The Factory Girl (33 page)

Egypt, when they finally reached it, took her breath clean away. The heat was so dry it was like the heat from an oven. Wearing a sun helmet and needing the constant shade of a parasol, she began to wonder what mad idea had made her want to come here, except that both she and Tony had been totally innocent of what this sort of heat could be like.

Consuming what seemed to be virtually gallons of water from leather bottles, they motored from Alexandria in convoy for more than one hundred miles between a vast expanse of dun-coloured desert with often hardly any horizon and nothing to see but dust devils and occasionally incongruous and wavering glimpses of distant water, seashores and green trees which their Egyptian escorts said were mirages – illusions she'd never bothered to think of, far less expect ever to see – on a road that was almost dead straight all the way to Cairo and often narrowed by blown sand. The journey had begun late in the day, necessitating they bed down for the night in tents. Then at last Cairo itself.

What a contrast to the silent majesty of the desert with just the odd camel caravan being passed or passing in the other direction. The din of Cairo was alarming, everyone seeming to need to yell above everyone else, whether talking, arguing or bartering, all against a background of a strange wailing of flutes supposed to be music.

There were so many people, so many beggars, so many starved-looking children with tangled hair and sore mouths and wide black eyes around which flies congregated for the moisture they contained; so many women shrouded from head to foot in some strange, shapeless garb; so many carts pulled by camel, donkey or human-power, the men as well as the poor creatures so thin that Geraldine felt her stomach turn as she wondered what sort of place Tony had brought her to.

And the smell! Invading her nostrils, an overpowering miasma of sickly perfume, strange cooking and, in passing many a back alley, stagnant odours of both animal and human excrement. As her dad often remarked at any not-too-pleasant smell: ‘What a rotten effluvia, what an 'orrible stink!' Amid the sights and sounds and smells of this city, Geraldine had to smile.

After a trip to view the Pyramids they were soon boarding the paddle steamer taking them down the Nile to Luxor, once more back to serenity and peace as Egypt seen from midstream regained its romance.

Even so there were still the flies, millions of them, tiny, tormenting little horrors that seemed to follow the boat, and her in particular, with vicious glee; she wielded without mercy the flywhisk she'd bought, or during the evening fluttered a fan. There were the mosquitoes too, whining beyond the netting put up around their bed at night. But having brought along medicines lest she got bitten, she had no fears of malaria.

The food, though, was sumptuous, the staff soft-footed and polite-toned, the accommodation, though hot even at night, was spotless with cool white sheets and crisp mosquito netting, and the double doors leading to a tiny veranda could be opened to a pleasant breeze created by the boat's progress upstream.

Once again she began to relax and enjoy the sparkling company, the good food, the soporific rhythmic pulse of the engine turning the paddles, the romance of slowly passing banks with their ever-changing scenery. Here groves of date palms, there huge, deep-green trees she was told were mangos – she'd tasted these the first night on the boat and wasn't too impressed, the taste strange with a slightly, somewhat unpalatable creosote flavour.

On deck, under a sunshade, sipping tea from fine china cups, she'd watch a finger of desert probing down to the very water's edge, or some local village sliding by with the faint, excited cries of children at play drifting over the river towards her. Now and again would be a drifting mass of lotus plants with a few flowers sprinkled among the light-green fronds, or a low bank of reeds among which people laboured, at what she didn't know. All so removed from the elegant and civilised life on board this sedate paddle boat, a world away, and again she must pinch herself to be sure that she wasn't dreaming all this.

It took days of leisurely gliding to reach Luxor and the Valley of the Kings where Carter had made his wondrous discovery. Here Europeans appeared to outnumber the locals at last, a couple of hotels brim full of visitors and she and Tony – he with his quiet wit, his natural charm and his ease of conversation – began rapidly to make friends as people will on holiday.

They went the next day in a fleet of cars bearing a horde of visitors, first stopping off to admire the Colossi of Memnon, taking turns posing for photos dwarfed by the huge, crumbling statues, the men hardly reaching above the plinths. They spent so much time there that by the time they arrived at the Valley of the Kings, Geraldine already felt worn down by the heat.

