The Twelve Rooms of the Nile (4 page)

“Trout?” Florence exclaimed uncertainly. It felt odd to be addressing the bottom half of a person.

“Yes, mum?” Trout’s voice seemed to emanate from the floorboards. “Something I can do for you?”

“Whatever are you doing?”

At this, the figure in front of Florence straightened and pivoted toward her, the upper portion taking its rightful place. “Something dropped off my chatelaine.” She reached forward to show Florence the vacant dangling chain. “It must have rolled away.”

“Oh, then let me help you find it.” Florence set her desk aside and stood. But the passageway was too narrow for both of them, even if one happened to be a willow withe. Florence waited for the larger woman to move aside.

Trout stepped back and lowered herself wearily onto the portside divan. “Maybe my eyes are going bad.” She sighed. “My dad had poor sight by my age.”

“What exactly did you lose?”

“A key, mum. Black key.”

Florence knelt in the passageway. Trout was never without her chatelaine, which, with its many implements, comprised a small hand manufactory. Florence knew well what hung from each chain: scissors, a needle case, a bodkin, a brass-capped emery in the shape of a strawberry, a crochet hook, pin safe, thimble, buttonhook, another strawberry made of beeswax, and spools of black and white thread.
Trout wore the chatelaine pinned at her waist, its parts dangling down, or else pocketed in her apron, like a watch. Florence had never noticed a key.

Her own fancier, gold version lay in a drawer at home, a gift from her mother, Fanny, with items befitting a country lady: a dog whistle embossed with spaniels, a diminutive magnifying glass, a telescoping pencil, and a vinaigrette stuffed with cotton wool soaked in French perfume. With her chatelaine, Florence could make or repair nothing, as was proper for a fashionably helpless young woman who moved in society, while Trout’s was a portable wonder.

The wooden floor of the dahabiyah was smooth, Florence noted, as she ran her fingers over its grooves, worn from the tread of so many feet, she imagined. She pictured its owner, a prosperous Ottoman functionary named Hasan Bey, standing barefoot on the very spot where she knelt. He used this boat, she knew, to ferry the veiled, bejeweled wives of his hareem and their children on pleasure cruises up the Nile.

Florence felt the key with her fingers before she saw it. Lodged behind a wooden post, it was heavy, made of iron, and vaguely industrial. She was certain she’d never seen it among the shiny brass dangles on her maid’s chatelaine. Why had Trout never worn it before, and what did it unlock? It was too big for a diary, certainly. A desk drawer? But Trout didn’t have a desk. A lockbox?

After teasing it from its hiding place, she stood up and offered it to Trout on the palm of her hand.

“Thank you, mum. You can be grateful for your good eyes, Miss Florence.”

“Perhaps I should take on the mending.”

“Well, that wouldn’t do, would it?” Trout reattached the key and dropped it in her pocket. “No, I can manage the buttons and seams, though a body hardly wants to wear clothes in this heat. Oh, what a climate.”

“Indeed. But it will be nightfall soon, and the heat will subside, as it has every evening.”

“Not
every
night, no—that first evening in Alexandria I liked to go blind from the sweat pouring into my eyes.”

“Well, then,” Florence said, patting the sides of her legs briskly, “I’ve letters to finish. Have you done with your nap?”

“Not yet, mum, my mind keeps going round and round like them waterwheels on the riverbanks. I’m not used to so little work. Don’t know what to do with myself, seems.”

“Oh. Then perhaps you can have a lie-down now . . . or read.”
Just do be quiet,
Florence thought in some desperation.

“Yes, mum.” Trout stretched out on her divan and turned toward the wall, her back to her mistress. Sitting on her divan, Florence placed her desk on her knees but did not yet take up her pen.

Trout had been miserable since they arrived in Egypt. She complained constantly of the heat, though this was the cool, dry season. She griped about insect bites, too, as well as stomachaches, headaches, and her deteriorating eyesight.

