The Visitors (54 page)

Write to me at once, and bring me up to date with all these excitements at the tomb. Give me the latest instalment on Miss Mack. Poor lady! Not cut out to be a writer, I’m afraid. Writers need hearts of stone. And, just occasionally, the capacity to
think
is of assistance to them. Tell me, is she still pressing on with this absurd project, or has she realised that this silly Book of hers is doomed?

Miss Mack had not realised this; quite the contrary. My own loyalties were torn: I wished Nicola were less scathing on the subject of The Book – although her latest comments were mild compared to others she’d made. I wished I’d been more discreet when describing Miss Mack’s writing travails. I hadn’t meant to poke fun, let alone be malicious. I would watch my words in future, I decided; meanwhile, wishing Miss Mack nothing but good, even when she most irritated me, I wanted her project to succeed. ‘Perhaps we haven’t paid enough attention to the newspapers, Miss Mack,’ I suggested, the day after our meeting with the Winlocks. ‘If we went over to Luxor today to collect our post, we could stock up on all the latest editions.’

Miss Mack agreed at once: she
had
been ignoring the press coverage, she admitted. We made the trip to Luxor after breakfast. There were no letters awaiting us at the Poste Restante, but Miss Mack stormed the news kiosk at the Winter Palace without delay, and there was an unforeseen bonus to our expedition: we sighted the Combine.

They had forsaken the Valley for once and were plotting on the hotel terrace, waiting for Carnarvon and Eve who were now said to be arriving from Cairo later that day. Miss Mack felt an immediate need for refreshments: we were soon seated at a table next to the cabal, in earshot and able to inspect all four men closely. Miss Mack did so with zeal. I found it hard to take an interest – the recent dearth of letters was weighing on me and souring my mood. Nothing from Nicola, nothing from Peter and Rose… The journalists were disappointing: four middle-aged men in hats, suits and ties. They seemed to relish the fact that many of the hotel guests crossed the room to avoid them.

‘
Lepers
,’ the one I recognised as Valentine Williams was saying plaintively to the short, fat man seated next to him. ‘Social lepers, that’s what we’ve become, Weigall. Carnarvon’s packed the hotel with his friends and supporters. That’s why they’re all giving us the cold shoulder. Sassoon cut me at breakfast, and I’ve know him since prep school. Who’s that old trout in the corner? She’s got her beady eye on us.’

‘Lady Pemberley, Carnarvon’s cousin. She’s a close friend of the mater’s. She’s bound to know something – and I just might have an in there, old boy.’ Weigall lifted his hand in salute; the dowager raised her lorgnette, stared him down and turned her back on him.

Weigall sniggered. ‘Oh, Lord. Won’t be getting much info out of
her
by the look of it.’

‘We’re not getting much info out of
anyone
,’ Valentine Williams replied tetchily. ‘Now I really
know how ostracism feels. It’s giving me the pip. I might require medicine.’

The Combine reporters agreed that medicine was a good idea all round. As Miss Mack and I left, weighed down with newsprint, four large brandies had just reached their table. It was eleven o’clock in the morning. This eccentricity visibly cheered Miss Mack. ‘Frankly, Lucy,’ she said with asperity, ‘the Combine is
not
impressive. I don’t see any of
them
writing books. I’m surprised they can manage two-hundred-word articles.’

She revised this view rapidly when, on returning to our houseboat, she read the papers she’d bought. I sat there trying to fight the irritability and moodiness that had yet again seized hold of me. Miss Mack scanned the articles. With a sigh, she passed me the
Express
,
Mail
,
Post
and
New York Times
. ‘Oh dear, they speak with one voice, Lucy. I have to admit, they do marshal their facts in a persuasive way. Also, they seem to have done quite a lot of
digging.
’

Indeed they had. The Combine might have been cold-shouldered by the well-heeled, pro-Carnarvon guests at the Winter Palace, but others, it seemed, had been only too keen to speak to them. These people were cloaked in anonymity, but reading between the lines I suspected that Rex Engelbach might have talked, and Ibrahim Effendi might have seconded him:
someone
had been singing – warbling away like Carter’s canary.