She'd never seen anything like those towering cliffs of sand, brilliant under an unforgiving sun. Standing about as the marvellous discovery of the boy king Tutankhamun's tomb was explained to them all, Geraldine began to feel strange. Not exactly sick or faint, but that the brightness of the sand began to grow brighter, more glaring, almost white, the heat more intense. Despite her sun helmet, her parasol now wavering a little, despite drinking desperately from her water bottle, the glare grew in strength before her eyes.

‘I've got to find some shade, darling,' she whispered to Tony. The heat was battering her body. Her breathing had grown rapid and oddly shallow, yet she seemed not to be sweating though tiny shining particles of salt on the back of her hands when she looked at them told her she must be, the moisture drying as fast as it seeped through her pores, its salt loss betrayed by those tiny crystals on her skin.

‘I have to sit down.'

The way she panted her request brought Tony's gaze. ‘Are you all right, darling?'

She tried to focus on him. ‘I – don't know. I feel … funny.'

As her body gave way she felt herself being lifted, carried, aware only of shade, of the heat of the sun diminishing as people bent over her, but she felt no better for it.

‘The heat has got to her,' came a woman's voice. ‘She has been drinking properly, hasn't she?'

‘Of course.' This was Tony's voice. ‘Just as we were instructed.'

‘It could be heatstroke. We must find somewhere cool. Let's splash her face with water. It might help cool her. Look, use my handkerchief. It is clean.'

After a while, with cooling water dabbed on her forehead, the back of her neck, the backs of her hands, she recovered slightly to find herself in the shade of a kiosk that had been set up by wily locals to dispense soft drinks to wealthy foreigners flocking there in their dozens these days, foolish people with more money than good sense, paying more than such drinks were worth – piastres simply for the asking – and these people called them foreigners and natives!

A drink of indeterminate flavour in a cool glass was being applied to Geraldine's lips. She drank a little then opened her eyes to see a pretty young woman kneeling over her, a glass of pale liquid in her hand. Above her stood Tony with a lost if concerned expression.

‘How do you feel now?' queried the woman.

Geraldine sat up slowly, needing to gather her wits, needing to dispel the embarrassment she felt. ‘A lot better. I'll be all right in a minute.'

The woman laid a gentle hand on her shoulder to prevent any attempt to rise to her feet. ‘Don't hurry. Just stay sitting for a moment.'

‘I just came over all unnecessary,' she excused herself in confusion of having a complete stranger seeing her in this state, and saw the woman smile at her colloquialism, but it was a smile that also carried a look of recognition.

‘I'm sure I know you, my dear, both you and your husband. Didn't I meet you at some party in London? I forget whose, but it was at a party, I am sure.'

‘I can't recall,' said Geraldine, now more in command of her wits.

‘Well, I certainly know you from somewhere.' Enquiring their name and being told, the china-blue eyes opened wide in triumph, the red lips parted to reveal small, perfectly white teeth. ‘Of course! Geraldine and Tony! Yes, of course I've met you. I still can't remember which party it was, a house party I'm sure, but which?' She gave a little shrug and turned to look up at Tony, pointing a finger of recognition at him. ‘You're the jeweller, aren't you?'

What that statement meant with particular emphasis on the jeweller, Geraldine wasn't certain. But apparently his reputation had gone before him even here.

She had begun to feel forgotten as the beautiful young woman stood up to extend a hand towards Tony who promptly took it.

‘I'm Diana Manners. Not
the
Diana Manners, daughter of the Duke of Rutland, now Lady Diana Cooper.' She gave a tinkling laugh. ‘I wish I were as famous, but I'm not, just happen to have the same married name as her maiden name. I was married to someone called Billy Manners but he died last year. Now I'm fancy-free, you see, so I came out here to soak up the atmosphere and find my feet. I'm mostly known as Di.'

Tony still had hold of her hand but was looking bemused. Geraldine spoke up quickly from where she still sat on the ground. ‘I think I can get up, darling.' She was feeling even more of a fool sitting here. ‘Darling, can you help me?'

