Shadows on the Nile (50 page)

It is the Tall Man who pulls Jessie aside, out of the way of the Fat Man’s fury. I like him for that. He is the kind of man I would listen to.

He says, ‘Don’t be a fool, Scott. He has betrayed no one. We’re here because of Jessie’s guesswork and you are the—’

‘Shut up, Chamford! You helped get Kenton here, don’t you forget that. At that séance.’

I think the Fat Man has gone mad. He is shaking. Worse than I shake. Did I wreck his brain as well as his face? He charges at one of the guards near him and snatches the rifle from his shoulder. The air changes. I feel it. It turns thin and empty, as if there is no oxygen in it. Faces change. Eyes widen. No one breathes.

‘Scott, put it down,’ the Tall Man orders and points his own gun at him.

‘You won’t shoot me, Chamford. You need my loan on that mausoleum of yours.’

‘Put that rifle down or I will pull this trigger.’

Before the words are finished, the Fat Man shouts again, ‘You betrayed me, Kenton!’ The rifle is moving towards you. ‘Don’t think that I don’t know you’ve got Chamford in the pocket of the police. We’ve seen him talking with them.’

He is going to kill you.

No one takes notice of me. I snatch from my waistband the revolver that Scott dropped on the sand when I hit him and I pull the trigger immediately. The strength of the explosion in my hands scares the life out of me and I fling the gun away, but I see the Fat Man crumple to his knees. He sways for a moment. There is so much blood on him already that I do not know whether I have hit him or not.

My hands are dancing and my breath is escaping
in a thin high noise that sounds like a bird’s alarm call. If he stands up, he will kill me. But he doesn’t stand up. He falls forward flat on his face and buries his bloody nose in the sand. That’s how I know he is dead.

Jessie and Tim sat either side of Georgie on the sand
in the shade of the truck. They sipped water that was warm and ignored the fact that their brother was swaddled from head to toe in a dark brown blanket.

‘It’s hard for him, Jessie.’

‘I know.’

‘He’s better when everything is quiet.’

‘So why did you bring him out here to Egypt?’

Tim looked away. ‘I was worried. I had to come out here, but I couldn’t leave him behind in the clinic.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because of Pa.’

Oh Pa, what have you done to my brothers?

‘What did he do?’

‘Haven’t you noticed how deeply he is now involved not only in Fascism, but in the Eugenics Society as well? He and Captain Pitt-Rivers, the anthropologist, are as thick as thieves with Oswald Mosley. They all feed off each other.’ He shook his head in dismay, scattering limestone dust. ‘They believe society can be improved through imposed birth control and selective breeding.’

The brown bundle beside them
shivered.

‘I don’t trust Pa.’ Tim lowered his voice. ‘All it would take is an extra syringe in the hands of Dr Churchward. No questions asked.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Tim, Pa wouldn’t do such a terrible thing.’

‘Wouldn’t he? How well do you know him now?’

Jessie’s stomach churned. ‘Not well.’ She studied the black leather briefcase at Tim’s feet. It had Dr Scott’s initials on it in brass lettering. ‘You told me how you found the address of the clinic in Pa’s safe, but why didn’t Dr Churchward tell Pa about your visits?’

Tim laughed without humour and prodded at a sand beetle that bumped into his boot. ‘That’s easy. The first couple of tiµmes I visited Georgie, Churchward was on holiday in Germany, so he had no idea that his staff had let me in. When he returned, he learned how much better Georgie was behaving,’ he patted the brown lump between them. ‘Whenever Georgie got out of hand, the attendants threatened to stop my visits, and that kept him under control. So Churchward decided to let the visits continue. Unknown to me, I was their secret weapon. It made life easier for Churchward, but he knew Pa would put a stop to it if he was informed, so he kept it secret. Probably he thought I would soon give up anyway.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Why not? It couldn’t have been easy for a young boy.’

‘It wasn’t.’

A camel walked past, kicking up sand in its wake, as men loaded the crates into the truck.

‘So why?’ Jessie urged gently.

Tim hesitated. He glanced up at the hills and she knew he was thinking of Fareed somewhere out there, searching for them. Beside him lay Scott’s revolver and Jessie wanted to hurl it behind the rocks. It had done too much damage for one day.

