The Shape of Sand

by Marjorie Eccles

  Millie, who made no secret of the fact that she could summon up little interest in such a trip, was weighing up its disadvantages. Of necessity, it would entail becoming hot, dirty and exhausted, not to mention having to wear that dreadful brown holland get-up, plus heavy boots. On the other hand, one might remain here in the hotel, with ample time to prepare to greet the intrepid explorers on their return – smiling, scented and clean, in a pretty frock and hat.

  “Well, perhaps I may be persuaded to visit Abu Simbel,” she acknowledged at last. “But for the moment I’ve had quite enough of sightseeing. I’m told there are bats in some of the temples! Supposing, Beatrice, they got entangled in one’s hair!” She shuddered. “No, I mean to stay here in the hotel for a few more days and take advantage of some modern civilisation — I have made the acquaintance of some very nice people. The Bellinghams are spending several weeks here, and I dare say I shall pass my time very well with them.”

  No doubt her decision had been influenced by the fact that the party she was referring to included a young man of effete but handsome appearance and poetic inclinations who affected to have taken a shine to her, but if she had expected to be left to her own devices, she was doomed to disappointment when Glendinning announced that he, too would stay behind. “Give the donkeys a chance, what?” he guffawed, patting his substantial girth, “and we can take the opportunity to look for some antiquities to buy before we leave, eh, Millie? Any tips, Major?”

  “The English Consular Agent is the most reliable dealer. You’d be advised to do business with him, otherwise you’re likely to be palmed off with shams. I’ll go with you when you are ready to buy, if you wish,” Wycombe offered, apparently feeling that Glendinning’s way of dealing with the natives by shouting loudly at them would be no protection against their natural-born cunning.

  Millie sighed, but obviously felt that even her husband’s company was less onerous than trekking through barren valleys to inspect inaccessible tombs. So it seemed to Beatrice that she was fated to spend the next few days in the company of Wycombe. She brightened, however, when she thought of Valery Iskander, who would accompany them, and make their visits so much more rewarding by the wealth of detail he was able to give.

  But when it came to the point, Wycombe seemed to have unaccountably taken against the young man, and told him he was free to take a break and pursue his own interests. They would hire a guide. “You do not need a guide,” Iskander insisted, his pride affronted, “I can tell you all you wish to know.”

  Beatrice, too, found herself upset at the idea of his being so summarily dismissed, but her protests did not seem to count for much and Wycombe said privately to her, afterwards, “I’m afraid I made an error of judgement when I was persuaded to hire that fellow in Cairo. This combination of the Egyptian and the Russian temperament – I don’t trust him.”

  “Why ever not? If you knew him better, you’d realise how much he knows, and how much he feels for this country. He looks on it as his own.”

  “Precisely! I hope he’s not one of those Nationalist hotheads. They are dangerous men, wanting to rule Egypt for themselves when they have no idea how to do it. They should appreciate how much the improvement in their conditions and way of life has been made possible through the services rendered by the British.”

  Pompous as it was, it was an unusually impassioned speech for Wycombe, and both he and Beatrice fell silent after its stiff deliverance. She felt profoundly that he was wrong, that Valery Iskander was not of this ilk. That gentle, idealistic young man? It was disturbing to think of hot thoughts simmering beneath the surface, but there were things about him, she had to admit, that she didn’t understand. Those eyes, for instance, that had turned so cold when they had rested on Millie, that time on the dahabeah. But their acquaintance was short and perhaps, after all, she did not know him as well as she thought. And indeed, she was beginning to feel she would never know Wycombe at all. The focus of her unease with him shifted slightly. She had always thought him basically cold and unresponsive, but now she felt a dangerous frisson of something she could not quite name.

  “I don’t mean to be unfair,” he said. “You must know, Beatrice, that I have only your welfare at heart.”

