by Cathy Kelly
‘It’d be lovely if we could have dinner together, maybe,’ Leonie was saying, hating herself for chattering away like a blackbird on acid. Terrified at the idea of being away on her own without a single friendly face to talk to, she was thrilled that she’d identified a fellow solo female traveller. But she didn’t want to come across as too lonely or too needy: Hannah, who seemed very self-possessed and assured, might not want a holiday companion. ‘If you don’t mind having dinner with me, that is…’ Leonie said, her voice fading.
‘Course not,’ said Hannah, who was perfectly happy on her own but felt oddly protective about the other woman, who was probably five nine in her socks and at least twice Hannah’s size. ‘It’s lovely to have company and we’ll be much safer from exotic, handsome Egyptians if we’re together. Or is it the male population who should be frightened of us?’ she joked.
Leonie laughed and looked ruefully at her sturdy body. ‘I think I’m quite safe enough and the male population needn’t worry.’ For once, she hadn’t felt the need to make some crack about men and how she couldn’t live without them. Those stupid remarks were only ever covering up her insecurities and she cringed hearing herself say them. Today, she hadn’t felt the need to pretend. Hannah was nice, calming. It’d be lovely sharing the holiday with her.
The bad-tempered bearded man, his wife and daughter got on the bus and plonked themselves at the front. Hannah and Leonie watched the trio with interest as the father kept up a critical monologue while his wife fanned herself weakly with a ridiculously out of place Spanish fan. Her long fair hair held back from her forehead was rather girlish for a woman of her age, as if she was acting the ingénue, while her tight-waisted, wide-skirted dress made her look vaguely as if she’d entered a fancy dress competition. She looked displeased, as if Egypt had been examined briefly and found seriously wanting. The daughter sat silently in the seat behind them, her face pale and her expression distant.
‘I hope to God we don’t end up with cabins anywhere near them,’ Leonie whispered fervently. ‘They look like the sort of people who complain if they don’t have something to complain about.’
‘The father certainly does,’ Hannah agreed, ‘but the person I feel sorry for is the daughter. Imagine being stuck with a loudmouthed tyrant like that.’
Watching the younger woman’s taut little face, Hannah was convinced it was sheer embarrassment at her father’s behaviour that made her look so distant. ‘She looks as if she’s going to cry any minute. Maybe we should get her to sit with us,’ Hannah suggested, overcome with a desire to save another lame dog, now she’d already saved one.
Leonie winced. ‘I’m not so sure…’ she said. ‘What if the other pair insist on making friends with us too and we get stuck with the lot of them for the entire cruise?’
‘Leonie,’ reproved Hannah, ‘you’ve got to live a little, experiment. Anyway, we’ll all end up sitting at tables of six or eight for meals on the boat, so if we’re allocated one with them, we’re stuck anyway.’
It was dark as the bus drove through the streets of Luxor on its way to the boat. Flora sat at the front, pointing out sights and welcoming them all to Egypt.
‘You’ll have a busy week,’ she explained, ‘because many of the tours start very early in the morning. We make early starts because the temples and sights get very busy with busloads of tourists during the day, and also because it’s cooler to sightsee in the early morning. But tomorrow you can have a lie-in as the boat sails to Edfu for the first visit which is after lunch. We’ll have a welcome meeting in the bar tonight at –’ she consulted her watch ‘ – half eight, which is in an hour, and I’ll go through the itinerary. Dinner is at nine.’
Hannah and Leonie peered out the window at the darkened, dusty streets, gazing at the one- and two-storey mudbrick dwellings which looked so different from anything at home. Many looked unfinished, as if another storey was to be built but everyone had lost interest. Scattered among these rural homes were palm trees and, far away from the road, luxuriant green crops could be seen growing several feet tall.
As they drove nearer to the lights of Luxor, Leonie noticed a solitary donkey leaning against a shed roofed with straw. He looked very thin, Leonie thought with a pang of pity. She could see his ribs sticking out painfully. She hoped she wouldn’t see animals being treated cruelly: it was bad enough at home seeing homeless dogs brought into the surgery after being hit by cars. At least she could do something for them at home, but here, she wasn’t a veterinary nurse: she was just a tourist.
