by Robert Power
‘Tell me,’ whispers Hatshepsut, ‘of the temple you will build for me.’
‘Your Majesty, the temple I will build for you will be of unsurpassed form and glory. All will marvel at its lines and proportions. It will nestle in the amphitheatre of the Theban Hills and its colonnades will point skyward to the massive crags overhead. Between the colonnades there will be a ramp leading to the temple’s main entrance.’
‘Senenmut,’ she whispers in her architect’s ear, ‘I will call this temple Djeser Djeser, Splendour of Splendours. The reliefs at one side of the colonnade will depict my birth and assert to all the witness of my divine patronage. My father, the god Amun, will appear as Tuthmosis I, and my mother Queen Ahmosis will be seated on a couch. The goddess Bes and the deity Heqet will attend my birth chamber. Goddesses will nurse me and Thoth will make record of my reign. A flotilla will set sail from the Red Sea and I will journey to Punt. There I shall collect myrrh trees and resin, panther skins, ivory and cinnamon wood. These are to be dedicated to Amun. The precious myrrh trees will be planted in the temple gardens, to grow and flower as incense. All this will come to pass and you will carve reliefs on the other side of the colonnade recording these events. And into the cliff face itself you will dig a sanctuary to Amun, so aligned as to point to my tomb on the other side of the mountain of the Valley of Kings. A daughter to a father. A god to a goddess.’
‘Your every wish is my duty to perform.’
‘And of you, Senenmut, there will be a portrait, just as we now lie next to one another, goddess and man. In a chapel to Hathor, leading from the Punt Colonnade, will be a gated sanctuary. On the left I will be depicted worshipping the divine cow. On the right, in an alcove, hidden when the doors are open, will be your portrait. Me on the right. You on the left. Hidden. Just as we are now.’
In the Cairo Museum, to the right of the Hathor Shrine, is a statue of Senenmut and Hatshepsut’s daughter, Neferure. After fifteen years of closeness to mother and daughter, Senenmut abruptly vanishes from all records.
Some children hear stories of witches and goblins, wizards and giants; they are lullabied to sleep by amazons and swallows, Famous Five and tales of the jungle.
‘Mother of Mothers, tell me more of the Chief of the King and the bearded pharaoh,’ I whisper, ‘tell me more,’ as we hide away in the bedroom, the needle scratching and bumping on the gramophone in the parlour below.
VISIT
Did my father tell me not to say anything about it? ‘Just say we went to the house,’ he might have said. ‘If your mother asks about it, just say the lady gave you some chocolate and you waited in the front room while I took the measurements.’ My father was a bathroom fitter and he took me on this job because my mother was unhappy about something. I’d heard them arguing and her crying. Then next day my dad told me I was to go to work with him. It’s true, the woman who stood in the doorway did give me chocolate. She offered me a piece she had broken from the block that she held out to me. She looked different to my mother, the way she hung on the doorframe like someone in a circus. She said she’d been in a film with Marilyn Monroe and was surprised when I didn’t know who this was (she was telling the truth, as I discovered many years later). So she shrugged and I realised she was not really interested in me. But her hand still held out the chocolate. I took the whole bar, but she said, ‘no, just one square’, and I reddened in embarrassment. Then my dad told me to play in the garden. He shut the door behind me. I knew something was happening inside that I wasn’t supposed to see. I knew it was somehow wrong and that it would make Mum cry. I was a long time alone in the garden, but what I remember most of that day was the square of chocolate and my getting it wrong. And my neck and cheeks reddening and my wishing not to be there with this woman who was in a film with Marilyn Monroe.
SALT BEEF
‘I want to write stories,’ said the little boy to the stray dog at the end of the garden as it peered through the fence that backed onto the lane. He’d come through the orchard, the dog that is, having smelt the hot salt beef of the boy’s sandwich. The boy tweaked the dog’s ears and said he didn’t want to write about his days in his school diary: he wanted to write stories.
And this is the first story the boy told the dog, as he (the dog) nibbled on the last piece of salt beef.
