The Map of Love (4 page)
Authors: Ahdaf Soueif
So Anna has taken to placing folded muslin napkins under the cups. She knows he will not drink his tea, but he accepts his cup from her hand and suffers her to sit with him — no, suffers her to sit in the same room, for she cannot be said to be truly with him. She cannot, for instance, guess what thoughts are at this moment in his mind. Except that they are not thoughts of a happy — or even comfortable — nature. He sits upright in the big chair, his grey woollen dressing gown belted neatly at the waist, his hair combed back, his moustache hiding his upper lip, the lower lip drawn. His eyes fix upon some object behind her left shoulder, then move to the shrouded window, then down to the floor. They never meet her own. A muscle works, from time to time, in the clean-shaven jaw. He is waiting for this formality of tea-drinking to be over so that she may leave him.
‘Edward,’ says Anna, ‘I have been speaking with Mr Winthrop, and he agrees that a change of air could do you good —’
‘No.’
‘Edward, dearest, we could go down to Horsham for a few days. You can ride, be out in the air —’
‘No, Anna. I am going nowhere.’ He still does not look at her, but his grip on the arm of the chair becomes tighter, and his voice, though not raised, pitches itself a note higher. ‘Will you please understand that? Nowhere. If you wish to go —’
‘But Edward, I have no wish for myself. I only thought —’
‘Let us not talk of this. I have no wish, no strength —’
‘Please, dearest, calm yourself.’
Anna puts down her cup and rises to bend at his side. She puts her hand on his, trying to ease her fingers between his palm and the armrest. When she fails, she simply lets her hand lie on his.
‘You must not become agitated. We will do nothing that you do not wish. I have no desire except to help you; to help you come back to yourself. Please, dearest, will you not tell me what I can do?’
When there is no answer, Anna bends further and places her lips and then her cheek against his brow. It feels hot and slightly damp. Edward Winterbourne pats his wife’s hand as it lies on his and disengages his own.
‘Please, Anna. There is no need to be so concerned. It is just a matter of resting.’
Anna stands beside him. She knows he would not welcome her sitting down again. But this is not some womanly folly; they are all concerned. The servants go about their business with muffled tread. Visitors leave cards to which she replies with polite notes saying that Edward finds himself indisposed, but as soon as he is better … His father is concerned to the point of anger. Yesterday afternoon she had entered the library to find him speaking to the butler. When he heard her at the door he had come forward and taken her hands.
‘Ah, Anna. I have just asked Wilson to take all the shot out of the guns. Just a precaution, you know. No sense in having all that lead lying around. What d’you think?’
‘Yes, of course, Sir Charles,’ she had agreed. ‘There’s no need for it.’
And when Wilson had left the room and closed the door behind him, she had allowed the fear to show in her voice and eyes. ‘You don’t really think, do you?’
‘No, no. Of course not. Of course not.’ He had paced away from her, the erect soldier’s figure striding to the end of the library table. ‘I hope you don’t mind, my dear —’ He gestured at his boots. ‘I rode over suddenly, you know.’
Anna shook her head. Halfway back he stopped and struck his fist against the back of a chair.
‘By God! You’ll pardon me, my dear, but I feel like taking a whip to him. If he had not the stomach for it, what drove him to go? He requested that commission — he would not be denied.’
‘He believed he was doing the right thing.’ And also, she thought, he wanted action, adventure, purpose, a mission …
‘I told him, though. I told him this was not an honest war. This was a war dreamed up by politicians, a war to please that widow so taken with her cockney Empire — Ah, what’s the use?’
He paused, and Anna came to stand beside him. Together, they stared out of the window at the trees darkening in the quiet square. He turned to her.
‘You should get out, my dear. This is no life for a young woman.’
‘I do get out, Sir Charles. I go out every day, for an hour. Mr Winthrop said I must. He said I must walk in the air. I go out every day at three, and I don’t come back till four o’clock. Edward likes to rest then, you see —’
‘But your little face is getting quite peaky, Anna, my dear.’ He had put his hand to her chin and under that gentle touch she had felt the tears rise to her eyes — as they are rising now.
‘Edward, dearest, is there anything you would like? Anything that I can fetch or do?’
‘I think I should rest now, for a while.’
For shame, for shame, Anna. To be weeping for yourself now, at such a time. All your thoughts should be bent on him, devoted to him. He is in need of rest, and he cannot find it.
How different this homecoming has been from that of his father when, as a child of ten, recently bereft of my mother, I lay on a corner of the smoking-room carpet, studying the map of Egypt Sir Charles had given me and listening to him tell of how they beat Urabi and took Tel el-Kebir. And I heard him talk of
heroism and treachery and politics and bonds, and I felt his anger at the job he had been made to do.
But Edward will not speak and I am afraid. I have not dared voice the thought, but I am afraid we are in the grip of something evil — my husband is in the grip of something evil, something that will not allow him to shake off this illness and come to himself.
