The Collector's Daughter

by Gill Paul

  She paused. There was a word she couldn’t think of. Howard had drawn a huge scale map of the Valley, charting the areas of each previous excavation, including the depths to which they had dug. What had he called it? What was that word?

  “He worked out there was an area beneath some old w-workers’ huts that hadn’t been explored.” Suddenly it came to her. “A gridblock plan!”

  “And he suspected Tutankhamun’s tomb might be there?” Ana asked.

  Eve nodded. “He was quietly confident it was in that v-vicinity.”

  * * *

  Howard spread the roll of paper across his table, weighting down the edges with books. It was like an engineer’s drawing, in pencil on squared paper, the writing tiny and barely legible. Eve and Pups stood to watch as he explained.

  “In 1905, a faience cup engraved with the name Tutankhamun was found here,” Howard told them, pointing to the spot, his fingernail encrusted with what looked like centuries’ worth of dirt. “As you’ll remember, Eve, he was an Eighteenth Dynasty king who ruled for nine or ten years. Theodore Davis assumed that KV54, which he and I had excavated in 1907, was the tomb of Tutankhamun, because it contained embalming oil jars with his name on them. In 1913, he decided there were no other tombs to be found in the Valley, and that’s why he retired when he did, but I disagree. I think Tutankhamun’s real tomb might be somewhere in this vicinity, as yet undiscovered.” He circled an area of the plan with his fingertip.

  “Crikey!” Eve felt a shiver down her arms. “And you plan to find it?”

  “Your father and I are negotiating the terms of the concession with the Egyptian government—but of course it is moving slowly, as everything does out here. Negotiations for the country’s independence somewhat muddy the waters because the nationalists are insisting that all artifacts found on Egyptian soil should belong to the state. But they know they need our expertise and investment, so I’m sure we will prevail.”

  “An undiscovered tomb in the Valley!” Eve exclaimed. “Isn’t that the holy grail of every archaeologist in the world? You’ll be famous, Howard Carter. Gosh, I really hope I’m there when you find it.”

  * * *

  “I think I knew that day in Castle Carter,” she told Ana. “Howard inspired c-confidence. Pups always had total faith in him, although he s-struggled to find the money.” She paused. “Everyone th-thought he was wealthy because he was an earl, but places like Highclere take an enormous amount of . . .” Damn. The word had gone.

  “Upkeep,” Brograve helped her, and she smiled her thanks.

  “While you’ve been talking, I’ve had an idea,” Ana said. “You clearly have remarkable recall of events that happened fifty years ago. Would you be prepared to talk me through the whole story if I return with a tape recorder? It would make an invaluable record for the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Perhaps they could make it available for visitors to listen to.”

  Eve turned to look at Brograve, feeling unsure. “I’d probably forget bits.”

  “I could ask you questions as we go along, and bring some images to prompt you. . . . Although you’ve proved to me that you are a good raconteur and need little prompting.” She smiled warmly.

  Eve liked the idea, but what if her speech let her down? She would sound like an idiot if she forgot words and stammered all the way through.

  “We can edit out any hesitation and pauses,” Ana said, reading her mind. “You’d be amazed what they can do with tapes.”

  Eve’s second worry was that there were things her father, Howard, and she had agreed never to tell about the discovery of the tomb. What if she forgot and blurted them out by accident? She would have to stay on her guard.

  “Take your time to decide,” Ana said. “I’m flying to Cairo tomorrow but I’ll be in London again before Christmas and I’ll get in touch to see if you want to chat. There are some questions I would very much like to ask you. It should only take a couple of hours, if that.”

  “I hope my speech will be better by then,” Eve said. “I’m w-working hard at it.”

  “It sounds fine to me already,” Ana replied. “I know from your husband that you are making remarkable progress.” She glanced at her watch. “I mustn’t intrude on your visit any longer, but I just wanted to say it’s been an honor to meet you—a great honor. My father would be very envious.”

  She shook Eve’s hand firmly, and Eve could see how genuinely pleased she was. It was nice to make someone happy.

  Brograve saw her to the door, and returned a few minutes later, his eyebrows raised.

