The Visitors (2 page)
5 a.m.: The Pyramids at Giza. Departure prompt.
Noon: Picnic luncheon at the Sphinx, in the shade of her paw.
2.30 p.m.: Return Shepheard’s Hotel. Obligatory REST period.
4 p.m.: Tea on the celebrated hotel terrace. An opportunity for
conversazione.
5 p.m.: Attendance, by invitation from the great lady herself, at
Madame Masha’s legendary dancing class. Duration, one hour. Benefits, inestimable.
‘You see, Lucy,’ Miss Mack said, ‘if truth be told, and although I am an old Egypt hand, my contacts in Cairo are just a little bit rusty. What we need is an
entrée
. Friends, dear.’ She regarded the list sadly. ‘Fun.’
I had forgotten what ‘fun’ was. It had disappeared into the fume and smoke that afflicted my mind then. But I was an obedient child, grateful to Miss Mack for her vigour – her ‘pep’, as she called it. I knew that my listlessness alarmed her; I knew that behind all her exhaustive planning lay anxiety, even fear. So I tried to reassure her: I rose early, in the Cairo dark. I endured the dousing with eau de cologne that kept flies at bay, and the sand shoes and the long socks; I accepted the cotton gloves: ‘Never insert your fingers into crevices, Lucy. The pyramid stones are notorious – beware of scorpions
at all times
.’ I submitted to the panama hat: that was to protect me from the fierce Egyptian sun – at least, that was the ostensible reason, the one Miss Mack always gave. Costuming complete, she turned me to the cheval glass, and we both inspected me. Should I snatch the hat off, expose the tragic state of my hair? The small girl in the glass met my gaze. Eleven years old, and she looked seven: thin as a reed, pinched around the nostrils, wary about the eyes.
What a little nothingness
: she was no one I recognised.
I turned my back on the girl and followed Miss Mack downstairs to the palace of hubbub that was the lobby of Shepheard’s Hotel. Escorted by a flurry of flunkies in ballooning white trousers and red boleros, I crept out in her wake to the flaring torches, the hotel steps and the eddying darkness beyond. A fracas ensued. Miss Mack, American, fiercely republican and principled, believed in frugality but was a woman of generosity. She scattered
baksheesh
like manna from the heavens: she bestowed her bounty on everyone, the beggars who swarmed throughout Cairo, the fake and the genuinely afflicted alike, the ragged half-starved children, the street vendors, jasmine-sellers and snake-charmers, the touts who, crying, ‘
Antika, sweet lady, first class, very ancient
,’
produced from their sleeves scarabs manufactured the previous day. Her soft heart had been spotted within days of our arrival, and the instant she appeared on the hotel step she was surrounded by an importunate horde.
I waited in the entrance as the inevitable turmoil commenced, then, feeling the familiar faintness, sank down on the stone steps between the sphinxes either side. Below me, the hotel’s
safragis
were reminding Miss Mack that there was unrest in Cairo, that she must not contemplate setting off without a dragoman. When this appeal failed – as an old Egypt hand Miss Mack scorned guides – the hotel servants, clustering around her and shouldering the beggars aside,
began insisting she hire a motorcar: a line of gleaming tourist cars now waited outside the hotel where, in her youth, a multitude of donkey boys had plied their trade. I saw Miss Mack hesitate: the night before she had been loud in her condemnation of automobiles –
dust, gasoline fumes, speed, convenience
, where was the romance, the poetry there? Now she glanced towards my seated figure, and I saw her reconsider. There was a risk in overtiring me… The hired cars were expensive, and all her thrifty instincts argued against them. But on the other hand my maternal grandparents, American grandees, formerly estranged and unknown to me beyond their handwriting, were now languidly assisting, wiring top-up funds, paying Miss Mack a ‘retainer’ and insisting money was no object – as indeed, in their case, it was not. They had insisted that on this voyage no expense should be spared.
‘Perhaps an automobile might be advisable after all, Lucy,’ Miss Mack said, fighting her way past the encircling
safragis,
and returning to the steps. ‘We must not exhaust you. Maybe this wasn’t wise – such an early start… ?’
I rose to my feet, and held on firmly to the hotel balustrade. If I concentrated hard, I could banish that smoky confusion from my mind for brief periods. I knew Miss Mack’s plans and it seemed cruel to disappoint her. I said, ‘Oh, please – not a car. I was looking forward to the carriage – and look, Hassan is there as usual, across the road.’
