Iris and Ruby (49 page)

They were looking at each other across a gulf that had not been there before.

‘I’m sorry for whatever it was they said, or did. It was
probably worrying about me that caused it, and my stepfather’s like that with pretty much everyone, not just you. My mother always tries to do the right thing. And weren’t you concerned about what had happened to us, or were you only thinking about yourself?’ she snapped back at him.

‘Ruby, Ruby. What do you think, since you know me?’ Ash reached out and took her hand. He was very good-looking, especially when he was angry and serious. She felt raw and needy, and the need translated itself into wanting him. She held on to his hand, turning it over and studying the flat purplish ovals of his fingernails. ‘And besides this, did I not tell you not to go past Giza, in the car with your grandmother?’

Anger flashed in her too. She banged the tin table with her free hand and the holder of paper napkins and the plastic menu card in its claw holder rattled and bounced. ‘I am not your possession, to be told what to do and not do.’ She was shouting, and the tourist couple at the next table glanced curiously at them.

‘There are good people in Cairo, and some bad. I was afraid that you were dead,’ he muttered.

‘I was afraid that I was dead.’

She said it in such a way that he caught her hand more tightly and hauled the rest of her closer to him so that their mouths awkwardly met across the table. He kissed her very hard and it was the more startling because Ash never made demonstrations in public.

Ruby caught her breath with difficulty and sank slowly back in her seat. The cracks in her mouth stung and she touched her fingers to them.

‘You see?’ Ash whispered.

She was the first to look away. Her face was burning twice over.

The waiter came and banged down the plate of fried eggs.
Ruby looked at the clouded yellow eyes and the brown lace-work at the edge of the glistening white and her mouth watered. ‘I’m so hungry.’

Ash smiled at her, a sunny smile from which the anger had melted away. ‘Eat, then,’ he said.

Lesley sat beside Iris’s bed, letting the time pass.

Andrew told her that he had work calls to make and needed to check and respond to his e-mails.

‘Couldn’t have happened in a worse week, all this,’ he sighed. ‘If you’re going to sit here with your mother, I’ll come back later. Will you be all right?’

Lesley smiled at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We will all be all right.’

Iris woke up and Lesley told her that she loved her. During the night, lying awake in the dusty bedroom while Andrew snored beside her, she had resolved that she would tell her mother this much before anything else. She had said it as soon as Iris seemed briefly aware of her surroundings, and she thought that Iris had heard her and even nodded her head. It was a comfort to Lesley that they had made this connection, at least.

Ruby had been deeply asleep when they left the house, and she was glad of this too. It was a different world from this time yesterday. She had Iris’s life to be grateful for, and Ruby’s youthful resilience. The edge of loneliness, the sense of never being quite what any of the people she loved wanted or expected her to be, was nothing compared with this.

‘Hello?’ an English voice said.

Lesley looked up and saw a woman in a khaki T-shirt with the LandRover logo on the front, only it had been changed to read SandLover instead.

‘Hello,’ Lesley answered uncertainly.

‘How is she?’

‘A bit better. She woke up about an hour ago.’

‘That’s good news. And your daughter?’

‘She was asleep when I left the house. Um, do we know each other?’

The woman laughed, then hurriedly looked around in case she had disturbed any of the other patients.

‘I’m sorry, my fault. I was in the group who found your daughter last night, or perhaps she found us, I’m not sure which. She was marvellous, you know. We just wanted to make sure everything had turned out all right. I’m Ros Carpenter, by the way.’

Lesley came round the foot of Iris’s bed and shook the woman’s hand, and the woman gave her a friendly hug and said that she was sure Iris would soon be on the mend and this seemed quite a good hospital, better than you would expect, really, at least it looked clean, and what kind of treatment would you hope to get at home these days? The other members of the group were having coffee at a place round the corner, actually, and would she like to take a break for a few minutes and come and meet them?

‘Well …’ Lesley hesitated, looking back at Iris. Then she decided quickly, why not? Ruby was marvellous, this woman had said. She smiled at her. ‘Just for half an hour. I want to say thank you to all of you. My name’s Lesley Ellis.’

The other four women were gathered round a table, and they waved them over and shuffled up their chairs to make room.

