The Visitors (25 page)

I knew it would hurt Frances and provoke a storm of tears if I said that, so I stayed silent. After an interval, Frances stepped away from the window and gave herself a queer little shake. Looking at her bright, set face, I realised that, as always, she was moving on to the next challenge, the next task; and, as always, she was leaving me behind her, sick at heart, in a maze of uncertainties.

‘I guess we’d better go, Lucy,’ she said. ‘They’ll be waiting for us. I wonder what half-truths they’ll come up with next? They’re letting us down gently. They
mean
well, I know that. We all
meant
well, you and I, Lord Carnarvon and Eve and Mr Carter – we all acted for the best. It doesn’t matter what they say to us now, anyway. By hook or by crook, we’ll discover the truth, won’t we, Lucy?’

‘I expect so. Eventually.’

‘Oh, sooner than that.
I
shall find out – or you will. And whoever does it first has to tell the other at once. Promise me, Lucy.’

‘Of course – if I can. But I’m leaving next week, Frances.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! As if that matters! I shall write you every week, and you’ll write me. Look how close we are!’ She grabbed my hand and pressed it between hers. ‘
That
close. Distance won’t make the least difference. I love you dearly, Lucy. Maybe not quite as much as my mother and father, but next. Even more than Poppy – and I loved her a lot. So whatever we find out, we
share it.
From now on until the day we die, there will be no secrets between us. Give me your solemn word.’

I looked at Frances’s intent, urgent face. Her bright gaze held mine. I was wary of her schemes, of her capacity to recover and move on, but how could I refuse her? Only one person had ever expressed love for me before then, and she was gone. And so, hugging her to me, I told Frances that she was my dearest friend too. I promised, as she did, that we’d never keep a secret from each other and would share all truths – including the truth as to Poppy d’Erlanger, should that emerge. We clasped hands and thus what Frances called the sacred ‘pact’ was made.

‘Why do we have to call it a
pact
?’ I protested belatedly, as we returned to the stairs; Frances’s heightened language, her love for high-flown terms, both thrilled and alarmed me. We turned along the corridor to Miss Mack’s room. Faint voices were audible behind its closed door. ‘Why can’t we say something ordinary, like “agreement”?’

‘Oh, Lucy, has Egypt taught you
nothing
? “Pact” sounds
much
better,’ Frances replied. ‘And it means more.’

Knowing Frances’s skills, I expected she would be the one to discover the truth, but I was wrong. I discovered it, a week later.

By then, the arrangements for our journey back to England had been adjusted. Miss Mack had learned that Rose and Peter’s father was demanding their immediate return home. They had been told, as we had, that their mother might have met with an accident, that there were reasons to be anxious on her behalf. Small hints had been dropped that Poppy might not be returning for a long, long time, and that therefore they must travel back to England without her. Their father had sent wires to Lord Carnarvon in which he made it clear he expected them to set forth at once, on the next available boat, with Wheeler as escort; he would meet them at Dover.

When Miss Mack discovered this, first from a tearful Eve, then from an indignant Wheeler, she was outraged. ‘Lord Strathaven’ became a name she refused to pronounce; from then onwards, he was
that man
. Outwitting that man, compensating as best she could for his deficiencies as a father and his abject failures as a human being, became her obsession. She could speak of nothing else – and I had never admired her more than the afternoon on which she returned triumphant from yet another skirmish at the Cook’s travel bureau to announce that the matter of Rose and Peter’s return was now settled. Their departure would be delayed by two days; our departure would be moved forward two days; as a result we would all leave Egypt together. We would take the same boats, the same trains, and with the assistance of Lord Carnarvon, who’d wired contacts at the train and shipping companies on our behalf, we were all to be accommodated in comfortable berths, at every stage of the long journey.

