The Visitors
Sally Beauman was born in Devon, and read English Literature at Girton College, Cambridge. She has worked as a journalist and critic in America and the UK, and is the author of seven previous novels.
Destiny
Dark Angel
Lovers and Liars
Danger Zones
Sextet
Rebecca’s Tale
The Landscape of Love
The Visitors
COPYRIGHT
Published by Little, Brown
978-1-4055-2510-7
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Sally Beauman 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Map by Viv Mullett, The Flying Fish Studios Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
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The Visitors
Table of Contents
For Ellie and her parents, James and Lucy
(the names of fictional characters are italicised)
CAIRO, 1922 and later
Lucy Payne
, aged eleven, visiting from England
Miss Myrtle Mackenzie
, from Princeton, New Jersey;
in loco parentis
and escorting Lucy
Hassan
, their driver and dragoman
Herbert Winlock
, an American archaeologist, field director of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s excavations near Luxor
Helen Chandler Winlock
, his wife
Frances Winlock
, his young daughter
Howard Carter
, an English archaeologist, in charge of the Earl of Carnarvon’s excavations in the Valley of the Kings
George Edward Stanhope Molyneaux Herbert
, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, of Highclere Castle, Hampshire; amateur archaeologist and collector of antiquities
Lady Evelyn Herbert
, his daughter, aged twenty
Poppy d’Erlanger
(formerly Countess of Strathaven), a beauty, bolter and divorcée
Lady Rose
, her young daughter, and
Peter
(Viscount Hurst), her infant son
Wheeler
, her maid
Marcelle
, Lady Evelyn Herbert’s maid
Albert Lythgoe
, curator of the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Egyptian Art: the museum’s
éminence grise
Arthur Mace
, an English, Oxford-educated archaeologist, working with Lythgoe in Egypt. Associate Curator at the Metropolitan Museum, in charge of its Egyptian conservation work
Harry Burton
, English archaeologist, also part of the Metropolitan Museum’s team in Egypt, and its acclaimed photographer
Minnie Burton
, his rebarbative English wife
Madame Masha
, the familiar name for Countess Mariya Aleksandrovna Sheremeteva, formerly a prima ballerina in Moscow; directrice of an exclusive Cairene ballet school
Fräulein von Essen
, one of Madame Masha’s long-suffering pupils, and
Frau von Essen
, her mother, both visiting from Berlin
Lieutenant Urquhart
and
Captain Carew
, young officers in the British army, attached to the British Residency, serving in Egypt at a period when Cairo is under martial law
LUXOR, 1922–3
El-Deeb Effendi
, a senior officer in the Egyptian police force, seasoned detective and admirer of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle
Mrs Lythgoe
, Albert Lythgoe’s wife; in charge of the domestic arrangements at the American House, the Metropolitan Museum’s sumptuous dig headquarters near the Valley of the Kings
Michael-Peter Sa’ad
, head cook at the American House
Abd-el-Aal Ahmad Sayed
, the senior servant at ‘Castle Carter’ (Howard Carter’s home near the Valley of the Kings), and
Hosein
, his much younger brother and fellow servant
Ahmed Girigar
, Howard Carter’s senior
reis
or foreman, in charge of his excavating team in the Valley of the Kings
Ahmed Girigar
, his namesake and grandson; aged six, one of the excavation team’s water boys
Pierre Lacau
, Director of the Antiquities Service, in charge of all excavation in Egypt, and keen to reform its practices – a radicalism that does not endear him to his archaeological peers
Rex Engelbach
, Chief Inspector for Antiquities, Upper Egypt, and thus directly responsible for supervising all finds made in the Valley of the Kings
Ibrahim Effendi
, his deputy inspector
Mohammed
, Ibrahim’s relative and sometime rival, an energetic informant; head cook on the
Hatshepsut,
a
houseboat at Luxor hired by Miss Mackenzie and Lucy Payne
Arthur ‘Pecky’ Callender
, an Englishman, formerly an engineer on the Egyptian railways; an old friend of Howard Carter, brought in to assist with the work on Tutankhamun’s tomb
