The Shape of Sand

by Marjorie Eccles

  Beatrice was not much fun since they had embarked on this voyage. She seemed to have entirely lost her taste for the gossip and inconsequential chatter Millie lived by. Glendinning was no use at all. He slept and snored on deck while his face and neck grew an alarming shade of brick red. Sometimes he shot water-fowl and wild duck, and once or twice he went off on camping expeditions to do some more shooting. He would acquire the services of a dragoman to conduct him to where he could bag quail and snipe, which were then prepared by the cook for their table. He fished, and sometimes caught some, but not as many as the Arabs with their dragnets. He was happy as a sandboy.

  “Cheer up, Millie! Remember how much you wanted to come here,” he constantly urged her.

  I must have taken leave of my senses, thought Millie. Three months on this boat! “Oh, Glendinning, I never dreamed it would be like this. What I wouldn’t give for a decent cup of English tea!”

  The unaccustomed food had upset Millie’s stomach, the heat gave her migraine, and – utter calamity! – she was without her maid. From the moment the silly woman first set foot in this land, she had done nothing but complain. Her nose was permanently turned up at the suspect foreign food and lack of hygiene. Venturing out into the noisy, smelly, cosmopolitan rabble in the dusty and insalubrious streets had her reaching for her smelling salts and her trusty umbrella to use as a weapon – she wasn’t going to end up alongside the dead donkeys in the malodorous Khalig Canal which ran right through the centre of Cairo, if she could help it, food for the wheeling kites which swooped down in front of your eyes for rubbish and carrion! But the last straw had been the cramped quarters she was supposed to inhabit and share with Clara Hallam on the dahabeah – Hallam, forever saying her prayers and taking up so much room with her bony elbows and big peasant feet. She had taken one look, then departed on the next ship home, declaring that nothing would make her stay a day longer in this heathen place.

  Millie had thankfully packed her off, but then immediately began to regret it, though Beatrice had said at once, “Don’t fret about it, Hallam will maid us both.”

  It was an offer neither Millie nor Hallam had any choice but to accept. To be sure, both ladies had taken the advice to adopt loosely cut, plain brown holland riding habits with divided skirts as a comfortable alternative to their normal elaborate, constricting attire whenever they went sightseeing, and they wore their hair as simply as possible, but to be without a maid was unthinkable. Hallam’s determinedly virtuous performance of her duties nevertheless convinced Millie she would almost have done better without her. She moaned and fanned her face. “No wonder I don’t feel at all well!”

  “You’d feel better, Millie, if you didn’t think about it so much, and took an interest in what there is to see,” Beatrice said, somewhat tartly. She herself had never looked or felt better in her life. Despite the broad-brimmed hats she was careful to wear, her thick, pale skin had acquired a golden flush from the sun. More than that, the electric, tonic effect of the desert air seemed to have cleared her mind and sharpened her senses. She was receptive to everything – and since Millie refused to be engaged in sensible talk or discussion, she found herself more and more in the company of the knowledgeable young man who was in charge of their expedition.

  Millie shrugged off the advice petulantly. “As far as I can tell, one temple is very much like another.” However hard she tried, she could not work up much enthusiasm or awe for the hot, stuffy monuments they visited en route, with their everlasting, unintelligible wall-paintings and inscrutable gods. “One can have too much of a good thing. If I am forced to admire one more statue of Rameses the Second, I shall scream!”

  “Well,” Beatrice replied shortly, “if you took the trouble to listen to Valery Iskander, and knew the context in which they’d been built, you might be more sympathetic.” She was becoming quite sharp these days.

  “Oh, Iskander!”

  “Don’t dismiss him so easily. He knows what he’s talking about.”

