Beneath a Burning Sky

by Jenny Ashcroft

  ‘Are you ever going to tell me what made that fortnight so necessary?’ Olivia asked it without any hope.

  And when Alistair stared over at her, his blue gaze incensed in the soft light, and he flexed his fingers, she bit her lip, wishing she could scrape the words back in.

  Tomorrow, she told herself as he took her face in his hands, one of them will send word they’re coming tomorrow.

  And then finally, on the last day of June, one of them did.

  THE FIRST DAY

  Chapter Four

  Ramleh, Alexandria, 30 June 1891

  The morning the Gray family returned, Alistair was especially insistent that Olivia not leave the house, not even to gad over to see Clara. Especially not that. He gave Olivia her orders over breakfast, just after he’d finished reprimanding her for allowing the marmalade to run out. (Was it too much to ask that she stay on top of the household management? Was it? She had precious little else to think about, after all.) He strode out to the office saying he’d be very late. He had a great deal to catch up on with Jeremy. Obviously.

  Olivia didn’t bid him goodbye. Obviously.

  ‘I mean it, Olivia,’ Alistair called from the front door. ‘You’re to stay in. I’ll know about it if you go against me on this.’

  She raised her eyebrows. Will you?

  She waited until she heard his hooves crunching gravel, then rose and went upstairs to change into a nicer gown. Clara’s note was clenched in her hand.

  I’m so sorry, Livvy, for being gone so long, I can’t tell you how much. I’m going to make it up to you. Let’s start with lunch, I’m taking you to Draycott’s. Be ready at eleven. I’ve missed you.

  Eleven was less than an hour away, Olivia didn’t have much time.

  She had just finished dressing when she heard the clock chiming eleven and Clara’s carriage in the driveway below. She went to her window and, even in spite of her confusion and frustration, felt a lurch of happiness as she took in Clara’s blonde curls and the curve of her heat-rouged cheeks beneath her parasol. At last. But still… Olivia narrowed her eyes; there was something about the disjointed way Clara was twirling her parasol, the jerky tap of her gloved hand on her skirts. She was undoubtedly on edge. Whatever it was that had upset her so badly before she left, it clearly hadn’t gone away.

  Olivia turned to Ada. ‘I’ll go down to see my sister alone.’

  ‘Mrs Sheldon.’ Ada’s flat London voice was pregnant with protest.

  ‘No, let me be, for once. For goodness’ sake.’ Before Ada could resist, she brushed past her, through the bedroom door and down the stairs; her heels clicked on the tiles to the rhythm of her breaths. She paused at the porch to fix her hat in place, then passed out into the fragrant front garden.

  Clara climbed down from the carriage as she approached, and reached forward, grasping her hands. ‘Oh, Livvy, I can’t tell you how marvellous it is to see you. Really, just splendid.’

  Olivia hung back, examining the lines around Clara’s wary eyes, the even deeper shadows beneath them, hearing again her marvellous, the just splendid, those oh-so-English turns of phrase, confirmation – as if any were needed – that Clara was anything but top drawer. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked her. ‘All these weeks, you kept ignoring my questions.’ Her voice slipped, betraying her hurt. ‘I’ve been so worried.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Clara’s shoulders slumped, she dropped her hand. ‘I wasn’t ignoring you… I want to talk to you. I just…’ She looked to the floor, moving gravel with the toe of her slipper; her bonnet cast shadows on her furrowed face. ‘I didn’t… Well, letters… Nothing came out right… and… Oh, I don’t know.’ She looked up, her expression at once sad and rueful. ‘I hated being away like that. I’ve missed you terribly.’

  Olivia felt her own face soften. ‘Do you still not know why Jeremy took you?’

  ‘No,’ said Clara, ‘not really.’

  ‘He’s told you nothing?’

  ‘Nothing that makes sense. He’s been so strange. Actually, he’s been awful, wanting to know what I’m doing all the time, where I am, not sleeping, drinking far too much. He’s even angry at Alistair over something.’ She frowned. ‘Frankly, I don’t think he was particularly keen on coming back, but Alistair’s been sending rather a lot of wires. And of course we need to get Ralphy ready for school. He’s off to England so soon.’

  ‘Have you told him he’s going?’

