Whispers in the Sand

by Barbara Erskine

  There was a rattle of stones below them and they looked down to see two men scrambling up the path. One, dressed in Egyptian robes, had a drawn blade in his hand. The other was a European.

  ‘We heard your screams.’ The taller man when he spoke was obviously English. He stared round the tomb entrance as the two Egyptians spoke to one another in quick agitated Arabic.

  ‘It was a snake.’ Louisa looked at him gratefully. ‘I think it’s gone.’ She scrambled shakily to her feet.

  ‘Did it bite anyone?’

  She shook her head. ‘It missed, thank God!’ She closed her eyes.

  The bottle had gone. There was no sign of it on the path, in the tomb entrance, on the track down the steep hillside at the base of the cliff. It had vanished with the snake.

  She accepted their rescuers’ offer of rest and refreshment, then she and Mohammed reclaimed their donkeys and headed back towards the river.

  They arrived back hot and dusty to find the boat in turmoil. One of the travellers planning to return north to Cairo had fallen sick and a berth had been found for Louisa on the next day’s steamer. There was very little time if she wanted to take it up. She must pack her belongings, say her farewells and allow her trunks to be loaded into the launch and moved over to the larger boat without delay.

  Later she was glad it had all happened so quickly. There was no time for retrospection. Barely time for goodbyes. Mohammed and the reis wept as she left the boat for the last time, as did Katherine Fielding who had, to her delight named her baby Louis after her. Venetia offered a cold cheek with barely a smile, David Fielding and Sir John both gave her huge bear hugs. Augusta took her hands and squeezed them. ‘Time heals, my dear,’ she said gently. ‘You’ll forget the worst times and remember the good ones.’

  It was strange, travelling with the constant sound of an engine and the splash of the paddle wheels as a background to her thoughts. There was no need to be at the command of the fickle wind. The river banks with their moving panorama of palms and lush crops, the shaduf, lifting the water endlessly from the river to the fields as they passed, the plodding water buffalo, the donkeys, the fishing boats. She watched them all from the deck, her reddened eyes hidden by smoked-glass spectacles, sketched, wrote a line or two in her diary to bring the account of her visit to Egypt to an end and she slept.

  She reached London on 24th April. A week later she was reunited with her sons. It wasn’t until the 29th July, on a hot afternoon as she worked in the cool tree-shaded room that she used as her studio at the back of their London house, that she opened the first of the boxes of Egyptian canvases and sketchbooks and began to pull them out one by one. Carefully she stacked them round the walls studying them critically, allowing herself for the first time since her return to remember the heat and the dust, the blue waters of the Nile, the dazzling glare of the sand and the temples and monuments with their carvings and paintings and mementoes of a long-dead past. She paused to stare out of the window at the garden square outside her house. Her world, the English world, was predominantly green, even here in London. The desert and the Nile were nothing to her now but memories.

  She stooped to pick the last canvases out of the box and frowned. Her old bag was there. She must have used it to wedge the paintings in place. She pulled it out and stared at it ruefully. The bag had accompanied her on all her painting trips. Even now there were brushes and some paints left inside. She put it on the table and rummaged inside to retrieve them.

  The scent bottle was still wrapped in the stained silk, tied with ribbon. She stared down at it for a long, long time, then slowly she began to unwrap it.

  She had taken the bottle out of the bag. She had thrown it at the snake. Surely she had. She remembered it being in her hand. She remembered looking down at it as she stepped out of the sunlight into the shadow of the tomb.

  Dropping the silk to the floor she stood looking at it as it lay on her palm. Then she shivered. Once again it had returned. Could she never be rid of it? ‘Hassan.’ She whispered the name quietly. ‘Help me.’ There were tears in her eyes as she turned to the Davenport at which she was accustomed to sit and do her correspondence. Opening the lid she slid out one of the drawers and reached inside to touch the small lever that activated the secret compartment. She laid the bottle inside it and stood looking down at it for a moment then she touched her finger to her lips and pressed it lightly on the glass. The piece of paper telling its story, she had left tucked in her diary, still in her writing box and unlooked at for months. One last look, one last thought of Hassan and she pushed the secret drawer back. It clicked into place and she quickly shut the lid of the desk.

  She would never touch the drawer, or her journal again.

