The Visitors (50 page)
Eve gave him a grateful look. Taking my hand, she led me indoors; the canary’s song could be heard at once. Its cage had been placed on the windowsill of Carter’s sitting room in full sunshine; the little bird fluttered from perch to perch, fluffed up its bright yellow feathers, opened its tiny beak and sang with an astonishing, sweet musicality.
‘Ah, Lucy… ’ Eve wiped her eyes. ‘I’m so happy, but… Everything Pups and Howard dreamed of and prayed for and more – their wildest hopes: and now they’ve been granted. Somehow that frightens me. I’m sorry to be foolish. It’s just that sometimes – it’s lack of sleep, I think. Howard has been so marvellous and – oh, doesn’t he sing sweetly? Poor little prisoner. I wish I could let him fly free – but I daren’t, of course.’
I waited quietly, saying nothing, remembering that secret night-time expedition, of which no mention had been made. I listened to the canary’s singing and, after a while, I asked Eve who had named him. I could see she was tense with some hidden distress, and I thought such an innocuous question might help to calm her.
‘I did,’ she replied, in a distracted way. ‘My father loves opera, you see, Lucy – and
Fidelio
is his favourite, so I named him for Pups. My father can be superstitious – he was desperately upset when he heard what happened to Howard’s first canary. He saw it as a bad omen. So I hoped –
Fidelio
is a joyous opera, you see. And this is a joyous moment – I do know that… And you’re joyous too, aren’t you, my sweet?’ Breaking off, she stroked the bars of the cage.
We listened to the little bird’s outpourings; its songs seemed to help Eve recover her equanimity. Apologising for her tears, she then led me back to the terrace. There her father and Carter were in the midst of describing the Antechamber’s opening ceremony, explaining that Lord Allenby, detained in Cairo by demonstrations and the worsening political situation, had been unable to attend, but Lady Allenby had represented him; describing the reactions of the Maamor, Wise Bey – and Monsieur Lacau.
‘Couldn’t bring himself to attend the same day as everyone else,’ Carter was saying. ‘Had to have his own private view the next day. Typical Lacau! But when he entered the Antechamber,
that
took the wind out of his sails – it silenced him. That has to be a first.’
‘Come on now, Carter,’ Carnarvon said mildly, as Eve and I reappeared, ‘we’re going to have to work with the man, you know. Lacau was perfectly civil to me. I think he was genuinely moved – overwhelmed by what he saw. Give him some credit.’
Carter did not reply to that but rose to his feet and turned his back. Eve, in her capacity as peacemaker, was swift to intervene: ‘And Howard’s friend from Cairo, Mr Merton from
The Times
, was at the official opening too, Myrtle,’ she said quickly. ‘We’d decided that he was the best person to break the story and
The Times
published it yesterday – it was headed “
By runner from the Valley of the Kings” –
so exciting! Now the whole world knows our secrets! We haven’t seen the paper yet, of course, but Mr Merton says it’s caused a sensation: Reuters picked it up at once, all the papers have cabled Cairo and they’re sending their stringers to Luxor post-haste. Mr Merton’s given us a copy of his article. It’s marvellous, Myrtle,
frightfully
atmospheric and really quite erudite.’
‘It damn well should be.
I
wrote most of it,’ Carter put in.
‘And a
tremendously
good job you made of it too,’ Carnarvon said in his urbane way. ‘Missed your vocation there, my dear fellow. But your chance will come, Carter… I’m planning a
book
, Miss Mackenzie,’ he continued, rising to his feet. ‘There will have to be a full scholarly publication in due course, naturally, but that’s a long, long way off. Meanwhile, I think a more popular, less highbrow account of my find might be the thing. Why let these journalist fellows make all the running? Carter could write it, we’d need to get it out quickly, capitalise on the news while it’s still fresh, obviously. Yes, a book. A blow-by-blow report – there’d be a pretty good market for that, don’t you agree?’
‘A blow-by-blow report?’ Miss Mack echoed faintly. She swallowed hard and blushed crimson. ‘My goodness! What an excellent idea, Lord Carnarvon. A
book
. Indeed. Yes… Gracious, is that the time? It has flown by – all so fascinating. So moving… privileged to have heard it… Our deepest thanks, mustn’t detain… Now Lucy and I really must go.’
She rose, caught me by the hand and began propelling me towards the garden at guilty speed. Carter, who’d been staring towards the river, said, in his brooding, abrupt way, ‘Before you go, take a look at something. Then perhaps you’ll understand what this means to me. I brought it here for safe keeping. It was lying on the floor, on the threshold of the Antechamber. When we entered, it was the first thing I saw. I nearly trod on it.’