The charges were uniform, and as follows:

‘Do you think newspapers employ
lawyers
, Lucy?’ Miss Mack asked. ‘Some of it has that weaselly attorney sound, dear, don’t you find? Did you see any
positive comments?’

‘There’s a couple of mentions of the conservation work – and how exemplary it is,’ I said. ‘And one of them points out that Mr Carter couldn’t have formed a better team to assist him than the Met’s. But
The New York Times
is asking what recompense the Met expects in return –
and
who is authorising it… Maybe that’s an angle The Book might want you to pursue, Miss Mack?’

She did not take this hint – most of my hints passed her by, as I was beginning to see. She picked up the four Arab newspapers she had purchased. Unlike the Western newspapers, which were days old by the time they reached Luxor, these were hot off the presses. Mohammed was summoned and asked if he would kindly translate. He did so.
Al-Balagh, Al-Mahroussa, Al-Akhbar
and
Al-Siyasa –
all spoke with one voice: Britain had already annexed Egyptian sovereign territory including the Suez Canal and the Sudan; now imperialistic British interests were annexing the tomb of an Egyptian king. By what right did an English peer deny Egyptians the right to enter the tomb and investigate these scandalous proceedings? By what right was he claiming half of everything found?

‘What if an intact sarcophagus is uncovered?’
Al-Mahroussa
demanded. Was King Tutankhamun’s grave to be plundered by foreigners? Or would the current government, a weak-willed tool of the British colonialists, have the courage to rule that the tomb’s entire contents, not one whit less, belonged in Egypt, the rightful heritage of its people?

Seeing Mohammed’s angry reaction, Miss Mack sought to persuade him that Carnarvon was now attempting to solve some of these problems. ‘I hear he’s been in Cairo for days, negotiating with the authorities,’ she said. ‘They
are
trying to make special arrangements, Mohammed, so the Egyptian journalists will at least be given a tour of the tomb once a week. I believe even the British Residency is pressing for that now.’ Her voice tailed away; she was aware, I think, that this gesture was hopelessly belated and insultingly inadequate. Mohammed regarded her with stony eyes.

‘And what of the king’s mummy, miss?’ he enquired. ‘Is he to stay in his homeland? When El Lord takes half the treasures from his tomb, will he want his share of the king’s body too? What will he do then? Saw King Tutankhamun in halves?’

Miss Mack was silenced. Mohammed left us, and we sat for a long while without speaking. I stared fretfully at the Nile. I counted the multiplicity of houseboats that had appeared since news of the tomb first broke. I’d been keeping a note of their flags: today the tally was nineteen Stars and Stripes, seventeen Union Jacks and one Tricolour.

Miss Mack remained chastened, saying nothing. The accusations of grave robbery in the Arab papers had struck a chord with her: she had always felt that the archaeology of tombs verged on the sacrilegious. Rousing herself at last, she said that Mohammed’s image of Tutankhamun’s body, sawn in two, had shocked her to the core. ‘I fear it is all becoming like the Judgment of Solomon, Lucy,’ she said sadly. ‘And the wisdom of Solomon will be needed to solve it, dear, don’t you agree?’

‘Wisdom is in short supply, so there’s not much hope of that,’ I replied snappishly.

Miss Mack’s frequent recourse to the Bible grated:
not on
my
reading list,
I longed to say.

Miss Mack made no reply. Shortly afterwards, she retired to her cabin, and began banging the Oliver No. 9’s keys. The noise made my head ache. For the first time in Egypt, I longed to be elsewhere: a balcony with a view of the Acropolis; Paris; even Cambridge – anywhere but here. Feeling entombed, I took myself off on a walk through the hills. This did not cure my mysterious malaise, so I fled to the American House, in search of Frances.

