The Visitors

by Sally Beauman

  ‘Died.’ He grimaced. ‘Ten of ’em, see, milady. Too much for ’er. Gettin’ on, the old bitch was, and when the last one come out dead, covered in blood, no bigger than your thumb, I knowed what was coming, and––’

  ‘Yes, yes – that’s quite enough, Fletcher.’

  ‘How much are the leads and the collars?’ I asked – there were several of these on sale too, and I had my eye on the red ones. Red was Rose’s favourite colour.

  ‘Ah, now you’re talking, miss,’ Fletcher said, brightening. ‘Tip-top leather, nice brass buckle – two shillings for the collar and one shilling for the lead, which makes three and sixpence with one of these fine little dogs ’ere, but as I knows ’er ladyship of old, miss, let’s say three shillings.’

  ‘No, let’s say one shilling all in,’ I replied. Eve coughed.

  ‘Are we talking dog or bitch, miss? The bitches is more valuable, see? But ’arder to train. In my experience.’

  ‘That one, please, Mr Fletcher.’ I pointed to the one he held. ‘And how does one feed it?’

  ‘Baby’s bottle and milk, miss. Guzzles it down. You knows your dogs, I see. A fine bitch. Two and ninepence – with the collar and lead, and I call that generous.’

  ‘One shilling and sixpence,’ I said, trying to hide my mounting desperation. ‘I only have two shillings, you see, and I’ll have to buy a bottle as well. That’s – my final figure.’

  I showed Fletcher my florin. By then I wanted to rescue the dog badly and, disobeying the international laws of dealing, I was making that only too obvious. To my surprise and relief, Fletcher gave in with alacrity. He winked, spat on his hand, shook mine, and bundled the puppy into a brown paper bag. With my remaining sixpence Eve and I bought a baby’s bottle and teats and then set off for Highclere in her car, top down, wind blowing in our faces. The little dog lay in my lap, trembling.

  ‘I can’t believe you did that, Lucy,’ Eve said. ‘What an adventure – wait till I tell Pups! Fletcher has twelve children and lives in this disgusting filthy shack – you can’t begin to count the pheasants and rabbits Pups has lost to him. He’s up before the magistrates for poaching every other week, and the sob-stories he tells! “Who’d begrudge me one little rabbit, Your Honour, when my kiddies ain’t eaten in weeks.”’ Eve, who was a poor mimic, did a whining, clown-like Hampshire accent. ‘The truth, of course, is that he drinks – and that’s where your one and sixpence will go… He’s such a rogue.’

  I considered this analysis. According to Rose, Lord Carnarvon expected to bag a thousand birds a day on his pheasant shoots. Ditto rabbits. I said nothing. The puppy whimpered.

  One of Highclere Castle’s lodges and castellated gates came into view. Eve accelerated up the winding drive: it was a mile long, Rose had told me. The parkland through which it passed had been laid out by Capability Brown; the great cedars I could see ahead of us had been planted in the 1790s by a previous earl, one with botanical inclinations.

  ‘What’s more,’ Eve continued, changing gear, ‘Fletcher’s obstinate, and he usually drives a very hard bargain. He must have liked you, Lucy. I was fearing the worst. Daylight robbery, but I thought he’d be sure to stick at two and ninepence.’

  By the time we reached the house itself, and I saw it for the first time in all its vastness and grandeur, I realised that I’d created a problem. By then, the little dog had peed on my dress, woken up, scratched and, trembling, gone to sleep again. Its vigorous scratching was as infectious as a yawn – it made me itchy too. I was supposed to be joining Rose and Peter inside for tea, for the tour of Lord Carnarvon’s Egyptian treasures. Glancing up at Highclere’s massed façade, its towers, its ranked windows, I realised belatedly that this puppy did not belong in this palace, and I didn’t either – not with the spreading wet stain on my skirt, and the powerful smell that was now emanating from me, a smell that was part pee and part unwashed dogginess. This odour became obvious the second Eve stopped the car. ‘Oh Lord,’ Eve said. We had a hurried consultation.

  We’d already agreed that the puppy would be given to Rose today, with the lead and collar kept for her birthday. But what to do with it now? Eve felt the dog could be whisked away to the kitchen quarters or the stables until the time came for us to leave – ‘Streatfield will deal with it,’ she said, indicating a stately man who was descending the steps and advancing upon us. Scarlet with embarrassment, I vetoed that; the thought of the little dog peeing on Carnarvon’s butler was humiliating; besides, it was frightened and I didn’t intend to be parted from it.

