Prodigies

by Francis King

  Harriet tore,open the envelope that a servant had just delivered on foot, and stared down at the invitation inscribed in French with a number of extravagant curlicues. The servant, squatting out in front of the stable block that now housed most of the domestic staff, had said that he would wait for an answer.

  ‘It’s extraordinary how many invitations are coming in. These people’ – she held out the card – ‘have never met us and I’ve no idea who they are.’

  Lucy lowered her head to squint down at the invitation. Before the arrival of the Dutch party she had broken her glasses, dropping them on the stone floor of the kitchen, and their replacement had still not arrived from Cairo.

  ‘Oh, it’s from Monsieur Thibault. The French consul. His wife’s name never appears on an invitation. She was a Sudanese slave.’

  ‘I don’t think we can be bothered to go,’ Alexine said. ‘ Not because his wife was a Sudanese slave,’ she added hastily. ‘That doesn’t trouble me at all. But because I find all these parties so dull.’

  ‘You won’t find Mr Thibault dull, I think. You might even find him interesting. He’s been here for years and years. He first came here, as Roderick did, merely as a trader. He’s the man who sent the first giraffe to the London Zoo.’

  ‘Oh, we saw it!’

  ‘Well, that’s something you can talk to him about.’

  ‘Since they’ve never met us – and, in most cases, we haven’t even got introductions to them – I don’t know why all these people keep asking us to their houses,’ Addy said.

  ‘Well, you can imagine how things are here,’ Lucy responded. ‘Nothing ever happens – except that each year a number of bores die and a number of bores replace them. You’re a novelty. You’re not interested in gold or copper or ivory or slaves – or even in exporting animals to some zoo or other. You’re aristocratic and rich and you have a vast retinue. To them, it’s like a visit from royalty.’

  ‘Shall we go?’ Harriet pondered, tapping the invitation against her mouth.

  ‘No!’ Alexine said.

  ‘Yes!’ Addy said. They spoke simultaneously. Harriet turned to Lucy. ‘I suppose you’ll be going?’ ‘Then I’m afraid you’ve supposed wrong. No, we are no longer

  personae gratae in that little circle.’

  ‘Oh! How’s that?’

  Lucy shrugged. ‘You must ask my husband that question.’

  As they were frantically preparing for the party – Addy had mislaid a cameo brooch and had convinced herself that it had been stolen, Harriet was dissatisfied with the ironing of her dress by one of the Egyptian maids so that Nanny Rose was now hurriedly re-ironing it for her, Alexine had returned late from a ride with Sunny and had then insisted on water being heated up for a bath – the ponderously dignified, grey-haired servant whom they now regarded as their butler announced the arrival of the Mudir’s barge.

  ‘The Mudir? The Mudir? Who on earth is he?’ Harriet asked Lucy, who happened to be sitting with her while she was awaiting her dress.

  ‘The Governor,’ Lucy said. ‘A Turk.’

  ‘But why should he send a barge for us? I thought we were dining with Monsieur Thibault.’

  ‘Yes, you are. But those two are thick as thieves. Which is, in fact, what both of them are. Each helps the other. Old Thibault pushes a bribe in the direction of the Governor, and in return the Governor does him a favour. The most usual favour is to make his barge available to him. Three years ago that favour turned into a disaster. The barge was hit by the Governor-General’s steamer, the crew all panicked, and some of Thibault’s guests, who had never learned to swim, were drowned.’

  ‘Well, I hope that we’re not going to drown. Alexine can swim but Addy and I never learned. Our father thought that swimming was a lower-class pastime.’

  ‘You’ll travel in the new barge, which was brought all the way from Cairo.’

  ‘In The Hague, we had a magnificent black and yellow brougham – made in England. Just as the Governor’s barge seems to be used chiefly for transporting Mr Thibault’s guests, so our brougham came to be used chiefly for transporting the guests of our friends and relations. It was borrowed so frequently that I often had to travel in more humble fashion myself, in one of our smaller and older coaches.’

  The barge was magnificent the only really elegant thing that they had seen since their departure from Cairo, Addy declared. Painted red and green, with armchairs upholstered in red and green damask and with a crew attired in uniforms of the same two colours, it was propelled majestically down the river by six oarsmen clearly in no hurry, so lethargic was their rowing.