  ‘Did you know all this when you gave me the diary?’ Anna was sitting next to Toby in Phyllis’s sun-filled sitting room.

  Phyllis shook her head. ‘I always meant to try, but somehow with my bad eyes I never got round to reading it.’

  ‘So you didn’t know about the bottle when you gave it to me?’

  Phyllis shook her head. ‘I would hardly have given it to you, sweetheart, if I’d known its history!’ She was indignant. ‘You were a little girl. As far as I knew it had lain in that drawer ever since Louisa put it there. The Davenport came to me through my father, of course, and I knew nothing of the paper in the diary. Even if I’d known it was there it would have meant nothing to me. None of us can read Arabic.’

  The three of them sat in silence for several minutes. In the hearth the fire crackled cheerfully, filling the room with the scent of apple logs.

  ‘What happened to Louisa in the end, do you know?’ Anna asked at last.

  Phyllis nodded slowly. ‘I know a bit. My grandfather as you know was her eldest son, David.’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘She never married again. And as far as I know she never went back to Egypt. She moved from London sometime in the 1880s, by which time she must have been in her late fifties or early sixties, I suppose. She bought a house down in Hampshire which she left to David when she died. I can remember going there when I was very small but it must have been sold before the last war. She went on painting, of course, and became a very well-known artist, even in her lifetime.’

  ‘Did she ever keep a journal again?’ Toby asked suddenly.

  Phyllis shrugged. ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘I’d love to know if she ever thought about Egypt again,’ Anna said wistfully. ‘What must she have felt like when she found she still had the scent bottle after everything she had been through to try and get rid of it? And why did she hide it? Why didn’t she destroy it as soon as she found it? Why didn’t she throw it in the Thames? The sea? Anything! But to keep it close to her. Wasn’t she afraid the priests would come back? Or the serpent?’

  Phyllis sat back in her chair and stared thoughtfully down at the fire. The cat on her knees stretched luxuriously and kneaded the thick tweed of her skirt for a moment or two before falling back to sleep. ‘I’ll tell you what I have got. There is a box of Grandfather’s old letters upstairs. His own to the family and those from his brother John mostly. I don’t remember there being anything particularly exciting but you can have them if you want them. Toby dear, could you go up and carry them down for Anna?’ She gave him instructions on where to find them and watched as he left the room. Then she smiled. ‘You hang on to him, darling. He’s a very nice man. Are you in love with him?’

  Anna blushed. ‘I like him.’

  ‘Like?’ Phyllis shook her head. ‘Not good enough. I want to hear that you adore someone. And that someone adores you. He does, you know. He doesn’t seem to be able to take his eyes off you.’ She sobered abruptly. ‘What really happened to you in Egypt? I don’t think you’ve told me everything. I’m sorry about that unfortunate man drowning. But there’s more, isn’t there. Do I gather you were ill?’

  Anna nodded slowly. ‘Not ill exactly. I’ll tell you what happened. Did you know the scent bottle was haunted? I know that sounds crazy. Imp
ossible. But it’s true. It was guarded by two Ancient Egyptian priests who were rivals for its ownership. They appeared on the boat and scared me witless so I did something very stupid. I had made friends with a woman called Serena Canfield. She is an initiate of some kind of a modern day Isis cult. She summoned up the priests to try and send them away. A sort of spirit disinfection. But I let one of them get inside my head. I went a bit mad for a while after Andy died. If Toby hadn’t taken care of me I don’t know what would have happened.’

  ‘Anhotep and Hatsek.’ Phyllis repeated the two names softly.

  Anna wondered for a moment if she had heard correctly. Her eyes widened. ‘Then you have read the diary?’ she accused.

  ‘No.’ Phyllis shook her head slowly. ‘There is a painting of them, here, in this house. Their names are written on the back.’

  Anna stared at her. She had gone completely cold all over.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I never liked the painting but I knew it must be valuable. It’s probably worth a fortune at today’s prices so I kept it, but I put it in the back store room.’ She turned as Toby reappeared with an old school tuck box in his arms. ‘Put it down there. Thank you, my dear.’ She frowned as Anna made for the door. ‘Darling, wait. Be careful! Toby, go with her.’

  ‘Where? Where are we going?’ Toby hurried down the long passage after her leaving Phyllis sitting by the fire, her face buried in the cat’s fur.

