by Zizou Corder
‘Aha,’ he said, in the annoying tone of one who thinks he knows better. ‘They are not all in there at once.’
Pathetic. I could knock that down easily. ‘Then they’re not in there, are they? If they’re not in there…’ I said it in an irritating singsong way.
‘They appear when they are needed,’ he said.
‘What, by magic?’ I sneered.
‘By some mysterious means, yes,’ he said. ‘The book has a different story in it each time you read it.’
‘So if you put it down at night and want to finish the story the next day, you can’t,’ I said. ‘Very nice.’
‘I think it lets you finish the story you’re reading, but when you go back to the beginning, it’s a new story.’
‘So how could it be every story ever told? Half of them haven’t been told yet. So if it was the book of this old god, Nebo, how could they have stories from now? Or any of the stories between then and now?’ I’m afraid I rather liked to make grown-ups look stupid.
‘I don’t know, Nigella. But I would think if a book were magic and mysterious enough to have a new story in it every time someone turned to its opening page, it could probably manage a little thing like time pretty easily.’ He smiled at me in a way I didn’t like – a wise, avuncular, friendly smile, patient and fond. I wished he wouldn’t.
I was annoyed and went away to kick things on deck. That was too hot, so I decided to be ill, so that my mother would have to make somebody bring me something cold to drink. I returned to our cabin and started to throw up, and rang the bell, and required the steward to fetch my mother.
Before she arrived I changed my mind. I would not be ill – I would do something even more annoying.
‘Mother,’ I said, ‘it’s not good for me being stuck on the ship. Why can’t we go ashore? There’s all that interesting culture to see, and those trips the others go on. There’s one this evening. Can’t we go to the temple, Mother? And see the things? I’d love to learn about the ancient Egyptians.’
She was furious. The grown-ups on the boat had divided into the people who went ashore and the people who sat about laughing and drinking. My mother was naturally among the latter. She wanted to have a cool shower and put on another pretty dress and drink more cocktails and smoke and let her laughter drift across the deck out over the still waters of the river. She wanted to play cards, and make some man go and fetch her wrap when it grew chilly.
‘Father will ask me what I saw when we get back to Cairo,’ I said plaintively. ‘And I don’t want to tell him I saw nothing. Please. Mother, please!’
The mention of my father was very clever of me. I knew it would get to her, because it was true.
For a moment her face was suffused with anger and then, just like that, she switched it to a charming smile and said, ‘Of course, darling! We’ve been far too engrossed with all this fun on board. We’ll go ashore tonight, just you and I, and We’ll have a lovely lovely time.’
She often talked like that, like someone out of an old film. It was stupid.
Of course it wasn’t just she and I. It was she, I, all the others who usually went on the shore trips – the Shore Bores, she called them – and John Matthews, who knew them all and chatted with the guide and seemed genuinely interested in the things we were shown.
Tonight it was indeed a temple. I can’t remember what it was called, but we had to go by bus and there were all these donkeys and poor-world people outside and it was pretty scuzzy, but when we got there there was a nice big air-conditioned visitors’ centre with a bar for tourists only, so that was all right. My mother couldn’t bear having poor-world people come up to her and I have to say I shared her view. They were really weird-looking. None of the women had make-up or facelifts or anything, and the children had no shoes.
Anyway, the temple was OK – I don’t know why they were so proud of that stuff, it was much smaller than what we build now, and a lot of it had fallen down or been knocked about by other people from hundreds of years ago. Really, who cared? But there were some quite good carvings on the wall of someone holding about eight enemies by the hair and bashing them. ‘Smiting’, the guide said. The guide was this pretty black woman, and she knew how to read the hieroglyphics, which was all the little pictures and things carved on the wall. Matthews really liked her and for some reason he wanted me to as well. He kept calling me over and trying to be interesting.
At one point he called, ‘Hey, Nigella – look, this is about that book!’
I shuffled over. The guide – her name was Emmeline – was showing Matthews a bunch of writing.
