Tutankhamun Uncovered (38 page)

Carter couldn’t really fathom what she might mean by it and it troubled him when he couldn’t detect the meaning in things. He took it as sarcasm.

“Well, you might be.” It was all he could think of in response.

“I don’t think so. You haven’t disappointed me ever. This cannot be an exception.”

They arrived in the early evening and went straight to the inn. Carter registered for them both and they went up to their rooms to drop off their bags. Dorothy’s room was indeed small a solitary single bed; a dressing table with so little space between it and the bed that there was no room for a chair; she would have to sit on the foot of the bed to attend to her toilet.

It didn’t bother Carter. He had been used to so much worse in his various encampments in the desert. This was comparative luxury. Everything is relative.

Dorothy unpacked her things and hung them in the tallboy. She powdered her nose and went downstairs to join Carter in the lounge bar. He was sitting in a ‘snug’ in the corner halfway through his first gin. His eyes lit up as she arrived and he got up to show her to her seat.

“What’ll you have?”

She bit her lip pensively. “Mmm... a sweet sherry, I think. Thanks.”

He went over to the bar to order her drink and get himself another gin. She watched him. He was wearing the same creased and baggy grey tweed suit he had worn in London. The Homburg for once was not on his head and the obvious thinning on top was now clearly exposed. Although he was adequately presentable, Dorothy couldn’t help herself musing: ‘He does not look after himself well. He needs someone to take care of him. But would he allow it? He is not one to take orders or advice from others.’ She felt more of a maternal concern than a physical attraction for the man.

He, on the other hand, had metamorphosed at last. He was attracted to and very much enjoyed the company and conversation of this Miss Dorothy Dalgleish.

Carter turned to walk back to the table with the drinks. He allowed himself a few moments to drink in the pretty little vision before him. She had a heavenly round face, pale blue, smiling eyes and a perfect complexion. And, although petite and extremely slim, she had a firm and shapely chest. Whenever he had been with her, as now, she had been dressed to the neck. He had never seen any sign of cleavage. But there was some recognisably distinct fullness there pressing outward against the tight cotton of her print dress.

He placed the drinks on the table between them. The tinkling of the glasses betrayed the trembling in his fingers. He sat down.

A longing was welling within him, but for once he lacked the tools to express himself coherently. Dorothy couldn’t suspect how he was feeling. He had always been strongly focused on his profession. Up to this point, they had talked together mostly about his experiences in Egypt. In discussion of his subject he had been amusing as well as serious but they had rarely dwelt long on life outside his work, except perhaps his associations with the aristocracy and the otherwise seriously wealthy, but certainly not his personal, more intimate feelings. She was here to enjoy his company and his stories. There was no anticipation beyond this.

So for a moment she was struck dumb when he clumsily blurted out, “I... I am greatly attracted to you, Dot.”

In the intensity of his feelings he translated her momentary silence to indicate she was offended by this forwardness. Perhaps he had ruined the whole trip right at the start through this brief confessional. Perhaps she would want to take the next train back to London. Perhaps she would not speak to him again. In the few seconds that followed, all these thoughts flashed through his confused mind. He hurriedly constructed a follow-up sentence and was just about to fumble a second delivery when she responded.

“Howard!” First a startled admonishment, then, “Oh, Howard,” softer, gentler, delivered with a clearly receptive smile. “I don’t deserve such words.”

Carter, surprised and greatly relieved at the tone of her response, took a grip on himself and collected the presence of mind not to answer ‘Oh, Dot’, which were the first words to come into his head. If he were not careful, his dialogue could easily become comical and the special moment he had so indelicately created could be lost. All he had to do was keep the theme going and with her willingness to play the other part in the duet his task would be all the easier.

Over dinner they talked about themselves; they talked about Norfolk, they reminisced about their childhoods, their parents, their brothers and sisters, their likes, their dislikes; they talked some self-criticism, their personally perceived idiosyncrasies those they observed in each other, those they observed in others. They talked about the war. For once Egypt did not figure in the conversation.

