The Visitors

by Sally Beauman

  ‘Are they indeed?’ Winlock said coldly. ‘How lucky that he isn’t paying for Hauser and Hall’s work, Minnie. How fortunate he doesn’t have to cover your husband’s salary, or Mace’s. Thank God he gets the services of the Met’s experts for nothing. We wouldn’t want dear Lordy bankrupted, would we?’

  ‘No, we wouldn’t,’ Minnie replied, with spirit. ‘And that remark is beneath you. The Met’s generosity will be rewarded. There will be a quid pro quo: Lord Carnarvon has made that perfectly clear. When the finds are finally divided, we will get our fair share. Carnarvon has said he’ll ensure the Met is well taken care of. We all know that.’

  ‘Then you know more than I do,’ Winlock replied acidly. ‘If Monsieur Lacau and his Nationalist buddies get their way, the entire contents of that tomb will go straight to Cairo, down to the last ivory hairpin. It will all remain in Egypt and Carnarvon won’t get a thing. What happens to your quid pro quo then, Minnie?’

  Shortly after that difficult conversation (‘You see what I mean, Lucy?’ Frances had said. ‘It’s like living in a hornet’s nest’), Winlock’s predictions swiftly came true – or some of them. By late January the Valley was swarming with journalists, all bent on outwitting The Times, all dispatched by editors who had no intention of accepting its monopoly.

  Their headquarters was the Winter Palace Hotel. They were spending money like water, Mohammed reported gleefully. The amount of baksheesh they were prepared to scatter around was astonishing; each one of them had his own dragoman, his own clutch of donkey boys, all doubling up as spies and informers. The rate for donkey hire to the Valley had trebled inside a week and quadrupled within a fortnight. Several of the reporters had fought in the war, or been correspondents on the Western front: they approached the story of the tomb with military zeal. At night, they spied, danced, drank, partied – the Winter Palace was enjoying the most glamorous season it had ever known, people said, so there was plenty of opportunity. Next day, these men bravely shook off their hangovers: Carter’s team began work early, and so did they. At eight in the morning Miss Mack and I would see them, mounted on mules, wearing a strange assortment of headgear, riding full trot from the ferry landing. They’d pass our boat, their outriders and spies clustered around them, and make for the Valley. ‘Early bird, first worm,’ they’d cry, and, ‘Onwards the cavalry!’

  They’d then take up their positions at the tomb, where a pecking order had quickly been established, with the Daily Telegraph, the Mail, Express and Post taking the front row of the circle, as it were, opera glasses at the ready. There they would sit, on or next to Carter’s retaining wall, as the sun rose higher in the sky, and the merciless heat of the Valley began to roast them. Since they could neither enter the tomb, nor interview anyone connected to it, all they could do was note the parade of objects being removed from it. That was the extent of their news.

  By mid-morning, the press representatives would be joined by the tourists. Cook’s were laying on extra steamboats from Cairo to cope with the unprecedented demand, and the number of visitors was increasing exponentially. The journalists found this displeasing: it was not helpful, they felt, nor did it befit their dignity as newspapermen to be elbowed aside and crushed by crowds of ignorant rubberneckers who failed to understand that the gentlemen of the press took priority. Scuffles began to break out, as tempers frayed in the heat.

  ‘Perhaps you don’t understand,’ Bradstreet of the Post and New York Times had said to a party of tourists alleged to hail from Huddersfield, ‘this is world news, and I am here to report it. My articles are syndicated to forty newspapers in England, ten in Australia, nine in Canada, twelve in India and one hundred and four in the United States of America. To the furthest reaches of the British Empire. From sea to shining sea, sir. So kindly do not stick your elbow in my ribs, and you, madam, kindly do not block my view with that infernal hat of yours.’

  ‘Don’t you take that tone with me,’ the man replied, squaring up. ‘Stand on my toes once more, you blighter, and I’ll punch your fat snout. And watch it when you speak to my missus. Or I’ll flatten you.’