And it was then he showed us an object soon to become famous: one that can be seen in the Egyptian Museum now, one that has been replicated and constantly photographed over the years: Carter had given it the name that is still used for it, Tutankhamun’s Wishing Cup. He fetched it from the house, carefully removed its linen wrapping and held it up to our gaze. A translucent chalice, cut from a single block of the palest alabaster, shaped like an opened lotus flower, that Egyptian symbol of rebirth; it was an object of serene, delicate beauty. Its surface was incised with hieroglyphs – and what I remember of that afternoon is not just the evasions that were contrived, or any lies we were told, but Carter’s voice, steady at first, then hoarse with sudden emotion, as he translated those hieroglyphs:
Tutankhamun, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands, Lord of Heaven
.
‘I think he was a child when he came to the throne,’ Carter said. ‘Until now, you see, we knew virtually nothing about him: almost all traces of his reign were destroyed by his successors. He disappeared from history. But all the images we’ve found so far show him as a child or as a very young man. A boy when he inherited and still little more than a boy, perhaps, when he died.’ And then he translated the words etched around the mouth of this boy’s wishing cup:
May your spirit live… O, you who love Thebes, may you spend countless millions of years, seated with your face to the cool north breeze, with your eyes beholding happiness.
A version of that wish would, years later, be inscribed on Carter’s own grave in a London cemetery. That day, I could see how profoundly it moved him. Since Carter hated to betray his emotions, he disguised this at once. Breaking off, turning aside, he said that was an approximate translation; inscriptions were not his field, and more expert deciphering than his would be required. ‘A young boy praying to rest his eyes on his homeland. An eternity with a sweet cool breeze on his face. That was his concept of heaven… I prefer it to ours
,
’ he said in a gruff tone. Keeping his back to us, he rewrapped the chalice and walked away.
Miss Mack and I left shortly afterwards, walking in silence, thinking of all we had seen and heard; the inscription on the king’s cup lingered with us. I was thinking of the dead boy’s love of Thebes – and wondering where my own homeland lay. Miss Mack may have been considering The Book, even the threatened
outbreak
of books: I knew better than to ask and she didn’t say.
Descending the track that led from Castle Carter to our houseboat, we were arrested by the sight of an exotic species new to the area, one that would infest the Valley within weeks and would soon reach plague proportions – a harbinger: it was the first of the journalists.
His long legs dangling either side of his donkey, sweating and red-faced, wearing a white pith helmet that did not fit him, swatting irritably at flies, and mounted on a saddle that was clearly paining him, he was toiling up the track towards the Valley – and still had a long way to go. He was escorted by his elderly dragoman and by an impudence of donkey boys; they were lugging his camera, its tripod and other impedimenta. All their faces bore an expression I recognised from expeditions with that soft touch, Miss Mack: excited, scornful, derisive but keen to please, it meant they’d scented a rich new source of
baksheesh
.
‘Christ, it’s sweltering. I’m on a deadline. I need to wire my report by six at the latest, and to do that I’ll have to get back to Luxor. How much bloody
further
is this blasted Valley?’ he demanded, glaring at his guide as we passed.
‘Two seconds from here, excellency! Very close now – just past this damnation big rock,’ his dragoman cried.
Encountering yet another rival so soon after the first proved too much for Miss Mack, who uttered a forlorn cry of authorial anguish. Within minutes of our return, she had stationed herself at the Oliver No. 9. She remained there, punishing its keys, for hours afterwards.
Shortly after this meeting, Lord Carnarvon returned with Eve to England; there, the press laid siege to him – and he did not take kindly to this
lèse-majesté,
we heard.
Somehow, his telephone numbers had been obtained by the Fleet Street scavengers. They telephoned Lady Carnarvon in the middle of the night, demanding ‘updates’. They accosted his daughter, pleading for ‘quotes’. When he had an audience at Buckingham Palace – both the King and Queen were anxious to hear the full story of his historic discovery – there was a new flurry of insolent calls: what had His Majesty
said
; what had been Her Majesty’s reaction? Reporters hung around his London house in Seamore Place, Mayfair; they skulked in the bushes outside the lodge gates at Highclere; he wasn’t safe at his clubs, at the opera house – wherever he went, some impudent hack clutching a dog-eared notebook would emerge to buttonhole him.
