Iris and Ruby (50 page)

She crossed the room to him, making a show of folding down and settling the collar of his shirt just because she wanted to touch him, to make the smallest connection, and wishing at the same time that they could laugh together or tease each other. Two creases familiarly showed between Andrew’s eyebrows.

‘Thank you for coming out here with me and taking charge of everything,’ she said.

It was Andrew who had tracked down the office of Ideal Desert Safaris and made sure that the camel guide received ‘an appropriate gesture’, as he put it, and he had dealt with the police and the embassy officials too. I couldn’t have done it on my own, Lesley thought automatically.

But now, suddenly, she reflected that there was no real reason why she should not have done. She ran her own business, even if it was only to do with lampshades and storage solutions, not corporate takeovers. It was Andrew’s way to make little of what she did and, by extension, to make little of her. And she accepted this because she also understood that he needed to emphasise his own adequacy by doing so.

He looked surprised, but pleased. ‘I couldn’t just stay at home, could I? And I was as worried about Ruby as you were.’

Maybe, Lesley thought. Her husband felt what he ought to feel, as if love or anxiety or responsibility had been placed on an agenda for him to consider. None of these emotions came spilling out of him, unstoppable. Passion was nowhere on the list. Except maybe where his boat was concerned. Lesley found herself smiling.

It wasn’t that he was a bad man.

But she didn’t know any more if he was what she wanted.

And then Lesley realised that even to consider what she wanted was such an unfamiliar course that she was startled by the exposure of it.

She said quickly, ‘So what do you want to do? I’m not going to leave Cairo while my mother is seriously ill in hospital.’

Andrew closed the lid of his laptop and gathered up some of his papers into a sheaf. ‘I might have to go back before you, then.’

‘That’s all right. Ruby and I can take care of ourselves.
You’ll have to look after Ed for a few days; we can’t leave him at Ollie’s for ever.’

‘Well. I suppose so.’

‘I’d better go.’ Lesley stooped and kissed the top of his head, where the hair had retreated. He caught her wrist and held it, and it was Lesley who straightened up in the end and said that she really must go.

Dressed up in bright tops, sparkly earrings and strappy sandals, the trekkers were drinking cocktails in the bar of the hotel.

‘Here she is! Come on, Lesley, you’re a cocktail behind.’

‘I’ll have a margarita,’ Lesley said.

The first was quickly followed by a second.

Later they went out in two taxis to a Lebanese restaurant where they sat on cushioned divans and ate a long succession of little dishes accompanied by bottles of heavy red wine. The conversation was a choppy stream of anecdote cut with intimate confessions that were received and then neutralised by a lot of laughing, and Lesley felt buoyed up by the giggly camaraderie of it all. The waiters played up to them and brought them free silver dishes of sugary pastries at the end of the meal, and everyone swore that they never touched such things before gobbling up every one as they drank thick coffee from tiny gold cups. After they had divided up the bill Lesley said that she ought to go home, but the others insisted that this was Cairo, they were going to a belly-dancing show and she must come with them.

To begin with, the dancer wore diaphanous turquoise voile harem pants and a matching veil, and a bodice and wrist bands glimmering with sequins and pearls. Bells jingled at her wrists and ankles, and her bare feet padded on the dusty floor. She had long, eloquent fingers and her sad eyes were heavily outlined with kohl.

‘I wish I could dance. I want to be a belly-dancer,’ Lindy wistfully sighed. Her eyes were shiny with admiration.

‘Right then. We’ll leave you here and come back next year to catch your show,’ Ros said.

Towards the end of her act the dancer shed most of her voile. Her thighs and the flesh of her belly shimmied extravagantly as she shook her hips and the jewel in her belly button flashed in the lights. The tourists all clapped.

‘I feel better about myself,’ Clare murmured.

‘Me too,’ Louise said. ‘I’m not going to suck in my stomach any more. I’m going to let it all hang out in a sequinned bikini.’

Lesley felt sorry for the dancer, who looked tired under her thick make-up, and then a more general sadness. The musicians were old men with greasy marks on their red waistcoats and their tarbooshes tipped to one side. Everyone was sad, and herself most of all.

Too much to drink, she told herself.