  “Well,” he said. “That was quite something.”

  “Wh-what do you think?” Eve asked, her lips stretching into a grin that she could feel was only slightly lopsided now.

  “I think I haven’t seen you so happy since . . . since before you were admitted to hospital.”

  He never called it a stroke, Eve noted. He always found some other form of words.

  “I suppose it will g-give me a goal to aim at,” she said, taking her time between words. “I need to be speaking per-perfectly before she comes back. I’ll tell Katie to keep my nose to the g-grindstone.”

  She was like a new woman, Brograve thought. Egypt had always had that effect on her. She became luminous, lit from within. Back when he first knew her, she used to be animated when she told him about digging in the Valley of the Kings with her father and Howard. It set her head and shoulders above other girls in that era, who in his experience had rather limited conversation about new gowns and romance novels.

  Then a shadow crossed his brow. It was all very well talking about the discovery of the tomb, but he very much hoped Ana Mansour didn’t want to talk about what happened after. That wouldn’t be a good idea in Eve’s current state of health. Not good at all.

  Chapter Ten

  London, November 1972

  Katie came to visit Eve at Pine Trees twice a week, invariably late and breathless. She never wore a bra and her breasts jiggled as she spoke, nipples poking through her cheesecloth blouse like fabric-covered buttons. Eve forced herself to look at her face and not let her gaze drift lower.

  Katie started their sessions with some warm-up exercises, in which Eve pronounced letters in exaggerated fashion, then went on to some tongue twisters: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers” or “She sells seashells on the seashore.”

  “Can you think of some words that start with ‘w’?” Katie asked one morning. It was a letter Eve still had difficulty with.

  “W-wit, wealth, allure,” Eve replied, quick as a flash. “I know ‘allure’ doesn’t have a ‘w,’ but those were the q-q . . .” She’d forgotten the word. “. . . the things my girlfriends and I looked for in a man. We gave them marks out of five.” And then the word came to her. “Qualities.”

  “Wit, wealth, and allure? Sounds very wise. I always go for the good-looking ones and get my heart broken.” Katie gave a rueful smile.

  “I didn’t follow those rules, though,” Eve said. “Brograve wasn’t wealthy when I married him, and he wasn’t flashy the way some other men were. My mother w-wanted me to marry a man called Tommy Russell. She bent over backward to bring us together. She had no idea how w-wild he was.”

  “That sounds like an interesting story,” Katie said. “Wild in what way?”

  “Booze, fast cars, loose w-women . . . Tommy was fun to party with, but I knew instinctively he wasn’t the kind you should ever think of m-marrying. My m-mother knew nothing about love, I’m afraid.”

  * * *

  In March 1920, three months after meeting Eve at the Residency Christmas party in Cairo, Tommy Russell returned to London, and he came to call on her and her mother at the family home in Berkeley Square. On being shown into the drawing room, he bowed and presented Eve with a book of Rupert Brooke poems bound in blue leather.

  “My sister tells me he’s very popular. I believe dying is essential for a poet’s career these days.”

  “‘There is a corner of some foreign field that i
s forever England,’” Eve recited. “Thank you. Are you a fan of poetry?”

  “Not really. I don’t have much time for reading,” he replied.

  Eve’s mother interrupted. “It must be hard for you to hold a book, is it not?” She turned to Eve. “Lord Russell’s shoulder was shattered by a bullet in the trenches. He was treated at my hospital, which is how we met.”

  Now that she looked more closely Eve could see that his right shoulder hung lower than the left. “I’m sorry. How ghastly for you!”

  He shook his head. “Not ghastly at all. It was what we soldiers call a ‘blighty’—a wound severe enough to get me sent home, because I couldn’t hold a gun anymore. I probably wouldn’t be here otherwise because my unit was decimated in battle after I left. Luck of the draw, I guess.”

  Eve wanted to ask how he got shot, what it felt like, and whether he had lost many friends—but they were all questions she knew her mother would disapprove of. “I hope you enjoyed the care in my mother’s hospital,” she said instead. “When it was based at Highclere, it was my job to wheel around a trolley at four o’clock and serve glasses of stout or sherry to the men. They were terribly grateful.”

