Prodigies

by Francis King

  ‘That seems a wonderful plan,’ Warburton said. ‘And you think you’ll like life in Cairo?’

  ‘Oh, yes! We’ll like life there because it’ll be a new life – another life – for us.’

  Lucy put her napkin down on the table, to indicate that the meal had ended. ‘I wish I could find a new life, another life.’

  ‘It’s never too late to do that,’ Nanny Rose said. ‘Look at us.’

  Chapter Twenty

  ALEXINE HAD FALLEN INTO A DEEP SLEEP as soon as she had gone to bed that evening. But then, less than two hours later, she had woken, imagining that it must be morning until, having pulled back the curtains, she gazed out into the dark. Once more she stretched out on the bed, so much more comfortable than the one which she had used for so many months, but she could not sleep again.

  She had been furious with Addy, and for the rest of the previous day, after their confrontation, they had barely spoken to each other and then only as though they were strangers. But now she was consumed with guilt both for what she had said and for what, before that, she had done. It was cruelly untrue to say that she had forced her mother to accompany her; but perhaps from the first she should have told a woman of that age that the journey was unsuitable for her. Yes, yes, but for months on end, Harriet had never once been ill. Her constitution, even in her sixties, was phenomenally strong. She had merely died, as the priests at the mission and so many other Europeans far younger than herself had died, from one of the sudden fevers as common in Africa as a cold anywhere else.

  Having fumbled for a box of vestas and lit the candle on the table beside her, she got out of bed, pulled a crocodile-skin valise out from a cupboard and, having placed it on the bed, rummaged in its contents. Eventually she found the large, battered cardboard box that she wanted. It contained the photographs taken of Harriet during the journey.

  Seated at the desk beneath the window, the flickering candle beside her, Alexine began to go through them slowly, one by one. Yes, Mama had been happy, happy! She was smiling into the camera, always smiling. Happiness vividly emanated from each of the sepia images, however badly posed or blurred, so that that happiness even briefly communicated itself, a flash of light in the enshrouding darkness, to the sad, guilty young woman now staring down at them. Yes, here Mama was actually laughing, as she lay back in the chair with the porters on either side of her and a parasol held above her.

  Then Alexine came on the last photograph of all. It was odd that her mother, who had dispensed with mourning as soon as they had set off from The Hague, should on that day have opted to dress wholly in black, so that she stood out starkly against the white of the ruined wall behind her and of the titled headstone beside her. She was not smiling on this occasion. The eyes were screwed up and there was an odd look of apprehension in both them and the tenseness of the mouth. Oh, no, she was imagining these things! Surely she was! Again Alexine rummaged in the valise and took out the magnifying glass that had once been Harriet’s. She held it over the picture and peered down. Was that really apprehension or just the result of having to hold a pose, the clamp gripping her neck, for so long a time? Alexine could not be sure, and the uncertainty tormented her.

  She left the photographs scattered about the desk, got up, went to the window again and pulled back the curtain. The dark was thick, velvety, suffocating. It reminded her of the fleshy leaves of the mangroves, crowding against the steamer, as she and Harriet sat out late on the deck, swatting at the gnats and mosquitoes settling on their bare arms or necks. They had been careless about those mosquitoes. Warburton had warned them about them. Perhaps one of those mosquitoes had been the bearer of her mother’s death and her own near-death? Hastily, Alexine dragged the curtains closed again.

  Yet again she stretched out on the bed. She began to think of all those occasions when she had been impatient with Harriet – ‘Oh, you and your lists, lists, lists – I’m so bored with them!’; of Harriet’s chagrin when increasingly it was Sunny whom Alexine employed as her assistant when taking her photographs; of her disappointment when Alexine refused to play yet another game of piquet with her, to ride beside her chair, or even (a dismissive wave of the hand as Harriet ventured into her daughter’s tent) to chat to her.

