Whispers in the Sand

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘It looks nice,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘Are you sure I live here?’

  ‘I’m not sure of anything.’ Toby put his arm lightly round her shoulders. ‘See if you’ve got the key.’

  She glanced at him sharply then she rummaged in her shoulder bag and pulled out a bunch of keys.

  The house smelt cold and unlived in and there was a pile of letters behind the door. Stooping to pick them up Anna walked into the living room on the righthand side of the narrow hallway and looked round. The room was furnished with antiques, the sober polished woods set off with colourful rugs and cushions and scarlet swagged curtains which were half-drawn across the windows looking out onto the garden at the back.

  Toby reached for the lightswitch. ‘Nice house.’ He grinned

  On a table by the small Knole sofa a light on the answerphone blinked steadily announcing five calls.

  ‘Only five and I’ve been away weeks.’ Anna stared down at it.

  ‘I expect all your friends knew you were away. It’s only recently they’ve realised you should be back,’ Toby commented sensibly. ‘Aren’t you going to listen?’ He was standing with his back to the fireplace, his arms folded. ‘There might be a clue.’

  Anna shrugged. She reached out and punched the play button.

  ‘… Anna, dear, this is your great-aunt Phyl!’ The voice was loud in the quiet room and indignant. ‘Where on earth are you? You said you’d come and see me the moment you got back. I’m dying to hear how you got on. Ring me.’

  ‘… Anna? Your great-aunt seems to think you’re avoiding her. Ring her or me, for God’s sake!’ This was a cross male voice. Her father. She recognised it without a moment’s hesitation.

  ‘… Anna, it’s Felix. I got your postcard. I’m so glad you’re having a good time. Take care.’ That too was familiar. She began to smile.

  ‘… Anna? Anna, are you there?’ Silence, then a suppressed curse. Female. Unknown.

  ‘… Anna? It’s Phyllis again. My dear, I’m worried about you. Do please get in touch.’

  Toby was watching her face. ‘You recognised the voices?’

  Anna nodded. ‘And this house. It’s all familiar. But it doesn’t feel like mine.’ She shook her head and put her hand to her eyes. ‘I feel like a stranger. But I do recognise it all.’

  ‘I’m going to ring your aunt back.’ Toby reached for the phone and punched in 1471. After a pause she saw him press the 3 to return the call.

  The phone rang for a long time before it was answered. ‘Do you want to speak to her?’ Toby held out the receiver. Anna shrugged and took it from him.

  ‘Anna? Anna, thank goodness, my darling! I was beginning to think you’d fallen in love with Egypt or found yourself a handsome sheikh or something and decided never to come home!’ The voice on the other end paused. ‘Anna?’

  Anna shook her head. Tears were pouring down her face. She couldn’t speak.

  Toby took the receiver from her. ‘Miss Shelley?’ He gave Anna a reassuring smile. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt. My name is Toby Hayward. I was on the cruise with Anna. She has not been very well. Is there any chance you could come up to London, or could I drive her over to you? She wants to see you so much.’

  He listened for a few seconds, hastened to respond to the anxious questions, reassured and nodded. ‘OK. I’ll bring her to Suffolk tomorrow. I’m so glad we’ve made contact.’

  He put down the phone. ‘She wanted you to go today, but I thought you might be too tired. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.’ He glanced at his mother who had been standing quietly by the door, studying the room. ‘Do you want to help Anna find some warm clothes while we’re here?’

  Anna was idly picking through the post which was lying beside her on the sofa. She reached for a postcard, studied the picture and then read the back. Then another. At least two of her friends, it appeared, had also been on holiday recently. There were several bills which she automatically discarded unopened, much to Toby’s amusement as he pointed out that her good sense had not deserted her along with her memory.

  ‘It’s only my memory of the holiday that’s completely gone,’ she said wearily. ‘The rest seems to be here, intact. I recognised my father’s voice, and Felix, my ex. I recognised Phyllis.’ She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t recall them spontaneously: it’s all been a strange blank when you and the doctor have asked me about things; but when I heard their voices and looked for them in my head they were there!’ She broke off. She was looking down at a letter in her hand. It had Egyptian stamps. Her face grew pale.