  “They must have thought they were hallucinating.” He grinned. “A vision of beauty bearing alcoholic beverages is every man’s dream as he crouches in the mud of Flanders.”

  Beautiful, was she? The compliment slipped out so easily that Eve guessed it wasn’t the first time he’d called a girl beautiful and that it wouldn’t be the last. His conversation was entertaining, though. He had spent a year in America, with some cousins, and disagreed with Lady Carnarvon’s view of Americans as crass and ill-educated. She was forced to admit her opinion was based on a month’s stay in Boston so her experience was less extensive than his. It wasn’t like her mother to back down, Eve thought—in fact it was almost unprecedented. She clearly wanted to impress Tommy.

  He stayed just half an hour, but before he left he asked if Eve would like to come to a party a friend of his was throwing that evening.

  “I’m afraid I’m not available to chaperone,” Lady Carnarvon said. “I must be at the hospital this evening as a patient is coming around from surgery.”

  “It’s not a formal party,” Tommy insisted. “Mostly young people. Perhaps you would like to bring some friends?” he asked Eve. “Then you could look out for each other. And I will, of course, vouch for your safety.”

  He caught eyes with her and his look had clear mischief in it.

  “I’d love to,” she replied.

  * * *

  Eve invited the other three members of the unholy quadrumvirate to Tommy’s friend’s party and they arrived together at the address in Hanover Square. Straightaway Eve realized it was a world of difference from the formality of Queen Charlotte’s Ball: there were no dance cards, no buffet supper, and no string quartet; instead a jazz band was playing loudly in a corner of the drawing room, the trumpet notes strident. Each of the reception rooms that led off a central hall was crowded with young people smoking cigarettes in long holders—even the women—and drinking what were clearly alcoholic drinks from coupe glasses.

  “Mama would have a conniption fit if she could see this,” Eve whispered to Maude. “Yet it is her doing because she is so desperate to match me with Lord Russell.”

  Eve felt out of place, like the gauche country girl she was, and sensed Maude and Lois did too, because they huddled together. Only Emily seemed at ease. When a Black woman, with a dress falling off one shoulder, began to sing with the band—“Sweetheart, won’t you please come home”—Emily swayed to the tune, mouthing the words, and Eve wondered how she knew them.

  “There you are!” Tommy cried, appearing through a doorway. He motioned to a passing footman to fetch them drinks and Eve made the introductions. “My god, your friends are visions of loveliness,” he whispered, his lips brushing her ear. “My pals will simply gobble them up.”

  She took a sip of the drink she was handed and shuddered. She’d tried her mother’s gin before, so knew what alcohol was like, but this was fiercer. It tasted poisonous, the way she imagined Lysol would taste.

  Tommy introduced them to a group of his male friends, then led Eve to a quiet alcove in the hallway where they would be able to hear each other speak. But what should she talk to a gentleman about? The war was taboo, according to her mother, and Tommy had said he didn’t read books.

  “You weren’t at Queen Charlotte’s Ball, were you?” she asked.

  He pulled a face. “I loathe the pretentiousness of the formal events of the Season. This kind of thing is more up my street. But I imagine you will be dragged around them all. Your mother is formidable.”

  Eve laughed. “I suppose you saw her in action at the hospital. She’s tiny—two inches shorter than me—but utterly indomitable.”

  He described an argument he had overheard when her mother had wiped the floor with a doctor who disagreed with her diagnosis of a patient, and he mimicked her: “I know liver disease when I see it and if you don’t, I suggest you go straight back to medical school.”

  “Imagine what it’s like having her as a mother!” Eve exclaimed. “Almina doesn’t ever admit to being in the wrong. She’s constitutionally incapable.”

  Tommy leaned in close so she could see the pinkish veins in his eyes, and his dark blond lashes. His breath was so alcoholic that she imagined it would catch fire, like a dragon’s, were he to strike a match.

  “I can’t think about her,” he said. “I’m too busy trying to decide how I can impress her daughter. What would it take?”

