Daisy Gumm Majesty 06-Ancient Spirits

by Alice Duncan

  “You know, Harold,” I said at one point. “You can stare at me all you want, but I’m not going to eat more food than my stomach can hold.”

  He shook his head sadly. “You amaze me, Daisy.”

  “I do?”

  “You’ve managed to lose a hundred pounds in a month without even trying, and I can’t lose weight even when I live on celery and carrots for weeks at a time.”

  I gaped at him. “You actually did that? Eat celery and carrots, I mean.”

  “Yes. It was the most miserable experience of my life, and Del finally persuaded me that he loved me in spite of my avoirdupois.”

  “Del’s a good man,” I said. The thought crossed my mind that if Del died, Harold might understand what I was going through, both with food and my emotions, but the notion was so awful I didn’t voice it.

  “Yes,” Harold said. “He is. And I know what you were just thinking, Daisy Majesty, so I promise not to badger you about eating more any longer.” He shook his head. “If anything happened to Del, I don’t think I could survive.”

  I stared at him for a second or two and finally said, “That’s the problem, though, Harold. You probably would survive.”

  He sighed and said, “I suppose you’re right.”

  We got back to the station in plenty of time to catch our train. My astonishment could hardly be measured when I found out that Harold had hired an entire railroad car for only the two of us!

  Chapter Ten

  “If anyone asks, just tell them you’re my sister,” Harold said as train employees bustled about us, tending to our luggage and our every need. “Not that people really care about such nonsense any longer, but still, it’s better to lie than to be ostracized.”

  Boy, the thought that anyone might find it strange or objectionable that I, a woman, would be traveling with Harold, a man, and that we were neither husband and wife nor kin had never occurred to me. Sometimes I can be remarkably dim.

  “Right. That’s probably a good idea.”

  I scrutinized Harold, who was shortish, chubby, pink-cheeked and merry, with thinning brown hair and eyes, and compared him to me. I, too, was short, but I had dark red hair and blue eyes. And I sure wasn’t plump any longer, if I ever had been. A hundred pounds, my eye!

  The last porter left after asking if we required anything, Harold said, “No, thank you”—he was invariably polite to the people who worked for him—and I took a good gander at the railroad carriage.

  It was an impressive car. Red plush furnishings; polished wood. Don’t ask me what kind of wood, because I don’t know. Two bedrooms were curtained off, one at each end of the carriage, and there was a bathroom just for us off to the side. It was snazzy, all right. And for some inexplicable reason I felt extremely lonely, even with Harold there with me. Did being rich mean you had to be by yourself all the time? What if you wanted to mingle with other passengers and strike up acquaintances? I thought the point of all this traveling and so forth was that I was supposed to meet new people. Not that I felt much like being introduced to a bunch of strangers or anything, but still . . .

  “Um, will we stay in this car all the way to Chicago and New York, Harold? I mean, will we leave it to eat in . . . what do they call it? The dining car?”

  “We can do whatever you want to do, my dear. If you want to dine with the masses, so be it. If you want to isolate yourself, you can do that, too, although I wouldn’t recommend it. What I think you need to do is get out and enjoy yourself.” He must have seen me open my mouth to reply, because he hurried on. “Yes, I know you aren’t in any condition to enjoy yourself at this point in your life. You’ve suffered a grievous loss. But if you meet new people and talk to them, you might begin to feel better eventually. Start small and work your way up, is my advice. Don’t forget that there are millions of people in the world who have also suffered terrible losses, especially lately, since the war and the ‘flu. It might help you to talk to some of them.” In order to forestall any more protests from me, he added, “Or not. You choose. I’m not forcing you to do anything at all. This is your time to do with as you wish.”

  After pondering this mini-sermon for several silent moments, I had to admit it made sense, especially given my state of loneliness. “Thanks, Harold.”

  Harold rubbed his hands together. “So . . . what do you want to do first?”

  “First?” I stared blankly at him.

  “Sure. Here we are. What do you want to do first?”

  “Um . . . I don’t know. What is there to do?”

