by Jessica Mann
‘Shut up, Tim.’ Janet seemed to enjoy public praise from Timothy no more than she had enjoyed his public slavering over Vanessa.
‘I am going to rout out John,’ Ann Benson said. ‘He’s usually the first up.’ It was true that John Benson normally appeared before anyone else for meals, about which he then aired his grievances. No Oxford marmalade, no milk, eggs fried in some unfamiliar native oil—he was preparing a list of complaints for Mr Osmond of Camisis Tours, to which would be appended the fact that Max Solomon had not taken them sufficiently to heart.
As Tamara was pouring herself more coffee, not because she wanted it but because it would occupy a little portion of what was evidently going to be another day of useless waiting, Max Solomon himself appeared, politely wished everyone present a good morning and helped himself to a large plateful of tinned peaches.
He looked around with a kind of innocent curiosity. His face was pale. It had been three days since he had come up into the sun. He also looked changed in some less precise way. He had seemed before a withdrawn, perhaps shy man, who pushed himself against the grain to be friendly and chatty. Tamara had found him kind, almost, at least to her, fatherly, but had sensed all the time that there was an effort going on whereby he controlled what might be an unguarded expression of sorrow, perhaps, or anxiety, of some powerful emotion quite unsuited to the circumstances of relaxed tourism. It had created a barrier that kept all but the most crass members of the party at bay. If his veneer were to crack, something violent and unmanageable might destructively erupt.
And yet, Tamara thought, I am not usually sensitive to such intangibles. Qasr Samaan was affecting her too, but under her usefully expressionless face it was less apparent than in Max Solomon. He seemed in a way washed clean, as though some psychic storm had blown over him, and passed on leaving calm behind.
A little bustle of welcome greeted his appearance. He smiled around and ate with relish, and when Ann Benson came rushing up the stairs he seemed to be prepared to cope as a courier should.
‘He’s not there. John. He’s missing,’ she gasped. Her sun-reddened face was blotched and sweaty and her hair was coming down. She provoked, as she always did, a mixture of irritation and pity. ‘Where can he possibly be? I can’t find him.’
‘Are you your brother’s keeper?’ Timothy Knipe said.
‘I did not notice him going on shore,’ said Giles. ‘Don’t you think he is probably in the bathroom?’
‘He isn’t there. I can’t think what has happened to him.’
Unease rippled through the company. Vanessa’s death had horrified people less than might have been expected, the idea of it happening in this strange and isolated place neutralised by the pure disgust of it. It had happened, it was over, now the problem was simply the mechanics.
But Ann Benson’s terror, irrational and hysterical as it was, produced a reaction in the others that should have been there before; fear that was almost literally panic, contagious and caused by an unseen influence.
By tacit agreement, John Benson was searched for. The door of each room was opened: the photography shed, the toilet cubicles, even the spaces behind the finds boxes and crates of mineral water.
‘I am sure he has just gone for a walk before it gets too hot,’ Tamara said.
Giles had been speaking to the servants. None of them had seen John Benson. He said, ‘We might just go and find him. He can’t have gone far, after all.’
They straggled down the gangplank onto the island. Casually they looked behind the blocks of white stone, once part of the church, that lay on the barren ground. Giles, trying not to look like a man who was looking for anything in particular, twitched aside the corners of tarpaulins, and made sure to scan each trench. Ann Benson stumbled ahead, calling her brother’s name. Tamara and Timothy Knipe made their way to the little peak of the rock. The water to the south, where it was deeper, was being forced and broken against the land by an increasing wind. On the far shore the closed niche in which Vanessa Papillon’s body lay was a reminder of mortality.
The searchers met by the rock known as the bathing place. None of the visitors had dared to risk going in the water, despite Giles’s reassurances. But a hat was on the ground, caught by its brim in a crevice of the stone. It was a panama with a band striped in the colours of John Benson’s college. His name was written inside on the hatter’s label. But of John Benson himself, there was no sign.