It was the end of the evening. Jane’s eyes were shut, her head resting on Lindy’s plump shoulder, and the dancer was taking her last bow.

Outside in the street there was the ubiquitous line of waiting black-and-white taxis. It wasn’t hard to travel around Cairo, Lesley had discovered, if you had a few Egyptian pounds for the fare.

The women all hugged her, and Ros made sure she had her shawl, and Lesley thanked them all again.

‘We didn’t do a thing.’

They had her address, she had theirs. They would meet up again. Lesley had been invited to join them next year.

‘Machu Picchu.’

‘
Not
bloody Macho whatsit. I fancy Parrot Cay, myself.’

They climbed unsteadily into two taxis. Lesley waved them off and then got into a third. She gave the driver Iris’s address
and looked ahead into the thick of the traffic. She was wondering what would happen next and at the same time realising that there were possibilities, definite possibilities. The answer might be as simple as taking a holiday on her own once in a while, or as complicated as admitting that her marriage needed work. It was like a door opening. She couldn’t quite see into the room beyond, but neither did she feel locked into the same old space.

Ruby was in bed, reading a book.

‘You’re still awake.’

‘Andrew went to bed hours ago, so he won’t be. I wanted to make sure you got in safely.’

They looked at each other, acknowledging the perfection of this reversal, and started to laugh.

Lesley sat down on the edge of the bed, as she used to do when Ruby was a child. ‘What are you reading?’

Ruby held the book up so she could see the cover. It was a history of pharaonic Egypt.

‘Is it interesting?’

‘Yes. We could go to the Egyptian Museum, if you like. I’ll show you some of the exhibits, there are some amazing things.’

‘Let’s do that. Andrew might have to go home in a day or so, but I’m going to stay.’

With her eyes on a photograph of excavations to unearth the tomb of Ramses II, Ruby said, ‘We’ll be fine on our own here.’

For its steady inclusiveness it seemed to Lesley that this was one of the most musical sentences she had ever heard Ruby speak, at least since she had been old enough to give voice to the opposite kind.

She smiled at her. ‘Are you coming to the hospital with me in the morning?’

‘Yeah, ‘course I am.’

Lesley kissed her and Ruby didn’t duck or wince. ‘Good night, then. Sleep well.’

In their bedroom she eased herself into bed without turning on the light, careful not to disturb Andrew. She lay on her back, looking up at the domed ceiling.

I am recovering. The figures coming and going at the edges of my awareness gain definition as the pain recedes. I recognise the nurses, who do what they must with reasonable efficiency, and the doctor, who when he leans over me smells of coffee and tobacco overlaid with cologne. And I have four visitors. Nicolas is the easiest. He sits in the chair beside my bed and reads to me, paragraphs from the
Egyptian Gazette
or one of the Cairo newspapers, or sometimes a short story by Somerset Maugham, a writer we both admire. Nicolas always kisses my cheek before he leaves, and tells me that I am doing well and will soon be home again. When Mamdooh comes he brings a small covered basket of food, cooked by Auntie, which I cannot eat. He sits for a few minutes, uncomfortable, too large for the spindly chair, and anxiety radiates out of him.

And then, my daughter and her daughter.

Earlier, because they have the same eyes and their mouths move in the same way, their faces slipped together and I had trouble distinguishing them. But now they are distinct. Lesley’s skin falls into vertical creases to her jawline and her expression is hesitant and at the same time expectant. Ruby looks as if there is a light behind her eyes. The future offers her everything, by right. She has only to reach out and take whatever she wants.

I am too tired to say more than the occasional word, but I like it when they are here, separately or together.

Now they have put more pillows behind my back and
slipped their arms round me for further support. Ruby is holding a cup and Lesley dips a spoon into it and pushes the tip against my lips. I open my mouth and taste, like an infant feeding, and then I swallow. It is warm, sweetened porridge. The first solid food I have eaten in – how long? I have lost track.

I am in the house that Gordon and I bought, in haste, before Lesley was born. There is a ceanothus bush in the garden and a high-sided pram placed in the shade of it, with netting stretched from the hood to the handle to keep off the cats. I unhook the net and peel back the white coverlet, but what I find beneath is not a baby but a fat tabby cat.

