The Visitors (16 page)
I leaned closer and peered at the picture. The clapboard house Frances was indicating was built at the summit of a sheer bank; below it was a boathouse, with a large jetty and landing stage raised on piles, at the shoreline, just feet from the waves. This dead brother had never been mentioned before.
‘We go to Maine to stay at that house every summer – and in this picture, it’s the summer of 1918. Daddy was in the army then, still fighting in France. But we were there. And that’s where my brother Billy died: he fell off that jetty, and drowned in the cold blue waters of Penobscot Bay.’
I can’t remember what I said, but I must have said something, for Frances patted my arm in a consoling way. ‘Yes, it was very terrible,’ she went on. ‘We were all there – my grandparents, and my mother and me. I was five – well, almost. It was the day my mother took me for my first race in a sailboat. There was just one tiny moment when everyone was looking the other way, fussing with picnic baskets and waterproofs, and that was the moment when he fell. But that’s the way of things. They’re fast. You know that too.’
‘I do,’ I replied. I closed my eyes, Egypt vanished and I was back in my Cambridge bedroom: my mother bent over my bed and stroked my forehead. I drifted into sleep, and when I woke from that long hot feverish sleep, she was gone. I opened my eyes again, and looked at the photograph. From its shadows, two figures emerged: I saw a small girl, who I realised was Frances, and a little boy, with bright hair, clutching her hand. Now I understood that reaction of Helen Winlock’s in the museum in Cairo.
‘He has very fair hair. He’s a dear little boy. He looks like Peter,’ I said, after a pause.
‘Perhaps. But Peter cries – and Billy never did. And he talked more than Peter does. He likes coming to Egypt with me, and when I’ve been somewhere, like Daddy’s dig, or the Valley maybe, I come home and describe it to him. I’ve told him all about you, of course, and he gave me permission to tell you his story. Normally, we keep it a secret – it doesn’t do to broadcast important things around, and besides, it makes my mother cry, to be reminded, you know. But Billy considers it’s right to tell you. You don’t blab. And besides, he knows you’re my closest and most particular friend.’
‘Am I truly, Frances?’ I asked anxiously; this honour was unexpected and powerful.
‘Of course,’ she replied, in a tone of careless reproof, as if I were being exceptionally obtuse. Turning away, and with a matter-of-fact air, she lifted my suitcase onto one of the beds and, moving to the washstand, poured some water into a bowl.
‘Right, time to wash and brush up,’ she continued, in a businesslike way. ‘No need to unpack, the servants will do that. Then coffee on the veranda with the Lythgoes and my parents. That’s the routine… You’d better know what you’re in for,’ she continued, as I washed my dusty face and hands. ‘The
past
– and then, just when you think at long last it must be over,
more
past. Albert Lythgoe will tell you how Daddy was the most brilliant student he ever tutored at Harvard – and also the most rebellious one. Then Mrs Lythgoe will start in on her famous father Rufus, who ruled the American School of Archaeology in Athens with a rod of iron, and didn’t permit women to excavate… She’ll tell you how Albert proposed to her at dawn on the Parthenon – imagine Mr Lythgoe, proposing! You’ll have to inspect the silver coffee service the King of Greece gave her as a wedding present… it goes on for ever! Meanwhile, Minnie Burton will carp from the sidelines, and boast about how her father ran the British army single-handed.
You have to listen to all this,
and not yawn or fidget once. I do it this way.’
Frances turned full face and assumed an expression of lively attention, eyes satirically wide. ‘After that,’ she went on, ‘there’s the ceremonial signing of the Visitors’ Book, and then my mother loses her spectacles and her watercolours, and finds she’s packed them, and Daddy cusses a bit, and then – at long last – we mount the donkeys again… ’
‘And we go to the Valley?’
‘We go to the Valley. Eve is thrilled that you’re coming, and so are her father and Mr Carter, she says. We’re in their good books for some reason, all our espionage at Shepheard’s, I think – anyway, they’re laying on a picnic lunch for us.’
‘In the Valley itself?’
‘Better than that. In the Valley
and
in a tomb,’ Frances said, performing a cartwheel.
The tomb selected for our picnic was sited at the far end of the Valley, in a remote ravine well beyond the most visited burial sites. It was a place of uncertainties, devoid of paintings or inscriptions, Herbert Winlock explained: scholars disagreed as to which king had commissioned it. It had been quarried a short distance into the rock, then abandoned, but this was not unusual, he added: Egyptian kings could be capricious when deciding their final resting place. All the tombs in the Valley were numbered and identified according to a system first evolved in the nineteenth century; they were referred to as KV 15, KV 24 and so on. Frances and I had by then adopted the acronym ‘KV’, which, when spoken, and particularly when hissed, sounded like the Latin warning
cave
, or the schoolboys’
cavey
. It was now our watchword of choice, used when adults circled near by. ‘KV, Lucy,’ Frances had said several times that morning when Minnie Burton had come threateningly close to our whispered conferences.
Beware, beware
: I examined the entrance to the luncheon tomb – no painted number; unidentified.
The tomb had a low, dark entrance, set under a rocky overhang. Facing north and protected from the rays of the sun, it looked like some natural fissure. Pausing and looking back the way we had come, I thought the unknown king had rejected a magnificent site to wait out eternity. Here, the wide central section of the Valley was invisible and the hills closed in, their rocks scoured into soaring columns. It was a wilderness place, and the heat was intense, yet the atmosphere was peaceful, the only sounds the murmuring of rock doves and the mew of kites circling the blue updraughts high above. My mind was still lingering on Frances’s little brother, and how he had died. Now that I knew his story, the way in which I saw his parents had irrevocably changed. How often did they think of him? I wondered, as Herbert Winlock led the way cheerfully into the tomb, and Helen, lingering behind, peered about the rocks in search of Frances and me, giving that now-familiar gesture of the hand, the gesture that betrayed her nervousness, her instinct to locate missing children and gather them in. ‘Ah, there you are,’ she said. ‘Come along, my dears.’
Turning to follow her, I ventured into the dark tomb, and found myself in a dining room. I looked around in astonishment: in the centre of the shadowy space, a long table had been erected and eight chairs arranged. The table was draped in a starched white damask cloth; each place setting had a large array of glasses, silver cutlery, crisp linen napkins, and gilded plates decorated with the initial ‘C’. Lined up with military precision was an array of chutneys and pickled fruits bearing the labels ‘Fortnum and Mason’.
‘Prospero’s feast,’ Helen murmured. I was wondering if the initial ‘C’ signified Carter or Carnarvon, and marvelling at this display, when I realised that our hosts were waiting for us. Eve, together with Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon, stood together in the recesses of the tomb, flanked by four Arab servants wearing white turbans, white gloves and white galabiyas, all four drawn up to attention like footmen. Eve came forward to greet us, but our two hosts hung back inspecting the new arrivals. Once we had all crushed in to the narrow space, they embarked on introductions – Carnarvon diffident to the point of languidness, Carter ill at ease and voluble.
‘Lord Carnarvon, if I may introduce Miss Mackenzie, in charge of my little friend here, Miss Payne, making her first visit to Egypt, and to the Valley.’ He dropped his voice, and I caught the words ‘Emerson’, ‘Norfolk’ and then ‘Trinity’.
Once I’d been stamped and labelled, Carnarvon shook my hand, smiled, and murmured: ‘Cambridge… my own alma mater, Miss Payne – and Trinity was my college too. Only lasted a couple of years, though, found it all a bit boring, trekking off to lectures at dawn, couldn’t wait to go travelling, bought a yacht and took off for the Cape Verde islands instead… Miss Mackenzie, delighted… Frances, my dear, and Helen… now, isn’t this amusing? I thought, after that long hot ride you’ve had, maybe something refreshing?’
Several bottles of champagne appeared, and while the four servants busied themselves with glasses, Carter began bustling back and forth, barking commands in Arabic. Turning to us, with much nervous jocular rubbing of the hands, he said, in his odd staccato way: ‘Cold cuts. Of necessity. “The funeral baked meats” as the bard put it, at least I think he did… Delicious too, chosen by Eve from the stores at my house. Now let’s see… we have tongue, potted fowl, pâté de foie gras… ’
‘And the most delicious
shamsi
bread, made in Howard’s kitchens this morning,’ Eve put in, coming to his rescue. ‘Now, where shall we all park ourselves?’
The informality of ‘parking’, I noted, was followed by strictly observed placements: Lord Carnarvon ambled to his place at the head of the table, with Miss Mack, as the oldest woman present, seated on his right hand; Helen was seated on Carter’s right at its foot, with Frances on his other side. On the strength of being a newcomer, I think, I was placed on Carnarvon’s left. Herbert Winlock, who never cared where he sat, ended up in the middle, with Eve opposite him.
‘Well now – this looks delicious,’ Winlock said. ‘A great improvement on the old days when we archaeologists all roughed it. What was it the great Flinders Petrie survived on, Carter?’
‘Sardines,’ Carter boomed. ‘His famous sardines! First, he made a hole in the can – drank the oil, claimed it was very nutritious. Then he opened it and scoffed the sardines. Followed it up with a dozen oranges. That was breakfast. And luncheon. And dinner.’
‘Heavens!’ said Miss Mack. ‘And was this diet inflicted on you too, Mr Carter?’
‘It was. All Petrie’s assistants had to endure it – most of them fled for the hills within a couple of weeks. He also despised tents, insisted you manufactured your own mud bricks and then built your own shelter with them – the fellahin
could have done it in half the time. No plaster on the walls either – didn’t approve of such luxuries – I’ve never slept anywhere so infested with spiders and scorpions… So, I can rough it if I have to, but I’m in favour of luxury whenever possible. Some foie gras, Helen? I can recommend it. Abd-el-Aal, wake up! Do you expect people to reach for things?’
He muttered a few commands in Arabic; Abd-el-Aal, the oldest of the men serving us, who was also the most senior of them, I thought, nodded serenely. He waited until he judged himself unobserved, then sidled up to the youngest of our waiters, a boy of about fifteen; he gave his ear a sharp yank and his ribs a sharp nudge. The boy, who looked terrified, scurried around the table to Eve. Lifting one of the salvers, he tipped a generous, pinkish mess of potted chicken onto Eve’s plate. Its coating of gelatine quivered, then at once began to melt.
‘How delicious, Hosein, thank you,’ Eve said, with a sweet and reassuring smile in Carter’s direction.
‘And you, Mr Carter – did you flee for the hills, like Petrie’s other assistants, or did you stick it out?’ Miss Mack enquired. I could see that she, like Eve and the Winlocks, was attempting to ease Carter’s nerves.
‘Stuck it out. This was at el-Amarna, Miss Mackenzie. I was seventeen, been in Egypt less than six months – knew nothing, green to the gills. Everything important I learned from Petrie. Walked me off my feet for hours every day in the boiling sun, worked me like a dog, half starved me – but that man showed me how to use my eyes and he taught me how to excavate. Taught me to discard nothing, examine everything, record everything.’ He broke off, then gave a wolfish grin. ‘Can’t stand the sight of sardines to this day. So perhaps that’s the great man’s legacy to me.’
The conversation drifted off, moving on to tales and reminiscence of a century and more of excavators, scholars, archaeologists and adventurers, Belzoni, Champollion, Lepsius and the man who had held the permit to dig in the Valley immediately before Carnarvon: the millionaire American lawyer, Theodore Davis – for whom Carter had excavated some years before Carnarvon hired him, and with whom Winlock had also done battle.
‘A rank amateur, with amazing luck,’ Winlock was saying, ‘and a barbarian when it came to the actual dig. Theodore Davis was a treasure hunter, pure and simple – which makes his numerous and important finds all the more galling. Still,
nil nisi
et cetera.’
‘Remember Ayrton? Excavator for Davis after I escaped his clutches?’ Carter put in. He’d gulped a glass of champagne and one of wine, and seemed more at ease now. ‘Good archaeologist, had the training, had the nose – but Davis soon ground him into the dust.’
‘Indeed I do. Alas, poor Ayrton!’ Winlock said. ‘Did you ever meet him, Lord Carnarvon? Very young, very bright indeed. Spent his boyhood in China. The Valley gave him nightmares – at the Davis dig house, no one would share a room with him. He’d scream out in his sleep, you see. In fluent Chinese.’
‘Dead now,’ Carter said. ‘Joined some archaeological expedition in Ceylon, and drowned a few years later. Can’t have been much more than thirty.’
‘And Jones – you remember Harold Jones, who came after him? Welshman, sweet fellow, trained as an artist – Davis finished him off too. Or the dust in the Valley did.’
‘What happened to Mr Jones, Daddy?’ Frances put in.
‘Tuberculosis, darling. It was very sad. A nice man – witty, and a good artist too. He used to drink quarts of milk every day; it was thought to keep the disease at bay. I remember meeting him once, sitting outside the dig house, staring at the hills – it was a glorious evening, the most magnificent sunset, but I could see how exhausted and miserable he was, so to cheer him up I said, “Evening, Jones – on the lookout for a new tomb?” And he gave me this puzzled look and said, “In the Welsh valleys? Why would I do that? No, I’m admiring my nan’s little house. See it, Winlock? That’s it, over there, beyond the chapel, on the edge of that green field.” Poor man. I knew it couldn’t be long after that – and it wasn’t.’