The Visitors (6 page)
‘Yes,
again –
but what can one do?’
‘Very little, I imagine,’ Madame replied. ‘I shall be sorry not to see her, but delighted as always to see your father. I look forward to the dinner. Send him my
félicitations… ’
‘Oh, I
shall.
It’s
so
lovely to be back – Poppy and I are having a whale of a time. I’m thinking of buying a canary – did Howard tell you? If I do, I shall take it with us to the Valley to bring us luck. Now, I must fly… Pups sends
masses
of love, by the way.’
Leaning forward, she embraced Madame, who chuckled, bestowed a kiss on Madame’s sallow rouged cheek and, clasping Lady Rose’s hand, turned to go. She drifted past me, still chattering away. I caught a drift of her scent – jonquils, iris – and then the vision was gone. I watched Madame scythe her way through the last clustering of children and guardians, and saw that Miss Mack, flanked by Helen Winlock, was nerving herself to pounce.
‘Madame, if I may just introduce myself,’ I heard. ‘I am Myrtle C. Mackenzie. Of Princeton, New Jersey. I wrote you a note, you may recall? Concerning my little friend over there, Lucy Payne? Lucy… Lucy? Where has the child hidden herself… ’
I had hidden myself behind the piano, crouched down by the stool, where short-sighted Miss Mack was unlikely to spot me. I could sense the saga was about to start up again; I’d reappear when it was over, I told myself, and not before. Madame was receiving the abbreviated version: Miss Mack was no fool, and no doubt sensed that with a woman like Madame it was futile to play the sympathy card. The status card, however, given the intake of her classes, might prove a trump. If plain Lucy Payne were denied admittance, perhaps a grandchild of steel and railroads might make it through the door?
Emerson
, I heard,
Stockton
,
Wiggins.
My cheeks flamed. I imagined Madame’s scorn, poor Miss Mack’s chagrin. As I peeped out from behind the shiny ebony of the piano, I saw my guardian was agitated, and Helen Winlock had now entered the debate. Madame stood listening to both women with an expression of stone.
‘
Impossible
,’ I heard. ‘
Je regrette
,
ma chère Madame, mais votre fille––
’
‘
Miss
. I told you, I am
Miss
Mackenzie. And Lucy is
not
my daughter. Heavens! This is so darn difficult. May we stick to good plain English, please?’
‘English? But I thought you were American?’ Madame said silkily.
‘And so I am. A Yankee and proud of it!’ Miss Mack, who knew sarcasm when she heard it, was becoming heated. She raised her voice; her hat was now tilting dangerously over her left eye. As I shrank back again behind the piano, I felt a small hand brush my arm. Turning, I found myself face to face with Frances Winlock.
‘Hello,’ she said, without ceremony. ‘I’ve been watching you for a while. I was watching you this morning too, through my field glasses. I recognised you as soon as you walked in. You’re the Sphinx girl, aren’t you?’
‘And you’re the pyramids’ girl. You’re an acrobat. You did a cartwheel. You wore sunglasses. I was watching you too.’
We gazed at one another warily. After a long appraising pause, Frances Winlock held out her hand, I solemnly shook it and we introduced ourselves. Close to, I could see that she was indeed younger than I’d realised at first, though she was tall for her age, almost on a level with me. Unlike her untidy mother, she was immaculately turned out in a navy blue pleated skirt and a neat, white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. She wore socks and sandals identical to mine. Her shining dark hair was cut in a bob to her shoulders, parted on the side and pinned back from her high forehead with a slide or, as Miss Mack would call it, a bobby-pin. She had a clear complexion and an air of radiant health. Her eyes and the brilliance of their gaze were the first thing you noticed about her – until she smiled, that was. Her smile lit her face in a way and to a degree I’d never seen before. She smiled now, and I risked the question to which I’d longed for an answer all day: ‘I’ve been wondering – did you pass your hieroglyph test?’
‘Oh, you heard that?’ The smile disappeared. ‘No, I failed. One out of six. Daddy was mad at me. But they are hard – really hard.’
‘Never mind. You’re sure to get them right next time,’ I said. She seemed so crestfallen that I felt anxious to console her. ‘And you danced beautifully.’
‘No, I didn’t. Half the steps were wrong, and then I messed up that jump.’
I glanced down at her ankle, which was visibly swollen. ‘Have you sprained it?’
