The Bride Box (15 page)

‘What is it, Effendi, that you look for?'

‘I see only gum arabic.'

‘That is what we deal in.'

‘I am told there would be trocchee shells.'

‘Ah, yes. Those we have, too. But first we have to load the gum arabic. When we get that out of the way, we can load the trocchee shells.'

‘Will that not take time?'

‘It will.'

‘The trocchee shells will have to wait for another train, perhaps?'

‘Perhaps. There is a lot of gum arabic to shift.'

‘The shells may even have to wait for another day?'

‘They may. With the shells, it does not matter.'

‘I am also expecting some boxes. Heavy boxes, which will require much lifting. When will they be put on the train?'

‘It depends when they come.'

‘Some are already here. But others arrive, I think, tomorrow.'

‘Who brings them?'

‘Tamuz. I think.'

‘Ah, yes. Tamuz. Yes, I think he comes tomorrow.'

‘But some of the boxes are already here?'

‘That is so, Effendi. Most of them are already here. The ones Tammy brings are but a small part.'

‘It is a big load, then.'

‘A big load, as you say, Effendi.'

‘But all is in hand, then, is it?'

‘All is in hand, Effendi.'

The next day, at noon, when the sun was at its hottest and the huge encampment was still, Selim came running.

‘The men, Effendi!'

‘They have come?'

This first visit had obviously been in the nature of a reconnaissance. A man had come and nosed around. He had gone inside, Selim thought to the back of the temple, probably to the chamber he had pointed out to Owen. Then he had come out and stood waiting and then another man had joined him and they had both gone inside. Apparently what they had seen had satisfied them for, said Selim, they had both looked pleased when they reappeared.

They had stood there talking for a little while longer and Selim had crept forward behind the columns to eavesdrop. What they were discussing was speed. How quickly could it be done? They had wanted to be sure that it would not take long.

The first man had assured the other man it wouldn't. The donkeys could be brought right up to the temple and even inside. They wouldn't be exposed to the risk of being seen for more than a couple of minutes. The boxes could be unloaded and taken to the chamber. And if they were brought when it was getting dark the chance of being observed was even less. They could do their business and then slip away again undetected.

The second man had remained uneasy. ‘I don't like this,' he said. ‘Are they good marks? Or the work of the Devil? I mean, this place is … It's not exactly holy, is it?'

‘It wasn't holy when they built it. It was built in the days of the Giants and they didn't know God's word. Our people came along later and sort of took it over. The old caravans used to pass close to here, at Kuft. And what I reckon happened was that they looked at this place and thought it ought to be made decent. So they painted our signs up there.'

‘Yes, but are they our signs?'

‘Oh, yes. You can see that. There's the moon and the stars – all the signs of the heavens! The work of the sages.'

‘In line with the Koran?'

‘Oh, definitely!'

‘This must be a holy place, then.'

‘Oh, it is. That's what I've been telling you. Put up by our holy men to show that the place was now decent. And that means it's all right for us to put our things here.'

‘I suppose it does, yes.'

‘And at the same time it keeps people off.'

‘Well, it would.'

‘Giants
and
sages! That's a pretty powerful combination.'

‘I'm not that keen on it myself.'

‘That's just my point. No one is. So the boxes will be all right.'

‘Has the boss seen it?'

‘Came here himself just to take a look.'

‘And he thought it was OK?

‘Just the place,' he said. Mind you, there was a bit of a worry. There was a kid around when he came and he didn't like that. He worried that she might have seen something or heard something. But Ali said, “What could she have seen? There weren't any boxes here then.” “Yes, but she might have heard something,” says the boss. “What could she have heard?” asked Ali. “And would she have understood anything?”

‘But the boss still fretted about it. He's like that, you know. Worries about everything. Doesn't like to leave anything to chance. Wanted to know who this girl was. “Maybe we ought to do something about her,” he said. I think, as a matter of fact, he
did
do something about her.'

‘He didn't …?'

‘No. Just saw that she was taken care of. But then it went wrong somehow. And now he's worried about her again. Thinks we ought to do something. We're supposed to be keeping an eye out for her.'

‘Well, I haven't seen any signs of a kid.'

‘Nor have I. But I'm just telling you. In case you do see her.'

M
ahmoud's daughter, Maryam, went to school. This was uncommon even among his colleagues at the Parquet. Having themselves got where they were by education, they were all in favour of it for their own young. For their sons, that was. Even among the relatively liberal Parquet lawyers, valuing of education and ambition for their offspring did not extend as far as educating their daughters, too.

Or in any case, only a bit. When their daughters grew old enough for their fathers to notice their existence and to start planning for their marriages a few of them were sent to special European-style finishing schools so that they might not be totally boring to their husbands when they got married, who were also likely to be bright Parquet lawyers.

Mahmoud, however, thought differently. Only the best was going to be good enough for
his
children, male or female, and he meant to see that right from the start they received an education along progressive Western lines. There were in Cairo one or two kindergartens chiefly for the children of well-to-do Europeans. It was to one of these that he decided to send Maryam.

When he learned what it was going to cost him he almost changed his mind. Young Parquet lawyers, no matter how bright, were not highly paid. Aisha, however, his strong-willed and equally liberal wife, who was just becoming aware of some of the arguments about the ‘New Woman' that were currently occurring in France, did not agree. Equality of the sexes had to begin very early – indeed, from birth – and her adored Maryam was certainly going to receive as good an education as any brother.

Mahmoud, logical to the last, had to admit the force of this point of view: so Maryam went, hand in hand with her mother, to the kindergarten every morning.

And where she went, could not Leila go too? Or so Zeinab thought. Aisha was not sure about this. Leila was an adorable child, but was she as capable of benefiting from advanced education in the way that her own perfect daughter certainly would be able to?