  ‘Yes, this morning.’ Clara’s frown deepened. ‘You should have seen his face, Livvy, the way he tried to be brave and not cry.’ She closed her eyes briefly. ‘I feel as if I’m letting him down. I can’t even think about Grandmama arriving so soon.’

  ‘What?’ Dread slithered down Olivia’s spine. ‘You said you wrote to stop her.’

  ‘I did. But you know what she’s like. And now Jeremy’s making noises about me going to England with them after all, taking Gus.’

  Olivia’s already heavy heart sank further at the prospect of Clara leaving again. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Jeremy’s a closed book.’

  ‘Perhaps you should try harder to open him, make him tell you what it’s all about.’

  ‘I’d rather not push him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Clara shrugged; her shoulders were tight, defensive.

  Olivia studied her for a moment. A thought occurred to her. ‘Does all of this have anything to do with Edward?’ Her voice strained on his name. She swallowed hard, terrified she would give herself away. ‘You were so upset when I saw you both talking at the Sporting Club.’

  ‘Livvy —’

  ‘Has something happened? Something to upset Jeremy that Edward knows about?’

  ‘No, absolutely not.’ Clara bit her lip, then, speaking as though she wouldn’t if she could help herself, asked, ‘Why do you ask that? What has Teddy said?’

  ‘He hasn’t said anything. I told you in my letters, he left the same day you did, he’s been gone ever since.’

  ‘And you don’t know why?’

  Olivia ignored the question. ‘What were the two of you talking about?’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t ask.’

  ‘Why not? You’re always telling me to talk to you, Clara, that I can trust you.’

  ‘You can…’

  ‘But then why can’t you trust me? Talk to me.’

  ‘It was nothing,’ said Clara, ‘really. Just some silly naughtiness.’ She flinched the moment the word left her.

  Olivia recoiled. ‘Naughtiness? What do you mean, naughtiness?’

  The horses shied at her raised voice. The driver clicked his tongue, quietening them. Clara’s eyes flicked to him; she coloured. ‘We should get on.’

  ‘Tell me what this naughtiness is first.’

  Clara’s eyes remained fixed on her driver. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Yes, now.’

  ‘No.’ Clara widened her eyes meaningfully at the driver’s back, then pointed her lace-clad thumb at the swarthy footman on the carriage’s rear step. ‘Let’s get on. We can talk properly over lunch.’

  Olivia stared. She felt like a punctured balloon, and not at all like lunching anywhere. But since it was obvious Clara would say no more here… She looked up at the bedroom window, unsurprised to see Ada’s pointy face peering down from behind the shutters. She sighed. ‘Let’s go then, before my maid insists on joining us. Alistair has her following me everywhere, he keeps saying it’s dangerous.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ Clara frowned. ‘Not him as well. It’s like I’ve been telling Jeremy, it’s as safe now in Alex as it’s ever been.’

  ‘Jeremy says it’s dangerous too?’ It surprised Olivia. She’d been so certain Alistair was alone in trying to keep her in the house, his words about the nationalists nothing but oily lies, spun to frighten her. But if Jeremy had warned Clara too, and was making these noises about her going to England, perhaps there was something in it.

  Clara said, ‘Jeremy’s just trying to make life harder for me than it needs t
o be.’ She climbed back into her seat, silk skirts rustling around her. She leant towards Olivia and mock-whispered, ‘I didn’t tell him we were going into town,’ then gave a small smile. ‘Don’t you look anxious though, Livvy, we’ll be fine. Come on.’ She patted the leather beside her. ‘Our reservation’s for twelve, if we don’t hurry we’ll miss it.’

  Olivia hesitated.

  ‘Livvy, please.’

  She gave in, climbed into the carriage. Clara gave her arm a quick squeeze and called for the driver to ride on.

  As they left the grounds, Clara pointed at the Bedouins’ tent at the gates and said, ‘I see you have guests.’

  ‘Yes. They arrived just as you left. They’re driving Alistair mad.’

  ‘Good,’ said Clara. ‘Good for them.’

  The long, bare strip of road that connected the white enclave of Ramleh to the city was dry with dust, framed by the glinting sea on one side, steep sandbanks on the other. The spring flowers which had once covered the dunes were gone; nothing but shrivelled vines remained, varying shades of yellow and brown swaying stiffly in the hot, lazy air. A lone camel stared from the roadside as the carriage trundled past, jaw working on a bunch of roots. Its owner plonked a saddle between its humps, thwacking its bones with leather. Poor camel.

