The Realms of Gold (6 page)

Hunter, on the other side, turned out to be an old friend of Derek Palmer, and had talked about her much with Derek in her absence. He seemed to know quite a lot about her, rather accurately, and in other circumstances she might have felt rather uneasy at the knowledge that Derek had clearly recounted in some detail the night he and she had spent with the BBC man in Tunis, and the day when she had been so violently and embarrassingly ill in the back of the landrover. But at the moment, with the wine flowing, and with delightful little morsels of shell fish and salad and mayonnaise and so forth following one another quickly upon her plate—it seemed to be her favourite kind of meal, a meal of endless hors d'oeuvres, or would she suddenly be called upon to tackle a huge steak or a whole chicken?—at the moment she didn't much care, and even launched upon her own description of that famous illness. It was a real break-through in human relations for me, she said, for after all, after that, what worse could life hold, in what worse a light could one possibly appear? If people can take that, they can take anything. Derek was
wonderful
, she said warmly, absolutely
wonderful
, he held my hand right through and never once looked disgusted, and I kept explaining that we couldn't stop because we were behind schedule and had to get there before the sun came up, but oh lord, I thought I was dying.

But it was a good trip, after that, said Hunter.

Yes, it had been a good trip. She'd recovered the next day—it hadn't been typhoid at all, that time. I'm incredibly resilient, she said; yes, so Derek said, said Hunter. They had started work on good terms, her momentary illnesS had reinforced her authority, and they had become close, the four of them, sharing everything, sleeping in the same tent, hiding nothing. It had been companionable. Karel would have hated it, for he was a modest man; she sometimes wondered how he could ever have liked an immodest person like herself. She had become more and more immodest over the years; perhaps it was something to do with tent life and the curious kind of non-sexual group feeling that always evolved in a shared enterprise of that nature. She'd often argued with Karel (who inclined to be jealous, even of the past) that there was no sex at all in her feelings for Derek and John and Bruce, though there was evidently something that was physical—it's friendship, or comradeliness, she would say lamely, but she'd never been able to make it sound very convincing, there weren't any good words for what she was trying to describe—companionship, comradeship, fellowship, the very words made one wince, as did the stupid word ‘dig,' which she avoided whenever possible. It wasn't always possible. A friend of her who had read Classics with her at University, and who was possessed of an even greater semantic squeamishness, had abandoned a career in archaeology because of this problem, and had stuck to book-bound Ancient History instead. Frances herself was not such an extremist. Unlike pedantic Karel, she recognized the existence of things that lacked good words to describe them. And she was not easily deterred.

