The Soul Scarab

by C J Turner

  ‘Why couldn’t you have told me last night that she had no luggage, no clothes other than the ones she stood up in and those only fit for the rag bag?’ Alice crossly confronted Blake, whilst he was trying to eat his breakfast. It was a mistake.

  ‘It did not occur to me – why should it?’ he replied coolly. ‘Good grief, Alice, I cannot think of everything! Use your initiative - take whatever you need from the housekeeping and kit her out if you must, but I really can’t spend any more time on this, I have work to do!’

  ‘And that’s another thing, you didn’t even tell me her name, what did you call her when she was in the hospital?’

  ‘I didn’t call her anything’, the harassed Professor snapped irritably, ‘There was no need, b…’

  ‘Well, of all the heartless, insensitive…’

  ‘I was going to say, BUT, if I can just get a word in, the nurses call her Meredith after the Ward – you know Edith Meredith the war heroine,’ he prompted impatiently as Alice stared at him blankly. ‘However, I really don’t ...’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t sound right if it’s a surname! But if she has already got used to it, I supposed it will have to do. Mind now, as I have to go out and get some things for her, you just make sure you stay here, and do not leave her on her own before I come back. Apparently, there was a break in over the road only a week or so ago and you can’t be too careful!’

  She bustled out, a woman with a mission, and Blake found himself completing his sentence to the empty air.

  ‘…like that name!’

  Exasperated, he turned back to the papers spread out beside his plate. Smiling grimly to himself, he finished his coffee, gathered up his notes and strolled into the study. He had no intention of going anywhere this morning, in fact, he expected to be rather busy, and now with Alice on her high horse with any luck he would be left in peace for a while.

  Because Blake had never pretended that he had entered into this arrangement with the hospital for altruistic reasons. Here at last was intrigue, challenge and something more, a feeling of excitement and anticipation he could not explain even to himself, but which suddenly made him feel that he had shed ten years and come alive again. He had acquired a certain quality, a focused, predatory look in his eyes that was more usually associated with stripes and sheathed claws. It would have been recognised and produced agreeable anticipation in his friends had they had seen it, but distinct nervousness in his enemies! Sitting down at his desk, he pulled a notepad towards him and reached for the telephone.

  Alice stamped upstairs muttering balefully under her breath, but her face cleared when she came to Blake’s bedroom door. Going in, she rummaged thoughtfully through the contents of his wardrobe before taking out a beautiful Liberty silk dressing gown. A gift, or possibly hint, presented to the Professor by a former girl friend and never worn. Hmm, she thought, use my own initiative must I - this will do nicely!

  Wrapped in the soft silk, Meredith was persuaded to rest during the morning until Alice returned with the new clothes. It was impressed on her that the Professor would be working in his study and disturbing him should be avoided, unless in an emergency.

  Restlessly, she tried curling up on the window seat with a magazine but the words danced in front of her tired eyes, her thoughts too busy to make sense of them. Giving up, she stared down unseeingly at the tree-lined avenue below and decided to use this respite to try and calmly get her thoughts in order.

  Meredith knew that she had lost her memory due to a head wound incurred during a hit and run accident. She could understand English but apparently spoke it with a slight foreign accent. However, when she was still only semi-conscious, she had spoken another language that no one had understood, and which she had no recollection of now.

  She had been so afraid when she had first returned to consciousness. At least in her troubled dreams the surroundings had been familiar – even if the shadowy, hateful images had been terrifying, she had known where she was and what was happening to her. Then she had woken up and instead of the relief she should have felt that the ordeal was over, reality had proved to be even more of an nightmare. She remembered thinking at one time that it was this unfamiliar, waking world that was the dream and that she had only to fall asleep to return to her own time.

  But that she dared not do.

  Here, all was strange and alien. Everything was wrong, the unfamiliar food, the smell of the air and the foreign looking people in odd clothes who mouthed incomprehensible words at her. Even the colours were jarringly unnatural, the shape and texture of nearly every object unknown and puzzling. There was no single point of reference, no lifeline to cling to and she was terrified, a hair’s breadth from madness.

  Almost she gave in, and then he came. She remembered his voice piercing the thick frightening fog filling her mind and with his calm authority came at last understanding, anchored to reality. The fragmented nightmare images had receded to leave a frightening vacuum in their place, which was almost as bad.

  With her sudden comprehension of his words, the immediate world had seemed to slip into focus, she recognised that she was in a hospital ward and later, she understood their account of how she had got there.

  But that was all, she had no memory of who she was or what she had been doing prior to the accident, and the affinity she had felt at first for the tall stranger dissipated into mute wariness. When she understood that he was involved merely by chance, and that the empathy she thought she had felt between them was not based on any tangible connection, her disappointment had been overwhelming. They had told her that she had been clutching his address in her hand when she was brought in, but she could not make much of that. She could have been delivering something to him that had been stolen after the accident, it meant nothing. He was in truth just a stranger, and why should a casual passer-by have any real interest in her? Sensing an underlying purpose to his questions, to which she had no answers, fear and suspicion began to mount up making her sullen and resentful of his sure and total poise.