  Addy, fearful that the breeze would disorder the elaborate coiffure created for her by the two maids whom she shared with Alexine and Harriet, fingered now it and now the cameo brooch that she had imagined to have been stolen until Nanny Rose had come on it in a drawer. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a barge like this to get us about the city?’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that!’ Harriet cried. ‘The next thing will be that Alexine will order one from Cairo. Or offer to buy this one for a sum so huge that the Governor will be unable to refuse.’

  Alexine, who had been watching the crew as they went about their tasks, suddenly said: ‘Isn’t that man beautiful?’ With her ostrich-feather fan she pointed at one of the sailors.

  ‘Oh, please!’ Addy protested.

  Harriet raised the jewelled lorgnette which she wore only on important occasions. She peered through it with her small, alert eyes. ‘ Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. They are a beautiful race, no doubt about it. When one sees someone like that, it’s like finding a diamond lying in the dust.’

  Addy again put a hand up to her coiffure. ‘What nonsense!’

  The Thibault house was set back from a surprisingly green lawn that sloped down to the river. ‘It looks like an even more petit Petit Trianon,’ Addy commented as, guided by a sprucely uniformed major domo who, standing motionless with arms folded across his swelling chest, had been waiting for them, they made their way up from the landing-stage. Lucy had told them that Thibault was the richest foreigner in the city. It was obvious that she was right.

  To their amazement Thibault was attired not, like his guests, in European formal dress but in what appeared to be the uniform of a high-ranking Turkish officer. He was even carrying a curved dagger in the red silk cummerbund encircling his vast girth. ‘Delighted, delighted,’ he murmured, as he lent over their hands to brush them with his full, moist lips.

  There was no sign of the Sudanese wife who had once been a slave. Later Addy was to say to him, ‘We’re so disappointed not to meet Madame Thibault’, to be told: ‘Yes, she is most disappointed not to meet three such distinguished guests. But the sad truth is – she is a martyr to migraine. And when the wind is in this direction – the Sudanese equivalent of the mistral – she is particularly vulnerable.’ Later still, as they waited endlessly for the arrival of the entrée at dinner, they heard a female voice, from behind the baize-covered door leading from dining-room to domestic quarters, raised in angry hectoring of the dilatory staff. Clearly her migraine had not prevented Madame Thibault from acting as behind-the-scenes stage-manager of the lavish occasion. No doubt Monsieur Thibault preferred it that way.

  The other guests gawped openly at the three Dutch women as they made their entrance into a long, low-ceilinged drawing-room, lit by elaborate, multicoloured chandeliers – ‘brought from Murano’, Monsieur Thibault said when Addy, who in fact thought them extremely vulgar, remarked on how ‘striking’ they were. Every object in the room – chairs, picture-frames, mirrors, even false Ionic columns – appeared to have been gilded. Monsieur Thibault triumphantly moved the women from group to group, making his introductions. This invariably began: ‘I am sure that you have heard of these three remarkable ladies,’ and then continued with references to their connections with the House of Orange and the extravagance of their progress, accompanied by a vast, polyglot retinue, from Cairo to Khartoum.

  It was clear th
at Monsieur Thibault had gathered all Khartoum ‘society’ – of which the Warburtons were no longer a part – with the purpose of impressing on everyone the importance and wealth of his three Dutch guests who, dressed in the height of fashion, at once became a focus for everyone’s eyes. ‘ Look at that necklace. Diamonds and rubies. Have you ever seen anything like it?’ ‘Even those shoe-buckles must have cost a fortune.’ ‘I love those ear-rings. They must be French, don’t you think? That bow shape could only be French.’ ‘Have you seen the diadem the girl is wearing? It reminds me of that one worn by the Empress Josephine in that portrait of her.’ Their clothes elicited even more excited comments. Most of the other women were dressed with an ostentatious lack of taste, to be ridiculed later by Addy during the journey home – if one must wear such an elaborate white collar and cuffs, then at least they ought to be spotiess, maroon was such an unflattering shade for a woman with that sort of muddy complexion, had they noticed how one of the pleated panels of that dress garishly embroidered with humming-birds worn by that elderly Greek woman was not merely coming away but was actually hanging loose?

