History books, said Alice. You always read history. And when I came back from my morning run we’d sit on the porch and Mother would bring us cookies and milk, and I’d tell you all the things I’d seen, and you’d say I’d made them up. And then you’d tell me some stories from your history books, and I’d say you’d made them up.
Alice laughed.
What a pair we were. So very different from the very beginning.
Yes, murmured Belle. Uncle George always used to say that. He used to say he could never believe we were twins, we were so different.
And on rainy afternoons, said Alice, you’d bring the brown stool in from the front room and put it next to the kitchen table, and you’d climb up there and pretend you were an empress sitting on your throne, remember? A great empress of all the somethings, and I would be your lady-in-waiting and bring your jewels.
Did you mind? asked Belle.
Oh no, I loved it. Especially when you asked for your crown and I brought it in on a cushion the way you said, and I waited in the doorway until all your ministers had taken their places and you told me to advance, and in I marched in front of all of them, very carefully because I was always afraid I might trip, and I stepped up on the stool and the moment had come at last, and I put the crown on your head. Oh I was so proud then. And later when court was dismissed we’d go into the bedroom and you’d drape me with scarves in front of the mirror, and I’d dance. I wonder why I always imagined Cleopatra wore scarves and danced?
I don’t know, said Belle. Perhaps you saw a picture somewhere. But dancing in scarves is nice and you were so pretty.
Oh no, not pretty.
But you were. You were a beautiful little dream in gossamer veils, and you just floated through the air.
No no, murmured Alice, I was just myself. But the books never claimed Cleopatra was pretty, did they? They just said she was charming and had a lightness about her, and that’s what always appealed to me, the lightness, the light. Any fool can be born with a pretty face. That’s nothing.
Abruptly, Belle’s hands went still above her knitting. She was staring down at the floor and Alice noticed it at once.
What is it, dear? Is your side bothering you again?
No, it’s not that. I was thinking about the little brown stool and climbing up to sit on the kitchen table, to play at being the great empress of all the somethings, nearly ninety years ago now. How foolish it seems. The empress of what, I ask you? Our little front porch?
Belle’s face was sad. She stared at the floor.
Well you were, said Alice softly. You were, you know.
I was what, dear?
The empress of our front porch. For me, you were.
Well, murmured Belle. Well. That’s something, I guess.
And it is, said Alice, it is something too. I’ve never been so proud in all my life as when the time came to enter the court with your crown and all the ministers bowed low, and I walked in holding the cushion high, so afraid I’d trip, and you smiled at me, Belle, right there in front of everybody. And it made me feel wonderful inside and suddenly I knew I wouldn’t trip and everything was going to be all right.
It was the proudest moment of my life, whispered Little Alice, and it always will be. Always.
When three or four clocks in the parlor struck the hour, Belle excused herself to take some medicine. As soon as she had left the room Alice came over to sit beside Joe. She put her hand on his arm.
Tip your head, please? I want to whisper.
Joe did so.
It’s about my sister. I know she seems grouchy sometimes but she doesn’t really mean it, it’s just that she’s in such terrible pain. First she broke one hip and then she broke the other, and there were all these operations when they put in plates and wires and I don’t know what, and the doctors said she’d never walk again because nothing’s supposed to heal at our age. But they didn’t know Belle, did they? When Belle’s determined to do something she just sets her jaw and goes ahead and does it. It doesn’t matter who says it can’t be done, she just does it. Belle will refuse to listen to others, Mother used to say. She will just get that look on her face and do exactly what she wants to.
Little Alice smiled warmly.
Even Uncle George, the poor dear, used to say the same thing. Well after she had all those operations, Belle decided she was going to walk again. And she went on trying and trying with her lips tight and her jaw set, and finally she did it. The doctors said it was a miracle but I knew it was just Belle being herself. Belle likes to pretend, you see, that she doesn’t believe in miracles. She likes to think she’s too rational for things like that.
Little Alice laughed merrily, then turned serious.
So she learned to walk again, and soon after that she had a stroke. That’s what you notice about her left side, she’s partly paralyzed. Usually I get her medicine for her, but tonight she didn’t want me to because you’re here, I could tell. And that’s why I let her bring you your whiskey and pour my sherry, because I could tell she wanted so much to do it. Belle’s proud that way. She wants to keep up appearances.
I just thought you should know, added Little Alice. So you wouldn’t think badly of her.
I could never do that, said Joe.
And she was always so talented, continued Little Alice. Everyone admired her for it. She used to write beautiful stories in French and Russian which she’d learned mostly on her own, from books, because she’s so clever with languages. And comedies that were witty and subtle and made you laugh and laugh long after you’d finished them. Belle was going to be a writer, you see, and I was going to be a painter. Privately, we always had those dreams, just between the two of us.
Little Alice looked down at her hands.
Those particular dreams didn’t work out for either of us. But there were other things to compensate, and Belle has never stopped writing. The work that has come to mean the most to her is a history of the life of Alexander the Great, for children, which she has worked on for years and years. She’s completed three or four volumes but she hasn’t gotten to the end yet, and it’s all told simply and directly so that a child can understand it and appreciate the great accomplishments. Not the military victories so much as the journeys to strange lands and all the strange peoples Alexander met, so children can appreciate what it means to try hard and live your own life. Someday she may finish it, I don’t know.
