The Visitors (11 page)
Defeated, I tried out the term on Miss Mack, who had never heard of such a hoard; she then asked Herbert Winlock if
he
had heard of it. She did so that night, across the dinner table at Shepheard’s. Several archaeologists from the Met were present that evening, including Albert Lythgoe, the conservationist Arthur Mace, and the photographer Harry Burton; they were deep in some abstruse argument. Miss Mack’s question instantly silenced them.
‘Three princesses? No, that’s not ringing any bells,’ Winlock replied, after a considering pause and in an easy tone. ‘But there are rumours of treasure hoards being discovered every other month, you know, Myrtle. These stories float around Cairo and Luxor, and very occasionally they’re true. But most of the time it’s the dealers who’ve invented them – it’s just their way of driving up prices. You’ll confirm that, won’t you, Lythgoe?’
Albert Lythgoe nodded. He was somewhat prim, with faultless manners, though his gentleness concealed a steeliness of will, as I’d begun to notice. ‘I surely will,’ he said in his urbane way. ‘Egyptian antiquities dealers are the best storytellers in the world, bar none. Ripping yarns… no one can touch them for inventiveness, Miss Mackenzie – not even your hero, Rudyard Kipling.’
‘Exactly.’ Winlock smiled. ‘If half their tales were true, then the infamous tomb-robber families of Qurna would all be millionaires, Myrtle – and they were still living in mud huts the last time I passed that way.’
‘But the Treasure of the Three Princesses – a stolen
hoard
of treasure –– it does sound so very intriguing! It was Lucy who heard about it. You picked up on it at once, didn’t you, dear?’
‘Really?’ Winlock turned his lazy, amiable gaze towards my end of the table, and fixed me with his eyes. Frances, who was seated next to me, bent over her plate and began to crumble a bread roll with great concentration. ‘What very sharp ears you must have, Lucy,’ Winlock went on. ‘Now I’m intrigued. Who mentioned this fabled hoard to you?’
‘No one mentioned it to me, exactly,’ I replied. ‘I overheard someone talking about it in the Mousky bazaar the other day.’
‘Ah, of course. The bazaar. Well, that figures,’ he replied, in an imperturbable way, and changed the subject.
I judged him successfully deceived, but I was wrong. A short while later, when Winlock thought himself unobserved, I saw him catch his daughter’s eye. Frances, flushed, her manner repentant, met his questioning gaze. Her father frowned, tapped his finger against his lips in an admonitory way – and then winked at her.
Under the tablecloth, Frances’s hand reached for mine and clasped it. I knew what it meant, that clasp and the mischievous grateful glance that accompanied it: it meant I was thanked, that there were secrets here. I could accept that. I too had secrets – who doesn’t?
The next morning, with time running out and Madame’s test imminent, Frances redoubled her efforts to improve my ballet. First position, second, third, fourth, fifth: when I’d finally contrived to make one foot point east while the other pointed west, she seemed pleased.
Turning away, and frowning into the glass at our mirrored reflections, she said in a casual way: ‘By the way, did I ever tell you the story of the Treasure of the Three Princesses? It was the most fantastic
hoard
, Lucy. It was found during the war, in 1916, I think. There had been heavy rains, the sands shifted – and there it was. It was found by some men from Qurna, who did what they always do with finds like that: they fenced them – to a dealer in Luxor. His name is Mohammed Mohassib. When we go to Luxor, I’ll show you his shop. It’s – munificent.’
Examining her reflected feet, she began to perform the first five ballet positions. ‘Mohassib then did what
he
always does when a hoard like that comes his way. He parcelled it up into small lots, and put out feelers for buyers. He tried playing them off against one another, as the dealers always do. The jewels were fabulous, Lucy, and their price was sky high – and if someone hadn’t intervened the collection would have been broken up and scattered around the globe… Someone
did
intervene, though. Several people intervened, in fact: Lord Carnarvon, Mr Carter, Mr Lythgoe – and my father.’
