The Girl in the Nile

by Michael Pearce

  “Well, no. It was just that she became—tiresome, really, she was so clinging. And then I thought: It is not I she finds special, any responsive man would do, it is the fact of being in love she finds special. I am not expressing myself very well.”

  “Being in love is special for women,” said Zeinab.

  “Yes, yes. I realize that, but I think that also there has to be one man particularly who means something special to you—”

  “There were other men?”

  “No, no. I did not mean that. I meant, I think, that it is very important to Leila, or it was then, to have a man, simply have a man. Any man would do, it didn’t have to be me. It was as if she was desperate—No, no, I didn’t mean that. What a terrible thing to say! I meant—”

  “She needed love and protection,” said Zeinab.

  “Yes,” said Suleiman, downcast. “Yes, I am sure you are right. Only—I’m not very good at that sort of thing. I—I want to get on with my work.”

  “Suleiman is a sculptor,” said Gamal.

  “Well, I am trying to be,” said Suleiman modestly. “Not very successfully, I am afraid. But I did have the chance of an exhibition, and it was just at that time, and I was working hard, and she—she, well, I suppose she was a distraction.”

  “Is it just that he is like you?” Zeinab asked Owen. “Or are all men like this?”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Gamal. “But I know that if you are an artist, that is how it is.”

  “It is not art that needs new roses,” said Zeinab, “it is the way men see women.”

  Owen hurriedly intervened.

  “At any rate,” he said, “you felt less warmly towards her than you had done.”

  “Yes. But she wouldn’t let me go. She clung.”

  “What do you expect?” said Zeinab. “A woman’s love is not like a man’s. Once you give it, you can’t take it back.”

  “She pursued you?”

  “Yes. Everywhere I went.”

  “And that was how she came to be at the reception?”

  “What reception is this?”

  “The first night of Gamal’s play, New Roses. There was a reception afterwards.”

  “I remember it. Was she there? Yes, I think she was there.”

  “Was she invited?”

  “No one was invited,” said Gamal. “It just happened.”

  “She tagged along.”

  “Did she come with you?”

  “No. I don’t think she came with anyone. But when I came into the room, there she was. And I thought: There she is again! Will I never be rid of her? This is what I am ashamed of,” said Suleiman. “It was unkind.”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  “No. I tried to avoid her. In fact, I did avoid her. She did not speak to me.”

  “Was that because she was speaking to someone else?”

  “I do not know.”

  There was a general appeal around the tables.

  “Who did Leila speak to at the New Roses party?”

  One or two names were suggested.

  “The Prince, I think,” said someone.

  “Narouz?”

  “Yes. It was the only thing he found interesting during the evening, I think.”

  “The man is a Philistine,” declared Gamal.

  “What was he doing there, anyway?”

  “Raoul was trying to tap him for money.”

  “Some hope. He’s only interested in car racing.”

  “Women?” asked Owen.

  “Leila, certainly. They went off together. Sorry, Suleiman.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Suleiman. “In fact, it’s a relief.”

  “How did you get to know her?”

  “She turned up, didn’t she, at one of our soirées?” He appealed to the group.

  “Faisal brought her.”

  “Who is Faisal?”

  “Oh, he’s not one of us. He hung around us for a while. He thought he was interested in the arts. One of those rich men, you know, no talent, no dedication. He went off to France.”

  “And Leila?”

  “Leila stayed. She started going around with—who was it? That journalist.”

  “Hargazy?”

  “That’s right. She went around with him for a while. Off and on. I don’t know when it stopped.”

  “When she took up with Suleiman.”

  “She was always tagging along with someone.”

  “What else could she do?” asked Zeinab with asperity.

  “Did she have any other friends?” asked Owen.

  “I wouldn’t have thought so. Judging by the amount of time she spent with us.”

  “Why all these questions?” asked someone.

  “Because she’s dead,” said Zeinab.

  “Dead?”

  They were shocked.

  “When was this? Are you sure? I saw her only recently,” said Gamal.

  “It was Tuesday,” said Zeinab. “Tuesday when she was killed.”

  “We don’t know that for cert—” began Owen, but his voice was drowned in the barrage of questions, cries of concern and comment.

  “But that is awful!”

  “Leila! I cannot believe it!”

  “I didn’t know her well, but—somehow one had got used to her.”

  “None of us knew her well, I suppose.”

  “Didn’t any of you ever talk to her?” demanded Zeinab.

  “Of course we did. We all spoke to her.”

  “That’s not the same thing. Did you ever talk to her in the way she wanted? Needed?”

  “Suleiman did.”

  “I’m not sure I did,” said Suleiman thoughtfully, “now.”

  Zeinab was very quiet afterwards as she and Owen drove home in an arabeah. Cairo was at its most magical. The streets were still and cool and silver in the moonlight. The shadows of the minarets made gentle curves in the dust and when Owen looked up, there they were, graceful against the deep blue of the Egyptian night. He bent over and kissed her.