  Then she began to think of Addy. All the difficulties, dangers and deprivations that had sweetened Harriet’s nature and strengthened Nanny Rose’s had soured, weakened and finally broken hers. She had started out with so much enthusiasm, such a readiness to adapt herself to changing situations, so lovable an ability to find every setback a joke. She had been a woman of a totally different world, that of the Court, to which she had been attached for most of her adult life. But she had stepped out eagerly to embrace this new world of clamorous challenges and people wholly different from those that she had had to deal with back at The Hague. Then, sadly, she had drooped, lost heart, finally failed altogether.

  Alexine raised her fist to her mouth and bit hard on the knuckle of her forefinger with such force that she all but broke through the skin. That afternoon a darkening bruise would begin to appear. She had so often made cruel fun of her aunt’s inability to do the sort of things that she, with her natural athleticism and her mother with her natural endurance and strength, were able to do. ‘Oh, I can never get the hang of using these steps!’ she would exclaim as she clumsily struggled up and down the companionway of the steamer. When she rode on a camel, there was endless fussing – ‘I’m falling, I’m falling! Oh, do keep the brute still!’ Even to get her into or out of the chair she so often used for travelling could be a protracted business. But until her near-fatal illness she had been determined never to abandon her sister or her niece – ‘You two are all I’ve got,’ she would repeatedly say.

  Why, oh why, had she never written to her aunt after Mama’s death? True, she had descended into that black pit in which every action had been an effort and every thought had been tinged with despair. But that was no excuse. She ought to have made the effort, however demanding. She had watched as Nanny Rose, tongue between teeth and pudgy fingers stained with ink, had laboriously inscribed not one letter but a series of them – ‘She’s going to be in a terrible state, she was so used to hearing regularly from your mother.’ Only two of those letters ever arrived but that was not important Warburton had said that the others might yet turn up, since one could not rely on the punctuality of runners in Africa as one could on that of postmen back in England; what was important was Nanny Rose’s determination in writing them. (‘How does one spell village, dear? Does it have one l or two? I can never remember’). She herself had lacked that determination.

  Once Addy, in the course of her interminable reading, had said to Alexine: ‘Isn’t this a wonderful phrase? It’s Anglo-Saxon or something like that. The agenbite of inwit.’ She repeated the words, savouring them. ‘Thackeray quotes it in this preface. Apparently it means the remorse of conscience.’ Now Alexine repeated the phrase to herself. The agenbite of inwit. That was what she was suffering from now. It was like one of those rodent ulcers that she had seen on the legs of the porters not disgustingly visible like theirs, however, but gnawing away insidiously within her.

  As she was dressing, Alexine heard her aunt going down the corridor past her own room to the bathroom they shared. She almost went out to speak to her and than shrank from doing so. She did not like the idea of humiliating herself with an apology. If she owed Addy one, then equally Addy owed her one. But to think that was ungenerous, she hurriedly told herself. Addy was old, in constant pain, no doubt anxious about a future without her inseparable companion, Harriet. Here, in Khartoum, she and Lucy were close. But if she were to take Lucy back to The Hague with her, as she was talking of doing, could that closeness survive differences in their respective social status, their interests and their characters, when suddenly brought into cruel relief in a different environment?

  Yes, she must go and apologize, or at least heal the rift. She pulled a comb through her hair and then marched decisively out o
f her room and down the corridor. There was no reply to her rap on the door. She rapped again. Addy must be in there, she had heard her returning from the bathroom, her slippered feet shuffling past the door.

  ‘Aunt Addy!’

  She tried the handle and, finding the door unlocked, pushed it open.

  The first thing that she saw was Mister, looking up at her from the bed. Then she saw Addy sprawled on the floor beside her dressing-table chair. On the table, among the hair tongs, the bottles of perfume, the jars of pomade and the half-open copy of Quentin Durward, there was an open pot of rouge. The brush had fallen from her hand and lay on the floor beside her. Scatterings of rouge covered one side of the white peignoir wrapped around her.