Hunter was very interested in her, no doubt about it. Or perhaps he was more interested in second-hand stories about Derek. She really must be very careful what she said, as it would clearly get around in no time, and she had lived to regret many an indiscretion: on the other hand, she couldn't resist telling him about Derek and the camel and the syphilis. (She could see Andersson looking at her more in sorrow than in anger. Galletti, on the other hand, was much entertained, though distracted slightly by the attentions he was having to pay to some unexplained and indeed inexplicable young lady on his other side. Who the hell could she be? She was far too young to be anyone's wife, and too well dressed to be a student. Someone's daughter, maybe? Anyway, she was old enough to hear echoes of the camel story.) Hunter enjoyed the story, she could see, though it was impossible to evoke all it had meant to them, huddled together in their small oasis, playing poker, playing Scrabble, drinking, recounting the whole of their past histories to one another night after night, laughing hysterically whenever the camel was mentioned, childishly referring to it, making Derek expose, night after night, the infinitesimally small bump which he had mistaken for serious affliction, and which he in the end admitted had probably been there all his life. Even the words of the Scrabble board had veered remarkably towards the camel, and when one night they had been reduced to playing Consequences, they had produced some highly entertaining variations on the theme. None of those good jokes would stand the chill of retelling, but they had been good at the time, mingled as they had been with the extraordinary sensations of relief and triumph, with the knowledge that there, just out in the sandhills, lay their own city, rising slowly from the ground: a reputation made, it meant, for Frances Wingate, and a good step in the right direction, career-wise, for Derek and Bruce, both of them acting as her assistants, both of them on handsome grants from their respective Universities, grants which would now be seen to have been amply justified. No wonder they had laughed weakly with euphoria, lying there in the cool evening, thinking of the long caravans from Meroé, the bazaar, the palms, the chickens and dogs, the bargaining, the donkeys and camels, probably not so different then from now, for the whole place had been miraculously preserved by the fine dry sand, and it looked, as it emerged, habitable, homely, like any other small Saharan village today, not crushed out of recognition, like so many sites, by earth and rain and trampling feet. It had been busy then, but they had all gone away (she had had to think of reasons for their departure, but that came later). Negroes, Arabs, Phoenicians. John Sinclair-Davies, who had accompanied them at his own expense, was the artist of the expedition; he was there to draw pots and stones, but would also dash off beautiful reconstructions—life in Tizouk and Meroë in 500
BC
, with giraffes and monkeys and ivory, with palm trees and lions, interspersed with sketches of Frances in her bikini, Frances in the pose of Alexandrine Tinne, the first European woman to venture into the Sahara (she was hacked to death for her trouble), Frances in the full regalia of a Meroitic queen, Palmer grotesquely raddled in the last stages of tertiary syphilis, Bruce Wyatt as a sheik playing poker with Frances dressed as the ancient queen of the Tuareg. They had all been very silly, no doubt. They had played Scrabble, in the evenings, when poker palled, allowing themselves to use the place names of the Sahara, which were full of z and k and x, and other useful consonants—after all, said Frances one night, regally adjudicating, bending the rules, allowing Tizouk to Derek, it is
our
place name, and we can allow ourselves to use it, can we not?

The Sahara had once been very different: fertile, grass-covered, and in places the hippopotamus had wallowed where there is now no water for hundreds of miles. Her people had left Tizouk when the water dried up: they had wandered off, from their little trading post, leaving it to the wind and the sand and Frances Wingate.

When she had finished her camel story, she and Hunter and Galletti discussed camels and their habits in general, contrasting their bad character with the nobility and fidelity of the horse and the dog, and then, suddenly out of the blue, Hunter said, ‘I met an old friend of yours a month ago. Karel Schmidt, his name was.'

‘Really?' said Frances, a little stunned, unable to change gear very quickly. She couldn't think of anything to say, her mind still ran on camels, but she longed to know more.

‘Where did you meet him?' she said, after a pause, playing for time, afraid the topic would be changed, wondering desperately how much Hunter could know about her and Karel, what Karel had said about her and whether she dared ask, whether Karel still saw Derek Palmer ever, wishing she hadn't drunk so much.

‘I met him at his Poly,' said Hunter. ‘I went to give a talk there. He said that's where you first met him.'

‘Yes, I did,' said Frances. ‘A good few years ago, now.'

‘A nice fellow,' said Hunter, idly, probingly. She panicked, unsure what to do. Should she tell all and get the real news of Karel? Should she keep calm and disown him? Should she suggest ownership? Hunter, she thought, would like her to tell all, so that he could sympathize, but perhaps he would sympathize too much. If she disowned him, she wouldn't get the news. The only thing to do was to suggest a vague association, implying all and telling nothing: that would keep Hunter quiet and get her what she wanted. If only I still
had
Karel, she said to herself, I wouldn't get into these confusions, drinking too much at lunch time and all this kind of thing.

Her tooth was beginning to ache: she had hit it, in her panic, on her pudding spoon.

‘He's a
very
nice fellow,' she said, warmly. ‘
Very
nice. In fact quite one of my closest friends.' She'd said that in a special enough way, she hoped, without too much of a leer. ‘And how was he?'

‘Oh, he seemed very well,' said Hunter. ‘Working hard. He does two evenings a week WE A as well, he says. We had quite a chat about it, because I was thinking of doing a class myself next year, if I can afford it. The pay's appalling. I don't know what he does it for.'

‘Two a week is too much' said Frances, faintly, emptying her glass quickly as Galletti reached for the replenishing decanter, and replenished. Waves of loneliness poured through her. Two a week. Last time she had spoken to him, he'd only been doing one. He had taken on a whole new class and she hadn't known. She felt insulted and bereft.

