitting. He’d mimicked exactly the attitude in which Louisa had posed for Augustus—her body at an angle, her head half turned, the eyes looking directly at the viewer. The mouth unsmiling, lips parted.
The girl knew the pose well enough now for him not to have to adjust her body, the set of her head, but he began each day with the ritual anyway, calculating the effect his proximity had on her, beginning with her bare feet, kneeling at them, shifting their position in tiny movements that allowed him to rest their bare soles on the palm of his hand, moving up her body, adjusting the angle of her hips, her hand, touching her cheek, pressing her skin with his fingers. Her blush deepened as he arranged her limbs.
His sister, Julia, had telegraphed that she was arriving in Cairo shortly. He would leave the following day to go to meet her there. He was sick of Luxor, bored with the company of the Simpsons. The sight of Louisa’s pale, faded beauty was becoming intolerable. He must act, if he was ever going to. Carpe diem.
“Did you enjoy the evening, Miss Heron?” he said.
“I think so,” she said, her lips barely moving.
“It was for you.”
“I thought it was for art.”
He felt irritated, stippling his brush against the palette, mixing cadmium with carmine for the shade of her hair. Adding a squeeze of flake white for the highlights. Umber, for the shadows. Something outside caught his attention, from the corner of his eye. It looked like a glint of light on metal, some rapid movement, among the trees. He raised his eyes but saw nothing. It might have been one of the waiters, hurrying past with a tin tray.
Eyre looked again at the image on the canvas, the tall, slight figure with its half-turned head, half-lifted chin, one hand resting lightly on a chair. The hue of the blue robe was vibrant and the gleam of the ivory-white trim luminous. The face, curious and vulnerable, looked older than its years and yet innocent. Miss Heron’s countenance lit up with an unexpected vitality when she spoke of the things that concerned her.
He hadn’t been interested in painting this sickly English girl but had made himself undertake the work as if he were and now the portrait held a certain beauty. From where it came, he didn’t know.
Miss Heron was not as irredeemably plain as he’d believed on first seeing her. Either that or she was changed.
“What are you thinking of, Mr. Soane?” she said, startling him.
“Me? I am regretting that we are nearing the end of the sittings, Miss Heron.”
“Are we? Have you finished your work? You know I must get back to mine, on the west bank. I don’t want to miss the opening of the tomb.”
“Never mind that, Miss Heron. Today is the day.”
“Which day, Mr. Soane?”
“The day of the embellishments.”
He felt in his pocket for the heavy piece and lifted it in the air. It was a necklace, a round silver disk the size of a crown, chased all over in the Arabic script, the edges studded with flat-topped, raised beads. He’d acquired it in the bazaar for a few florins from a nomad woman. Beaten her down from her asking price until she’d passed it over, still warm from her own neck. Holding it before him on its silver chain, he walked toward her.
“I chose it to complement your complexion.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said. Her face began flushing but whether with pleasure or because she knew herself to be insulted, he could not be sure.
He held out the necklace. “May I?”
She nodded wordlessly. The skin on her cheeks, her neck, darkened as he moved behind her and lowered his arms over her head, placing the chain around her throat. Standing close to her, he laid the piece on her chest, his fingers grazing her skin.
Eyre found himself unable to use her first name. Often, he could not recall it. Then, when he remembered it, he couldn’t speak it. He swallowed and, when he spoke again, employed the same deep tone of scarcely controlled feeling.
“Hold up your hair.”
Her hands reached behind her head, lifted up the crinkled mass. The hair was a darker tone underneath, a deeper copper, the skin on the back of her neck milky white. The rounded shapes of the spine bones as she bowed her head reminded him suddenly of his sister’s neck.
Eyre felt no appetite for what was to follow, neither desire for her nor hatred. Only the enduring wish to hurt Louisa. Scruples were nothing but a nuisance. He would set them aside. Bending forward, he brushed the back of her neck with his lips. Her skin was cool and smelled of soap. He kissed her again, encircling her waist with his arm, pulling the slender body against his own.
“Stop,
Mr. Soane, please.”
“Harriet. I cannot wait any longer. If you love me—”
“Love you?”
He pulled her around toward him and locked his eyes on hers. “I’ve dreamed of this moment.”
