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 talk
ing cockney to you – with comments on your barnet and asking where your titfa is, as well as demanding to eat jellied eels.’
‘Jolly good show, my lord.’
He relaxed back in his seat with a smile. The oddest thing about travelling was the people you rub shoulders with while rattling along in a train and this Maisie Randall was the last one he’d expect to find in a first-class dining car en route to Egypt. It brightened his day no end. He took out his cigarette case.
‘Would you care for a smoke?’
‘Nope. Filthy habit.’
Instead she dived into a cornflower-blue handbag that matched her gloves, clearly brand new, and drew out a narrow Bakelite box. She popped it open to reveal a row of skinny black cheroots.
‘Now that’s what I call a smoke.’ She offered him one.
‘I’ll stick to my own, thanks.’
He lit both and the split second of intimacy when she leaned over his flame gave him an unexpected sense of well-being. There was something so alight in this woman that you could warm your hands on it.
‘Travel much?’ he asked.
‘First time abroad.’
‘On your own?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Nervous?’
‘Scared bloody witless.’ She exhaled a string of foul-smelling smoke. ‘Excusing my French, my lord.’
‘I have a feeling it’s the Egyptians who will be scared when they see you coming.’
‘Get away with you!’
‘Why Egypt?’
‘Why not? Everyone has made such a bloody fuss of this digger-fellow, Howard Carter, that I thought I’d take myself off to get a butchers at this King Tutamen.’
‘Tutankhamen.’
‘That’s the chappie.’ She narrowed her eyes and paused, thoughtfully inspecting Monty. ‘And you? Why Egypt?’
He glanced out of the window, at the night thundering past, solid and impenetrable. What he saw was his own face looking back at him, black holes for eyes and cheekbones about to push through the skin. He looked away.
‘I felt like some fun,’ he answered with a smile.
‘I’ll drink to that.’
He laughed and waved a hand at the waiter. ‘Splendid. Now where’s that damn champagne?’
‘Tell me more about Tim, Jessie. What kind of person is he?’
They were eating breakfast. Or, to be more exact, Jessie was scoffing breakfast while he poured a pot of coffee down his parched throat. His head felt as if a donkey was kicking around inside it and chewing the back of his eyeballs. Opposite him Jessie looked up from her breakfast plate, surprised.
She looked young and fresh this morning, her hair gleaming, its corn-coloured waves loosely nudging her shoulders as she lifted her head. There was a special morning shine to her.
‘What kind of person is he?’ he repeated.
She thought for a moment. ‘He’s the kind of person you’d want watching your back if you were in trouble.’
Such a statement. Such an open declaration of sisterly love. It simply took his breath away. To cover the moment he sipped his black coffee though it tasted like tar. ‘I know Tim is familiar with ancient Egypt, but …’
‘He and the pharaohs are like that.’ Jessie twisted two fingers together. Teasing him.
‘But how much does he know about modern Egypt?’
‘What exactly do you mean?’
He was careful to buff the sharp edges from his words. ‘Just that there is some unrest over there.’
A forkful of scrambled eggs was halfway to her lips. She returned it to her plate and pushed it aside.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘Oh, you know, it’s the usual hot-under-the-collar stuff. It will probably blow over.’
The smile slid from her eyes. ‘But they have their own king in Egypt, King Fuad. And their own democratically elected parliament now. I thought everything was quiet out there.’
‘It is. More or less.’
‘But?’
‘But would you be quiet if you had another country’s military jackboots strutting up and down your streets?’
‘Don’t.’ She shuddered.
He tasted more of the tar and shut up. He didn’t want her to lose her shine because of him.
‘I realise,’ she said, ‘that as a colonial power we are bound to be unpopular at times, but …’ Her fingers moved to the centre of the table and waited there.
‘You have to keep in mind the country’s history,’ he pointed out. ‘We invaded Egypt in 1886 and have been the masters there ever since. It is a territory regarded as vital for us because of where it lies geographically, a strategic point halfway between Britain and the jewel of our colonial crown, India. So of course we are ruthless in keeping our stranglehold on the Suez Canal and our military might on show in the streets.’
‘I know. Tim was always regaling me with lurid stories of the great battles that have been fought over Egypt. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lived through Lord Nelson’s Battle of the Nile victory over the French.’
