Palace Circle (30 page)

Four days later, when her train from Alexandria steamed into Cairo's chaotic station, Darius was waiting to greet her.

“How did you know what train I would be on?” she asked, tingling with pleasure as he took her small suitcase from her hand.

“Petra told me. We don't usually socialize, but she kindly made an exception since she can't be here. She's at Abdin Palace with your ambassador. He's having a meeting with King Fuad. I don't think your sister is Lampson's official secretary yet, but she might as well be. Why the nifty head bandage? Did you fall?”

“Yes, but only after I was hit with a flying object.”

He stared at her, but said nothing. She didn't mind. She wasn't ready to launch into an explanation of what had happened at Olympia.

Since she obviously didn't want to talk about it, he asked, “What are you going to do now you're home?”

“I'm going to spend as much time as possible in Bayram el-Tonsi Street,” she said, checking that the horse pulling the gharry they had chosen showed no sign of ill-treatment.

“That's where the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital is, right?”

She nodded. “And I'm going to approach the Anglo-American Hospital and see if they'll take me as a student nurse.”

He helped her into the gharry, saying to the driver, “Garden City,
minfadlak
.”

He was wearing dark glasses and a white linen suit that looked as if it had been tailored in London. A group of heavily veiled young women stopped and stared at them.

Davina didn't blame them. Where looks were concerned, Darius was film-star class.

As they moved out into a tumultuous stream of cars, buses,
bicycles, and donkey carts, she leaned back against the leather seat. In a little while she would tell Darius all about Toynbee Hall and the Sinclairs and Sir Oswald Mosley. For now, though, she just wanted to relish her happiness. The heat was overpowering, but she didn't care. Heat meant that she was in Cairo, and Cairo meant that she was home.

“And so it was hideous, Petra. The most hideous thing you can possibly imagine.” Petra and Davina were seated in cane chairs on the lushly watered lawn of Nile House. Nearby, the donkey Davina had rescued munched happily on alfalfa. Davina gazed unseeingly at him. “All Aileen and I heard was glass shattering and then as we struggled to get to Fergus I was hit on the head and went down like a ton of bricks.”

Petra adjusted her large-brimmed sun hat, so that her face was in a little more shade. “From the sound of it you were lucky not to have had your skull fractured.”

“And Fergus was lucky he wasn't killed.”

Their drinks were on a small table positioned between them. Petra reached for her Tom Collins. “How were things in London when you left?” she asked, stirring the ice cubes around with a straw. “Did you see much of Jack while you were there?”

Her voice, as always when she spoke of Jack, was queerly abrupt and her eyes didn't meet Davina's. Instead she looked with studied intensity across the Nile toward the hazy outline of the pyramids.

“I didn't, though I would have liked to. All my time was spent in Whitechapel. I did see Uncle Jerome a few times. Since meeting Fergus he's become even more involved with Toynbee
Hall. He's helping to set up a council of East End citizens to take whatever action is necessary to try to put an end to the present street violence. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the council's president.”

A shutter came down over Petra's face at the mention of Jerome's name. Thinking that it was because Petra was tired of hearing about London's East End, Davina said, “What is the situation here, at the palace? Why was Sir Miles Lampson meeting with the King?”

“Oh, the usual.” Petra stopped stirring the ice cubes. She popped a maraschino cherry into her mouth and Davina noticed that it was the exact same color as her lipstick. “Street violence here never completely comes to an end, Davvy. The King took away parliament's full constitutional rights ages ago—it now operates only in an advisory capacity—and the Wafd is agitating to have full constitutional power restored.”

“And Farouk? Is he as exasperating as ever?”

Petra pulled white-framed sunglasses down her nose and looked at her over the top of them. “Farouk,” she said, “has the attention span of a gnat.”

Davina giggled.

Looking at the donkey gently rambling across the lawn, Petra took a sip of her drink and then said, “What about Fawzia? We haven't talked about her. Is she enjoying the season? According to Delia's letters she's received lots of proposals.”

“Shoals of them. Not, though, from the person she might have accepted.”

“And who was that?” There was amusement in Petra's voice. “The heir to a dukedom?”

“No.” Davina hesitated and then, aware that Petra had declared ages ago that she no longer had the slightest interest in Jack, said, “The person she spent most time with was Jack.”

To Davina's horror, Petra turned white.

Terrified she had miscalculated, Davina said anxiously, “It doesn't matter to you, does it, Petra? I mean, it was you who did the chucking.”

“Most definitely. Of course it doesn't matter to me.” Petra shot her a brittle smile, but there was no longer any amusement in her voice. “If you don't mind I'm going to find some shade, Davvy. The sun is giving me a headache. It's good to have you back, though. I did tell you that, didn't I?”

As she watched Petra walk back to the house Davina was touched at how much Petra had obviously missed her. Though Darius hadn't said so when he had met her at the station, she was hoping he, also, had missed her very much.

“D'you fancy a ride out beyond the pyramids?” Darius said, standing with one foot on the wide shallow steps fronting Nile House.

He was dressed in jodhpurs and boots, his white shirt open at the throat. Behind him, parked in the graveled driveway, was a low-slung cream sports car. Wryly Davina noted that it wasn't British, but a German Mercedes-Benz.

“I thought it would give us a chance to catch up,” he added, making no attempt to come into the house.

“Give me five minutes,” she said, her smile radiant, “and I'll be right with you.”

She didn't suggest that he should come inside to wait. For the last couple of years Darius had chosen never to enter Nile House, regarding it as part of the enemy camp.

Ten minutes later, in a caramel-colored silk shirt, jodhpurs, and riding boots, her shoulder-length hair braided into a fat pigtail, she ran down the steps and across to the car.