‘There was once a ship, a pirate ship, so laden down with gold coins and jewels that the pirates became bored with their success. They sat around all day on the mounds of treasure, basking in the sun and picking their teeth with their daggers. One night there was a great storm, the ship was tossed on the wind, and all that could be heard above the tempest was the shifting of the treasure in the hold.’
But the dog had finished his beef and wandered back to the orchard. So the boy sat in silence on his own, with no one to tell the ending to.
BAKER’S VAN
The engine was still running, the back doors of the baker’s truck were wide open. The ginger tomcat from across the railway line helped itself to a Danish pastry as the radio on the dashboard played Shirley Bassey and the windscreen wipers swept back and forward, waving at the sun. Down the road, the ice-cream van tinkled ‘Danny Boy’ as it turned the corner and headed for the gates of the park. I stretched so I could see above the window ledge, peering from behind the curtains of my bedroom. Gazing down at the street below: the truck, the cat and the baker who cast me a glance as he tightened his belt and whistled the tune that would stay in my head for years.
STONE OF A PEACH
I took the stone of a peach and dried it in the sun. The next morning, a peacock on the beach, a flame in the tree, I awoke. On the terrace, facing the sea, listening for the lapping waves, I held it in my hand, clasped. Its hard wrinkled surface dug into the flesh of my palm. I wanted to feel it. I wanted to plant it somewhere, to give it a chance. It felt so dead and dry. I held it to my lips, blew it a kiss of life. Breathing hope.
THE MONUMENT
My best friend from school is eleven years old. We stand on the uppermost balcony of the Monument, the one that was built to mark the spot where the Great Fire of London started in a baker’s shop. I look down and am fascinated, mesmerised, by the men on a building site. How they walk about, how they come together, then move away. The friend I am with takes in the view. ‘This is the tallest building in all of London,’ he says. But I pay him little attention. Way down below, a man is unwinding a steel cable and seems to be asking another man a question. Or is he telling him a secret? Or asking for help? I want to know, to hear, to see, to understand what is happening as the steel cable unwinds and the two men in the bright orange jackets talk to each other.
THE BOY TELLS THE DOG THE END OF THE STORY
Dog-eared. Tickling the boy’s whispering lips. The smell of freshmown grass reminding them both of the season and the senses. Nibbling at radishes from the blue fish bowl. The boy restrained himself. He bit back the words that would tell more of ghosts and burning coach-houses. He offered the dog the cherry-white radish. A sniff and a lick, not so much rejection as curiosity. No cats to kill and no stories of death and spirits.
‘So,’ he said to his little dog, ‘remember the pirates? Before you left, when I gave you the salt beef from my sandwich? This is how it ended … The pirates rode the storm, or so they thought. When morning came and all was calm, they found themselves on the back of a whale, on the crest of a cloud, on the ridge of an icefloe, but never again back to where they started.’
The boy told the dog of rollicking and cutlassing and endless voyages across vast expansive seas. He spoke of smuggler’s lanes and doubloons, and of treasure chests that brimmed and glittered. And, as the wind flittered across the pond, he whispered tales of daring and lust for riches, and he painted pictures of Caribbean blue and ruby-red blood. And all the while the sun warmed his words and the dog snoozed in the sleepy balm of the Sunday afternoon.
‘With the pointy point of his sword,’ said the boy, ‘the pirate prodded the blindfolded admiral to the edge of th
e plank. And down below, in the salty sea, the sharks circled, waiting for the splash.’
The boy peeked over at the dog. To see if he was frightened. To see if he would let out the same howl as he did when the boy told him about Margaret and the burning baby. But the dog was asleep. And the boy, his truest friend, lay beside him, listening to the buzz of the meadow, smelling the sweet waters of the brook. Soon he too drifted into dreams. Of pirates. Of a captain of the sea. And his dreams met those of the dog. And over by the oak tree that overhung the pond, they whispered each other’s story, as one dream to another. The dream of the boy and the dream of the dog and the dream of the pirates on the high seas.