  In the end we agreed I’d be parked outside with the dog, and Eve would go in quest of Rose and Peter and resolve matters. ‘If you insist, dear,’ Eve said, and I could see that even her good manners were failing her. I could detect a faint but fatal note of impatience at my obstinacy. Escorted by a liveried footman summoned by Streatfield, I was led to a table and chairs beneath a cedar, and asked if I required tea. I said I’d like that.

  ‘China, Indian or Ceylon, madam?’ the man enquired.

  ‘Indian, please,’ I replied, redder than ever and snatching one choice at random.

  ‘Milk or lemon, madam?’

  ‘Milk.’

  ‘Jersey or Shorthorn, madam?’

  Minutes later a maid appeared with a silver tray on which was tea, and an array of tiny sandwiches and cakes. Realising I’d left the bottle in the car, I poured some of the milk into a cup, dabbled my fingers in it and allowed the puppy to lick them. Its small pink tongue was sandpaper rough. It seemed to like the milk, licking off the drops that adhered to its whiskers; it went to sleep again. This was soothing, as was the absence of further servants, or indeed any people.

  Feeling calmer, I inspected the house – how huge it was, a momentous high-Victorian pile, square as a dice, surmounted by towers and pinnacles, solemn yet fantastic. Replacing earlier houses on the same site, it had been commissioned by the third earl, and finally completed during the lifetime of his son, the fourth earl. This last, the present Lord Carnarvon’s father, had been a celebrated classicist and a distinguished statesman, Eve had said; serving in three Cabinets and appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he had made Highclere into a Conservative Party outpost: politicians of the day had gathered there to shoot and to plot. Disraeli had taken the same approach we had that day, Eve said with a smile, and, passing the lake, the temple to Diana and the deer park, had cried out in an ecstasy of admiration: ‘How scenical, how scenical!’

  Highclere’s architect had also designed the Houses of Parliament in London – and, thinking back, I can see the resemblance. It had the same assertive air and the same spurious suggestion of romance; architectural allusions to some mythic Arthurian past, as if a brotherhood of knights occupied it, ready to ride forth and conquer the forces of darkness. It suggested gravitas, government, a domain where a kingdom and a great empire were administered. Did it look like a country house, someone’s home – even someone as rich as Lord Carnarvon? No, it didn’t. Too many Camelot towers. I gazed at the flagpole on the main tower. The air was hot; no breeze: the flag drooped motionless.

  Inside, Rose and Eve had told me, it was regal and masculine, resembling Pugin’s House of Lords, or one of the gentlemen’s clubs in St James’s. Lord Carnarvon’s wife, Almina, had tried to tame these male tendencies and put her own mark on the house, Eve said. Aided by the fortune of her father, Alfred de Rothschild, an indulgent man – ‘Another ten thousand pounds, puss-cat? But what have you done with last week’s?’ – Almina Carnarvon had thrown money at Highclere. Almina’s upbringing was French – she’d grown up in Paris – and her taste was Louis Quinze or Louis Seize; to her, the Puginesque flourishes, all that pomp and circumstance, all those heraldic beasts, were anathema. And so, with her, had come an attack of femininity: Hepplewhite, Boulle, pretty Aubusson and Savonnerie carpets, flowered Meissen porcelain – and a jewelled flask, kept in Almina’s boudoir, that was said to contain five precious drops of Marie Antoinette’s execution blood. ‘But it’s hopele
ss,’ Eve had said with a sigh. ‘The house resists it. You might as well plant a rose on the slopes of Mount Everest.’

  It was the east face of this mountainous house I was examining now – and to my consternation I saw that there were figures emerging from it. I squinted at them, hoping they would not be strangers; Eve had said, in a negligent way, that only twenty people or so were staying at present. One of those guests was Howard Carter – but it was not his welcome figure that I saw now. A wispy young man in plus-fours, carrying a golfing bag, advanced across the lawns, and came to a halt at the tea table.

  ‘I say, you haven’t seen Biffy by any chance, have you?’ he enquired, addressing the sky above my head.

  I told him I hadn’t seen anyone; this seemed to make him cross.

  ‘Well, honestly! Four o’clock I said, four o’clock we agreed, four o’clock it is. Typical! If you see him, tell him from me, will you – I’ve gone on.’ He frowned. ‘And he can put that in his bally pipe and smoke it,’ he added, and walked off again.