  Before the summons to dinner Monsieur Thibault’s three daughters, beautiful girls with glowing brown skins, vivacious eyes and ample haunches and breasts, self-consciously arranged themselves on the floor around Alexine, as though they were about to pose for one of her photographs. One admiringly fingered the torchon lace trimming of her white muslin dress, ‘This must be from Paris.’ Alexine nodded, not wishing to say that no, it had been made for her by Madame Molnar in The Hague, since the Hungarian dressmaker was someone of whom she still did not like to think, much less speak. Another put out a brown hand and stroked the black patent leather toecap of one of her otherwise white slippers. The third raised Alexine’s wrist to examine the bracelet on it.

  Excitedly they began to question her. Had she been to Paris? And to London? The eldest had travelled as far as Venice with her father – it was on that occasion that the chandeliers had been purchased – but the other two had never travelled farther than Cairo. The French magazines arrived so late in Khartoum, and some that were sent never arrived at all. Oh, they so much envied her her voyage! From time to time, their mother had travelled, chiefly as interpreter, with their father on his journeys into the interior, but he would never allow any of them to go too. He was terribly strict in that way, old-fashioned, unaware that times were changing.

  ‘When will you start on your travels again?’ the eldest asked.

  ‘As soon as possible. But there are so many preparations to be got through first.’

  ‘Oh, couldn’t I come with you?’ another of the girls asked.

  ‘Couldn’t we all come with you?’

  Alexine shook her head. ‘I don’t think your father would allow it.’

  The girls groaned and sighed.

  At dinner, Harriet was seated on Monsieur Thibault’s right. As dish after dish appeared, he kept telling her of the difficulty with which this or that ingredient had been procured. Good milk, he explained, was hard enough to come by, but cream of this quality was virtually impossible. This was lamb, not goat, from some sheep brought from Greece. The petits fours were not local but imported from France. His florid face was sweating and from time to time he raised his heavily starched linen napkin to mop at it.

  ‘Your father was an Admiral, wasn’t he? Yes, Admiral Van Capellen. Very distinguished. And didn’t his brother marry – was it a cousin of your King?’

  Harriet was soon bored and longing for the evening to end. But her natural good manners prevented her from in any way betraying this. Addy was less self-controlled. When Harriet’s eyes met hers, she raised a hand and went through an elaborate charade of yawning behind it. She was seated between a middle-aged Italian engineer, sent by his company to explore the possibility of laying a railway track from Cairo to Khartoum, and an elderly English businessman who had recently arrived to shoot big game.

  After dinner, Monsieur Thibault asked Harriet if she would play for them. ‘Your fame as a pianist has preceded you even to this cultural desert,’ he proclaimed, not realizing that this was hardly flattering to his other guests. Harriet was at first reluctant, but eventually acceded. She wished that she had not done so: having wiped her palms on a lace-bordered handkerchief, she practised a few arpeggios. Clearly, no piano-tuner had visited the house for months, perhaps even years.

  What would be suitable for a company like this? She decided on some of the Mendelssohn Songs Without Words. Everyone listened with attention but with little evidence of pleasure. When she had played five of the pieces, she thought that that was enough, and the company seemed to agree with her. But Monsieur Thibault jumped up, applauding more vigorously than anyone else, and asked her if she would accompany ‘one of my little girls’. The little girl was the oldest and largest of the trio, who came forward with an album of Tosti songs. Did she know them? she asked Harriet. Yes, Harriet did. She had frequently played the accompaniments in drawing-rooms in the Netherlands and England. She sighed as she squinted short-sightedly down at the score spread out before her by the girl.

  The voice, a powerful contralto hoot – Addy later said that the girl had sounded like a cow in labour – was excruciating. Monsieur Thibault beamed, as she went through ‘A Last Dance’, and his other two daughters beamed with him. The rest of the audience were no doubt wishing that the last dance was also the last song. But her father clapped even more vigorously than he had clapped Harriet and cried out: ‘Encore! Encore.’ The girl was only too happy to oblige.

