Shadows on the Nile (34 page)

‘The boy looks upset.’

‘You go!’

One of the other men took two steps towards her. Sweat slid down her back. She could smell strong tobacco on him, he was so close. Her mouth was dry.

‘I want to speak to the boy,’ she said.

A young voice reached her from behind the man, followed by the sound of a slap and a squeal of pain.

‘Excuse me, please,’ she said briskly and tried to step around the man but he straddled her path, his lean body made bulky by his robe.

For a moment their eyes held, his so angry that she almost backed down, but then, very deliberately, she did the unforgivable. She touched him. Put her unclean hand on his arm and pushed. He leapt back as if she had the plague, and uttered a string of guttural curses, but Jessie now had a clear view of the boy. He was rigid with terror. She reached for him, seized the filthy sleeve of his tunic and yanked him out of the grip of the one who had spoken in English. The boy rocketed forward, relief on his young face, and entwined his dirty fingers deep into the material of her full skirt.

‘Good morning, lovely lady,’ he beamed up at her and tugged at her skirt. ‘I take you home right now this moment. Come please now come, yes.’

‘Yes,’ she said, her eyes
on the pack of young men.

One of the group growled something in Egyptian at the boy, but the child didn’t even glance in his direction.

‘Come come come,’ he chattered. ‘Lovely lady.’

Together they started walking away and the small hand pulling on her skirt tried to urge her to a faster pace but she refused to run. She knew what wolves did when their prey showed fear. But when they reached the corner of the street she risked a glance behind and saw that the four figures were leaning against the dusty wall.

‘Hurry hurry,’ the boy hissed.

She obliged once she was out of sight, but she still refused to break into a run.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Malak.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘I very all right.’

‘Well, Malak, I need to get back to the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.’

‘Yes yes, I take. I good dragoman. Come now here yes.’

He was steering her through a bewildering maze of back streets and alleyways. The stench of rotting vegetation and human filth was strong, but at the same time lines of spotlessly clean washing hung limply across the alleys, so that she had to duck her head, and she passed a girl perched on a three-legged stool diligently washing dishes in a bucket of water. The girl smiled shyly at the boy but he ignored her.

‘Malak, what was going on back there with those men?’

He turned his bright young face to her. His eyes were huge and round with soft long lashes, shining with expectation – not just of her, but of life. As though they knew life had an abundance of good things to offer, just waiting to be dug out of the sand. His cheeks were thin and the colour of palest coffee, silky smooth and as touchable as an apricot. His hair was black and dense, in need of a wash. Jessie’s heart went out to this child and instinctively she took his hand in hers. He didn’t pull away and the gleam in his eyes brightened.

‘The men bad. Very bad.’ But he
shrugged and wiped the blood from his nose, cheerfully. ‘They want sell me.’

‘Sell you?’

‘Oh yes yes. I make much good price.’ He puffed out his thin chest.

‘Sell you?’ she whispered. ‘No.’

‘Oh yes yes. Men come from you country, jolly good England.’

‘For boys?’

‘Oh yes yes. Plenty boys.’

‘Malak, I’m sorry.’

He twisted his head to look at her. ‘Not sorry you. You kind. Thank you, lovely lady.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twelve.’

She smiled at him.
Twelve?
He was lying. More like eight, maybe nine at most.

‘You speak excellent English, Malak. Where did you learn it? At school?’

They were turning into yet another dingy street where the dust lay thick and a man was skinning the carcase of a goat on a spike. For the first time a flicker of sorrow darkened the boy’s face, as brief as the beat of a crow’s wing. ‘No, no school. I must work. I polish. Lots of polish yes.’

‘Polish what?’

‘Pots. Brass pots. Tourist want shiny. Many pots and snakes and bowls and many many polish.’ He mimicked the act of polishing with his free hand. His other still clung to her.

‘So where did you learn English?’

He hesitated. ‘From Englishman.’

Jessie tightened her grip. Her heart sickened.

‘He good, very lovely good.’ He grinned up at her. ‘He kind, like you. He say I smart.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘Up here. I be lawyer one day. He love me plenty but …’ he sighed with the weariness of an old man, ‘he leave. Must go. Too bad.’