‘One would be all right, though, I thought it might be fun,' said Hunter. ‘Does he do it for fun?'

‘I don't really know' said Frances, cautiously. ‘I think he enjoyed it, yes. He's a very good teacher,' she said, primly and loyally.

‘And he's got a large family,' said Hunter. ‘Perhaps, with all those children, even a fiver helps . . . '

‘It's not as large a family as
mine
,' said Frances.

‘Ah yes,' said Hunter, with a touch of malice, ‘but then we all know you're the golden girl, don't we?'

‘Tell me some more about Karel,' said Frances, rather pleased by the malice: flattery was all very well, but it wasn't as good as real acknowledgement. ‘What else did you talk about?'

Hunter stared at her calmly. He had a peculiar baby face, soft and freckled and pale, and long wavy hair, straggling a little round his neck, as though it had passed the point where he usually cut it. He was very relaxed. He was years younger than she was.

‘We talked about you, of course,' said Hunter.

‘But you don't know me,' she said.

‘I knew you through Derek. And I knew your work.'

‘Yes, I suppose so.'

‘Aren't you going to ask me what he said about you?'

‘I don't know if I dare,' said Frances, as the air turned very still: her heart was beating rather loudly, and her tooth seemed to be beating in time with it, with an incessant throb, like a generating machine. Suddenly Hunter's self, which she had taken so lightly, assumed a terrible significance: there he was, this bland young man, smiling at her, a fatal messenger. How much would he dare to say? If the news were bad, would he utter it, and would she blame him for delivering it? Or was he the kind of polite person who would never tell an unwelcome truth? It was important to know, but too late to discover. He smiled at her, knowingly. He was a quiet trouble-maker, maybe. It was too late to escape. If Karel had disowned her, she would die.

‘Oh, I think you dare ask,' said Hunter.

‘All right, then,' said Frances. ‘Tell me. What did he say about me?'

‘He said he loved you,' said Hunter, with satisfaction, expecting applause.

She thought she was going to faint, for a moment, at the sound of this lovely news.

‘How nice of him,' she said, unable to stop herself from smiling. And then she handed over her reward. ‘And I love him, of course,' she said, primly.

‘He didn't say much about that,' said Hunter.

‘No. Well, he wouldn't,' said Frances. She was so moved by Karel's loyalty, and by this boy's completely self-interested nerve, that she wanted to embrace Hunter as a substitute, but could see that that would not do. On the other hand, she could see that there was no point in pursuing the Karel theme: to pursue it would have ruined it, for she would have had to admit her failures, and at the moment it stood between them perfect, undiminished, neatly summarized, as though in a poem or a play. She decided that it would be better, after all, to devote her attention to Hunter himself.

‘How kind of you to tell me,' she said. ‘
Why
did you tell me, may I ask?'

‘I thought you might like to know,' said Hunter.

‘It was rather a risk,' she said. ‘You clearly don't mind taking a risk or two.'

And in no time at all, she had Hunter discussing himself, with her knowledge of Karel filling her heart with such delight and joy that she could hardly breathe. She would rush straight back to him, she would ring him as soon as she reached England, no perhaps not ring because of his wife, she would write to him, they would meet again, how mad to have wasted all this time, she drunkenly reflected, as she listened to Hunter and the story of his divorce (he
can't
be divorced, she said to herself, he's only about twenty-eight, he can hardly be
married
yet, she thought, though she herself had married a rich man at the age of twenty).

 

Hunter walked her back to her hotel. She had a train to catch at six: it was now half past three, and she hadn't packed. Hunter could help her pack. She had got him completely under her thumb. He had nothing better to do, anyway, and would enjoy telling the story of how he helped Frances Wingate to pack her bags. She hadn't behaved badly to him, after all. She'd listened to his stories about his wife with sympathy and had given him some excellent advice. She felt slightly bad about Galletti, but then one can't please everyone, and there hadn't after all been a contract between them, and even if there had been Galletti wouldn't have liked its terms. Whereas Hunter liked exactly what he was getting, she could tell. She was too old for him, but he liked watching.