Her tone, as it often did, veered between mockery and gravity. She had begun to tremble. I gazed at the ring, then her face, in incomprehension. I was trying to work out this husband-to-be’s identity: was it someone unknown to me, or could it be the poet Eddie, whom I’d met at her luncheon party? She’d gone to that reading he gave in London, I remembered, and had stayed there overnight. She’d mentioned him in one of the letters from France; perhaps not everything in those letters was fiction. Then I raised my eyes to her pale set face – she couldn’t hide the expression in her eyes, not from me, not by then – and I understood at last. I said: ‘My father? You’re going to marry my father?’
‘Yes. I am. He needs a secretary, and since an unmarried woman can’t travel with him on his sabbatical, he needs a secretary-wife. I am over-qualified for such tasks.’
She gave a small impatient toss of the head as she said that. Her face had become a mask of arrogance, and she was attempting to stare me down; the trembling in her hands, as before, had now spread to her whole body.
‘But you don’t love him,’ I burst out. ‘You don’t even like him. I’ve seen the contempt in your face when you look at him. How could you do that? Why – why would you do that?’
‘I did it because I could.’ She turned away. ‘Because I don’t want to be governess to some girl for the rest of my life, not even yours. Because I don’t want to go on – and on, and on, scratching a living, moving from place to place, buried alive, taking orders from fools. Because people won’t talk once I’m a married woman. Because your father was available and one fine day I thought – why not? Because I’m angry, and it gets me nowhere. Because I’m exhausted and I gave in. Because I once wanted to do great things and now I know I won’t––’ Her voice caught and she covered her face with her hands.
‘How many reasons do you want? Am I so intolerable as a stepmother? I had thought you might be pleased. How stupid of me. Now I see I was wrong.’
I was staring at her as she spoke these words, but I couldn’t see her very well; tears had come to my eyes. I thought her distress was acted, then I thought it was genuine, that it sprang straight from her heart. Fake or real? Fake or real? I thought how much I hated her, then I pitied her and thought I could love her, and then I found I’d crossed the room, flown across the room and put my arms around her. She bent her head and rested it against mine. I held her until her trembling ceased, until my own tears dried.
When we were both calmer, she drew back a little and gave me a sidelong, glinting glance. ‘It wasn’t difficult, Lucy,’ she said. ‘You’ve seen him. I had two weeks to work on him before you returned from Egypt. And six – nearly seven months since then. Once I decided not to go to France, I knew… Well within my powers.’
I looked at her uncertainly. ‘Your bicycle-thief friend thinks it will finish you. I heard her say so.’
‘Clair?’ The fact that I’d overheard this perhaps disconcerted her. ‘Oh, Clair is so intransigent and demanding,’ she said quickly, in a negligent way. ‘She’s possessive and she talks nonsense. Who cares what she thinks, Lucy? I certainly don’t.’
Some while later – considerably later, when I’d made something to eat, and she’d poured us glasses of red wine, and insisted I drink – she sat in my mother’s ‘Strawberry Thief’ chair and I sat on the rug at her feet. I was calmer now, but I could sense agitation in both of us. The room was quiet, the fire warm on my upturned face; its flames lit the bronze, gold and copper of Nicola Dunsire’s hair. After some time had passed, she took off her engagement ring, held it delicately to the firelight, examined its small stone – and told me it had been chosen at a shop in Bene’t Street, owned by a Hungarian by the name of Szabó.
‘How many pieces of your mother’s jewellery did you sell that man, Lucy?’ she asked quietly and, accepting that she’d always be a hundred yards ahead of me however fast I ran, I told her. I also told her what the money was for. I described my escape plan, how much I yearned to return to Egypt, to the Valley of the Kings, to Frances – and why. Maybe the wine loosened my tongue, maybe she did. Because, I said, beginning to cry; because, because, because.
I spoke at length; once I began speaking, I found I couldn’t stop. Somewhere in the midst of this blurt, this cri de coeur, Nicola Dunsire took my hand in hers. She listened intently, without interruptions or questions. Nothing I said seemed to surprise her – it was as if I were describing a state of mind long familiar to her. When I finally ceased speaking, she said: ‘You’ve let me into your secrets. In return, I shall let you into mine. You remember that friend I spoke of, the one you remind me of, the one you resemble so closely?’
