The Sacred River (13 page)

Louisa surveyed a drawing room furnished with two long low-backed sofas upholstered in striped cream and green satin. The few English scenes on the walls—a pair of watercolors depicting milkmaids with bucolic brown cows, a small and indistinct oil of the Thames by moonlight—only added to the sense of England being impossibly far away.

The room wasn’t tasteful, contained nothing of beauty or value, and yet with the vase of trailing white flowers shedding petals on the sideboard, the French doors draped with a pretty, tattered lace curtain and standing open to the garden, it was relaxing. She had thought she would feel the loss of her home more than she did. It was only Blundell she missed. The hook flew in her fingers around the skein of silk, producing neat and even stitches.

“Yes, Mustapha?” she said at the tap on the door.

“Visitor, Sitti.”

Louisa put down her handwork. They’d had few callers. The manager of the local branch of Blundell’s bank, the Anglo Ottoman, had been twice to offer his services. Mr. Moore, a Yorkshireman, had seemed relieved when Louisa had insisted that they would not need to call on him except in case of emergency. Their neighbors on the other side of the brick wall at the back of the garden, a Dutch family with a line of noisy, fair-haired children, had welcomed them with a tin of sugar biscuits imported from the Low Countries. Reverend Ernest Griffinshawe arrived at the gate one morning and was persuaded to take luncheon. Louisa had hinted to all of them that they were in Alexandria for the sake of Harriet’s health and intended to pass the time in a state of seclusion.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Soane, ma’am,” Mustapha said. “It is Mr. Soane. I shall show him in?”

“Well, Louisa?” Yael said, her voice mild. “Give the man an answer.”

“I . . . Tell Mr. Soane we are not at home.”

As she said the words, a figure entered the room from the garden. Louisa felt confused. She knew it was Harriet, by her height and the way she moved, but the person in front of her was not her daughter. She was hidden under a black robe, only the toes of her boots visible. A pair of light-colored eyes looked out from between two strips of black cloth.

“Well, Mother?” came the well-known voice. “Does Suraya’s veil suit me?”

Louisa sprang to her feet and reached for a corner of the fabric, tugging it from Harriet’s face.

“Harriet, please. Take that dreadful thing off.”

“It looks charming, Miss Heron.”

Eyre Soane stood in the doorway, smiling. “Mrs. Heron. Miss Heron.”

He nodded at Louisa and Yael in turn. Harriet had blushed scarlet and was still standing in the center of the room, the folds of black cloth lying on her shoulders.

Yael put down her pen.

“Do come in, Mr. Soane, and take a seat.”

“Thank you.”

He sat down on the empty sofa, arranging his leather satchel on the seat beside him, stretching out his legs. He wore a suit made of fustian, the color of cocoa powder, a white calico shirt under the unbuttoned jacket. Leather shoes, in brown and cream. His hair was waxed, smoothed back on his head. Despite his clean-shaven cheeks, he reminded Louisa of his father. She looked away.

“Would you care for a sherbet?” Yael said.

“I believe I would, Miss Heron.”

“I’ll go and tell Mustapha,” Harriet said, heading toward the door.

Yael blotted her letter, smoothing the paper with the side of her fist.

“The weather is warm today,” she said. “It might be spring.”

“The weather is warm most days.” He turned to Louisa and assumed a smile of polite inquiry. “Are you enjoying your stay, Mrs. Heron?”

Louisa took a deep breath. She would not be bullied in what currently passed for her own home.

“We spend our days very quietly, Mr. Soane, for my daughter’s health. She is an invalid, as you may remember.”

The door opened again and Harriet entered with Mustapha following behind, bearing a tray. He set out woven mats on the scarred surfaces of the tables, put down the cold drinks, and withdrew. Harriet sat next to Yael, her hands clasped over her knees. Eyre Soane regarded her.

“I would scarcely have recognized you, Miss Heron. I believe Egypt agrees with you.”

The blush reappeared like a sunrise on Harriet’s neck, spread upward to her cheeks.