She performed a pirouette. ‘They decided it was time Mr Mohassib was taught a lesson, so when he approached the Met, he was told it wasn’t interested… which rattled him badly. When other buyers heard the Met wasn’t buying, they lost interest too, so the price started to drop. And then, abracadabra! Mr Carter stepped in and bought them, on behalf of Lord Carnarvon… But Lordy was just a front for the Met, and – imagine this, Lucy! – he
sold them on to us at cost price: that was the secret deal all along! Mr Carter got a percentage, I think – and everyone gained. We got the collection intact for the Museum, and at a
very
good price. Lordy had the pleasure of outwitting one of the wiliest dealers in Egypt, and Mr Carter’s become financially secure for the first time in his life – at least that’s what Daddy’s saying… It’s taken all these years to acquire the jewels, and Mr Carter snaffled the very last batch of them the other week – isn’t that splendid? I expect he’ll pass on the good news to Lord Carnarvon when he arrives. Any day now, Lucy!
‘I hope I’ve got the details right,’ she continued, giving me a small reflected glance. ‘That’s the story I’ve
heard
. Some people were talking about it in the bazaar.’
‘Of course they were. And in Arabic too.’
‘My Arabic improves by the day. As yours does, Lucy.’ She laughed and pressed one finger against her lips. ‘Now, where were we? Ah yes, the first five positions.’
I performed them, and better than I’d ever done before. Frances clapped approvingly.
‘Well, well, well! Who’d have thought it?’ She planted a kiss on my cheek. ‘At last you’re learning, Lucy.’
The next day – it was the momentous day when I performed my test for Madame, and passed it – I was whisked down to a celebratory tea on Shepheard’s terrace with Frances and her mother. There we were joined by Evelyn, and – astonishingly – by her elusive friend, Mrs d’Erlanger. Some while after that, by a mysterious process, caught up in the currents of rush and confusion that seemed always to attend her, I was transported to the bedroom of Poppy d’Erlanger’s suite at Shepheard’s: I can still smell the lilies, the smoke of Turkish cigarettes, and the musky scent she was wearing.
‘Hellishness! Rose, Peter – please help me,’ Poppy was saying, on a note of nervy desperation. ‘Whatever shall I wear for dinner tonight? Look at these horrid things! What possessed me to buy them? Eve, Frances, Lulu – advise me. I simply must make the right choice.’
We’d been in the room less than ten minutes, and Mrs d’Erlanger was standing amidst an ocean of clothes. A spring tide of chiffons and silks was lapping around her; a torrent of lace, organdie, fur and tweeds was cascading from her wardrobe onto the floor, and this flood was now several dresses deep. A flotsam and jetsam of frothy underwear, scarves, hats, gloves and shoes had been cast up on every surface in sight. One exquisite green snakeskin shoe with a diamanté buckle had drifted towards my feet, and Frances, seated next to me on the carpet, was awash in the foam of a lace nightdress. Peter, half asleep on my lap, was stroking some polar silvery fur, while Rose – a practical girl, as I was discovering – was extracting a tangle of silk stockings from the debris.
Evelyn, who, like Rose, seemed used to this spectacle, was sitting on a chair near by, waiting for the weather to calm and the tide to ebb: her attitude was patient and resigned, as was that of Poppy’s maid, the statuesque Wheeler, who was standing to attention next to the wardrobe. This was a huge catafalque, very like the fearsome one in my own room; ten minutes before, the contents of that wardrobe, and of several chests of drawers, had been in impeccable order: now, chaos had come, but Wheeler’s broad features remained impassive; she surveyed the detritus lapping around her ankles with studied detachment.
Audience and advisors, our sacred mission to help Poppy decide what to wear at the dinner the newly arrived Lord Carnarvon was giving at Shepheard’s that night, we three girls were in a trance of dresses. I dearly wanted Poppy to choose a dress of black velvet; Rose preferred the emerald-green silk; and Frances favoured the slick of shocking pink satin that had been made for Poppy, I’d just learned, by an artist called Elsa Schiaparelli, a friend of hers in Paris.
How intoxicating that room smelled – never had I seen so many flowers in one space. Great bouquets of roses and deep-throated lilies and orchids spilled from vases on every available table. Poppy herself, as vivid as any of these flowers, stood in the sea of clothes, snatching up one dress, discarding it carelessly, then pouncing upon another with little cries. She had changed into a silk kimono embroidered with scarlet dragons, and tiny slippers with silver heels, decorated on their toes with thistledown pompoms. Her black shingled hair shone in the lamplight: falling forward in rippling waves across her face, yet cut as short as a man’s at the back, it was shockingly modern, exposing her white neck and giving her a misleading air of porcelain fragility. Her dark blue eyes, restless in their gaze, were tragic in their expression. She was tall and astonishingly thin, she was all angles and surprises: she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.