  Whatever Millie might think of him, Beatrice considered that intense young man to be a find. His extraordinary eyes, pale blue in his dusky face, lit up when he was required to explain the significance of each temple deity, or to decipher the mysterious hieroglyphics, or when he was propounding every last detail of the lost civilisation of the ancients. It was entirely due to him that the Nile journey was given meaning and purpose. Listening to him, her head had become filled with stories of how the pyramids were built by means of circumpolar stars and the dark, still point; with talk of spells and incantations and riddles; of eternity and resurrection, and the Doors of Heaven. He did his best to unravel for her the complexities and mysteries of the ancient religion, but she was bewildered by one based on the fear of self-begotten, self-existent, almighty Ra, the god of all; by the multiplicity of grotesque gods and goddesses, their dual nature and their half human, half animal shape; horrified by human sacrifice and the obsession of the ancients with the world of the dead. But she realised Iskander was in love with his country’s past, speaking of Tuts and Ptolemies as though they were but one generation removed, his enthusiasm making them seem still alive. His deep knowledge of his country’s history and its culture amounted almost to an obsession.

  She understood a little of this passion when she saw for herself how the past was still all around them, often disregarded. The colossal fallen statue of Rameses the Second, lying in the dust at Memphis … mud hut villages built on the rubble of former civilisations, hallowed stones plundered for re-use as native hovels … temples used by gypsies whose fires had blackened the interiors, where sparrows and bats nested above the porticos. Enchanting, black-eyed, filthy children playing among the ruins of a temple and wanting to sell them a kid for a few coins.

  But Millie refused to show an interest in any of this. “We might have walked along the Embankment in London and seen as much,” she objected petulantly, at gloomy Denderah. “At least there is one of the original obelisks there to see.”

  “But not in its original context.”

  Millie’s stomach upsets continued, and she could hardly contain her impatience for their arrival at Luxor, where a decent hotel, baths, and soft beds awaited them. Not to mention Major Randolph, who was to join them there and spend his leave with them. He at least managed to make excursions interesting without trying to stuff one’s head with incomprehensible facts about a dead civilisation.

  The eternal, dun-coloured cliffs beyond the lush valley plain became shoulders of hills covered with golden sand-drifts as they journeyed further up the Nile, into Upper Egypt. Dust-devils spiralled litter, leaves and sand into miniature whirlwinds; then the north wind failed and the khamsin blew for days, making navigation impossible. The hot, suffocating wind from the south drove them all down below decks, while it buffeted anyone unwise enough to venture out, and coated everything in sight with desert sand. Tempers frayed, and even the normally happy, smiling crew became cross and morose.

  “It will become hotter still,” warned Iskander, smiling imperturbably, “but not as hot as in what they used to call ‘the evil days of summer.’ The sun is pitiless then.”

  The choking khamsin at last departed. When they went on deck, the sandbanks had been blown into new and mysterious shapes, and the sky was quiet and still once more.

  “I will tell you a story about the khamsin,” said Iskander. “There was once a pharaoh’s daughter, whose name I have forgotten, beautiful and young. She went down to the river-bank, walking under a canopy of silk held by her handmaidens, to bathe in the Nile before her marriage to an old man whom her father commanded her to marry, but whom she did not love, for there was a young prince who had already claimed her heart. She lowered herself into the water nine times, and each time wished that she might die before the marriage could take place. The prince she loved, disguised in the form of a crocodile so that she did not recognise him, glided silently up to her. In her despair, wishing for death, she said, ‘I give myself to thee.’ Now, these were also the
words which meant a solemn promise thereafter to be bound to a man as his wife. ‘Come with me,’ said the crocodile-prince, and they swam away together. Her handmaidens, believing she had been eaten by the crocodile, beat their tambourines and uttered long lamentations of grief. Her father sorrowed for his daughter, while for three days, the khamsin blew. When it ended, the king saw that the wind had carved and shaped in the sand outside his window the form of a crocodile, with his daughter in its jaws. So afraid was he that this was an afreet, an evil spirit come to haunt him, that he publicly expressed his remorse for the wrong done to his daughter, and promised anything their heart should desire to anyone who would kill the crocodile. At this, the princess came forth by day from the darkness, walking towards him with her young prince, radiant with happiness.”

