by Rosie Thomas
‘Darling, you’re here. Did you sleep? Have you had something to eat? How do you feel?’
‘Mum. Where did you get to?’
‘I went for a cup of coffee with the camel trekkers, they came to see how you both are. How did you get here?’
‘Really? That was nice of them. I’m fine, I woke up and had breakfast with Ash. Then I had a shower and he gave me a lift on his scooter. Iris was awake a minute ago. She looked around and asked for you.’
‘She asked for me?’
‘Yes. She said to me, “Lesley, you’ll have to speak up.” Then she sort of blinked, and said, “Where’s Lesley?” I told her you’d be back soon.’
Lesley sat down quickly on the other side of the bed. She took her mother’s hand, so thin and small that there was no weight in it, and held it tight. Ruby was quiet, sitting with her head propped against the back of the chair, and Lesley sat watching her and letting the wordless phrases of gratitude rise slowly through her mind, like bubbles in the sea.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ruby talked to Sebastian, who was in his office in London.
‘You gave us all a fright,’ he said.
‘Sorry. I gave myself a fright as well.’
‘Are you sure you are all right?’
Ruby was using Andrew’s mobile. Andrew was trying to work, with his papers spread out on the divan in Iris’s sitting room. He complained that the overhead light was too dim to read by, and if he opened the shutters the muezzin and the noise from the street below was too disturbing. Ruby saw no point in trying to pitch a conversation somewhere between two fathers.
‘I’m OK. Iris’s getting better as well.’
‘That’s good news. All right, darling. I’ve got to go to meet an author. Give me a call later in the week, eh? And we’ll have to make a proper plan for that New York trip, once you’re back in England.’
‘Yeah. OK, Dad.’
‘Love you, darling. ’Bye.’
Ruby put the phone down beside Andrew’s papers, but he didn’t look up. She wandered out and glanced down from the gallery into the hall. With a scarf tied over her hair, Lesley was balancing on a stepladder. She was taking the red glass lights out of the huge lantern that hung on chains from the carved roof and dusting them one by one. Mamdooh hovered at the foot, his hands raised and upturned as if he hoped to catch her when she fell. Ruby went slowly down the stairs. Between them, Lesley and Andrew were re-creating Kent in Cairo.
‘I’m going for a walk with Ash,’ Ruby called.
‘What? Oh, wait. Where will you be going? Take my phone. You’ll be back to have supper with Andrew, won’t you? I’m going out, remember.’
‘Dunno,’ Ruby breathed. ‘Don’t fall off.’
She skipped out of the door, closing it tight and automatically squinting as the low sunlight hit her face.
Ash detached himself from the wall and sloped towards her. ‘You are late. But you are looking like yourself again, I am glad to see.’
‘I was talking on the phone to my dad in London. And thanks.’ She sketched a mocking kiss at him.
‘On the phone, why? I thought he was here also.’
‘This one here is my stepfather. The other one in London is my real father.’
Ash sighed. ‘This is very complicated for you.’
‘It’s pretty simple, actually. I don’t worry about it.’
He took her hand and they began to walk, slowly and with no particular objective, the way Ruby enjoyed.
Mamdooh puffed out his cheeks with relief as Lesley replaced the last of the red glass globes and clambered down the ladder. She stood with the duster in her hand, looking up at the result of her work. She now saw that it wasn’t an improvement. When it had been furred with dust the lantern had at least looked old and important. Now, with the clumsy joints in the metalwork and the machine-made glass fully revealed, it was obvious that it was a piece of modern junk that anyone could have picked up in the bazaar. Which was probably exactly what Iris had done. Most of the rest of her furnishings looked the same. Iris didn’t care about clothes or possessions or aesthetics, perhaps never had. Lesley had inherited all her enthusiasm for such things from her father. When he died, he had left her his good furniture and his library of first editions on photography, nearly all of which she had sold, although that wasn’t particularly relevant.
It was the ability to appreciate in the first place that mattered, Lesley thought.
