Prodigies

by Francis King

  ‘We have a large medicine chest – full of all the latest remedies,’ Harriet volunteered. ‘My daughter’s responsible for it. She’s really very knowledgeable about medicine. As about most things.’

  Lucy hesitated. ‘ That’s kind of you. Very kind.’ She laid down her knife and fork. She had eaten even less than the others. ‘ There’s a doctor here, just one. A Greek. He used to be good but now … Mr Warburton says that he’s gone native. But to hit the bottle in a Moslem country is hardly to go native, is it?’ She gave a dry laugh.

  Later, Lucy was standing out alone on one of the many verandas, a hand to a trellis from which a rose, long deprived of water, was drooping, its once white blooms rusty at the edges. From behind her she could hear the men still carrying in their burdens. They were shouting to each other, and from time to time loud laughter erupted. Above those deep voices, Alexine’s sharp, clear voice, an intermittent descant, issued her orders.

  Lucy gazed out, across the film of heat shimmering above the flat, yellow-brown expanse of uncultivated land beyond the overgrown garden, towards the far horizon. She sighed. She wanted to get back to her den and to her writing. But all this din and movement were too distracting. Well, at least the sum offered by the visitors for their quarters for a period of three months was more than ten times what she had expected. She was ashamed now that she had not at once told them that it was far too high. But, if Roderick continued as he was now, they would need all that money and more to see them through the months ahead.

  She turned at a rustle behind her. It was Addy, delicately stepping out through the French windows, a forefinger inserted between the pages of the book that she was carrying with her.

  ‘I see you’re a reader like myself,’ Addy said.

  ‘Yes. There’s little else to do here.’

  ‘I’ve read so much on this journey of ours. It’s the only thing that’s kept me sane.’

  Now, as previously with Alexine, Lucy felt a sudden, unexpected rapport with this emaciated, heavily rouged woman, dressed as though for a stroll in St James’s Park. As a result, she felt that she could put the question that she had been wanting to put throughout that shamefully awful meal. ‘What made you start on such a journey?’

  Addy opened the book and looked down at it, as though the answer were in it. Then she snapped it shut. ‘ I can’t speak for the others. But life there – in the Netherlands – had become so dreary and pointless. The same people, the same parties, the same things … An awful monotony. I wanted – wanted – something different.’ She gave a brittle laugh. ‘Well, I certainly got it.’ She moved over to one of two wicker chairs standing in a corner, dusted it off with a hand, and sat down. Lucy hesitated for a moment, then joined her on the other chair.

  ‘And you, my dear? What brought you to Khartoum?’

  Lucy gazed once more at the horizon, a wavering line shimmering through the heat-haze. Then she turned her head and smiled at Addy: ‘Love. Oh, and one or two other things too.’

  Addy again gave her brittle laugh. ‘One must be careful of love. It makes one take decisions one later regrets. I know that from my own experience.’

  ‘Yes. That’s what happened.’ There was despair in Lucy’s voice.

  ‘And what brought your husband here?’

  ‘Money. His family was a poor one. He wanted to make money. And at first he did, lots of it. That’s how we came to buy this ludicrous house – which, as you can see, is far too big for us. Then … things began to go wrong … His Arab friends cheated him, his English friends …’ She paused. ‘ Rumours. They started rumours.’

  ‘Rumours? What sort of rumours?’

  Lucy hesitated, biting on her overfull upper lip. ‘ That he was not just dealing in ivory and things of that kind. That he was also … also … dealing in slaves.’

  ‘Oh, my dear!’ Lucy had expected Addy to be shocked but instead she merely burst into laughter. ‘And was he?’

  Lucy was indignant. ‘No! Of course not. No. They were jealous. That was all.’

  ‘Why should they be jealous?’

  ‘Because he was making money. And because he was made honorary consul here. As you know.’

  Harriet was calling: ‘Mrs Warburton! Mrs Warburton! There’s a small problem here. I wonder if you could spare a moment?’

  Wearily Lucy got to her feet.

  ‘I’m sorry we’re being such a nuisance,’ Addy said.