Jessie
wanted to cry.

‘So where do you live?’ she asked.

He released her hand and jumped into the open doorway of a house even more ramshackle than the others.

‘Here home! My mother and plenty sisters.’

He said it proudly and she loved him for it. He salaamed formally and invited her in.

One room. Six people lived in it. Malak, his parents and three younger sisters. His father worked on a boat on the Nile, loading and unloading sacks of grain or boxes of machinery or whatever else it happened to be carrying that day. Long hard hours of brutal labour. And yet they lived like this.

It wasn’t right.

‘Hello. Salaam.’

She greeted his mother, a fine-boned woman with her son’s smile, who was seated cross-legged on a square of rush matting, spinning cotton on a spindle that dangled from her hand. Opposite her, three exquisite little girls under five years old sat watching, transfixed by their mother’s nimble fingers. Jessie was impatient to return to the museum and Monty, but she was obliged to sit and eat a few mouthfuls of flatbread with her new friends. As she talked to the mother and asked questions, she had a feeling that the answers Malak translated for her bore no relation to the words expressed by the woman. It made them all laugh, but as soon as Jessie finished her mint tea, she rose to leave. She bowed her thanks and gave each of the little girls a note of five Egyptian pounds. The mother kissed the hem of Jessie’s skirt which embarrassed her hideously.

‘What you do tomorrow?’ Malak asked, as he walked her up towards the main road. His mother had gently bathed her hand with herbs and bound it with muslin. ‘I good dragoman. Much cheap. I show you big-big pyramid, yes please.’

‘I’m sorry, Malak. I will
be travelling south to Luxor tomorrow. By train.’

‘Ayee!’ he squealed, ‘I know Luxor much good too. My uncle rich man in Luxor. Big-big house. Water tap
inside
house! I go many days in Luxor. I show you good Luxor cheap guide, yes please, lovely lady.’

Jessie laughed. It hurt to disappoint the hopeful young boy. ‘I have work to do there, but thank you for the offer. Next time, perhaps.’

He flashed his wide beguiling grin at her. ‘Many next times, yes please.’

‘Yes, please.’

She slipped twenty Egyptian pounds into his hand and he lowered his head over it for a moment, cupped his hands. ‘
Allah akbar
,’ he murmured, ‘God is great.’ And when he looked up, his chin was quivering. Tears glistened in his eyes. ‘
Shukran
, lovely lady. I thank you. I save for education of my sisters. I not wish them ignorant,
inshallah
.’

They stood together on the side of the road in the hot sun and Jessie was touched by the love of this loyal young boy for his sisters. He would never let one of them be snatched away from under his nose. He would die first. Why had she not slit her own throat the moment they took Georgie away from her?

As a gharry drew up alongside them, she bent and kissed his dirty black hair. ‘You are a fine young man, Malak. Thank you for your help. I am sure we will meet again in this life.’ She touched his cheek. ‘May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you, always.’

When you are waiting for someone you love, a part of you ceases to exist. You are not a whole person. Jessie could feel the crush of that knowledge with every turn of the wheels of the gharry.

Monty. Wait for me.

There were holes in her. She was aware of them now. Empty holes into which the waited-for-person – the loved one – fits perfectly. She had waited for Georgie most of her life, and the hole had widened when Tim disappeared, tearing open new parts of her. Now she was waiting to see Monty but the teeming traffic, the clogged streets, the agonisingly slow carts, they all blocked the wheels of the gharry.

Will he be
there? Will he wait?

She saw him the moment she drew near, prowling relentlessly back and forth in the full sun along the top step of the museum with quick angry strides. His face was set hard. His hat had gone, his jacket abandoned. When he turned she could see the sweat on the back of his shirt. Before she had paid the driver, before she had dismounted from the vehicle, his quick eyes had picked her out of the crowd and he was pushing through the busy courtyard towards her. She stepped into his open arms, feeling the heat of his lips and the thud in his chest, but neither of them spoke.

It was enough. That they had waited for each other.

Georgie

England 1931

You are staring
at my nose. I touch it self-consciously.

