Shadows on the Nile (13 page)

‘Are you all right?’ he asked quietly.

‘Of course. I’m fine.’

‘Not frightened? Of mediums?’

‘No.’

But it wasn’t true. Jessie
was
nervous. Not of the medium herself but of what she might say, of what revelations might tumble out of Pandora’s box.

After a moment’s awkwardness, Sir Montague shifted easily to stories of picnics in the car with his parents and outings to Oxford for punting. ‘Never could get the hang of the dratted pole,’ he grimaced, ‘and always ended up in the bally river.’

He paused for her to laugh, but she didn’t. She didn’t want this man beside her to try to amuse her, to entertain her with unlikely stories of getting dunked in the Isis, to think she was so easily blinded by charm and chatter. She held him responsible. Firmly and unforgivably responsible. She blamed him for Tim’s disappearance. It might be unfair of her, it might be grossly unjust, but if it hadn’t been for Sir Montague and that burnt mansion of his, Tim would be walking on Putney Heath with her on this Sunday afternoon, teasing her and throwing bread at the ducks. That cold certainty had lain with her on her pillow all night, and now sat like a fist in her throat, blocking her words.

So, no. She couldn’t laugh at his stories or pin a smile on her face to please him. Nor did she want to be riding in a car called a Silver Ghost. The irony of it surely had not escaped him. Travelling to a medium … in a Ghost.

Oh, Tim, where on earth are you?

Give me a clue, like in the old days when we would hide from each other in the park. Don’t leave me like this
.

Sir Montague blasted the horn and overtook a coal wagon with a wave. His hands were strong and capable, at odds with his beanpole figure which seemed as if it might blow
over in the wind. On either side of them as they drove along the A40, the fields lay brown and barren, ploughed into ridges.

‘Heading for Oxford, are we?’ she queried.

Just a simple question. But it caused him to stare ahead blankly through the windscreen for a moment, as though it meant more than she intended.

‘Not far now,’ he said vaguely and she was glad when
he drifted into silence.

Georgie

England 1922

‘I envy you, Georgie.’

We are playing chess. I am winning. I always win.

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Because you don’t have to do maths homework.’

‘What is wrong with maths homework?’

‘It’s like chewing on broken bottles.’

‘What?’

‘Just an expression. Ignore me.’

‘You are lazy today.’ But I never ignore you. ‘Show me how to do your maths.’

I take your queen’s bishop and you groan.

‘It’s hard,’ you warn me.

I grin. ‘Good.’

I stop delaying your king’s demise and put an end to
the game. After that day, I do your maths homework every Saturday while you read
The Maltese Falcon
and smoke cigarettes.

You don’t want to work today. You are tetchy – a word I know because you say it to me.
Don’t be tetchy
, you complain when I sit on the bed with my back to you and watch the rain with my ears closed to your words.

Today it is you who are tetchy.

It makes me nervous. I am seated at my desk and write out the Greek alphabet in long smooth columns. It is very beautiful, though nowhere near as beautiful as the hieroglyphs of the Egyptian alphabet that I have taught you. That’s what you are fiddling with half-heartedly. I want to snatch the pencil from your inept hand.

‘You are lazy today,’ I say.

You make a noise and jump to your feet. It startles me. You stand with your back to me.

‘What colour are my eyes?’ you ask.

‘The colour of their iris pigment.’

‘And what colour is that?’

I panic. I put my hands over my ears.

‘I don’t know,’ I say.

‘You should know. I’ve told you before that you should look at me when I speak to you.’

‘Why?’

You sigh. ‘For heaven’s sake, Georgie, this damn place is making you worse.’

Silence.

I stand and stalk over to the door. I open it and stare at your shoes. They are brown and handsome. ‘Get out.’

‘Georgie, don’t …’

‘Get out!’ I know I am shouting.

You go.

‘I killed a bird,’ I tell you.

You put down your
book. You are reading Shakespeare and finding it hard.

‘What?’

‘I killed a bird when I was five.’

I don’t know why I tell you. Why now? I think it is because the sun is on your hair, burnishing it the colour of a finch’s gold crest. Or is it because after all these years I cannot keep my crime inside me any more, shut away in the dark?

‘How did it happen?’

You are interested. I hear it in your voice, that catch in your throat when you are really interested. You can never disguise it.