  Later, Alexine and Lucy sat talking in the garden.

  ‘We so often sat here,’ Lucy said. ‘She was fascinated by the bats.’ She pointed. ‘ She was afraid that one of them would suddenly fall out of the tree and land on her head.’ She laughed. ‘ I kept telling her that it couldn’t possibly happen but she never believed me. The funny thing is that, though she was frightened of them, she always wanted to sit here, under the tree, nowhere else. Oh, we had such fun together.And she was so intelligent about everything she read. She would draw my attention to things – in Tom Jones or Les Liaisons Dangeureuses, for instance that had somehow totally escaped me.’

  ‘Yes, she was fun,’ Alexine agreed, restraining herself from adding ‘once’. ‘ People always said that about her back at home.’

  ‘Where will I find someone else to talk to as I used to talk to her? I mean, in a place like this.’ She sighed and put a hand over her eyes. ‘ She made all the difference to my life during her months here.’

  Now Alexine gazed upwards at the bats. ‘I behaved badly to her. I’ll never be able to forgive myself for that.’

  ‘Oh, people so often say that, when someone has died. But in the end they forgive themselves. They do!’ Lucy did not want to console Alexine, she wanted to make her suffer even more. That scene with the mortally ill woman in the dining-room had been, in her opinion, a disgrace.

  Alexine shook her head. ‘Was I responsible for my mother’s death? And hers? I just don’t know. I wish I did.’

  Suddenly Lucy felt sorry for this girkin the loneliness of her anguish. She would never like her – so tough, so ruthless, so determined to achieve her own aims, regardless of others – but, now that she had been brought so low, yes, she could feel sorry for her. ‘None of us has ever done all that we could have done. So it’s pointless – and unfair – to reproach yourself.’

  Again Alexine shook her head.

  ‘You and I are so unlike each other,’ Lucy said, after musing for a while. ‘I’m a coward, you’re so valiant. You want action, and I want only to be still. But we have one thing in common. I was thinking about it in bed this morning.’

  What could she mean? Alexine gazed at her, frowning in puzzlement.

  ‘We are both after something that’s probably unattainable. And we’re prepared to go to endless sacrifice – of ourselves, of course, but also, sometimes at least, of others – to attain it. I have that wretched novel upstairs, on which I’ve been slaving for, oh, three years and really getting nowhere. And you have your dream of discovering something that no one else has discovered, which so far has brought you only frustration and grief. But, obstinately, we’ll both go on with our quests.’ She looked oyer at Alexine. ‘Won’t we?’

  At first Alexine seemed not to have heard her. Once again she stared up at the motionless bats. Then she shook her head. ‘ No. I don’t think so. I feel – I feel that my quest is over. Enough.’

  Book 4

  Chapter One

  IN NAPLES ALEXINE WAS AN OBJECT OF ENVY, amazement, curiosity and derision.

  The white 200-ton yacht, which John had had built in the Isle of Man to her constantly changed specifications, lay anchored out in the bay when not carrying her around the Mediterranean. Its original name was Seagull, but Alexine had translated that into Dutch and it had become Meeuw. Sometimes she slept aboard it even though, ever since its arrival, she had complained to John in innumerable letters that its main cabin was too cramped. Sometimes she would occupy the suite that, with its five rooms and balcony overlooking the sea, she kept rented at the Hotel Splendido. Seated out on the balcony, she could watch through binoculars everything that was happening on the yacht. Other guests in the hotel complained of the noise and smell of the dogs; but she was too valuable a client for anything to be said to her by the management. She was paying a vast sum weekly for the suite and, as always, she tipped constantly and lavishly.