‘And I hope that teaches
that man
a lesson!’ she declared. ‘Alexandria to Marseilles – a four-day crossing, and he expected Wheeler to travel third class! Imagine: those two poor bewildered children, all alone on one deck, and Wheeler down in the bowels of the ship somewhere. I can tell you, Lucy, I’ve learned a very great deal on this journey of ours, and never again shall I be taken in by an English gentleman. Some merit that title, and some, my dear, do
not.
And I’ve had just about enough of his American counterparts too. At first I’d felt that you and I might economise, dear. But then I thought of those high-handed, hard-hearted Emersons and Stocktons – and I remembered you’d need to be near Rose and Peter, because you’re a comfort to them, Lucy, and little Peter adores you… and, well, I just decided, there and then. I threw caution to the winds, and did it.’ Coming to a halt, inspecting my face, she hesitated: ‘I did do the right thing, didn’t I, Lucy?’

‘Absolutely the right thing. Truly, Miss Mack. You’ve done everything, and more, that I could have wanted.’

‘And you won’t mind leaving a little earlier, Lucy? You’re sure?’ She looked at me intently. ‘I know you’re reluctant to leave. I know how close you and Frances have become – and I expect there are many uncertainties, even anxieties in your mind about returning home, and how it will be, there in Cambridge, without your dear––’

‘No, no, no,’ I said, knowing I must stop her at once. ‘Two days makes no difference. And anyway, Frances and I were prepared – we shall write to each other.’

‘Sure you will.’ Miss Mack was attuned to me now: she planted a kiss on my brow, and with no further mention of Cambridge or my father or my future, for which mercy I silently blessed her, announced that the sooner we started packing, the better.

We took the night train to Cairo two days later; Lord Carnarvon and Eve, Frances and her parents came to see us off. They all kept saying how much they would miss us, how we’d meet again soon, how we must return to Egypt… Fortunately there was no need to reply: Peter, overwhelmed by yet another departure, burst into tears, so Rose and I could be occupied in soothing him.

From Cairo, we took a train straight on to Alexandria and embarked on the
Berenice
, an ageing but still glamorous
paquebot
. We sailed at noon, Miss Mack pointing out the sights she remembered from her time there in the war, and the hospital where she’d nursed the wounded men evacuated from Gallipoli. There was a strong onshore wind, and as soon as we were beyond the harbour, the seas became choppy. Within an hour, Miss Mack, greenish of complexion, announced that it was undeniably
rough
, and she would retire to her cabin. She was followed, soon afterwards, by most of the other passengers; the decks emptied. Wheeler, Rose, Peter and I held out until, unwisely, tea was risked. Peter took one look at the cakes, hiccuped, and was copiously sick; through clenched teeth, Rose announced she might be dying.

Wheeler whisked them away, and I was left alone. I wandered through the staterooms, which were deserted, and out onto the empty decks. From the stern, Egypt was invisible, left far behind; from the bows, I could see nothing beyond a wall of cloud. I did not feel seasick, or dizzy; no smoky typhoid uncertainties clouded my mind. I just felt alone, on a brilliantly lit ghost ship, sailing to nowhere.

I walked the port deck, then the starboard, and after a long while, when it was absolutely dark at sea, without stars or moon, I sat down on one of the steamer chairs and stared at the invisible horizon. Someone had left the
Morning Post
, an English-language Cairo newspaper, on the chair; I picked it up. The wind kept riffling the pages, so I took it back to my cabin with the fixed intention of reading every word of every column: then, as now, reading was the best cure I knew for affliction.

I lay on my narrow cabin bed and continued reading where I’d left off: a long account of the declaration of independence for Egypt, issued on behalf of the British government by Lord Allenby the previous day, 28 February. As the ship rolled and pitched, I read through the comments from English diplomats and Wafd Party nationalists, beginning at last to understand that uneasy scene between Lieutenant Urquhart and Mr El-Deeb – when that interview took place, the transfer of power had been just a week away. I turned to the second page, and the third, which seemed to suggest that this transfer was partial at best, attended by scores of muddling provisos. The British would retain control of the Canal Zone, the army, of the Sudan, of… I turned the page, and there opposite was a large photograph of Poppy d’Erlanger. It was a recent picture, one that captured the woman as she was then, and as I still remember her. A speaking glance straight to the lens: unforgettable eyes, a half-smile, and an air of hastening away somewhere.

The inquest had been held in Cairo the previous morning. Interest in this sensational death of a society beauty was so great that it had been standing-room only in court. I bent over the close columns of print, and that was how I finally learned the truth as to the death of Mrs d’Erlanger.