“Aren’t you going to inform me of the sights you’ve seen?” he said.

“I . . .” she said. “We—”

“We have explored the town a little,” Yael said. “And visited the monument, of course. How have you been passing the time, Mr. Soane?”

“I’m continuing work on my Oriental portfolio. I intend to paint Cleopatra while I am here. I shall seek out some beauty to serve as a model.”

Louisa remained quite still, looking through the open French doors into the garden. In the early afternoon sun, the flowering shrubs and bushes looked bleached, the deep pinks and purples robbed of their strength and richness. The lace curtain, which had possessed a certain beauty earlier, was limp and shabby. No doubt could remain. Eyre Soane intended to torment her.

“It is airless in here,” she said, reaching for her fan, flicking it open.

“In fact, Miss Heron”—Eyre Soane fixed his gaze on Harriet—“I should like to sketch you, just as you are now. Native dress becomes you.”

Harriet raised her head and Louisa caught sight of her eyes, bright with a look Louisa didn’t recognize. Louisa had a feeling inside, of plummeting, as if some structure were collapsing like a card house.

“It is time for your rest,” she said, getting to her feet.

“Mother, I—”

“No arguments, Harriet. Mr. Soane,” Louisa continued, “you may care to see the monkey puzzle tree in the front garden on your way out. We are told that it is two hundred years old.”

Louisa walked to the door and held it open. Eyre Soane rose from the couch, retrieved his satchel, and bowed to Harriet.

“Until we meet again, Miss Heron.”

Louisa led the way through the shadowed courtyard. The thin stream rising from the fountain, falling into the shallow pool surrounding it, sounded like a gutter discharging into a rain butt. Opening one half of the front door, she walked into the garden. Through the soft leather of her summer shoes, the points of the fallen cones underneath the tree were sharp against the soles of her feet.

At the great iron gate, she turned to face Eyre Soane.

“My daughter is ill, Mr. Soane. I would not wish her to be disturbed by anything that does not concern her.”

“Disturbed? What do you mean, Mrs. Heron?”

On the other side of the gate, the watchman lifted the catch. Louisa lowered her voice.

“I am asking you not to call on us again.”

The gate opened and Eyre Soane stepped through it. He hitched the strap of the satchel higher on his shoulder and got out a cigar case from his pocket.

“It’s a fine specimen,” he said, gesturing back into the garden toward the tree. “They’re considered unlucky, as I’m sure you know. Goodbye, Gypsy.”

Louisa turned away, breathing in the odor of dry earth and drains and blossom. She had just time to get behind the scaly trunk of the monkey puzzle, to notice that it looked like a blackened pineapple, before she was silently and violently sick.

TWENTY

Yael put down her spoon and looked at the French door. “It can’t be getting dark at this hour,” she said. “Can it?”

The three of them were sitting in the places they had made their own around the long table in the dining room. Harriet pushed back her chair and went to the window. On the other side of the glass, the mulberry trees and palms waved in silent salutation. Opening the door, she stepped out into the garden and looked up at the sky. The sun had disappeared and the air was hazed with brown, carrying the scent of brick and cinders. Somewhere nearby, women were shouting to one another in Arabic. The peculiar quality of the light, the sound of the wind, made her shiver.

“It’s dusty,” she announced, coming back inside, the wind banging the door behind her. “That’s why the sky’s overcast, Aunt Yael.”

Harriet returned to the table and took another mouthful of a jelly that contained pieces of a sweet, soft-fleshed fruit. Nothing could dim the sense of happiness she’d felt since Eyre Soane’s visit. He wanted to paint her. Each time Harriet remembered the fact, she experienced a little jolt of pleasure. On deck, the first time they met, the painter had barely noticed her. When he joined them for dinner, he had seen her for the first time. Now he wished her to be the subject of one of his works. Despite Louisa’s discouragement, he would call again. Harriet felt certain of it.