  ‘Oh, no, not at all, not at all.’

  Once again Addy opened her book. She was more interested in the problems of Balzac’s characters than in those of this melancholy, resigned, faded woman.

  Chapter Nine

  HARRIET HAD STACKS OF LETTERS with which tO deal.

  But before she could attend to them, she must, with her usual thoroughness, ensure that her room was precisely as she wanted it.

  ‘No, Nanny, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have that chest under that window. I think it would be better over there … Oh, this carpet has got terribly dusty in transit. You’d better call two of the men and tell them to beat it … Those curtains look dreadful – far too short for such high windows. Perhaps we could swop them for those in Alexine’s room. Her windows are far less high …’

  Nanny Rose listened patiently and then no less patiently carried out these often contradictory instructions and others like them. She no longer wore her hair in a small, hard bun at the nape of the neck but cut short and dressed in stiff ringlets. This, like the change in her usual expression from a suppressed irritation to a smiling benevolence, made her look much younger. She summoned the men back to work again on windows from which, at their first lazy attempt, they had failed to remove all the dead flies and wasps. She stood over the elderly woman and her daughter whom she had ordered once more to scrub the stone floor. She placed the carriage clock precisely where Harriet could see it when she woke, on a console table at the foot of her bed, and oversaw the installation of Harriet’s own commode, washstand, wash-basin and ewer, the last of these covered with a crisp, newly laundered towel, in the bathroom adjoining the bedroom.

  As a result of all these efforts, Harriet could at long last walk about the room and out on to the veranda in the certainty that nothing dirty, broken or out of place would catch her eye. Now, after so much delay, she decided that she could settle to those letters. She sat down at her desk, took up the silver paper-knife that had once belonged to the Admiral, and slit open the first of them. It came from one of the closest of her women friends, a baroness. How were they getting on? the baroness asked. They were so much missed. Were they getting proper food to eat? Was the heat too terrible? So much had been happening since their departure. But what had been happening seemed more and more distant and trivial to Harriet, as she turned over stiff page after page, a coronet embossed on each, and read yet another paragraph, written in letters the bold swagger of which seemed to be an oblique indication of the importance of the writer.

  The next letter was from John. He had concluded all the financial transactions requested by Alexine, but he must confess that he was frankly worried about the recklessness of her expenditure. Certainly she was an extremely rich young woman, but even the extremely rich had to be provident. Only recently one of the richest men in England, similarly heir to a fortune derived from the West Indies, had gone bankrupt and been obliged to escape to Paris with his wife, his wife’s jewellery and what scant funds he could manage to lay his hands on.

  Harriet put the letter down half-read. She would pass it on to Alexine. Since the money and the extravagance were both hers, why did he not write to her direct? He was a good, decent man but, oh dear, he did so often irritate her.

  Having read all the letters, she began the next day conscientiously and carefully to answer them. Since her friends might pass round her letters, she struggled to find different ways of giving the same news. In such circumstances, many people might have been tempted to exaggerate the perils and hardships of the journey, but that was not Harriet’s way
. She wrote lightly and flippantly, even when describing some close encounter with disaster or even death. Her style, colloquial and relaxed and generously scattered with dashes and exclamation marks, lacked any of the formality of the majority of her correspondents. But she was an observant woman, and she described what she had seen in a manner so vivid that, weeks later, reading what she had dashed off, the recipients would be as much enthralled as by any book or newspaper article.

  The letter-writing finally concluded, she began on yet another of her lists. This was a list of all the things that, filched, broken, mislaid, or recklessly consumed, would now have to be replaced, if possible in Khartoum, before the next stage of their journey. But where were they going, and when would that be? She did not know. When she had last asked Alexine, the reply was: ‘Oh, don’t let’s think about it yet, mama. I have all sorts of ideas and it’s difficult to choose between them.’ Harriet sometimes wondered whether Alexine had any ideas at all.