‘I don’t think so. I can walk on it. Just twisted it – it hardly hurts at all.’
That was untrue, I thought. Frances shuffled her weight from foot to foot experimentally, and winced. Changing the subject, she quickly asked me why I was in Cairo, how long I was staying there. She also asked why was I so thin and – peeping under the brim of my hat – what had happened to my hair? She was the first person I’d encountered who had been this outspoken and her directness undid all my resolutions: before I could stop myself, out the story came. I was just reaching the end of this blurt and had got to the ‘parcelled-up’ phase when Miss Mack, accompanied by Madame and Helen Winlock, discovered my hiding place.
As I looked from face to face, Miss Mack’s flushed and anxious, Helen Winlock’s sympathetic, Madame’s a mask of arrogance and impatience, it became obvious that Miss Mack was fighting a lost cause. ‘Ah, Lucy,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid this is not promising. Madame’s classes are full and it really doesn’t look as if––’
‘This is the child?’ Cutting her short, Madame leaned forward to examine me. I felt the full glare of those predator eyes of hers. ‘I will question her myself.
Vous permettez, mademoiselle?
’
Miss Mack and I, unsure whom she addressed, both nodded. The inquisition was brief and to the point. In rapid-fire time it elicited the information that, despite having reached the advanced age of eleven, I had never attended a ballet performance, a ballet class or indeed any other kind of dancing class in my entire life. Furthermore, I neither rode, nor played tennis, and my swimming was unreliable. I was not, Madame deduced,
sportive.
‘
Enfin –
what
can
you do, child?’
‘Well, I read. I read a lot,’ I said desperately, casting around for an answer and giving her a Cambridge one.
Madame raised her eyes to the heavens. ‘Do you
wish
to dance, Mademoiselle?’
‘No. Yes. That is, I didn’t, but––’
‘
Incroyable…
Still, I must not be hasty. You have been ill, I must make allowances. I shall be fair. Fair play, as the English never cease reminding us. We shall see with our own eyes. Child – remove your hat, please.’
I did so. Miss Mack gave a small mew of distress and protest; no one else said a word.
Madame recovered first. ‘Let us continue,’ she said. ‘Child – bend over and touch your toes… Now, stand straight, raise your arms above your head, and lower them slowly –
slowly
, Mademoiselle.
Enfin
, remove your shoes, hold on to the barre and raise yourself on your toes –
comme ça, vous voyez
?’ She demonstrated. I copied. She sighed. ‘Extend your left leg, point the toe and raise it as high as you can…
Mon Dieu,
but you’re stiff
,
I’ve seen a chair, a table, with more animation.
Ça suffit.
’ She began to turn away. ‘We will not waste each other’s time any longer.’
‘That’s not fair, Madame.’ To my astonishment, Frances Winlock pushed past me and spoke. ‘There are umpteen girls in our class who can’t dance very well and never will – and you didn’t turn them away. Lucy wants to learn, she told me so. And besides, you’re not giving her a chance. She’s – she’s – she’s very –
acrobatic
. She can do these amazing handsprings and cartwheels. Somersaults too… ’
This lie was brazen: I blushed to the roots of my tragic hair. It was stated with wide-eyed innocence and in a tone of such heartfelt conviction that Miss Mack was completely taken in. ‘Why, Lucy, dear, I never realised––’ she began.
Mrs Winlock gave her a sharp nudge, and said quickly, ‘Frances, that’s quite enough. But perhaps my daughter has a point, Madame? After all, Lucy will be moving on from Cairo to Luxor in a few weeks, just as we shall, so it’s only a short-term arrangement. Surely you could fit her in? Imagine how much she’d learn from a teacher such as you! And I know Frances would love it if you could… She and Lucy are
such
friends.’
I said nothing. I could see Madame was not deceived for an instant. She knew that Frances was lying, and I could no more perform a cartwheel than I could read hieroglyphs. I was an impostor, a fake – and about to be exposed as one. All she had to do was ask me to demonstrate. I saw her eyes gleam with that malicious possibility, but then she seemed to change her mind. Possibly Frances and her mother weighed more with her than all the Stockton and Wiggins and Emerson tribes put together: maybe she felt like playing up to her own reputation for unpredictability; perhaps it was simply that the blatancy of the lie amused her.