  Clara chattered quietly, more to fill the silence, Olivia felt, than anything else. She spoke mainly of Ralph and Gus, dimples forming on her pink cheeks as she related Ralph’s rapid progress in reading, his obsession with the new Sherlock Holmes stories, Gus cutting his first tooth on the voyage home.

  She didn’t mention the naughtiness. Olivia didn’t press her. There seemed little point with the servants in such close proximity. She would just have to wait for lunch to find out what it was all about. She waved her hand, flicking away the ever-present flies.

  Eventually Clara fell silent and turned to stare at the sea. Olivia watched as she pulled at the beribboned handle of her expensive parasol, slowly ruining it. With her shoulders bowed and snub nose wrinkled, she reminded Olivia of the way she’d looked that night at the club, disappearing off into the windy darkness: like a vulnerable girl rather than a twenty-nine-year-old mother of two. Not happy, no not at all.

  Olivia shifted in her seat. She felt a near-overwhelming urge to reach out and take Clara in her arms. But she didn’t move. It was Clara’s evasiveness these past weeks that held her back; all the secrecy.

  She couldn’t get past it.

  She sighed.

  ‘Penny for them,’ said Clara.

  ‘I’m not sure they’re worth it.’

  It took them another twenty minutes to reach the city. The driver steered them away from the shore and into the cobbled market streets, the stalls bursting with fresh fruits, fish and vegetables. They passed a bakery, great baskets of flatbreads at its doors; cinnamon and yeast wafted out from within, mixing with the scent of peaches and onions, heat and sweat. The noisy pavements teemed with as many Mediterranean faces as Egyptian: Greek merchants, Turkish tradesmen, veiled women, cap-wearing Jews. A patchwork of cultures. Edward had told Olivia how this city, founded by Greeks and grown by Egyptians, had been ruled over by the tolerant Ottomans throughout the Middle-Ages; a haven for the persecuted. Even now, mosques stood alongside churches and synagogues, tongues slipped easily from Arabic to Syrian to Hebrew to Greek. Everyone spoke one another’s language. (Except the British, of course. For the most part they stuck to English. And lived in Ramleh.)

  Olivia chewed her lip as dark, expressionless eyes came to rest on her and Clara’s fine carriage, their silken skirts and frilly parasols. They were strangers, the both of them: a race apart in this cosmopolitan land.

  They left the carriage in Alex’s centre square, the palm-fringed Place Mohammed Ali, and set off to Draycott’s on foot. It was as they joined the crowds coursing down the main shopping thoroughfare, the elegant Rue Cherif Pasha, that Olivia felt the straining atmosphere of the day dip and darken. She looked to the heavens to see if a storm was coming, but the sky was pure blue.

  They carried on walking. Olivia tried to shrug off her ill-ease, but she couldn’t ignore the feeling that she was being watched. Her skin tightened, a curiously insubstantial weight pressed into her back. She looked over her shoulder, eyes watering in the sunlight as she examined the shoppers around them: men in pill-box hats and white robes, others in top hats and tails, the odd pairing of gowned women, wilting, like her and Clara, in the growing heat of the day. No one appeared to be watching them, though. Why then were her senses prickling?

  ‘We should hurry,’ said Clara as Olivia narrowed her eyes down the distance of the avenue. ‘They won’t hold our table for much longer.’

  ‘Just wait a moment.’ The people around them seemed to be moving too carefully, dancing a precisely choreographed routine. It was as though the windows in the surrounding buildings were trained on them. Olivia’s own gaze felt sluggish, clumsy, like it kept missing things that she was meant to see. ‘I feel so strange.’

  ‘Are you getting ill?’ Clara eyed her worriedly.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘No you’re not. I can see it. Is it Alistair?’

  ‘Not now, Clara, please.’

  ‘But there’s so much I want to say, about you, about him.’ Clara shook her head, trying to find the words. ‘We’re not so different, you know.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Clara gave her a long look. ‘Did Teddy really say nothing about me before he left?’

  ‘No.’ Olivia frowned at the apparent non sequitur. ‘Why? What would he have said?’

