Fly Away Home

by Marina Warner

  That Shakespeare knew Italian has been suggested in some quarters, and even more vertiginously, that he actually was Italian! But Shakespeare does not need to have had Italian blood or known the language; his imagination is also inscribed with the shadowy watermark of the past that MR James glimpsed much later in the Chapel at Eton when he saw the shadowy saints emerge, an apparition from out of the wall.

  Later that year, after much successful business in London, Gasparo and Fiammetta and Lucia Spirello (the two young women still successfully passing en travesti), travelled west out of London and began making their way cross country, stopping to set up shop temporarily as jobbing artists; they had held on to the remaining prints in their baggage in order to draw from them for commissions they might receive.

  In Stratford-upon-Avon, where the prosperous burghers were eager to adorn their town, Fiammetta found she was having a baby; in the event, she gave birth to twins that second summer the family spent in England. This happy accident required they shed their disguises, and raised difficulties for Fiammetta and Lucia working in public. Besides, even in England, there were signs that the demand for painted lives of the saints was dwindling.

  Phidias and Anastasia struck their English friends as rather unwieldy names for such tiny scraps of life, but the parents and the children’s aunt took them from The Boke of the Citie of Ladies, where they had executed images of the artists, the sculptor at his work bench and the painter at her easel, to accompany the praises of Lady Reason.

  The Spirello travellers had news from home: their great lady patroness was now celebrated for her poetry as well as her patronage. Love poetry, they were told, frank and fierce, but always decorous. All books, Messer Gerolamo reported, were now full of different kinds of feelings and different kinds of stories from the Legenda Aurea.

  They began longing to return. They made plans to return. They began packing.

  But did they?

  Did the twins grow up at home, at ease with the spoken Italian of their generation? Did they meet Madonna Veronica?

  Or could they have stayed on in Stratford-upon-Avon year after year, with their things half packed, expecting to leave but never quite managing it?

  Or did Lucia remain behind on her own? Could she have married there?

  The trail peters out.

  Except for traces in the plays of their contemporary, if they can be counted evidence.

  A Family Friend

  WHEN ROLLO VERREY arrived in Cairo, the name of Ivor Whitaker was on everyone’s lips. At the Turf Club, on the verandah of Shepheard’s Hotel, in the bar at Gezira Sporting Club, in the officers’ mess of the eleventh Hussars detailed to the garrison of Lord Cromer, and in the offices of state where Cromer ruled as Lord Protector of Egypt, the talk kept turning to the topic of the influential and wayward Mr Whitaker, known as ‘Young Whit’ after his late father, even though he was no longer in first youth.

  Young Whit was still celebrated for his vigorous and ruddy beauty, his golden hair and beard, his straight-backed horsemanship – and his independence of thought in matters of public interest. Rollo soon discovered that, in the highest circles in Egypt, Mr Whitaker was often called by various other, rather suspect names – El-Witiqui, for instance, or the Pasha of Sheykh Omar. Rollo felt intrigued: the sheaf of ­recommendations that had secured him his junior post in the Chancery of Lord Cromer had included, he knew, a particularly eloquent letter from Whit, a family friend, a confidant of his beautiful grandmother, and a tower of strength throughout her childhood and youth of his equally admired mother, the intrepid plant-hunter and botanical illustrator Amanda Verrey.

  Disappointment ensued in Cairo circles when Rollo could not add much to the picture of Whit himself. According to the customers of the time, an only child of busy parents, he’d seen little of them, even over the school holidays, and besides, Whit was always faraway, up to something worthwhile and heroic, even epic. Rollo had in fact only met his benefactor once. But he was such a familiar compass point in the landscape of his family that he felt he’d known him all his life.

  In the city that spring, levées, luncheons, soirées, dinners, dances, suppers, even breakfasts after supper, took place in clubs and houses, pavilions and palaces, on a round that met head to tail since his duties required an early start. Rollo was meeting lots of his countrymen out in Egypt – even Lord Cromer acknowledged his existence: ‘A sprog of young Verrey, and grown already? Of course you’ll do. And if you don’t we’ll see to it.’ This greeting was followed by gusts of laughter, the scented ambit of the great man richly laced with port and brandy and cigars and gun oil.