  ‘She’s got a picture of them! In the freezer room. I don’t believe it! She’s got a painting of the priests!’ Anna pushed open the door of the kitchen and led the way inside. It was a large kitchen, warmed by an old cream-coloured Aga, the scrubbed oak table littered with books and papers, the dresser hung in equal number with colourful mugs and ancient cracked tea cups. For a moment she stood still, staring at the door between the dresser and the sink. ‘It’s in there.’ She swallowed. Her hand went to the amulet at her throat. ‘Toby, it’s in there!’

  ‘There’s no need to look at it.’

  ‘There is. I’ve got to see it. Don’t you see, I’ve got to see if they looked the same to Louisa!’ She stared round the room, focusing on the vase of winter jasmine on the dresser. She found she had reached for Toby’s hand, trying to steady the beating pulse in her ears.

  ‘You’re safe, Anna. The bottle is at the bottom of the Nile.’ Toby put an arm round her shoulders. ‘It’s just a picture. We can ignore it. Go back to the fire and look at the letters. Put the kettle on again and top up the teapot. Go home.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve got to see it.’ Taking a deep breath she walked over to the door and opening it she reached for the lightswitch. The room was small, lined with shelves of tins and jars and boxes on three walls and almost filled by a large chest freezer on the fourth. Above that there were hooks, carrying string bags, onions, garlic, old saucepans and baskets. She stared round and for a moment she didn’t see the picture. Then she spotted it, half shrouded by a net of potatoes. The frame measured about two feet high by about eighteen inches across. It showed two tall dark-skinned men standing in the desert against a sky the colour of sapphires and framed by a huge acacia tree. One was dressed in white linen robes, the other wore an animal skin draped over his shoulder and round his waist. Both wore strange head-dresses and carried tall staffs and were staring out of the picture towards the viewer with an expression of intense concentration. Toby turned from studying the picture to look at Anna. She had gone as white as a sheet.

  ‘That’s them,’ she whispered, ‘just as I saw them.’

  ‘OK. That’s enough.’ Toby pulled her away. ‘Come on. Back to the fire.’ He switched off the light and shut the door behind them.

  ‘Why haven’t I seen it before?’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve been in that room a hundred times. Opened the freezer, fetched things from the shelves. Since I was a child!’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t there before. Or as it was half hidden perhaps you just didn’t notice it. After all, it meant nothing to you then.’ He followed her back along the passage to the sitting room.

  Phyllis was sitting on a cushion on the hearth rug in front of the fire, the open box beside her. The cat had taken over full custody of her chair. She glanced up as they came in. ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘How long has it been hanging there?’ Anna threw herself down on her knees beside her great-aunt.

  ‘Oh, my dear, I don’t know. Thirty years? I can’t remember when we put it there. It used to give me the creeps, so one day I went and hung it in there out of sight!’

  ‘Then why haven’t I seen it before?’

  ‘You have. You just never noticed it.’

  ‘But don’t you see? If I’d seen it I would have recognised them. I’d have known who they were.’ She slumped back on her heels, her hands to her head.

  Toby sat down beside her. ‘Anna, an awful lot of people can see something every day of their lives and not look at it,’ he said gently. ‘Especially if you didn’t find it interesting. After all, you had no reason to notice it, did you? It meant nothing to you until you actually went to Egypt.’

  ‘Unless I noticed it, and stored it away in my memory like some hidden nightmare to bring back later. Going to Egypt reminded me in some strange subliminal way. What do they call it? Hidden memories? Perhaps I made it all up. Cryptomnesia? Created the whole thing out of my imagination.’ She stared at them both hopefully.

  Phyllis shrugged. ‘I’ve found the early letters,’ she put in quietly. She held out some envelopes fastened together with white tape. ‘See if there is anything interesting.’

  With shaking hands Anna drew the first out of its envelope. She read it quietly and passed it to Phyllis with a smile. ‘They are very early. Your grandfather is still at school in this one.’