‘The one who killed herself? Yes, I remember her.’
‘That friend was me. She and I are one and the same. Her name was Nicole. She turned on the gas in her room at Girton one night, and she died. The next morning, Nicola – the Nicola you know, was born. You and I are as alike as can be, Lucy. We are two sides of the very same coin.’
I stayed silent, watching the firelight play across her face. I thought through this revelation and wondered if it were true and, if it were, what had brought her to that pass. Were we alike? The idea bewildered me.
‘But I wouldn’t have done that, Nicola,’ I said gently. ‘I would never try to kill myself.’
‘Don’t tempt fate.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘And don’t argue. Like as like, even so. You and I are twins, Lucy – and I knew that within an hour of meeting you.’
We returned to Mr Szabó’s shop the following morning and sold him the last necessary item of jewellery: Miss Dunsire and I selected it together from the museum of Marianne. I wrote to Miss Mack, confirming I could accompany her to Egypt again – the dates, as Miss Dunsire pointed out, would be convenient for us both, leaving her free to travel with my father for part of his sabbatical. And, a few days later, we gave a small supper party to celebrate the surprise wedding: no Girtonian friends present, no waspish, hard-drinking poets; several carefully selected dons – all those invited, and their wives, attended. Everyone brought presents. Dr Gerhardt made a kindly speech. My father, the unexpected bridegroom, looking suave, handsome and pleased with himself, a man who’d pulled off a complex conjuring trick to the amazement of his friends, proposed numerous toasts.
At some length, and with a gallantry and eloquence everyone remarked upon, he explained his new wife had transformed his life. He felt as if the roles of Orpheus and Eurydice had been reversed, he said; as if it were Nicola Dunsire who had risked that journey to the underworld to rescue him from the shadowland of bereavement – and had done so, unlike ill-fated Orpheus, successfully. She had changed his name, he said, with a flicker of amusement – he would revert to his old surname from now on. She had changed his life – and his work: it was thanks to her promptings that he’d finally understood the form his book on Euripides must take, he added. He raised his glass, and we drank to the successful completion of this book, to him – and to Nicola Foxe-Payne, the wife who would soon be accompanying him to Athens and Paris for research purposes, the wife whose devotion, intellectual support, acuity and secretarial skills he could now rely on.
Miss Dunsire – I still thought of her by that name and always would – then proposed a toast to me, and my forthcoming stay in Egypt: ‘Life! Prosperity! Health!’ she said, raising her glass, using the salute I’d taught her, the salute traditionally given to all Egyptian kings. She was happy that night, I think. It was an evening of gaiety and good fellowship. We’d filled the house with white lilies with pink throats, and their scent was intoxicating. I drank a glass of champagne for the first time in my life. I wore Miss Dunsire’s silk dress for the first time. It was greatly admired by everyone present.
‘You promise you’ll write to me from Egypt, Lucy?’ Miss Dunsire said. We were alone by then. Our guests had left, and my father, seeing no reason why marriage should alter by one iota the habits with which he was comfortable, had returned, as always, to college. The house was quiet a
gain. Miss Dunsire and I climbed the stairs to bed. She kissed my cheek, as we reached the first landing.
‘Oh, I’ll write punctually. One letter every three days,’ I answered, with a small sidelong glance.
‘Wicked girl. Goodnight then.’ She laughed as I turned to the stairs to my attic.
FIVE
Oliver No. 9
AT LAST HAVE MADE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY IN THE VALLEY. A MAGNIFICENT TOMB WITH SEALS INTACT. RECOVERED SAME FOR YOUR ARRIVAL. CONGRATULATIONS. CARTER
Telegram from Howard Carter in Luxor to Lord Carnarvon at Highclere Castle, 6 November 1922
26
‘Curious, that famous telegram of Carter’s,’ Dr Fong said.
He settled himself in his chair on my Highgate terrace and surreptitiously switched on his tape recorder. I poured him a cup of Gunpowder tea and kept my eyes on the graves of Highgate Cemetery below my back garden walls: that long, long view over a wilderness of ivy and brambles, over crucifixes, obelisks and angels. A party of volunteers was clearing the undergrowth in this, the oldest, most neglected section of the burial ground. Their shouts as they uncovered another overgrown monument interspersed with the whine of their chainsaw.