Chapter Fourteen
Now the real nightmare began.
Silence, chatter, tears, screams, questions, exclamations; all the ways were practised in which human beings can demonstrate their distress, anxiety, bafflement and impatience.
From mystification to grief, from irritation to remorse. One could make a graph, Tamara thought, showing the inevitable, invariable pattern of reaction to any disastrous discovery; in this case, to John Benson’s disappearance. The indigenous workmen and servants were more dignified, being more disinterested. They helped to search and search again. They looked everywhere that it was conceivably possible for a man to be, alive or dead. Once it seemed undeniable that John Benson was dead, they offered sympathy and withdrew to their own occupations.
There could be no possible explanation for John’s disappearance, but that he had somehow drowned in the deep waters of Lake Nasser, and that his body had been carried away where no searcher could find it. Several sweeps around the island in the rowing boat failed to result in any trace of the missing man. The roughened water was clouded by stirred-up sediment. In other circumstances it was easy to see through it to the floor; to see anything that lay on it, in fact.
Whether John had intended to bathe, though he had not done so before, and indeed had announced that he could not bear the very idea of doing so, or whether he had set off for a walk and fallen from the stretch of cliff that bounded the southern side of the small island would never be known. All his companions could tell was that he had vanished.
They all agreed that it had been an accident, just as Vanessa’s death had been an accident; and if anyone other than Tamara realised how easy it would have been to cause it, nobody said so.
The shared longing to get away from what now seemed like dreadful imprisonment was left unvoiced except by Timothy Knipe. He was now speaking of dark forces ranged against the intruders to ancient Egypt’s secrets. ‘We have brought this upon ourselves. We should not be here. We are being punished. Too late now to remember the Pharaoh’s curse.’
Ann Benson had been persuaded to swallow a few of the tranquillisers with which Max Solomon had been provided by the prudent Mr Osmond. The neatly packed medicine case, stamped on its blue leather with Camisis’s pharaoh crest, was equipped with treatments for most physical emergencies short of death, and a typed sheet attached to the inside of the lid explained how to use them.
Max Solomon was willing but inept. Giles prescribed and Janet administered the medicine before helping the ravaged figure down the stairs and onto her bed. After a while the sound of gasps and sobs faded into silence.
‘Thank God for that at least,’ Timothy Knipe said. Ann Benson had been weeping continuously ever since first realising that her brother was missing. ‘You wouldn’t think she’d have tears or a voice left. I could do with one of those nice downers myself.’ He stretched out his hand to the bottle.
Nobody tried to keep it from him, and with a defiant laugh he swallowed two of the little capsules.
‘They have really made sure you have everything,’ Tamara said. She poked her finger inquisitively into the medicine chest. ‘Lomotil, athlete’s foot ointment, antihistamines, streptomycin.’
‘You will find nothing here that could harm anyone,’ Max said. He was unexpectedly back in control, and insisted on finding out when John Benson had last been seen. Had he left the barge before even going to bed last night? Were the clothes he had worn the previous day gone from his cabin? Had anybody heard anything?
Giles summoned Abdullah and Hassan. John Benson’s bed had been
slept in. Hassan had laundered a dirty shirt, as he did every day. The room had been used after the bed was turned down while everyone was at dinner.
Nobody had seen John Benson after bedtime the previous night. At least, nobody admitted to having done so.
The watchman had not noticed him going on shore; or said he had not.
‘I suppose we all look alike to them as they do to us,’ Timothy Knipe said.
‘If you are talking about our staff here, I must tell you that none of them looks in the least bit like any other except for Yasser and Mohammet who are identical twins,’ Giles told him.
‘I can tell them apart,’ Polly said. Tamara glanced around to see who noticed that give-away of the identity of a girl whose whole upbringing had been directed towards ensuring that she always remembered and could tell apart all the numerous people it would be her job to meet. Hugo was watching her, one eyebrow quizzically raised, but all the others were as indifferent to Polly’s boast as unrelated adults usually are to the young.