I force my eyes open. My tongue is parched and swollen, my lips gummed at the corners. Someone holds a cup to my mouth and I gratefully swallow. I see that it is Lesley, with her expectant look.

‘How long have I been in this place?’ I demand. ‘A week.’

I am assimilating this information when she says, ‘Mummy, it’s me. It’s Lesley.’

‘I know who you are.’

‘You do? Well … good. That’s very good.’

‘I want to go home, Lesley. I want to be in my own home,’ I say. At home I will be able to concentrate on what I have to do.

‘Do you like them?’

Ruby and Lesley were at the museum. They had queued to enter the Mummy Room, where Lesley recoiled slightly from the shrivelled faces with leathery dark skin drawn back from the bleached bone in what looked like a snarl. Ruby wandered between the cases, pausing beside each king and
queen with what seemed to Lesley to be close to tenderness.

They had stood in front of the mask of Tutankhamun, and as with the
Mona Lisa
and
The Birth of Venus
Lesley experienced the same small shock at the familiarity of the real thing, the parallel absence of astonishment. You expected more from it, but all the images and reproductions that you had pre-absorbed meant that there was no more; how could there be?

She remembered that as a teenager her father had taken her to the British Museum when the boy king was on temporary display there, but the queue for admission had stretched a long way beyond the gates and they had both decided that however magnificent it turned out to be, the exhibit would hardly repay such a wait. They went to the pictures in Tottenham Court Road instead, the faintly illicit afternoon fug of the cinema acquiring an extra charm following their mutual rejection of planned culture. In their enclosed, affectionate relationship Lesley and Gordon often did things like that together.

Now Ruby led her down the stairs again and they passed between the dingy glass cases that cluttered the ground floor. There were incoherent heaps of antiquity everywhere, looking like nothing more than bric-a-brac, crying out to be labelled and separated and properly lit, yet Ruby was obviously entranced by it all. They came into another tall room and Ruby took her arm in front of a series of statues with enigmatic sloping faces and massive bellies and thighs.

‘Do you like them?’ she repeated. ‘They’re my favourites.’

‘They are certainly impressive. Who are they?’

‘Pharaoh Akhenaten. About 1300
BC
. And look, here’s his wife, Nefertiti.’

‘Really? That’s Nefertiti? You are very knowledgeable, I must say.’

‘I am interested,’ Ruby said, faintly reproving.

She pointed out a carved panel, calling it a stele, that showed the pharaoh cradling a child and his wife nursing two smaller infants. The domestic intimacy of the scene was in sharp contrast with all the funerary pomp and symbolism elsewhere, and Lesley lingered in front of it. Even these ancient stone-carved kings and queens had babies, and held them in their arms. She wondered if any of these children had grown and died, and then been interred in their pyramids, only to be dug up again centuries later and laid out under the lights upstairs for inspection by daily parades of German tourists. It was a harsh fate, she thought. Death ought to be a private matter, whoever you were.

She became aware that Ruby was shifting at her side, preparing to say something.

‘I’d like to stay here, you know.’

‘To do what, darling?’

‘Look, Mum. You’ve got to go back home soon, haven’t you? Ed needs you, and so does Andrew.’

Andrew had returned to England four days earlier. Ed had insisted that he was fine, he came home from school and made himself some cereal and did his homework, and then Andrew came in and they had supper together. Takeaway, sometimes, he had added with satisfaction.

But she would have to go back soon, whatever Ed might say. Christmas was coming. She had a lot to do.

Ruby continued in a voice of calm reason, ‘On the other hand we can’t leave Iris here on her own. She’ll be out of hospital in a day or so, and I can’t really see her packing up and coming back to Kent with us. Can you?’

‘No,’ Lesley conceded, although that was more or less what she had been anticipating.

‘So I thought, like, the best thing would be for me to stay on. Seeing as it’s what I want to do anyway. I could maybe study Egyptology? Or something like that,’ she added.

Carefully, Lesley said, ‘You want to stay here, look after Iris, and be a student?’

Ruby met her eye. ‘Yeah. That’s it, pretty well.’

‘I know you want to be with Iris. That’s good. But she could live for a long time yet, you know.’