by Jessica Mann
‘You mean he doesn’t do handsomely.’
‘Right. But it took me some time to see it. When he first left, I was just obsessed with getting him back. Or getting my own back. I’m not sure which, now.’
‘So you came on this holiday,’ Tamara said.
‘That was the main reason.’
‘What were the others?’
‘Work trouble.’
Tamara did not answer, until Janet went on, ‘I shouldn’t talk about it.’ She pulled off her cotton hat, and wiped her hand over her forehead. ‘It’s so hot.’
‘It’s a bit much today. Do you want to go down?’
‘No, I can’t face them all. It’s like some ghastly play, with one character being written out after another, it makes you wonder who is next. And that idiotic juvenile mooning around after Giles. She reminds me painfully of myself with Tim.’
‘Or Hugo with you.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘He is making it pretty obvious.’
‘Yes, isn’t he just! When he said about going for a jog this morning . . .’ Janet wiped her face again. ‘It isn’t real though. Anywhere else . . . This place changes one. One needs something—someone.’
‘I should say he’d fancy you anywhere,’ Tamara said.
‘Not me. My work.’
‘I am afraid,’ Tamara said, ‘I don’t exactly know what your work is.’
‘You aren’t supposed to. Nor is he. But it is all perfectly ridiculous.’ With sudden energy Janet stood up, shook her skirts out and refolded them around her legs, and sat down again in a severe, upright position. ‘I won’t be gagged. Anyway, you’re Alexandra’s sister.’
‘You are a biologist, aren’t you?’ Tamara prompted her.
‘Not exactly. Physiologist. I work with the human brain. I have been studying the causes of epilepsy.’
‘Electrical impulses of some kind?’
‘That’s right. But the trouble is that I have come across something that my bosses won’t let me publish. Do you think there can be any justification for suppressing scientific discoveries, Tamara? After all, you are a sort of scientist yourself. You must have thought about it.’
Tamara temporised. ‘It depends on the circumstances.’
‘For instance, if you came across archaeological proof of something that was unacceptable and even dangerous. What if you could prove that black and white races descended from different species of primates and there really are inherent, ineradicable differences between them?’
‘It would be political dynamite.’
‘So would you suppress it?’ Janet demanded. ‘You must have been educated like me to believe that the free exchange of scientific results is a right. An axiom. A given, as an American friend of mine would call it. If he says this is one I’m going to take his word for it.’
‘What about the pragmatic arguments? Perhaps one should suppress information about weapons, for instance. Or . . .’ Tamara made a gesture as of one plucking a random notion from the air. ‘What if one found a way of disseminating germs, so as to make it possible to wage germ warfare?’
‘That is all very well, but the same information would probably tell you how to cure or prevent that very illness in its spontaneous form. It isn’t for the scientist to judge the use of objective information. It never has been. All her duty is to publish it.’
‘If she’s allowed to.’
‘That’s the trouble. I had better not say what I’ve been working on, but Hugo knows about it and—’
‘Did you tell him?’
‘There didn’t seem any point in not. I’m telling my American friend Cal. Anyway Hugo already had some idea of the line I was taking. I didn’t remember him, but we had met a few months ago at a dinner party. Anyway, he says he’ll take the risk of publishing it. The thing is, what my boss doesn’t seem to understand, the good this can do would by far outweigh the harm it conceivably might, just possibly, most unlikely that it ever would, do. And while they dither about that, people are suffering who could be helped. Even cured.’
‘I didn’t know that Hugo could publish things. I thought he was a businessman.’
‘He seems to have a finger in a good many pies. But for some reason he’s very keen on this one. Of course he says that he’s keen on me too.’
‘Do you reciprocate?’
‘Up to a point. To tell you the truth I am a bit frightened of him. He’s very single-minded and—Good Lord. Do you hear what I hear?’
Tamara had noticed the noise several moments before, but hoped to hear more of Janet’s confidences before mentioning it. She said, ‘I can see something else in the water too. Rather closer by.’