  Toby glanced at Frances. He put his finger to his lips. They both watched Anna as slowly she tore open the envelope. ‘It’s from Omar,’ she said slowly. ‘He wants to know how I am?’

  She looked up and her eyes widened. The floodgates had opened. A torrent of memory, of noise, of images, of shouting, suddenly poured into her head. She sat down abruptly and stared wildly up at them.

  ‘Oh God! Andy! I remember now. Andy died!’

  Toby sat down beside her, and put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Do you remember what else happened?’ he asked gently.

  She was staring down at the letter in her hands. ‘The scent bottle. The scent bottle of the priest of Sekhmet!’ Suddenly she began to sob, tears pouring down her face. She looked up at Toby. ‘I remember Andy falling in the Nile. We’d been to Philae.’

  Toby nodded.

  ‘Then his body disappeared. There was no sign of it –’

  ‘They found him the next day, Anna –’

  ‘And Ibrahim gave me an amulet.’ She put her hand to her throat as though she had only at that moment become aware of the charm hanging on the chain round her neck. ‘I’m still wearing it! But it’s valuable, I should have returned it to him!’

  ‘No, he wanted you to keep it. He especially told me to tell you to keep it for ever, Anna.’ Toby took Omar’s letter out of her hands and put it down on the table.

  ‘What happened to Andy?’ She turned to him, her eyes blind with tears.

  ‘His body was flown back to London and buried in his family’s home village in Sussex. Serena and Charley and Ben all went to the funeral.’

  ‘And Charley?’ Anna echoed the name. ‘Is she all right now?’

  Toby nodded. ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘So it’s just me.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘It wasn’t shock, you know.’ Suddenly it was all crystal clear in her mind. ‘He needed me. The priest needed me when Charley left Egypt and I let him in. Serena summoned him at Philae and I watched and smiled and was all eager to see what happened and he jumped inside my head! Serena knew how dangerous he was. Ibrahim knew. But I just opened myself up and let it happen! Where is Serena? What has happened to her?’

  ‘Serena has been to see you several times, Anna,’ Toby said. ‘She’s been so worried about you. She tried to explain to the doctor that she thought you had been possessed, but he was not prepared to listen. He patronised her horribly. If I hadn’t seen it myself I wouldn’t have believed how he behaved to her. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she hadn’t come back, but she did and she brought someone else to try and help you, but by then you didn’t want anyone else poking around in your head and we decided it was better to wait until your memory came back by itself. Ma wanted to bring in a clergyman but Serena said that would make the priest angry.’

  Anna shuddered. ‘I’ve been so much trouble to you?’ She looked up miserably. ‘And it’s all my fault.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ Frances came and knelt in front of her. ‘None of it was. How could anyone have known that these terrible things would happen?’ She shivered. ‘Come on. Let me help you pack some warm clothes. Then we’ll go home. Tomorrow you will be with your great-aunt and things will start to get back to normal for you.’

  ‘Nothing can ever be normal again.’ Anna shook her head. ‘I killed Andy. With the help of the stupid little bottle.’

  ‘No,’ Toby was adamant. ‘What killed Andy was a large
bottle – of vodka – on an empty stomach! Never, never blame yourself, Anna.’

  It occurred to her for the first time that evening to wonder where it was that Toby went after the three of them had eaten together at the small round table in Frances’s lower-ground-floor kitchen. She asked Frances only after he had kissed them both on the cheek and run up the area steps, jingling his car keys, to disappear into the frosty London night.

  Frances laughed. ‘Didn’t he tell you? He’s staying with someone called Ben Forbes. I gather he met him on this infamous cruise of yours.’ She hesitated. ‘Toby lives in Scotland, Anna. You knew that, didn’t you? After his wife died he didn’t want to stay in London any more and he gave me this house. Normally he stays upstairs in your bedroom when he’s in town, but he felt very strongly that he didn’t want to crowd you.’