TWO
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
—George Bernard Shaw
MOTHER’S KISS
She runs her fingertips over the smooth stretched skin. I can hear her. I’m waiting for her soft sweet voice. I know she’s here and I want to know what she has to say. Silently she mouths the words. ‘Baby, can you hear me?’ My heart and my tongue, but no sounds. But I feel the warmth of her breath and I smile in the cosiness of my hidey-hole. Tell me about some wondrous things. Things I will know about, things I might like. Her fingers caress the skin and I feel the ripple of my mother’s kiss. ‘There’s chocolate, baby, and windy days for kites. And when the pelicans open their wings to dry, when they stretch, they’re so big.’ I listen to my mother who knows so much. I listen out for her voice on the wind, her breath on the breeze, and when it comes, when I feel her near, my head swims with the anticipation of it all and I tug on the cord like a bellringer at Easter. ‘And there are penguins and tigers and angel cake in tea shops.’ The taste and the smell of the huge roses on the window ledge.
THE NUCLEAR FAMILY
He used to watch a children’s program on the BBC called ‘The Woodentops’. At the end of each weekly show the Woodentop family would line up outside their little cottage and wave and smile. Even the spotty dog would wag his tail and wiggle his ears. The little boy would watch them on the black-and-white set. The mum and dad, the brothers and sisters, and the dog. All together, smiling and waving by the picket fence. It was nothing like his family, but he wanted to be there. In the line-up. In the sunshine. Carefree and waving. In union. Part of the happy family.
MOTHER EGYPT
I, the small boy dressed in the purple robe of court. Above me, the Goddess. Mother of Mothers. She tells me to lie beside her on the bed, as she whispers secrets from the ancient burial grounds of the pharaohs.
‘You will be my architect,’ she says, stroking my brow, ‘and I will be your queen. And these candles I light will be the only ones in the world to know who we really are. Not father or sister, teacher or friend. Just you and I. Our own special world. Tell me, who is your mother?’
‘Mother, you are Hatshepsut, the greatest of all pharaohs. I will obey your every wish. I am your servant, your devoted servant, in this world and into the next.’
I lie down next to you, Mother of Mothers, and watch over you as you fall asleep. I trace the rise and fall of the blanket against the light wallpaper. And I listen to the ticking of the clock on your bedside table.
‘You, my mother. Mother of Mothers.’
How often you told me the story. Your story, the only one that ever made sense to you. That sustained you. As we, you and I, in unison. Under the bedcovers. Truly under cover.
You used to call me baby boy, but I was always Senenmut. He was your counsellor, your confidant and tutor to your daughter. You told me, in one of my earliest night-time stories, that Senenmut was a great architect, the creator of the temple at Deir el-Bahri on the western shore of the Nile at Thebes. In my crib maybe you whispered of Senenmut’s greatness in the construction of the Karnak temple. You showed me pictures from books, plans and elevations. I can recite to this day the great gifts and honours and titles that you, Hatshepsut, my mother, bestowed upon him: Overseer of the Works, Overseer of the Fields, Overseer of the Double Gold House, Overseer of the Gardens of Amun, Controller of Works, Overseer of the Administrative Office of the Mansion, Conductor of Festivals, Overseer of the Cattle of Amun, Chief of the King, Magnate of the Tens of Upper and Lower Egypt, Chief of the Mansion of the Red Crown, Privy Councillor, Chief Steward of Amun, Overseer of the Double Granary of Amun and Hereditary Prince and Count. And most precious of all, he was declared the Steward of the King’s Daughter, Neferura.
And all the while, who were you? What were you? Hatshepsut relinquished those titles that only a woman could hold and took on those of the pharaoh. She also dressed in a man’s kilt and headdress and donned a false beard. She cut away the female t ending from her name and became His Majesty, Hatshepsu. As pharaoh she gave away to her daughter the title of God’s Wife. Yet, with an eye to the future, she was grooming her daughter as a prince, rather than a princess. Senenmut, in his role as the vizier, is depicted in a block statue holding the child Neferura in his arms. The young girl is wearing the royal false beard and the side-lock hair of a young boy.
Dawn is breaking and I am still awake.
‘Mother,’ I whisper, to hear my own voice, to sense where I am, ‘are you still sleeping?’