  Listening to the nurses laughing and talking to each other, she became aware that the Professor’s visits created something of a flurry. Remembering their freely expressed and candid observations had brought the swift colour to her cheeks when she saw him next. To her there was nothing in the least romantic about his visits and she grew angry, both with him and with herself, when she realised how much she had began to depend on them.

  The Professor was, after all, nothing to her, she had no claim on him whatsoever, at some stage he would find more urgent demands on his time, and his visits would cease. She was expecting this to happen and steeled herself to fight off the panic reaction and feign the same cool diffidence that he showed to her and which made her wonder why he continued to come. But he did come, every day. At the beginning when it was very bad, he might only hold her hand in his, or gently stroke her brow, but in such a cool, almost clinical manner, that in no way could she ascribe his actions to some warmer or more personal concern for her welfare.

  The nurses had told her that Professor Blake Gasgoine, eminent archaeologist and lecturer, was somewhat of a celebrity but she has found that fact hard to reconcile with the easy manner and casual style of this tall, rather hard featured man. However, it was not his academic qualifications that had made such an impression on the nurses.

  The surprise was huge however, when Sister Maguire had told her that he had offered her a temporary home with him to convalesce, now that there was no physical reason why she should remain in the hospital.

  ‘But why should he do this?’ she had asked, stunned, when Sister Maguire had finished her proposal.

  ‘Oh, he is very keen on doing some research into the language you were speaking when you were first brought in – apparently it is a very unusual dialect or something; to be honest I didn’t precisely follow what he was saying but he obviously finds it very interesting. He says it will give him an ideal opportunity to study it. You have nothing to worry about my dear, the arran
gement is perfectly above-board. There is a housekeeper apparently, who would live in while you are staying there and the police will keep an eye on you and keep you informed of developments. They are doing everything they can, you know, to trace your identity.’

  ‘But what will happen to me if I never recover my memory,’ she had faltered, ‘I cannot live with him forever.’

  ‘Don’t look too far ahead and start worrying, that’s what the doctors have told you. Just live for the moment. I am sure it will not be long before they trace your family, or your memory could come back at any time. Sooner, Dr. Hill thinks, than later, if you give it a chance. Just give it time. Now, what do you think?’

  What choice did she have? She was terrified, if the truth were known, that if she declined this offer, the Professor would turn his back on her for good, and then what would become of her? However tenuous their relationship, it was the only one she had in a frighteningly upside down world. With a great deal of trepidation, she had accepted.

  In the event, the Professor himself was so matter of fact when he came to collect her, coolly waving aside her awkwardly expressed murmurs of gratitude, that she had managed to cope reasonably well, although it was a wrench leaving the safe and familiar confines of the hospital and the cheery chatter of the nurses for the unknown world outside.

  It was a great relief when she met Alice. She felt at home with the older woman from the first, there was an instant rapport between them and suddenly Meredith no longer felt so alone.

  Now, as she knelt on the window seat looking down at the tree-lined avenue of gracious Georgian houses, the peaceful scene outside at odd variance with her uneasy thoughts, she caught sight of her reflection in the glass.

  It was a shock. The windowpane was old glass and the image distorted but the image showed plainly enough that one side of her face was still puffy and bruised. The other side was painfully thin, the abrasions standing out like scars on her jaw and cheek. Harsh worry lines etched into her forehead under the white dressing and pulled down the corners of her mouth. One eye was still half closed with stitches puckering the delicate skin under the brow, and the shadows under both stood out like dark smudges in the too pale face.

  It was a very odd feeling knowing that you are looking at your own reflection, but seeing a stranger gaze steadily back at you.

  ‘You are ugly,’ she told the shadowy image in the glass. ‘But who are you? Where did you come from? … Is there someone looking for you, anyone who cares for you at all?’

  The sad eyed reflection looked mutely back at her reproachfully. Tears gathered at the back of her eyes and she bit down hard on her trembling bottom lip, determined not to give in to them. Her looks, or lack of them, she scolded herself severely, were the least of her troubles.

  The doctors had thought that she was in her early twenties and had told her that apart from the recent damage, she was physically very fit. Unusually so. Perhaps she had been an athlete? No good - the image struck no responsive chord at all. She thought the Professor was probably in his thirties and what does that have to do with anything, she caught herself up, furious at the direction her own betraying thoughts had led.

  Casting round in her mind for distraction, it occurred to her that she had not seen the Professor at all since the previous day; annoyingly he now seemed quite content to leave her to the kind ministrations of Alice. Meredith felt too alone with her unhappy thoughts in this quiet house after the constant frenetic bustle of the hospital, and she had an undeniable urge to see him. Alice had told her that he had not been idle on her behalf and that he was going to arrange for Meredith to meet a friend of his who might be able to help her. She felt that she should at least make the effort to thank him for all the trouble he was going to, and conveniently forgetting the injunction not to disturb him, she decided to venture downstairs in order to do just that.