That figured. All but Hugo were preoccupied, either by their own thoughts, like Max Solomon, or by their own selves, like Tim Knipe. None would have paid any real attention to Polly or to anyone else, except in the mirror of their self-absorption. Any apparent interest that Polly herself showed in the others was a practised performance too, not a genuine emotion. It was perhaps the strongest aspect of her conditioning, that she should always seem to care. That newly intransitive verb was probably dinned into her since the days when it would have been followed by a grammatical object: care about the people you meet, care about their reaction to you, above all care that you please them. But the veneer was cracking.
Probably, Tamara thought, all of us will show true selves through our disguises, unmistakably enough for them to be recognised even by people less perceptive than Vanessa had been. Soon everyone present would be able to write a candid exposure of the party at Qasr Samaan. Who first, she wondered, excluding herself?
Hugo Bloom had already recognised Polly. But now he was giving away a little of himself.
‘I left the barge before breakfast,’ he said.
‘What did you . . .?’
‘I’ve done it every morning. Get some exercise before the day hots up.’
‘So did I,’ Janet said. It was the first time she had spoken since breakfast. She was a silent, abstracted presence, going through the motions of being a member of a party. A pang of guilt stabbed Tamara’s conscience. What should it matter to her if John Benson had disappeared? Her job was to keep a check on Janet. What was wrong with the woman?
‘Well, did either of you see Benson?’ Giles Needham said impatiently.
‘Or each other?’ Tim Knipe said, his voice slightly slurred, but still malicious.
‘We went together.’
‘An assignation, eh Janet?’
Hugo said, ‘I have been jogging round the island every morning. As far as I know it was your first time, isn’t that right, Janet? But it is why I am mystified about John. That first morning I said he ought to come too, but he was quite disgusted at the idea of being energetic so early in the day. Or later, actually.’
Tamara heard as clearly as if the words had been spoken aloud, John Benson’s querulous voice announcing that he could not bear the idea of doing anything so uncivilised.
‘And you saw no sign of him?’ Max Solomon said.
‘No. None. Did we, Janet?’
Janet flushed, an uncontrollable surge of colour staining her cheeks and watering her eye. Hugo put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her towards him with his hard, strongly tanned arm. He said, ‘We might not have noticed anyway.’
‘What a time to choose,’ Timothy said. He pushed himself up from the canvas chair. ‘I am going to lie down for a while. I find all this very distressing.’ It was not clear whether he meant Vanessa’s death, John’s disappearance or Janet’s defection. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken your tranquillisers.’ Unsteadily he went below.
‘Perhaps we should all take some,’ Tamara said. ‘Until rescue comes we could sleep the time away.’
Chapter Fifteen
Janet Macmillan was the first to break.
Tamara found her sitting on the peak of the island and said, ‘Sister Ann, sister Ann, is there anybody coming?’ But she needed no answer to know that there were no boats, there was no sign of other life on the wide water. The day was hot, hotter than ever in fact, and the wind was increasingly an irritant. It felt as though there was a fine grit on one’s lips and teeth, tongue and eyes. The wind was bearing sand from the arid south where a yellowish haze like distant hills lay across the horizon. ‘Day three . . . I wonder how many more.’
Janet was chewing at the skin around her fingernails. ‘I can’t take much more of this,’ she muttered.
‘If one looks on it as a chance to sunbathe . . .’
‘I can’t think what to do.’
Tamara knew a good deal about Janet. Janet knew little about Tamara. There could hardly be understanding between them. But Janet was unaware of any reserve between watcher and watched. She said, ‘Your sister Alexandra. You are very like her.’
‘So they say.’
‘We have been friends for a long time. Since we were students together. Bristol. It seems like so long ago.’
‘She still lives there.’
‘I know,’ Janet said. ‘I went to stay with her once. Husband, children, dog, cat . . .’
‘She gets a bit bored,’ Tamara said.