Miss Mack wheeled about. Beyond the shrieking crowd of hawkers and professional beggars forever on duty on the hotel steps, she glimpsed her paragon. There he sat, on the far side of Ibrahim Pasha Street, bent over the reins of his carriage, waiting for custom that was, these days, infrequent and poorly paid. His attitude was one of stoic resolve; on glimpsing Miss Mack, he lifted his hand in salute. In an instant she was resolute again. Out came her purse; munificent tips were conferred
.
Hassan was whistled across; bags, baskets, rugs, stools were transferred in seconds; the carriage hood was drawn up; and I was installed, Miss Mack beside me, confident once more and ready for anything in hand-made tweeds. Hassan’s horse pricked its ears and neighed; the sound startled a pair of red kites, tireless scavengers that roosted in the palm trees of the Ezbekieh Gardens opposite.
They rose up with a clatter of wings, circled overhead, and gave us a fly-past. ‘Now, Lucy,’ said Miss Mack in a hopeful tone, ‘now your great adventure begins.’
Hassan was Miss Mack’s paragon for many reasons: he was a kind, knowledgeable man and he cared for his elderly horse in an exemplary way; his carriage was resplendent with shining trinkets, powerful amulets and charms. He spoke English, French, Turkish and Arabic, and in his youth had served in the British army under Lord Kitchener… Miss Mack sang his praises for the expedition’s first half-hour. I was tired from all the dressing and packing and loading and
talk
. I examined the dark sky and the fantastic glitter of the low-slung Egyptian stars. I breathed in the sweet talcum scent of the lebbek trees. Cairo, which I thought of as a city of consternation, was strangely quiet at this hour.
‘How well I remember the first time I made this journey to the pyramids, Lucy,’ Miss Mack was saying. She wiped a tear from her eye. ‘We took a carriage just like this one. I was only a child, a little older than you are now. Just twelve, and it was the first time I’d ever left Princeton. Why, it must have been 1878 – can it really be that long ago? The excitement! “Now, Myrtle, prepare yourself,” my dear father, God rest him, said to me. But I was screwed up to such a pitch of excitement that I could
not
stop fidgeting. I was hopping about like a bug on a blanket – and then, on the horizon, as the sun rose, I saw… ’
I made no comment. We had now crossed the Nile; the towers and minarets, the jasmine and sewage scents of the city were behind us. Far in the distance I heard the rumble of a tram, the cough of a car engine. The dark of the desert enveloped us; I breathed in its antiseptic air. With a low muttered imprecation, Hassan turned the horse’s head, and we entered the narrow road that Miss Mack referred to as the
Allée des Pyramides
.
Abandoning reminiscence, she was now attempting another approach.
A history lesson, I realised, had been continuing for some while. I felt a passing sympathy for her: in the face of my silences, she was indefatigably well-meaning; she did
try…
‘What I want you to remember, Lucy,’ she was saying, ‘is that for the ancient Egyptians, sunrise was a resurrection. They believed that – that after the heartache of death, there would be a rebirth. It was as predictable as the rising of the sun each day… ’ Clasping my hand, she added: ‘Try to think of that, Lucy. It might strengthen you. I trust it will, dear.’
I did not reply. After a polite interval, I extricated my hand from hers. Miss Mack, perhaps discouraged, fell silent. How cold the air was! How regular the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves. Hassan’s charms and trinkets jingled. I could dimly see the avenue of acacia trees either side of the road; they had been planted, the guidebooks said, in honour of the beautiful Empress Eugénie of France – but when? In some other century, some other world… Smoke coiled in my brain: I watched the lovely Eugénie dance a graceful if unlikely gavotte on the desert sands with Napoleon Bonaparte; they both turned to bow obeisance to a pharaoh who’d died three thousand years before. This pharaoh was wrapped in a swaddling of death bandages. As I watched, his
ka
detached itself from his body, turned to beckon us sternly towards the perils of the underworld, then stalked off down the
allée
ahead. We followed. A bird cried out forlornly from the branches of the acacias. Somewhere in the darkness a jackal howled.
I crept closer to Miss Mack’s reassuring warmth and bulk. She hesitated, then put a comforting arm around my shoulders. If I fell asleep, I knew what dreams would come. I resisted for as long as I could, but after a brief fight the tiredness and darkness claimed me. Fast as anaesthetic, equally irresistible: I went under within a quarter of a mile.