‘This is Lesley,’ Ros announced proprietorially. ‘Her mum is recovering and our desert wanderer is at home fast asleep.’

There were exclamations of relief and satisfaction, and the largest of the women cheered. Lesley looked around the table, touched by their warmth.

The blonde one said, ‘Your daughter was very brave. She was exhausted, terribly thirsty, sunburned – she had walked
all that way, but she didn’t think about herself at all. The one thing she had in her mind was to get help to her grandmother. Our guide tried to send her to the hotel with us but she just stood there and shouted at him until he said she could join the search.’

Lesley smiled. ‘Yes, that’s Ruby.’ It was, too. It came to her that her beloved child was a different person from the one all her misgivings and anxieties had rested upon. ‘That’s Ruby,’ she repeated, almost to herself.

A woman with sunglasses pushed up on her head took Lesley’s hand and patted it. ‘This must have been a horrible few days for you.’

They gave her coffee and a croissant, introduced themselves, told the story again of how Ruby had stumbled from between the sand dunes and almost collapsed at their feet.

‘Our guide, Hammid …’

‘Lindy’s in love with Hammid.’ The one called Clare laughed. ‘Can’t stop saying his name.’

‘No, I’m not. I’m just saying that
he
said you should always stay put if you lose yourself in the desert, but if Ruby had done that it might have been days before anyone found them and by then it might have been too late.’

‘She did the right thing in this instance,’ Jane agreed.

‘I’d never have been able to do what she did,’ Louise added. ‘How did it happen, by the way? How did they get lost?’

‘We don’t really know yet. I expect we’ll get the full story when Ruby has recovered.’

Or maybe not, knowing Ruby.

Even though they were praising Ruby, Lesley wanted to shut out the rest of it; to think of how lucky she had been and what would have happened if she hadn’t met the safari party was too much for now. She made the right faces and responses to the talk, but to distract herself she studied the women. They were about the same age as she was, and Lesley
recognised their clothes and their discreetly highlighted hair, but there were other aspects that were less familiar.

Their friendship, for one thing. They seemed very comfortable together. Lesley had friends of her own, from business and from the village, but she couldn’t imagine setting off to ride a camel across the dunes with any four of them. And the other unusual factor was the absence of men; husbands, specifically. For Lesley, holidays meant Andrew and the boat. Or, rarely, Andrew and not the boat.

They were ordering more coffees now, and debating whether it was too early to think about lunch and maybe a glass of wine.

‘We
have
just spent five days sitting on a camel’s back.’

‘And it is our last day but one.’

‘I don’t want it to be over,’ Ros sighed.

‘Do you always take your holidays together?’ Lesley asked them.

They all laughed. ‘Last year it was Sri Lanka. Next year we’re thinking Machu Picchu,’ Clare said.

‘Well, you might be,’ Lindy protested.

‘But yes, we do. Three of us are divorced, two still married …’

‘Just about.’

‘… and we don’t all like the same things. Some of us will spend this afternoon at the Egyptian Museum, for example, others … well, they won’t. But we all like each other. And it works.’

Lesley smiled, envying them their apparent freedom. Then she looked at her watch. ‘I’d better go. Wait, did any of you lend Ruby a shawl yesterday?’

‘That was me,’ Ros said.

‘How can I get it back to you? Where’s your hotel?’

‘Tell you what,’ Clare suggested. ‘Why don’t you meet us for dinner tomorrow? Our last night?’

To her surprise, Lesley agreed without even thinking about it. Nor did she say that she would have to bring Andrew with her.

‘See you tomorrow, then,’ she said. ‘Enjoy the museum.’

‘Or a nice sleep by the pool,’ Lindy murmured.

When she reached Iris’s side ward again, Ruby was sitting in the visitor’s chair. She looked clean and almost her normal self, apart from her cracked and swollen lips.

‘Darling, you’re here. Did you sleep? Have you had something to eat? How do you feel?’

‘Mum. Where did you get to?’

‘I went for a cup of coffee with the camel trekkers, they came to see how you both are. How did you get here?’

‘Really? That was nice of them. I’m fine, I woke up and had breakfast with Ash. Then I had a shower and he gave me a lift on his scooter. Iris was awake a minute ago. She looked around and asked for you.’