  “To tell you the truth, not a whole lot. We’re going to be stuck on trains for four days. Once we get on the ship, there will be dancing and sun-bathing and—”

  “I can’t sun-bathe. I have to protect my pale complexion.”

  “Why?”

  “Good heavens, Harold, do you think anybody would want to employ a spiritualist who looks like an athlete or a swimming instructor?”

  “Good point. Forget sun-bathing. But you can put on a big hat and go up on the deck and watch the dolphins frolic in the wake of the ship. Maybe we’ll even spot a whale or a shark or something else interesting. You can read to your heart’s content.”

  “Darn it!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I forgot to bring any books! What a fool I am! About the only thing I’ll be able to read are travel brochures.”

  “Not to worry. The ship will have a library, and there will be every magazine and newspaper known to man available to you. Hell, we can buy a whole library in New York City if you want to.”

  “That might be excessive, but really? The ship has books?” Hmm. That was nice to know. I might even pick up a book and see if I could concentrate on reading an entire novel while enjoying new experiences. And if I couldn’t make my way through an entire book, I could try magazine articles.

  “Absolutely. We’re going first class all the way, my dear.”

  Another screech from the train’s whistle told us we were about to take off for Chicago, so the first thing I did on my very first trip anywhere except to Massachusetts was rush to the window and watch as Los Angeles slowly began sliding past us. As the train picked up speed, the images outside seemed to move faster.

  “Well, since all you want to do at the moment is stare out the window, have a chair.”

  Harold shoved a ladder-backed chair at the backs of my knees and I sat with a plop. “Thanks, Harold.”

  “Any time, my dear.”

  He sounded a little sarcastic, but for me this was interesting. I don’t know how long the train took to get out of the city proper, but soon we seemed to be flying past fields planted with all sorts of stuff. Again, don’t ask me what, because I don’t know. I was a true city kid, I guess, because it seldom occurred to me that farmers grew the food we ate at home. Well, we had a little kitchen garden, but we only grew tomatoes, carrots, onions and cucumbers there. But we sure never had a herd of cows in our backyard, and we passed tons of them on our way. And then there was the desert: miles and miles of what looked like absolutely nothing. Every now and then the train would pass through a tiny village somewhere, and a couple of times I actually saw a man leading a donkey.

  “Oh, my,” I said at one point. “Do you suppose that fellow is a miner? Are there mines out there?”

  “Mines? I have no idea. Where are we?” Harold glanced out the window. “Hmm. Yes, probably he’s a miner. I think we’re about in San Bernardino County now, and there are lots of mines here.”

  “My goodness. I didn’t know that.”

  “Good Lord, yes. I own interest in several boron mines in this neck of the world. And haven’t you ever heard of that old wild-west character, Wyatt Earp? He used to mine in this neck of the woods years ago.”

  “Good gracious.” I felt something akin to awe. I’d read about Wyatt Earp in various periodicals, but all of those articles had concerned the gunfight at the OK Corral, Doc Holliday and that sort of thing. The fact that Wyatt Earp, the master gunfi
ghter and lawman, had also been a miner had been totally overlooked by the writers of those pieces.

  “Don’t believe everything you read,” Harold advised wryly. “Earp did more than shoot outlaws back in the day. In fact, I do believe he’s still alive and living in San Berdoo.”

  “My goodness.”

  But I’m not going to describe our entire trip across the vast geography that is our great nation. Some of the scenery was fabulous; some of it was depressing. I guess trains don’t generally run tracks through the fancy neighborhoods in big cities. They build the tracks where the people who live there are too poor to complain about the noise.

  Darn. My attitude wasn’t improving very fast, was it?

  Well, never mind. The trip in the train was at times boring and at times interesting, and I found myself enjoying the luxury that Harold’s money could buy. We did take dinners in the dining car, although I mainly stuck to soup and soda crackers while Harold frowned at me. I was more pleased than not when I discovered that we didn’t get a table to ourselves, but had to share with other people, mainly because Harold couldn’t scold me with other people around. Well, I suppose he could have, but he didn’t, bless the man. Harold told me train travel was always that way—the sharing of tables in the dining car thing, I mean.

