The Visitors

by Sally Beauman

  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.

  2

  ‘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.

  The heat of the morning was pleasant, still bearable, and just sufficient to make the light bend, waver and deceive. In the distance, Miss Mack was supervising the unloading of baskets, a small folding table and snow-white napery. I took another swallow of water and forced it down. I turned my gaze towards the Great Pyramid, where the man called Bertie had finally reached the summit. He removed his tweed cap and shouted, ‘Huzzah!’ Loud cheers came from the spectators below. Bertie, it seemed, had come prepared: from inside his Norfolk jacket he produced a small flag and waved it victoriously. I raised the field glasses and focused them. The flag was a Union Jack. Bertie fixed it between the stones at the pyramid’s summit where it fluttered briefly. There were more cheers, then groans as the flag blew away.

  Behind this group, I saw, a large car was approaching, bumping its way across the sand. It described a circle, made for the Sphinx, reconsidered, and finally came to a halt in the shade of some palm trees about fifty yards away. I watched as its occupants climbed from the car: first, a young but portly man, balding and with a markedly high, prominent forehead, wearin
g a flamboyant bow tie; then a woman, festooned with scarves; and finally a girl of around my own age, who jumped from the car, ran a few yards, and then performed a cartwheel. I watched as she followed it up with a somersault, and then reached into the car and fetched out desert gear. A fly-switch, a pair of dark glasses. I stared in astonishment as she put them on. Such sophistication, dark glasses for a child, how I envied her this protection from the punitive light; how free she looked, how her dark hair, almost black, shone.

  ‘Hot, hot, hot,’ she called to her mother – was it her mother? They were the first words I heard her say. ‘Daddy, it’s baking. I told you it would be.’

  Her voice was light, discernibly American. Her father shrugged. ‘Sure it’s hot if you insist on gymnastics. Try sitting down.’

  ‘May I climb a pyramid before lunch?’

  ‘Don’t be fresh, Frances. That’s not funny and no, you may not. Neither before lunch, nor after it. It’s vandalism, as you very well know. Now sit down and eat your sandwiches. I’ll test you on your hieroglyphs when you’ve finished. Did you learn the six I set you?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Kind of won’t do. Accuracy is all. Helen, is that confounded picnic ready or not? This was a damn-fool idea – I’m due back in Cairo in an hour… ’

  Their voices faded; they withdrew out of sight behind the palm trees. I was wondering dreamily if they too were apparitions, when Miss Mack, followed by Hassan, rejoined me. The table was unfolded, a cloth spread upon it; baskets were opened, and the bounty of a Shepheard’s packed lunch was revealed. Cold roast quails and a pilaff; sweet quince pastries, dates and greengages. Miss Mack and I ate in state at the folding table, with plates and knives and forks and linen napkins; Hassan, who, at Miss Mack’s insistence, shared this plenty, squatted on the ground. He had brought with him some flat Egyptian bread, which he unwrapped from a cloth bundle. He then shinned up the Sphinx’s foot, placed the bread carefully in full sun on the paw-knuckles, allowed it to warm through, and shinned down again. Explaining that his wife had made it for him, he offered it to us to share. Miss Mack froze: seeing I was about to accept some, she shook her head at me.

  ‘Excellent bread,’ Hassan said, somewhat mournfully: I felt he was used to such offerings being refused. ‘Shamsi, you see? Sun bread. You will like it – that is sure.’

  ‘Indeed we would, Hassan,’ Miss Mack said firmly. ‘But my friend Lucy has been ill, you see, so we have to be very careful what we eat. That is tremendously kind, but we have so much already, and we wouldn’t dream of depriving you.’

  Hassan gave up with melancholy grace. He seemed saddened – I hoped not affronted. I scraped at my plate, pushing the food back and forth into little piles. I could eat very little. The meal took an age. We were still scarcely halfway through when I heard voices, then a car engine. The acrobat girl was departing. I watched her disappear in a shimmer of light and a cloud of dust – and she couldn’t have been an apparition since Miss Mack also registered the exodus.

  ‘Automobiles,’ she remarked, with a frown. ‘At the pyramids! Some people have no sense of respect. They might remember – this is a holy place. It’s a burial ground.’

  We inspected the burial ground again when lunch was finally finished. Miss Mack was reinvigorated, determined to evoke some spark. All three pyramids and no escaping them: kingdoms, dynasties, reigns; probable building methods; alignment with compass points and stars; number of pharaonic wives and daughters buried in adjoining necropolis… The sun was now directly overhead. I squinted at the wives’ section of the necropolis. It was only partly excavated, and the sands were encroaching on its rough jumble of stones. Any decoration or inscriptions they might once have had, had been long scoured and obliterated by millennia of desert storms.