‘Are you interested in The Book of Thoth?’ she asked me.
I grunted.
‘It’s explained here – the book that holds all stories was found in the heart of a tree sent from Lebanon – do you see? That’s the sign for a tree, that’s for book. It’s not clear if Thoth wrote it or claimed it…’
‘So where is it now?’ I asked.
‘Ah, well – it burned with the great library of Alexandria,’ she said. ‘Or possibly it was shipwrecked in the Nile. Pity, isn’t it? I always wanted to know if it had every story ever told, or every version – if it would have had Shakespeare? And if it had Romeo and Juliet, would it have had West Side Story as well? And did it give the same story to different people? And how did it decide what story it was going to give who? And if you liked a story, would you ever get it again? There are accounts of it from ancient times, but they don’t answer the questions I have… Of course, there’s also a theory that it survived…’
She realized I was looking at her as if she was a total blabbering idiot and she dried up. Honestly – a magic book! Grow up!
Matthews though was continuing. ‘Probably they were all in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs though, so most of us would need a translator anyway…’
‘But if it was from Lebanon it would not have been in Egyptian. I read a theory once that it was actually from Mesopotamia… that it might have been the origin of the opening of the Gospel of St John, you know – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. Maybe it has different languages… And sometimes it’s a clay tablet; sometimes a papyrus – oh, there’s loads of stories…’
I tuned out. Stories were all very well, but the Bible! How dull can you get!
That night, I woke from a deep dream with a start and a yelp. A green-eyed woman had been speaking to me, holding out a book on a tasselled pillow and saying, ‘You can have everything.’ A bird-headed god had come and chased her away.
I was sweating and breathing hard.
A book with every story in it! New stories every time!
Dad would like that, I thought. I bet there’d be a story in there good enough to publish. I could get that book and give it to Dad.
I told him about it when we got back to Cairo.
‘That sounds great, Jellyfish,’ he said. That’s what he called me when – when we played together. We did, sometimes. ‘It sounds a very useful book. You find it and bring it to me, eh?’ And he tickled me.
For the rest of my life, the idea of the book didn’t leave me alone.
CHAPTER 9
Lee
Tired!
Corpus Christi Mariani! I wasn’t tired!
I was in criking shock.
I’d spent the day chatting with a book!
Listen – a lot of you, probably, can read. You’re likely to be accustomed to reading, or to listening to stories, on CDs or by your parents or whatever. I was not accustomed, in the first place, even to stories. Apart from that month with the Beano, Mum never read to us. Dad? Don’t make me laugh. The whole story thing, if I knew of it at all, was just Dad and the uncles and Granddad Fred drinking beer and going on about stuff that happened a hundred years ago down the shores. So for a start to have that story about strangling the lion, and then all that life story of the book – told me by the book!!!! And then me piping up with all these questions and the book just breaking off his story to
answer me… Well, I imagine you can understand I was amazed. On several levels.
And then he decides I’m tired and shuts down. Well, that’s not right. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that if you can read you can read anywhere, any time, for as long as you want till the story’s finished, and even then you can go back to the beginning if you so choose. So I didn’t think much of that.
But oh, my days.
I used him as my pillow again. He hadn’t objected. Also I wanted him close. It was an instinct.
It wasn’t till the next morning that things started to fall into place. The night before, I had finally gone to sleep full of glitter and wonder at the fabulous thing that was happening to me. In the dawn, as I lay achy and half awake, watching the light begin to appear like ghostly smoke down the ventilation shaft, practical thoughts came to me.
One, my new friend had a price on his head of 25,000 dirhams. OK, I’d been tempted. I’m a thief! I steal things – that’s what I do. But now…
Well, you don’t sell your friend, do you? If someone doesn’t talk to anybody for 12,000 years, and then they talk to you, do you sell ’em? No, you don’t. It ain’t right.