  Shortly after this, I thought I did spy Howard Carter in the distance – a familiar bulky figure, who issued from the house, surveyed the lawns as if searching for someone and then, in a purposeful way, strode off towards the stables. Not long after this sighting, a tiny man with bandy legs ambled across the grass towards me. He came to a halt and inspected both me and the puppy with sharp electric-blue eyes.

  ‘Let’s be having a look at this beast then,’ he said, and crouched down next to my chair.

  He had very small hands and handled the puppy in an expert way. As soon as he touched it, its trembling ceased. He felt along its back and around its muzzle; he lifted the little dog’s head, and examined it in a squinting manner. ‘Never look them in the eyes direct,’ he said. ‘Dogs don’t like that, not on first acquaintance. Bide your time: when they’re ready to look you in the eye, they’ll let you know it.’

  The puppy gave a small shudder, then licked his hand. He smiled, made a crooning sound and fondled its ears. ‘There’s Jack Russell in there for sure,’ he said, ‘and lurcher. So she’ll be fast, and a rare little hunter – give her a few months and you watch her go.’

  ‘You don’t think bulldog? Or sheepdog? Mr Fletcher, the man who sold her to me, said there could be French poodle.’

  ‘Did he just? Don’t you be listening to fairy stories like that. There’s gypsy dog for sure. She’s in a state – look at her fur, poor thing! She needs a good groom and a bath – and what’s more, she’s hungry.’

  He bounded to his feet, fetched the jug, tipped some milk into his cupped palm and held it out. ‘Jersey, my little darling,’ he murmured. ‘Nice and creamy.’

  The puppy lapped inefficiently, splashing most of the milk on the sleeve of the natty brown suit the man was wearing; this did not appear to concern him. After a while he rose, and announced a bottle was needed and he’d organise it.

  ‘Too young to be parted from her mother,’ he said, giving the little dog one last caress. At speed, he departed in the direction of the house. The puppy went to sleep again.

  I was left alone for a while after that. I was beginning to think my next Wonderland visitor would be a white rabbit consulting his pocket watch, or a mad queen crying, ‘Off with their heads!’ Eventually two visions of loveliness wandered across the lawns, and came to a halt at the tea table. Both were tall, elegant, older than Eve, and clad in exquisite tea dresses. ‘Eve said we’d find you here,’ said one of them, sharp-featured, with a chignon of thick dark hair wound about like a coil of cobras. ‘How do you do, my dear. I am Dorothy Dennistoun, and this is Lady Cunliffe-Owen… oh, look, Helen,’ she went on, ‘this must be the famous puppy! Isn’t he adorable? What a little scamp.’

  Both women bent over my lap, cooed, wrinkled their noses and rapidly retreated. They sit down on the far side of the table. I muttered an apology and, clutching the puppy, removed myself, wandering a short way across the lawns until I was out of their line of sight. Thinking the puppy might like to walk a little, I lowered it very gently onto the grass and released it. It tottered a few steps, then tumbled over and yelped. Open space seemed to terrify it; it peered about and began to shake violently.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, and felt I couldn’t go too far in case Eve returned for me. So I bundled the little dog up and returned to the vicinity of the tea table, sitting down on the grass at a safe distance behind the two women. Tea had been brought them and they were deep in conversation. I glimpsed the figure of Carter again in the distance; he still seemed to be in search of someone. I saw him scanning the lawns; he glanced towards the tea table but then, to my disappointment, struck off at a swift pace in a different direction.

  I regretted that; the previous day a letter from Frances had arrived, forwarded from Cambridge by my father. It brought exciting news about Carter and his quest in the Valley of the Kings. I’d been hoping I’d encounter him today; hoping that he, or Carnarvon, or both of them, would discuss this latest development. I’d have to wait. I leaned back against the trunk of the cedar and stroked the puppy until it was calm again. Snatches of the two women’s conversation drifted across on the still afternoon air.

  I was paying little attention to the women’s talk until I heard the one called Helen Cunliffe-Owen mention Carter’s name, and realised she was discussing the famous seance at Highclere that he had described to Frances and me. ‘And then, Dorothy dear,’ she said, ‘Howard Carter finally admitted it: he’d recognised the language the instant the voice began to speak through me. It was Coptic! Imagine! A dead language no one’s spoken for thousands of years.’

  ‘Helen, darling – how positively bloodcurdling! Was it a warning, do you think?’

  ‘Carter wouldn’t say. He clammed up… but there have been warnings.’ Her voice dropped, then she said something about Carnarvon’s consulting a palmist in London: ‘It was back in July, Dorothy… the great Velma took one look at his hand and said: “Lord Carnarvon, if you value your life, you must never return to Egypt. No matter what the temptation or circumstances.”’