  Eve had never been asked a question like that before so it took some thought. “Do you drive?” she asked, in a moment of inspiration, and squealed with delight when he told her he had one of the new Model T Fords, just released that year.

  “I read Ford has begun making cars that are not hand-cranked but operated with a starter motor,” she said. It had been in her father’s newspaper.

  “You do know a lot for a girl,” he said. “Yes, she has a starter motor and runs like a dream. Do you fancy a turn? She’s parked outside.”

  “Gosh, I’d love to,” Eve said. “I adore driving.”

  “Come on then. What are we waiting for?”

  He took her arm and pulled her toward the door, staggering over the edge of a rug and bumping into a metal lamp stand that teetered back and forward before deciding to stay upright. Eve had never seen a drunk man before, at least not to her knowledge, but she could tell Tommy wasn’t in a fit state to drive.

  “Perhaps I’ll just have a peek inside,” she said. “I don’t want to abandon my friends.”

  The car was shiny and black, with a roof and proper glass windows at the sides, so it would be cozy and dry in the rain—unlike her father’s Panhard, which just had a canvas top. Eve squeezed into the front passenger seat, which was upholstered in soft gray leather. The controls looked very modern, with three floor pedals, which Tommy told her were clutch, reverse, and brake, and a small round button set alongside them.

  “How do you start it?” she asked.

  “Easy,” he said. “Pull up the ignition lever, then the throttle, pull the choke handle, then step on the starter motor.”

  He demonstrated each move for her, then pressed his foot against the button in the floor. Even though her hands weren’t on the wheel, she felt that familiar sensation of pent-up energy as the engine rumbled to life. The car leaped forward, hitting the bumper of a car parked in front.

  “You idiot! Turn it off!” she cried, and when he didn’t obey immediately, she stood and stretched her foot across his leg to push down on the brake pedal. He closed the throttle and the engine fell silent.

  “Thank you for the demonstration,” she said, pulling her leg back, embarrassed it had pressed against his in such an intimate way. “It’s a beautiful machine.”

  “And sho are you,” he slurred, looping an arm around her shoulders and yanking her toward him.

  Eve had nev
er found herself in a situation like this before. All thoughts of politeness flew out the window. “What are you doing? Stop it!” He leaned forward to kiss her and she pushed him away but still his lips landed on her cheek, at the corner of her mouth. “You clearly don’t know how to behave yourself so I’m going back inside.” She reached for the door handle, but Tommy wouldn’t let go.

  “Don’t be a spoilsport,” he said, and his palm cupped her left breast, a thumb stroking the nipple.

  “Lord Russell!” she cried, smacking his hand away. “I think you have mistaken me for another kind of girl entirely. Get off!”

  He slumped back with a shrug, muttering to himself. Eve swung the door open, jumped out of the car, and ran inside to hunt for her friends. Did all men do that to girls they barely knew? She spotted Maude first and grabbed her arm.

  “You’ll never guess what Tommy just did!”

  “Does he have a case of wandering hands?” Maude asked. “I had a feeling he might be that sort.”

  Eve laughed, although she was still feeling flustered. “You’ve got it in a nutshell.”

  A letter of apology arrived the following day. Tommy wrote that his behavior was the result of an old army friend forcing him to drink whisky over a long luncheon, and he hoped it would not permanently taint Eve’s opinion. She forgave him, and the unholy quadrumvirate went to many more of Tommy’s friends’ parties. But Tommy’s chance of marrying Eve never got out of the starting gate, not after that.

  Chapter Eleven

  London, November 1972

  It may not seem much to your generation but for a man to touch your breast in 1920 was a very shocking thing.” Eve laughed at Katie’s expression. “I knew I could never trust him again, although we stayed friends for some time afterward.”

  “Had you already met Brograve by then?” Katie asked.

  “I had, but I didn’t see him often. He was a recluse. He wouldn’t come to parties or balls unless his mother positively forced him. The only time I bumped into him was at horse races. He was always at Royal Ascot in June. He gave me a tip on a horse once—Diadem.” She smiled, pleased to have remembered the name. Tiny details like that were particular triumphs. “We both won a few pounds that day.”