Prodigies

by Francis King

  Addy approached Alexine from behind, as she still leaned over the taffrail. ‘Throwing money away once again?’

  Alexine turned to face her. Then, saying nothing, she turned away.

  The two women had already begun to get on each other’s nerves.

  When not playing the piano, working at her ledgers or, with the assistance of Daan, Nanny Rose and a reluctant Osman, supervising the domestic staff, Harriet was happy merely to sit out on the deck, usually at a distance from Addy and Alexine, and watch the sometimes changing but usually unvarying scene. When passengers on other dahabiahs, amazed by the size of their party, shouted out their greetings, it always irritated her. But out of a natural courtesy, she would greet them in return, wave, and even go to the rail for the conversation that they so obviously wanted.

  These slow, uneventful days, when the chief excitements were the temporary disappearance during a walk ashore of one of the dogs in pursuit of a pariah bitch on heat, a quarrel with knives drawn but never actually used between two of the soldiers, and the firing off of a gun in warning by a Russian boat whenever it passed or was passed, ended when they arrived at Aswan. Their party alone was proceeding up the cataracts. The others, daunted by the expense of hiring scores of men to tow their boats for four miles up and up over a forest of boulders sticking out of the churning, frothing water, were turning back.

  Addy retreated with Nanny Rose to the newly opened hotel in Aswan as soon as they had arrived at the cataracts.

  ‘Well, it’s a relief to be back in civilization again!’ she exclaimed, as she began to remove her clothes, preparatory to taking a bath.

  ‘Civilization, madam! Do you call this civilization? Just take a look under that bed. It looks as though there’d been a duststorm.’ Nanny Rose bustled over to the bell-pull and tugged on it, even though she had already ordered a maid to bring water for the tub. ‘Someone will have to see to that.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want anyone to see to it until I’ve had my bath.’

  Harriet, accompanied by Daan, Osman Aga and three of the Russian tourists, all men and all painters, who were not leaving until the next day, first scrupulously supervised the unloading of most of the luggage and the animals to lighten the boats – she had been warned of frequent thefts – and then, as the day began to wane, led the party to a cluster of jagged rocks, from which they could watch the arduous passage. Alexine, despite Harriet’s protests, had insisted on remaining on board with Flopsy and the crew.

  ‘I can see how the pyramids got themselves built,’ one of the Russians remarked, as the near-naked men, straining, sweating, shouting, grimacing and constantly drenched with spray, hauled on the tow-ropes.

  ‘Oh, I do hope my daughter will be safe.’

  ‘Your daughter is the sort of person who can survive anything,’ the Russian said. He had had an argument with Alexine about the dogs, telling her that it was cruel to confine them to a boat. Refusing to be cowed, she had at once retaliated that the Russian boat looked filthy and that it was even more cruel to confine anyone human to it.

  When night fell with extraordinary abruptness, only the first of the four cataracts had so far been negotiated. Once more aboard the steamer, Harriet slept fitfully, seeming still to hear the thunder of the water, the shouts of the men, and the shrill dissonance of the innumerable birds startled by so much unaccustomed activity. Alexine declined to sleep, sitting up on deck with Flopsy in her lap while she talked to Osman, now in Arabic, now in English and now in French.

  Aroused yet again by their voices above her cabin, Harriet descended from her bunk and made her stiff, weary way up on deck.

  ‘Oughtn’t you to try to get some sleep?’

  It had particularly irritated her that, at her approach, Osman should have bared his teeth, gleaming in the moonlight, in an impudent grin; and now it irritated her even more to see, from close quarters, that he had stripped off most of his clothes, no doubt because it was a night of exceptional heat and humidity for that time of year.

  ‘Oh, no, mama! I couldn’t possibly sleep after all that excitement. There were times when I really thought we were about to capsize.’

  ‘I was burned to a cinder on those rocks.’

  ‘You should have gone to the hotel with Aunt Addy and Nanny Rose.’

  ‘No. I had so much to see to here.’ Harriet turned her head aside, frowning. Then, all at once, her bad humour evaporated. ‘ It was worth it. Quite extraordinary.’ She repeated what the Russian had remarked about the Pyramids.