And so to bed.

Pecking her nervously on the cheek, Carter said, “Good night, Dot. Pleasant dreams.”

“Pleasant dreams, Howard,” she repeated, kissing him back. And they parted company.

They each had much to dream about: she with the unexpected realisation that he did, after all, have feelings for her, he with a new and consuming obsession that had in some considerable measure, for the time being at least, displaced his life’s work.

They were both awake when the innkeeper’s wife brought the tea. He was down to breakfast by eight o’clock and she shortly afterwards. As they laid eyes on each other for the first time that morning, it was with a sense of mutual acceptance. There was no awkwardness in their conversation. A pleasing atmosphere of total comfort existed between them. Even though this was all new to him, Carter nevertheless felt like he’d known her this way for years. Dorothy, on the other hand, had always felt she knew the man. What was different now was that he wanted to know her.

They spent the first day visiting his brothers. They talked about painting. They went through a portfolio of his father’s works. They visited his aunts’ house. They had dinner with Vernet. And finally, at bedtime back at the inn, they parted company as they had the night before.

At breakfast the next morning, Carter introduced his plan for the day. “I told you, didn’t I, Dot, that during my boyhood and early teens I would visit the Amhersts frequently and receive instruction from his lordship on Egyptian antiquities and history. It was like a free tutorial as often as I wished it. It is he whom you should blame for my infatuation.”

‘Well, Egypt was bound to creep back into the picture sooner or later,’ she thought.

“It’s quite a long way.”

They set out on bicycles for Didlington Hall. Carter was on his way to revisit the crucible of his career. Riding beside him was a woman who had lit a fire where coals, let alone flames, had not existed before. He felt possessed. First the old church and then the familiar lines of the house came into view. Carter stopped and dismounted. Dorothy drew up beside him.

“It is much overgrown. Gone to seed. The Amhersts fell on hard times a few years ago and I had to help them sell everything. No one wanted the house. It’s been empty ever since I catalogued his collection for auction.”

“It must have been lovely in its heyday,” observed Dorothy.

“It was. It truly was. I never thought...” he paused.

“What, Howard?”

“Well, when you’re there you don’t think when it’s alive with people, the family, their belongings, and you visit almost daily you never give a thought to how it could change just like that,” he snapped his fingers. “Overnight almost. And all you are left with is an overgrown, empty shell this thing we are looking at now like a ransacked tomb, left to the elements after the scavengers have taken their pickings; a beautifully crafted palace, constructed at great expense; a home, loved and cared for by its inhabitants all gone, as they are gone.”

They got back on their bikes and cycled on to the gateway just as he had done so many times all those years ago. Even the gates had gone, sold with the rest of the contents. But the carefully crafted brick walls still stood.

The couple rode on up to the house. They left their bikes at the front steps. Carter pulled off his trouser clips and they walked around the building along the overgrown pathway to the rear terrace.

“It wouldn’t take too much effort to revitalise this garden,” observed Dorothy. “They look a bit dishevelled now, but these are all cultivated trees and bushes. All it would take to bring them back to their former grandeur is a little ‘TLC’.”

The bright afternoon sunlight bathed the rear portico in leafy shade. The paint had peeled from the frames of the long row of venetian windows that opened onto the terrace. Howard had frequently observed the family at play here. Now weeds reached through the cracks between the pavers. The grass in the lawns which swept down to the ornamental pool was tall, thick enough even for haymaking.

Carter pointed back the way they had come.

“Across the road the Amhersts of the last century are remembered. It was the family church. There is a plaque near the altar erected to the memory of Mary and William George Tyssen Amherst. What a name! They died in ’54 and ’55. In the bell tower there are even more plaques to Amelia, Francis, Beatrice, Charles and William. All Amhersts. All of them died in the last century. Where my friends rest I have no idea.” He looked downward.

“Howard,” Dorothy spoke firmly.