You are quiet; just the gentle sigh of your breathing. I am doing this for you, Mother, this reading of the hieroglyphics. From our secret box. Though the masks frighten me, with their horns, their twisted beards. Though the stark and dry colours of the desert and the strange stick insects of the hieroglyphs fill me with foreboding. You have taught me their secret formulae, unlocking codes, turning the strange and mystical shapes and forms into meaning and stories. I do this for you, because it is your command. You are the Queen and I am the Chief of the Mansion of the Red Crown.
Outside the birds are beginning to sing. The illuminated numbers on the clock tell me that soon the alarm will sound, the night will be done with, and you and I will stretch to another day.
WINDFALL BEYOND THE ORCHARD
He knew, like all small boys, that there was more to outside the fence than the orchard. He had heard the sobs in the dead of night. The doors had banged and not from the wind. Lights had turned on and off long after bedtime. The heavy steps on the stairs and the muffled cries from downstairs had tugged him from his dreams. And on those nights, when it was all too much to bear, he would crawl under the bedclothes, as a priest climbing into a priest hole, and long for the orchard and the small black dog that chewed on the windfalls.
‘Don’t cry, darling, it’s all for love,’ his mother would tell him in the morning, the blood on her lip, ‘it’s all for love.’
THE FISHMONGER
He was nearly asleep: that time when remembrances creep in. He saw his mother in a fur coat. Where had that come from? Both the coat and the memory. The way she had flirted with the young fishmonger. The looks that passed between them. And the smell and sheen of the fish. Samson, the brothers had called him, because of his strong arms, sleeves rolled up past the elbow, exposing a muscular bicep. And she had taken to wearing the fur coat. She seemed wilder, wanton, and she cried in the afternoon. Her hair was very black then, hung loose around her face and neck. Tresses, tresses of thick black hair.
‘I’ll pretend to be a bear,’ he had said to his mother, ‘to frighten Dad when he comes home from work.’
So they set up the charade. The overturned chair, a scene of carnage. And when his key sounded in the front door, the small boy threw the fur coat over himself and grizzled. What a supreme sense of power and victory overcame him. All due to the magic and transformation brought about by the fur coat. And his father expressed horror and surprise (they were almost a family; it was almost a family scene). But the game had to come to an end. The fantasy of the bear from the woods acceded to the early evening. The boy cried when it could no longer be real. That he could no longer be the bear. He cried from the frustration of not knowing the meaning of the fur coat. He couldn’t help or hold back the tears. And he cried because he was disturbed by the way the fishmonger sta
red at his mother and the smiles she returned. And his tears were of anger that the fur coat would not give him the strength and claws and teeth of a real bear. The weapons he would need to ambush his father. But most of all he cried because the spell had been broken and the game was up and everyone was who they were. His mother by the stove. His father at the dinner table. His two brothers somewhere else in the house, in their own sense of what it all meant.
If it was Friday there might be fish for dinner. Not because they were Catholics (which they were of a kind), nor because of the boats and the weekend. But because his mother had taken to wearing a fur coat and the fishmonger had forearms like the shanks of a racehorse.
CHANGELING
‘How will it all end?’
What a thing for a six-year-old to say. What with his golden locks and butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth expression. They’d been in the park for less than half an hour. It was the uncle’s first time alone with his nephew and niece since he’d got back from San Francisco. He’d bought them ice-cream (vanilla for the girl, chocolate-chip for the boy). After feeding the ducks the uncle suggested they might all enjoy taking a rowboat out on the lake. The niece, a year older than her brother, smiled and whooped at the prospect. The nephew looked out across the still water, staring at a swan beating its wings, running along the surface in its efforts to get airborne. There were a couple of boats already hired out. In one, a young couple, she with a parasol, he with a straw hat, were being rowed by an older man. The other boat was overfull with raucous teenagers and in danger of tipping over.
‘What fun,’ said the uncle, taking in the scene, ‘our day together.’
That was when his nephew turned to him, with such a strange look and said that very strange thing.
THE CURTAIN
I was so happy. After so many mornings and afternoons of peering through the fence into the orchard. Of laying out titbits to tempt his return. The dog had come back, barking at the foot of the stairs. The back door having been left ajar, just in case.