  It was as she was writing down:

  Dried haricot beans

  Dried apricots

  Flour (wheat, maize?)

  that Addy appeared, still clad in peignoir and slippers although it was almost noon. Having entered the room, she gazed around it, appraising everything. She approached the desk and examined the two neat piles of letters received and letters to be mailed.

  ‘You’ve been working hard.’

  ‘Yes, very hard. I’ve got cramp in these fingers.’ Harriet wriggled them. ‘I was hoping to practice a little on the piano.’

  ‘I must have received almost as many letters as you. But I’m not going to bother with any of them.’

  Harriet was shocked. ‘But you must, Addy!’

  ‘Why must I?’

  ‘Well, if people go to all that trouble to write, then the least one can do is –’

  ‘Oh, please! The only advantage of being in this dreadful country is that one is out of their range.’

  ‘They’re your friends.’

  ‘Fine friends! Have your forgotten how they gossiped about us?’

  ‘Oh, everyone gossips. That’s a fact of life. From what Mrs Warburton tells us, they even gossip here. Soon, we’re going to be as much a topic for gossip in Khartoum as in The Hague. You mark my words.’

  Once more, like a caged animal, Addy paced the room. She picked up the clock and, stared at it, and then, to Harriet’s concealed annoyance, failed to put it back exactly where Harriet and Nanny Rose had long ago decided that it should stand. Lowering her head, she gazed at a photograph of her brother-in-law in an elaborate silver frame. It was one of those taken by the Baron.

  ‘Do you miss him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Philip.’

  Harriet thought. She was an unusually truthful woman. ‘Sometimes. Less and less. You know’ – she ran a hand through her hair – ‘ I’ve almost forgotten him. Not what he did – or we did together. But what – what he was actually like.’

  ‘Did we ever know that?’

  Harriet did not answer.

  Addy lowered herself into one of the six Chippendale chairs brought with them, to Lucy’s amazement, from The Hague. Termites would destroy the chairs, Lucy had warned. Termites had a burglar’s instinct for what was valuable. They had devoured a pretty little mahogany sewing-box, once her mother’s, that she herself had brought to Khartoum. Now, she said, she kept everything of value in tin boxes.

  ‘Do you realize that Nanny and Daan are sleeping together?’

  ‘Yes, I imagine they must be.’ Harriet was offhand. Weeks had passed since a late evening when, emerging from her tent, she had seen the two of them walking arm-in-arm, at a leisurely pace, beside the Nile. Nanny was wearing a black bonnet, a black shawl and high-buttoned black boots. Daan had on his wide-brimmed straw hat and was carrying a cane. They might have been a long-married couple going for an evening stroll along one of the Dutch canals.

  ‘You imagine they must be!’

  ‘Well, why not? What other company is there for them? Each has the other – and no one else.’

  ‘But even so …’

  Harriet shrugged.

  ‘You wouldn’t take such a relaxed attitude back at home. Would you? If you knew that they were sharing a room. As they are. Yes, yes, they are! What do you suppose Mrs Warburton will think if she finds that out? Nanny Rose’s room is never slept in. I passed it late last night, the door was ajar, and so I peeped in. No sign of her.’

  ‘Well, I hope they’ll be happy.’

  ‘But it’s immoral. They’re not married, Harriet.’

  ‘You never used to be greatly concerned about morality. I was. Once. But out here … That’s the wonderful thing. To be free of it. I mean, of that rigid, bourgeois idea of what’s moral and what isn’t. Wonderful!’

  ‘This trip has changed you!’

  ‘Yes, it has, it has.’ Harriet nodded her agreement. ‘It’s changed us all. For better or for worse. Yes, you too.’ She laughed, head on one side. ‘If Daan did decide to make an honest woman of her, how would he do it’Who’d marry them? There’s a Roman Catholic mission but they’re not Roman Catholics. Perhaps there’s also a-Lutheran one. Or do you think that an honorary consul can conduct a marriage service? But if Mr Warburton is so ill …’ Again she laughed. ‘It looks as if they’ll have to go on living in sin until we return to civilization. The only consolation is that Nanny, unlike Philip, is unlikely to produce a bastard.’

  ‘It’s no joke!’