“What moment?”
Her voice was cool, more collected than he would have expected. She looked puzzled. Eyre drew her to him and again felt the rigidity in her body, the resistance. He lowered his mouth to hers and forced open her lips with his tongue, stifling the noise she made. Thrusting one hand inside the open neck of her gown, he felt her breast, her skin soft as water, and experienced a rush of sorrow at what and whom he had become.
Eyre Soane became aware of two things. The girl was struggling to get free. And there was a noise coming from outside. He raised his mouth from hers and looked past Harriet’s troubled gray eyes. Outside, framed by two palm trees, was Louisa. The sun was behind her; her shadow fell long and thin into the gazebo, her head at his feet. She wore the same dark evening dress as on the previous night and her hair was out of its coiled arrangement, fallen down on her shoulders.
For an instant, Eyre Soane saw again the girl Louisa had been, coal and milk, all black curls and white skin, half draped in red velvet. He heard her high, teasing laughter. His father’s groans as he rolled off her. Eyre had thought he was dying. He pictured his mother in the house, weeping.
Louisa had lifted one arm and was holding it out in front of her. She waved it at him and again Eyre saw the glint of sun on metal.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.
The silver piece fell to the ground as Harriet wrenched herself away and turned to face the garden.
“Mother! What are you—”
Louisa waved the gun in the air. “Get away from her,” she said.
Eyre pushed Harriet out of the way. He was angry. How dare she threaten him. It was he, he would threaten her. Raising his hands in a mocking surrender, he walked out of the gazebo and into the sting of sun. A few yards from Louisa, he stopped. She looked deranged, her eyes staring and her mouth set. Even now, he could not help but notice the distinctive hairline that Augustus had represented so accurately. It reminded him of something or someone. He couldn’t think who. The gun was pointing straight at him.
“I will kill you,” she said, waving it in his direction.
“Kill me?” He took another pace toward her and stretched out his hand to relieve her of the pistol. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Louisa steadied the arm that held the gun. “One more step, Augustus, and I will shoot.”
Eyre Soane’s palms were sweating. He had a peculiar feeling of satisfaction at facing his foe at last, directly. For what she had done, he hated Louisa. Hated her in a way he’d never hated any other person. Except the unbidden, unwelcome, and unfamiliar thought came to him: one. There had been one other person whom he hated as much or more. The mocking face of his father rose in front of his eyes, as if Augustus were present in the parched garden, as if his feet again filled a pair of the leather boots, the smell of his paints hung heavy in the air.
“Go on,” Eyre said. “Go on, Gypsy. Shoot him.”
The sound seemed to shatter everything—the morning, the ground under his feet, the clear blue sky that tumbled and spun as he fell. He heard the harsh cry of a peacock and had just time to think that he’d seen no peacocks here, before he felt a warm flood seeping into the sleeve of his shirt. The smell of oils had given way to an acrid stench of burning and a woman knelt by him on the grass, screaming for help.
He need pretend no longer. He turned his face from her, closed his eyes to block out a splintered sky.
“You mean nothing to me, Harriet. You never could.”
FORTY-SEVEN
Blundell’s letter lay on a tray on the table. Yael looked at it for a moment longer, then went up the steps to the bathroom and removed her dusty clothes. The tap in the shower was dry but a large, filled jug stood next to a tin bowl. After washing herself all over with a soapy flannel, Yael stood in the bowl, trickling what remained of the clean water over her face and shoulders. It was pleasant to stand naked, with her feet in the cool water.
Wrapping herself in a robing gown, she returned to her own room, where she lay down on the bed in a shaft of sunlight and opened the gown. She could not recall a time when her breasts, her stomach, had ever been exposed to the sun’s rays. She was a lizard, she told herself as she bathed in the soft, intense warmth and light that flooded through the window, basking in God’s sun, and it was neither injurious nor immoral.
In the soporific warmth, Yael fell asleep. She dreamed of a place that, when she woke, she was unable to describe to herself, except through the sense she’d had there of ease, a contentment that in her waking life she had never experienced. Happiness, she thought as she pulled on the dress she’d had made at a little tailor’s in the rue des Soeurs, a road with the distinction of having a convent at one end and a brothel at the other. Yael fastened the buttons at her cuffs. The dress was a pale gingham check, the color of the dust at noon. Happiness of the kind she had imagined heaven to offer. That was what it was.
