Shadows on the Nile (22 page)

It was all a world away from Chamford Court.

Monty stood on the platform with Jessie, waiting while fellow passengers clambered up the steep steps onto the train. Coats damp, faces eager. A thousand miles lay ahead of them: by rail to Brindisi in Italy, where they would transfer to the aeroplane that would carry them to Athens, and then across the Mediterranean to the port of Alexandria in Egypt. A thousand miles.
That’s a lot of miles
. A lot of time. He imagined the minutes ticking away. Imagined sitting next to her. Today was Wednesday evening and they wouldn’t arrive in Brindisi until Friday morning. Thirty-six hours.

As he handed Jessie up the steps into the train carriage, her gloved fingers curled around his for a brief moment and he caught the sweet smell of rain in her hair. Her face was tense now, quite unlike in the plane. On the ground it was as though she knew she was vulnerable. No wings to fly away. And she was right. Like the shimmering pheasants on his estate, the ones he regularly blasted out of the air as they struggled to escape, she didn’t know what was coming. Any more that he did. The thought made him tighten his grip on her fingers, and her eyes flicked to his face with unspoken questions.

‘Chocks away,’ he said and she smiled at him.

He accompanied her straight to her sleeping compartment in the wagon-lits. The corridor lamps were muted, creating
a soft somnolent world. In the doorway she turned to him, preventing him from crossing the threshold. He placed her case at her feet.

‘I think I’ll rest,’ she said. ‘But thank you for today.’

‘You won’t join me for a nightcap?’

She shook her head. ‘You go off and shine your armour.’ Her hand landed lightly on the exact centre of his chest and lay there. ‘You might need it tomorrow. Goodnight.’

And then the door was shut and he was staring at its fine-grained wood. Slowly he rubbed a hand back and forth over the front of his waistcoat, buffing it to a shine fit for a white knight, even for one riding only an iron horse. He touched the spot where her fingers had lain.

It burned as though he’d been branded.

He could stand guard outside her door all night. Arms folded, repelling all boarders. But damn it, she would bite his ear off. The reason he had suggested that they travel first class was not just for added comfort on the rough European trains, as he had told her. It was really to keep her safe. There were fewer passengers milling around the first-class coaches, nowhere near as many strangers strolling up the aisles who might have other things on their minds than a trip to the Parthenon or the pyramids.

He stood there outside her door for half an hour according to his pocket watch, until everyone had settled down in their couchettes or in their seats and the corridor was empty except for the lingering smell of Gauloises. He’d heard no sound from behind her door. He imagined her stretched out on the brocade cover of the bunk, shoes kicked off, reading a book, probably another of her piffling Conan Doyle tales that she set such store by. Keeping her mind from escaping down dark alleys. He didn’t like to think of her stumbling around in those alleys, real or imagined.

At the end of half an hour he moved silently along the corridor, threw his own case into his sleeping compartment and headed for the dining car. Under him the great wheels kept turning, sending him swaying from side to side as the flat landscape
of northern France rippled past, wreathed in the sleep of an autumn night. An occasional cluster of lights blinked at him out of the darkness and the thought of Jessie Kenton’s hand on his chest hung around in his head.

Monty was well down his second scotch and soda, fending off scenarios as to the whereabouts of Timothy Kenton. Jessie had shown him a photograph before they boarded the plane at Croydon and it had skewered him right through his throat, so that for a moment he couldn’t speak. The photograph was curled at the edges and warm from her pocket. It showed the two of them, Timothy and Jessie, brother and sister. They were sitting on the floor in her flat, playing a game of bagatelle, and they were both laughing. Looking at each other and laughing. Not like most people do when amused which is with an easy release of delight. This was different. They were looking at each other with such joy, such love, such intensity, his hand on her shoulder, her fingers buried in the Father Christmas beard he was wearing. As if they couldn’t bear to let go in case …

In case … what?

One vanished? Like now. Confronted by her worst nightmare.

He would like to know who took the picture. Tabitha, her flatmate, presumably. He wondered if she reacted as he did, with an envy that tasted vile in the mouth. To be loved like that. To love like that. It took something – and someone – special.