  She had reached the study door and was just about to give it a polite knock, when she heard the Professor’s voice raised in protest. He was talking to someone called Max on the telephone and as she hesitated, one random word riveted her attention.

  ‘I don’t know, she was talking in her sleep as I keep telling you but she distinctly mentioned the ‘ta set aat’ - yes that’s right, the ‘Great Place’ – the Valley of the Kings … no, I’m not likely to forget, her pronunciation was unusual, but it was definitely Menkheperne … absolutely – she spoke the name several time. Yes it is, absolutely genuine, a stunning piece, Eighteenth Dynasty in my opinion - there has to be a connection and this may give us the chance of finding out … well, of course Max, that’s your department … No, but until I clear this up, she is staying here where I can keep an eye on her.…’

  At the mention of that ancient name, Meredith felt an icy shock pass through her. Biting back an involuntary exclamation of fear, she flung herself away from the door, her heart pounding. It was as if a beam of light had suddenly been switched on in the dark featureless desert of her mind; a brilliant array of impressions had sprang up bright and clear, and then just as quickly, like snow on a hot plate, melted away again, leaving her bereft and empty. Stifling a sob, her errand forgotten, she ran back up the stairs to her room. Trembling, she shrank into a corner of the window seat and pressed her hot cheek against the cold glass.

  In the black despair of her mind, the bitter shreds of mist eddied and swirled, tantalisingly thin. She had been so close, so very close to breaking through.

  One thing she was now sure of, she could trust no one - the helping hand had revealed hidden claws.

  Gradually, the sick darkness drained away and she found herself staring mindlessly out of the window at the activity centered around a small dark blue car parked on the opposite side of the road.

  Her vision cleared and clarified. There were two men sitting in the back of the car and a third was awkwardly getting into the front seat; he had turned away from her but she could see that his hands were full of the type of containers specially designed to keep takeaway food both tepid and soggy. His companions got out of the car to help him and her attention was caught as she watched their awkward manoeuvres.

  Intriguingly, they were still there later that morning and her curiosity was piqued, but her absorption in what they could possibly be doing was rapidly deflected when Alice returned with some interesting carrier bags.

  Meredith exclaimed delightedly when she saw her new jeans, loafers and several bright T-shirts. Alice had also been concerned at her inability to keep their guest warm. She had noticed that Meredith often shivered and that her hands were always cold, despite the mildness of the temperature outside, so she had invested in a beautiful sweater of soft cream coloured cashmere.

  There were also some rather more intimate items of apparel, which Alice had had to guess the size of, quite accurately, as Meredith found out later on when she tried on the pretty, frivolous scraps of silk and lace.

  It could not be denied that Alice distinctly

  savoured the moment when she placed the receipts on the desk in front of the Professor later that evening. Blake had just taken a sip of whisky and she stood back and watched with mild enjoyment as he passed an indifferent eye over them and then started to choke and splutter.

  Patiently, she folded her arms and calmly waited for him to recover from his indignant paroxysms.

  Eventually, he stopped spluttering and glowered sourly at her from streaming eyes.

  ‘I suppose I should think myself fortunate that you didn’t see a tiara or diamond studded toothbrush for her that just happened to catch your eye!’ he growled hoarsely.

  She raised a quizzical eyebrow and he burst into unexpected laughter.

  ‘Good job, Alice! I am suitably punished and you are a w…, a – well, never mind!’ he smiled at her approvingly, obviously disposed to be in a good mood.

  Alice frowned but before she could interrupt, he continued hastily, ‘Anyway, I have good news! Max is coming up the day after tomorrow to see if he can be of help to our mystery gue
st.’

  ‘Oh, that is splendid, Blake. I do hope so. Has he discovered some information about Meredith?’

  Blake’s eyebrows twitched together irritably.

  ‘I thought you were going to come up with a better name for her?’ he demanded brusquely. ‘I distinctly remember saying that I don’t like that one!’

  ‘Well, what’s that to do with anything? You told me that was what the nurses had called her!’ Alice snapped back in exasperation.

  ‘Yes, but that’s not the point, it’s a ridiculous name – totally unsuitable - you will have to think of something else!’

  ‘I will do no such thing! Ridiculous or not, that is what I have been calling her - and I have got used to it and so has she. She is not a puppy whose name you can change on a whim. Until the poor thing remembers her real name, that is what we will call her! Change her name again, indeed, as if the poor love is not confused enough already! Honestly Blake, sometimes . . .!’

  She abruptly turned on her heel and throwing over her shoulder a terse command, ‘Dinner on the table in ten minutes – do not be late,’ stalked off in high dudgeon, having had the last word, a not uncommon occurrence.

  Injured and indignant at such manifestly unfair and arbitrary treatment, Blake could only scowl malevolently at her retreating back.

  Meanwhile, Meredith (the name stuck despite the Professor’s continued protestations) was still mystified by the behaviour of the men seemingly camped out in the blue car opposite, and she made a point of looking out of the window from time to time to see if they were still there. They were. All day, and when she looked out later that evening, they were still there.