The Visitors

by Sally Beauman

  I could not shake it off; it would not depart – even when our friends arrived, and we were caught up in the bustle of finding our compartments. Evelyn, her father and their entourage were further down the train, but we were in the same carriage as the Winlocks; Frances and I, as promised, were sharing a sleeping cabin. Peter and Rose, supervised by Wheeler, had the cabin next to us. The excitement of exploring these tiny rooms and testing out the bunks was intense. Yet the undertow of apprehension and sadness remained; it strengthened as, with a banshee scream, the train jerked, jolted and, gathering speed, pulled out of the station. Frances, who had made the journey before, was sanguine; she quickly prepared for bed and went quickly to sleep; I stayed wakeful, nervous and alert in the dark, listening to the pulse of the wheels as we powered south, hour after hour, through the desert.

  I lay there thinking of Peter, who had been frightened and fretful in the confusion of the station. He had clung first to Wheeler, then Rose, then me: he kept asking for his mother, something he rarely did, for he’d always seemed inured to her absences. So insistent were his cries, and his efforts to pick her out among the crush of passengers, that I too became seized with the conviction that, at any moment, the crowds would part, and there Poppy would be, hastening towards us. I envisaged her in that same pink dress and dark fur – which was absurd, I knew. I also knew, perfectly well, that such a manifestation was impossible: it took days to sail from France to Egypt, and Poppy d’Erlanger had not yet left France. Still the obstinate vision persisted, and from thinking of Rose and Peter’s mother, I fell to thinking of my own – something I’d learned never to permit.

  On we rushed through the dark. I thought of the twelve gates of night through which the ancient Egyptians believed the sun passed during the twelve hours of darkness. One by one the perilous gates opened and closed, and I began counting them, hoping that the arithmetic might make me sleep – still I stayed wakeful.

  It was a fast train, but it made some stops en route – and at one of those stops, I crept out into the corridor in my dressing gown and slippers. It was cooler there, and through the window I could just make out a tiny station building, lit by one guttering oil lamp, palm trees fringing it, and beyond a vast blackness sprayed with stars. Further down the platform, Arab porters were loading baskets into the luggage van, but long after doors had slammed, long after the men had departed and their voices had grown faint, then inaudible, the train remained stationary in this nowhere place, while an invisible clock ticked, another underworld gate shut behind us and the gate ahead opened wide. It might have been midnight, or much later – I’d lost count. I was thinking how far away England was, how far away, how unreachably far, my mother was, when the door of the compartment next to mine quietly opened, and Wheeler stepped out into the corridor.

  She was as taken by surprise as I was, I think, for she started, pressed her hand on her chest, and then, recovering, shook her head in reprimand. ‘What are you doing out here?’ she said in a sharp way, and then more gently: ‘It’s three in the morning.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep, Wheeler.’

  ‘Me neither.’ She sighed. ‘Peter couldn’t settle, poor little chap. But I’ve got him off at last, so I nipped out for a quick breather. It’s that hot and stuffy in those cabins. And those bunks weren’t made for a woman my size.’

  ‘I expect – maybe Peter is missing his mother?’

  ‘Could be.’ There was a silence. Wheeler hesitated, then turned me to face her. In the dim bluish light of the corridor, she gave me a long inspecting look. She said: ‘And you, Miss Lucy? Are you missing yours?’

  I wasn’t sure how much Wheeler knew of my story; most of it, probably, as she was the kind of woman who absorbed information the way a bank absorbs money – and who guarded it like a bank, too. I said nothing, and Wheeler seemed satisfied with that answer. A few moments passed, while we both stared out at the stars in silence, then Wheeler rummaged in the pocket of her dressing gown. She brought out a flask, poured a thimbleful of liquid into the flask’s cup, and handed it to me.

  ‘Cherry brandy,’ she said. ‘Swallow it down in one. It’ll ease your mind. You’ll be off to sleep in no time.’

  ‘I’ve never drunk alcohol. I’m not allowed.’

  ‘You’re allowed now. I shan’t tell. It’s the middle of the night. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Get it down you. And wipe your eyes, pet – you must have got a smut in them.’