  She traced patterns in the dry, gritty sand beneath her feet and remembered the touch of Iskander’s brown fingers as he gently stroked her hand in those long talks they’d had as they sailed up the Nile, his smooth young flesh. A flush started at her neck and mounted to her cheeks. But she was grateful for the concern that prompted Wycombe’s interference, and said so, laying a hand upon his sleeve, the first time she had ever willingly made a spontaneous gesture towards him. It was a rather large, well-shaped hand, browned by the sun despite her precautions. He looked at it for a long time. “Indeed, Beatrice,” he said at last, raising his eyes. “But this Iskander – it doesn’t do to let the natives forget their place, get too big for their boots, you know.”

  Natives! Her momentary sympathy with him vanished. He was talking of Iskander – Valery Iskander, who had been part of her life for the last weeks, who had taught her so much and had awakened in her feelings never before experienced. She tried to excuse the unwittingly wounding words but the antagonism was back between them.

  Iskander sulked and would hardly speak to her, no matter how prettily she coaxed him, and then went off on his own concerns.

  Later, in her journal, she wrote: ‘He intrigues me, but sometimes frightens me. A dark, fierce excitement beats in me, when I think what might happen, what I want to happen; then I hear the echo of a still small voice which says this was not precisely the sort of advice that had guided my infant teaching.’

  The visits to the west bank, and even to the great temple at Karnak were, in fact, quite eclipsed by what happened later. She remembered being awed by the Colossi, the funerary temples and the silent, ancient tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but nothing of their detail. With more exactitude, she recalled the debilitating heat, and her vow that whatever happened, she would find some excuse not to re-visit the sites when Amory would be with them. She had marvelled at the immensity of Karnak, its pylons and columns, ten times the height of a man, sat for a while watching the palms reflected in the Sacred Lake. She was hushed into silence, endeavouring to comprehend a dark religion whose temples could accommodate thousands of people to witness, though not to take part in, arcane ceremonies taking place in inner sanctums where only the priests were allowed, in order to perform their secret, mystic rites; for the holiest and most inaccessible shrines were only for the high priests, who were the link between the people and the terrifying dark gods with power to flood the land in the annual deluge and to send drought, pestilence and death.

  But then all of it faded to nothing, after the Luxor temple.

  Only recently restored, the temple was within a stone’s throw of the hotel and could be visited at any time but, as so often happens when this sort of decision is made, it had gradually been pushed to the end of the itinerary. At one time approached from the greater temple of Karnak by a two-mile paved avenue, lined with ram-headed sphinxes, its massive sandstone columns had once supported the roof of a temple dedicated to the god Amon. Over the centuries, it had suffered from earthquakes, sacking and burning by Christian iconoclasts who wrecked shrines, smashed statues, disfigured bas-reliefs and then abandoned it. On the years of accumulated rubble, mud-brick houses were built, and its stones were used to keep back the inundations of the Nile. A few years ago excavations had begun, forcing the native population to abandon their houses, much against their will. Misery seemed to have seeped into its stones and even before she entered, it was a gloomy and depressing place to Beatrice, haunted by the past.

  The visit had been made too late in the day, when dusk was already beginning to fall. Perhaps she had been too tired to appreciate its remaining splendours, or was sated or overstimulated by the ruins of mighty Karnak, where she’d been made to feel insignificant and slightly lost in the midst of its overpowering ma
gnificence. Why, afterwards, the temple at Luxor, though small only by comparison with what they had just been exploring, should have affected her so adversely, she felt unable to explain. Whatever it was, it had overwhelmed her. It was true that the sacred building was more beautiful, less obviously awe-inspiring than Karnak, yet she knew that she would never be able to remember it, ruined, empty and dead, without terror. Or maybe it was simply the echoing darkness and the deep, silent shadows which had oppressed her, the weight of memory, old ghosts. What was certain to her at least was the actual thing that had happened there, in that small chamber.

  It was reached by a progression through several preceding chambers, each of which became smaller, and the portals lower as one approached the inner shrine. It was necessary to step over a raised threshold to in order to enter it – the enclosed birth-chamber of a royal child, son of the god Amon, a future king, said their guide. The light was nearly gone, and voices echoed eerily. A torch was held up for them to see the inscriptions, the rayed suns upon the roof. Complex scenes carved in relief upon its stones told the story of the child’s conception and birth, and predicted his royal status. It was all at once too much. Birth was still too closely associated in her mind with death, both had touched her too recently for her to think objectively: feelings on the death of her unborn child, when she had been so ill herself, and had almost died, came back in a rush. Time stood still while she felt herself caught and trapped in an engulfing sense of despair. The walls of the chamber pressed in suffocatingly, she couldn’t breathe. Panic set in, then just as quickly receded as she began to have the sense of a presence behind her in the darkness, and felt strong arms enfolding and supporting her from the back. Instead of despair, there came a flooding feeling of peace, a release. Until the hand from behind cupped her breast and gently pressed … a purely human presence. For a while she leaned back, not resisting the flood of sensation that swamped her. Then she knew what had happened, realised that she was allowing something dark to erupt into her world, opening the way, inescapably, to what would transform her life from its soft sweetness by a dark, unclean emotion which at that moment she felt would choke her.

  She twisted herself from the arms and turned blindly to go back. Stumbling on the threshold of the chamber, she forgot to bend her head, crashed into the low stone lintel, and felt herself falling …

  The next thing she knew, she was in bed, back at the hotel, and Millie and Hallam were fussing around her.

  Old terrors, old fears, but never, ever, to be forgotten.

  Blindly, she raised her head, for a moment not knowing where she was. Behind her, in the pretty, frivolous bedroom, the little French clock struck two, synchronising exactly with the tinny strike of the clock over the stables: Amory was punctilious about his clocks keeping time. Beatrice blinked, realising he had been gone but fifteen or twenty minutes, while she had lived through another, distant, lifetime, it seemed. In an effort to recover herself, she rose, opened the french doors on to the balcony and stood there, letting her heart resume its normal beat and the night air cool her feverish brow. An owl swooped across the moon, some small creature screamed in its death throes. The trees soughed and the scent of the Madame Alberic Barbier climbing rose lingered on the balcony. The soft, English darkness beyond was as deep as any in the desert, though the stars were not as bright.

  It might have been minutes, it might have been hours later when she heard him open her bedroom door again.

  “I am out here,” she called softly, her heart beating with hope, not turning her head, “I needed some air.”

  Footsteps sounded behind her, and she turned as he joined her on the balcony. She gave a stifled cry.

  “You thought I was Amory!”

  “Yes.” She had begun to tremble. A thick pulse beat in her throat.

  “He has gone into his study. He will be there for hours.” He placed his hand on hers as it lay on the balustrade and she did not withdraw it. They came closer, his free hand moved to her white arm, stayed a moment, then moved to her throat, her cheek, and gently rested there. They stood, eye to eye, not speaking, not moving, but then body to body, lip to lip. Until, with one accord, they moved back into her bedroom.

  The light went out and after a moment the cigarette of the watcher in the garden was also extinguished.

  7

  The following day, Vita lay in the hammock under the cedar, trailing one pretty little foot, a soft cushion behind her head, half asleep, her thoughts drifting, listening to the church bells pealing their summons for morning service, pleased with herself for having resisted the pressure to attend. It was too hot to go anywhere, too pleasant to be doing anything other than lazing here, day-dreaming, just feeling perfectly happy. She was going to marry Bertie, and she didn’t care a fig that everyone else thought she was doing so simply because she had managed to make a good catch, in her first season – she knew otherwise. Her family liked him well enough – who could fail to like Bertie? – but at the same time it was obvious they thought he was a bit of an ass. Vita, however, though far from being a fool, didn’t crave intellectual stimulation. Unlike Harriet and Daisy, she wasn’t the clever type, nor had she ever wanted to be. All she had ever asked was to marry and have three – or four – darling children. She was just very lucky to have found the right man so soon …

  I, Victoria Edina, take thee, Bertram Granville George …

  Her bridesmaids were to be in palest blush pink. Beatrice was of the opinion that they should, all eight of them, be in traditional white, but pink would be kinder to dear Dolly’s slightly sallow complexion (Dolly had chosen cream for her own wedding gown, for that very reason). Besides, Vita herself would be wearing white satin, pure and virginal.

  She felt the heat run right up from her neck into her face as she remembered last night’s fiasco and what might have happened. They had both drunk too much champagne. As soon as was polite, Bertie’s mother and sisters had indicated they’d had quite enough of the festivities and wished to be escorted home. Bertie, half-drunk, had whispered that he would be back, she must wait for him, pretend to go to bed and then come out again to meet him. Greatly daring, she had promised. What a lark! She would have promised him anything. But oh, what machinations she’d had to resort to in order to avoid being seen as she slipped out! In the end, she had managed it, and waited for him, heart beating, ready to slip into his arms. Under his soft, insistent persuasions, she had led him to where she was sure they wouldn’t be disturbed, so that they might kiss and embrace as they were never allowed to do in daylight. And goodness knows what it might have led to if they hadn’t been so rudely interrupted –

  Vita put her hands to her flaming face. Heavens, no! What was she thinking? Nothing like that would ever have happened! Bertie was too honourable, he would never have let her risk losing her reputation, and besides, he knew she was not fast, or immoral … she was not! Hot shame coursed through her, but at the same time, there was a secret inner excitement that told her if Bertie had insisted, she just might not have resisted enough …

  “Vita!”

  “What?” Vita sat up, almost tipping herself out of the hammock, which at least served to cover her confusion and gave her time to collect herself. “Oh, it’s you, Daisy. What’s wrong?”

  “Do wake up! I can’t find Mama anywhere.”

  “She’s gone to church, I suppose.”

  “No, she hasn’t. Hallam says not. She’s in rather a state, Hallam I mean – she hasn’t even gone off to the Baptists this morning, which speaks for itself. She’d rather miss eating for a week than her Bible class! She says Mama didn’t go to bed until late last night, but when she took her morning tea in to her – she wasn’t there.”

  “Well, don’t ask me! She may have gone for a walk.”

  They looked at each other and burst out laughing. The unlikelihood of this amounted to an impossibility. Beatrice never walked anywhere if she could avoid it, except perhaps to take a gentle stroll in Hyde Park when in London, or as
far as the lake, here.

  In any case, she rarely put in an appearance before eleven in the morning. Sometimes it was noon, especially on Sundays, or when they had been entertaining late the previous evening, as had happened yesterday, but she was usually to be found before then in her room, writing and answering letters and invitations, often from her bed, flicking through fashion journals or busily making plans for entertaining guests here or in Mount Street. But as for rising early and going out to take the air …!

  “Perhaps she’s gone for a spin with Papa.”

  “He’s in the library. With orders not to be disturbed. And Copley’s polishing the motorcar in the yard.”

  “Have you asked anyone else? The servants–”

  “Well, I suppose Hallam’s asked them, I haven’t. Kit’s gone back to London, Uncle Myles left for home an hour ago, Harriet’s off to church with Marcus – and Mr Iskander doesn’t seem to be about, though I don’t imagine he’s gone to church. What religion is he, do you suppose? I wonder what the rector would say if he turned up there … perhaps he’s run off with Mama!”

  “Daisy, don’t be such a goose! I know, she’ll have gone across to Nanny’s cottage. That skirt material came from Swan & Edgar’s yesterday, and I was supposed to take it across. But I forgot, and Mama was quite cross with me.”

  “I dare say you might be right. I’ll go over and find out. I want to see if Nanny’s cough’s better, anyway.”

  “Shouldn’t you be helping Miss Jessamy? I thought that was the reason you’d been excused church.”

  “Oh, I escaped. She’s having difficulty with one of the walls and creating such a dust! And since I’ve been worked to death all week, I felt I deserved a break. She’s a real slave driver.” Indeed, Rose had driven Daisy, installed like the sorcerer’s apprentice, almost as hard as she drove herself and the staff who had been enlisted to help her with the heavy work.