  “And of course, they all lived happily ever after,” said Beatrice with a smile.

  Iskander smiled too, his wide, white smile and, as he often did, took her hand in the most natural manner, gently stroking it as he talked, a liberty she permitted without thinking too much about it. She had grown used to it, and to the compliments he paid her, not in the light, social way she was accustomed to, and had always taken as her due, but looking at her with those strange eyes as though he meant every word. The way he pronounced her name made her smile. “Ah, Bayah-tree-chay, the shape of sand, like life, is whatever we wish it to be,” he murmured softly.

  The boat glided on, and the sunset turned the sky to fiery rose and gold, and its reflection lit the rocks either side of the river so that they, too, were rose and gold, before the sun went swiftly down and they turned black and menacing. A vulture landed on the edge of the rail, then took off. Beatrice looked up, and saw Millie standing at the entrance to the awning, a silk stole in her hand. Her bright eyes went from one to the other, then Iskander, without haste, conveyed Beatrice’s hand to his lips, “Goodnight, Bayah-tree-chay.” He stood up and lazily walked across the deck. When he came to Millie, he bowed and raised her hand to his lips, too. “Goodnight, Lady Glendinning.” The iciness in his voice matched the cold blue stones his eyes had become on seeing Millie.

  In the silence after his departure, Millie said, shivering a little, holding out the stole, “Are you not cold out here? Come down below and talk to me. Glendinning is asleep again, and I’m likely to die from terminal ennui with having nothing to do, and no one to chat with.”

  “As you wish, though I haven’t felt the cold.” But now, aware of the warmth of the heavy silk as it slid around her shoulders, Beatrice realised how chilly the night, with the onset of its swift darkness, had in fact become.

  Millie paused before they went below, and looked her straight in the eye. “A word of warning, my dearest Bea. Amuse yourself all you want … but be careful. Amory is not a man to be trifled with.”

  Beatrice paled a little under her sun-warmed skin. This was rich, coming from Millie! Whose flirting had always gone somewhat beyond the bounds of circumspection, at weekend house parties, and elsewhere, for that matter. Who had, in fact, changed her original opinion of Wycombe in Cairo, and had set her sights firmly on him. She could scarcely wait until she met him again at Luxor – though her instincts where he was concerned, Beatrice thought wryly, had failed her there. He would never be interested in the likes of Millie.

  But how dare she? With difficulty, Beatrice managed to keep her indignation under control. Valery Iskander was, after all, nothing more than an interesting companion. He was a mere twenty-two, a boy. And she was thirty-three. Yes, he had been holding her hand when Millie had arrived on deck. Yes, she had found the experience pleasurable, and perhaps needed to examine her motives in allowing it. But she was not deliberately flirting with him, as she might have done with any young admirer in London, so what did that signify?

  The days slid by as they approached Luxor. Like the natives who sat in the sun and did nothing, or took all day to perform the most simple task, Beatrice was happy enough. Unwitting of what lay ahead for her. Waiting. She did not know for what. She had glimpsed something else, some vaguely understood part of her, something of that same inexplicable longing that occasionally assailed her in her decorous life at Charnley, and thought it might be vouchsafed to her.

  As soon as Hallam had hooked her into her skirt and the cool lavender-coloured muslin blouse, its pin-tucked bodice now invisibly mended with exquisite, tiny stitches, re-ironed and free from every crease, and she had picked up a matching silk parasol trimmed with black lace, Beatrice, still feeling magnanimous at what she proposed, strolled out into the garden, outwardly purposeless, but intent on seeking out Miss Jessamy without delay.