  She passed me a clean handkerchief. I wiped my wet eyes, and drank the cherry brandy in one gulp. It was sweet and viscous; it made me cough, then it smoothed warmth down my throat and into my stomach.

  Wheeler patted my head. ‘That hair of yours is starting to grow back,’ she remarked, in a kind way, turning me to face her again, and inspecting it closely. ‘It’s still a bit on the tufty side, but it’ll even out soon, you’ll see. I’m good with hair, you know – I have a knack for it. Mrs d’Erlanger swears there’s no one to touch me with hair. When we’re in Luxor, you come and see me one day, and I’ll get my scissors out, and my lotions and potions, and by the time I’ve finished you won’t know yourself.’

  ‘I don’t know myself now,’ I burst out. ‘Can’t you see that?’

  That reply was wrenched out of me before I could think. At that exact moment, the train gave a jolt, and above the rumble of the wheels as it began to move came the sudden piercing cry of a child in distress.

  It frightened me badly. I clutched at Wheeler for protection. The cry seemed to have come from inside my own body; it seemed to judder up from the floor of the carriage, lodge itself in my lungs and then escape from my mouth – but I felt that couldn’t be the case and so, as its echo died away, I asked Wheeler if it could be Peter who had cried out. She put her head on one side and listened impassively. When the cry did not repeat itself, she said that perhaps it was, but if so, he’d just been dreaming.

  She said: ‘You’re an odd one, you are. And close. But that’s all right: I’m the same way myself.’

  Then she ushered me back to my cabin, telling me that Peter’s bunk was the other side of the partition wall from mine; if the crying started up again, she advised, I must tap on that thin, that paper-thin, dividing wall: my tapped signals would be comforting.

  I returned to my bunk, and lay back into the tilt and rush of the train. Occasionally, as I tossed and turned, a cry or a sob would be audible; but whenever the sounds grew louder, and threatened to wake Frances, I did as Wheeler advised. I’d tap a soft Morse-style message on the panels, and the crying was soothed, and died down.

  We rattled on through the dark, on through the dark. Not wanting to think of what might happen after Luxor, or of my inexorable return then to England, I lulled myself by thinking of the places that still awaited me here in Egypt. I listed them again and again in my tired mind: a Winter Palace of an hotel, Carter’s castle in the desert, the American House – and beyond them, the Valley of dead kings. The wheels took up this refrain: into the Valley, into the Valley, said their iron voice. I must remember to warn Peter about scorpions, I thought. I fell into a sudden pit of sleep, just as the last gate of night swung open and the edge of the window blind began to colour with the promise of sunrise.

  THREE

  Three-Thousand-Year Effect

  I, Philastrios the Alexandrian, who have come to Thebes and seen with my own eyes these tombs of astounding horror, have spent a delightful day.

  Ancient Greek graffito in a Valley of the Kings’ tomb

  12

  Today, at nine in the morning, I received a phone call. Thanks to the arthritis, now in full winter ascendancy, it is taking me an hour to get myself out of bed, to wash and dress, and creep down the stairs. I’d just completed this whimpering descent, and was staring out at the gloom that was Highgate, when the phone on my desk rang. I snatched at the receiver, expecting to hear a welcome, familiar English voice, only to be greeted by an American one: ‘Hi, it’s Ben Fong here,’ it said, in very warm tones.

 
An unpleasant surprise: it was a month since Dr Fong had visited me; I’d been sure I’d never see him again, and, unless my mind was giving out (always possible at my age) he was now a safe two thousand miles away, filming his Tutankhamun docu-spectacular. ‘You must be in Egypt, Dr Fong,’ I said. ‘Are you phoning from Cairo – or Luxor?’

  ‘No, Highgate tube,’ he replied, in the tone of someone imparting very good news. ‘I’m on my cellphone. Five minutes away. I was wondering if I could zip up and see you.’

  ‘Highgate?’ I couldn’t hide my dismay. ‘No, you can’t,’ I added, thinking fast. ‘I’m on my way out. The cab is at the door now.’

  ‘I couldn’t catch you later? Like this afternoon, maybe?’

  ‘No, you couldn’t. I’m tied up all week. I’m very busy indeed. Why aren’t you in Egypt?’