‘Georgie, spill the beans. Don’t lie to me. You’re a wet rag at lying.’

I don’t understand you. What have beans and rags to do with our conversation? But despite what you think, I am learning to be good at pretending. I pretend to understand.

‘We walk in the garden for exercise,’ I say.

‘That’s true.’

‘It was hot yesterday.’

‘That’s true.’

‘I got sunburnt while we were out there.’

‘That’s not true.’

How do you know? What am I doing wrong? It maddens me that I do not know.

‘Don’t sulk, Georgie. It’s not nice. You stick out your bottom lip and screw up your eyes like a two-year-old.’

I rearrange
my face.

‘It’s not important,’ I say.

My foot starts to twitch. We both look at it. It is performing its own private dance. You rise from your chair and pace around the room in silence for a while and I dare to hope you have moved onto some other line of thought, but I should know better.

‘Let us, my dear Watson,’ you begin, ‘examine the facts. Because facts cannot lie. Only people lie.’

I experience a thrill. The excitement of the chase. Even though I am the quarry.

‘Fact number one. Your forehead and nose are sunburnt. Correct?’

‘Correct,’ I say.

‘Burnt badly enough for the skin on them to be peeling.’

‘Correct.’

‘Skin does not peel so quickly. So soon after burning.’

‘It has been sunny all week. We go in the garden every day.’

‘Ah, but only for an hour. And never when the sun is at its height.’

I pass no comment. You light a cigarette but do not offer one to me.

‘Fact number two.’

You pause.

I wait.

‘Fact number two is that the skin of your throat in the V of your shirt is brown. Browner than your face. Which means only one thing – that you have been in the sun regularly but have been covering your face. I ask myself why?’

You pace in silence. I remember to breathe and I press on my knee to stop the foot-twitch. Abruptly you come to a halt and stare at me.

‘Your hair is paler,’ you comment.

My hair?

‘Bleached by the sun,’ you add. ‘This leads me to suspect that if I removed your shirt, I would find that your chest is also tanned.’

I stare at the backs of my hands and notice for the first time how they have become the colour of honey. I am embarrassed and hide them surreptitiously between my legs.

‘As the front
and back doors are always locked,’ you continue, ‘I can only conclude that you are removing yourself from here some other way. Let me consider.’

You draw hard on your cigarette and exhale two perfect smoke rings.

I glare at my foot. It is still twitching. Betraying me. I stamp on it with my other foot.

‘The obvious choice would be a window. But downstairs the windows are all nailed shut, as I found when I once asked to have one opened for fresh air. Damned unpleasant. But I can see why Dr Churchward insists on it.’

For a long while you return to your pacing, wreathed in tobacco and thought.

‘Not this first storey,’ you mutter to yourself rather than to me. ‘You could descend using sheets and blankets, but how would you ascend again? There is no fire escape. That leaves only the top floor.’

A wail of despair leaps up to my throat and I have to swallow hard to thrust it back down. I watch your fingers, as restless as an insect’s antennae on your cigarette. You have me cornered. When finally you stub out your cigarette, I know I am done for.

You place your fingertips together and release a sigh of resignation. ‘The roof.’

‘Holmes,’ I say, ‘you are a man of iron.’

The wind is brisk and tugs at our clothes.

‘This,’ you announce, ‘is one of the dramatic moments of fate, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill.’

It is a quotation. From the beginning of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
. I do not think it appropriate because there is neither a step nor a stair in sight up here, and I know without doubt that it is a moment for ill, not for good.

We have climbed
onto the roof. I brought you up the tiny spiral stairs at the far end of this large house, the ones that used to be the servants’ staircase, poor disregarded creatures. On the upper floor there is a disused washroom under the eaves, stacked high with empty suitcases now. I have examined them over the years, searching for signs of my name on any of them, but there is nothing. I try hard to remember anything I brought with me from home, but I can’t. There is just a blank. Maybe that is why there is no suitcase, because I came just in what I stood up in. Or maybe in my fury I destroyed everything that meant home. I don’t know. But I refuse to ask Dr Churchward.