She tried to laugh, a small self-deprecating sound, but it didn’t quite come off. It was the mention of Tim. Monty felt a sadness spilling out of her and quietly he started to fill her mind with Egypt instead. ‘Egyptians have suffered foreign occupation for the last two thousand years. It if wasn’t the Persians, it was the greedy Greeks and Romans. And they only left because the cunning Turkish Mamelukes seized power and had their wicked way with Egypt for centuries before Napoleon and the Ottomans got in on the act. I tell you, we British are newcomers to the game in the Middle East.’
Gradually he became aware that she was watching him instead of listening to him. He stopped speaking.
‘You know a lot of things,’ she said.
‘All totally useless to me when I’m digging out ditches on the estate.’
She smiled, the kind of smile that reaches the eyes and keeps on going. ‘Maybe you should abandon your ditches to the weeds and try your luck at something else – and I don’t mean séances.’ Her hand slid forward, easing into his half of the table, and he picked it up. It wasn’t a delicate hand. It was broad and square with short flat fingernails and no jewellery. His fingers closed around it.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said quietly. ‘I am grateful. It would be harder without you.’ The smile on her face gained a twitch of amusement. ‘You look rough this morning,’ she told him.
He tore his gaze from her face and looked down at her hand nestled in his. ‘I feel rough.’
The human heart is wreathed in darkness. That’s how it seemed to Monty, that mankind has an infinite capacity to inflict pain on its fellow members. He had witnessed it before and had his illusions ripped apart by man’s ingenuity at the task, but still he harboured hopes that he was wrong. Ridiculous, pathetic hopes that Timothy Kenton was playing a game of some sort, one designed to goad and test his sister for some piffling reason known only to himself.
It was possible.
It was unlikely, but it was possible.
Monty was seated on his narrow wagon-lits bed, listening to the great iron wheels turning beneath him. It would be so damn simple if everything were pre-ordained, if life rolled along on a pair of silvery rails with just a few undulations along the way. He lit a cigarette and shook his head. The image of Jessie’s hand encircled by his own was still in there. Unsettling him. No, he didn’t believe in destiny, well, not that kind anyway. Not the kind that laid down the rules for you all straight and narrow. That would suit politicians, of course, everything tied up neat and dandy, like the way that fellow Adolf Hitler was imposing a new regime on Germany with his Nazi party right now or that poppycock Mussolini who was strutting over Italy with his Fascist party. And let’s not forget the bastard Mosley who saw himself as the saviour of Britain, bringing Fascism to our green shores. God forbid!
No. You create your own destiny. You make your own choices, right or wrong. They pre-ordain the mess you get yourself into. He gave a grim smi
le. Hell, that was what made life thrilling – that you could at any time make new choices, new decisions to haul yourself out of those damn bottomless wells that in your infinite wisdom you decided to jump into. This train was his rope and he was hauling himself up hand over fist, towards that small circle of light at the top.
It was almost dark outside now; that moment in time when the day holds its breath before it exhales a last whisper and draws the shadows of night over itself. The mountains of Switzerland hung blue and bruised-looking around them, leaning so close at times it was as though they were trying to peer inside the carriage. As they thundered past one snug village of steep-roofed houses, the church-bells were ringing and a herd of goats stopped what they were doing to watch the train, round-eyed as children.
This was the time to make new decisions. To alter destiny. Before it was too late.
23
Georgie
England 1929
Facts circle inside my head. You laugh at me and my facts but I learn not to mind.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica has been my Bible for so many years that I have read each volume until their embossed covers are tattered and hold the imprint of my hands. I cannot help it if I remember facts.
We sit in the beautiful uncomfortable chairs and I tell you facts.
‘Knapping is what they call the process of shaping a flint. Or it could be a piece of chert or obsidian or any other conchoidal fracturing stone used to manufacture stone tools. Lithic reduction is the term used for chipping away segments of stone to create a sharpened edge.’
‘Thank you for that piece of information,’ you say.
I am pleased. Today you are interested in my facts, which is not always the case. Sometimes you tell me to shut up. I have learned from you that I must not bore people, so I swap subjects to entertain you.
‘Do you know that using trigonometric parallaxes is the way to find out the distance of stars?’ I lean forward, excited. ‘This is the good part … that by using the earth’s orbit as the base-line, the distance can be found in parsecs from the angular size of the parallax. Hence d = 1/p, assuming of course that both the sun and the star are not moving with a transverse velocity.’
Shadows on the Nile Page 18