  ‘Long story.’ He gave a gusty sigh. ‘Script problems, budget problems, crew problems – you name it. We’ve had to delay the start. I’m getting seriously pissed off. Sorry.’

  ‘So when are you leaving?’

  ‘Ten days – two weeks maybe.’ There was a pause, during which I digested this bad news, then he added, in a gloomy, embittered tone, ‘And that’s if the schedule doesn’t change again… Let’s not go there.’

  ‘The taxi man is getting impatient. I have to leave.’

  ‘Sure, okay – sorry to have sprung this on you. I’ll email – I really need to see you, Miss Payne. I––’

  ‘I’m losing you,’ I said quickly. ‘You’re breaking up. Goodbye, Dr Fong.’

  I switched the phone to answer mode and crept across to the windows. The taxi was imaginary, of course, but paranoia took hold: with cellphones, a person may say they’re in one place, while being somewhere quite different – for instance, ten feet from one’s front door.

  I peered out into the impenetrable murk that is Highgate, north London, on a wet day in February: no sign of Dr Fong. Did I trust him to get back on the tube train and go and pester someone else? No, I did not. I thought it entirely possible he’d jog up the hill in his regrettable white trainers, and hang out in one of Highgate’s superfluity of coffee shops: I envisaged him in Starbucks, lurking over a skinny latte.

  The last time I’d seen him, there had been several lines of enquiry Dr Fong seemed keen to pursue. I’d dodged them once, successfully, I felt, and didn’t intend to do so a second time. I closed the window shutters, bolted the front door, and lit the fire – I do have central heating, but it’s ineffective; the boiler, plumbers tell me, is dying. I made myself some strong coffee, and, several millennia later, still agitated, I sat down at last. My armchair of choice, chintzy, faded, with sagging springs, has reached that stage of age and neglect at which such chairs become, for a brief period, truly comfortable. It forms an island, surrounded by albums, diaries, journals and bundles of letters: the markers, milestones or tombstones of that hideous route that fools fondly call ‘memory lane’. These – all of them – related to Egypt. Picking up a worn guidebook to Hatshepsut’s temple, I turned the pages, and an old picture postcard fell out.

  It showed the baroque wedding-cake frontage of the Winter Palace Hotel. Directly below its terrace and gardens lay the wide expanse of the Nile. The disposition of palm trees, feluccas and dahabiyehs was arty: a Cook’s steamboat, dominating the river scene, was disgorging passengers the size of ants. The sepia image was faded and some chemical deterioration had made the image unpleasantly sticky, but I could still make out a large inky arrow marking one particular window on the hotel façade.

  Turning it over, I saw it was dated February 1922, and addressed to Dr Robert Payne, Trinity College, Cambridge. In a small pinched hand, the girl I then was had written:

  The arrow marks my room, Daddy! Yesterday, Miss Mack and I explored Karnak, and today the temple of Hatshepsut. Our visit to the Valley of the Kings keeps getting postponed. We sail for England at the end of next week. I hope your new course of lectures is going well and that it is not too miserably cold in Cambridge. It is hot, hot, hot here. I have learned to read a hieroglyph! Miss M exhorts me to send good wishes.

  Your loving daughter, Lucy

  There was a postscript that had been heavily crossed out: with the aid of my magnifying glass I could decipher two horribly cramped words: I hope. The rest of the afterthought was illegible – so what I had hoped, or why I’d decided to communicate this hope to my father, was irrecoverable. I examined the card; melancholy clenched around my heart. There was a stamp, but no postmark. This uninformative missive was never sent – perhaps, knowing my father would dislike the exclamation marks, I’d sent a different one.

  I could remember the hieroglyph I’d learned, however: it was Frances who taught it to me.

  ‘Okay, what can you see?’ she would ask, as we stood on the terrace at the Winter Palace. We’d be watching the sun begin to sink behind the hills on the horizon opposite; this was a dangerous moment – to the ancient Egyptians, it meant the sun was about to make its nightly journey through the perils of the underworld, from which, if one of the gates of night failed to open, it might never emerge; to me it meant Frances’s brief visit was drawing to a close; shortly she’d return to those hills and to the American House with her mother. From our vantage point, I could see the wide grey-green expanse of the Nile, the brown sails of feluccas, a man driving goats towards the ferry below and, on the far bank, a plume of white dust that marked the progress of Lord Carnarvon’s hired motorcar: he was returning from his day’s expedition to the Valley, Eve at the wheel, one of the boys from Castle Carter clinging to the running-board. You could set your watch by this punctual daily return. What can you see, Lucy?