She had been discovered among the rushes and papyrus of the Nile marshes three days before El-Deeb’s arrival in Luxor. It was an English subaltern who happened upon her body. Newly posted to Egypt, he had joined one of those pre-dawn, duck-shooting parties favoured by members of the Gezira Sporting Club. The shoot was over by then, the catch had been good; he and his fellow officers were about to leave for the traditional hearty English breakfast at the Mena House Hotel, when the hum of flies, a sweet stench in the air and a patch of vivid colour amidst the reeds caught his attention.

‘Flamingo pink’ was how he described it. Intrigued by its brilliance, ignoring his friends who were urging him to hurry up, he waded towards it along the marshy foreshore. The reeds were alive with birds, dragonflies darted across the water. He found Poppy d’Erlanger lying at the edge of the river, concealed by rushes, beside a patch of blue lotus flowers. She was still wearing the remnants of her shocking-pink dress. It was dawn when he found her, and in the warmth of the rising sun the blue lotus flowers were unfurling.

An iridescence of insects had obscured Poppy’s face; the young subaltern, overcome and turning aside to vomit, was uncertain who or what he had found, but he could see this broken creature was female, was dead – and, judging by her clothes, was a white European; the Residency was contacted, the police were summoned. It was quickly established that it was murder: the woman’s throat had been savagely cut. It took longer to establish that the dead woman was Mrs d’Erlanger. How she came to be there by the river, what had become of her jewellery and fur, and what had happened to her after she left Shepheard’s remained a mystery.

Poppy’s husband Jacob d’Erlanger and a British officer named Carew, the two men who had quarrelled over her that night at Shepheard’s, had been interviewed at length: both had British friends who provided unshakeable alibis. An Egyptian taxi driver alleged to have driven Mrs d’Erlanger that night was then charged with her killing. He too had an alibi, but it had been provided by ‘natives’ and could thus be dismissed by the British authorities as a tissue of lies – a verdict with which the British-owned newspaper I was reading concurred. A few years, it trumpeted, even a few months previously, and this man would have faced the death penalty; but his arrest occurred on the eve of independence, at a time of great political sensitivity. When it provoked nationalist outrage and violent street protests, the man had been quietly released.

The verdict of the inquest was ‘murder by persons unknown’ and the newspaper saw this as an injustice with the very gravest implications.
SAVED
BY
HISTORY
! declared its headline – and, since there was no risk of being sued for libel by an Egyptian too poor to afford lawyers, it devoted many column inches to proclaiming the taxi driver’s evident guilt, the breakdown of law and order these events presaged, the glimpse they gave of the corruption that would inevitably follow independence, and the proof they provided that Egyptians were manifestly unfit to govern their own country.

I read this account from beginning to end. Then I tore it up. I found a pen and
Berenice
writing paper, and, as the ship rose and fell, at once and according to our pact, wrote to Frances. When the letter was complete, I sealed it in an envelope, and then carried it around with me for days.

Perhaps I had a superstitious fear it would go astray if I consigned it to the ship’s mail. Perhaps I felt that, if the letter remained unposted and its news unshared, its contents would prove untrue. I’m not sure what my reasoning was, or even if there was any reasoning: I was numb at that time. I put the letter aside and throughout the voyage spent my days on deck with Peter and Rose. A rough crossing: I was unable to tell them the truth; I was forced into comforting evasions and shaming lies. I’d decided to send the letter when we reached Dover, but the parting there with Peter, who clung to me, whose small hands, clinging desperately to my coat, had to be prised loose by Wheeler, drove all thought of it from my mind. Still I delayed: I finally relinquished my letter when, having said my farewells to Miss Mack in London, I was back in Cambridge at last.

Escaping for half an hour from the rigid programme of lessons that had been lined up for me, a regime that had begun within a day of my return, I stuffed the letter in the pocket of my warmest coat, and trudged into the town from our tall grey house in Newnham, on the city’s outskirts. I walked across the Backs, crossed the swollen muddy-brown river, and inspected the few wan daffodils poking through the wet earth; they were being battered by that vicious east wind I remembered of old – the one my mother Marianne used laughingly to claim came straight in from the Urals, from Siberia.