  She found her on the lawn in front of the house, giving Daisy, who had a sketchbook on her knee, advice as to how to proceed with a drawing of Marcus, who lounged on the grass a few feet away. They were all laughing when her shadow fell between them and the sun, causing them to look up. The laughter subsided when she said she had come to see Miss Jessamy about the guest rooms, and a rather horrid little silence ensued, but when she told them of her change of heart, Daisy threw down her sketchbook and jumped up to embrace her. Miss Jessamy went almost as red as that terrible hair. And Marcus just grinned, as if he had known all along that she would change her mind.

  Beatrice was mortified, not having thought that her negative decision would have been received so critically by others as well as the young woman herself. Neither had she imagined such rapport would already have been established between Miss Jessamy and Daisy, not to mention Marcus. But at least it appeared that she had not entirely forgotten her role as companion to Daisy.

  She left them sitting there, and with these thoughts occupying her mind strolled down towards the lake, and the summerhouse, where she was surprised by Iskander, sitting there as if he had been waiting for her.

  “I hope you are being looked after properly, Valery. Is everything to your satisfaction?” she asked, endeavouring to play the polite hostess, while every nerve screamed danger.

  “Not everything,” he said, with meaning. There followed a long silence.

  “What is it you want of me?” she asked at last in a low voice.

  “I simply want explanations, an answer and an apology.”

  “For what?”

  “Your conduct towards me in Luxor. I want an answer to the question – why? That is all I have come for, what I want to know. Why?”

  “I simply don’t understand.”

  “Oh yes, Bayah-tree-chay, I think you understand very well.”

  5

  Beatrice’s birthday morning, a week later, dawned bright and clear. Her breakfast had been cleared and she had risen and was sitting at her dressing table when Amory came into her room, clean-shaven and smelling of bay rum, with a smile on his face and in his hands a flat box bearing the name of the Bond Street jeweller he always patronised.

  “A very happy birthday, my dear. I didn’t come along earlier, not wishing to disturb you. You’re going to have a very busy day today.”

  “Oh, the children have already been to see me,” replied Beatrice, smiling and waving to the masses of tissue paper and ribbons still strewing the bed. “Lovely presents, so sweet of them.”

  “Well, here’s another that I hope you’ll like.”

  Resting on white velvet inside the box was a parure, comprising a matching bracelet, necklace, earrings and a crescent-shaped hair ornament that was almost, but not quite, a tiara. They were exquisitely fashioned, thickly studded with amandine garnets set in marcasite, not nearly so splendid as the sapphires he had given her on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, or the pearls when Marcus was born, but charming of him, she thought, as he said, oddly embarrassed, it seemed to her. “Mere trifles, of course, but I believe you’ve expressed a liking for garnets more than once.”

  “I have – and these are quite delightful!” She had meant to wear the heirloom emeralds tonight, but she was careful not to give any indication of what she’d intended – and in any case, the garnets’ setting was
more modern, so much lighter than the heavy gold one of the emeralds. She hooked the earrings into her ears and, smiling, held out her wrist for him to fasten the bracelet around it. He pushed it gently up on to her rounded forearm and then walked behind her to slip the necklace around her neck and fasten the clasp at the back. She was pleased with effect of the delicate cascade of gleaming stones against the creamy skin of her throat and as she felt his fingers warm on the nape of her neck, she twisted round in his arms and impulsively offered her lips to be kissed. “You are so good to me, Amory. I don’t deserve it.”

  “Nonsense! No one could have a better wife. A few bits of jewellery are no compensation for the support you give me. I consider myself a fortunate man, to have a wife so accomplished, as well as so good. And now I must leave you. Work awaits me, even today.”

  “Of course.”

  When he had gone, she sat on amidst the pretty, frivolous, untidy clutter of her bedroom, curiously deflated. The breeze fluttered the lace curtains between the heavy folds of the ivory silk drapes to either side. The peach-coloured plush upholstery, the Aubusson carpet, the gold-shaded lamps perfectly complemented the prettily papered walls. The cheval mirror reflected the silver and crystal on her dressing table and the glow of the garnets against her flesh.