‘Does our mother still keep songbirds?’ I ask.

‘Gosh, no. I’ve never known her to keep birds.’

‘She used to. She must have got rid of them all after I was …’

We leave the end of the sentence unsaid. But I play with possibilities in my head. After I was …
abandoned? Locked away? Incarcerated?
Take your pick.

‘So how did it happen?’ you ask again.

‘Jessie and I were left with the nanny. I forget which one, they were all …’ I search for the right word, ‘… despicable.’

You grunt. That means you are not sure what I say is correct, but you were not there. I was.

‘Ma had left us with her while she had lunch with a friend. The birdcage was in the morning room and I used to watch the birds sing by the hour. I was fascinated by the way their throats vibrated and I longed to see how such a tiny creature could make all that noise. So I fetched a penknife Pa had given me for Christmas, caught the little finch and slit it open.’

‘Christ, Georgie! You were a little monster.’

‘Was I?’

‘What did Ma say?’

‘She never knew. When I saw the tiny innards of the creature, its miniature heart and lungs, the bones of its throat no thicker than pins, I started to cry. Jessie found me under my bed with the bird slit open in my hand. She put me to bed, closed the curtains
and told everyone I was sick.’

My throat grows tight at the memory. The air won’t go through it.

‘Didn’t Ma miss the bird?’

I swallow. I can hear the finch’s song, needle-sharp in my ears.

‘I didn’t find out until later that Jessie told Ma that she had accidentally let the bird out of the cage and it had flown out of the open window. She was punished.’

‘The cane?’

‘Yes. Six of the best.’

Six of the best on her soft young palm.

‘What did you do with the dead bird?’

‘Jessie buried it in the garden.’ I am shaking uncontrollably.

You come over and you put me to bed and read me the story of Cleopatra.

Today is a bad day. My head is crammed full of darkness. I have closed the curtains in my room because the sunlight hurts my skin and makes my hands twitch. I sit on the floor in the gloomiest corner beside the wardrobe and I place a blanket over my head. It is better this way. Alone in my world of darkness.

I am not like other people. I know that. They are all out there playing a game they call life but I do not understand the rules. I get it wrong. Again and again. It is better this way.

‘Georgie?’

I hear your voice. I have a feeling I have been hearing it for some time but without being aware it was there.

‘Georgie? Come on out from under that blanket.’

You start to sing to me. Old nursery rhymes. ‘Three Blind Mice’ and ‘Hey Diddle Diddle’. Only one person has ever sung to me before and she has nothing to do with me now.
Wants
nothing to do with me. My hands are wet and I realise I am crying silently. I wipe my face on the rough wool and jerk the blanket away, I am so eager to see you. The light hits my eyes with the force of a cricket bat.

‘Hello, Tim.’

You are there. In the chair. Seen from down here at this angle your legs are longer than the door. That amuses
me. I am interested in angles, how they change things, alter the way we see things. You once said to me that the only thing wrong with me is that I am looking at the world from a different angle. I want it to be true, so that if I move my feet, the angle will change and I will see the world like everyone else. But it doesn’t happen. I have tried. I can tell from the way you are sitting, slumped in the chair, that you have been here a long time. It is not a comfortable chair. You are wearing a bright green jumper. I rise to my feet and sit in my usual place on the edge of the bed, smoothing the cover flat all around me.

‘Your hair needs washing,’ I say.

It’s true. It curls in dusty blond clumps on your head but I hear you utter a sigh that gallops up from your lungs.

‘I’ve been busy, Georgie.’

You speak very quietly. To protect my ears. You have explained to me in the past that kindness is doing things like that for people. Making them happy. I remember now that you say I must not make what you call ‘personal remarks’ unless they will make someone happy. I try again. I want you to be happy.

‘Your legs are long.’

You smile. ‘Better.’

I risk a quick look at your eyes and am startled by their greyness. Where has the blue gone? What does it mean? I want to crawl under your skin and find out all the things I cannot understand about you.

‘Georgie, I’ve been thinking.’

‘I think all day, every day.’

‘I know, of course you do. But I want you to show me your arm. Push up your sleeve.’

‘My right or my left?’

‘Your right.’

I undo the cuff button on my shirt sleeve and roll the material back in neat folds up to my elbow.