  That was at a tea party: days in Cairo governing the country in partnership with the locals entailed much party going, Rollo began to see. It was at one of these gatherings that Major Crowhurst of the 11th Hussars told him of his plan to liven up the social round with some more gentlemanly pursuit than drinking tea in the afternoon. ‘Cairo’s deathly after a month or two – what? Nothing to be done here, dear boy. Natives ostensibly in charge, so we have to play second fiddle, dance attendance while they make a mess of things, ha, and then come after them and put it to rights – never letting on, of course. But this life is turning me soft! Before my time a lean and slipper’d pantaloon!’ He struck his belly, well-corseted in his Hussar jacket.

  ‘A spot of hunting, that’s what’s needed,’ continued the Major.

  So it was that a few weeks later, Major Crowhurst gave Rollo the job of fetching a special cargo newly arrived in Alex. ­Rollo would have liked to take his own horse north to meet the ship when it docked, but the cargo was to be brought later by railway to the regiment’s compound in the east of Cairo. It was decided that Rollo would forgo the night ride through the desert in the cool of the dark, and travel up by train himself with his men to make sure of the preparations for the cargo’s delivery.

  Air and water floated overhead on the Nile delta in the hour before dawn, and in the merciful cool, Rollo made his way through the wharfs to the quay where the flanks of HMS Shearwater rose out of the swirl, like Gulliver tethered by a thousand tent pegs as the Lilliputians swarmed over him to pick him of everything he carried. Bundles, kegs, barrels, crates in great knotted nets swung down bulkily overhead from the gantries and, accompanied by a hullabaloo of cries, dropped into the welter of smells and sounds and colour on the docks as the fellahin rushed to pull them open and the quartermasters struck their ledgers and gesticulated further directions for transporting the cargo on the next leg of the journey.

  Rollo’s Arabic now stretched to the odd command, oath, and warning, but not much else. He plunged into the harum-scarum of the port, a path parting in front of him like the sea under a sailing ship’s prow, as his men cast to right and left with their own more temperate cries and flourishes of their batons, and he had a rush to the head and the sweat prickled his neck. This was the first time he had played such a part, he, twenty-one years old, on his first detail since leaving Oxford, appointed to Lord Cromer’s office and representing his Lordship’s protection of Egypt. It felt something like the explosion of pleasure all over when breaking the finishing line after a race – hurdling had been his favourite sport, but he’d been a champion sprinter too.

  He heard the fox hounds being disembarked before he saw them, baying loudly from the openwork crate high in the air. Neither the sea voyage nor the aerial drop quelled their ­energies: the pack was a squirming mass of jaws giving voice as tongues lolled, of scrabbling paws, and waving tails … given water and meat as soon as they landed, they were penned in the shade by the freight train which was to leave for Cairo that night once it was cool again, kept for a period of quarantine and then … the first fox-hunt ever to take place in the Egyptian desert was planned for the summer.

  At night, as Rollo lay behind the mosquito veiling with the servants taking turns to fan him, the gossip he kept hearing played over and over in his head:

 
– Young Whit and Lady Lucy were out riding in the desert soon after they were first married, and near the old city of Heliopolis they came upon an abandoned garden – ‘Sheykh Omar’.

  – There’s a tomb of a Sufi saint in the grounds – the place is named after him. Whit makes offerings to him, can you beat it?

  – You’ve been there?

  – Oh no, it’s dreadfully hard to wangle an invitation.

  – They bought the property for £200, you know.

  – Not much of a pinch for them! She’s rich too, you know – in her own right.

  – It was first planted by the old Khedive – Ismail – it’s a paradise by all accounts – the Khedive used to go there for picnics. There was no house then – if they stayed overnight they bivouacked like nomads – under the stars.