  This riposte was joyfully seized upon by Bradstreet’s journalistic rivals; they broadcast it, with embellishments, around Luxor – Frances and I heard at least three versions of it. But that was in the early days, when they were still rivals. As time passed, and the news they were able to glean remained pitiably small – when they all began to receive crushingly sarcastic cables from their editors, pointing out the pathetic starved inadequacy of the stories they were filing; when the fact that from day one they were being scooped by Merton of The Times rankled, then festered – there came a change. A quartet of the leading journalists decided to pool their resources: they became sworn blood brothers, dedicated to uncovering the truth. They were calling themselves the Four Musketeers, we heard. Shortly this changed: they were now known as the Combine.

  ‘And the Combine means business,’ Herbert Winlock reported to Miss Mack one hot afternoon on our houseboat. Helen Winlock had almost recovered from her bouts of fever by then, and he had brought her and Frances to have tea with us. Helen’s improved health had restored his spirits; he was enjoying the journalistic fray.

  The press knew, he said, that once Carnarvon returned to the Valley, and he was due from Cairo any day now, things would hot up. Their daily pilgrimage to the tomb had given them one solitary but useful lead: they knew that the clearing of the Antechamber was nearing completion. Once it was emptied, the excavators would tackle that mysterious third wall; it would, at long last, be breached – and then the world would discover whether or not the first intact burial chamber of an Egyptian king ever found lay behind it. That story was the great prize – and the Combine intended to break it.

  ‘Will there be another official opening, when they remove that wall, Daddy?’ Frances asked, as she and I passed cups of tea.

  ‘There certainly will. And it’s going to be quite something.’

  Miss Mack leaned forward. She never forgot the demands of The Book, even when the taking of notes was impossible. ‘An official opening for the inner chamber? Do you know, Herbert, when – exactly when – this will happen?’

  ‘I do, Myrtle. But my lips are sealed. Sorry, sworn to secrecy. The Times will cover the great day – but apart from that, it’s a news blackout. Carter’s terrified the date will leak. The Combine has eyes and ears everywhere.’

  The ringleader of the Combine, he went on, was the special correspondent sent out by Reuters, one Valentine Williams. The handsome, dashing Mr Williams wrote books – spy stories, or ‘shockers’ – but was a seasoned reporter and an indefatigable newshound. Some weeks before, on discovering that Lord Carnarvon and Eve were about to return to Egypt, he’d booked a passage on the same boat for himself and his wife. Together they had approached Carnarvon and Eve in the bar of the Adriatic, and then stuck to them like limpets for the remainder of the voyage. This imaginative tactic had amused Carnarvon, but got Williams nowhere. He’d been getting nowhere in Luxor too – and that had made him all the more determined, Winlock said, grinning. ‘Williams intends to break the story of the inner chamber. He says he’ll scoop The Times if it kills him.’

  Williams was backed up by three other senior reporters, we learned: there was a man called H. V. Morton from the Daily Express, a Fleet Street star, one of Lord Beaverbook’s finest, author of several bestselling travel books. There was Mr Bradstreet, a tricky customer, stirring up trouble via The New York Times. And there was Lord Rothermere’s secret weapon, special correspondent for the Daily Mail, one Arthur Weigall. Like those of his fellow Combine recruits, his reports were internationally syndicated.

  ‘Carter and Carnarvon need to watch their backs with Weigall,’ Winlock went on. ‘He writes romantic novels and works of popular Egyptology now. But he used to work in Egypt. He was an Inspector for the Department of Antiquities, back in the halcyon days before the war. It was Weigall who oversaw Carnarvon’s first dig and ensured he was given a lousy
unrewarding site to work on too. Weigall has no time for gentlemen excavators – and no time for Carter, either. They loathe one another and have done for years – which doesn’t bode well.’

  ‘At daggers drawn, Lucy,’ Frances whispered. ‘You remember: we saw Mr Weigall in the Valley. He’s the short, fat, pink-faced one. Jovial, but kind of smarmy.’

  There was a silence. Miss Mack was staring forlornly at the hills. ‘What a great many books these reporters have written,’ she remarked, in an unhappy tone. ‘Do you think they’ll be planning more books, Herbert – about Tutankhamun’s tomb, for instance?’

  ‘Books by the barrowload, I expect. Imagine the potential sales – there were five thousand visitors to the Valley yesterday, did you hear? “Tutmania”, Myrtle, that’s what they’re calling it. And that’s before we know whether Tutankhamun’s actually buried there. If Carter finds an intact burial chamber… well, you can imagine.’