  And I met new people. I didn’t particularly take to most of them, especially a fat man who seemed to be a little too interested in me and who smoked smelly cigars. He followed Harold and me around all one evening, from the dining car to the smoking car (neither Harold nor I smoked, but that’s one of the places where people gathered and chatted) to the lounge car. Finally Harold took him aside and spoke with him for a moment, the fat man took one last gander at me and then he left in a hurry.

  “What did you say to him?” I asked Harold when he returned to sit beside me on a sofa.

  “I told him that you, my beloved sister, had just lost her husband and that you found his attentions objectionable.”

  “Oh, my!” Gee, I didn’t know you could be direct about stuff like that with people. I’d always been taught that one needed to pussy-foot around people’s feelings and never say anything that might hurt them. “That was very brave of you, Harold.”

  “Why?”

  “Telling him I found his attentions objectionable. I think that was brave of you.”

  Harold shrugged. “I only told him the truth.” He eyed me keenly. “Didn’t I?”

  “Absolutely.” After a pause, I said, “I guess it’s the ‘objectionable’ part that floors me.”

  Thumping his chest, Harold said, “That’s man-talk, Daisy.”

  For the first time in what seemed like forever, I laughed.

  Chicago was a big city, but we didn’t get to see much of it, which was all right with me. At that time, in the thick of Prohibition, you could read articles in all the newspapers about rival gangs trying to corner the illegal liquor markets in Chicago and New York, and Chicago seemed a particularly bloody place to be at the moment. We caught the New York Central from Chicago to New York City.

  New York was interesting, but too big and bustling for me. Harold took me to see Getting Gertie’s Garter and Mr. Pim Passes By. The latter, strangely enough, was by A.A. Milne, the same man who wrote The Red House Mystery. Both plays were comedies. I suspect Harold didn’t think I was up to heavy drama, and I suspect he was right. I enjoyed both plays, particularly Mr. Milne’s. Harold also took me to dine at what he said were fabulous New York restaurants, although I didn’t enjoy them as much as the plays, because I still wasn’t hungry.

  And then we set sail on the Olympic, and I forgot all about plays, books, and everything else, because I was so horribly seasick for the first day or two. Harold was aghast at my plight, since he’d already freely admitted that his primary aim in taking me on this trip, besides making me feel better emotionally, was to fatten me up.

  Didn’t work.

  By the time we eventually docked in South Hampton, I was over my seasickness, but still neither cheery nor fat. Harold said he despaired of me. I told him it was his own fault.

  Thank the good Lord Harold then loaded me onto what he called a boat train, where I recovered some of my cheer, if none of my fat.

  And then there was the ferry to Marseilles. I absolutely dreaded that trip on another boat, but oddly enough, I didn’t get sick on it.

  “You’re getting your sea legs at last,” said Harold.

  “Huh,” said I, reminding myself of Sam Rotondo and bringing a huge wave of nostalgia to my heart. Now why, I ask you, should thinking of Sam Rotondo make me nostalgic? Probably because I always thought of Sam and Billy together, with my family. Ah, well. That part of my life was over forever. At least the Billy and Sam part.

  In Paris we boarded the Orient Express. I was kind of excited about this leg of our journey, since I’d read about the Orient Express in books and magazines, and Billy had read an entire article from the National Geographic aloud regarding the Orient Express. It was a fabulous train, and we met more interesting people than we had on the trains to Chicago and New York City, including a countess from . . . somewhere. I don’t remember. And a prince from some Baltic country who tried to pay me a lot of attention until Harold told him of my recently widowed status, and the prince backed off after offering me sympathy and kissing my hand. I don’t think Harold told the prince I found his attentions objectionable; what I think was that the prince had better manners than the fat man with the cigar.