  I heard that clearly – and I heard her friend’s reply too.

  ‘Well, he won’t be returning, I know that for sure,’ the woman called Dorothy Dennistoun said in her assertive voice. ‘Almina confides in me – we’re like that, darling. So I can tell you, she’s put her foot down at last. She’s had just about enough of Egypt! It’s her money that pays for that little hobby – and it doesn’t come cheap! So they’ve decided: no more Valley of the Kings. No more excavations, time to call a halt! Besides, dear, strictly entre nous––’

  ‘Now, Dorothy – we mustn’t tittle tattle.’

  That rebuke made Mrs Dennistoun lower her voice too, so although I was listening unashamedly by then, I caught only scraps… Even their money not inexhaustible… already got through the millions Rothschild left Almina – inside four years, darling… Son-and-heir’s new bride, not a penny to her name… Carnarvon’s health… if the worst happened… Death duties… cruel wicked taxes.

  ‘That terrifies Almina,’ Mrs Dennistoun concluded on a dramatic note. ‘She says death duties could wipe them out. The horror of it! Imagine, Helen – if all this had to be sold.’ She waved a hand in the direction of house, lawns, cedars and undulating acres.

  ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that, Dorothy.’ Lady Cunliffe-Owen rose to her feet, as if anxious to curtail her friend’s gossiping. ‘Shall we go back to the house now or watch the croquet?’ With a regretful shake of her head, she added: ‘Major economies and no more Egypt, then? That seems sad. Carnarvon loves it there so much. Whatever will he do about Howard Carter?’

  ‘Give him his marching orders.’ Dorothy also stood up. ‘He’s nerved himself to do it and it’s slated for tonight. After dinner, Almina says. A man-to-man talk. Expect rages… Carter won’t go down without a fight.’

  ‘No, indeed.’ Both women laughed; linking arms, they strolled off together.

  I stared after them. I wondered if it could b
e true, that the expeditions to the Valley were over, that Carnarvon was pulling out of Egypt, that Howard Carter would have to abandon his life’s work.

  I could not believe it: that was not the information Frances had given me in her letter. She claimed Carter was keener than ever – and with very good reason. Before her family left for Maine, she’d explained, her father had been in New York, tying up his work at the Metropolitan Museum. There – possibly at Carter’s behest; Frances left this unclear – Winlock had re-examined some artefacts found in a pit in the Valley of the Kings years before, in the days when Theodore Davis had been digging there. This find included numerous large pottery embalming jars, much rough linen material and papyrus wreaths. When they were first unearthed, Davis, the avid treasure hunter, had angrily dismissed them as worthless. He had handed them to Herbert Winlock – it was either that, or dispose of them. That had been fourteen years earlier; the collection had been languishing in the Met’s storerooms ever since, with many of the jars still unopened.

  Examining them again, Winlock realised he was looking at funerary material: natron, embalming vessels, mud-seal cartouches and linen bandages – the two latter bore hieroglyphic inscriptions. Experiencing a sudden stab of excitement and triumph, Winlock recognised the throne name of a little-known king, Tutankhamun – and that changed everything.

  They were found in the Valley, Frances wrote, in high excitement. And if his funeral artefacts were buried there, it means Tutankhamun is buried there too – it’s a virtual certainty. Yet his tomb has never been found! Daddy wrote Mr Carter to tell him. It could mean Mr Carter was right all along, and the Valley isn’t exhausted. It doesn’t tell him exactly where Tutankhamun’s tomb might be, of course, though it’s likely to be somewhere close to the funeral cache – and it could have been robbed anyway. But it must give Mr Carter new hope. This is top secret! Don’t breathe a word to anyone.

  I considered this evidence: gossiping Mrs Dennistoun must have been wrong, I decided. In view of this breakthrough, it was impossible that Lord Carnarvon would end his quest now. Surely Carter would be dispatched to the Valley post-haste… I closed my eyes. Even in the shade of the cedar it was hot. The puppy had peed on my skirt again. Everyone seemed to have forgotten its existence – and mine. I felt myself drifting off; Highclere and the Valley began to blur in my mind, and the heat of the lawns became the heat of the desert. From the depths of the Valley, someone was calling to me. The voice was insistent: Lulu, Lulu, Lulu. I opened my eyes and saw Peter standing in front of me, jiggling with excitement. He was holding the hand of a very tall and good-looking young man; a man with a Lancelot look, I thought, staring at him.