  ‘Yes, those poor men! I heard that the last time they dragged that steamer up the cataracts two of them drowned.’

  ‘Do you remember the Schaffhausen? And the fjords? They were nothing compared to this.’

  Harriet moved off along the deck, sniffing the smoke from Osman’s cigarette. Then she paused. From the dahabia immediately behind the steamer, she could hear someone singing. A man or a woman? From the voice, high-pitched and nasal, it was impossible to say. She imagined some song of love and loss. Tomorrow she would try to pick out the melody on the piano. She hummed it over to herself, as a sudden gust of wind, surprisingly cool, wafted through the hair hanging down her back to her waist. She and Addy had always been proud of their hair. But, since she had arrived in Africa, hers had become increasingly thin and grey.

  At Korosko, the party learned that the waters of the river were now so unusually low that they would either have to wait, perhaps for many weeks, or else abandon the steamer and the dahabias and make their way by land across the great U-bend of the Nile to rejoin the river again at Abu Hamad.

  Addy became almost hysterical at the news. ‘But why did no one warn us of this before? Why? Why?’

  ‘Because no one knew.’ Alexine struggled to conceal her growing exasperation with her aunt.

  ‘Well, why didn’t they know? Why? Why?’

  Harriet was as appalled by the prospect as her sister. But, unlike her, she had not forgotten the stoicism inculcated in them in their youth by their stern father and their even sterner mother. Wearily, with aching head and eyes unaccountably red and itching, pad of paper and pencil at the ready, she once more made an inventory of the immense quantities of provisions that, over the next two days, had to be unloaded from the boats and then loaded on to camels.

  During that interminable process, she constantly watched, ticking off item after item, as all these things, followed by innumerable trunks, hatboxes and packing-cases, were brought down the gangway, to be first stacked as she directed and then covered in tarpaulin. The men groaned more loudly than ever when they had to lift the piano and the two tea-chests containing Addy’s library of books.

  On the first night away from the steamer, seated in a tent with a lamp flickering beside, Harriet again laboured at her notes, while, at the farthest end of the encampment, the others watched the performance of. some clumsy, barely pubescent dancing girls from the nearby town. She wrote:

  Dogs to be carried in panniers.

  Ditto sheep, fowls, turkeys (for consumption on journey).

  Daan on donkey.

  A, NR and self on camels.

  Water. How many goatskins? Consult Osman Aga.

  She put a hand to her throbbing forehead. There was too much to remember. What else? What else?

  Frantically, she riffled through the pages of the ledger, one after another covered with her handwriting, until, at long last, she found a clean one. Again she took up the pen.

  102 camels

  6 guides

  30 camelmen

  ‘Why don’t you try to get some sleep? It’s a long journey tomorrow.’ It was Nanny Rose, dressed in her customary widow’s cap and thick black dress. She had lost weight on the journey, her pocked cheeks fallen in and the dress sagging on her.

  ‘It’s all too big, too big for me!’ Harriet cried out in despair. ‘All these people, all these animals depending on us – not just for their food and their safety but for their fives. And the camels! How are we to find more camels? I�
��m not a Napoleon. I leave that to Alexine. I’m just an ordinary woman.’

  Nanny Rose waddled up to her. She put her hand on her shoulder. Then she did something that she would never have done in The Hague: she bent her crooked body forward and put both arms around Harriet, from behind, and laid her cheek against hers. She might have been comforting Alexine when she was young.

  ‘You’re not an ordinary woman, dear. You’re an extraordinary one. Don’t worry about it. It’ll all work out. You’ll see. We’ll be fine. Yes, yes! I’m sure of it.’

  Impulsively Harriet swivelled round in her chair and now put her own arm around Nanny Rose’s neck. ‘Oh, Nanny, Nanny! What would I do without you?’

  ‘I expect you’d get on much as you do now,’ Nanny Rose replied drily. She released herself and made to leave the tent. ‘Well, goodnight, madam. If you need me, I’m just in the next tent, as you know.’