I never, ever, ever was going to give him up. Unless, I don’t know, destiny or something needed him. Or if Nebo turned up on Mushusshu, saying, ‘Oi! That’s my sacred tablet.’ Then I might. Probably I’d have to.
Otherwise, no. It felt more than a bit peculiar turning down more caio than I’ve ever dreamed of. But there you go.
Two, Jenny Maple. The description had rung a bell yesterday but I hadn’t heard it clearly. Now it was blatant: Julie Mordy, Ciaran’s mate from Kennington, used names that matched her initials. She was fifteen or so, quite little, and had this knack of looking really innocent, which helped her a lot in her career of small-scale crim activity. Julie’s speciality was running errands for people and seeming clean.
So how was she mixed up in this? Why did the police want her?
Something else had struck me. If Mr Ernesto had given the book – I really had to work out what to call him – to this author, whatsername, then why had he not actually given him to her? Why did he still have him on him, and why did he leave him with Mr Maggs? And why did he get killed? And why did he shout ‘Elly-Anne’? Who was that?
Also, Ms Author had to be a pretty bad author if she couldn’t even think up something more original than ‘my heart goes out to his wife and family at this difficult time’.
The book, it occurred to me, would be able to tell me. He was telling me his life story after all – he would have loads of information about Mr Ernesto.
I got up and stretched myself and rinsed my mouth and had some breakfast. Never had the prospect of a day all alone underground been so enticing. I picked up my new friend.
‘Good morning, Booko,’ I said cheerfully.
‘Booko!’ he squeaked. ‘Absolutely not. You can’t call me Booko! You’re going to have to come up with something better than that, for crike sake.’
CHAPTER 10
The Story According to Billy Raven
My brother Lee’s a good boy, nobody’s saying he ain’t. Well, I’m not. He’s a good boy. He just ain’t the brightest. We’re a big family, everybody can’t be the brightest and in our family it’s Lee.
Here’s an example: Lee won’t go to school. Well, that ain’t very bright.
Here’s another: he won’t stay home. There’s Mum loves all her boys, worried sick about him; and there’s Dad, who’ll give him no end of grief when he gets hold of him, which he was always going to and you can bet your aunt Fanny he’s going to now… that ain’t very bright.
And here’s another. Lee’ll always use the same fake name. Hello, Lee! If you use Joe English all the time, guess what, we know it’s you!
Lucky Dad’s in Paris, that’s all I can say. Lucky Squidge and Finn and Ciaran listen to sense and are letting me handle this. Lucky Mum’s in the way of being – how can I put it? – obedient to whoever she thinks is the alpha male in the area. I.e., for the moment, Dad being away, me.
So when young Joe English is all over the papers in charge of a valuable manuscript and wanted by the old bill, it is my honourable duty to go and bring him in.
The rules are simple when you’re looking for someone. Where was they last seen? So I took myself to Berkeley Square, to the booksellers.
It was evening by the time I got there. A young lady responded. She wouldn’t open up; only talked through the intercom.
‘Yes?’ she says, all high and mighty.
‘I’m here about the manuscript,’ I said, in my best posh English – learned, I may say, at school off the chaplain, realizing as I did that talking proper is a skill like any other and worth having in your repertoire.
‘What about it?’ she said. Her posh voice sounded completely natural. To the manner born.
‘I believe I may have some information which may be of interest to you,’ I said, which was true, but I wasn’t going to give it her – quite the opposite, I was going to get some off her.
‘Then you should go to the police,’ she said. Lovely! People are so easy to read, ain’t they? I love straight people. So simple.
‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ I said regretfully. ‘For reasons into which I cannot go in public, I am unable to talk to the police. If, however, you would let me in for a moment I could explain to you.’
I waited a moment or two while she no doubt looked me up and down on her little screen inside and made her decision. My guess was that, like all respectable people involved in a mystery, she wanted to solve it. Villains and people with secrets don’t do that. They just move on, quickly, with no comment except perhaps a quick ‘none of my bliddy business, mate’.