He had studied the image of Timothy carefully, but without comment. A mass of blond curls, an interesting face because it was so well-shaped and perfectly proportioned. Straight nose and good chin. It might have been bland, if it weren’t for the eyes. They were bursting with laughter and loaded with energy. This was a person it would be easy to love – except for the mouth. It was full and generous, like his sister’s but around the edges there lay a weakness, a kind of neediness that leaked from the wide smile like whisky from a cracked glass. As though he were living a life
that wasn’t quite his. No wonder he was holding onto Jessie for dear life.

‘May we sit here, young man? Do you mind?’

Monty dragged himself out of his scotch and soda. He glanced up at the couple hovering at the side of his table in the dining car, and registered a retired military type with an ebullient moustache and a wife who looked as if she were chiselled out of chalk, so white were her hair and skin.

‘Do you mind?’ she echoed. ‘Everywhere else is taken.’

She was right. Each table was occupied. Late night brandies and coffee for the passengers. He rose courteously to his feet and waved a hand at the two vacant seats opposite him across the pristine expanse of white napery.

‘Please do, delighted to oblige.’

It wasn’t true. He wanted to be alone. But neither was it true when he greeted someone with ‘Good morning’ when it was pouring with rain and the stock market had plunged. They were just words. The sticking plaster of society.

The couple eased into the chairs and beamed at him. ‘The name’s Lieutenant-Colonel Forester. My wife, Mrs Forester.’

Monty shook hands across the table. ‘Montague Chamford.’

They ordered two vodka martinis, and Monty summoned another scotch for himself as they proceeded to inform him that they were travelling to Alexandria – their daughter had married a diplomat out there – and to criticize the Egyptian nation for demanding a degree of autonomy from the guiding hand of His Majesty’s government, their British overlords.

‘We granted the Egyptians the right to have their own parliament last year,’ the chalky woman declared, ‘and you’d think that was enough, but no, they always want more, always more. After all we’ve done for the Egyptian people – look at the Suez Canal, at the cotton trade we’ve developed for them throughout our Empire – you’d think they’d be grateful to the British. But no.’

‘Really?’ The single word from Monty was curt. ‘You surprise me.’

She pinned him with a steely gaze. ‘Mr Chamford, we were stationed for many years in India and it was exactly
the same out there, I assure you. No gratitude whatever.’

‘Is that so?’

It was the woman’s husband who was more alert to the edge in Monty’s voice.

‘We don’t want to tar them all with the same brush, my dear,’ he urged his wife. ‘Remember old Rajat Singh. He was a real card and loved the British.’ He ruffled his moustache in an attempt to lighten the mood and chuckled.

The woman picked up her martini the moment it arrived and flared her nostrils over it. ‘Not capable of ruling themselves,’ she insisted. ‘You have to treat them like children, you know.’

‘Mrs Forester,’ Monty leaned forward across the table, closer to the layers of white face powder that sought to eradicate decades of sun-ravage in the sub-tropics. ‘If I came into your home and told you how to run your household, would you like it? Would you be grateful? Would you thank me for making your life miserable?’

For a full ten seconds no one spoke. On the woman’s cheeks a flush of colour bled into the white powder. Monty remained leaning forward, waiting for an answer.

‘Sir!’ It was the Lieutenant-Colonel who found his tongue first. ‘I expected better of you! A man of your breeding should know more about the world and – more to the point, young man – should know how to treat a lady.’ The veins on each side of his nose pulsated with fresh blood.

Monty wanted to hit it. To make this woman see what it felt like when someone assumed they had a right to physical violence to make their point.

‘Apologise!’ Forster barked.

‘For what?’

‘For your rudeness to my wife.’

‘No, sir. I will not.’

‘I insist.’

His voice was rising. Heads turned. Monty knocked back his scotch, and somewhere dimly in the soft ticking of his mind he knew that this was about Jessie, not about Egypt or India
or about the baloney spouted by these two arrogant colonials. This was about punishing himself. He switched his gaze back to Mrs Forester’s not-so-white face. If he scraped off the powder with a trowel, what kind of human being would he find underneath?

‘Madam,’ he said in a tone cold enough to freeze her bloody martini, ‘if I were a native working for you and you treated me like a child, I would—’

‘Well, well, boys and girls, what’s the point of fisticuffs over a few native jigaboos who don’t give a tinker’s cuss about you?’