  Clara opened her mouth to reply, then stopped short and squinted at the opposite pavement. ‘Isn’t that his man over there?’

  ‘What?’ Olivia turned, following Clara’s stare.

  ‘Look.’ Clara pointed at a wiry, middle-aged Egyptian soldier walking along the opposite side of the road. His khaki shirt was rolled up at the sleeves, his trousers were drawn tight around his waist. Every inch of him appeared dusty with sand.

  Olivia would know his sinewy strength and dark features anywhere. ‘It’s Fadil,’ she said. If he was back, Edward must be too. The realisation sparked within her, squashing thoughts of all else. She looked around but couldn’t see him. She had to find out where he was. She told Clara she was going to ask Fadil, just so she could send word back to have Edward’s rooms ready, of course. She kept her face set as she spoke, containing her excitement by an effort of will.

  ‘All right,’ said Clara. ‘I’ll wait here.’

  ‘No,’ said Olivia, ‘honestly, you go on.’ She wanted a moment free of Clara’s presence to compose herself. She nodded at the pillared façade of Draycott’s in the distance. ‘I’ll meet you there.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. I’ll stay.’

  ‘No, really. You should make sure they keep our table.’

  Clara frowned. ‘All right,’ she said at length. ‘I am rather gasping for a drink. Don’t be long, will you?’

  Olivia promised she would be there directly. Clara nodded and walked away. Olivia watched her as she left, waiting until the sashay of her lace skirts had been swallowed by the crowd, then returned her attention to where Fadil had been.

  She cursed as she realised he was gone.

  She tried for close to a quarter of an hour to find him. It was only when she got all the way back to the Place Mohammed Ali without any success that, with a sigh of exasperation, she admitted defeat and set off again for Draycott’s.

  ‘I’m here to meet Mrs Gray,’ she told the maître d’.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you, Mrs Sheldon.’ He bowed his head, practically scraping the lectern in front of him. ‘Your table is ready. Would you like a cool drink whilst you wait for Mrs Gray?’

  ‘She’s already here.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Mrs Sheldon.’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  He grimaced apologetically. Olivia rolled her eyes and took herself across the marble foyer to find Clar
a herself. She paused at the dining-room door and looked around. The place was full. Ceiling fans whirred, spun into action by boys operating rope pulleys; waiters stalked the floor, silver trays held high; the air hummed with the conversation of over a hundred occupied tables, only one of which remained empty, the best in the house, overlooking the sun-drenched terrace and laid for two. Olivia went to it and peered into the garden, seeing sumptuous flower beds, lounging cigar-smokers, a depressed-looking parakeet in the corner, but no Clara. She made her way to the powder room. Still nothing.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked, returning to the maître d’.

  ‘It’s half past the hour of midday.’

  ‘She should be here.’

  ‘Would she have gone to attend to an errand first?’ His hand fluttered in the direction of the street. ‘Shopping, perhaps?’

  Olivia doubted it, but went back out into the steaming day to check. She spent well over an hour ducking in and out of shop doorways, back to Draycott’s, then out to the shops again, eyes wide for Clara’s lemon bonnet, her pale blue dress. She lost track of the number of assistants she approached, the shaken heads she received in response to her enquiries.

  ‘She’s the same height as me, same build, fairer hair…’ Her voice was breathless with hurrying as she addressed the aproned proprietor of the Imported Delicacies Emporium.

  ‘I know her, of course I know Mrs Gray,’ the man replied with a sniff from behind jars of piccalilli and mustard, ‘but we haven’t had her here in weeks. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re certain there’s been no mishap? No accident on the pavements that could have taken her away?’

  ‘No, not that I’ve heard.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t think what else to tell you.’

  Baffled, Olivia retraced her steps to the restaurant, and conducted another tour of its grounds.

  ‘Would she have gone home?’ asked the maître d’, following her.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Olivia. ‘She wouldn’t leave me in town like this.’ Surely not. Even so, Olivia set off to find their carriage in the square, sweat trickling down her back. Clara’s driver was leaning against the carriage door, the footman was slouched on the dusty floor. They assured Olivia that they had been there the whole time, that no, they’d seen no sign of Ma’am Gray. Did Ma’am Sheldon wish them to help look for her?