My guess was right. She buzzed open the door and stood inside to greet me.
She was gorgeous, I have to say. Younger-looking than she sounded, Indian, with long smooth black hair and big suspicious eyes. For a second I was about to flirt with her but I pulled myself together just in time. Time and place, Billy Boy. Not here and not now, that’s for sure.
‘Well?’ she said rudely.
‘I know Joe English,’ I said. ‘If you can tell me exactly what happened, I can work out where he might have gone.’
‘And you are?’ She wasn’t giving an inch.
I smiled ingratiatingly.
‘I’m his social worker,’ I said, in a concerned and kind way. ‘Richard Oliver’s the name. Joe has had a lot of problems and he needs help. I very much want to get to him before the police, for his own protection. He’s not a bad boy…’ I find this approach often works with females, who like to think the best of everybody, and exercise their sympathy and redemption and that stuff. With guys I’d say I was the police and wanted to put the little graspole away before all them lefty liberal social workers let him off his crimes and sent him on holiday to Tenerife on account of his hard childhood…
I had misjudged.
‘Not a bad boy?’ she said. ‘He’s a little thief and possibly a murderer.’
‘Well, yeah, of course, there’s that,’ I said, stumbling a bit over how to change tack. ‘So it’s vital he’s got off the streets…’
‘Of course it is,’ she said. ‘I don’t need you to come round here to tell me that.’
She had this disconcerting way of just saying things blankly, like that. No ‘yeah well maybe’ or ‘I think’ or ‘it could be’ or ‘do you agree?’ Just straight out, unadorned.
Either that or her beautiful black eyes was getting to me. I was not coming over as the suave and effective Billy Raven I usually am.
‘So could you tell me what happened?’ I said brightly. Or weakly.
‘I thought you had information for me,’ she said.
‘I just told you,’ I replied. ‘Hard life, deprived kid, all that.’
‘That is of less than no interest to me,’ she said. ‘I just want the book back. If you can tell me where he might be, then I’m interested.’
She had a think. It suited her. Then: ‘Well, it’s in the public domain,’ she said. ‘He went down to Piccadilly, turned left, got into conversation with a boy and they disappeared up a side street opposite Lansdowne Row. He hasn’t been seen since.’
I smiled. It was as I had thought.
‘Madam,’ I said, laying it on a bit, ‘I may indeed be able to find young Joe and get your book back. Leave it with me.’ And I scarpered.
CHAPTER 11
The Story Continues According to Janaki
Well, I wasn’t letting him get away with that. There were altogether too many people turning up on our doorstep lying. Social worker indeed!
The boy had obviously stolen the book because that’s the kind of boy he was. Those people would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down – it’s second nature to them.
Then the girl, Jenny Maple – well, she was something else. Mr de Saloman was already dead by the time she came round with her fake letter, asking for the book! Who was she? Why did she want the book? Where did she get that letter? You may think it was none of my business but personally I felt some responsibility. Mr de Saloman had left his book with the House of Maggs, so we are meant to protect it. Mr Maggs looks to me for organization and good advice, and I am honour-bound to Mr Maggs. He is my father now and the House of Maggs is my family.
So I wasn’t letting this one get away so easily. Social worker! He had scamp written all over him. Before he’d even turned down Berkeley Square I had my big scarf wrapped round my head, my sunglasses jammed on the front and I was off after him, just an invisible Asian schoolgirl in a bit of a hurry.
I followed him across the square. He turned left up Bruton Lane and by the time I barrelled round the corner he was standing on the pavement, staring at the tarmac in the middle of the road. I backed into a doorway to see what he’d do next.
It was very odd. There was no one around, but he glanced this way and that, then lay down in the middle of the road, with his ear to the ground. He seemed to be listening, though what he hoped to hear I had no idea. Then an electro turned into the street and he jumped up again and, looking thoughtful, turned and stared to the north-west. He gave a little snigger of laughter and then he began to walk in the direction in which he had been looking.