  Zeinab kissed him back mechanically. She was thinking about Leila.

  “She was very alone, wasn’t she?”

  “If you leave home you are alone.”

  “If you’re a woman,” said Zeinab.

  “She must have wanted to leave home terribly badly. Maybe I ought to take a look at her family.”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t so much that she wanted to leave home. Perhaps it was more that she just wanted to be somewhere else. Be someone else.”

  Later, she looked up at him. The moonlight was on her face and he could see her clearly.

  “You are going to do something about it, aren’t you?” she said.

  ***

  The next morning, though, he found a message on his desk from Paul, asking if they could meet for a drink at lunchtime at the Club.

  They took their drinks out on to the verandah where they would not be disturbed.

  “I’m not following you,” said Owen, bewildered. “I thought you wanted me to stay close to it?”

  “Not so close. Keep a gentle eye on it from afar.”

  “Well, fine. I can do that,” said Owen, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s Mahmoud’s pigeon really. I’m just there to see, well, that it doesn’t build up into anything major.”

  “That’s right.” Paul nodded approvingly. “We wouldn’t want that, so continue keeping an eye on it. But from afar. No need to involve yourself directly. Ease off a bit. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of other things to do.”

  “I have, yes. There’s a lot on just at the moment. But—I’m still a bit puzzled. I thought this was important?”

  “Well, hardly. Certainly not in itself. An accident, a murder—they come with the ice cream in Cairo. It was just tha
t this could have had political implications.”

  “And you don’t think that’s likely now?”

  “I think there are more important political considerations.”

  “Well, fine, you would know. Mahmoud will be getting on with it anyway. He doesn’t need me.”

  For all Paul’s highly developed, possibly overdeveloped, political sense, he was normally straight with Owen. After all, he explained, politics wasn’t everything—what about drink, for instance?—and if you couldn’t be trusted to call properly when you were playing tennis, who would want to play with you?

  Now he was toying uncomfortably with his glass.

  “I have a feeling,” he said at last, “that Mahmoud may be receiving the same sort of advice.”

  “To back off? What’s going on?” Light dawned. “You can’t—you don’t mean to say you’re giving in to Narouz?”

  “Certainly not! Narouz is just a sideshow, a distraction. The fact is, though, that we could do without a distraction just now.”

  “It’s this Special Agreement, is it?”

  “How do you know about that? It’s supposed to be top, pinnacle-top, secret. Only the Consul-General and the Khedive are supposed to know.”

  “You know.”

  “I am the right side of the Consul-General’s brain. How do you know?”

  “I have access to the left side of the Khedive’s brain.”

  “You keep your spies in peculiar places, Gareth.”

  “I do. But they didn’t tell me about this. Nor that you were giving in to Narouz.”

  “We’re not giving in to Narouz. It’s just that we don’t want anything to ruffle the Khedive’s hair just when the negotiations are approaching a delicate stage.”

  “Narouz is a sideshow. You said it yourself.”

  “The Khedive will have to carry his family with him. Potential heirs, at least. The Treaty is to do with a possible extension of the British presence here in return for continuing political support. And cash, of course.”

  “And Narouz is one of the heirs?”

  “Potential. Only potential.”

  “So you don’t want us to press this case?”

  “Are you in a position to press a case?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Why don’t you just leave it like that? Let it roll along, latent, so to speak. It’ll mean we’ve got a hold over him. We might use it sometime.”

  “I don’t know if Mahmoud will play.”

  “I don’t think Mahmoud will have any option. Not if he’s formally taken off the case.”

  “I don’t know that I want to play, either.”

  “Now, Gareth, no moral heroics, please!”

  “It’s not moral heroics, it’s Zeinab. She’s rather got the bit between her teeth on this.”

  “Zeinab? How the hell does she come to be involved? She’s not a friend of the girl, is she?”

  “No. Has friends who are. It’s not that. It’s—well, an abstract principle of justice, I suppose.”

  “Oh, come, Gareth! Zeinab’s not interested in an abstract anything! A more concrete, realistic girl I’ve never met. Emotional, perhaps, but—”

  “She’s pretty emotionally involved here.”

  “How the hell did she get to be emotionally involved? How the hell did she get to be involved anyway? Gareth! You’ve been talking to her! Is that it?”

  “A bit.”

  “You daft idiot! Couldn’t you see that she would get emotionally involved?”

  “We’ve talked about things before.”

  “About girls trying to strike out alone in Egypt? I’ll bet you haven’t.”

  “It has not arisen,” said Owen stiffly.

  “Can you imagine Zeinab talking about a thing like that and not getting emotionally involved? Zeinab would get emotionally involved if she was talking about breakfast.”

  “We’ve got to talk about something, haven’t we?”

  “Your work? That the sort of thing you talk about in bed, Gareth? You worry me. You sound more and more like—I’ve got to say it—yes, a husband, Gareth.”