Trout would never have spoken so freely in England. And sympathetic as Florence was to suffering, she couldn’t help wondering how a strongly built woman of forty-three years and Teutonic ancestry could suddenly turn so frail. Or how it was that the ailment jumped around so variously. For no sooner had a headache subsided than a muscle cramp or skin rash would crop up in its place. It was as if an ill wind had been trapped in Trout’s body, battering part after part in its attempts at escape. Florence suspected hypochondriasis, which she had read about in her medical books, an illness that the Greeks believed began in the hypochondrium, the soft area below the ribs, but that modern medicine understood as a case of overactive nerves. Whatever the cause, Trout was clearly a valetudinarian, creating ailments from thin air through the weakness—or was it the power?—of her mind. The continual whining was driving Florence mad. Since Trout was not only her maid and chaperone but also her roommate, she never had a moment alone. Even as she turned back to her writing, Trout began to snore, a rattling intake and exhalation that filled the room like the fluttering of a panicked hen.

If only Mariette could have accompanied her to Egypt. She could speak French with Mariette, for one thing. And no one did her hair as well, or made her look more glamorous and à la mode. But Mariette had gotten pregnant, and since the trip would last nearly a year, had to stay home. Might she not have done this on purpose? Flo suspected that Mariette had not wished to travel in a land that her countrymen had lost so ignominiously to the English and that was hardly likely to meet her standards of good taste. Only the year before, in Italy, Mariette had found fault with some of the hotel food and furnishings. She would have hated the backwardness of Egypt.

Trout, alas, had little experience as a lady’s maid. But her references painted her as steady, honest, and hardworking. Certainly there had been no mention of time spent in bed in a state of “green as the trees” nausea, or foot pains which, she claimed, made her life “a walking crucifixion.” Well, nothing to be done now except bear it. A hand mirror borrowed from Charles’s naturalist’s kit had improved Flo’s hairdressing. By holding a mirror in front while Trout held another in back, she could avoid a coiffure that flapped like turkey wattles.

Flo watched the Nile through the window. She thought of the river as a male presence, a creature of long, sinuous muscles strong enough to lift and rearrange the littoral each July when it flooded. Her Nile shone in the sunlight like a bronze shield. At night, with the dahabiyahs and feluccas moored along its shores illuminated by oil lanterns and the occasional candle, her Nile was a London street fair, its goods lit up by paraffin flares. The river had not only currents and tides but also mysterious eddies that whirled at the surface as if Poseidon himself were stirring it from below with his trident. Now, though, it was calm, steadily and smoothly rocking the dahabiyah.

Trout continued to snore in a sleep so heavy she lay unmoving as a clod of earth, while Florence finished her letter. Some time later, the door creaked open and Selina Bracebridge leaned her head into the cabin. “Flo?”

“I’m awake.”

“Come up to the foredeck, dear.” The door clicked shut again.

Florence gathered herself together, stepped out of the room, and mounted the narrow stairs, emerging onto the deck to see a band of orange and navy at the horizon, and above it a single star. Venus. It was childish, but she always made the same wish on the first star.
Please, God, tell me what to do.

Selina sat in a chair made of plaited palm leaves. She was fanning herself languidly, as if from habit rather than intention. Two letters lay on the table beside her. Charles had just returned with candles, Selina said, and was belowdecks, resting. “The consul’s runner delivered the post to Charles in the village. Isn’t that something?”

“Perhaps he was the only European.”

“Yes. Anyway, you have a letter from home.” She handed an envelope to Florence.

Whatever hostilities had been brewing among Fanny, Flo, and her sister, Parthe, all was forgiven when it came to letter writing, everyone in the family being reliably voluble. Since her trip to Italy the year before, Florence had become a celebrated correspondent. The whole family cherished her letters. Parthe had taken to making copies to send on to the grandmothers, aunts, and cousins.

“I’ve had a note from Fanny myself,” Selina said, tapping an open envelope on the table. “Your father’s eyes are still bothering him. They are considering consulting a specialist in Germany, at Carlsbad.”

Flo reflected that Fanny never omitted troublesome developments, feeling no particular need to spare Florence or Selina worry.

“Any outgoing letters?” Selina glanced at a basket on the foredeck, the captain’s makeshift depository. It was empty.

“Nothing just yet.” It took Flo days to compose a proper letter. She kept a diary of quick notes but liked to ruminate on events and ideas, especially anything to do with Egyptian religion, which intrigued her.