Chapter Sixteen
The sound was that of a diesel engine distinguishable from that of the electricity generator by its deeper, less even firing.
The floating object was bobbing on the disturbed water not far from the south side of the island. It was a piece of twentieth-century flotsam, white expanded polystyrene that must once have served a useful purpose of its own; and now had become a raft to which what evidence remained of John Benson had become attached. It was not much more than half his pink shirt, an unmistakable garment whose breast-pocket trademark, a small green alligator, had become a disgusting parody. When Tamara and Janet pulled the trophy in, they found that the symbol was still there. The creatures, alligators, or crocodiles, perhaps even piranha fish, Janet suggested in a tone of hysteria, had left nothing else of its wearer, except a red bloodstain on a remaining fragment of collar.
The material evidence of John Benson’s fate was only of equal interest to most of the party as the fact that Hugo Bloom had started the barge’s engine. When Tamara and Janet came up with their morbid trophy Hugo was saying, evidently not for the first time, that he had not done anything, or, alternatively, that he did not know what he had done. ‘I just pushed things in and out a bit,’ he said with uncharacteristic imprecision. ‘Pure fluke.’ He broke off, as though with relief, at the sight of the two girls. Then he said, ‘Oh my God.’
‘It is a piece of John Benson’s shirt,’ Max Solomon pronounced, his voice and his sombre face like a Talmudic judge. ‘He is really dead, then. There is no hope.’
But everyone had abandoned hope for John’s survival before now. In this, as in Vanessa’s case, death brought out the worst in the survivors, none of whom was really interested in anything except escaping from Qasr Samaan. Even Ann Benson, shaken awake from her drugged silence, accepted the proof of her brother’s fate with a kind of apathy. Tamara, having rapidly packed her own few possessions, went to help Ann. She was sitting vacantly on the edge of her brother’s bed, holding a pair of his socks as though she had started to roll them together and become distracted in the middle of the small task. Tamara took them from her and put them into the open grip. The dead man’s clothes were heaped on the floor, the chest and the ends of the bed. He had brought far more than seemed necessary. Tamara began to fold trousers and underwear, and Ann watched her with dozy eyes.
‘There is a shirt missing,’ she said.
‘Still in the laundry perhaps?’
‘But the man brought the washing back.’
‘Anyway, how can you be sure?’
‘He had three of those Lacoste shirts. They were very expensive. He said he couldn’t bear cheap imitations. I had to go to Harrods for them. A red one and a blue one and a pink one.’
‘The pink one—’
‘I know.’
‘The blue one is here,’ Tamara said and folded it into the suitcase, averting her eyes from the carnivore that was its trademark.
‘I expect the servants have pinched the red one,’ Ann said calmly. ‘I told John he should have tipped them more. But he always said he couldn’t bear the kind of person who got good service by bribery.’
‘I rather doubt . . .’ Tamara began.
‘But I know why he wouldn’t. It was because Hugo could always outdo him. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Did Hugo tip the staff here?’ Tamara asked. It had not occurred to her to do so on arrival or since, though some notes were ready in her pocket, now that it seemed that moment had at last come.
‘Lots. In fact lots and lots. Showing off, John called it. Throwing his money around. Even to the captain of the barge. It was like tipping a taxi driver. Hugo should have asked for his money back when the man was so inefficient. If he had made his beastly boat start we could have been away from here days ago and then John would never have died. Still,’ she said with sudden, unexpected briskness, ‘no use crying over spilled milk. I can say that now. John couldn’t bear people who used clichés.’
‘Can I help you with your own packing?’ Tamara said.
‘No need. There is hardly any to do. I never had as many things as John. He said I didn’t need them, because he was the one who saw clients and buyers and had to convince them that he was a real authority. I wonder whether they will buy the things from me.’
‘Do you think you will carry on your brother’s business then?’
‘Not likely. But I shall have to get rid of the stock if I’m to sell the house.’