‘Look at your arm,’ you say.

I look. Nothing strange. Just my arm. I quite like it.

‘Now look at this.’ You push back your own sleeve all bunched
up in a green hummock, and hold out your arm towards me. ‘See the difference?’

‘Yours is ugly.’

It is true. Mine is pale, with a pattern of blue veins beneath its translucent skin; it is smooth and elegant like marble. Yours is the colour of honey, with tiny golden hairs over it and several small craters which I know are chicken pox scars. Yours is twice as thick as mine with crudely fitting big bones at the wrist, but I suddenly remember to put a hand over my mouth, as you have taught me, to stop my thoughts leaking out. You lean closer, and I try not to push you away.

‘So why do you think there is such a difference?’ you ask me.

‘Mine is prettier.’

‘Yours is like a girl’s arm, Georgie.’

‘Is that bad?’

‘Yes.’ You flex your muscles under your skin, making the flesh move. It looks horrible. ‘Mine is the arm of someone who does things. I have been digging troughs in the earth all week at the remains of a Roman villa near Cheltenham and I’m exhausted, but I was working outdoors every day, and getting good exercise.’ You pause and inspect me slowly from head to toe. ‘I think you need more exercise, Georgie.’

‘I exercise every day,’ I explain. ‘We all do. Half an hour every afternoon and an hour on Sunday.’

You snort. I don’t know what it means, but you add a smile. Not a nice smile. ‘They herd you all out into the garden and make you shuffle round in a circle for a while, no running in case you fall, no jumping or kicking a ball. Nothing to get the heart beating.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I have watched you.’

‘In the garden?’

‘Yes.’

I stare at your dirty hair. I feel naked. You have spied on me.

‘So.’ You jump to your feet. ‘We are going to start an exercise regime. You are nothing but skin and bone, pale as a
ghost.’

‘Nothing but skin and bone? That is not true, Tim. I have a heart and lungs and kidneys and …’

‘It’s just an expression. Don’t take it literally.’

‘But it is a lie.’

You sigh again. ‘Let’s concentrate on the exercises. Don’t look so miserable. Look what I’ve brought you.’

You lift up your coat from the floor. Under it lie two beautiful Indian clubs. About the length of my arm, bulbous at one end, smooth rich wood. You hand one to me. It is heavier than I expected but when I see you start to swing yours in a wide figure of eight in front of you I copy you, careful not to bang into anything.

My blood grows hot in my veins and my arm
takes on a force of its own. I feel powerful for the first time in my life.

Monty Chamford could not stand uncertainty. It put him on edge. He liked things clean-cut. But here he was turning into a quiet culde-sac of terraced houses without the faintest idea who Nell would be today. She and her spirit friends dealt in uncertainty on a daily basis, relished it with a gusto that drove him mad. And it amused Nell – he was sure of it – to keep him guessing. On the telephone he had laid down the rules for today,
Keep it low key,
but with Nell, blast her satin turbans, he could never be sure. Madame Anastasia liked to play games.

Monty parked the Rolls outside Nell’s tiny front garden, which was choked with weeds that his fingers itched to uproot. He jumped out of the car, aware of net curtains twitching, but before he could whisk the door open for his passenger, Miss Kenton had emerged and was heading for the front gate. He liked the way she was dressed today, a bit arty with a loose flowing cape and strong colours. She wore her hat at an angle and it looked slightly mannish in style, almost a trilby, hiding the soft waves of her fair hair. She meant business, he had no doubt of that.

‘My dear young lady, how lovely to meet you,’ a woman’s voice floated out in greeting.

Monty blinked, and turned his bark of laughter into a
cough.

Nell had taken him at his word –
low key
. This was a Nell that was new to him. She had emerged from the front door kitted out in a long tweed skirt, a brown hand-knitted cardigan that did nothing for her full figure, and heavy brogues. Only the weighty pearls at her throat possessed a milky gleam, a hint of hidden secrets and better times. Her hair was rolled up into sausage curls and she was wearing tortoiseshell spectacles. Spectacles? Monty knew she was forty-nine but she could have passed for sixty today. She looked like everybody’s spinster aunt, trustworthy and honest, but rather dull and bookish.
Oh Nell, my wicked Nell, you have surpassed yourself. She is going to believe every word you say.