Florence opened the butter-colored envelope. The handwriting was Parthe’s—careful, well-formed letters that never varied in size or shape, nor rode up and down the page. First: expressions of affection. They missed her. Oh, they always missed her. They missed her if she
was gone for an hour, especially an unaccounted-for hour spent in what Fanny regarded as “improper” visiting, such as comforting an ailing villager near Lea Hurst, the Nightingales’ summer home, or teaching the poor boys at the Ragged School in Wellow.

Parthe reported on the weather at Embley, and then on the park. The rhododendrons and azaleas were in bloom, the hillsides around the house a feast of pink, white, fuchsia, and rose, more flowers than usual, perhaps because of the heavy rains the previous autumn. Parthe was learning a new Beethoven sonata on the pianoforte, while her worsted work was progressing slowly, in shades of green that were easy on the eyes.

The mere phrase “worsted work” inflamed Florence, automatically registering in her mind as “worst work,” a pun that always fell flat on the ears of a disapproving Fanny. How Flo deplored that fashionable waste of time! Was there anything more pointless than the relentless embroidery of articles that needed no further decoration? It was Fanny’s way of keeping Flo’s hands in a state of busy idleness and away from worthier pursuits. Surely, Parthe had included the reference to goad her.

Flo looked up for a moment. The dome of the sky had darkened; the lavender trails through it had faded to a dusty pink. More news: Fanny had recovered from her ague and was feeling fit. Father had joined a new society considering revisions to the Poor Laws. Flo set the paper down wistfully. She loved her father, a tall, gangly man with an air of innocence, despite his age. Such an idealist; such an independent thinker. How many fathers, after all, took pains to teach their daughters Greek and Latin? But his marvelous intelligence was too scattered to be of real use. How she wished he could have found a focus for his genius. Fanny said his defeat in 1834 for a seat from Derbyshire had deeply wounded his ambition.

Oh, and there was something else, Parthe announced, something “ENORMOUS.” Gossip, actually, since Fanny had heard it secondhand, but still, news that would greatly interest Flo: Richard Monckton Milnes (whom they both called the “Poetic Parcel” behind his
back) had announced his engagement to the Honorable Annabelle Crewe!

Oh God
. She felt her lungs deflate and then fill up again. In and out, her breath, her life, a meaningless exchange of air. It surprised her that the pain was so sharp and immediate. This must be what Richard had felt on that afternoon last October when she refused his proposal.

Was Selina still talking? Florence had been nodding and offering monosyllabic assent as she skimmed the letter and Selina spoke of home, but now a heavy silence fell upon the two women. “I’m sorry—what was that you said?” Flo asked. “Was there a question?”

“I haven’t said anything, dear. Are you all right? Your face has gone quite white.”

“News from home.”

“Nothing troubling, I hope?”

Selina Bracebridge had one of the sweetest faces in the world, Flo thought, and now she turned it toward her, the eyes softened by concern. More than once Selina had rescued her from Fanny’s smothering. Selina was unselfish and devoted to anyone sheltered under her wing, but kindest of all to Flo, whose anguish she seemed innately to grasp. Being barren, Selina had had to endure the pity of relatives and strangers for decades. Flo thought this might be what had made her so compassionate.

“No, no . . .
good
news, I suppose.” Flo felt like crying—blubbering like a child—but the last thing she wanted Selina to think was that she had a broken heart. She stanched the tears, swallowed them back, throat burning. “Perhaps troubling only to me.” She would cry later, but where? Sharing the cabin with Trout, she never had any privacy. In fact, her whole life seemed but a miserable catalog of togetherness designed to deprive her of solitude. To be alone, Fanny believed, was the worst of social blunders, an offense to civilized society, of which one must always partake, no matter how infantile and boring the talk, how insipid and without merit the activity of that darling blood mob known as one’s
family.

“Oh, my dear.” Selina reached over and stroked Florence’s hand. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Perhaps in a bit. . . . My apologies—I don’t mean to be rude or mysterious.”

“Well then, may I ask what this news is?”

Of course she would have to say the words. She straightened up, her neck lengthening with determination. “Richard Milnes has announced his engagement to Miss Crewe.”

“Oh.” Selina looked worried. “I shall have to tell Charles.”

“Of course. It’s no secret.”

“I just meant he may mention it to you, too. Will it bother you to talk about it?”