  “I don’t think things have got quite as far as that yet.”

  “They seem to me to be drifting that way. And if they are, then I think you want to think about it, Gareth. Because I can see problems. Zeinab’s a lovely girl, but—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Paul!”

  “I know, I know. All the same—”

  “Let’s get off the relationships. You were giving me instructions.”

  “Advice, I was giving you. Advice.”

  “Advice. Back off the investigation. Leave it all alone. Let Narouz get away with it.”

  “That was not my advice. Timing was what I was talking about. And the balance between political and personal priorities.”

  “I get the message.”

  “I hope you do. Especially the bit about balance.”

  “I do. But will Zeinab?”

  Chapter Six

  “No,” said Zeinab.

  “Look, let’s not be too hasty—”

  “I do not understand. First you are on this case, then you are off. One moment you give all your time to it, you don’t come home till late at night, you don’t even come home in the afternoon like ordinary men, the next you are giving no time to it at all. Is it the same man, I ask myself?”

  “Of course it’s the same man. It’s just that—”

  “Don’t you care at all what you do? Or is it that your feelings suddenly alter? They switch and change all the time, phu! like this. You are,” said Zeinab, “emotionally erratic.”

  “It’s nothing to do with emotion—”

  “Oh?” said Zeinab, bridling. “You don’t care about Leila? You don’t care about a poor girl, alone and brutally murdered? You have no feeling? Is that it?”

  “No, that’s not it. Of course I care. But—”

  “She is only a woman, is that it?” said Zeinab, firing up. “An Egyptian woman, yes? What is a mere Egyptian woman to the mighty British? They brush her aside, yes, like a fly.”

  “Calm down, calm down! I am very concerned—”

  “Concern! Pah! Is that all? I am concerned too. I am concerned that you have a heart of stone. I am concerned that with you one minute it is this, the next it is that. I am concerned that the man who is here today is not the same as the man who was here yesterday. I—”

  “OK, OK.” This was going to be as difficult as he had imagined. “It’s not me that changes,” he said mildly. “It’s just that—well, circumstances change.”

  “And you change with them, yes? Just like that. Something happens and immediately you change.”

  “No. It’s not like that.”

  “It’s not? Well, it seems to me just like that. We talk, we agree, I go away and start doing something, and then suddenly it’s all different. It all changes. You blow hot, you blow cold. You go to bed saying one thing, you wake up saying another.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Oh, isn’t it? I am glad. Because I thought perhaps it was the same with me. Now you love me, now you don’t.”

  “You know I love you.”

  “But that,” said Zeinab, “is precisely what I don’t know. Now that we have all this change. You loved me yesterday, or so I believed. Yes, I believed you. But tomorrow? Will you love me then?”

  The large dark eyes stared at him tragically. Owen, who had suspected that Zeinab was enjoying the drama, melted totally.

  “Of course I will!”

  “You say it,” said Zeinab somberly, “as if you meant it. But then, you spoke about Leila in that way too.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Oh? Why is it different?”

  “That—well, that’s work.”

  �
�I do not make that distinction,” said Zeinab.

  “At work you’ve got to go along with things more. You’re subject to pressures.”

  “I see.”

  She sat there silently for a few moments. Owen hoped that she was calming down.

  “That’s it, is it?” she said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Pressure.”

  “Arguments, rather.”

  “And you have been persuaded by these arguments?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I haven’t,” said Zeinab.

  “You haven’t heard them,” Owen pointed out.

  “You won’t tell me them. You can’t,” said Zeinab, “tell me them. And do you know why? Because they are British arguments. They are not my arguments, they are not even your arguments. They are British arguments.”

  She suddenly dissolved into floods of tears.

  “I hate you!” she said. “I hate you!”

  “Oh, look—”

  “No. Don’t touch me. It is not the man I love who touches me, it is the British.”

  “You mustn’t see it like that!”

  “I see it like that because it is like that.”

  “It is not like that.”

  “No? Tell me then: are you going to do what they say?”

  “Well—”

  “You see,” said Zeinab.

  ***

  Mahmoud had a case that morning in the Mixed Tribunals and Owen wanted to send a letter to England so they agreed to meet at noon at the Post Office.

  Mahmoud wasn’t there when he arrived, so he went inside to buy his stamps and then came out to use the wet roller hanging against the wall. The heat tended to dry up the gum on stamps and getting them to stick on was the very devil.

  Facing the front of the Post Office was a long row of sealmakers and scribes squatting in the dust with their customers. The ordinary Egyptian could not write and if he wished to send a letter he would have to get a scribe to write it for him. And since he could not sign it he would use a seal.

  Owen wondered suddenly whether Leila had been able to write. Almost certainly not, for few women could. How, then, did Narouz communicate with her? If by note, then she would have had to get a scribe to read it to her. But perhaps Narouz sent a messenger.

  In either case the man would know the message: and in either case they ought to be able to find him. But he was forgetting.