  She opened another, then another, slowly relaxing as she became immersed in the gentle day to day activities of a Victorian family. It was ten minutes later that she let out a little cry of surprise. ‘No! Oh God, listen! This letter is dated 1873. It’s from John. That’s Louisa’s younger son. “Dear David. Mother is not well again. I called the doctor, but he has no clue what is wrong. He orders her to bed and commands us to keep her still and warm. On her orders I went to the studio to fetch her a sketchbook hoping to keep her in bed drawing. Imagine my astonishment when I was confronted by a large snake! I had no notion what to do! I slammed the door and called Norton.”’ She looked up. ‘Who was Norton? “We went in very cautiously and found nothing. It must have made its way through the window which was open and out into the street! It must have escaped from the Zoological Gardens.”’ Putting down the letter she stared into the fire. ‘The snake came to England,’ she said bleakly. ‘It followed the bottle.’

  ‘Does he say anything else?’ Toby was frowning. She shook her head. ‘We did not tell Mother in case it alarmed her.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘How wise!’ She leafed through some more letters. ‘No, nothing else. These are from Cambridge. Then the army. There is no mention of home. No, wait.’ She held up another letter in excitement. ‘This is Louisa’s writing.’ She opened the folded sheets reverently and was surprised to find there was a lump in her throat. It was like rediscovering an old friend.

  There was a long silence as she scanned its pages. When she looked up her face was pinched and drawn. ‘Read it.’ She handed it to Toby. ‘Read it out loud.’

  ‘“I have painted a picture of my persecutors in the hope of getting them out of my head. They haunt my dreams even now, so many years after my visit to Egypt.” Who is she writing this letter to?’ He looked up.

  ‘It is addressed to Augusta. The Forresters were living in Hampshire. Perhaps that’s why she moved there.’ She shivered. Hugging her knees she stared into the fire. ‘Go on.’

  ‘“Last night I dreamt about Hassan. How I miss him still. Not a day goes by without him appearing at some point in my memories. But I dread his two companions in my thoughts. Will they give me no rest? They beg me to take the phial back to Eg
ypt. If I were strong, perhaps I would do so. Perhaps one day one of my sons or grandsons will take it for me.”’ Toby broke off, staring at Anna. ‘That’s you. Her great-great-granddaughter. You took it back.’

  She nodded. ‘But something went wrong. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I didn’t do it right.’

  ‘You left the bottle in Egypt.’ Phyllis untied another bundle of letters. ‘That was the important thing.’

  ‘And sacrificed a man’s life.’

  ‘No, Anna. The fact that Andy died as the bottle went into the Nile was pure accident. He was blind drunk.’ Toby folded up the letter and put it back in its envelope. ‘In fact, although it is probably no consolation, I have read since that it was considered very good fortune to die in the Nile, as one was taken directly by the gods. But remember, there were no priests and no snakes in that launch.’

  ‘No?’ Anna smiled quietly. ‘The priest of Sekhmet was in my head, Toby.’

  Phyllis frowned. ‘We haven’t talked about you, Toby.’ She changed the subject adroitly. ‘Come on. Let’s have all the details. What do you do for a living?’

  Toby smiled. Sitting up straight he gave a mock salute. ‘I’m afraid I paint, too.’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘Not as famous as Louisa, but I have had several exhibitions and I can earn my living at it. I am also lucky enough to have inherited a bit of money when my father died, so I’ve been very spoilt. I’m a widower.’ He hesitated, glancing at Anna. Then he shook his head and went on. ‘I have a mother, no brothers or sisters, alas, but an uncle who is at the consulate in Cairo, hence my contacts over there. I do not work for the CIA or the Mafia. I am not wanted by the police as our poor late friend Andy seemed to think. I have a house in the Scottish borders and another in London which is where my mother lives. My passion, at least until recently, has been travelling and painting. Mostly I go on my own, but sometimes I’ve been known to do daft things like travel on the Orient Express just for the hell of it, or go for a cruise on the Nile. I’ve supplemented my income by writing two travel books, both quite well received.’ He grinned. ‘If I write about our last cruise it will, I fear, have to be fiction and I shall launch myself as a thriller writer or no one will believe it!’ He shrugged. ‘That’s it, really, except to apologise for abandoning Anna at Abu Simbel. I never got the chance to explain what happened and why I wasn’t there when she needed me.’ He shook his head. ‘I met a friend of my mother’s who was on a different cruise. She was on her own and just after I had spoken to her she was taken ill. That was why the tourist police were looking for me. It was at her request. By the time I’d sorted her out, Anna had got on the bus and gone.’