‘I felt responsible. If our parents hadn’t found me, they might have kept Georgie.’

Jessie shook her head. ‘That would never have happened.’

‘But also,’ he paused and thought about his choice
of words, ‘I felt Georgie and I were, in an odd way, the same person. I stepped into his shoes, literally.’

She stared at the blanket. ‘And into his pyjamas, I recall.’

‘Yes, into everything that was his. We even looked alike. And you loved him so much. I wanted you to love me like that.’

‘Oh Tim, I quickly learned to love you too.’

‘I couldn’t walk away from Georgie. It would have been like walking away from myself.’ He nodded at the blanket. ‘I love the blasted idiot.’

‘It’s obvious he loves you.’ Jessie felt a huge wrench in her chest. ‘I’m so happy he’s had you for company all those years that I wasn’t there. He wasn’t alone. But why didn’t you tell me? I could have …’

‘He wouldn’t let me. He didn’t want you to see him so … damaged.’

‘Oh, Georgie!’

For a while neither spoke. A sudden gust of wind swirled sand into their faces and they covered their eyes. It made it easier to say what she had to say.

‘Tim, Anippe Kalim is here.’

He swung to face her. ‘Anippe? In Luxor? Have you seen her?’

‘Yes. I’ve spoken to her.’

‘Here in Egypt. I can’t believe she came looking for me too. Did she …’

‘Tim, she’s with Fareed. She’s been working for him and his cause all along to get information from you.’

His face looked as if she’d slapped him. It took on a fixed expression, as though something of importance had just been squeezed out of him.

‘I see,’ he said. Nothing more.

‘I’m sorry, Tim. Maybe when she knows you are not really working with Scott, she will …’

He shook his head. ‘No. It all makes sense now. I was stupid to think there was a chance.’

His gaze swept across the hills, as though he still hoped he might spot Anippe’s dark figure in the distance, but then he shook himself and looked away. He lowered his eyelids, almost
closing his eyes in the way she recognised. It meant he had something to confess.

‘What is it, Tim?’

‘There’s something else.’

She waited. She could feel an uneasy anger stirring inside her but she didn’t know exactly why or at whom.

‘I should have told you years ago,’ Tim said. ‘When I found the papers in the safe about the clinic where Georgie was kept, there were other papers too.’

She sat forward. ‘What papers?’

‘My adoption papers.’

‘Oh, Tim, what did …?’

‘And Georgie’s.’

‘What?’

‘Georgie is also adopted.’

‘No!’

‘Yes.’ He looked at her intently. ‘And yours.’

Jessie leaned back against the truck. Closed her eyes. Her throat was tight, her mouth dry. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. It looks as if we were all part of an experiment. Blond, blue eyes, good bones and presumably good head measurements to fit the theories of human improvement and eugenics. All from different families, in case there were any mistakes.’

He didn’t sound bitter. It amazed her that he didn’t sound bitter.

‘It explains a lot, Jessie,’ he said gently. ‘And when you think about it, it shows Pa has been generous in his care of Georgie all these years.’

‘Generous?’ She jumped to her feet. ‘Georgie is his son, adopted or not. You don’t put your son in a cage,’ she said fiercely.

But he was right. It explained so much. The disappointment in her that she’d always seen on her father’s face but never understood. For the first time she realised that he had married the same template of a human being too, and she wondered if her mother felt the same crushing weight of his disappointment, never able to live up to the ideal.

All of them adopted.

It shifted something fundamental inside her and when she
looked down at Tim, crouched so protectively next to the brown hump that was Georgie on the sand, she felt the connection between herself and her brothers deepen into something different, into something more binding. As though their roots had locked together. She understood them better, suddenly. She felt their weaknesses were her weaknesses and their strengths were her strengths. She would be much slower to pass judgement in future when …

In future?
What future?

‘Tim,’ she said urgently, ‘what’s the matter with me? I’ve been asking all the wrong questions. I should be giving you hell about this camp of yours. You, of all people, pillaging Egypt’s history.’ Her voice was rising in the still air. ‘I’d never have believed it of you. That’s why I came – to get you out of trouble because I believed in you. But what do I find? You’ve been organising the whole scheme with Dr Scott.’