He smiled, took a breath and changed the subject. “At one time there were seven statues of seated Egyptian gods positioned all along this back wall,” Carter swept his hand in a wide arc. “I can still imagine them staring at us. Such a prize they were. So easily sold. Now sadly scattered. They don’t stand together any more. Too many museums wished to share the prize.”

The man in the baggy tweed suit and hat walked along the terrace with exaggerated steps, stopping briefly at each place where a statue had once stood, each time taking up a position with his back against the wall looking out across the gardens in stone like pose, mimicking the fixed gaze of the gods. As he acted the part, he named each one and described its purpose in the ritual of ancient Egyptian religion.

Dorothy was lying on her stomach on the grassy slope that ran from the terrace to the ornamental pool. With her elbows firmly planted in the thick turf and her hands cupped under her chin, she watched Carter’s nostalgic theatricals with obvious pleasure. She didn’t hear most of the words. Her mind was filled with the picture of this dowdily dressed, moderately attractive but otherwise unnoticeable little man elegantly playing the script and the parts that he knew so well and with a flourish that belied his normal reserve.

But he had a singularly private audience. He felt completely released from the discipline that normally characterised his behaviour. He finished his description of the seven deities and bowed like a maestro accepting a bouquet. His lady friend clapped. He threw off his jacket and came over to sit down beside her. She rolled over onto her back, rocked her head in the grass to tousle her hair a little and looked up at him.

The picture, perfectly framed in his eyes, gave him the same rush of excitement he had felt when he had sat having dinner with her that first night in the pub. Howard Carter returned to Egypt a changed man more inwardly complete and feeling less solitary. Although he was not sure whether she would join him in Egypt again, he knew when he felt cornered by the strains of his work he would have someone he could confide in, someone he could go to for help, perhaps more.

The war was escalating outside Europe. Everyone had thought it would be over within the year, but things were getting worse. Influenced, as all were, by what he read in the newspapers, Carter fast developed an intense dislike for the Germans. They now took first place on his ‘most hated’ list, displacing even the French.

Determined to make his own contribution to the war effort, he returned to Luxor at the usual time of year. He had selected his target, but before he could take any action he would first need to enlist the help of his erstwhile colleagues in the UCO.

On his journey back up the track to Castle Carter, it loomed large as life that brutally arrogant statement of German bad taste, the red villa of Borchardt!

As he approached his house, the mangy Gaggia bounded from the porch towards him. Abdel stood in the doorway, a broad grin on his face, always relieved to see his master return. They exchanged greetings. Abdel proffered the obligatory G and T. The welcome drink didn’t stop Carter delivering some early criticism. “You have not looked after Gaggia well, Abdel. His mange is worse than when I left. Have you been applying the paraffin daily like I told you?”

Abdel profusely denied any delinquency in the execution of his responsibilities. But Carter knew he had been less than diligent. There was not the slightest scent of paraffin on the dog.

“Go and get me the can right now, Abdel. I shall do it myself.”

The dog hated the application and would run for cover as soon as he saw Abdel bring the paraffin can into the room. He had become so clever at hiding that Abdel invariably could not find him and would give up looking.

True to form on this occasion, as soon as Abdel returned with the paraffin can, the dog scampered out of the room, its paws sliding on the tiled floor in its panic to get away.

“Gaggia! Come here, boy!” Carter shouted. “Gaggia!”

Not a sound from the other room.

“Go and get him, Abdel.”

“Sir,” acknowledged Abdel, and he went looking once more.

He was gone long enough for Carter’s mind to drift into the catalogue of pleasant memories he had accumulated during his summer leave. The dry bottom to his glass brought him back from his Elysian dreamings.

“Abdel! Where the hell are you, man? Get the dog and bring him back here at once. And get me another drink, dammit.”

Carter’s irritability was a complex cocktail fatigue after his long journey, Abdel’s negligence with the dog, the sight of that monstrous red construction a few yards back down the track, and an unaccustomed longing. The heady mixture had been fermenting within him since he had

returned. And now there was the alcohol.

“Abdel! Come back in here at once!”