She looked intently at Frances and at me. A long fraught silence ensued, and then she laughed. ‘Well, well, well – you have talents I should never have suspected, Mademoiselle,’ she said in a dry tone. ‘
Eh bien
, you will be on trial, but since your friend vouches for you, you may attend my class next Tuesday. By then I shall expect you to have learned the first five ballet positions; if you haven’t – out on your ear. Mrs Winlock, Miss Mackenzie – you have exhausted me. I wish you good day.’
She swept out of the room. When I was sure she was gone I thanked Frances for her generous lie, and her mother for intervening, and Miss Mack for pressing my case; but I was incoherent. I was experiencing fierce emotion, of a kind I’d almost forgotten, and had assumed long gone.
‘There, there,’ said Helen Winlock, ‘let’s say no more about it. I reckon we should celebrate, don’t you? Miss Mackenzie––’
‘Myrtle, my dear, please.’
‘Won’t you and Lucy join us for dinner tonight? I’m letting Frances stay up. If we dine quite early? My husband Herbert will be so pleased to meet you – he’s an archaeologist, out here working for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ll introduce you to a whole bunch of our archaeologist friends if you think you can bear that––’
Miss Mack’s face lit up: as she was a devotee of tombs and temples, nothing could have delighted her more. She demurred, but was soon won round.
Later that evening, wearing my best dress and with my patchy tufts of hair artistically concealed by a scarf, I found myself at a huge table in the very centre of the glittering Shepheard’s dining room, Frances seated next to me and explaining in a whisper who everyone was. That was the first time I met her father, Herbert Winlock, and the colleagues whose photographs now rest in my albums, forever frozen at that supreme moment of triumph that was almost a year away.
‘And who is that?’ I asked, indicating a man seated near her father, who seemed somewhat isolated and withdrawn, neither participating in the repartee nor sharing the easy manners and good humour of the other guests. So far, the only remark he’d made, was a curt, ‘Tommyrot’. It had come at the end of a long discussion between Frances’s father and the man she had pointed out as the senior curator of Egyptology at the Met, a small, quietly spoken Bostonian named Albert Lythgoe. Neither seemed to mind the brusque comment: Lythgoe raised an eyebrow, Winlock grinned, and they continued their discussion serenely.
‘That’s Howard Carter,’ Frances replied. ‘He’s an archaeologist too. He works for the Earl of Carnarvon, who has the concession to dig in the Valley of the Kings. Mr Carter is an especial friend of mine. I’ll introduce you one day, but be warned, Lucy: he has one devil of a temper. Daddy says he’s the rudest man he’s ever known.’
Howard Carter seemed to resent the lack of reaction to his ‘Tommyrot’ remark. He slopped some wine in his glass and slumped back in his chair, staring off into space. He was in his late forties, I judged, hawk-nosed, dark-haired, ill at ease, broodingly assertive even when silent. After a brief interval, he rose to his feet and, without a word to his companions, walked out.
I watched him leave with interest. To me, Mr Carter looked like an outsider – it takes one to know one, of course.
The ‘Opening of the Mouth’ was an important Egyptian ritual in which an inanimate object, such as a statue or one who was no longer alive, like a mummy, was symbolically brought to life… different adzes were used for the symbolic cutting open… and several mummies have been found on which there are small cuts in the bandages in the region of the mouth.
Cairo was a relatively small city then, not the spreading metropolis it has become since. The haunts favoured by visiting Americans and Europeans were limited in number, so I saw Howard Carter often over the following days, though it was some time before I’d actually be introduced to him. He was not staying at Shepheard’s, I learned, but at the Continental Hotel across the Ezbekieh Gardens, where the Winlocks also had their base. Like them, he visited Shepheard’s daily, using it as an informal club.
Frances gave me nuggets of information: she said his father had been an artist, who specialised in portraits of animals, that he was the youngest of eleven children and his family had been poor. He’d been farmed out as an infant to two spinster aunts and brought up by them in Norfolk – there his grandfather had been a gamekeeper on a large estate, and there both his parents had been born. That interested me: with my dual nationality, I had a good ear for accents, and the expert Miss Mack had sharpened it. I was familiar with the unmistakable pronunciations of rural Norfolk from my visits there. Carter’s voice, with its clipped consonants and drawling upper-class vowels, sounded fake. Practised yet unnatural, it had an actorish ring, retaining no trace of his native county that I could hear.