‘Jessie, I—’

‘Tim, you wretch. You are a criminal.’

The blanket flew across the sand as Georgie scrambled to his feet, his limbs jerking in all directions, his mouth alarming in its contortions.

‘He is not a criminal,’ he shouted.

Tim was gratified by his unexpected champion, Jessie could see it in his face.

‘You tell her, Georgie!’

Georgie swung towards her. ‘Tim is not a criminal because he is committing no crime.’

‘Look at those.’ She gestured angrily at the crates.

‘No, no, no. He’s working with the police.’

‘That’s right, Georgie boy,’ Tim hissed. ‘Shout it out loud, why don’t you? That way everyone can know.’

Georgie

Egypt 1932

I am a murderer.

I watch the Tall Man – the one Jessie calls
Monty – bury the dead body under the sand. Big hands on a big shovel. It is dead meat, nothing more. It isn’t the Fat Man now. His
Ba
– his soul – has flown to the underworld of Osiris and when I look at the flesh left behind, I feel nothing for it. But I hurt inside. I think his
Ba
has torn mine from my chest. Is that what happens when you kill a person? You kill part of yourself as well and it can never come back to life. I walk around wrapped in my blanket to try to keep my
Ba
inside but I fear it is too late.

You hurry me. You move fast. You talk loud.

You speak with the Egyptians but I try not to listen because I do not want to know that you offer them double money or that one of Fareed’s men has been seen. I don’t know where and I don’t care. But you do. You care so much that you forget who I am. You flap me away with the same impatient hand that you use to flap away a fly that torments you, and it is Jessie who tells me you are the boss now and have much to do.

I hear the truck driver say to the Tall Man,
‘Fareed kill Mister Tim quick, if he catch him.’

Suddenly I am in a hurry too. I run around throwing anything I can pick up into the back of the truck until you tell me to stop. You throw my things back in the sand. It is Jessie who stays. She doesn’t leave me or shout at me. She is still and quiet and picks up my blanket when it falls off.

‘Don’t blame Tim,’ she says in the low voice that I remember from when we used to hide under the bed. ‘He has a lot on his mind.’

He doesn’t have me on his mind.

It is Jessie who makes a safe corner for me in the back of the truck when the crates are all roped in and it is Jessie who sits in it with me in the dark when the doors are shut. Just before the doors close completely, I see the desert reduced to a thin beige strip behind the truck and I breathe a sigh of relief. I prefer the desert that way, no wider than my hand, too small to hurt me any more.

‘Georgie,’ Jessie tells me, ‘I didn’t want you to leave when you were a child. I tried to find you.’

But I don’t want to talk about it because the memory of that night turns my lungs inside out and I can’t breathe. Instead I say, ‘I liked Hatherley.’

She laughs and says, ‘So did I.’

She remembers the fish in the pond. She does not talk much, which I like, and while we wait for the engine to start, my mind drifts in the darkness through a room with green curtains and a proper bookcase and a cricket bat against the wall. You and the Tall Man are going to ride in the front with the driver and the guard and I know you will have guns on your lap, which makes me nervous. Only then does it occur to me that Jessie may be silent in the truck because she thinks I am going to kill her because I am a murderer.

‘Jessie,’ I say. I don’t know what to say next.

Quietly she says, ‘Shall we name all the characters in
The Adventure of the Creeping Man
?’

I smile. That’s easy.

Monty was angry. He kept one hand on the gun at his
waist while his eyes scoured the rocky ridges ahead of where he stood, away from the truck. The heat and the dust shifted shapes, so that nothing was ever what you thought it was and that did strange things to the mind.

He was angry about Jessie. He didn’t want her to ride in the back of the truck and it wasn’t just her arm he was worried about. He wasn’t happy that she was shut alone in there with that strange brother of hers, but she had insisted. Monty was impatient to be on the move, eager to whisk her out of this place just as fast as he could, but the driver was taking an age to top up the radiator water, and all the time the sun was growing hotter. At Monty’s elbow stood Timothy Kenton, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare as he kept alert for signs of movement.

‘Tim, is Georgie safe to be with?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He is violent.’

Tim glanced at him quickly and considered what Monty was saying. ‘Don’t worry. He’d never hurt Jessie. He worships her.’