  ‘He’s been very kind to me,’ Anna said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know what would have happened to me if he hadn’t been there.’ She glanced up. ‘And I would never have met you.’

  Frances smiled. ‘I was so pleased he brought you here.’ She was busying herself making them both a night cap. ‘I expect you have gathered I am a widow. And Toby is an only. I’m just so pleased he and I are friends. I gather he told you about that dreadful time ten years ago?’ She glanced up and when Anna nodded she went on. ‘He became very defensive after Sarah died; he cut so many people out of his life.’

  It was the moment to ask questions. To find out more about what had happened. Anna hesitated and the moment passed. ‘Will you come with us tomorrow, to Suffolk?’ she asked instead.

  Frances shook her head. ‘No, my dear. I would love to meet your great-aunt one day, but not this time.’ She hesitated. ‘Toby said you are divorced?’

  Anna nodded.

  ‘That must have been sad for you.’

  ‘Not really. A shock at first, to find things weren’t as I thought. Then, in the end, a relief. That was Felix, my husband, on the phone at the house. We still speak.’

  ‘And you sent him a postcard.’

  Anna nodded again. She accepted a mug of hot chocolate from Frances and sipped it slowly. ‘Did Toby tell you the whole story of the trip?’

  Frances shook her head. ‘I’m pretty sure not. To be honest in the cold light of a London winter it all sounded a bit farfetched. No!’ She reached out her hand towards Anna as the latter opened her mouth to protest. ‘I’m not saying it didn’t happen. Clearly something awful did happen. I’m just saying I found it hard to picture it all. Andy’s death was sufficiently dreadful for me. Perhaps that’s all I can cope with at this stage.’

  Anna nodded slowly. Her fingers groped inside the neck of her blouse and closed round Ibrahim’s amulet. ‘I would like to go and see his grave,’ she said. ‘Take him some flowers. Tell him I’m sorry.’

  Frances glanced at her. She hesitated, obviously trying to decide how to respond. ‘Anna, my dear, you weren’t in love with Andy, were you?’

  ‘In love with him!’ Anna was shocked. ‘No, of course I wasn’t!’

  ‘I just wanted to make sure.’

  There was a long silence. Anna was groping for words, unsure of her ground, aware suddenly of a huge misty gulf in her memory. ‘Did Toby not tell you about Andy and me? How he was trying to get hold of my great-great-grandmother’s diary?’

  Frances nodded. ‘He told me. He told me a lot of things, but he left some out as well.’

  ‘Oh?’ Anna stared down into her drink.

  ‘Things which are none of my business, such as how you two feel about each other.’

  Anna could feel her cheeks colouring. ‘I know how I feel about him.’

  ‘You’re fond of him?’ Frances glanced up and catching Anna’s eye she smiled. ‘In love with him?’ She waved her hand in front of her, the fingers crossed.

  ‘I think I might be.’ Anna shrugged. ‘But we’ve had such a short time together and that time was difficult!’

  Frances snorted. ‘That seems like an understatement! I won’t ask any more, my dear. Just know that I’m so pleased Toby met you.’ She reached across the table and squeezed Anna’s hand.

  Anna went over that short conversation again and again in her head as she lay in the bath luxuriating in the mixed oils of rose and lavender she had found on the shelf above it and a smile came slowly to her lips. Wrapped in a huge soft towel she climbed back to her attic room and wandered round for a while thinking about the visit to her great-aunt next morning with Toby.

  The diary lay on the small table in front of the window. She stood staring down at it, frowning. She had promised that she would give it to Frances to look at tomorrow while they were out, but in the meantime were there not one or two pages left that she still had not read herself?

  The last thing she remembered doing on the boat was putting down the diary on the bed in her cabin and lying staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed with fear and a strange, alien rage.

  She reached for the book thoughtfully. Had he really gone, the priest who had invaded her head, or was he merely biding his time? She shuddered and moved her head cautiously from side to side as though testing it, then she looked down at the book in her hands. In the last section she had read Louisa was planning to go out to the Valley of the Tombs to bury the scent bottle which had turned out to be a sacred ampulla, at the feet of Isis.