  ‘Do you believe that Mr Carter will find an intact burial, Daddy?’ Frances put in dreamily. She had been staring at the Nile and now stirred restlessly.

  ‘What, the king himself, in all his funeral finery?’ A shadow passed across Winlock’s face. ‘Well now, Frances, my hunch is that Carter just might… and I truly hope he does. I’d like to live to see that. Faustian stuff – I’d darn near sell my soul for it.’

  ‘You should keep quiet about those hunches of yours, darling,’ Helen said, quietly.

  ‘So I should! I mustn’t speculate. A couple more weeks and we’ll all know the truth.’ In his easy way, Winlock altered tack. ‘Meanwhile, to return to Arthur Weigall… Carter and Carnarvon should take care with him. He’s clever and unscrupulous – and what’s more, he’s a close friend of Rex Engelbach’s. Engelbach is furious with the way things are being handled at the tomb: the secrecy, the difficulties created when he tries to make routine inspections. He’ll pass on those concerns. In fact, I’d lay good money it’s thanks to him and Weigall that the Combine is now taking a new angle.’

  ‘And that is?’ Miss Mack asked.

  ‘Oh, causing as much trouble politically as possible,’ Winlock replied, suddenly irritable. ‘Cosying up to the Nationalists in Cairo. Stirring up the Arab newspapers. This deal with The Times was a disaster, Myrtle. It’s ensured that the rest of the press coverage is hostile. Carter and Carnarvon need to build bridges fast. I’ve tried to get Carter to see that, but there’s not much he can do: it’s Carnarvon who makes the decisions. Infallibly the wrong ones. Lordy is so insulated by his wealth and his class that he just can’t see how damaging those decisions are. He has nothing but contempt for bureaucrats; he resents Egyptian officialdom. He’s been able to snap his fingers at the world for his entire life, Myrtle. Why stop now?’

  ‘Maybe all this adverse publicity will change his ways?’ Helen suggested. ‘What they’re writing now is pretty incendiary.’

  ‘I doubt it. Carnarvon finds it amusing. One in the eye for all those grubby journalists he so despises. The ones who work for a living. The ones who aren’t gentlemen.’

  ‘I think you’re wrong, Mr Winlock,’ I said, finding my voice, speaking for the first time and surprising everyone, myself included. ‘Lord Carnarvon might even like journalists. I don’t think he minds whether someone’s a “gentleman”. One of his closest friends is a jockey, Eve told me. He doesn’t care tuppence about class distinctions.’

  ‘Really? You sure could have fooled me,’ said Winlock.

  Who do you think was right, Nicola – Mr Winlock or me? I wrote later that night, Miss Dunsire’s fountain pen clasped tight in my hand. I inspected the paragraphs I’d already written: my italic script was near perfect now, as Nicola herself had remarked in her last letter to me. Let her be the arbiter, I thought – and imagined my pages winging their way to her. She and my father were renting an apartment in Athens, with a view of the Acropolis, she’d told me in her last letter, received six days before: And I have never loved a place more than I do this. After your father leaves for the library, I sit on the balcony and wait for the maid, who is called Iphigenia and – even better – is married to a man called Achilles. She brings me strong coffee and little rolls and the letters – and if it is a very good day, there is one from you. I store up its contents and carry them about with me – and it makes me invincible.

  I need that because, in truth, I have one or two small worries: my mother has been ill, this time genuinely so, I believe, and is pestering me to go to Provence, and Clair (Clair the bicycle thief as you called her) writes to say – oh who knows? Some litany of misfortunes. So I am a bad woman, Lucy, and toss these complaints aside, and turn back to your letters. What an age they take to reach me! But we’ll be moving on to Paris next week, where they’ll reach me more quickly – and once I’m there, it won’t be long until you and I are reunited. The end of February! I am counting the days, Lucy – are you?

  Write to me at once, and bring me up to date with all these excitements at the tomb. Give me the latest instalment on Miss Mack. Poor lady! Not cut out to be a writer, I’m afraid. Writers need hearts of stone. And, just occasionally, the capacity to think is of assistance to them. Tell me, is she still pressing on with this absurd project, or has she realised that this silly Book of hers is doomed?