‘She asked for me?’

‘Yes. She said to me, “Lesley, you’ll have to speak up.” Then she sort of blinked, and said, “Where’s Lesley?” I told her you’d be back soon.’

Lesley sat down quickly on the other side of the bed. She took her mother’s hand, so thin and small that there was no weight in it, and held it tight. Ruby was quiet, sitting with her head propped against the back of the chair, and Lesley sat watching her and letting the wordless phrases of gratitude rise slowly through her mind, like bubbles in the sea.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ruby talked to Sebastian, who was in his office in London.

‘You gave us all a fright,’ he said.

‘Sorry. I gave myself a fright as well.’

‘Are you sure you are all right?’

Ruby was using Andrew’s mobile. Andrew was trying to work, with his papers spread out on the divan in Iris’s sitting room. He complained that the overhead light was too dim to read by, and if he opened the shutters the muezzin and the noise from the street below was too disturbing. Ruby saw no point in trying to pitch a conversation somewhere between two fathers.

‘I’m OK. Iris’s getting better as well.’

‘That’s good news. All right, darling. I’ve got to go to meet an author. Give me a call later in the week, eh? And we’ll have to make a proper plan for that New York trip, once you’re back in England.’

‘Yeah. OK, Dad.’

‘Love you, darling. ’Bye.’

Ruby put the phone down beside Andrew’s papers, but he didn’t look up. She wandered out and glanced down from the gallery into the hall. With a scarf tied over her hair, Lesley
was balancing on a stepladder. She was taking the red glass lights out of the huge lantern that hung on chains from the carved roof and dusting them one by one. Mamdooh hovered at the foot, his hands raised and upturned as if he hoped to catch her when she fell. Ruby went slowly down the stairs. Between them, Lesley and Andrew were re-creating Kent in Cairo.

‘I’m going for a walk with Ash,’ Ruby called.

‘What? Oh, wait. Where will you be going? Take my phone. You’ll be back to have supper with Andrew, won’t you? I’m going out, remember.’

‘Dunno,’ Ruby breathed. ‘Don’t fall off.’

She skipped out of the door, closing it tight and automatically squinting as the low sunlight hit her face.

Ash detached himself from the wall and sloped towards her. ‘You are late. But you are looking like yourself again, I am glad to see.’

‘I was talking on the phone to my dad in London. And thanks.’ She sketched a mocking kiss at him.

‘On the phone, why? I thought he was here also.’

‘This one here is my stepfather. The other one in London is my real father.’

Ash sighed. ‘This is very complicated for you.’

‘It’s pretty simple, actually. I don’t worry about it.’

He took her hand and they began to walk, slowly and with no particular objective, the way Ruby enjoyed.

Mamdooh puffed out his cheeks with relief as Lesley replaced the last of the red glass globes and clambered down the ladder. She stood with the duster in her hand, looking up at the result of her work. She now saw that it wasn’t an improvement. When it had been furred with dust the lantern had at least looked old and important. Now, with the clumsy joints in the metalwork and the machine-made glass fully revealed, it was obvious that it was a piece of modern junk
that anyone could have picked up in the bazaar. Which was probably exactly what Iris had done. Most of the rest of her furnishings looked the same. Iris didn’t care about clothes or possessions or aesthetics, perhaps never had. Lesley had inherited all her enthusiasm for such things from her father. When he died, he had left her his good furniture and his library of first editions on photography, nearly all of which she had sold, although that wasn’t particularly relevant.

It was the ability to appreciate in the first place that mattered, Lesley thought.

She went through to the kitchen to rinse out her duster, surprising Auntie into a nervous flutter in her wake, then retreated upstairs to have a shower in the bathroom in which the pipes ominously clanked and the water swirled away into a scaly hole in the tiling.

‘What am I supposed to do for the evening?’ Andrew demanded when Lesley reappeared changed and ready to meet the women at their hotel.

‘Have some dinner here, with Ruby if she’s back. Auntie is cooking something.’

‘Bean soup.’

‘Very good for you. I won’t be late.’

‘This is getting more and more awkward, Lesley, you know. How long are you going to need to stay? I’m right in the middle of the Elligott deal, and I can’t handle the whole business from here.’