  – Witiqui Pasha and Lady Lucy still do, given the chance.

  – The old Khedive let it fall to rack and ruin after he himself was bankrupted … he had bad habits, what?

  – There were interested parties … we wanted him in our grasp, don’t you know?

  – Whit thinks of himself as Bedouin chief, and God, he looks the part.

  – Takes their side too.

  – The Gyppos’?

  – Yes. Mind you, he’d never call them that – to him they’re desert warriors and pure Arabians of an ancient noble race. He’s always creating about our role, saying we should get out of the country – and give up the Canal. Doesn’t see that Egypt matters – to us. He’s an ‘anti-imperialist’, or so he claims. Doesn’t seem to realise that it’ll go to blazes without us. Or, what’s worse, to the French.

  – He breeds ’osses now.

  – Yes, ten years ago he began buying ’em at auction. The finest horseflesh in all of Arabia. When Ali Pasha died, Whit and Lady Lucy’s stud farm was unsurpassed … not even King Victor Emmanuel’s could touch it.

  – He breeds here now – at Sheykh Omar – a dozen brood mares stabled there at least.

  – The garden’s full of wild life, but nothing like the game back home.

  – Holds with some foolishness about harmony in nature if things are let well alone.

  – There’s a high wall all the way around the garden and a whole tribe of Bedouin living there as guards – they just camp there, desert-style, under tents – would you believe it?

  – D’you know he turned his Arab ruffians on some Italians who were out with their guns shooting during the migration season.

  – He’s a law unto himself.

  Laughter, marvelling laughter, harsh and bright, and much puffing on cigars and quaffing of fine wines and liquors, punctuated these exchanges.

  Rollo joined in out of courtesy. Some of it he knew, though he had not heard it told in quite the same way at home.

  In the withdrawing rooms where the ladies retired, in private supper rooms, in changing rooms after golf, or tennis, or a swim, these are some further things that were being said – more discreetly. Rollo was privy to much of this as well, as he found many young ladies liked to pass on what they had heard their mothers say.

  – Whit did build a house in the garden to stay in.

  – Two houses, darling girl, one for himself as Lady L’s husband. The other … well …

  – You know what he calls it – that other one?

  – The Rose Villa – ooh la la. Wine and roses, don’t you know?

  – It doesn’t end there – in private he calls it El Hashish.

  – He had it built a little space apart from the main house because … when he has certain guests … Lady L does not want them in the main house …

  – But it comes from her, you know, this fad for everything Oriental: she started him off. It was her idea to explore the desert, and she dresses in Arab costume too, male costume – with a dagger stuck in her belt. The pair of them, they fancy they’re living in the Arabian Nights.

  And then the informants grew softer, even more confiding. Clementina Crowhurst, the Major’s daughter, imparted:

  – Mummy says he has more than one family – and more than one child, the one with Lady Lucy.

  – Clem, honestly, her friend Georgiana tittered.

  Rollo tried to look above tittle-tattle, but his palms sweated in anticipation.

  – They say after he’s been … well, the mother’s friend he waits for her daughter to grow up …

  The two girls, both a little younger than Rollo, huddled their shoulders as a peal of shivery laughter shook them.

  – You know him, said Georgie, looking at Rollo and recovering her sobriety. So you’ll get invited.

  – Oh, lucky old bean, that would be something! added Clem. Take me with you, oh do!

  Rollo could not understand why it was that when he was in company, the figure of El-Witiqui Pasha instantly made his entrance, materialising among them as if he were at that moment streaking over the sand dunes on his Arabian mare with his wife or another in Bedouin native dress, or presiding in his floating robes over his Khedival pleasance, where ladies smoked and picnicked on carpets laid under the fruit trees and jessamine arbours, while springs filled purling pools and rilling fountains, and scents and sounds mingled with the spattered light and shade. Whit had been a figure in his family’s conversations throughout his childhood, but he had never struck Rollo as quite so remarkable or indeed so peculiar before: everyone at home, especially at his grandmother’s, took Whit for granted and treated every inch of him with a kind of amused admiration. Here in Cairo, it was different: underneath the hubbub of envy, curiosity and hostility, Whitaker appeared dangerous and different and infinitely glamorous, and Rollo found himself thinking with impatience of the garden of Sheykh Omar and the impending return of its pasha from England in the autumn. He also rode out into the desert to find the garden; the cotton fields running up to its high mud walls became familiar to him, but he did not enter.

