Palace Circle (38 page)

“Their little boy …” Davina's teeth were chattering. “Andrew. Was Andrew hurt?”

“He wasn't with them. I don't know why, but Sir Jerome thought there were no relatives on either side of the family to take care of him. Muriel Scolby went to the funeral and when she realized the situation she brought Andrew back down to London with her. With the family solicitor's permission, he's now living at Shibden Hall.”

“Can he be adopted?”

The question was so unexpected that Boo blinked.

“Well, yes,” she said, “I suppose so. Though he may be a
little old now. He's nearly six and I know older orphans don't seem to have much of a chance.”

“This one will.” The light in her eyes was almost as fierce as the tone of her voice.

Bruno came back with a brandy and a tartan rug. Darius pressed the glass of brandy into Davina's hand and laid the blanket around her shoulders.

“When this bloody war is over,” she said unsteadily, “I shall adopt him, Darius. It's the least I can do for Aileen and Fergus.”

Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. He might survive having an English wife, but what about having a Scottish stepson?

It would be impossible, but he couldn't tell Davina so when the Pytchley girl, Bruno Lautens, and Archie Somerset were clustered so anxiously around her. Instead he said heavily, “I think we should leave Davina alone for a little while.”

“Yes, of course, old chap.” The speaker was Archie and as Archie duly opened the door the incongruous sound of Delia singing “Dixie” filled the room.

Later that night, back on the
Egyptian Queen
, Darius sat on the deck, a cigarette in one hand, a glass of arrak in the other. Talking Davina out of adopting the Sinclair child wasn't an option; for one thing, he knew he wouldn't be able to do so, for another, he fully sympathized with her intention. The Sinclairs had been her close friends. If their child was left with no family, Davina wouldn't be the person he loved if she hadn't responded as she had.

By the time Sadat arrived for their meeting the sun was beginning to rise.

“You're a lawyer,” Sadat said when he had seated himself in a chair on the deck. “And a skilled lawyer will have a vital role when we take control of Egypt. We'll want men whose loyalty and commitment are proven. A minister of justice who has been with us from the beginning.”

Darius would have taken such remarks from anyone else as empty daydreaming, but Constantin had told him enough about Sadat for him to know that Sadat was a hard-nosed realist.

“There's a new breed of officers in the Egyptian army now,” Constantin had said. “And they are ready to stage an uprising when the moment is right. Their real leader is an officer named Gamal Nasser. Sadat is his deputy.”

Constantin hadn't told Darius that Sadat was only in his early twenties. He had been expecting someone far older, but his shock didn't last.

“It isn't only the British we need to expel,” Sadat said bluntly. “We have to overthrow the monarchy. As long as there is a king, Egypt will remain poor and backward. All our country's wealth from cotton, from the canal, goes into the pockets of a handful of self-indulgent and corrupt men. The King has to go. The great landowners have to go. Parliament, as it exists, must be stripped of power and a new congress reelected.”

The future Sadat painted—where the old feudal estates were broken up, where the wealth from cotton was used to build a modern state—was beyond anything Darius had ever dared to hope.

By the time Sadat had left the houseboat, Darius had decided on his future. Along with Sadat, Nasser, and the idealistic young officers they had gathered around them, he was going to be instrumental in the rebirth of Egypt. He would ensure that she was never again subordinated to another nation.

“And that includes Germany,” Sadat had said, stuffing tobacco into a pipe. “I know that at the moment it looks as if the tide of the war is turning against her, but it won't be so for long. Hitler will send in German troops under Rommel. It is imperative we have direct contact with him when he arrives. We can't stage an uprising that will help him take Cairo without a guarantee that when the war is over, Egypt will be independent.”

“What kind of contact?” he had asked. “Wireless?”

“Only to arrange the meeting,” Sadat had said, lighting his pipe. “Our intention is to fly one of our officers across the desert for a personal meeting. It's risky, of course. When the British realize he's heading for enemy lines they'll try and shoot him down. Unless the Germans offer cover, the RAF will blast him from the sky before he can land. Constantin is already in
touch with Berlin and they will tell him the wavelength needed for their headquarters in Libya. When the time is right, we'll be able to make contact.”

Darius lit another cigarette and poured himself some more arrak. Golden light was now streaking the sky and gilding the surface of the Nile. In a few more hours Davina would arrive.

He wondered how much he could safely tell her.

And he wondered if it was fair to tell her anything at all.

“I didn't break the news to my mother of Aileen and Fergus's death until breakfast,” Davina said sitting down wearily on one of the lounge chairs. “I just couldn't bring myself to do it last night when she was having such a wonderful time.”

“And this morning?”

She winced. “It was terrible. She admired both of them so much and had grown very fond of them, particularly Aileen.”

Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face etched with grief.

Seeing her pain was a knife to Darius's heart.

“Would you like a coffee?” he asked, wishing there was some way he could comfort her.

She nodded. “Yes, please. But not Turkish.”

He went down the companionway to the galley. Though he hadn't been to bed he had changed out of the Western clothes he had worn to Delia's party, and into a galabia. It was black trimmed with narrow silver braid and he was quite sure that he had never looked—or felt—more Egyptian.

When he returned to the sundeck, he said, “I've met the most remarkable young man, Davina. His name is Anwar Sadat and he's an Egyptian army officer.”

He described Sadat's vision of an Egypt without foreign domination and without a self-indulgent monarchy and a corrupt Egyptian elite. He told Davina that Sadat envisioned a place for him in the new republican government. He knew
he should tell her how difficult their future would be, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. At least not while she was so distressed over her friends’ death.

Always able to read each other's minds, she did it for him.

“I doubt if the Free Officers envision a future minister of justice who is married to an Englishwoman.” Her voice was filled with despair. “And my adopting Andrew only complicates matters further, doesn't it?”