‘You have already decided to move?’
‘Oh yes, for years and years, if John should die before me. I don’t want to carry on looking after other people and being polite to them and sorting out their problems and pretending to care if they aren’t feeling well or don’t like the other guests or don’t have enough time to practise their silly musical instruments or can’t eat the food I cook. Do you know what I mean? I want a flat with two bedrooms in a nice quiet part of London. All electric, no animals, no garden, just something cosy and snug that’s easy to keep clean and warm. I’ve always wanted that, but I never had any money and I wasn’t trained as a girl, not like you are nowadays. My parents wanted us to be creative, but I could never have played well enough for a professional career. I’d really like to have had a little shop, but John would never hear of it, not even when he started dealing in pictures and antiques. He always said that the atmosphere of Fernley provided them with authenticity.’
John Benson had brought a sizeable overnight bag as well as his suitcase. ‘I’ll put the washing things in here, shall I?’ Tamara said; not that there seemed much point in packing a damp toothbrush and razor that nobody could, surely, ever wish to use again.
‘If you want,’ Ann said, getting into practice for not being polite to people.
Tamara unfastened the leather catches, and lifted out the waterproof pouch. Under it John Benson had stored his purchases—as, presumably, these apparently ancient objects were. Tamara could not tell whether the scarab had been through the digestive system of a turkey or whether the faience beads came from a pharaonic tomb or a workshop in downtown Cairo. John had acquired several miscellaneous objects, some of them, whatever their period, of great charm. Tamara would have liked to own the little alabaster dish with two girls’ profiles carved on it in relief, or to have worn the lapis lazuli earrings and the cornelian intaglio ring.
Tamara upturned the bag onto the bed.
The hoard looked incongruous on the brown blanket, as though a robber had flung out his swag. In among the objects was a little wodge of folded paper which proved to be a copy of a page from Dengue’s textbook on fakes. Tamara read it with interest. There was no way to recognise whether ancient. Egyptian antiquities were genuine except by scientific processes in which they would be destroyed, and by ‘feel’. Tamara understood about that at least, knowing the years of handling, feeling, examining, admiring, that were needed to enable a scholar to make judgements that were based on his or her own experience and that looked as though they were based on intuition.
No doubt the same applied to art and objets d’art. There would not be many people competent to doubt John Benson’s assertions about the pictures he sold, or sufficiently suspicious to suspect the authentications he provided with them. It would be interesting to see whether his death confirmed his authority, or freed critics to query them. Vanessa would not even have waited for his death; she had shown that the libel laws existed for her to circumvent.
‘John was going to get Giles to authenticate all those things,’ Ann said.
‘Really? I wasn’t sure whether they were copies. I can’t tell.’
‘Nor could John, I shouldn’t think. But Giles was to say they were real and write out certificates. John was going to ask him today.’
Tamara shovelled everything into the bag, telling herself that if buyers were fools enough to be taken in by John Benson, or now by his sister, they deserved to lose their investments.
A knock on the half-open door: Hugo Bloom. ‘My poor girl, I am so sorry.’ His Irish voice; by this time Tamara knew that his accent broadened in emotional moments. He put his arm around Ann, and wiped his own eyes. ‘What can I say?’ he said. ‘How can I help you?’
‘You have cut yourself,’ Ann said.
‘It’s just an insect bite. But it’s better to cover them in this country.’
‘You know I have my first-aid certificate. Let me do it for you.’
‘It really isn’t worth it. At home you wouldn’t even think of it. I’m just careful in the tropics. Listen, there is the siren.’
The harsh note blared across the water, and the passengers it summoned were as relieved to obey as the captain of the barge was to make it.
Chapter Seventeen
The Hotel Nefertiti in Abu Simbel was not patronised by package tours. It was able to accommodate the party from Qasr Samaan when Egyptair could not, and there they waited while Giles arranged for a bus or truck to carry them by road to Aswan. Max Solomon tried to book transport onwards to Cairo and London, frustrated by the caprices of the local telephones.