  Harriet got up from the chair, fetched a bottle of laudanum from her medicine case and poured some drops into a glass, which she then filled with water from a carafe. The water looked cloudy and had a salty taste to it. She thought of the sparkling, clean water of the spring at Bled with a sudden longing and despair. Then she stretched herself out on the narrow camp bed and tried to sleep. Somewhere, far off, one of the dogs was howling.

  Eventually she fell asleep but only for a brief time. She fell asleep again, woke again. When she awoke, it was always to a throbbing of her head and to a feeling that every bone in her body was simultaneously aching and shaking.

  ‘Mabel!’ She heard the whisper between one dream and another.

  Mabel? Who was Mabel? Of course. That was Nanny Rose’s Christian name.

  ‘Mabel!’ The name was repeated, with greater urgency. She recognized the voice. It was Daan’s.

  Why should he want Nanny Rose at this hour? And why should he be calling her by the Christian name that no one ever used?

  Head propped on elbow, she listened intently for more. But she heard nothing. Eventually she fell asleep again.

  Chapter Five

  ‘NO, I REFUSE, I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE to travel on one of those brutes.’

  Wrapped in white muslin, so that only her eyes and nose were visible, a wide-brimmed straw hat tied under her chin, Addy stood beside the camel, a book in one hand, while the other held the lead of her favourite dog, a tiny white Spitz called Mister. The dog was scratching himself, indifferent to what was going on.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing else on which you can travel,’ Alexine said in the sharp tone that she now constantly used to her aunt. ‘Unless you’d like to have the donkey. You can’t possibly walk.’

  ‘But how am I to stay up there? And it might bite me. They say camels bite. And the bite can be poisonous.’

  The argument prolonged itself. ‘Well, I’m going to get up on one, willy nilly,’ Nanny Rose proclaimed; but Addy remained unpersuaded even by that.

  ‘I can’t, can’t, can’t!’

  ‘Well, in that case you’d better return to Cairo.’

  ‘How can I do that? The boats have all gone. And anyway what would I do there?’

  ‘Well, you’d just have to wait for us, wouldn’t you?’

  It was Daan who eventually proposed a solution. Would it not be possible to make a, well, a kind of bed on top of the camel with cushions and a mattress? Everyone was dubious, until Osman began to issue commands for this to be done. Soon the camelmen were laughing among themselves as they busied themselves with first hoisting up the horsehair mattress and then strapping it with ropes to the camel. They had never before seen anything so odd.

  ‘And how am I suppose to get up?’ Addy demanded, when the cushions had also been secured.

  ‘They’ll lift you,’ Alexine said.

  ‘Who are going to lift me?’

  ‘The camelmen. You’re far too heavy for me.’

  ‘Couldn’t Daan and Nanny Rose lift me?’

  ‘You’re far too heavy for them.’

  Addy let out a shrill scream as the men hoisted her aloft. Then, as she settled herself, she shouted down: ‘It’s really not at all bad. Can you pass me up my book? Oh, and Mister!’

  After innumerable false starts – one of the dogs jumped out of his pannier and raced off into some scrub, a packing-case had not been properly loaded and fell off a camel spilling its contents, Addy demanded some water – they finally got moving. Harriet and Nanny Rose were also each on a camel, with a camel boy striding out beside it. Daan was on the white donkey, Alexine on the Arab. Osman also rode.

  Alexine was amazed by the variety of the countryside through which their huge caravan wound its way for days and days on end. At one point, as they proceeded up a grass road between low rocks, she called out to her mother: ‘We might be in Scotland! It’s so green, green! This isn’t a desert! Why do they call it a desert?’ Only a few hours later, she was overawed by the distant mountains which, in the clear light of evening, suddenly rose up before them.

  The next day, they reached the foothills of these mountains and took the path that Osman indicated, through a narrow cleft. The white sand of the path shone with fragments of marble and granite; the rock face on either side was streaked with what looked like rusty iron. Later, as they encamped, the moonlight seemed to have dusted everything with snow.

  ‘Oh, I’m so stiff!’ Addy groaned. ‘That camel! It’s like travelling on the high seas. And it stinks!’

  They all laughed. Addy looked hurt. Then she too began to laugh.