  And then the train arrived at the station in Istanbul, which, as you must know by this time, used to be called Constantinople and still was by some folks. Oh, boy, I’d never expected to see sights like those we saw in Istanbul! Billy would have loved this. It was so . . . foreign. If you know what I mean. Sure, it wasn’t foreign to the Turks who lived there, but I was simple Daisy Gumm Majesty from Pasadena, California, who’d never been anywhere or done anything before in my life, and Istanbul—Constantinople. Oh, bother. Choose either name for yourself—amazed and astonished me.

  I was surprised that the costumes we saw on the people were so colorful. After hearing Billy read to me about Egypt, I’d expected everyone to be clad in black robes and to see veiled women everywhere. Then I recalled that Turkey had given women the vote in 1918, two years before we females were so honored in the United States, and decided that Turkey must be a pretty progressive place in spite of my preconceptions.

  Harold and I dined in a restaurant where we ate an entire meal composed of stuff I’d never even heard of before, much less eaten. It was delicious, too, what’s more, and I wondered if Aunt Vi would like a Turkish cookbook. Of course, nobody in the family could read Turkish, but still, it might be a nice conversation piece. I was sorry when Harold told me he doubted such a book existed and that he wouldn’t know where to get one if it did.

  And then there was another train from Constantinople to Cairo. This train wasn’t as luxurious as the Orient Express, and not for the first time I doubted the wisdom to traveling to Egypt in the summertime.

  “It’s hot, Harold,” I said, fanning myself with an exquisite fan I’d found in an Istanbul marketplace. Harold and I had promised each other we’d spend more time in Istanbul on our way home from Egypt because it looked like such a fascinating city.

  “Yes,” said Harold, fanning himself with his hand. “It is. I know people generally travel to Egypt in the winter, but I didn’t think it would be quite this bad. Heck, it gets hot in Los Angeles during the summer.”

  I eyed the strange surroundings in which we were then chugging along. “Maybe it’s because we’re used to life in Southern California, and we aren’t used to life here.”

  Harold, red-faced and perspiring, said, “Maybe.”

  “Um, maybe you should take off your jacket, Harold. There’s no sense in wearing a jacket in this weather.”

  For only a moment, Harold appeared shocked at the suggestion. Then he said, “Good idea.” He shucked his jacket, removed his tie, unbuttoned the top buttons o
f his shirt, and actually rolled up his sleeves. I don’t think I’d ever seen Harold so casually attired before.

  As for me, I wore a silver-gray sleeveless day dress made of lightweight cotton. I was still hot, but not as hot as Harold, I’d bet. And I’d also bet I wasn’t as hot as the shrouded women we saw both on the train and in the towns we passed on our way to Cairo. They all wore long, shapeless black robes, had their heads covered and their faced veiled. I suppose the robes were comfortable, but all that black made me kind of feel sick.

  “Do all women in Egypt wear those black robes and veils, Harold?”

  “I believe so, Daisy. Egypt is a Moslem country, you know, and they like to keep their women under wraps.”

  “But Turkey is, too, isn’t it? And the women in Constantinople at least wore colorful robes.”

  Harold shrugged. “I don’t have any idea how the cultures of either country work.”

  “Golly, I’ll feel sort of out of place in my lightweight clothes.”

  “No, you won’t. There will be gobs of tourists to keep you company.”

  “In August?”

  Harold frowned at me. “Very well, I guess August wasn’t the most appropriate time to visit Egypt. Still, I want to see you on a camel. After we do that, we can go back to England early if it’s too hot to carry on in Egypt.”

  “I don’t want to spoil your trip, Harold.” By that time I’d begun to feel guilty for bringing up the subject of heat. I was always feeling guilty about something or other in those days.

  “You won’t be spoiling my trip,” Harold said upon a sigh. “If anything spoils my trip, it’ll be the damned weather, and that’s not your fault.”

  “Well, I hope it cools off a little. Maybe it will be cool on the Nile?”

  “Maybe.”

  The notion of taking another boat, this one up the Nile, made my stomach feel queasy, but I didn’t let on.

  And then, at long last, we got to Cairo.