‘Lucy, dear – you’re looking exhausted,’ said Miss Mack, later that morning. ‘Perhaps all three pyramids were too ambitious? After all, one pyramid is much like another, and we’ve done Cheops most thoroughly. Maybe we should have our luncheon a little earlier? You’re so pale and washed out. I think I’ll park you by the Sphinx, dear – just for a second while I tell Hassan our change of plan. If you stay in the shade, here behind her left paw… There’s no better place for a picnic than the Sphinx’s paws. Some people favour the tail area, but I cannot agree.’
I sat down obediently on the camp-stool provided. The pyramids, a dark sapphire when I’d first glimpsed them against the citron of the desert sky at dawn, were now glittering painfully. Groups of camel touts were arguing at a distance; an intrepid male tourist, assisted by Arab guides, was clambering up the Great Pyramid to laughter and cries of encouragement from a group of smartly dressed young Englishwomen standing below. ‘Keep going, Bertie,’ one of them called, her voice carrying clearly across the sand. ‘Nearly there, darling one. Only another eighty thousand feet to go… ’
‘The water flask, Lucy,’ Miss Mack said, inspecting me intently. ‘I’ll leave it with you – are you feeling thirsty? You’re very
white
. Are you sure you’re all right, dear?’
‘Truly, I’m fine. I’ll just sit here and read the guidebook.’
‘Very well. I’ll be two ticks, and I’ll stay in sight all the time.’
Miss Mack scurried off across the sand towards the palm trees in whose shade Hassan had laid out a mat and was praying; it was two hundred yards away. Such guardianship! I considered the flask, which I knew contained water that was absolutely
safe
: Miss Mack had supervised its purification, its boiling, cooling, filtering and bottling – ever-vigilant, she left nothing to chance. I unscrewed and uncorked it, took a swallow of water, felt nauseous at once and spat it out on the ground.
Nine months previously, walking across fields in Norfolk on a hot perfect May day, my mother and I had stopped to ask for directions and glasses of water at a remote farm. We had been visiting my father’s sister, Aunt Foxe, and exploring the area on the coast still famous as ‘Poppyland’; wandering inland, we’d become lost. The farmer’s wife had brought the glasses of water to us on a tray, and we drank thankfully, sitting in the shade of her apple orchard. The trees were in blossom, hens pecked at the grass: my mother Marianne, revived by our holiday, had lost the careworn look she so often had at home in Cambridge; she looked pretty and young again. ‘This is idyllic, Lucy,’ she said. ‘Isn’t this the most marvellous place to have happened upon? How clever of you to spot it, darling. And isn’t this the
best
water? How pure it tastes. So cold and refreshing – it must be straight from their well.’
And so it was – that was established later, when enquiries were made. By then, my mother was dead of typhoid and I was expected to share her fate; but Miss Mack had been there to nurse me and, by some quirk that my father described as merciful, I survived. Now here I was, teleported to a desert, sitting in the shade of the Sphinx’s massive paw. I inspected its weathered crumbling stones. No scorpions that I could see.
‘The word “typhoid” is taken from the Greek
typhos
, Lucy,’ my classicist father had explained. ‘It means “stupor”, but the term was also used to describe a hazy state of mind. This disorientation, or “smokiness” as you insist on calling it, is a well-documented symptom of the disease. It’s known to linger on, after the illness has apparently run its course. It will pass, I promise you. But you must learn to be patient, and give it time.’
Eight months since my alleged ‘recovery’, and the fogginess had not cleared. My father really should not make promises he could not keep, I felt. Yet that seemed disloyal: those remarks had been made when we’d just spent our first Christmas without my mother, a period that had been painful for both of us. All I could remember of those weeks were walks around a cold, foggy, deserted Cambridge, and one terrible expedition along the banks of the Cam towards Grantchester, in the course of which my silent father broke down. Turning away from me, hiding his face, he’d left me there by the riverside. Walking at a brisk pace towards the town, he disappeared. After an interval, I too set off and reached home without incident:
no harm done…
I decided I’d write my father a letter that very night: I would describe the pyramids and the Sphinx and Hassan. I’d describe the further delights of the day, as laid out in Miss Mack’s master plan. I’d say nothing of Empress Eugénie; nothing of a hallucinatory pharaoh
.
I’d make everything
lucid,
including my improving health and gratitude. Yes: a lucid letter from daughter Lucy. I began to word it, stopped at
Dear Father
, and scanned the sands.