The final blow came a few days before Christmas when, just as he was about to sit down to luncheon at Seamore Place with his good friend, Dr Alan Gardiner – one of the world’s foremost experts on Egyptian inscriptions, whose assistance with the new-found tomb Carnarvon relied upon – his butler announced that he had an unexpected guest: Mr Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of
The Times
, was downstairs and most anxious to see him. He did not have an appointment.
‘Dawson? Never met the fellow. Damn cheek. Get rid of him,’ Carnarvon said.
Dr Gardiner intervened. He suggested that showing the door to the editor of
The Times
was akin to barring the Archbishop of Canterbury. Carnarvon said he’d boot
him
out as well, should he come between him, the Dover sole and the sublime Montrachet ’65 that were about to be served; but Dr Gardiner was persuasive, and Dawson was permitted to remain. He was left kicking his heels for an hour and a half, but the two men did, finally, have the conversation the editor had so importunately sought. What he wanted, Dawson explained, was a monopoly on all news relating to the tomb and Tutankhamun.
Howard Carter told us this story on Christmas Day at the American House, over a lunch of roast turkey, followed by a Fortnum’s plum pudding, sent with Carnarvon’s compliments. The Winlocks had just arrived in Egypt: Frances and I had been joyfully reunited, and Miss Mack and I had been invited for the feast. The dining room at the American House had been festooned with paper streamers, a large lemon tree decorated with stars stood in for the Christmas fir and the room was hung with lanterns.
It was a large group, sixteen of us; it included Arthur Mace, the English conservationist from the Met’s team, and Harry Burton: both men had now been seconded to work on Tutankhamun’s tomb. Several other Met archaeologists made up the party, and we’d been joined by Howard Carter, who had ridden over from his house to join us. Albert Lythgoe and his wife were not there; they were still in London, locked in negotiations with Carnarvon as to what further assistance the Metropolitan might provide him – or so Herbert Winlock had told us, somewhat irritably. Pecky Callender was also missing: he was spending the holiday with his sons at his Armant farm, he’d said, and intended to have a ‘knees-up’ and a ‘bit of a beano’.
It wasn’t exactly a beano at the American House – things remained decorous; but there had been red wine with the turkey, and then sweet wine with the pudding; after that, we’d played games – Dumb Crambo and Consequences. Minnie Burton had obtained crackers, and we were all wearing paper hats. Miss Mack had an approximation of a red revolutionary French bonnet; Howard Carter had a gold-foil crown, crammed down over his ears; he was chain-smoking and began drinking whisky after lunch. Once the games ended, he seized the chance to talk shop with Herbert Winlock.
Clasping my hand, Frances drew me behind the chairs ringing the fireplace; we knelt down and began stuffing the hats and feather boas we’d used as accessories in our Crambo game into the large chest where they were stored. ‘
KV, Lucy: out of sight and out of mind,’
Frances whispered, putting a finger to her lips and, hidden by the chair backs, we listened. Frances’s face was tense with concentration and concern – the conversation began amicably enough, but its underlying tensions were apparent to us.
‘So – that’s the latest news,’ Howard Carter was saying to Winlock. ‘According to Dawson,
The Times
did a similar deal with the recent Everest expedition. Paid them one thousand pounds for rights to the story worldwide. For exclusive rights on the tomb, we’d get much more: it could go as high as four thousand. The
Daily Mail
would trump even that, I gather, but
The Times,
as Lord Carnarvon says,
is
the first newspaper in the world… He’ll consult me before he makes the final decision. What d’you think, Winlock?’
‘The Everest expedition?’ Winlock’s tone was dry. ‘Not
exactly
the same, is it, Carter? No reporter was going to hike off to the Himalayas to cover that story
–
besides, that expedition never made the summit. This is different: it’s a massive story already, and if you
do
find an intact burial chamber, it will be front-page news, worldwide… The journalists are already on their way to Luxor; there were three sleuths on our boat over, and two more on the train from Cairo. The manager at the Winter Palace told Helen he’s never had so many bookings – they’re flooding in, from tourists and newspapermen. The latter might not be
too
pleased to trek all the way to Luxor, only to find
The Times
had stolen a march on them. They’d be expected to sit around, waiting for whatever scraps it deigns to pass on to them, would they? I can’t see that happening – even if it
is
the first paper in the world. And it might be tactful to avoid that kind of remark, Carter – you know, if you’re speaking to
The New York Times
,
for instance. Or one of the Arab papers. Journalists just might take exception to it.’