The system was not geared to independent travellers. At this, the height of the tourist season, no vacancies seemed to be available on any airlines, or, as the travellers then discovered, in any hotels. An oriental king was paying a state visit to Egypt, and the Oberoi Hotel at Aswan and the Winter Palace at Luxor had been commandeered for him and his suite, decanting visitors with reservations into other hotels that were already fully booked.
Abu Simbel, known to nearly everyone as the site of a reconstruction, was revealed to be, behind the glories of the temple, an unconstructed yet already derelict town.
Egypt had been, if not European, then sui generis. So was Qasr Samaan, so utterly out of the world. Here, in the southernmost settlement of Upper Egypt, Tamara realised that she really was in Africa. Large women, their skins the glossy black of Nubia, their profiles fine and delicate, trod a stately way through filth and dust, carrying baskets of fruit or amphorae of water balanced at disconcerting angles on their heads. The houses needed no roofs here where rain was unknown, but rush matting was laid across the crumbling walls against the sun, and skinny goats stretched their necks to chew at its corners. Donkeys and camels jostled against battered cars and vans in the crowded streets. The reek of decayed food, and of animal and probably human excreta, was very powerful. Tamara wondered whether the whole world had once smelt equally disgusting, before the advent of drains, piped water and the internal combustion engine.
She waited by the door of the hotel to hear whether they must stay the night there, or could set off northwards. She watched a string of camels sway past on their way to market, pale, dusty creatures with petulant faces. The ‘grown-ups’ were slumped pessimistically on plastic chairs in the lobby. Polly was out on the step, and snatched back her offered hand as a camel’s lip bared yellow teeth at it. Around her jostled a crowd of children holding out their hands, not to pat but to beg baksheesh. Behind them were their mothers, eyes peering above their veils, soon joined by a few men, who laughed as they spoke, obviously listing the charms (or otherwise) of the immodest woman. Their own wives or daughters would be shamed by the staring attention that Polly had been educated to attract. Her smile at the crowd was automatic and her hand began to make the familiar wave.
&n
bsp; Giles stepped past Tamara to stand by the younger girl. ‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘Suppose someone recognises you.’
She pushed past him and ran towards the only lavatory. Nobody would really have recognised her much photographed face in its present state. Giles looked at Tamara. His eagerness to be rid of the incubus the girl and his lack of interest in her as a troubled child were chilling. There came a point where single-minded pursuit of scholarship ceased to be commendable. Tamara said, ‘All right. I’ll cope.’
Polly was looking with dismay at the apology for a modern convenience. It had taken her mind off her own troubles if only for a moment. She said, ‘I have never seen anything like it.’
‘Or smelt,’ Tamara said, holding her handkerchief in front of her nose.
Polly zipped up her trousers. ‘Honestly, an earth closet would be better than this. You’d have thought . . .’
‘If they had known you were coming they would have redecorated it,’ Tamara said. Polly glanced at her with a practised, chilly stare.
She was young enough for her lack of make-up and generally scruffy appearance to be only a little disfiguring; but nature had not made her pretty. She was without the improvements she had been taught to assume and had applied throughout the stay at Qasr Samaan, until this last day. She had neglected a routine so necessary to her self-respect that she had observed it for every moment in Qasr Samaan, where, of all places, it might have seemed unnecessary.
Polly must have grown up believing that she mattered to the world. What else could have been the message of the pitiless attention, the continuous observation, that were inherent parts of Polly’s life? Her unadorned face, marked by an infected insect bite on the forehead, was a symbol of the disintegration that was affecting the girl’s own wilful personality.
Tamara, secure in the kind of complexion and features which others tried to mimic, saw with pity the other girl’s low cheekbones, usually disguised with coloured powder; the mousy hair whose crafty auburn streaks were growing out; the ragged eyebrows and short-lashed, small eyes, that could be so convincingly improved with paintbrushes and pencils.