Sphinx (9 page)

A tall, handsome man in his early thirties approached me, his veiled wife beside him. Ashraf Awad, son of Aadeel, Francesca’s housekeeper. He had grown up with Isabella and their friendship had lasted into adulthood. I didn’t like to think I found Ashraf threatening, but I suspected his relationship with Isabella had more than once slipped into something approaching intimacy. An ardent socialist and supporter of Nasser, Ashraf had completed his engineering degree at Moscow University, which had appealed to Isabella’s left-wing leanings. ‘Meet the new Egypt’ had been the way she’d always introduced him; she’d seen his education and political fervour as a manifestation of the better side of Egyptian nationalism. Ashraf had visited us once in London en route from Moscow to Cairo. He had slept on our couch and dominated our dinner parties for a couple of weeks, captivating the women and outraging the men with his fervent discourses on socialism and the Middle East. I sensed that he’d never fully approved of me, but Isabella had loved him. In many ways he’d been the brother she’d never had. More importantly, through him she had seen a way she could fit into this new post-colonial society. Noting the full abeyya his wife was wearing and Ashraf’s traditional clothes and newly sprouted beard, I wondered about ‘the new Egypt’. Why and when had he become a fully practising Muslim?

To my surprise, Ashraf began to weep as he reached to grasp my hand.

‘Oliver, my friend, it is a tragedy, a real tragedy. I have lost a sister, you a wife. But Isabella, she had courage. More than perhaps we will ever know.’ He embraced me; embarrassed, I patted him awkwardly on the back.

I had always secretly envied the openness with which Middle Eastern men expressed their emotions. I couldn’t remember my father ever embracing me or Gareth. A hand on the shoulder was the best we could expect, and as a child I had craved the ponderous intimacy of that deceptively casual gesture. In Egypt, men kissed, held hands; fathers openly caressed their sons. I watched Ashraf’s tears with secret envy. My grief hadn’t broken yet and I wished I could weep like that now.

Francesca, determined to follow protocol, interrupted Ashraf’s condolences and guided me to a podium at one end of the marquee. It held three ornate chairs.

‘You, as the husband, sit in the centre. I am on your right, while the mother,’ Francesca spat the word with ill-hidden disgust, ‘sits on your left. People will pay their respects and we shall conduct ourselves with proper decorum. Then my duties as a grandmother will be over.’

Cecilia collapsed into her chair. She moaned quietly, her painted mouth opening and shutting like a beached fish. There was a self-conscious theatricality to her grieving that appalled me, and I noticed Francesca glaring disapprovingly at her.

Despite Isabella and I having been married for five years, I had never met Cecilia before now. Isabella had described her mother as having a pathological fear of intimacy. ‘It makes her claustrophobic to spend time with her own daughter,’ she’d told me one night after an argument on the phone with Cecilia. ‘She doesn’t like to be reminded that she gave birth. This is a woman who is running from her past and she is terrified that one day it may trip her up in the shape of a resentful daughter.’

I could still hear Isabella’s scornful tone ringing in my ears. She had reason to be resentful. As far as she was concerned, her mother had abandoned her. Seeing Francesca’s reaction towards Cecilia now, I suspected the situation might have been a little more complex than that.

The Valium was beginning to wear off. I desperately needed something to defend myself from encroaching grief and the tedium of greeting a parade of strangers, but there wasn’t a drop of alcohol to be seen.

A man gestured to me from the other side of the marquee. Francesca had pointed him out to me disdainfully earlier on. It was Cecilia’s husband, Carlos. He was at least ten years her senior and wore the uniform of the wealthy European: panama hat, linen suit, loafers and gold cufflinks that caught the sunlight. Excusing myself, I got up from my chair and walked over to him. He shook my hand, introducing himself. Then, taking my arm in a familiar manner, he guided me behind a marquee, out of sight.

‘Here, my friend, some grappa from the village I grew up in.’ He pushed a silver hip flask into my hand.