30

It was February before Miss Mack and I entered the tomb for the first time. No doubt we could have visited it earlier, had she pressed for an invitation as others such as Minnie Burton certainly did, but Miss Mack would not have countenanced such an approach – she would have regarded it as ill-mannered and exploitative. As a result, we were forgotten or overlooked. I never discovered who procured for us this belated ‘invitation to view’. It might have been the melancholy Mr Callender, who had taken to visiting our houseboat on his river walks. It might have been Eve, who often passed our boat and called in to see us. I always suspected it was Frances, who in her direct way simply told Howard Carter to invite us – though this she strongly denied.

Whoever was responsible, a note was delivered by Pecky Callender one hot afternoon. It read:

My dear Miss Mackenzie,

I shall be delighted if you and Lucie would care to visit our tomb tomorrow. I suggest you come to the Valley at four o’clock when with luck our Scourge the tourists and pressmen will have departed but no doubt Eve will be there. Messrs Mace and Lucas will be glad to show you our ‘laboratory’ and if I am not free Callender will look after you and explain procedings to the best of his ability.

Sincerely yours,

Howard Carter

PS Perhaps Frances might like to acompany Lucie?

Frances did like: she had viewed the Antechamber with her parents at Christmas, when all its glorious contents were still in situ; I suspected she had seen it several times since as well, but was too tactful to say so. But she was excited to see it in its denuded state. ‘Now’s our chance, Lucy,’ she explained, as we rode our donkeys up the Valley track. ‘I want to work out when this famous opening is going to be. We’ll be able to tell when we see the Antechamber. It’s pretty well emptied now, Mr Mace says, so they must be going to open up the inner chamber in the next few days… I think they’re hanging on until Lord Carnarvon gets back from Cairo.’

‘He’s gone to Cairo
again
?’ I asked in surprise.

‘Just for a day or two. On his own. A flying visit. Intrigue and negotiations… Also, he had to see his dentist there.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Lordy’s in agony, apparently – his teeth keep falling out, and Eve says he’s feeling terribly seedy. Daddy says he’s trying to get that Rex Engelbach man fired. I expect he’s arguing about
partage
, and the arrangements for the opening too – they want King Fuad there, you see, and all the top brass, so it’s complicated. Especially with the Combine breathing down their necks.’

‘Has Eve not gone to Cairo with her father then?’ I asked, as we rounded the rocks and entered the Valley. Eve rarely left her father’s side, so this also surprised me.

‘No. Eve says her father thinks it isn’t safe for her there. There were two more assassinations last week – all British officials are armed now. You daren’t go to the Mousky bazaar any more. Eve has stayed here because Luxor is safe – or so she claims.’ Frances gave me a sidelong look. ‘You remember how she and Mr Carter were last year when we had tea at his house?’

‘I do.’

‘Well, see what you think now. They’re very
thick
together; everyone’s talking about it. Thick as thieves, Daddy says. That’s just one of his jokes, of course.’

I was familiar with Herbert Winlock’s jesting remarks – by then I knew just how double-edged they could be. I said nothing. I felt I was in a better position to understand Eve’s relationship with Carter than I had been the year before: I had watched Nicola Dunsire, watched my father and learned. I was twelve now; I was experienced.

There was no sign of Eve or Carter when we finally reached the tomb. It was very hot that day, over one hundred degrees in the shade, and, as Carter had predicted, the heat had driven most tourists and pressmen from the Valley. Numbers dropped in the afternoons anyway, as the excavators now worked in the tomb only in the mornings, concentrating on conservation work in the afternoons. A small group of people remained by the tomb when we finally reached it: three elderly women, sitting in the shade of a propped umbrella and knitting; a couple of excitable young men with box cameras; and an overweight, pink-faced man I recognised as the journalist, Weigall; he was seated on the retaining wall, scribbling in a notebook. As we approached and dismounted, Arthur Mace emerged from his laboratory and came across to greet us.