A hot afternoon in May: I had recently returned from my stay in the country with Rose; Dr Fong, driven out of Egypt by temperatures that made filming impossible, had just left Luxor. This meeting was the first we’d had since his return. I wasn’t sure why he had pressed for it, or why I’d agreed. Perhaps I welcomed company: since leaving Rose’s house, my days had been solitary.
The first two episodes of Dr Fong’s Tutankhamun documentary were complete, the remaining two would be filmed the following autumn, he said, and the programmes would be ready for transmission by next January. But filming had disagreed with him: the technical wizardry took days to set up, the helicopter shots used up half the budget, the script kept altering and the producers had decided too many scholars were involved. ‘Too many “talking heads”,’ Fong explained in an irritable tone. ‘First they wanted to cut half the interviews, then they had a panic attack and said we needed drama… Intercut scenes from the life and death of King Tut. Costumes. Actors, God help us. Tut’s mourning sister-widow, villainous viziers.’
That insurrection had been successfully put down, but the political infighting of prime-time television had taken its toll. Dr Fong was looking tired and dispirited; there’d been a noticeable ebbing of confidence; his former youthful bounce was gone. He’d been ill while in Egypt, he’d told me: one of those feverish Valley colds, the ones that could fell you for weeks. I wondered whether these factors explained the change in him; not entirely, perhaps. I noted that his wedding ring had disappeared, though he said nothing of its absence and neither, of course, did I. Fong’s manner was chastened, less impatient than it had been; he’d greeted me with surprising warmth and a kindly concern: ‘You’ve lost weight since I last saw you, Miss Payne,’ he’d said gently. ‘You’re looking exhausted, you know. You haven’t been ill, have you?’
I brushed these enquiries aside. I’d endured similar cross-questioning from Rose, who was urging me to see some Harley Street specialist she favoured; under pressure, I’d made an appointment to see this man. A waste of time: even top consultants can’t provide a cure for age. I was able to give Dr Fong the same answer I’d given Rose: I’d been sleeping badly, that was all. I blamed the months spent poring over letters and journals, re-exploring my past… A trivial complaint, I told him crisply: nothing that the latest sleeping pills couldn’t cure.
Having made that remark about Howard Carter’s famous telegram to Lord Carnarvon, Fong lapsed into silence. He seemed unwilling to pursue that subject, but sat frowning at the cemetery below. The scent of the wisteria on my house walls honeyed the air and a faint breeze riffled the pages of his notebook. ‘To tell you the truth, Miss Payne,’ he said suddenly, ‘I found it kind of dislocating, being back there, in the actual places where it all happened – the Valley, the American House… I had hoped a friend would be there with me, but in the end he couldn’t make it, so I was on my own a lot. I had time to kill while the crew did their endless set-ups. I was kind of losing faith in the whole documentary, so I’d wander around the Valley for hours at a time. And that’s a strange place, as you know. It doesn’t exactly lift your spirits when you’re feeling low – buses, car parks, exhaust fumes, a damn great tarmac road, restrooms, guards and touts everywhere. A million visitors a year – and counting. The toxicity of tourism. The Valley you knew is lost for ever – all that’s left of that is photographs.’
‘And memories.’
‘Memories don’t survive – not unless they’re recorded. And besides, who’s to say what’s memory and what’s myth?’ He made a restless gesture. ‘I met this old man while I was in Luxor, Miss Payne – he must have been ninety or more. He used to hang around the hotels, yarning to the tourists. He waylaid me one day, wanted us to film him, I think. He told me he’d been one of the water boys on Carter’s dig. He claimed it was he who found that famous first step that led down to Tutankhamun’s tomb. Said he was six, maybe seven years old, and was just kidding around, delved about in the sand with a stick, suddenly hit stone, brushed the sand aside – and, abracadabra, there the step was…
‘That information cost me five Egyptian pounds – not that I minded that: the man was blind. Thin as a reed, eyes bandaged, could scarcely walk – he was pitiful; if he made some kind of living spinning tales for the tourists, I’m glad. We didn’t film him, of course – Luxor is filled with charlatans making similar claims. But true or false, Miss Payne? Howard Carter gave two versions of how that first step was found, if you recall. In the first version, his reis Ahmed Girigar and the workmen uncovered it, early one morning, before Carter turned up on site – and just three days into the dig too: 4 November 1922. In the second version, it was the water boy at play who uncovered the step by chance… kind of a quaint detail, yes? But that boy was never mentioned until Carter was on his triumphant lecture tour in America two years later, by which time extra colour was getting added in by the day.’