  Not for the first time, Alexine studied the Colonel’s creased and tattered map. During the journey, late at night, when she could not sleep despite her tiredness after a day of almost incessant riding and walking, she would often light a candle, take the map out from her pocket or her bag, where she carried it folded up in a small leather purse and, holding it up to the flickering illumination, would try to discover from it what she should make her next objective once they had reached Khartoum. It was as though she believed that, through the erratic, fine, scarlet lines, branching hither and thither like innumerable blood-vessels, the far-off Colonel could somehow direct her.

  This time it was by the light of a colza lamp, not a candle, that she gazed down at the map. There was Cairo and there, far south of it, was Khartoum. In the area around Khartoum the red network was particularly complex and dense. There were so many arrows that to attempt to follow them, even with a magnifying glass, merely confused her. Eventually, frustrated, she once more folded up the map and replaced it in the purse. Then she put the purse under her pillow, as though she expected it to speak to her in her dreams since it so obstinately refused to do so while she was awake.

  The next day, after breakfast, when she, Lucy and Sunny were sitting together in the garden, Alexine said: ‘You know, Mrs Warburton, I’d so much like to meet Mr Warburton.’

  ‘Lucy. Please call me Lucy. In a place like this, when we’re living so close to each other and there are so few other Europeans – it seems somehow ridiculous to be so formal.’

  ‘May I? May I really?’ Alexine was delighted. ‘Yes, I’d like that. And you must call me Alexine. That’ll mean we’re really friends.’

  ‘You’d like to meet my husband?’

  ‘Yes. I want his advice.’

  ‘I’m not sure that he’s up to giving anyone any advice. He was a great one for giving advice in the past,’ she added, surprising Alexine whh the bitterness of her tone. ‘But now …’

  ‘Please ask him. Tell him I need some advice. Badly. He knows this whole area so well. Doesn’t he? He’s Hved here so long. He’s known – and helped – all the great explorers.’

  ‘And a lot of gratitude he’s got for it!’

  ‘Do please try. I promise not to tire him. Please.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can persuade him. I’m never very good at that. But I’ll try.’

  Sunny, who had been squatting on the floor at Alexine’s feet, now tugged at her sleeve. ‘You said you’d take me to buy clothes this morning.’

 
‘Yes, yes. In a moment’

  Lucy was amazed. The boy certainly had charm, but it was ludicrous how Alexine spoiled him.

  ‘Where do you think I can get some clothes made for Sunny? Something really smart.’ Alexine still did not realize it that, in buying clothes for Sunny, she was repeating what, by taking him to his expensive tailor, her father had done for Sammy.

  Lucy made two suggestions: an Egyptian with a shop in the market, and a Greek tailor. The latter could copy well enough. She ran a hand down her plain, ill-fitting brown dress. He had made that for her, she said, copying it from one from England that had worn out.

  In no way to Lucy’s surprise, Alexine was clearly not impressed.

  The Egyptian’s shop was little more than a rickety wooden shed with an open drain, choked with refuse, running in front of it. Daan leapt across the drain with remarkable agility for someone of his years, to be followed by Sunny. Then they both held out their hands for Alexine. But ignoring them, one hand raising her skirt while the other held her parasol aloft, she too leapt across.

  ‘This doesn’t look much of a place,’ Daan said, peering up at it. ‘Shall I take a dekko first?’ But, as he spoke, Sunny had already entered.

  ‘Oh, let’s all go in.’

  Having so often been importuned to buy, buy, buy, Alexine was surprised by the indifference of the old man who, gazing vacantly into space, hands clasped in his lap, now rose slowly to his sandalled feet, and merely looked at them with a vague enquiry. One of his eyes was clouded with cataract; the other was red-rimmed and gummy in one corner with a yellow-green pus.

  Daan, who had already begun to wander round the premises, said: ‘This is just a junk shop.’ He picked up a fork, bearing an elaborate monogram, its twin tines bent askew, which rested by itself beside a letter-rack on the top of a rickety table. The shop-keeper at once swivelled round to watch him, until he had replaced the fork.