  Suddenly Alexine was thinking of Sophie’s clear, sweet, artless but unfailingly tuneful soprano. She seemed to hear it, a silvery descant, above the chesty bawling resounding round the room. She closed her eyes. She had so seldom thought of Sophie since her arrival in Africa. From Shepheard’s Hotel she had despatched a brief reply to the three long letters that she had found awaiting her there. Here in Khartoum four more letters had been awaiting her, their girlishly enthusiastic chatter so much grating on her that she had postponed writing an answer, despite Harriet’s urgings – ‘Oh, you must write to the poor little thing. She’ll be so disappointed not to hear from you. It’s so cruel of you.’ Now Alexine was consumed with guilt, as she closed her eyes and visualized Sophie standing by the piano, her small, plump hands clasped before her and her throat quivering as she released a particularly high note.

  Alexine opened her eyes. There, not sitting in a chair but leaning against the wall opposite her, was Fielding. She stared intently at him, willing him to look in her direction, but his face remained averted. Unlike all the other men, he was clad not in formal evening dress but in the sort of loose tweeds that he might have worn when walking around his father’s now cruelly diminished ancestral estates near Ennis. His trousers, patterned with large squares of black and brown, were of peg-top design, the upper part cut very loose. His waistcoat was yellow checked with black, with heavy brass buttons. He was shod in Hessian boots. Was he not embarrassed at appearing in such clothes for such an occasion? From his negligent stance and slightly contemptuous expression, his eyes half-closed, it was clear that he was not.

  At last the performance was over. Having gone on clapping long after everyone else had stopped, Monsieur Thibault first told his daughter, ‘Thank you, my dear, that was a beautiful experience,’ and then took Harriet’s hand – she was still seated at the piano – and bowed over it and kissed it. ‘Madame – all that we have heard about your musicianship has proved to be no exaggeration. You were truly inspired.’

  Harriet shook her head. ‘I badly need practice.’ She restrained herself from adding: ‘And the piano badly needs tuning.’

  It was then that Monsieur Thibault noticed Fielding. ‘ My dear friend!’ As the Frenchman rushed over, Fielding straightened himself and took a step back. Monsieur Thibault threw his arms around him and kissed him on either cheek. Then, gripping both his forearms, he looked him over, beaming idiotically. ‘What happened to you? A place was laid f
or you at dinner. We waited.’

  ‘I had a meeting. Something I could not avoid. My apologies.’ Fielding was coolly offhand. ‘I didn’t even have time to change, as you can see.’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. You look far more elegant in your casual clothes from Savile Row than we do in our formal ones from our Greek friend.’ Monsieur Thibault guffawed, throwing back his head, hand to the dagger at his waist. ‘Have you met our guests of honour?’

  ‘The three intrepid Dutch ladies? Yes, I have. In Cairo.’

  ‘Well, come and meet them again. Didn’t you enjoy Madame Thinne’s playing? Exquisite. And she accompanied my little girl with so much tact. The voice is beautiful but it still needs a lot a training – which could, alas, also be said about the character of the singer.’

  ‘Oh, you’re doing her an injustice. In my experience, Lola always behaves impeccably.’

  Thibault took Fielding’s arm and began to push him ahead of him to where Harriet was seated on a sofa, with a citron-faced middle-aged woman perched eagerly on its edge beside her. But Fielding had other ideas.

  ‘Oh, Miss Thinne!’ he called out. ‘We meet again.’ He jerked free of Thibault’s restraint, and hurried over to Alexine. ‘ Monsieur Thibault told me that the three of you were to be here. That was what decided me to come to one of these singularly tedious gatherings. Was the food as indigestible as the caterwauling? It usually is.’ Monsieur Thibault was still hovering in their vicinity. Alexine feared that he might have overheard these far from flattering remarks.

  She shook her head. ‘No. We had an excellent dinner. The teal was particularly good. I tried to shoot some on the journey here, but had little luck.’

  ‘Shoot some! So you shoot! You’re an even more remarkable woman than I thought. The amazon not of the Amazon but of the Nile. May I sit down here beside you?’ He pointed to one of the fragile gilt chairs.

  ‘Please.’

  He moved the chair round, in such a way that the burly American trader to whom Alexine had been talking was totally excluded.