Caroline Bourke tells me that Sir William Butler, meeting General Kitchener upon his arrival at Dover, said to him, ‘Well, if you do not bring down a curse on the British Empire for what you have been doing, there is no truth in Christianity.’ And Kitchener simply stared at him. I asked her what he meant. What had they done beyond taking the Soudan and restoring order? And she said she did not know — but with such dark looks as left me full of foreboding. I long to ask my husband what this means, for my instinct is that there is a key here to what ails him, but I am afraid. He is so changed and now is unable to take any nourishment but the thinnest broth and some crusts of bread.
Anna stands up and walks slowly round the gallery, coming to a stop in front of an old man, his white beard and turban set off against a wall of golden brick hung with pages of white, inscribed paper. Before him, on the floor, robed in vivid reds and blues, sit the children he teaches. A sun-striped cat reclines on a green cushion watching a pair of doves pecking at the spangled mat. In the half-open doorway, the smallest of the children hesitates.
In the street, Anna starts to hurry. It is four o’clock and the light is fading fast.
I have failed him. I am constantly and repeatedly failing him. If I could but find the key to the locked door of his mind, I could sweep out all the tenors that lurk there. And he would be well again.
For I know there are tenors and they have to do with the mission he has been engaged upon, which culminated earlier this week in the signing of the Soudan Convention. An event which
has greatly angered Sir Charles and his friends so that they have written to
The Times:
Sir,
What would be said in private life, if a guardian and trustee who had undertaken to manage the estate of a minor, allowed the estate to run to ruin and then took possession of it as being worthless? In 1884 we forced the Egyptian Government to abandon the Soudan and leave it derelict, and now, the opportunity having occurred, we are taking possession of the country as belonging to nobody. It is a comment on the tone of the age that we should be doing this with the apparent approval of the whole world, moral and religious.
It would also appear, according to the Convention signed by Lord Cromer and Boutros Pasha, that we are saddling on Egypt the whole cost and labour of the war of reconquest not yet completed and making her budget responsible for the Soudan deficits.
This invention, the British Empire, will be the ruin of our position as an honest Kingdom.
Yours etc.
Sir Charles tells me that George Wyndham said to him plainly that it is agreed by the Powers that the aim of African operations is to civilise Africa in the interests of Europe and that to gain that end all means are good.
I cannot believe George truly meant that ‘all’ means are good — but he is Under-Secretary for War and is bound to espouse more warlike principles than Sir Charles would think right.
I wish to ask Sir Charles to speak to Edward about the Soudan and to try to unlock — but I fear Sir Charles is too impatient and of too volatile a temper. My father would have been a better man for the task, for it was in his nature to be gentle —
* * *
Dear God, dear sweet Lord Jesus, I pray constantly for my husband’s mind and for his soul. He is grown weaker and cannot or will not leave his room.
* * *
Caroline came to visit and told me how they say Kitchener’s men desecrated the body of the Mahdi whom the natives believe to be a Holy Man and how Billy Gordon cut off his head that the General might use it for an inkwell. It cannot be true, for if it were — I
truly fear for Edward now.
* * *
Sir Charles tells me that Billy Gordon confirms the story of the cutting of the head, but is angry that the deed is imputed to him — but he will not say who did it. Sir Charles did not wish to speak of this at first, but when he learned how much I knew already, he saw that it could not be helped and that it would be kinder to allow me to speak with him, for surely there is no one else to whom I can talk of this.
Oh, how I wish now more than ever for the presence of my beloved mother! For I feel sure she would advise me on some simple, womanly way to reach my poor, imprisoned husband. I have no confidante save Caroline Bourke and she, I fear, carries my own personal interest — as she sees it — too close to her heart to be able to advise me how I can best help my husband.
* * *
Edward brings up everything we give him now. His stomach cannot retain so much as a cupful of thin gruel and I fancy he is attempting to purge himself of — all manner of things. I beg him to take heart, for our Lord surely watches over him as he watches over us all and God judges the actions of men but surely too He judges them by their hearts and their minds, else how can one act be held distinct from another? And surely that distinction He would make — but Edward turns away.
Meanwhile, I find out that General Gordon’s sister has distanced herself from this expedition all along. She has said that if it is to avenge her brother, then she does not wish him avenged and she is certain he would most strongly have not
wished it himself. She says she knows the Mahdi had not wished General Gordon dead but rather had wanted him alive so that he could exchange him for the freedom of
Urabi Pasha, the exiled leader of the Egyptian uprising of 1882. She tells anyone who will listen that her brother was among the first to come forward when Mr Blunt set up the fund to defray the expenses for the defence ofUrabi, and that he had said, ‘Here’s the money, I’ll wagerUrabi pays it back himself in a couple of years.’