She went through to the kitchen to rinse out her duster, surprising Auntie into a nervous flutter in her wake, then retreated upstairs to have a shower in the bathroom in which the pipes ominously clanked and the water swirled away into a scaly hole in the tiling.
‘What am I supposed to do for the evening?’ Andrew demanded when Lesley reappeared changed and ready to meet the women at their hotel.
‘Have some dinner here, with Ruby if she’s back. Auntie is cooking something.’
‘Bean soup.’
‘Very good for you. I won’t be late.’
‘This is getting more and more awkward, Lesley, you know. How long are you going to need to stay? I’m right in the middle of the Elligott deal, and I can’t handle the whole business from here.’
She crossed the room to him, making a show of folding down and settling the collar of his shirt just because she wanted to touch him, to make the smallest connection, and wishing at the same time that they could laugh together or tease each other. Two creases familiarly showed between Andrew’s eyebrows.
‘Thank you for coming out here with me and taking charge of everything,’ she said.
It was Andrew who had tracked down the office of Ideal Desert Safaris and made sure that the camel guide received ‘an appropriate gesture’, as he put it, and he had dealt with the police and the embassy officials too. I couldn’t have done it on my own, Lesley thought automatically.
But now, suddenly, she reflected that there was no real reason why she should not have done. She ran her own business, even if it was only to do with lampshades and storage solutions, not corporate takeovers. It was Andrew’s way to make little of what she did and, by extension, to make little of her. And she accepted this because she also understood that he needed to emphasise his own adequacy by doing so.
He looked surprised, but pleased. ‘I couldn’t just stay at home, could I? And I was as worried about Ruby as you were.’
Maybe, Lesley thought. Her husband felt what he ought to feel, as if love or anxiety or responsibility had been placed on an agenda for him to consider. None of these emotions came spilling out of him, unstoppable. Passion was nowhere on the list. Except maybe where his boat was concerned. Lesley found herself smiling.
It wasn’t that he was a bad man.
But she didn’t know any more if he was what she wanted.
And then Lesley realised that even to consider what she wanted was such an unfamiliar course that she was startled by the exposure of it.
She said quickly, ‘So what do you want to do? I’m not going to leave Cairo while my mother is seriously ill in hospital.’
Andrew closed the lid of his laptop and gathered up some of his papers into a sheaf. ‘I might have to go back before you, then.’
‘That’s all right. Ruby and I can take care of ourselves. You’ll have to look after Ed for a few days; we can’t leave him at Ollie’s for ever.’
‘Well. I suppose so.’
‘I’d better go.’ Lesley stooped and kissed the top of his head, where the hair had retreated. He caught her wrist and held it, and it was Lesley who straightened up in the end and said that she really must go.
Dressed up in bright tops, sparkly earrings and strappy sandals, the trekkers were drinking cocktails in the bar of the hotel.
‘Here she is! Come on, Lesley, you’re a cocktail behind.’
‘I’ll have a margarita,’ Lesley said.
The first was quickly followed by a second.
Later they went out in two taxis to a Lebanese restaurant wh
ere they sat on cushioned divans and ate a long succession of little dishes accompanied by bottles of heavy red wine. The conversation was a choppy stream of anecdote cut with intimate confessions that were received and then neutralised by a lot of laughing, and Lesley felt buoyed up by the giggly camaraderie of it all. The waiters played up to them and brought them free silver dishes of sugary pastries at the end of the meal, and everyone swore that they never touched such things before gobbling up every one as they drank thick coffee from tiny gold cups. After they had divided up the bill Lesley said that she ought to go home, but the others insisted that this was Cairo, they were going to a belly-dancing show and she must come with them.
To begin with, the dancer wore diaphanous turquoise voile harem pants and a matching veil, and a bodice and wrist bands glimmering with sequins and pearls. Bells jingled at her wrists and ankles, and her bare feet padded on the dusty floor. She had long, eloquent fingers and her sad eyes were heavily outlined with kohl.