She finished dressing, put on her shoes, and went down the steps. The fountain in the little courtyard in the middle of the house was running again and a drab sparrow perched on the edge of the pool, dipping its beak down to the water and then throwing back its head, allowing the water to run down its throat. It watched her pass, seemingly unconcerned.
Sitting down at the table, she poured herself a glass of water. When she had drunk it, she opened Blundell’s letter. Yael had been expecting it. She had continued to postpone writing to her brother. He had put her in charge of his wife and daughter when he forced her to accompany them, she reasoned. He could have no quarrel with the decisions she then made, since he had put her in a position where she alone must make them. Since improving Harriet’s health was the purpose of the journey, it had been best for her to travel farther south. Agreed, Blundell might have preferred that Yael accompany them. He might even have expected it. But, having started the clinic, she was resolved to continue it for the length of time she had promised herself and God that she would.
Sister,
I trust all are well and Harriet’s health improved. You will be glad to know that Father carries on all right.
News from Egypt is worrying and there may be trouble ahead. I regret that I cannot allow you and Louisa and Harriet to remain any longer. Get back the others from wherever they may be, book your return journey, and inform me by telegraph of your likely arrival date at Southampton.
Yr affectionate brother,
Blundell
Yael sat on at the table, half listening to Suraya and her children, to the beat of the wings of the birds in the garden, giving themselves dust baths. She folded the sheet in half, replaced it in the envelope, and in one gesture tore it through the middle, from top to bottom.
Mustapha appeared with a tray.
“Dinner, ma’am,” he said. “No fish in the market today.”
“Thank you, Mustapha. Why no fish?”
He made a noncommittal movement of his head. “The boats did not leave.”
“I see. Well, never mind. It is not important.”
Yael pulled her chair in to the table and began to eat. The omelette was the same temperature as the air, as the fried potatoes and slices of pickled turnips and radishes that surrounded it in a ring. Somehow, she wasn’t sure when or how, Yael had adopted the native way of taking food. She found a curious pleasure in eating with her fingers. She ate the omelette slowly, using torn-off pieces of flat bread to soak up the oil and vinegar and juices left behind on the plate, the scraps of slightly burnt potato, the floating shreds of green herbs. Eggs seemed to her the very best type of food, digestible, nourishing, pleasing in shape and appearance, and involving no active methods of slaughter. For pudding there was a fruit salad of irre
gular geometry, apples and some kind of melon, further sweetened by dates.
When she had finished, she washed her hands and poured a glass of tea, watching as the leaves unfurled, floating and waving from the prison of the thick little glass. The agony of the leaves, tea planters called it.
She dated a sheet of paper May and gave as the address Alexandria.
Dear Blundell,
I expected to have heard again from you but have received no word. I shall not worry unduly, the post in this part of the world is not altogether reliable.
Alexandria is pleasant, and certainly quieter and safer than London. We are not troubled by drunkenness here or thieving, due to the strong beliefs of the Mussulmans.
Louisa and Harriet have taken a short trip farther south in search of better air. I occupy myself with a little charity work.
Please give my love to Father and remind Mrs. Darke that he likes his whisky at 6 p.m. sharp.
Yr affectionate sister,
Yael
Was there affection between them, she wondered as she put down the pen. There had been. Was there still? Her brother had changed since he was a boy. His eyes had grown grave and distant, his expression harder. That much was obvious and right. But the best parts of him, his sense of fair play, the concern he once showed for the most vulnerable living creatures, when he would rescue every spider and bedraggled fly from the ewer, release them onto a sunny leaf in the garden, those parts had been hidden away when he became a man. Either that or they were lost, left behind as surely as the rocking horse with the balding mane, the skiff on the lake in the grounds of their childhood home.
Theirs had been a happy childhood. They wanted for nothing, had never in their lives gone to bed hungry or walked barefoot except for the joy of it. Nonetheless, to remember it filled Yael with a sadness as deep and sweet and dark as the water in the lake.
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