Alfred Lucas
, a distinguished English chemist working for the Antiquities Service in Cairo; enlisted to work with Arthur Mace on the conservation of objects found in the tomb
Dr Alan Gardiner
, of Oxford, the greatest philologist of his era, and an internationally renowned Egyptologist; friend to Lord Carnarvon; advising on inscriptions in the tomb
Dr James H. Breasted
, of Chicago, an equally renowned Egyptologist, advising on clay seals in the tomb
A. S. Merton
, special correspondent in Egypt for
The Times
; Howard Carter’s long-time friend
Arthur Weigall
, special correspondent for the
Daily Mail
; Howard Carter’s long-time enemy
Valentine Williams
, special correspondent for Reuters
H. V. Morton
, special correspondent for the
Daily Express
A. H. Bradstreet
, special correspondent for the
Morning Post
and
The New York Times
CAMBRIDGE, 1922 and later
Dr Robert Foxe-Payne
, classicist and Fellow of Trinity College; Lucy’s father
Marianne Emerson Payne
, his late wife, Lucy’s mother; an American heiress
Nicola Dunsire
, a young blue-stocking, putative descendant of Sir Walter Scott; recently studying at Girton College, now Lucy’s governess
Clair Lennox
, Nicola’s alarming friend, once her fellow Girtonian, now an artist
Eddie Vyne-Chance
, a handsome, iconoclastic Cambridge poet with a thirst for alcohol
Dorothy (‘Dotty’) Lascelles
, now training to be a doctor, and
Meta
, a scornful classicist, both Girtonian friends of Nicola Dunsire
Mrs Grimshaw
, wife of a Trinity College porter, cleaner at Dr Foxe-Payne’s house in Newnham for many years
Dr Gerhardt
, a Cambridge don once enlisted to tutor Lucy in German and French, and his sister
Helga Gerhardt
, a Fellow of Girton; both friends of Dr Foxe-Payne
Mr Szabó
, a Hungarian dealer in antiques and curios
HIGHCLERE CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, 1922
Fletcher
, a former ditch-digger on the Earl of Carnarvon’s estate, said to be a rogue
Streatfield
, Lord Carnarvon’s butler
Almina
, Lord Carnarvon’s wife, 5th Countess of Carnarvon. The heir (and allegedly the illegitimate daughter) of the millionaire banker, Alfred de Rothschild
Dorothy Dennistoun
, a woman with a reputation; one of Lady Carnarvon’s closest friends
Helen, Lady Cunliffe-Owen
, another friend; sometimes a reluctant medium at Lord Carnarvon’s seances at Highclere
Brograve Beauchamp
, candidate for the National Liberals in the forthcoming election; an admirer of Lord Carnarvon’s daughter, Lady Evelyn
Stephen Donoghue
, a great flat-racing jockey, winner of the English Triple Crown and (several times) of the Derby
HIGHGATE, 2002
Dr Benjamin Fong
, an alert American Egyptologist; formerly of Berkeley, University of California, now a Fellow of University College London; conducting research for a high-budget jointly funded BBC/HBO television documentary
Here we are in Egypt,
land of the Pharaohs, land of the Ptolemies, country of Cleopatra
(as one says in high style)… What to say? What would you like me to write? I have hardly got over the first bedazzlement. It is like being thrown, fast asleep, into the middle of a Beethoven symphony…
Gustave Flaubert, letter from Cairo to Dr Jules Cloquet, 15 January 1850
When I’d been in Cairo a week, I was taken to the pyramids; it was there that I saw Frances for the first time. It was January 1922, and Miss Mackenzie,
in loco parentis
, my guardian for our travels in Egypt, planned our visit with great care. She believed that if I could see the pyramids, ‘One of the greatest wonders of the ancient world, remember, Lucy, dear,’ and see them in the most powerful way possible – at sunrise – they would effect a change. They would stimulate; they would enthral; they would
snap
me back to life, and persuade me to re-engage with the world. For six days she had postponed this visit: I wasn’t yet strong enough. On the seventh day, the great moment finally arrived.
Miss Mack, who had been a nurse in the war, believed in timetables as well as pyramids. She was convinced regimes were therapeutic. So the day of our expedition was planned with zeal. The list she drew up in her neat looped handwriting went like this: