The Shape of Sand

by Marjorie Eccles

  “Go on. Please.”

  “No, I’ve said enough.” She closed her eyes briefly. “I’m too old for all this.”

  “You know that’s not true! Go on – what happened next?”

  Millie continued to be evasive. “Nothing. Amory arrived the next day, then we went on to Assuan, and Abu Simbel, that’s all.”

  “She was well enough to go with you?”

  “Oh yes, we all went, then we returned to Luxor. Your father had found he could spend a little more time there than he’d originally thought, so the men spent several days exploring the temples on the west bank. Neither Bea nor I went with them. She’d already been there once, and I’d no desire to go. The crew took the boat back to Cairo, but we’d decided to return by train. We stayed in the hotel meanwhile. Lovely hotel,” she added reminiscently, “I believe it’s called the Winter Palace now.”

  “And that’s all? That’s all that happened? What about Iskander?”

  “Oh,” Millie said vaguely. “He’d suddenly decided to go back to Cairo. He left us before Amory arrived. They were all like that, you know, the Egyptians. Unpredictable.”

  Harriet said, with sudden insight, “It wasn’t what happened to my mother in the temple that was important, was it? It was what happened afterwards. Was it something to do with Iskander – and why he left so unexpectedly?”

  “Your mother always said that you were too sharp for your own good, Harriet!” Relapsing into silence, Millie closed her eyes for so long that Harriet thought she might have dropped off to sleep. But then she opened them and they were sharp and bright as ever. “Let it be,” she said, “No good will come of stirring mischief up at this stage.”

  “It’s a little more than mischief! Somebody killed my mother, strangled her. It’s a matter of trying to find out who did.”

  “Does it matter now? Iskander’s probably dead himself by now. It’s only old dinosaurs like me who are still alive. And Myles Randolph, or so I hear.”

  Harriet said, “Iskander is, too. He’s a respected professor of Egyptology at the university in Cairo.” There was a silence. A lump of coal fell into the heart of the fire. Ash feathered around it and then the flames burned brighter.

  “That cross you’re wearing – he gave it to her. An ankh, it’s called – supposed to be the symbol of life. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  Harriet had forgotten she had been wearing it, like a talisman, ever since coming across it. “She was fascinated by him, wasn’t she?”

  “Iskander? Yes, in a way. He intrigued her. So much so that I began to think she might do something very silly, that she might have regretted, but we arrived in Luxor quite soon and that put a stop to that.”

  “My father arriving, you mean?”

  “No,” Millie said quickly, “I simply meant that we were back with civilised company.”

  Her tongue still ran away with her as, according to Amory, it always had. A rattle-pate he’d called her, perhaps not without reason. Had she been referring to Wycombe? That meeting him again in Luxor had provided opportunity for clandestine meetings with Beatrice? Had the affair started then? Or had it started earlier, in Cairo perhaps? And had Amory found out — either then, or later? Or suspected – and then, on Beatrice’s birthday night many years later, found them together – and killed her? Insupportable thought – and in that case … why had he spared Wycombe? Perhaps a more subtle revenge had been exacted in taking his own – to him now worthless – life, and leaving Wycombe with a lifetime of guilt. It was a picture Harriet could all too easily envisage – the nightmare she had been afraid of all along, the alternative to Kit having killed Beatrice. People, perhaps Beatrice most of all, had always underestimated Amory, looked at his surface sobriety and failed to see the underlying depth of feeling and emotion.

  Where did Iskander, then, fit into this? “What bothers me,” Harriet said, “is why my mother invited Valery Iskander to Charnley. She didn’t seem to like him very much, as I remember, whatever she’d once thought of him.”

  “Unfinished business? To make amends? Who knows? Whatever the reason, she made the biggest mistake of her life.”

  “You do believe he killed her, don’t you?”

  But Millie, having planted her barb of suspicion, shrugged and was not to be drawn further. She shook her head and helped herself to another slice of walnut cake, dabbing at the crumbs of coffee icing with her finger.

  “You know,” she said at last, unexpectedly, “I used to envy Bea her beauty, the way men fell at her feet, but beauty’s a burden. Your mother couldn’t cope with it.”

  Thinking of the way Beatrice had always seemed to accept compliments as her due, so graciously, this sounded to Harriet very much like a contradiction. But then Millie added, “She had to live up to it all the time, seeking reassurances, because it was all she had, in the end.”

  This was shrewd of her. It was the first time anyone else had ventured to remark on it. Harriet herself had always secretly felt that Beatrice might have had few inner resources to fall back on, but recent events had shown that was too easy a judgement, too superficial. Beatrice had been a more complex character than that. She – and Millie – could both have been cruelly underestimating her. “Didn’t she ever worry that sort of thing might distress my father, I wonder?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Millie, “Beatrice never thought of anyone but herself, did she?”

  Half an hour later, Harriet knew she’d wrung from Millie as much as she was prepared to divulge. Before she left, however, she had to know about Hallam. “She told me she’s been here since she left Charnley.”

  “Yes. My maid at the time had just left me and I hadn’t found another. I knew Clara would be looking for another position. She wasn’t keen to come and live in London, but she agreed to give me her services until I found someone else. As it happens, she decided to stay. She’s been with me getting on for forty years.”

  What could account for this surprising change of heart on both sides? According to Beatrice’s journal, Millie had endured the sour Hallam’s ministrations with ill grace after Millie’s own maid had departed in Cairo, leaving her high and dry.

  “She’s a dismal old thing but we’ve always managed to rub along,” Millie said, reading her thoughts, “in fact, I doubt I should manage at all without her if ever she were to leave. Though of course, she never would.” Her tight smile bordered on the secretive, but for a moment there, her face had looked quite bleak at the prospect.

  “Come again, Harriet. It’s been a long time since I saw anyone from the old days.”

  “I will.” Impulsively, Harriet bent and kissed her. “I’m sorry we lost touch. It’s been a pleasure to meet you again.” This was true, for Millie, despite age, arthritis and loneliness, had lost none of her vivacity, the sparkle that had been so appealing in her younger days.

  Hallam was there at the door the instant she opened it, too quickly for her to have been far away. Closing it firmly behind Harriet, she walked with her down the hall to the front door. There she paused in the act of opening it. “I heard about them - finding your mother,” she began stiffly. She hesitated, then plunged her hand into her pocket. “Here, take this!”

  Harriet reached out to take the manila envelope but the old woman kept it clutched tightly in her knotted hand, reluctant to let it go. “What is it?”

  “Only some old papers she asked me to take care of before she – before she – disappeared.”

  Harriet was nonplussed. “I don’t think I understand.”

  What was the woman implying? That Beatrice had had some prescience of her death? It was more likely that she had been afraid of prying eyes seeing what she’d written, and Hallam’s next words seemed to confirm this.

  “You know what she was like. Secretive.”

  Clara Hallam was no longer the lady’s maid, having to watch her words and her attitudes. After a distance of forty years, bringing altered relationships, the need for pretence had gone and she was able to speak t
he plain truth without fear or favour – yet the criticism was unconsciously softened by a sigh, and Harriet knew that she was lying. Given that strange, twisted relationship she suspected had existed between them, it was scarcely credible that Beatrice would have entrusted Hallam with an envelope containing private papers, even supposing she’d had any unlikely premonitions of her coming death. If the point of it was secrecy, she would surely have been aware of the possibility that the woman might open it?

  “They’re pages from her journal, aren’t they?”

  Harriet had once or twice come across her mother in her bedroom, reading or writing in that mysterious little grey suede book, and at such times it had immediately been slipped into a drawer. Hallam, however, would certainly have known of its existence and although it was furnished with a lock, would have known where the key was hidden – as it undoubtedly would have been. Harriet was convinced that it was Hallam herself who had cut those pages out, and kept them for reasons of her own – but why? Out of misplaced loyalty to her mistress, because they had contained something damaging to Beatrice?

  Had Harriet so far misjudged her?

  After a moment, Hallam nodded. “Yes, that’s what they are.”

  “Why didn’t you hand them over before?”

  “That doesn’t matter. They weren’t important, as it turned out — but they might be now.”

  She saw that the woman’s eyes, like Millie’s, had been drawn to the golden ankh on its chain around Harriet’s neck, and that she was staring at it, fascinated.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked suddenly, moving to stand too closely for comfort near Harriet. She was not, after all, as unchanged as Harriet had thought. On the contrary, at such close quarters she showed every year of her age in her face, every bitter thought that had dragged it into its harsh lines. “I do, and so should you. Mark my words, you should! They come back to haunt you, when you least expect it. You shouldn’t have interfered. But you always were a meddlesome creature!”

  “That’s rubbish!” Taken aback as she was by the spite, Harriet still noted that Hallam had probably overheard most of her conversation with Millie. Interfere? What had she done that anyone could class as interference? Nothing more than insist that the past events she’d resurrected from Beatrice’s journals had some significance, and she was certain this wasn’ t something she might later come to regret. Wasn’t she?

  She realised the envelope was at last being thrust into her hands, and only when it was safely stowed in her bag did the maid snatch up her coat that was lying across a chair, almost throwing it at her. “Go now.” Her voice was shaking. “And don’t come back, bothering her. She can’t tell you anything – and never forget, she was a good friend to your mother, despite everything.”

  Harriet left, closing the door very quietly behind her.

  18

  The restaurant where they had arranged to meet Iskander was a narrow building halfway down a shadowy street situated somewhere in the dun-coloured confusion of the old city, crammed with the sort of shops that might have come straight out of The Arabian Nights. Flaring torches and single electric light bulbs dangling from a flex were the only illumination for the dark interiors of booths piled with splendours like Aladdin’s cave. Trading was still being carried on as they made their way to the rendezvous, the whole ceaseless bustling life of the city continuing undiminished by the arrival of darkness.

  Iskander was late. “Not to worry, he’ll be here” commented Tom, unfazed and clearly not expecting anything else, accustomed to the masterly sense of inactivity and supreme indifference to the clock that was masked by the noise and commotion in which Egyptians existed. Why hurry? Life here was but a footstep in the sands of time. A man who makes haste is a man who has no faith in the eternity of Allah.

  Nina herself wasn’t unduly impatient for Iskander to arrive. She was quite happy to watch the passing scene while sitting comfortably in a rattan chair in the restaurant window, in front of the velvet curtains behind which the serious business of eating was going on. On a window-seat nearby, a middle-aged Egyptian couple, smartly dressed, she with her plump fingers loaded with diamonds, he with gold, sat blissfully sharing a narghile. As they smoked, the gurgle of the water through the glass pipes provided a gentle accompaniment to the Arab music wailing from within the dim interior of the restaurant. She and Tom sipped scented, syrupy, violet-coloured drinks from tiny glasses, brought to them by the proprietor himself, who had welcomed Tom back like one of the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

  At last he arrived. Valery Akhmet Iskander. Despite the photograph taken at the birthday party, when he’d been wearing western dress, Nina had formed in her head a picture of a dark figure in a traditional white galabeya. But here he was, snappily dressed for the occasion in a sand-coloured suit, a dazzling white shirt and a red tie. She knew him to be of mixed race but here, in the flesh, it seemed to her as though the Russian in him had grown predominant as he’d grown older. His hair was no longer dark but grizzled. He was lighter-skinned than she had imagined he would be, stockily built and inclined to a paunch. His smile stretching from ear to ear, he threw his arms around Tom and kissed him on both cheeks. Then he stood back, regarding him intently. Gently, he put up a hand and touched the scar on his face. “A badge of courage, my dear young friend,” he said softly. “I am so very sorry.”

  “Inshallah, Valery. Malish.” Nina suspected Tom’s tongue was firmly in his cheek. The will of Allah. It doesn’t matter. Well, maybe it didn’t, to Allah.

  With an ambiguous wave of his hand and his brilliant smile, Iskander accepted, or brushed aside, this fatalism. “It does my heart good to hear you call me by my name again. No one calls me that any more – Professor, yes. Or just Iskander. The young are too egalitarian, eh? These Nationalists. And this, I take it, is Miss Nina? Enchanté, m’selle.”

  Her hand was taken in his warm, plump clasp and raised to his lips. Dark spectacles obscured the full impact of those famous light eyes, until he took them off and gave her a very shrewd look. She thought, yes, for all his cordiality, this was a man capable of harbouring deep resentments.

  “Come, let’s eat, and then you must tell me all that has happened to you since we last met, Tom.”

  “When we have time – it’s not me we came here to talk about.”

  “Patience, patience! I have known this young man since he was born, Miss Nina, and he was impatient in the cradle. I knew his lovely mother. His father is one of my oldest, closest friends who taught me all I know.”

  Did he know that Marcus was Tom’s father? Almost certainly. He must have been aware of the situation between Rose Jessamy and Marcus when they arrived in Cairo. And it had been he, after all, who had introduced Rose to the man she was eventually to marry.

  All affability and charm, he led the way to reserved seats at a small table in the dim, pulsating interior of the restaurant and ordered a meal whose component parts, apart from some tender lamb kebabs, were unfamiliar to Nina, but the total sum of which was light and delicious. Tom advised her on the choice of falafel, tamaiya patties, seared aubergine and hummus. Iskander pressed her to a glass of mint tea. The serving of the meal was conducted in a leisurely manner that suggested tomorrow was another day, but while waiting for the food to be brought to the table, there were diversions in the form of a dervish dancer, who was rewarded with uproarious applause, as was the emotional Egyptian woman singer who replaced her. Everyone was enjoying themselves immensely. The heat grew and the noise level intensified. It was impossible to talk. “Come home with me,” Iskander said abruptly, as soon as they had finished eating. “We can talk better there.”

  They emerged into the heavy dark night, daytime heat held by the buildings, and from somewhere, Iskander summoned a cab. Hooting and nudging its way through the dense traffic, it eventually deposited them outside a tall narrow building near the arch of the old Fatimid Gate, in a thronged street smelling strongly of spices, filled with dark little shops, and stalls se
lling but one commodity each – garlic, or oranges, or tomatoes - where trade was still vociferously being carried on under the flare of naphtha lights. Watched closely by three swarthy men in striped galabeyas, smoking under the shelter of an awning, they followed where Iskander led, into the dark interior of a shop, where the chief merchandise seemed to be pots, pans and baskets of every kind, through a door in the back and thence up some narrow stairs which led into his quarters above. “Welcome to my home,” he said, quietly but not without pride, seeing Nina’s eyes widen at the sight of the room which, though narrow, ran back to front of the whole building, making its size considerable. “I’m lucky, am I not, to live in such great comfort here?”

  He fussed around, insisting on providing refreshments, though they had just eaten a full meal. It was not until they were settled on low divans with tiny cups of sweet, thick coffee poured from a planished copper pot with a long, curved spout, and small, sticky sweetmeats in filigree silver dishes were placed in front of them that Iskander indicated he was prepared to hear what they had come to say.

  “Sorry to have sprung it on you, but we haven’t much time before we go back to England,” said Tom.

  “Always in such a hurry, Tom! All this way, and now you must rush back. Do try one of these, Miss Nina, they are delicious. No?” He chose for himself a tiny pastry, covered in honey and almonds, and popped it into his mouth.

  “I wish we didn’t have to go back so quickly, I’d have liked Nina to see something of Cairo, but there’s no time. We’re here unofficially, as it is.”

  Iskander smiled understandingly at this. That was something he recognised, pulling strings, greasing palms, bargaining. Then his smile faded. “So, to this sad business. You wish me to help. How can I do this? But stay a moment — I think you may find this difficult to believe, but I must repeat it, for it is the absolute truth. When I left Charnley that morning, I knew nothing of the events that had happened there. I went straight to London and took ship for Egypt as soon as I could. In too much of a hurry perhaps, but I had my reasons. I had no idea that Beatrice had disappeared, until I heard it from her son when he came here.” His face set in melancholy lines. “And now she has been found. Such a tragedy.”