Flora's War

by Pamela Rushby

  ‘Hold onto your hats,’ I warned them. ‘She drives like a demon.’

  ‘But looks like an angel,’ said one of the young officers gallantly.

  Gwen laughed. ‘Tell me that if I get you back to camp safely!’ she said. By the way she roared off, spraying sand, I hoped they would.

  I sat down with a thump. ‘Thank goodness that’s over!’ I said to Fa.

  ‘Well, I have to say I was rather dreading it,’ he said. ‘But they’re delightful young people and very interested. Especially that one young man.’

  ‘What young man?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, one of the officers,’ said Fa vaguely. ‘Very interested indeed and quite well informed. I’d say he’s actually studied some Egyptian history. Now, what was his name? He did introduce himself. Something with a J in it. Joseph? James? John? You’ll know, Flora.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know all of them. There is a Jim the boys have mentioned who spends a lot of time in the museum. Perhaps it’s him.’

  ‘He asked if he could come again sometime, when we’re a little further along with the work,’ Fa said. ‘I suppose you’ll be able to put a face to the name, if he comes.’

  Chapter 8

  One afternoon, I was sitting up on the roof gazing out over the city. I looked down – and I saw the small door. Lately I’d been distracted with the excavation and my duties as a volunteer and all the wonderful dances and outings, but I had some free time just now. I was curious to see where the door led. I could go and find Mr Bilal and ask him again to show me, I thought – or I could find out for myself. That seemed like much more fun.

  I carefully noted where the door was in relation to the windows beside and above it. I went downstairs, listening carefully. I could hear voices coming from the kitchen below. Good! Everyone was busy. I wondered briefly why I was doing this in secret. There was no reason I shouldn’t explore the house, after all. It just seemed … odd that Mr Bilal was never able to show me the storeroom. Well, I was going to look at it now! I crossed the bridge connecting the two houses and went down to the ground floor.

  I knew that the window to the right of the small door belonged to a sitting room, and the one to its left to a study. The room above was a bedroom. So I knew exactly where the storeroom was situated – but I couldn’t find it. I stared at a blank, panelled wall in the hall and knew the room with the exterior door must be behind it, but there was no door here, inside the house. I checked the rooms on either side. Perhaps there was a connecting door in one of them? There were no doors.

  I came out into the passage again and stared at the wall. I thought of the secret chamber above the balcony overlooking the hall, in the part of the house across the alley. Could this be another secret room? I started to investigate the panelling, sliding my hands across the wood, pulling at protuberances, feeling into crevices. And I found it. A pull with my nails in a crack in the panelling, then another pull, and a piece of the panelling slid aside. A secret door!

  I looked over my shoulder. I stepped in quickly, and slid the panel almost shut behind me. Some light came in from the stone latticework above the door, enough to show me that this was indeed a storeroom. Not for blacksmith’s tools, however. The shelves on the walls were packed with bundles wrapped in cloth. I picked one of the bundles up and unrolled it carefully. A small black statue of a cat rolled out into my hands. A very ancient statue. I knew enough about Egyptian art to be sure of that.

  I checked some of the many other parcels. I found another cat statue; a necklace of blue and orange beads; and a tiny coffin embossed with a figure of a snake that would have held a small, mummified snake. I didn’t need to see anymore. I carefully rolled all the artefacts up again and put my finds back. Well, well, well, I thought. Either these had been stored here a long time ago and forgotten, or there was something odd going on. Considering Mr Bilal’s evasiveness concerning this room, I suspected something shady.

  Maybe this was a temporary store for artefacts being smuggled out of Egypt. As long as you had the key, it would be easy to bring things in and out of the door to the alley. Who was involved? Not only Mr Bilal, certainly. And what should I do?

  I wasn’t sure of anything, I told myself as I paced the storeroom. I only suspected. If I reported this, the antiquities police would investigate. We’d probably have to leave the house, and Fa might even be accused of being involved. And if I told Fa about it, he’d feel obliged to report it, and exactly the same things would happen. Best to wait and watch, I decided. Best not to tell anyone at all. And best to get out of here, right now, before someone discovered me.