‘Yes, but it’s so settled. Secure. She isn’t going to have unexpected moral quandaries bounced at her.’
‘Do you?’ Tamara asked.
‘I shouldn’t be talking about it, least of all to you.’ Janet looked over her shoulder. The two women were alone on their rocky prominence. Great birds wheeled overhead. ‘They are wondering if we are carrion,’ Janet said with a shudder.
‘Oh, are they vultures? I should have known. They look as big as an albatross.’
‘I follow your train of thought. You are afraid I’m going to fix you with my glittering eye?’
‘Not afraid,’ Tamara said.
‘I ought to be afraid of you. I am in so much trouble with officialdom already,’ Janet said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Alex told me about you. I know what you are. I can almost guess why you are here.’
‘All the same, I shan’t do you any harm. Why don’t you tell me if it would help to talk about it?’
There was silence for a few moments and when Tamara glanced at Janet again tears were washing down her face, a gush of water unaccompanied by sobs. She sniffed and wiped the back of her hand against her nose. She said, ‘I have been such a bloody fool.’
Tamara waited. She had learnt from her lawyer father that people can’t bear silence. He once told her they will fill it if you don’t utter, and then they end up by telling you that you are a good listener, when what you have really been good at is getting them to talk.
‘I shouldn’t ever have come to Egypt,’ Janet said.
Tamara said, ‘You couldn’t have known that Qasr Samaan would be such a disaster.’
‘Oh, not that. In other circumstances I’d have loved it. No, because of Tim. Don’t pretend you hadn’t noticed about him and me. I came on this trip just because he was going to. Tim and that woman.’
‘You wanted to spoil it for them?’
‘Something like that. It was because of that book by Agatha Christie. It seemed fitting somehow, to dog their footsteps the way her character did. I think I even hoped that Tim would turn into the man in the book, plot with me to get rid of her—I don’t know. I was crazy. I can’t remember what I was thinking. I just got this idea, when I heard that Tim was coming here with Vanessa, I was determined to be here at the same time. I suppose I just wanted to make him sorry. Sorry for what he’d done to me.’
‘Oh dear,’ Tamara said.
‘We lived together, you see. Nearly three years. I thought we were
. . . you know.’
‘I know.’
‘And then he met that bitch. Vanessa. Funny, I always used to think that “never speak ill of the dead” was a description more than an injunction. I have never wanted to before, even about people I hadn’t thought much of when they were alive. But Vanessa Papillon. Vera Pritchard. No wonder she changed her name. I feel very unforgiving about her. And it’s so silly. He was a free agent. We always said so.’
‘It’s easy enough to say.’
‘When I had friends with unhappy love affairs their problems were so predictable. And then it happens to you, and it’s unique. I just didn’t feel that he was free, not while I was still bound to him. I knew people weren’t property, I didn’t own him, but that was just all words. I wanted him. Funny, really, because now I wouldn’t have him back gift-wrapped and repentant. But at the time I was damned if I would let her enchant him away so easily. Do you know, I really could have murdered her.’
‘And did you?’
‘I thought about it. Honestly. I went down to the cabins when everyone was having dinner that night and I thought, I could strangle her with a pair of nylon tights. Or bash her over the head with one of the digging tools. Even poison her. What with poor old Max’s medicine chest and the unguarded photography store, it would be easy enough to find a lethal substance to force down someone’s throat. But then Polly came down to fetch something and she looked so—so bloody silly. Young and ignorant and vain and frivolous, and I just thought, It’s not such a long time since I was light-hearted like her, taking things as they came and leaving men instead of having them leave me. I looked at myself, and I just didn’t know this hag-ridden female I’d turned into, seriously, or almost seriously considering committing a crime. Losing control. Forgetting about what really matters.’ Janet giggled. She went on, ‘And of course by then I was nursing my grievance. I was beginning to see through Tim too. You probably wonder what I ever saw in him.’
‘He is very handsome.’
‘You know the old saying.’