  Miss Mack had not realised this; quite the contrary. My own loyalties were torn: I wished Nicola were less scathing on the subject of The Book – although her latest comments were mild compared to others she’d made. I wished I’d been more discreet when describing Miss Mack’s writing travails. I hadn’t meant to poke fun, let alone be malicious. I would watch my words in future, I decided; meanwhile, wishing Miss Mack nothing but good, even when she most irritated me, I wanted her project to succeed. ‘Perhaps we haven’t paid enough attention to the newspapers, Miss Mack,’ I suggested, the day after our meeting with the Winlocks. ‘If we went over to Luxor today to collect our post, we could stock up on all the latest editions.’

  Miss Mack agreed at once: she had been ignoring the press coverage, she admitted. We made the trip to Luxor after breakfast. There were no letters awaiting us at the Poste Restante, but Miss Mack stormed the news kiosk at the Winter Palace without delay, and there was an unforeseen bonus to our expedition: we sighted the Combine.

  They had forsaken the Valley for once and were plotting on the hotel terrace, waiting for Carnarvon and Eve who were now said to be arriving from Cairo later that day. Miss Mack felt an immediate need for refreshments: we were soon seated at a table next to the cabal, in earshot and able to inspect all four men closely. Miss Mack did so with zeal. I found it hard to take an interest – the recent dearth of letters was weighing on me and souring my mood. Nothing from Nicola, nothing from Peter and Rose… The journalists were disappointing: four middle-aged men in hats, suits and ties. They seemed to relish the fact that many of the hotel guests crossed the room to avoid them.

  ‘Lepers,’ the one I recognised as Valentine Williams was saying plaintively to the short, fat man seated next to him. ‘Social lepers, that’s what we’ve become, Weigall. Carnarvon’s packed the hotel with his friends and supporters. That’s why they’re all giving us the cold shoulder. Sassoon cut me at breakfast, and I’ve know him since prep school. Who’s that old trout in the corner? She’s got her beady eye on us.’

  ‘Lady Pemberley, Carnarvon’s cousin. She’s a close friend of the mater’s. She’s bound to know something – and I just might have an in there, old boy.’ Weigall lifted his hand in salute; the dowager raised her lorgnette, stared him down and turned her back on him.

  Weigall sniggered. ‘Oh, Lord. Won’t be getting much info out of her by the look of it.’

  ‘We’re not getting much info out of anyone,’ Valentine Williams replied tetchily. ‘Now I really know how ostracism feels. It’s giving me the pip. I might require medicine.’

  The Combine reporters agreed that medicine was a good idea all round. As Miss Mack and I left, weighed down with newsprint, four large brandies had just reached t
heir table. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. This eccentricity visibly cheered Miss Mack. ‘Frankly, Lucy,’ she said with asperity, ‘the Combine is not impressive. I don’t see any of them writing books. I’m surprised they can manage two-hundred-word articles.’

  She revised this view rapidly when, on returning to our houseboat, she read the papers she’d bought. I sat there trying to fight the irritability and moodiness that had yet again seized hold of me. Miss Mack scanned the articles. With a sigh, she passed me the Express, Mail, Post and New York Times. ‘Oh dear, they speak with one voice, Lucy. I have to admit, they do marshal their facts in a persuasive way. Also, they seem to have done quite a lot of digging.’

  Indeed they had. The Combine might have been cold-shouldered by the well-heeled, pro-Carnarvon guests at the Winter Palace, but others, it seemed, had been only too keen to speak to them. These people were cloaked in anonymity, but reading between the lines I suspected that Rex Engelbach might have talked, and Ibrahim Effendi might have seconded him: someone had been singing – warbling away like Carter’s canary.

  The charges were uniform, and as follows:

  1

  Lord Carnarvon and Mr Carter had not observed protocol when first entering the Antechamber: a government inspector should have been present and was not. This contravened the terms of Carnarvon’s permit. As a spokesman from the Antiquities Department confirmed, further breaches could lead to that permit’s withdrawal, and all rights in the tomb reverting to the government.

  2

  Lord Carnarvon’s agreement with The Times laid him open to accusations of profiteering. It had been an act of profound insensitivity to exclude Egyptian reporters; to exclude all reporters created the impression, no doubt erroneous, that the excavators had something to hide.