Mustapha entered the room with a tray. Setting out small cups with no handles, he began to pour the coffee, holding the pot high, filling the little cups with a dark, steaming stream. The room was growing dimmer by the minute.

“What is happening, Mustapha?” asked Louisa.

“It is the wind, madame. The Khamseen.”

“I think we ought to investigate, Louisa,” Yael said, getting to her feet.

“If you insist,” said Yael.

With Mustapha following, the three of them walked through the front part of the garden and out of the gate, onto the wide, unpaved street. The watchman had enveloped his entire head in his white turban, leaving only a slit for his eyes.

Their dresses blew against their legs as Harriet, Louisa, and Yael stood staring at the horizon, at a dim, dark shape bearing down on the city like a soft, moving mountain. Harriet felt a sense of foreboding. She enjoyed extremes of weather—found thunder and lightning exhilarating, relished the drama of high wind—but the brown cloud looked ominous. She’d never seen anything like it.

“ ‘For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth,’ ” said Yael.

“There’s no need to be dramatic, Yael.” Louisa rubbed her eyes and turned her back on the horizon. “Come inside, Harriet.”

By the time they had finished the coffee, they could barely see each other across the dining table.
Khamseen
meant
fifty
, Mustapha told them as he took away the cups. It was the fifty-day wind and it had arrived early. There was no saying when it would leave.

•  •  •

Parting the curtains of net around the bed, Harriet swung her legs out from under the blanket. A shutter was banging against the wall outside the window. She leaned out over the vanished garden and pulled the shutter back into the frame as the wind blasted dust at her face.

Back in bed, exhausted by the effort, she listened to the sound of her own breath, harsh on the air. She felt empty, devoid of the hopes and thoughts and ideas that had been filling her mind. In the weeks since they had left London, she’d allowed herself to begin to believe that she had left her illness behind. She’d been deceived. Asthma had stowed away inside her, waiting for the moment to spring out and make itself known.

If she couldn’t be well here, a voice in her head insisted, she couldn’t be well anywhere. Propped up on the pillows in the position meant to ease the constriction in her chest, Harriet wiped her eyes. The hope and excitement she’d felt on first entering this room seemed to mock her. How could she live, when it was all she could do to keep breathing?

She turned down Louisa’s offer to sit with her, Yael’s suggestion that she might read aloud. At mid-morning, Suraya arrived.

“Good morning, Suraya,” Harriet said in Arabic, rousing herself. The greeting translated literally as
morning of light,
and Harriet enjoyed using it. Arabic seemed able to inject poetry into anything. Suraya didn’t answer. Putting down a glass of black tea on the chair by the bed, she fetched a can of water from outside the door and began scattering it on the wooden floor, casting drops as if she were sowing seeds, then picked up a grass brush and began sweeping in quick, efficient strokes, hinging from her waist, the silver bells around her ankle tinkling as she moved.

She dropped the brush and sat down on the edge of the bed. Reaching for Harriet’s hand with her small, strong one, she squeezed Harriet’s fingers.

“You’re well, by God’s will?” she said in Arabic.

Harriet nodded.

“I’m well,” she said, using the Arabic Suraya had taught her. “Thanks be to God.”

She didn’t know how to say that she was ill, that she felt hopeless and lonely. That more than anything she was filled with a bitter disappointment.

Suraya’s dark eyes, lined with a sooty cosmetic, were unconvinced. Glancing toward the door, she reached into the neck of her robe, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to Harriet. It was addressed to Miss H. Heron. Harriet turned it over. There was no name on the back but she knew who had sent it.

“From where, Suraya? Who?”

The tinkling receded, and when Harriet looked up, Suraya had gone. Harriet tore open the envelope and unfolded a single sheet of paper.

Parthenon Hotel

March 15th 1882

Dear Miss Heron,

Quite unaccountably, I find I’m missing you awfully. In fact, I long to see you again.

I will call on you as soon as this wind subsides. We shall take a picnic in the Palace gardens and perhaps you will be persuaded to pose for sketches. Above all, I should like to paint you.