Shyly, Alice looked up.
Or maybe not? Maybe she can’t bring herself to finish it and the story of Alexander the Great will just go on and on forever, like the Nile?
Little Alice smiled.
It’s true that people are affected by where they live, and we’ve lived here so long it’s almost like a dream. Oh yes, we’re ancient and we know it. Sometimes I think we’re as old as the pyramids, so much has passed by us here.
She laughed.
But I’m chattering again, aren’t I? Belle’s right, I just can’t help myself. But you see I never wanted to become old and even now I don’t feel old, even though I look a hundred and ten, more or less. I know it sounds strange, but inside I feel exactly the same as I did when I used to go for my runs early in the morning and I’d come back and find Belle sitting on the porch, reading, and Mother would bring us cookies and milk. Inside, it’s still me.
Little Alice frowned.
And I could never picture myself living like those little old ladies you used to see around here, who never appeared in public until the sun went down. You used to see them gathering like old crows on the corners of small empty streets just after sunset, shaking their ancient hats and chatting in French with Greek or Armenian accents, or Syrian or Maltese accents, and then they’d go strolling off in a cluster along the flowered railings to their daily card game in some damp darkened room that you knew would be cluttered with heavy Moorish-style furniture, the arabesques and mother-of-pearl gleaming feebly in the gloom, the fragile inlaid filigree all gummed up with dust.
I hate dark rooms, whispered L
ittle Alice. And I don’t want to look like an old crow in some ridiculous old-fashioned hat, and I hate those tiresome card games old women play and the heavy gloomy furniture that always goes with them. I like things light and airy and I never wanted to be old, and somehow I’ve never been able to picture myself that way. I know I’m as ancient as the hills but I don’t feel that way. I feel as if I’m just still me.
Little Alice abruptly smiled.
But here I am prattling again. Tell me, do you like Egypt? It’s changed so much since we first came here. Originally, Belle and I were on the stage and that’s why we never married. In those days actresses never got into families. Nowadays it’s different, but it used to be like that.
You must have been very young when you came to Egypt, said Joe.
Oh yes, we were. With white camellias in our shining dark hair. And it was unforgettable, that first sparkling winter we were here, nearly three-quarters of a century ago.
Was it that long ago?
Yes, that’s when it was. We came for the opening of Aïda, for the first performance of Aïda that was ever given anywhere. But we didn’t come as wealthy tourists or as the guests of someone who was wealthy. We were poor then and we didn’t know a soul in Egypt and we came as slave-girls in Aïda, just two little slave-girls off at the back of the stage. Aïda opened at the khedivial opera house in honor of the opening of the Suez Canal, and there were guests from all over the world in Cairo then, and not one of them paid a penny for anything. Everything was free, given by the Magnificent, the khédive Ismail. The shops and hotels all over Egypt just sent in their bills to the minister of finance, who paid the lot of them without a murmur. The road to the pyramids was built then, so the Empress Eugénie could visit them in her carriage.
Little Alice nodded to herself.
And even though we were just slave-girls in the production, we began to attract a certain amount of attention, because we were twins, I suppose. And before long we were being invited around to dinners and to sunset sails on the Nile, and then later came the beautiful houses, the villas that were museums of china and carpets, the rarest in the world. And Belle had her residences and I had mine, and it was lavish, I can tell you. We used to call on each other in our carriages or meet along the river somewhere, and then in the evenings we’d be sitting in our separate boxes at the opera, in the first tier, our breasts covered with diamonds and every pair of glasses in the house turning from one of us to the other, looking to see what we were wearing and watching to see which gentlemen we spoke to, and with how much enthusiasm.
Little Alice smiled shyly.
People used to talk about us in those days but I don’t suppose they do anymore. I don’t suppose people even remember we’re still alive.
Oh yes they do, said Joe. And there are all kinds of mysterious tales about the mysterious sisters who live in a rambling houseboat on the Nile.
Little Alice clapped her hands in delight.
There are? Still? Even though we’re a hundred and ten, more or less?
Little Alice grew wistful.
What kinds of tales? Where do they say we came from?
Ah, now that’s the most mysterious part of all. Nobody claims to know where you really came from, but one story is that you were Russian princesses running away from a family scandal. An uncle had gambled everything away in Nice, or some such thing, so friends bundled the two of you into a sealed train in St Petersburg one cold winter night, at the Finland Station, and you went abroad with the best of old Russia in your suitcases and never went back again.
It sounds like a nineteenth-century novel, whispered Alice happily.
It does, doesn’t it? And then there’s a totally different story, just as intriguing, about the two of you being Hungarian actresses who went to Paris at a young age and became a hit there. And another story begins in Venice, and another in Vienna, and just on and on. There’s no end to them really, and one is more exotic than the other.
Little Alice smiled, looking down at her hands.
Just imagine, she murmured. Isn’t that lovely…. Uncle George would have liked that, she added with great feeling.
And who was Uncle George, said Joe, if you don’t mind my asking?