“Why a German car?” she asked as she slid onto the cream leather seat beside him. “Is it another one of your too-subtle-for-most-people-to-understand anti-British statements?”

“Yes, it's an anti-British statement.” He put the car into gear. “But what do you mean about people not understanding?”

His face was unsmiling, but then it nearly always was.

She knew him too well to mind.

“Well, it's like your never coming into the house,” she said as he drove toward the Kasr el-Nil Bridge.
“I
know why you don't, but I doubt if anyone else has even noticed. You can't expect them to, not when you still go to the Gezira Sporting Club and other British hangouts, like the Turf Club and Shepheard's.”

“I go to those places because I am Egyptian and most Egyptians cannot.”

“But who knows that is why you do it? No one knows apart from yourself—and me,” she added, aware that she was the only person to whom he ever revealed his feelings.

He swerved to avoid a group of black-garbed women carrying large baskets on their heads.

“People are going to know soon enough.” The handsome planes of his face were nearly as harsh as his voice. “I've had enough of Wafd's hope for change through political negotiation. The only way Egypt is going to free itself of the British is by taking far more extreme measures.”

The car swooped up onto the bridge and a breeze from the river cooled her face.

She looked across at him. His jaw was clenched so tightly a nerve was pulsing.

Stifling her growing anxiety, she said, “Your father is one of King Fuad's key ministers. If you came out as a revolutionary he would disown you. He'd have no choice.”

“And d'you think I'd care?” A lock of hair fell over his forehead as he swung his head toward her. “D'you know how long it is since Britain promised to get out of Egypt? It was in 1883—2883/ And you're still here!”

“I won't be for much longer if you don't keep your eyes on
the road. Mind the bullock cart, Darius. You're going to clip its load.”

Driving with only one hand, he swerved past it.

“And it isn't only the British who have to go,” he said, speeding off the bridge and onto the straight dusty road leading to Giza. “Fuad and Abd al-Fattah Yahya Pasha have to go, too.”

Abd al-Fattah Yahya Pasha was the prime minister and, having been appointed to office only recently, was not a man Davina knew much about.

“He's a Whitehall puppet.” Darius almost spat out the words. “He and the King both dance to a British tune. And our new high commissioner, Sir Percy Loraine, is a man who reminds me very strongly of your father.”

Davina remained silent. She'd briefly met Sir Miles Lampson, the new high commissioner, when he had visited Nile House. She thought Darius's opinion rather astute. “Lampson's going to be far more heavy-handed on student demonstrators,” her father had said after Sir Miles had left.

It wasn't a snippet of gossip she felt inclined to share with Darius. Neither did she think it wise to ask him what he intended doing for polo ponies and sports cars if his father did disown him.

The road was flanked on either side by fields of alfalfa and maize. They made a brilliant checkerboard of green and gold, interspersed occasionally by narrow irrigation ditches. As she looked out at them, her arm resting on the top of the car's low-slung door, Davina sympathized with his anger and impatience over Britain's refusal to give Egypt unconditional independence, and worried where his anger and frustration might lead him.

If he supported terrorism his father would disown him. Her own father—if he were to find out—would ensure that Darius was arrested. His career in one of the city's most prestigious
law firms would be at an end. Yet he was right about Britain's intention.

“The Foreign Office doesn't think the time is right for Egyptian independence,” her father had said when she had questioned him. “Egypt is incapable of governing herself without British help.”

If that was what her father thought, she knew there was no chance at all of the government thinking differently.

“Not one British minister would take the slightest interest in Egypt if it weren't for the Suez Canal,” Darius said, breaking in on her thoughts. “Sometimes I wish the bloody thing had never been built!”

He swerved through the gates of the Mena House Hotel where the stables were within easy walking distance. Once he was out of the car, his mood changed.

“D'you fancy riding to the Step Pyramid?” he asked. “On the off-chance of you saying yes I've brought fruit and water with me.”

The Step Pyramid of Djoser, at Saqqara, was ten miles south of Giza and was where he had taken her on their first ride together.

“As long as there's no chance of a dust storm,” she said equably.

“No chance at all. It's the wrong time of year.”

As they walked into the stables, he said, “You haven't talked about London. What did you do there?”

“I met two of the nicest people in the world. People I will be friends with for the rest of my life.”

And while they rode into the vast expanse of shimmering desert she told him all about Toynbee Hall, the Sinclairs, and Sir Oswald Mosley's rally.

For the next year she spent most of her time at the newly opened Old War Horse Memorial Hospital in Bayram el-Tonsi Street. And when she wasn't at the hospital with another volunteer, she was out on the streets, buying broken-down horses in order that they could spend their last days being lovingly cared for.

“The cruelty isn't always maliciously intended,” one of the senior workers said to her. “You have to remember that an ex-cavalry horse needs far more food than a donkey or a mule and that their owners are so poor they aren't even able to feed their children. Another thing to take into account is that the owners often don't realize that animals feel pain.”

She did her best to educate all her friends.

“Never use a gharry when the horse looks half dead,” she said fiercely. “Never ask a gharry driver to hurry, no matter how late you may be. The horse will only get whipped. Never ever tip anyone who wears out his horse and
never
travel more than four to a cab. The weight is just too much for the horse.”

Before long even her mother's acquaintances were paying attention to the condition of the gharry horses and Davina remembered Fergus telling her that to effect social change, education was essential.

Just before Christmas she was accepted as a nurse in training at the Anglo-American Hospital. “I start after Easter,” she said to her mother. “Do please try and look a little happier about it.”

Her irritation more pretend than real, Delia said, “I'd be more pleased if you were engaged to marry one of the eligible young men you met in London. Twice your father has gone to the expense of a London season, only to have Petra a glorified secretary and you about to empty bedpans all day.”