  It was dawn when Louisa and Mohammed mounted their donkeys and turning their backs on the river, headed westward across the rich, densely planted fields. They rode in silence, unencumbered by pack animals or companions, watching the dull clear light grow stronger by the minute. As the first shafts of sunlight were throwing long shadows ahead of them across the ground they had already reached the edge of the fertile ground and were heading out into the bright heat of the desert.

  ‘Where will you put the bottle, Sitt Louisa?’ Mohammed looked over at her at last. ‘Which tomb do you want to go to?’

  Louisa shrugged. ‘Somewhere quiet and hidden so the bottle can rest in peace. I need to find a picture of the goddess Isis so it can lie near her.’ Her donkey stumbled suddenly and she grabbed at the saddle to steady herself. ‘That is all I want to do. Then we can go straight back to the boat and forget it.’

  He nodded gravely. The path had narrowed as they reached the mouth of the valley. He glanced round at the dark entrances in the cliffs. He was not a dragoman. He did not have Hassan’s knowledge and experience of the valley. Reining in the donkey he shook his head. ‘Do you remember where to go?’

  She stared round her, hoping that Mohammed would attribute the tears in her eyes to the glare of the early morning sun striking off the glittering rocks. Her memories of this place were so closely tied to Hassan, every rock, every shadow bore the imprint of his face, every echo the sound of his voice.

  Finally she urged her donkey on. There were other visitors in the valley this time, groups of travellers with their own dragomans staring round, or emerging into the daylight full of wonder at what they had seen.

  They stopped the donkeys near one of the entrances. Mohammed slid from the saddle and helped Louisa to dismount then he reached into his saddle bag for candles. He shivered. ‘I do not like these places, Sitt Louisa. There are bad spirits here. And scorpions.’

  And snakes.

  The word hovered unspoken between them. Louisa bit her lip and forced herself to move forward, leading the way. ‘We won’t be here long, Mohammed, I promise. You have the spade?’

  They had brought a small spade lashed to the saddle of his mount so she could bury the bottle in the sand. He nodded. Swiftly he moved in front of her and she saw he had his hand on the hilt of the knife tucked into his belt and it gave her some comfort as they climbed the path towards the dark square in the dazzling rock of the cliff, to think that he was armed and prepared to use the knife to protect them.

  They reached the entrance, panting. Mohammed peered in. ‘Is this the right place?’ She saw him make surreptitiously the sign against the evil eye.

  She
nodded. Somewhere inside she would find a representation of the goddess with her strange characteristic head-dress of a solar disc and throne, her hands clutching the ankh, symbol of life, and her staff.

  She reached into the bag hung around her shoulders for the bottle, still wrapped in the water-stained silk. ‘It won’t take long,’ she repeated. She stepped ahead of him into the darkness, hearing the rasp of a match behind her as he lit the candle in its little lantern, seeing the shadows run up the wall. Here they were, the pictures she remembered so clearly, the bright colours, the dense endless stories told in strange indecipherable hieroglyphics, the ranks of gods and goddesses stretching into the shadowed darkness.

  ‘Sitt Louisa!’ His strangled cry echoed into the silent depths of the tomb.

  She spun round.

  He was standing at the entrance almost where she had left him, still in the sunlight, flattened against the wall, frozen with terror. In front of him she could see the swaying head of the cobra.

  ‘No!’ Her scream tore into the shadows as she hurled herself back towards the cave entrance. ‘Leave him alone! No! No! No …’

  As the snake struck she threw the bottle at it and then went for it herself, grabbing at it with her bare hands. It thrashed for a moment in her grip – warm, smooth, heavy, and then it had gone. She was staring down at her empty fingers.

  Mohammed slid to his knees, sobbing. ‘Sitt Louisa, you have saved my life!’

  ‘It didn’t bite you?’ Suddenly she was shaking so violently she too could no longer stand and she found herself on her knees beside him.

  ‘No.’ He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘No, Lillah! It did not bite me. See!’ He held out the width of the full trouser leg and she saw the mark of the fangs and the long trail of the poison which had run down the cotton below the hole.