No, I don’t mind. We loved him a great deal and we both like to talk about him now. It didn’t used to be so easy…. He was our mother’s brother and he was the only relative we had, the only family. He ran the pub in the village where we grew up. It wasn’t much of a pub but that’s what we used to call it. When Belle and I were children we cleaned up for him there. We mopped the floors and carried in the firewood and did the washing up. We always thought it was very exciting to be in such an adult place.
You were English, then, originally?
Yes, from a little village near York. Our father had worked in a factory and he was killed in an accident when we were babies, so Mother took us back to her village. The only thing we ever knew about our father was that he was a laborer and drank a lot because he was unhappy. Mother never talked about him, Uncle George told us what we know. Apparently our father used to beat Mother when he drank, we overheard Mother and Uncle George talking about it once. And then after he died Mother made quilts and things like that to sell, but it was really Uncle George who made life possible for us. He was a bachelor and he helped out with our food and our clothes and other things, and the presents Santa Claus gave us at Christmas, and the presents we received on our birthday, were always from Uncle George.
It was Uncle George’s cottage that we lived in when Mother took us back to her village. It was small so he moved out back into the shed and let us use the cottage. He made wonderful things with his hands, mostly for us, but he must have been unhappy too because he also drank a lot. He was a kind man and very gentle and he was always so good to us. When we were children, there wouldn’t have been any Christmases for us without Uncle George.
Little Alice gazed down at her hands.
He drowned himself in the millpond one New Year’s Eve. He went down there alone in the darkness and drowned himself and they found him on New Year’s Day. He would have been forty that year. And after that Mother said she wanted to leave the village forever, she said she just couldn’t live there anymore. Well she had her own dreams, Mother did, and she wasn’t just like other people, and there was a little money from the cottage and from Uncle George’s share of the pub, and she used that to take us to Italy, which was an unheard-of thing to do in those days for people like us, common people who were poor and uneducated and didn’t know anyone. But she was a brave woman and she wanted her daughters to make something of their lives, so she took us to Italy because she loved the sun, and an Italian man she met gave us singing lessons, Belle and me, and that’s where it all began for us. All of it.
Little Alice tipped her head.
It’s strange, isn’t it, those exotic tales people tell about Russian princesses and Hungarian actresses, and Venice and Paris and Vienna and all the rest of it. Of course, I’d be speaking less than the truth if I didn’t tell you we used to encourage that sort of thing when we first came here.
Little Alice looked up at Joe.
Two little girls, she whispered. Two little girls mopping the floor of a pub in a village near York, a long time ago. And then later the singing lessons, and eventually appearing as slave-girls in the first performance of Aïda that was ever given anywhere, just tiny parts for two young girls. And so it all began, and so it goes.
Suddenly her smile was gone and she was gazing up at Joe with a childlike face, in a questioning way.
So it’s no wonder, is it, that we never left? That we stayed in Cairo, in faraway Egypt?
No wonder at all, said Joe. After all, not everyone has the chance to be Cleopatra beside the Nile.
Little Alice stared at her cramped gnarled hands.
Oh yes, she whispered, oh yes. And that’s what I always used to tell myself when I sat in my box at the opera and everyone looked at me and envied me for my diamonds a
nd I felt nothing but rage and sorrow because I could never get married. And later when I was home again in whatever villa it was, and the man had left to go home to his family and the servants were in bed, and it was very late and I was all alone again and crying and crying in bed because I knew I could never get married, that’s what I used to tell myself. Ten thousand times I must have said it as I cried myself to sleep. We can’t have everything in life, so remember how lucky you are. Think of the good things you have and just remember. Remember.… Or as Uncle George used to say, You can take what you want from life. All you have to do is pay for it….
Joe reached out and plucked a tear from her cheek.
There now, he murmured, there now. And so we do remember, and so we do pay. And what a beautiful night it is to be here with the two of you in this wondrous room, the stars so bright and magical upon the river.
Big Belle cleared her throat by the door, a noisy growling sound. Slowly, she came limping back into the room, smiling broadly.
Here now, what’s this? Are the two of you holding hands already? I’m gone for no more than a minute and my little sister is already flirting with some gentleman caller?
My fault entirely, said Joe. We got to talking about the past and I’m hopelessly sentimental, I have to tell you that.
You’re Irish, thundered Belle.
Well that’s right.
Well don’t be redundant then, we heard you the first time. Now let me take your glass and refill it for you. It’s getting late and we have some talking to do.
Alice moved away to her chair. Belle returned with the new glass of whiskey.
Will that do?
It will. A mite large as before, but then.
But then, life should be large, boomed Belle. Otherwise, what’s the point? Now you’ve been sitting here patiently letting two old sisters carry on the way they’re used to doing, and you’ve hardly said a word, which must mean you’re out looking for things. My guess is, you have some questions to ask. Do you?
Yes, as a matter of fact.
Fact? thundered Belle. Fact, you say? Well since Alice and I have lived a total of almost two hundred years, and gossip being what it is in Cairo, and men being what they are anywhere, Alice and I have come across a few facts in our time. But first, tell me this. Do you work for this man Bletchley?
Nile Shadows (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 3) Page 32