All three looked round, startled. The voice possessed an East London accent you could hack with a knife and belonged to a middle-aged woman who had risen from her seat across the aisle. She smacked a hand down on their table so hard that the glasses hiccupped. Monty had noticed her earlier on the platform. She wasn’t the kind of woman you could miss in a crowd because she was easily as tall as he was, sticking up like a flagpole. Her spectacles hung on a bright blue cord around her neck, resting on her sparse bosom like a spare pair of eyes.

‘Madam,’ Lieutenant-Colonel Forester snapped back, ‘this is a private conversation.’

‘Private, my arse! If you want private, don’t yell so much.’

‘Kindly leave us alone, madam.’ Forester swung round to Monty, seeking support for his umbrage.

But Monty did not oblige. Instead he tipped his head with deference to the woman and indicated the vacant seat beside him. ‘I’m sorry we disturbed you. Won’t you join us? You can be umpire.’

Without hesitation the tall figure slid into the seat and beamed at Forester opposite. ‘Now this is right cosy, isn’t it, duckie?’

‘It certainly is,’ Monty said warmly, to goad the Lieutenant-Colonel further. ‘We must have some champagne to celebrate the start of our journey. Mrs Forester, can I tempt you?’

The newcomer’s laugh swooped through the carriage but Forester rose speedily to his feet and addressed his
wife. ‘Come, Amelia, let us retire for the night.’ He directed a scowl at Monty. ‘You, sir, are no gentleman.’

‘And you, sir, are a bigot.’

His wife finished off her martini with a well-practised hand and joined her husband in the aisle. After much adjusting of garments and twitching of gloves, she gave Monty a cold stare.

‘My husband fought for his country and watched his friends die for their country. What did you ever do?’

‘Ah, there you have me, madam.’ Monty spread his hands in surrender.

Satisfied, the Foresters marched off to their sleeping quarters and the newcomer nipped around to their side of the table, so that she was now facing Monty. He could study her more thoroughly. At least fifty, judging by her eyes, but no more than forty, judging by her good skin, so probably somewhere in between. Not wearing a hat or headscarf of any sort, as most of the ladies did, but her mousey-blonde hair was pulled back in a bun so tight that it lifted her eyebrows. Her face was narrow with a pointed chin and of all things she put Monty in mind of a heron. Especially with her habit of shrugging her bony shoulders within the folds of her long grey coat, the way a heron ruffles its feathers before diving into the water once more.

‘Thank you,’ he said with a smile.

‘What for?’

‘For removing unwanted guests.’

‘Any time, young man.’

‘Champagne?’

‘If you’re paying.’ She rested her elbows on the table. ‘She got to you, didn’t she, that snooty mare? With her parting shot.’

‘Right through the heart,’ he said lightly and raised his glass to her.

‘I dare say you deserve it. You toffs don’t actually do much, do you?’

‘I polish my monocle now and again. My butler will vouch for that.’

She laughed
good-naturedly, jiggling her shoulders with amusement. ‘My name’s Maisie Randall. I’m from London. Headed for Egypt. What about you?’

‘I’m Montague Chamford. From Chamford Court. Headed for hell, I suspect.’

‘Not a Lord Someone-or-other? You look like you’d wear one of them top hats in bed.’ She chuckled at the idea.

‘How did you guess?’

‘You talk like you got mothballs in your mouth, that’s why. No offence or nothin’.’

‘None taken, dear lady.’ He spoke quietly in a conspiratorial manner that drew her towards him. There was a shrewd alertness underlying the laughter in her pale moth-grey eyes. He’d seen the same look on a fox on his front lawn, the look of a creature who knows how to survive when times are harsh. In a low voice he admitted, ‘To be honest, it’s
Sir
Montague. But I keep it quiet because …’

Too late.

‘
Sir
Montague,’ she crowed. ‘
Sir
Montague!’

Heads swivelled in the carriage, curious glances skipping in their direction.

‘I knew it!’ She stuck out a hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,
Sir
Montague. It’s
such
an honour.’

Monty sighed. ‘Enough,’ he murmured as he gave her hand a no-nonsense shake. ‘You’ve had your fun. Or I shall start talking cockney to you – with comments on your
barnet
and asking where your
titfa
is, as well as demanding to eat jellied eels.’