  A week or so later, Rollo was riding behind the pack in the hunt Major Crowhurst had mustered. They’d got up before first light and were moving west under the fading stars; his dappled mare streamed through the still pleasant cool of the early morning air. The hounds were whirling in a dense parcel of bodies, but the whippers-in were kept lively as the pack began to pick up desert scents – jackals and mongoose and a hundred other rodents. Soon, the first heat started to shimmer in the blue air and the hunt was on, racing through the cotton fields, towards the wall of Sheykh Omar; there was a stretch where it was crumbling, as Rollo knew, and he let the hounds run along the perimeter, as the huntsmen sounding their horns to urge them on. Soon they were baying from open throats after the scents they were picking up, till the point where the boundary wall was low enough for them to jump and for Rollo on his mare and Major Crowhurst on his stallion to follow the animals into the enclosure of Sheykh Omar.

  The hounds made a kill, far too quickly. Their prey turned out to be a coyote. Then, wheeling round, the pack surged forwards on another wind; made a fresh kill again, almost immediately. This time, it was a fox, but a small thing, like a squirrel.

  Rollo remembered the talk:

  – They’re his pets … the garden’s full of animals, but nothing like our foxes back home.

  As he watched the hounds at their spoil and the huntsman flick them aside and lean down to pick up the brush – which was not bushy, but sparse, he heard a cry of fury from behind him and before he could turn, a blow landed on his shoulders, and then, to a crescendo of shouts, a flurry of sticks fell on the hounds to scatter them, on the horses of his riding companions and, to his horror, on his own mare, on her neck and between her eyes.

  His blood rose in rage at this assault on the animal, and he leaned to her neck to soothe her as she whinnied in fright; he struck out with his crop – all the weapons he had – to right and left, as an Arab in a none too clean djellabah seized his reins. Major Crowhurst was shouting to him to he
ad out and was turning his own horse’s head and ordering him to follow; but yet more Arabs were running up with garden tools and poles, and the affray was joined by the others from the hunt who came leaping over the wall to set about their assailants. Eventually, in the singing heat of midday, they made their way slowly back to Cairo, with three prisoners taken from Whitaker’s men.

  The repercussions of that morning sharpened Rollo’s misery: Whit, alerted by telegram of the hunt and the captivity and trial of his head groom and two guards, raised the roof about the incident. He wrote to the Foreign Office, to Lord Cromer, and to the papers. He deplored the casual habits of the British in trespassing on the fields of hard-working peasants, let alone entering his own animal sanctuary. But his campaign in the public print cut deepest of all. There he expressed his surprise that more than twenty English huntsmen, with several Hussars among them, should be so frightened by a gaggle of barefoot fellaheen that they wailed of their wounds and thought it necessary to overpower them and throw them into the cells.

  The laughter that kept rising around Rollo before the episode now became venomous to his ears. He avoided the social round as much as his post in the Chancery would allow. Then, towards the middle of September, a suffragi, in a blazing white turban and tunic and a red sash, delivered to him personally a letter written on heavy cream paper in a spiky cursive script.

  Dear Boy,

  It was a damned shame that I was gone from Sheykh Omar at the time of the unfortunate fracas. But it is my custom to return to England in the summer heat – as your beloved grandmother and mother will have told you. I did not of course know that you were of the company that my men, under strict orders in my absence to allow no trespassing, rightly drove from the garden: my brood mares must not be disturbed, above all by any stallion in the vicinity. I regret that the subsequent wrangles involved you and caused some difficulty with your superiors. But it will all come out in the wash, I trust.