  Wandering away, I leaned over one of the burial pits. Miss Mack, reading from her guidebook, had informed me it was an unknown princess’s tomb, stocked with wine, fruit, and grain to sustain her in the afterlife. Now it was about ten feet deep – a dazzle of debris. An emerald-green lizard darted for a wall crevice. A faint breeze brushed my skin. I watched the sands shiver beneath my feet – and realised that this burial place was not deserted after all: moving in the shadows below me was a girl. She was about my own age, thin, wiry and alert. I could see she was trying to escape the pit. She made a series of nervous runs at its encircling walls, as if meaning to climb or jump them. She advanced on its boundaries, then backed off again. After a while, she seemed to sense my presence: she raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun’s glint, lifted her transparent face and turned to look at me. We stared at each other, hard and long. I raised my small box camera to capture her on film, and at once, as swiftly as she had manifested, she disappeared.

  Should I inform Miss Mack of this interesting mirage? I knew if I did I’d be dosed up with aspirin and confined to base again. I said nothing. Miss Mack was gathering up our belongings: time to return to the hotel. She looked dispirited; I think she felt the pyramids had been woefully ineffective, and was now pinning her hopes on the afternoon’s dancing class.

  3

  The young man paid his first visit to me today. He had come to interrogate me on the subject of a tomb – a very famous tomb. His name is Dr Ben Fong. He is an American scholar, formerly of Berkeley, California, now a Fellow of University College London. He is writing a book (another book!) about the most famous discovery ever made in the Valley of the Kings. A television documentary, a co-production jointly funded by the BBC and some American channel, perhaps HBO, is also being planned. Its working title is Tutankhamun’s Tomb: The Truth. Laid-back, photogenic Dr Fong will be fronting this alliterative, high-budget, four-part marvel. The book and the TV series, he informed me, are ‘linked in’ and interest in them is ‘awesome’. He dropped this information early on in our interview, when still under the illusion that I’d find this prospect impressive, even flattering. He’s quick on the uptake, however, and unlikely to make that mistake again.

  This first visit was preceded by a polite letter, citing Dr Fong’s impressive academic qualifications, his previous books, and his Egyptologist contacts and friends, including the one who recommended approaching me, who had provided my address. That man, an expert on the transcription of papyri, is an acquaintance I’ve not seen in twenty years. The letter was followed by several emails. Dr Fong expressed gallant surprise that a woman of my great age should be ‘computer-savvy’. In view of that unpromising start, I have no idea why I agreed to see him: was my curiosity aroused? I doubt it. I think it’s simply that in winter my arthritis can be vicious, I don’t get out as much as I’d like and can experience cabin fever even here in London. Loneliness, of course, had nothing to do with it – no, I agreed to see the man because he pressed me, and I was bored.

  These days I tend to spend winters in England, and summers either in America or elsewhere. Where I go and when I go now depends on no one but myself: this, as I’m always telling people, is a pleasant state of affairs. My journeyings depend on the current state of my arthritis – also on mood. Since it was January when we met, and the arthritis was in its winter ascendancy, Dr Fong came to my house in Highgate. It is an old and beautiful house, if overburdened with stairs, and it is set at the top of the highest hill above London. It has a fine view across the famous Highgate Cemetery, where people as diverse as Karl Marx and George Eliot are buried; I find this stupendous view, over burial crosses and guardian angels towards the towers of the new London, very useful. I can usually divert my guests’ attention with its wonders for at least ten minutes, which gives me ample time to assess them. Dr Fong proved impatient, however. I hadn’t got beyond early thirties, keen-eyed, modish hair, wearing a wedding ring, pity about his shoes, when, four minutes in, I found myself installed in my chair by the fire, Fong opposite me, notebook in hand and pencil poised. Between us, on a small table, lay a tape recorder. Without preamble, Dr Fong switched it on.

  ‘Just say something, Miss Payne, so I can check sound
levels… Great, that’s fine. What an incredible room you have here! So many books, quite a library of them. And amazing paintings, I mean like seriously amazing. Is that a… could it be… ⁠? Wow, yes it is. Professor Yates did warn me, but even so. I see you keep a shabti figure on your desk. A very beautiful one too. Would it be––’

  ‘A fake?’

  ‘Genuine, surely?’

  ‘The bazaar in Cairo. Bought in 1922, the year I first went to Egypt. One of the more unscrupulous dealers. I was a child. Eleven years old. Green in judgement. So, alas, no.’

  I was not warming to this interviewer. Game on, I thought. I suspect Dr Fong came to the same conclusion – but then the shabti in question, one of the small faience figures made to serve an Egyptian king in the afterlife and placed in his tomb for an eternity of servitude, was genuine. I knew that, and Dr Fong knew I knew.

  We fenced around for forty-five minutes. I may have divorced two husbands, buried a third, and generally led what has been described as a rackety life, but for the past two decades I’ve lived alone. I’ve reverted to the solitude of my childhood, and reacquired old habits, one of which is caution. I’m nervous with strangers and suspicious of them. I dislike taking others into my confidence and avoid doing so. As I’ve outlived most of the friends who had gained my trust, there are precious few confidantes these days. Dr Fong did not fail to point this out: he ran through a roll-call of eminent men, including all those involved in the astonishing discovery and excavation of Tutankhamun’s tomb, all those that I first met in Cairo, as a child; those I knew at Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. Every last one of them was dead as a dodo. Drawing breath, he then described me as a unique living witness to the greatest archaeological discovery ever made, and to the extraordinary and historic events that galvanised Egyptology in the decade from 1922 to 1932…