I unscrewed the top and took a long, grateful swig. The alcohol burned my throat and seared through to the top of my head, but it obliterated the moment, which was what I wanted.

‘I am sincerely sorry we meet in such circumstances. These Brambilla women - before you know it they have swallowed your balls. Cecilia loved her daughter, you have to understand that.’

‘She had an odd way of showing it,’ I replied. I tried to remember what line of manufacturing Carlos was in, but failed to do so in the fog of tranquillisers and grappa.

‘It is far more complicated than you or I know, my friend. When Paolo died the grandparents insisted on keeping the child. That Giovanni, he was a crazy man, obsessed with the mystical. He could hypnotise people, like snakes can. If you ask me, all the Brambillas are crazy. As for Francesca, she is still angry with Isabella’s father for dying so young.’

I nodded, slightly doubtful, but thanked him for the grappa and returned to my seat. Francesca gave me a disapproving glare, but she was preoccupied with the Italian guests and couldn’t reprimand me further.

I was dismayed to see that my first English-speaking visitor was Amelia Lynhurst. I had first met her at a cocktail party at the British Consulate. The English middle-aged Egyptologist was famous for dressing in a tweed twinset even in the full summer heat, much to the amusement of the Arabic members of the prestigious Smouha Polo Club who had created a betting ring around these legendary appearances. And I always had the impression that she was frozen in another era, as if the post-war Kensington of the late 1940s she’d left had stayed preserved in aspic - gas meters, rationing, dingy flat and fog all waiting, suspended in time, for her return. At that first encounter she’d launched into a passionate monologue about oil exploration destroying the natural world - or Gaia, as she insisted on calling it, to my great irritation. She had also attempted to cross-examine me about Isabella’s research, and I’d found myself taking an uncharacteristically intense dislike to her. She seemed hungry for new information, perhaps for a thesis that would re-establish her ruined reputation. Whatever her intention, I didn’t trust her.

‘I’m surprised to see you here, Miss Lynhurst.’ I failed to keep ambivalence out of my voice.

‘Perhaps you didn’t expect me,’ she replied. ‘But please understand, I had a great fondness for your wife, particularly during our time together at Oxford.’ She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘In relation to other, more pressing matters, I hope you understand the implications of harbouring an undeclared antiquity, particularly one of such spiritual value. This country is in the throes of a delicate resurrection and these are perilous times. Such an antiquity has powers that you, a man of prosaic interests, could never understand. Others, however, do. If the wrong people were to get hold of such a device, it could prove very dangerous indeed.’

Startled by her directness I felt myself become defensive. Had Isabella been correct in her suspicion that Amelia Lynhurst had known how close she was to finding the astrarium? I decided it would be wise to feign naivety.

‘Oh, we always kept our work very separate,’ I replied casually.

Amelia looked sceptical. ‘Oliver, if you need my help in any way, you must visit at any time. I’m not sure whether Isabella had a true idea of the value of the object she was researching . . .’

Her voice faltered and she glanced over my shoulder. I was surprised to see what I thought was a glimmer of fear in her eyes. I turned to see Hermes Hemiedes coming towards me, followed by the priest who had conducted the funeral.

‘I really must leave now.’ Amelia pressed her hand into mine, then walked away.

Hermes stepped onto the podium, an ironic smile playing over his thin lips. ‘Such women are dangerous because they never appear so,’ he remarked as we both watched Amelia leave the tent.

‘Oliver, Isabella’s death is a profound loss.’

He embraced me and I was enveloped by a wave of musk and the scent of the cologne he was wearing - a sharp green tone undercut with a darker shade. In my heightened emotional state, it smelled like the aroma of physical decay. I pulled back, stiffly self-conscious.

‘Thank you. I know Isabella respected you greatly, which was rare for her.’

He laughed - a hyena’s bark. My eyes fastened on a curious pendant around his neck: a silver depiction of Thoth, the baboon moon god whom the Ancient Egyptians believed gave hieroglyphs to mankind on behalf of Ra.