‘The old man was blind?’ I turned to look at Dr Fong, but it was not him I saw; it was Girigar’s grandson and namesake, that six-year-old imp of a boy pointed out to me in the Valley, the boy whose one ambition was to ride on Carter’s Decauville rail-carts… a boy who’d be in his eighties now. ‘Did the old man tell you his name?’
‘Oh, sure. He claimed he was called Ahmed Girigar. As in, Carter’s reis. That name wouldn’t mean a thing to ninety-nine per cent of tourists, but who knows? Maybe he figured it added to the authenticity.’
‘Maybe he did,’ I replied.
I watched the little boy of eighty years before dash back to work as his grandfather shouted a reprimand: he leapt, sure-footed, among the stones of Carter’s excavations, then disappeared into its billowing dust, leaving a familiar ache about my heart. I watched two small girls run through those dust clouds, escape into a narrow wadi, come to a halt by a tall wind-carved stone and bury a pink purse at its foot. Let it pass.
I turned my eyes back to the graveyard; the volunteers had taken a tea-break and were beginning work again. I watched them advance on an angel swathed in ivy and hemmed in with sycamore seedlings: the angel’s head, the arch of a wing, and a warning upraised hand were all that were visible; the chainsaw spluttered into life, and whined.
‘So – that famous telegram of Carter’s,’ Fong said, returning at last to the issue he’d been fretting over from the moment he arrived. ‘I can’t let go of that telegram, Miss Payne: it’s a foretaste of all the puzzles to come. Think about it: Carter sent it two days after they found that first step. At that point, they’d cleared the stairway, sixteen steps down – and they’d got as far as a wall at their foot. All he’d found at that point were the necropolis seals on that wall’s plaster: no identifying king’s cartouche, or so he claims – and worrying evidence of forced entry in antiquity too. So Carter couldn’t have been sure he’d made
a “wonderful discovery” when he sent that cable. He couldn’t have known it was a tomb he’d found – let alone a “magnificent” one. It might easily have been a cache, or a minor burial. Even if it did prove to be a tomb, the probability was he’d find it rifled and emptied – and he, of all people, must have known that. Yet he sent that cable to Carnarvon at Highclere, in the certain knowledge that the earl would then hightail it out to Egypt on the next available boat… Then he filled in the staircase and halted excavation until his patron arrived. All very proper – but a risk, even so. Suppose Carnarvon arrived – and they found an empty hole in the ground?’
‘A risk Carter was prepared to take, I imagine,’ I said absently. Below us, the angel was slowly emerging from its cloak of ivy. ‘He was a showman. As you know.’
‘A showman – and a fabulist,’ Fong said, his tone bitter. I turned to look at him, surprised. ‘I’ve reached the point, Miss Payne, where I don’t trust a word that man wrote,’ he went on, his agitation now perceptible. ‘How he found the tomb, what he and Carnarvon did next… Looking into the tomb for the first time by candlelight… the “glint of gold”, the “wonderful things” he saw. Then, turn the page, and what do we find? Secrecy and deceit. A cover-up. You could say, a pack of lies.’
‘Effective lies, Dr Fong. It took decades for the truth to emerge.’
‘If it has emerged – even now. There are still unanswered questions. Too many of them.’
A silence fell. The sunlight glinted on the lenses of Dr Fong’s spectacles; a mauve petal from the wisteria fell onto his notebook and he brushed it aside. ‘Questions I’d like to answer,’ he went on. ‘I’d like to know whether the secrecy ever got too much for him. Did lying and subterfuge take its toll? Did he ever reveal the truth to anyone? Imagine it, Miss Payne: Carter makes the greatest archaeological discovery of all time – but he disguises the circumstances of that discovery. He lies – and he goes on lying. He pulls off an act of deception, aided and abetted by Lord Carnarvon and his daughter, by his Arab workforce and by a clutch of internationally distinguished scholars and archaeologists… And he does it in front of the world’s press. The assembled journalists never noticed a damn thing. They were taken in by an act of theatre.’ Dr Fong paused. ‘Were you?’