And then there was the question of cost. Owen was barely richer than Mahmoud and Leila, damn it, was not even their daughter. Zeinab hadn't the faintest idea about money except that she knew Owen hadn't got any; so she applied, as she usually did, to her father. Nuri Pasha didn't know much about money either – he left all that sort of thing to his steward – but he did know that he had less than he thought he did. However, he was interested in the latest French fashions when it came to ideas. He had brought up Zeinab very much
au courant
with them and had made no difference between her and his son, a decision much assisted by the fact that he couldn't help noticing that Zeinab was about twice as bright as her brother.

So he saw no reason why Leila shouldn't be educated, and the fact that she was the next best thing to a slave's daughter was no problem to him. Hadn't Zeinab's own mother started off as a slave? And she had developed into the most beautiful courtesan in Cairo. It may be that Leila could do the same! She was a bright little girl, according to Zeinab. Why not? Stranger things had happened. So he didn't mind paying for Leila to go to the kindergarten; it could even be looked upon as an investment.

So off now went Leila every morning, hand in hand with Maryam, usually with Aisha or Zeinab but sometimes with Musa's wife in attendance.

The warehouse clerk and the Greek were by now great buddies. Rare was the morning when Georgiades did not drop in to take the clerk round the corner to the coffee house they favoured. The clerk felt that he was doing the Greek a good turn by lending a sympathetic ear to his tales of marital woe; and, besides, as he confessed to Georgiades, there wasn't much happening in the warehouse at the moment. ‘But it will all be different next week,' he said.

‘How's that?'

‘Well, Clarke Effendi is returning and bringing with him many goods, which will all have to be put in their right places and accounted for – and, no doubt, there will soon be billing to be done.'

‘Bales and bales of gum arabic?' said the Greek. ‘And trocchee shells?'

‘And other things, too.'

‘Pretty slave girls?' prompted Georgiades.

‘I should be so lucky!' said the clerk. He shook his head. ‘No,' he said, ‘no such luck. But sometimes there is a special consignment.' He put up his hand. ‘Don't ask me what it is,' he said. ‘I don't know. Clarke Effendi keeps all that to himself.' He laid a finger along his nose. ‘He handles it all himself. Everything! The goods come in and then go out and neither I nor anyone else is allowed to go near them. Nor even the paperwork.
Especially
not the paperwork. Clarke Effendi does it all. “The less you know about it, the better,” he says. “If you don't know anything, you can't tell anyone anything. It's better like that.” And,' said the clerk, ‘I think it is better. Because the old bastard is up to something, you can be sure. And the less I know about it, the better.'

‘There is wisdom,' said the Greek admiringly. ‘It's a wise man who knows when it's best not to know something!'

‘Of course, I have to know a bit,' said the warehouse clerk. ‘I have to know when a consignment like that is coming in, so that I can make space for it. And it's not just any sort of space; it's got to be over in a corner, where people don't come upon it by mischance. And it's got to be in the usual place in case he wants to move it by dark. In fact, he usually does want to move it by dark. That's another thing, you see. What people don't see, they don't think about, he says.

‘But once or twice I've had to be there to see to the moving – make sure the right boxes are collected. It would never do to have the wrong box picked up. And that would be easy to do in the dark. Of course, we've got torches, but still, it helps if someone who knows about it is there to see to it. Actually, he likes to see to that himself. Never trusts anybody else when it's important. I suppose that's why he does so well. Why he's a rich man and I am not!'

‘There are costs to being rich,' said the Greek. ‘That's what I always tell my wife. You've got to be thinking about your money all the time.'

‘The risk!' said the warehouse clerk.

‘Suppose it went wrong?' said the Greek.

‘Ah, then you're in trouble!' said the clerk.

‘I'll bet you didn't say that to Clarke Effendi, though!'

‘You'd win your bet!' said the clerk. ‘That's another thing he says. “No silly questions, no sharp answers!”'

‘And that's true, too,' said the Greek.

‘Still, there are things that I know and that he doesn't know. How to get hold of a reliable porter in Cairo, for example.'

‘Can't trust the buggers!' said the Greek.

‘You've got to stand over them. And although he'd prefer to do that himself, that's not always possible.'

‘So you have to do it?'

‘That's it!'

‘Even at night!'

‘Even at night. Especially at night!'

‘Because of the temptation to wander off and have a drink?'

‘He'd go mad!'

‘I'll bet he would. But that's what they'd do if you weren't standing right behind them.'

‘You can't afford for it to go wrong.'

‘Not when there's a Pasha involved.'

‘Oh, so that's the way the land lies, is it? I don't envy you.'

‘Just occasionally. I don't do it every time, of course, and I don't know about the other times. But I know what I know.'

‘And you're not saying!' said the Greek, chuckling.

‘Too true, I'm not!'

‘Well I think he's a lucky man to have you to call on.'

‘Well, I think he is, too. It's not easy to get things done the way he likes them done. There's more to it than he thinks. Just getting the stuff here is not that straightforward. It comes in by train, you see, and has to be fetched from the station. Nothing to it, you might think. Just a matter of porters. But porters have to be found, and porters have to be stood over, like I said, or else they'll get it wrong. And then he'd go mad!'

‘Do you use the same porters every time?'

‘Why do you ask?'

‘I should think you would. If he's like you say, you'd want to be sure of your porters. And if you've found some you know to be reliable, I think you'd stick with them.'

‘Well, I do, as a matter of fact.'

‘Go to the same ones every time?'

‘That's right.'

‘I reckon you've done well if you've found some reliable ones.'

‘It's not easy. In a place like Cairo. Where porters are always drifting away. Offer them some money and they're off!'

‘Does he pay well?'

‘No.'

Georgiades pursed his lips. ‘That makes it tricky,' he said.