A vision of Penny came to her, suddenly; those melting chocolate eyes filled with abject misery at being left behind. Leonie missed her desperately; she missed all the animals she loved. Poor Clover locked away in the cattery, and little Herman, watched endlessly by her mother’s ravenous cats. And she felt so far away from the kids. At least Ireland was nearer to Boston than here. Just a phone call away. Egypt was two continents away and she’d be travelling so they’d never be able to track her down. What if something happened and Ray couldn’t reach her and…
Stop it, she commanded. Nothing’s going to happen. Trying to put portents of gloom out of her mind, Leonie stared out the windows as the countryside gave way to straggly city streets with more traffic. Dust rose up into the air from the other vehicles on the road: battered Ladas with TAXI signs on them and stately old station wagons in bright colours, encrusted with dust. Electric signs in exotic Arabic shone over small shops and cafés, with bright English-language signs over the myriad souvenir shops.
Every few yards, she could see small groups of men sitting outside their houses, drinking coffee or watching football on television. Most wore the long simple cotton robes with white head-dresses tied into a neat hat. Young boys sat nearby, staring and pointing at the tourists in the bus, some waving excitedly.
‘I haven’t seen any women,’ Leonie whispered to Hannah, as if the men watching them from the roadside might read their lips.
‘I know,’ Hannah whispered back. ‘It does seem to be a very male-orientated society. There were no women at the airport either. It’s a mainly Muslim country, though, isn’t it? And that means the women dress modestly.’
Hannah thought ruefully of her holiday wardrobe, which contained quite a few skimpy clothes for sunbathing on the boat. As the guide books mentioned that women shouldn’t wear revealing shorts or sleeveless outfits for visiting temples, she’d brought plenty of cover-up clothes as well. But if the Egyptians frowned upon Western dress, her bikini would be staying in her suitcase. She didn’t want to offend people with her clothes. Mind you, she realized with a grin, the elderly parish priest back home in Connemara wouldn’t appreciate a pale pink crochet bikini any more than a religious Egyptian.
‘On your right is the Nile,’ Flora announced and the passengers craned their necks for their first sight of the great river. At first, Hannah couldn’t see anything but other people’s heads as everyone tried to get a glimpse out of the window.
Then she saw it, a great expanse of gleaming water, sparkling with lights from the large river boats that were moored by its banks. The mystical Nile, the gift of Egypt as Herodotus said – or was it the other way round? She couldn’t remember. Egyptian kings and queens had sailed up and down this river in their royal barges, pharaohs sailing to visit their temples and to worship their gods. Tutankhamun, Rameses, Hatshepsut: their names were a roll call of an exotic past world…
‘Look at the boats,’ breathed Leonie, who was dying to know on what sort of vessel they’d be spending the next seven days and who couldn’t concentrate on the glories of the Nile until she saw her cabin to see if it had enough room for her vast suitcase. ‘That’s a huge one,’ she added as they drew closer to a floating palace decorated with hundreds of fairy lights. ‘I hope that’s our boat.’
The bus sped past. ‘Oh well…’ Leonie shrugged.
The bus suddenly shuddered to a halt beside a much smaller boat which was painted French blue and had the words Queen Tiye w
ritten on the side in huge gold letters. Three decks high, the top deck was half covered with a large canvas awning, the other half open to the skies with wicker seats and sun loungers splayed around. The top deck shone with lots of small lights and they could see a few people sitting around a table, bottles and glasses in front of them. ‘Pretty, pretty,’ Leonie sighed happily.
Everyone trooped off the bus, identified their luggage for the porters as Flora commanded them, and then climbed carefully down the stone steps at the quay to walk along the narrow wood-and-rope bridge on to the boat.
Leonie held on to the ropes at the side of the bridge to balance herself and beamed back at Hannah who was behind her: ‘It’s very Indiana Jones,’ she said, thrilled with the adventure. ‘Is this the gangplank, do you think?’
‘Dunno,’ answered Hannah tiredly. She was beginning to feel the after-effects of her sleepless night with the energetic Jeff. All she wanted now was to fall into her bed and sleep until morning. But she shouldn’t really skip the talk with Flora. Otherwise, she might miss out on what was happening for the voyage – and Hannah couldn’t bear the thought of missing out on information. You could never rely on other people to tell you things.
When everyone had filled in a registration card, Flora organized cabin keys. Hannah and Leonie’s cabins were opposite each other.
‘Isn’t this fun?’ Leonie asked in childish delight as the two of them walked down a narrow passage to their cabins. She’d never been on a boat like this before.
The big ferries to France were different. Modern and boring. This was all so different, so exotic. The walls were covered in rich dark wood and hung with tiny prints of Victorian watercolour desert scenes offset by filigree gold frames. Even the cabin keys were decorated with little brass pyramids. Leonie wished the kids were here with her to experience it all. Mel would be thrilled at the thought of buying silky Egyptian scarves, Abby would be in raptures at the thought of seeing the temples, and Danny would be pestering the crew to let him steer the ship. She hoped they were having a good holiday.
She opened her cabin door in a fizz of excitement which quickly abated when she saw the room which was to be her home for the next week. The cabin was tiny, not even as big as her bathroom back in the cottage. There were none of the filigree gold paintings or rich wood of the rest of the boat: the cabin was painted plain cream all over with yellow curtains and yellow-striped covers on the two single beds.
A six-inch square ledge served as a dressing table, with another as a bedside table between the beds. There was a small fridge beside the wardrobe, which was really just a niche in the wall with doors. Leonie stuck her head inside the bathroom to find a minuscule room with a sink, toilet and a shower. Her suitcase would barely fit in the cabin, never mind trying to cram her vast store of clothes into the wardrobe, and as for dressing table space – she’d obviously have to use the other bed to lay her make-up and jewellery out.
‘Compact, huh?’ Hannah put her head round the door.
‘Compact is not the word. It’s just as well I haven’t brought my toyboy lover for a week of passionate thrashing around on the Nile.’ Leonie grinned. ‘We’d concuss ourselves every time we launched off the dressing table on to the bed!’
‘Lucky you with a toyboy,’ joked Hannah. ‘We must compare stories later.’ She disappeared as the porter brought her case along the corridor.
My side of that conversation won’t take long, Leonie thought regretfully.
She opened the curtains and let the quayside lights shine into the cabin. Opening the window, she looked down to see the placid dark waters of the Nile. She was really here, she realized with a happy shiver. She hadn’t balked with fear and run home; she’d taken her first holiday on her own. That had to be worth something in the independence stakes.
Once unpacked, she showered quickly, thrilled at the fact that the compact shower room had only a tiny mirror so she didn’t have to stare at her huge, pinky-white naked self. She spent the usual ten minutes trying on clothes, then ripping them off and throwing them on the bed when she looked awful in the long wardrobe mirror.
Her burgundy velvet embroidered dress was too hot even if it was the nicest thing she’d brought and her other dress, the sleeveless black one, revealed so much of her plump arms she couldn’t bear it. Hannah would not be having this problem, she sighed, thinking of what a fantastic figure her new friend had. Slim and elegant, Hannah had looked wonderful in her simple travelling clothes. Leonie would have killed to look that good in jeans.
Eventually, she settled on the sleeveless dress worn with an open pink silk shirt, the long tail covering up her bum, she hoped. She left the cabin full of anticipation for the night ahead.
The informal meeting before dinner in the top-deck bar was in half an hour but Leonie decided to go up now, so she could daydream quietly and watch the world go by.
In her daydreams, she had a vision of herself sitting on the upper deck, glass of wine in hand and a swarm of admiring men surrounding her like something from Scott Fitzgerald. Instead, she caught sight of herself in the smoky mirrors which lined the stairs and saw the familiar reflection: the solid peasant’s body and a mass of hair like untamed hay that no anti-frizz serum could help.
Scott Fitzgerald’s heroes would probably hand her their empty martini glasses and ask for refills, presuming she was the serving girl.
Wishing she’d stuck to a diet for her holidays, she stomped upstairs to the bar. Decorated in ornate carved wood, it was certainly from another era with its Art Deco furniture and French lithographs behind the counter.
She ordered a glass of white wine from the smiling, dark-eyed young barman and, once she’d signed her room number on the bill, took her glass outside to the bar-level deck where she could feel the night air on her skin and listen to the noises of the river.
There was nobody else there and she breathed in the silence broken only by a distant hum of Arab music from one end of the boat. It was still gloriously warm and Leonie felt herself relax finally as she stared out over the tranquil darkness of the Nile. She wasn’t going to obsess about being forty-something and manless: she was going to enjoy herself.
Moored to the other bank, she could see the tall sails of river boats. Feluccas, her guide book had explained. You could rent one and sail down the river for a couple of hours, travelling the way people had for thousands of years. How romantic.
She picked up her glass and was about to take a sip when she heard a hesitant, rather husky voice through the vast open doors order a mineral water with no ice.
Leonie smiled to herself and played one of her favourite games: guessing to whom the voice belonged. She thought of the couple of sedate blue-rinsed ladies who’d climbed on to the coach last of all, twittering with relief that one of their bags hadn’t been gobbled up by the carousel but had in fact been rescued from the wrong baggage cart by an apologetic airport official. Definitely one of them. Although that voice was very sexy, very whiskey and cigarettes as it said, ‘Thank you so much,’ in an anxious manner. Too sexy to be a genteel seventy-year-old, unless she’d had a lifetime of fierce chain-smoking behind her.
Twisting in her seat to see if she was right, Leonie was astonished to see that the owner of the voice was the anxious Saluki Woman with the parents from hell, still wearing her long cream outfit and still looking immaculate. But she looked different somehow.
Instead of her previously distant expression, the woman’s face was tired and, no, Leonie wasn’t imagining it, friendly. She even carried herself differently: her body was no longer tense and she gazed around as if some weight had been lifted from her. Before, she’d avoided eye contact like the plague. Now, she looked around, spotted Leonie and gave a half-smile that seemed almost apologetic.
Leonie, naturally friendly, smiled back and immediately regretted it. What if the woman and her awful family decided to sit with her and Hannah during dinner? Or attach themselves to them for the entire cruise? What a terrifying thought. Hannah
was mad to think about it. Wishing she didn’t feel such a bitch, Leonie wiped the smile from her face just as abruptly and went back to studying the Nile as if she was about to sit an exam on What Sort of Objects You Might Find Floating By on a Summer’s Evening.
‘You look as if someone just pinched your bottom,’ remarked Hannah, sitting in the chair opposite and placing a glass of orange juice on the table. ‘Or is it because they haven’t pinched your bottom you look so glum?’ In loose white drawstring trousers and a simple caramel fitted T-shirt, she looked classy and comfortable at the same time. Leonie immediately felt overdressed in her floating pink silk.
‘I’m avoiding looking at yer woman in case Ma and Pa Walton decide to join us,’ Leonie explained in a whisper. ‘She smiled at me when she came in and I’m terrified of starting up a friendship I won’t be able to shake off. I can’t stand people like her father. I never lose my temper except with people like him and then I’m like a bomb, I just explode.’
‘I’d love to see you explode at him. Anyway, the poor girl’s lonely,’ Hannah insisted.
‘I collect enough lame dogs at home without collecting a few rabid ones abroad,’ Leonie groaned, knowing that Hannah was right. The poor girl was lonely and it wasn’t fair to ostracize her just because of the people she was travelling with.
They both sneaked casual glances at the woman, who had positioned herself at a table just outside the bar and was trying to take something from her handbag without anyone noticing. She couldn’t have been more than thirty, Hannah decided, and she looked thoroughly miserable, like a cat that had been locked out in the rain. The girl had a long face, Leonie was right about that. But having long straight hair trailing down her face didn’t help. Hannah suspected that some unkind person had once told her that wearing your fringe low detracted from a large nose. Probably that obnoxious father of hers. Hannah bet that if the girl smiled or if she wore something less colourless than that hideously old-fashioned cream thing, she’d be pretty in an understated way.