  ‘I see the sunset,’ I replied.

  ‘Very observant. And where do you see it?’

  ‘I give in: on the horizon.’

  ‘And the word for horizon is?’

  ‘Akhet.’

  ‘Which, when you write the hieroglyph, looks like?’

  ‘A little squashed hill, with a dip in its centre, and a small round ball resting in the dip.’

  ‘Progress. We’ll learn another next time. Oh, hellishness, it’s time for the ferry.’

  She glanced over her shoulder: in the distance, but coming closer by the second, were the monitory figures of Helen and Miss Mack, shaded by parasols and deep in conversation; at the landing stage below, the ferry-whistle blew.

  Nerving myself, I said: ‘Miss Mack and I will be leaving soon. It’s coming closer and closer. The days go so fast – oh, I wish I could come with you, Frances.’

  ‘So do I. Daddy’s been very tied up at his dig, and the Lythgoes have been entertaining endless Museum donors; too many millionaires to woo – that’s what’s held things up. But don’t worry, the guest rooms will be free soon. I’m working on it.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ she replied, kissing my cheek, and then running off to join her mother.

  When Frances made a promise, it was always kept; when she said she was working on something, she meant it was semi-achieved. A few days later came the invitation to Miss Mack and me: would we like to join the Winlocks for two nights, staying at the American House, and, under their guidance, explore the Valley? Miss Mack sent a note of acceptance; I danced for pure joy. Then I applied myself: wanting to look my best for this visit, I pleaded with Wheeler until, with an affectation of grumpiness but actually with zeal, she agreed to get out her scissors, lotions and potions and transform me.

  ‘Snip, snip, snip,’ said Wheeler. ‘And stop fidgeting about – I’d prefer not to slice your ears off.’

  I stopped fidgeting and steeled myself to look in the mirror: I was seated in splendour in the d’Erlanger suite, at what would be Poppy’s dressing table when she finally made it to Luxor. Its surface was prepared for her return with scent sprays, powder pots and elaborate jars containing the secrets of eternal youth; the sense of Poppy’s presence was so strong that I kept expecting to see her face in the glass. It was
a triptych of a looking glass too: instead of beauteous Poppy, it reflected in triplicate my sad hair, and the expectant faces of Rose and Peter, perched on stools either side of me.

  ‘Pretty Lulu,’ Peter loyally pronounced, patting my hand.

  ‘No, not pretty,’ said Rose – an honest girl. ‘In fact, you still look a bit strange. But Wheeler will improve things, and it is growing back… sort of. Besides, short hair is very it – Mamma says so.’

  ‘Enough!’ Wheeler said, flourishing scissors. ‘I need silence, not you two chattering on and putting me off my stroke.’

  And she began combing and flicking and snipping and smoothing, working so fast that her fingers became a blur, and my damp tufty hair – freshly washed, soothed with a scented cream, and smelling flowery and exotic like Mrs d’Erlanger’s – lay flat against my scalp one moment, and the next stood up as if electrified. It was parted in the centre – Wheeler shook her head in disapproval; then on the left, then on the right; at last Wheeler cried, ‘Got it!’ and parted it on the left again, but lower. ‘It’s putting up a fight – but I’ll get the better of it. Oh, you would, would you?’ she said, addressing a lock more rebellious than the others. ‘I know how to deal with the likes of you… ’

  The offending lock was thinned, sheared, then twisted into obedience around a curling iron; eventually, with a sizzling sound, it gave up the battle. Peering into the mirror, I began to see that, as promised, something was happening: the thin face in the glass belonged to someone I distantly remembered, a ghost girl I recognised.

  Rummaging in a drawer, Wheeler brought out what she called ‘a fixative’. She rubbed this secret substance between her palms, applied it lightly as if anointing me, and then stepped back to admire her handiwork. ‘You’ll do,’ she pronounced.