  The next morning, Addy had succumbed to a violent diarrhoea. Time after time she had to be helped down from the camel and hoisted up again. Desolately she would totter off to where some bushes or rocks provided cover for her. At first, Daan had attempted to escort her but she had angrily waved him away. On his donkey, he had ridden with his Grouser legs rolled up, and in consequence his calves were now raw from sunburn. Harriet noticed how solicitous he was for Nanny Rose, far more than for Alexine, Addy or herself.

  Alexine briskly dosed Addy with laudanum. She had with her a German medical encyclopaedia recommended to her, so long ago it now seemed, by Colonel Scott in Bled. It described laudanum as a panacea for tropical illnesses. As a result of the massive doses pressed on her, Addy spent most of the time sleeping, when not yet again being helped down from the camel and tottering out of sight.

  One evening, Addy was particularly fractious over dinner. ‘When is this ghastly journey to end? When, when? I’m worn out. It’s going to be the death of me.’ She turned on Alexine. ‘ Why on earth did you persuade me to come?’

  Alexine controlled herself with difficulty and said nothing.

  ‘When it’s all over, you’ll be pleased and proud to have done it,’ Harriet said placatingly.

  On the following morning Addy had a high fever. She lay out on her camp bed, her shift, drenched in sweat, clinging to her body. She alternated between restlessly twisting and turning from side to side, and lying totally motionless, eyes closed. From time to time, supported by Harriet or Nanny Rose, she would stagger to the commode which had been placed, surrounded by wicker screens, near to her tent. It was the task of one of the Egyptian servants repeatedly to carry its contents to a pit dug some distance from the encampment. Clearly, Harriet said, they would all have to wait to continue their journey until she was better.

  Alexine was consumed by impatience at the delay. Because of the size of their party and the time that it took to set up camp each night and then to strike it each morning, they were merely inching their way insect-like to their destination, whereas the parties of Arabs who from time to time rode triumphantly past them, were galloping to theirs. She had until now enjoyed the grandeur and luxury of their progress, so much envied by the other foreign travellers on the Nile. But now she began to rage inwardly against this ridiculous, constantly hampering superfluity of companions, servants, animals, tents, furniture, and provisions.

  On the second morning, three of the soldiers were found to have deserted. They came from a s
ettlement only a few miles away and Osman said that they must have decided to make for their homes rather than continue with a journey far more arduous and lengthy than they had expected. On hearing a rumour from one of the Egyptian maids that, before going, they had pilfered some provisions, Harriet, inventory in hand, at once began to carry out a check. But, stacked as they were, it was impossible to do so properly. She ordered the tarpaulin to be pulled off a pile of bags of flour and sugar, and then began laboriously to count them. As the sun beat down on her, she began to feel nauseous and dizzy.

  Alexine, followed by Flopsy, whom she had yet again been combing for the fleas that devoured all the animals, came up: ‘What are you doing?’

  Harriet explained.

  ‘But what’s the point?’

  ‘Well, I must see what’s missing. Mustn’t I?’

  Alexine was stricken with the pathos of this dumpy, middle-aged woman, strands of hair sticking to her flushed neck and forehead, stooping to count sacks in the glare of the midday sun.

  ‘Why? Why must you?’

  ‘If things get stolen …’

  ‘So? They get stolen.’

  ‘But they may have taken things vital to us.’

  ‘With luck, we can replace them in Khartoum.’

  ‘If we ever get there.’

  ‘Of course we’ll get there.’ Alexine spoke with growing irritation.

  ‘What was the guard doing? I told Osman that there must always be a guard.’

  ‘Sleeping, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, if only one could rely on someone!’

  ‘You can rely on me. Do stop all this fussing and complaining!’

  Then, remorseful, Alexine rushed over to her mother and put her arms around her. ‘Don’t become discouraged now. Darling! Please! You’ve been such a rock to us all. Without you, we’d never have got even as far as this. Please!’

  She began to coax her mother to the largest of the tents, used as a makeshift living-room. ‘Sit down. I’m going to get you some water. Sit!’ Her voice ceased to be tender and acquired an imperious sharpness. She pointed to a chair. She might have been commanding one of the dogs.