  In the narrow streets, people would stop to stare at her and her retinue with impudent frankness. Urchins would even shout and point. She had eventually come to dress the members of this retinue in European clothes, since that way they were less likely to be mobbed; but she herself, once so fashionable in her attire, now wore shapeless, billowy gowns, more oriental than western, with a wide-brimmed straw hat, a turban or merely a scarf or shawl wrapped around her head. Sunny would often be beside her, carrying her portmanteau-like bag and leashes for the dogs. Following her there would often be a rabble of servants originally recruited for the African expedition. When she had been about to pay them off, they had begged her to retain them. Otherwise, they told her, they would be at once taken back into slavery. The dogs would scavenge in the gutters or bark at anyone who dared to approach too near.

  Having been in Rome on business, John travelled on to Naples to see his half-sister. They had last met, in the immediate aftermath of the two deaths, when he and his wife had arrived in Cairo, determined to take her back with them either to the Netherlands or to England. But she had been adamant in her refusal to accompany them.

  ‘No, no! I can’t possibly return! No, no!’

  John had been taken aback by the note of panic in her voice. Later, he and his wife had wondered if Alexine’s hideous experiences might not have unhinged her.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they all blame me.’

  ‘Who blames you?’

  ‘Everyone. Everyone who knew us.’

  ‘But why? Why?’

  ‘You know why. They think I killed them. They think I’m a murderess.’

  It had been impossible to argue with her then; it was still impossible to argue with her now, almost two years later. Once again he tried to persuade her to return home and once again he failed.

  ‘What’s the point of this vagrant life? Don’t you get bored?’

  ‘Of course I get bored. I’m bored with Naples and every other place I visit. I’m even more bored with myself. But what’s the alternative? I’m not going home to be a pariah.’

  ‘A pariah?’ He repeated the word in amazement.

  ‘Like one of my dogs before I’ve rescued it. Kicked, beaten, stones thrown at it. No, I don’t want that. I can’t face it.’

  He shook his head and pursed his lips. It was useless to argue further, he could see.

  ‘So yours is to be a future of collecting more and more animals and servants and sailing about the Mediterranean?’ His exemplary patience, which had enabled him to put up with her peremptory instructions and nagging complaints over so many years, was beginning to fray. His wife had so often told him: Stand up to her. At last he was on the verge of doing so.

  Alexine raised the binoculars and stared through them at the yacht. The two Egyptian maids, one of whom had now married the undercook, were lining the rail. She could see them smiling, almost as though they knew that she was watching them and were smiling back. Lowering the binoculars, she said in a voice of melancholy resignation: ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. It’s as though something had broken inside me. When one breaks a leg or an arm, one’s told to rest it until it has mended. So that’s what I’m doing – resting whatever it is until it’s mended.’ She brightened. ‘I’ve been thinking of starting an animal hospital. You can’t imagine how horribly they treat their animals here.’
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  ‘But that will mean more money – a lot more money! That’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. I like to think that I’ve managed your affairs pretty well. But you must know that you’re no longer living on your income. You’re eating into your capital at an alarming rate.’

  ‘Oh, please. Don’t let’s talk about money. It bores me. I leave that to you.’

  ‘But what I’m trying to warn you about is –’

  ‘If the money runs out, it runs out. In the mean time …’

  Later, in his bedroom, John was to write to his wife that Alexine had become even more difficult than ever, and that he wished that he could lay down the burden of looking after her affairs. But his sense of family loyalty was too strong. He could never do that.

  As Alexine was striding out in the Park with Flopsy, a small, dapper young man, with a pale, translucent skin, a number of rings on his fingers and ash-blond hair reaching almost to his shoulders, passed her, cane in hand, followed by a huge, shaggy, grey dog which, he was later to tell her, was called Tito and came from the Maremma.

  Flopsy, always bellicose despite his size, raced after the strange dog, barking wildly. Tito turned. Keeping his distance, Flopsy barked even more furiously until, without a bark or even a growl, Tito suddenly hurled himself on him. Alexine and the young man ran forward simultaneously. He reached the dogs first and at once, with uncharacteristic courage, grabbed both of their collars and somehow managed to hold them apart until Alexine was able to fasten a lead on to Flopsy and drag him away.