‘The very bright can be very arrogant,’ Hermes said. ‘I helped make her who she was: uncompromising.’

‘So I understand.’

He moved closer, enveloping me in that nauseating aroma again. ‘If Isabella did indeed find the astrarium, you should know that the device is very valuable to a lot of people, all of them far less scrupulous than myself.’

He pulled a card from his breast pocket and slipped it into my hand. ‘If you respect the ambitions of your dear wife you will visit me sooner rather than later. Dusk is the best time.’

I glanced at the address, recognising it as the old Arab quarter to the west of the city. When I looked up again, the Egyptologist was making his way through the mourners, his slightly uncoordinated stride parting the crowd. I wondered briefly what he would make of the coroner’s revelation.

Now tired of the event, I decided to leave too. I stood, but was prevented from stepping down from the podium by Francesca’s hand on my wrist.

‘Oliver, you cannot leave now.’

‘I can and I will,’ I told her. ‘It’s time I began my own mourning.’

I had never been so defiant with the old woman and she didn’t try to dissuade me.

I was amazed to find that it was near nightfall. A hantour, a small horse-drawn cart, was waiting outside the Brambilla villa. The driver, a rake-thin middle-aged man in traditional clothes, was leaning up against the villa wall and smoking. He threw away his cigarette and stood upright when he saw me.

‘Please, get in,’ he said quietly but with authority.

Wanting to walk, I waved him off.

‘No, for you it is free. Please, Monsieur Warnock, I insist.’

I hesitated, wondering whether he was a member of the secret police, but there was a dignity to his stance and something in his open pleading face that made me trust him. Foolish, maybe, but exhaustion and grief had made me weary. I got in and asked him to take me back to the villa at Roushdy.

We drove through the narrow lanes of the city. The air was fragrant after the recent rain and the soft clip-clopping of hooves lulled me into a gentle trance. The sense of motion postponing the terrible loneliness I knew awaited me back in the villa, confronted with remnants of my life with Isabella.

The cart slowed alongside a low archway that seemed to lead into a darkened courtyard. A man wearing a headscarf that covered most of his face suddenly hauled himself into the cart. He was carrying a bag over his shoulder. I reared back, jolted out of my reverie. To my immense relief, Faakhir’s face emerged from under the dark blue cloth.

‘Say nothing,’ he whispered. ‘The astrarium is in the bag by your feet. I promised Isabella that I would deliver it safely to you. She said you’d know what to do with it. Oliver, guard the astrarium with your life. I don’t know exactly what its powers are, but there are people out there who believe they can use it to destroy everything we have worked for in this country - political stability, peace, an economic future . . . and worse.’

With a clatter of wheels we pulled up outside the villa.

Framed in an upstairs window was the lonely silhouette of Ibrihim, switching the lights on ready for my return.

‘You must take the astrarium to your friend Barry Douglas. You can trust him. He will be able to open the container and carbon-date the astrarium to tell you what exactly it is. This you must do - for Isabella. You know I loved her too.’

I grabbed his arm. ‘Why are you risking your life, Faakhir? Who do you work for?’

Smiling enigmatically he shook off my hand. ‘Stay safe, my friend.’

He leaped out of the cart to disappear into the shadows.

I had arranged to meet Barry Douglas at the Spitfire, a small bar just off the Sharia Saad Zaghloul - one of the main avenues in Rue de l’Ancienne Bourse. Established in the 1930s, it had been popular with the Allied troops posted in Alexandria during the Second World War. The proprietor - an Anglophile - had proudly installed a small plaster bust of Winston Churchill draped by a Union Jack in the window. Inside, it was perpetual twilight. This was one of Barry’s favourite haunts.

Barry Douglas had quickly become one of my friends as well as Isabella’s; I was attracted to his maverick sensibility and classic Australian intolerance for bullshit. We shared a strong disdain for pretence and class-related snobbery. What I didn’t share was his love of all things mystical and spiritual, a characteristic he had in common with Isabella.