‘I wish I could dance. I want to be a belly-dancer,’ Lindy wistfully sighed. Her eyes were shiny with admiration.
‘Right then. We’ll leave you here and come back next year to catch your show,’ Ros said.
Towards the end of her act the dancer shed most of her voile. Her thighs and the flesh of her belly shimmied extravagantly as she shook her hips and the jewel in her belly button flashed in the lights. The tourists all clapped.
‘I feel better about myself,’ Clare murmured.
‘Me too,’ Louise said. ‘I’m not going to suck in my stomach any more. I’m going to let it all hang out in a sequinned bikini.’
Lesley felt sorry for the dancer, who looked tired under her thick make-up, and then a more general sadness. The musicians were old men with greasy marks on their red waistcoats and their tarbooshes tipped to one side. Everyone was sad, and herself most of all.
Too much to drink, she told herself.
It was the end of the evening. Jane’s eyes were shut, her head resting on Lindy’s plump shoulder, and the dancer was taking her last bow.
Outside in the street there was the ubiquitous line of waiting black-and-white taxis. It wasn’t hard to travel around Cairo, Lesley had discovered, if you had a few Egyptian pounds for the fare.
The women all hugged her, and Ros made sure she had her shawl, and Lesley thanked them all again.
‘We didn’t do a thing.’
They had her address, she had theirs. They would meet up again. Lesley had been invited to join them next year.
‘Machu Picchu.’
‘Not bloody Macho whatsit. I fancy Parrot Cay, myself.’
They climbed unsteadily into two taxis. Lesley waved them off and then got into a third. She gave the driver Iris’s address and looked ahead into the thick of the traffic. She was wondering what would happen next and at the same time realising that there were possibilities, definite possibilities. The answer might be as simple as taking a holiday on her own once in a while, or as complicated as admitting that her marriage needed work. It was like a door opening. She couldn’t quite see into the room beyond, but neither did she feel locked into the same old space.
Ruby was in bed, reading a book.
‘You’re still awake.’
‘Andrew went to bed hours ago, so he won’t be. I wanted to make sure you got in safely.’
They looked at each other, acknowledging the perfection of this reversal, and started to laugh.
Lesley sat down on the edge of the bed, as she used to do when Ruby was a child. ‘What are you reading?’
Ruby held the book up so she could see the cover. It was a history of pharaonic Egypt.
‘Is it interesting?’
‘Yes. We could go to the Egyptian Museum, if you like. I’ll show you some of the exhibits, there are some amazing things.’
‘Let’s do that. Andrew might have to go home in a day or so, but I’m going to stay.’
With her eyes on a photograph of excavations to unearth the tomb of Ramses II, Ruby said, ‘We’ll be fine on our own here.’
For its steady inclusiveness it seemed to Lesley that this was one of the most musical sentences she had ever heard Ruby speak, at least since she had been old enough to give voice to the opposite kind.
She smiled at her. ‘Are you coming to the hospital with me in the morning?’
‘Yeah, ‘course I am.’
Lesley kissed her and Ruby didn’t duck or wince. ‘Good night, then. Sleep well.’
In their bedroom she eased herself into bed without turning on the light, careful not to disturb Andrew. She lay on her back, looking up at the domed ceiling.
I am recovering. The figures coming and going at the edges of my awareness gain definition as the pain recedes. I recognise the nurses, who do what they must with reasonable efficiency, and the doctor, who when he leans over me smells of coffee and tobacco overlaid with cologne. And I have four visitors. Nicolas is the easiest. He sits in the chair beside my bed and reads to me, paragraphs from the Egyptian Gazette or one of the Cairo newspapers, or sometimes a short story by Somerset Maugham, a writer we both admire. Nicolas always kisses my cheek before he leaves, and tells me that I am doing well and will soon be home again. When Mamdooh comes he brings a small covered basket of food, cooked by Auntie, which I cannot eat. He sits for a few minutes, uncomfortable, too large for the spindly chair, and anxiety radiates out of him.
And then, my daughter and her daughter.
Earlier, because they have the same eyes and their mouths move in the same way, their faces slipped together and I had trouble distinguishing them. But now they are distinct. Lesley’s skin falls into vertical creases to her jawline and her expression is hesitant and at the same time expectant. Ruby looks as if there is a light behind her eyes. The future offers her everything, by right. She has only to reach out and take whatever she wants.
I am too tired to say more than the occasional word, but I like it when they are here, separately or together.
Now they have put more pillows behind my back and slipped their arms round me for further support. Ruby is holding a cup and Lesley dips a spoon into it and pushes the tip against my lips. I open my mouth and taste, like an infant feeding, and then I swallow. It is warm, sweetened porridge. The first solid food I have eaten in – how long? I have lost track.
I am in the house that Gordon and I bought, in haste, before Lesley was born. There is a ceanothus bush in the garden and a high-sided pram placed in the shade of it, with netting stretched from the hood to the handle to keep off the cats. I unhook the net and peel back the white coverlet, but what I find beneath is not a baby but a fat tabby cat.
I force my eyes open. My tongue is parched and swollen, my lips gummed at the corners. Someone holds a cup to my mouth and I gratefully swallow. I see that it is Lesley, with her expectant look.
‘How long have I been in this place?’ I demand. ‘A week.’
I am assimilating this information when she says, ‘Mummy, it’s me. It’s Lesley.’
‘I know who you are.’
‘You do? Well … good. That’s very good.’
‘I want to go home, Lesley. I want to be in my own home,’ I say. At home I will be able to concentrate on what I have to do.
‘Do you like them?’
Ruby and Lesley were at the museum. They had queued to enter the Mummy Room, where Lesley recoiled slightly from the shrivelled faces with leathery dark skin drawn back from the bleached bone in what looked like a snarl. Ruby wandered between the cases, pausing beside each king and queen with what seemed to Lesley to be close to tenderness.
They had stood in front of the mask of Tutankhamun, and as with the Mona Lisa and The Birth of Venus Lesley experienced the same small shock at the familiarity of the real thing, the parallel absence of astonishment. You expected more from it, but all the images and reproductions that you had pre-absorbed meant that there was no more; how could there be?
She remembered that as a teenager her father had taken her to
the British Museum when the boy king was on temporary display there, but the queue for admission had stretched a long way beyond the gates and they had both decided that however magnificent it turned out to be, the exhibit would hardly repay such a wait. They went to the pictures in Tottenham Court Road instead, the faintly illicit afternoon fug of the cinema acquiring an extra charm following their mutual rejection of planned culture. In their enclosed, affectionate relationship Lesley and Gordon often did things like that together.
Now Ruby led her down the stairs again and they passed between the dingy glass cases that cluttered the ground floor. There were incoherent heaps of antiquity everywhere, looking like nothing more than bric-a-brac, crying out to be labelled and separated and properly lit, yet Ruby was obviously entranced by it all. They came into another tall room and Ruby took her arm in front of a series of statues with enigmatic sloping faces and massive bellies and thighs.
‘Do you like them?’ she repeated. ‘They’re my favourites.’
‘They are certainly impressive. Who are they?’
‘Pharaoh Akhenaten. About 1300 BC. And look, here’s his wife, Nefertiti.’
‘Really? That’s Nefertiti? You are very knowledgeable, I must say.’
‘I am interested,’ Ruby said, faintly reproving.
She pointed out a carved panel, calling it a stele, that showed the pharaoh cradling a child and his wife nursing two smaller infants. The domestic intimacy of the scene was in sharp contrast with all the funerary pomp and symbolism elsewhere, and Lesley lingered in front of it. Even these ancient stone-carved kings and queens had babies, and held them in their arms. She wondered if any of these children had grown and died, and then been interred in their pyramids, only to be dug up again centuries later and laid out under the lights upstairs for inspection by daily parades of German tourists. It was a harsh fate, she thought. Death ought to be a private matter, whoever you were.
She became aware that Ruby was shifting at her side, preparing to say something.