The beautiful one is come,
I thought. I wondered how I could have considered Eve’s looks remarkable: next to her friend, her quiet grace and prettiness were eclipsed; she was a crescent moon in comparison to Poppy’s meridian sun.
‘Oh, do get a move on, Poppy,’ Eve said now, in a good-humoured way, but stifling a yawn. ‘This is taking such an age, darling. You know you look divine in all of them. Just remember, Pups thinks you’re frightfully
fast
, which amuses him no end. So don’t disappoint him, and choose accordingly.’
This remark seemed to increase Poppy’s uncertainty; she moaned and began pouncing, pulling, tossing and ferreting around again. Frances and I exchanged a look: we had witnessed the arrival of Lord Carnarvon the previous day, so we could understand why Mrs d’Erlanger might consider him a stern judge of appearances.
We had stationed ourselves in the lobby of the Continental Hotel where, like Howard Carter and the Winlocks, the earl was staying; we took up our position early, determined to get a good view. Even by the standards of the Continental, which were as high as Shepheard’s in this respect, it had been a magnificent arrival. The manager and a line of under-managers
were there to greet him: Lord Carnarvon made his entrance wearing that wide-awake hat, as made famous in an earlier era by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Thin, elegant and superbly nonchalant, he wore a long dark woollen overcoat with a rich fur collar; he leaned on a cane with a handle carved from some improbable pink stone – made to his design by Cartier, we learned, when we quizzed Eve afterwards. True, he had a slight limp, but he moved at a rapid pace, taking immediate possession of the hotel as if it were his home and its staff his servants; in his train came his valet and his doctor – he usually travelled with his own physician. Four lordly trunks and thirty-seven pieces of leather luggage, each stamped with his coronet and monogram, brought up their wake: we counted.
‘Fast,
fast… ’
Poppy d’Erlanger sighed. ‘I wish you hadn’t said that, Eve – you’ve just made it worse
.
Wheeler, which of these dresses would you say was the
fastest
?’
‘I really could not venture an opinion on that, madam,’ replied the impassive Wheeler, speaking for the first time since this onslaught began. ‘But I’d say they were all fairly speedy.’
‘The blue? The imperial yellow? I adore that. Have I worn that yet, Wheeler?’
‘Not in Cairo, madam. You thought of wearing it to the Residency, but settled on the blue chiffon with the sapphires. The last occasion on which you wore the yellow, the
only
occasion, was at Lord Carnarvon’s birthday dinner at Highclere Castle.’
‘Oh, well, that’s no good then. Your father will have seen it, Eve. So that’s out,
and
the blue… ’
Poppy turned her tragic eyes to the dresses again – and I saw that the need for a decision really did pain her: this was no affectation, but an anxiety close to fear. She knew that she was judged by her looks. Had it never occurred to her, I wondered, exquisite as she was, that she might be judged on any other score, her sweetness of temper, for example, or her innate kindness and generosity? Presumably not – yet these qualities of hers were very evident. They became obvious after ten minutes in her company.
‘Oh, please wear the emerald green, Mamma,’ Rose said. ‘You look so splendid in that. It’s my favourite – and Petey loves it too.’
Peter woke up briefly, said, ‘Geen, please, Mamma,’ and went to sleep again.
‘No,’ said Frances, standing up, and fishing from the rainbow pile that slick of architectural pink satin. ‘You should wear this. It’s the fastest thing I ever saw in my life. And you must wear lipstick.’ She looked covetously at the line of lipsticks drawn up for battle on Poppy’s dressing table. ‘A scarlet one, I think – one that
clashes.
’
‘Heavens!’ Poppy cried, snatching at the dress. ‘Are you
sure
? What a little genius you are, Frances. Yes, yes, I see it now. Wheeler – be an angel and get it ironed, will you? It seems to have got crumpled somehow. Oh, and my bath needs to be drawn and I shall need my fur – no, not that one, the
dark
one… ’
‘Poppy, are you mad?’ Eve stood up and stretched. ‘Fur? It’s insufferably hot – and it will be worse in the dining room.’
‘I know, I know, but I might need it
later
. I might be trotting on somewhere.’
‘Oh, Poppy – what are you up to? Trot on
where
? I do wish you wouldn’t.’
‘So do I. But even so, I
might
. Of course, I’m resolved
not
to, but I’m so bad when it comes to temptation. I solemnly intend to resist to the last – and then I just sort of cave in. Why does that happen? It’s a complete mystery.’