He wanted to say that no, it didn't. But because they had always been truthful with each other, he couldn't.

She put the tips of her fingers to her forehead as if trying to ease a pain that was too much to bear. “Perhaps we should end things now, Darius. Perhaps it would be easiest—”

He seized hold of her arms and pulled her roughly to her feet. “No,” he said fiercely, knowing it was something he couldn't, yet, survive. “Nothing has to be done now. It will be years before the Free Officers' dream comes to fruition. And it could be a long time before you are able to adopt Andrew. Who knows how long this bally war is going to continue? Who knows who is going to win it and what the circumstances will be? For now, we go on as we've always done. Together.”

She sagged against him with relief.

His arms closed around her and as he hugged her to him, he knew he was only forestalling the day when she would leave his life forever.

A month later a Romanian diplomat was expelled from his legation on suspicion of spying. The legation, however, was not closed down.

“Can't be, old boy,” Archie Somerset said in his infuriating English public-school accent. “You have to remember that Egypt's not at war with Romania—or anyone else for that matter. Much as Ambassador Lampson would like to close the
Hungarian and Romanian legations, he can't. Getting rid of a spy was the most Lampson could do. It must make him crazy with rage.”

Archie was the kind of jovial Englishman that most annoyed Darius. Always jolly, always joking, he would disappear from Cairo for weeks on end and then turn up again with pale marks around his eyes left by sand goggles and no explanation of his absence other than that he had been “in the blue”—British slang for the Western Desert.

When he was in Cairo, Archie was everywhere. No matter what the party, Archie was a guest. And Darius regularly ran across him in places British soldiers normally never visited. One day Archie said, “How about a party on your houseboat, Darius? That's what houseboats are for, aren't they? A bit of music, a lot of dancing. Have you got a radiogram? I've got plenty of records you can borrow.”

Darius replied stone-faced that he never held parties, but he increasingly wondered if Archie was Constantin's British contact.

British euphoria over the collapse of the Italian advance changed to an atmosphere of tension in February when General Rommel landed in Libya with two crack panzer divisions.

Even before the month was out the Afrika Korps launched into an engagement with British troops at El Agheila, the point in Libya where, a couple of months earlier, the British had defeated the Italians. There was no running German troops to a standstill, and the prospect of Rommel striding into Shepheard's and commandeering the best suite suddenly seemed a very real possibility.

Sadat, using Constantin's wireless transmitter, contacted Rommel's headquarters in Libya from the
Egyptian Queen
, but to his great consternation, there was no reply.

In March, as more successful attacks were launched by the Germans, Britain's foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, flew into Cairo in order to give a firsthand report to Churchill. He was accompanied by the chief of the imperial general staff, Sir John Greer Dill, and Sir Jerome Bazeljette.

Though nearly every moment of the three men's time was spent in discussions with the military hierarchy, Jerome did manage to squeeze in an appearance at a party thrown for him by Delia.

Darius and his father were among the many guests.

Their hostess was radiant. Wryly Darius wondered if he was the only person—apart from her husband and Jerome— who was aware of the reason for Delia's glowing happiness.

“Sylvia and Girlington are at Skooby for the duration,” he overheard Jerome say to Lady Tucker, the wife of an army general.

He hadn't a clue who was being talked about.

Aware he was eavesdropping, Davina glided past him and whispered helpfully, “Sylvia is the former Lady Bazeljette. Girlington is her husband, the Duke of Girlington. Skooby is one of their many homes, a castle in the north of England.”

His lips twitched in amusement which quickly vanished when Fawzia entered the room on their father's arm.

She looked ravishing, as always. Her blue-black hair was coiled in an elaborate chignon. Her cocktail dress was ruby-red brocade and she was wearing magnificent diamonds at her ears and throat. He regarded them cobra-eyed, certain that whatever she may have said to their father, they were not a present from her husband.

He remembered Sadat's passionate promise that when the Free Officers Movement liberated Egypt, Farouk and all he stood for would have to go. Darius looked at the waterfall
of diamonds hanging from his sister's ears and felt that day couldn't come soon enough.

“Did you forget that Sir Jerome is my father-in-law?” Fawzia said when their father had moved off to speak to Ivor. “Unfortunately he has no more news of Jack than I have. The last we heard he was in Palestine.”

Darius said nothing. Palestine was too close to Egypt for comfort. Now that Sadat was attempting to contact Rommel from a wireless transmitter onboard the
Egyptian Queen
, the last thing Darius needed was a British intelligence officer turning up in Cairo—especially when that intelligence officer was both a brother-in-law and a friend.

Behind them Delia, who had become temporarily detached from Jerome's arm, was saying cheerily to Lady Tucker, “It's so dandy getting reliable news of the Duke and Duchess. When I heard the Duke had been given the governorship of the Bahamas my heart sank. It's so far from Europe I couldn't imagine either of them feelin' it was anything but a form of exile, but apparently the Duke is doing a cracking job and Wallis, who is just as sweet as she can be, has thrown herself into Red Cross work.”

Lady Tucker's face was a picture. He had long ago realized that no one in the British community had a good word to say about the woman for whom King Edward VIII had renounced his throne, but Delia never left anyone in doubt as to where she stood on the issue of Wallis Simpson. Wallis was her friend and, as she said often, “a grand gal.”

Lady Tucker stiffly changed the subject to Delia's highly successful club for noncommissioned troops and Darius watched Davina as she threaded her way through the guests. Her pale-blue cocktail dress was simply cut, her shoulder-length fair hair held away from her face by a mother-of-pearl comb. Though she was twenty-five, she looked barely twenty
and he was strongly reminded of an illustration he had seen of Alice in the children's storybook
Alice in Wonderland.