Di Manners turned back to her, but speaking to Tony, ‘I think she ought to go back to the boat to rest. You never know, it might be heatstroke, and one has to be careful. I'd get a doctor to look in on her if I were you.'

It was almost as if she wasn't there, or too far gone to comprehend if spoken to directly. ‘I'm fine,' she blurted out. Struggling to her feet, she made a play at brushing down her dress, adjusting her sun hat, looking for her parasol, but the change from sitting to standing made her stagger a little.

Both Tony and Di Manners grabbed her arms. ‘We must get her back to the boat,' instructed Di, ‘then I expect she might have to spend a day or two in the hotel we're all going to when we reach Luxor.'

Luxor was on the other side of the Nile. The more expensive rooms, one of which Tony had paid for to Geraldine's concern that he was spending far too much on this trip, looked directly across the river and the golden cliffs of the Valley of the Kings, each morning made even more golden by the rays of the rising sun. The reverse was seen at sunset, the cliffs black against a dying light, the temples of Luxor and Karnak watching the sunrise depict the afterlife of those buried there and proclaim the death of the worldly body.

Why such thoughts should invade her mind as Tony, with this young woman's help, got a driver to take them back to the boat, she didn't quite know, except that her mind was still in a whirl. Waiting for the rest of the company to return, the three of them sat with her leaning against Tony, a thumping headache now making her want only to lie down and sleep.

‘I'll be all right,' she said, ‘now that me Tony's here.' She felt too out of sorts to care how she sounded, until she saw that quirky little smile come to the woman's lips once again and could have bitten her tongue, showing herself up again. ‘If you want to go,' she ended lamely.

‘No, I'll stay,' came the ready offer. ‘I've had enough of milling about among barren rocks in full sunshine. I'm happy to stay.'

Geraldine saw a look pass between her and Tony that her befuddled mind saw as kindness and concern on the woman's part and gratitude on his, no doubt wondering how he would ever have managed her on his own.

Egypt was six months ago now and great chunks of it were beginning to fade from her memory. Only those moments of special note stood out – that first sight of Cairo with its crowded thoroughfares and its smells and all that. The journey there she still remembered vividly but not a lot of the trip down the Nile that despite parties every evening did become a little bit too much of the same old thing as the days flowed slowly on like the river itself. Only the odd snatch of memory of some village lingered, a certain tree or two, some portion of bank somewhere or other, a young girl, a child of about eight years old, driving a couple of huge bullocks with a stick as she walked confidently behind them, they obeying her every command.

What she recalled most vividly was the way she'd passed out in front of dozens of people who unlike her were quite unaffected by the heat, and coming back to consciousness to find a young woman who actually knew her bending over her.

What had the woman really thought of her despite her attractive smile? Had she gossiped about her later? And how many people had witnessed it and hurried forward to offer help, discussing the incident long afterwards, debating if she were in fact normally poor in health?

She hated the mortification of having made such a fool of herself, even after all this time with a damp and cold English October crowding in on her, often with not even Tony's company to soothe away the shame of it. But he seemed always off somewhere, making an excuse not to take her with him.

They still went to nightclubs, dancing until all hours and having fun with the people they knew, went to the theatre on occasion, had gone once to the cinema to see the acclaimed film
The Ten Commandments.
But there had been no summer holiday, Tony having spent far too much in going to Egypt.

Geraldine knew he was short of money and struggling. How could he have been so silly as to put someone in charge of his shop while they were away? She hadn't queried it then, being so excited at aping the wealthy. There had been no complaints about the man, a friend, he'd put in charge, but he'd had to pay him an exorbitant wage, taking up any profit there had been, and of course while he was away there was no other work done.

In fact it recently reached her ears that those he dealt with hadn't been too happy and, in the words of her informant, a spidery little woman named Kate who owned a nightclub and was herself involved in all sorts of shady goings on, were leaning on him so that he was spending endless time away endeavouring to make up for it and ingratiate himself once more into their good graces. Without what he did for them, it was obvious the shop on its own, with its large overheads, would never keep himself and her in the style they'd grown used to.