  I peeked through the crack of the door I’d left open, saw the hallway was empty, and slid out. I pushed the panelling back into place and walked away quickly, dusting my hands off. There, clear! I thought.

  ‘Miss Flora?’ Mr Bilal said from behind me.

  I almost leapt out of my skin. I spun around, trying to look unconcerned, but sure that I looked as guilty as if I’d just robbed a tomb myself.

  ‘Uh, yes?’

  ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘Tea? Uh, yes. Tea. Tea would be nice. Yes, please.’

  Mr Bilal regarded me steadily. ‘I will take it to the roof. And, Miss Flora?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am afraid the key to the blacksmith’s storeroom is lost. I will have another made. However, I recall nothing in there of interest, only some old possessions of the owner of the house.’

  ‘The owner’s possessions?’ I said quickly. ‘Exactly who is the owner of the house?’

  Mr Bilal looked evasive again. ‘I do not know. An Egyptian gentleman, I believe.’ There was a long pause. ‘I will take your tea to the roof.’

  I went up to the roof and felt my eyes drawn down to the little door. I was going to keep an eye on that door.

  …

  The rest and recreation centre was very, very popular with the soldiers. I’d doubted Lady Bellamy’s tea and lemonade could compete with the tavern in the Ezbekieh Gardens, but the soldiers seemed to enjoy the cool, quiet atmosphere of the pavilion. They returned again and again. Trooper Hendy (whose name, I’d discovered, was Alex, though naturally I never used it in Lady Bellamy’s hearing) and his friends were there whenever they had leave.

  I still couldn’t understand why all these soldiers were in Cairo. The fighting was far away in France. The soldiers spent a lot of time training, but for what?

  ‘What have you been up to?’ I asked Alex one day after not seeing him for a couple of weeks.

  ‘We’ve been going out on exercises for several days at a stretch,’ he explained as I poured his tea. ‘We trek far into the desert without much food and water, getting our horses accustomed to moving on sand.’

  I handed Alex his teacup and he took a sip. ‘Why don’t they give you much to eat or drink?’

  ‘The weight adds up and the horses have to carry it all. They’re getting us ready for hard times in the desert. Each trek is getting longer and more challenging,’ he said.

  Did that mean something was going to happen here, not far from Cairo? The thought kept returning to me, like a small, threatening cloud that preceded a storm.

  But in the meantime, my social life was sparkling. I whirled through picnics and tennis parties, and danced the soles of several pairs of shoes thin prancing through the bunny hug and the turkey trot. Every time I tried to sit down at a dance, another young officer was holding his hand out hopefully to me. It was intoxicating! But before I accepted, I always looked around to see if Frank was offering as well. Somehow, dancing with Frank was … different. More exciting.

  Every week or so Fa gave dinners for his archaeologist friends at the House of the Butcher and Blacksmith and it was my job to arrange them. All I had to do, really, was mention the date to Mr Bilal and Mrs Maryam, and their team of genies had a magnificent dinner on the table as if they’d used a magic lamp and summoned the whole feast out of empty air.

  In March we had three days of
khamsins, high winds that roared in from the desert, whipping up and carrying sand. The khamsins were early this year, and the workmen hastily dismantled the tents and packed equipment away in stout boxes. With the arrival of the khamsins, the excavation season would be closing before long. I’d be very sorry to leave Egypt this year, and our wonderful, mysterious house.

  The khamsins blasted the sky to a pale, sickly yellow and shrouded the city in a pall of what seemed like fog, but was actually fine particles of sand. The sand infiltrated under tightly shut windows and doors, slithering and sliding and collecting in little piles in the corners of rooms that had been swept only hours before, and getting into food so that my teeth crunched on the fine grains.

  After the khamsins had howled their way off over the desert, we returned to the excavation to find sand blown, again, into the tomb. I spent several days emptying sand out of boxes of artefacts and records. The wooden cover of the pit burial had sand all over it and some had drifted into the grave, but it was easy enough to clear it again so visitors could see it.

  Although days at the tomb were often uncomfortable now, with a breathless heat in the air and the noon sun pounding down on our heads, we had many visitors. After a while, they began to drive Fa to distraction.

  ‘I’ll show them the pit burial instead,’ I suggested. ‘And the finds in the tent. That should keep them out of the tomb.’

  So, while Fa happily continued supervising the clearing of rubble from the shaft, I kept visitors out of his way.

  Several times, from a distance, I’d noticed an Australian officer talking to Fa, or even disappearing into the tomb, while I’d been busy with a party of visitors. ‘Is someone bothering you?’ I asked Fa one day. ‘Do you want to send him over to me?’

  ‘Bothering me?’ said Fa vaguely. ‘Oh, you mean Jim. James Hunter. He’s the fellow who’s so interested in Egyptian history. He’s asked if he could have a stab at excavating the pit burial. Jim’s had some experience and the pit burial isn’t important, no reason he shouldn’t cut his teeth on it. He’ll be coming and going, when he has time off.’

  I felt rather sorry for the little body in the pit burial. Not important. The body had been a person, and important to someone. I was pleased someone was interested. ‘Should I keep visitors away?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Fa. ‘I don’t suppose Jim will mind if people watch him at work.’

  I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t agree. Lots of archaeologists – like Professor Travers – simply hated being watched while they were working. I decided that when this Jim Hunter was working I wouldn’t take visitors to the pit burial. Over the next few days, when visitors came, I glanced up at the grave on the hill and if I saw a far away figure there, or a pile of equipment on the ground, I kept well away.

  …

  It was my birthday in March. I’d be seventeen! With the khamsins stopping the excavation for three days, I had time to plan a party at the House of the Butcher and Blacksmith. I invited many of Fa’s archaeologist friends, and the friends Gwen and I had made among the nurses and officers. I was so looking forward to it. My birthdays had always been in the school term and I’d had to be satisfied with a sedate tea party for school friends.

  Mr Bilal strung the roof terrace with pierced tin lanterns again. As I was up on the terrace, supervising the decorations, I looked down at the little door in the alley. I’d seen nothing suspicious down there; heard nothing. Had I been completely wrong about it? I resolved to keep a closer watch – but certainly not today! When I had time …

  Mrs Maryam and her band of genies had been cooking for days, filling the house with spicy, delicious aromas that floated out into the street and had passers-by lifting their heads and sniffing appreciatively. Small boys hovered near the door in the wall, pretending they needed a drink from the copper cups that hung there, but really hoping that Mrs Maryam would come out and give them a taste of something wonderful to eat.

  I’d ordered a new evening gown in a glorious shade between apricot and orange with an over-dress in a paler apricot and deep embroidery along the hem. I was ready to dance all night.

  And I did – in between eating, sipping champagne and opening the gifts kind friends had brought me: books, scarves, small and pretty ornaments, chocolates from Groppi’s. One of the young officers presented me with an enormous bunch of flowers, the largest I’d ever seen.

  ‘Thank you!’ I said, overwhelmed. ‘These are so beautiful. I’ve never seen such a large bouquet.’

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ he said. ‘I’m one of the many boxes of chocolates. No imagination, that’s me! These are from Jim. There’s a card – look, here it is. He was very disappointed he couldn’t be here tonight, but he had to go out on an unexpected training exercise.’

  ‘Who?’ I said. I looked at the card. ‘Oh, Jim Hunter.’

  Gwen was admiring the flowers. ‘These are absolutely beautiful,’ she said. ‘I wonder where he got them? You’d better put them in water, Flora.’

  I went to get vases and water and Gwen came along to help me arrange them in the dining room. ‘Well, you do seem to have an admirer,’ she said. ‘Is he nice?’

  ‘I have no notion,’ I said. ‘I’ve never met him that I can recall. He’s the man excavating the pit burial. Fa quite likes him.’

  ‘It seems to me he might like you,’ said Gwen, taking half the flowers and arranging them in a vase.

  ‘He can’t,’ I protested. ‘I wouldn’t know him from – well, from a hole in the ground.’

  ‘Very appropriate on an excavation site,’ said Gwen.

  It wasn’t a very good joke, but we laughed. The flowers were filling the dining room with a deep, velvety scent.

  ‘Are you ever going to finish with those flowers and come dance again?’ Lieutenant Hardy asked from the doorway.

  We abandoned the flowers and went back to the terrace and danced for hours. Lydia whirled around the terrace in the arms of an officer called Matthew Grier. They seemed to be enjoying each other’s company immensely. I’d seen her with him several times before. I must ask her about him, I thought.

  Frank spent most of the night talking with the other archaeologists and we didn’t get to dance together. I was surprised how put out I felt about that. It only made me dance harder with other young men – and to swirl past Frank every chance I got.

  Late in the evening I noticed that Gwen and one of the officers danced off into the shadows at the end of the terrace and stayed there for a rather long time. Hmmm, I thought.

  Much later, after everyone had gone, Gwen and I were in my room.

  ‘And just what was going on with the debonair William?’ I demanded.

  ‘We-e-e-e-ll,’ Gwen looked at me, eyes sparkling.

  ‘Gwen! You didn’t! Did you? Did you actually kiss him?’

  Gwen nodded.

  ‘You did? Really? So what was it like? Was it wonderful? Tell me!’

  ‘What was it like?’ Gwen pretended to think about it. ‘Well, to tell you the truth, it was just sort of prickly. William has a moustache, you see.’

  ‘Prickly? Is that all?’ I was horribly disappointed. Gwen and I had often discussed what a first kiss would be like. Stars and thrills and violins had featured heavily. ‘It wasn’t wonderful?’

  ‘It was pleasant enough,’ admitted Gwen. ‘But wonderful? No. Not really.’

  ‘Maybe you really have to like someone a lot before it’s wonderful?’ I suggested. I thought about that. Who did I like a lot – enough to kiss them, that is? No one with a prickly moustache! Suddenly I realised whose face I was picturing. The face of someone I liked a lot. Frank. Now that, I thought, would be really interesting – to be kissed by Frank. But, I realised sadly, though I’d laughed with Frank, and teased Frank, and even danced closely in his arms, he’d never, ever tried to kiss me. He hadn’t even danced with me once tonight. And on my birthday, too! He probably just didn’t think of me in that way. I’d thought he did, after the Christmas party, but clearly
I’d been wrong. Oh well. Someone else would come along, I told myself.

  Gwen was still talking, and I turned my full attention back to her. My full attention, except for an odd little ache around my heart.

  ‘I do have to admit, I was less than impressed,’ said Gwen. ‘I guess I just wanted to see what it was like, and he was offering. Maybe I won’t bother again, not until I really, really like someone, anyway. Then I’ll see if it’s different.’

  We sat at my window on my lovely comfortable cushioned divan, looking out at the sky, and talked the party over. Who’d said what, which nurse had danced with which officer, which officer had flirted with which nurse, and the stars circled behind the towers and minarets.

  Everything in our world was wonderful.

  Chapter 9

  I kept an eye on the small door in the wall. Every week or so when I felt I was unobserved, I went to the secret, sliding panel and entered the room behind it. Sometimes the bundles on the shelves were unchanged; sometimes, they were different. I would unroll a parcel or two, and they always contained small, beautiful artefacts. Nothing of great value, but valuable enough to turn a good profit. Someone was moving them in and out.

  I never saw anyone near the exterior door. I never saw anyone in the house who shouldn’t have been there. I didn’t know what to do. Corruption and bribery were common in Egypt. I didn’t want Fa accused if I reported the cache. I had no idea of the best action to take – or whether to take any action at all.

  …

  Easter came in early April. Lady Bellamy had been most insistent that every available volunteer should be on duty at the rest and recreation centre. ‘Many of the men will be on leave,’ she said. ‘We need every hand on deck to help take care of them.’