Whispers in the Sand (5 page)

His uncle and aunt were, however, not quite as unconventional as their nephew, and she was finding out every minute that her dreams of conversation and laughter and the convivial travel which she and George had so often discussed were far from what the Forresters had in mind.

Anna looked up. Her neighbour appeared to be asleep. Over the back of the seat in front of her she could see the film in full swing. Most of the passengers seemed to be engrossed in the action. Surreptitiously she tried to stretch and wondered how long she could last before she had to ask him to move so she could go to the loo. She glanced back towards the rear of the plane. The queue for the lavatories did not seem to have grown any shorter. Beyond the thick glass of the window, the distant ground had turned the colour of red and ochre and gold. The colours of Africa. With a tremor of excitement she stared down for a long time before leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes. She was almost there.

It was impossible to sleep.

She opened the diary again, eager to lose herself in Louisa’s adventures and blot out her own less than romantic mode of travel. Skimming down the cramped, slanted writing with its faded brown ink, she flipped through the pages, glancing at the sketches which illustrated the narrative.

“Hassan brought the mules at first light so that we could escape the worst of the heat. He loaded all my painting equipment into the panniers without a word. I was afraid he was still angry at my lack of tact and understanding of his role, but resolved not to speak of it. Instead I allowed him to help me onto my animal without uttering a word either of apology or of remonstrance at his outburst. He looked up at me once, and I saw the anger in his eyes. Then he went to collect the lead rein of the pack animal and climbed onto his own. We rode all the way to the valley without speaking.” Anna glanced up again, wearily rubbing her eyes. It did not sound as though Louisa had had a good time with Hassan. She turned on a few pages.

“I saw him again today—just a faint figure in the heat haze. A tall man, watching me, who one minute was near me and the next minute was not there. I called out to Hassan, but he was asleep, and by the time he had reached my side, the man had vanished into the strange shimmer thrown by the heat of the sand. The shadows where I set my easel were dark in contrast, but out there, on the floor of the valley, there was nowhere for him to hide. I am beginning to feel afraid. Who is he, and why does he not approach me?”

That sounded exciting. Exciting and mysterious. With a small shiver, Anna looked up with a start to see the flight attendant hovering with a jug of coffee. Her neighbour, ignoring the woman, was looking down at the diary on Anna’s knee with evident interest. She closed it and slipped it into her bag, reaching for the tray in front of her and letting it down onto her lap. He had already looked away. Outside, the sun was slipping nearer and nearer to the horizon.

Her neighbour appeared to have fallen asleep when she fumbled in her bag once again for the diary, and opening it at random, she was captivated immediately by the words which sprang from the page. “I begin to love this country…”

Louisa set down her pen and stared out of the window at the dark river outside. She had pulled open the lattice shutters to allow the smell of it, the warmth of the night air, the occasional breath of chill wind from the desert to enter her cabin. It all captivated her. She listened carefully. The other cabins were silent. Even the crew were asleep. Gathering up her skirts, she tiptoed to the door and opened it. The steps to the deck were steep. Cautiously she climbed them and emerged into the darkness. She could see the humped forms of the sleeping men before the mast and heard suddenly a brief sleepy snore as one of them eased his head on the cushion of his arm. Another breath of cold air and she could hear the rustle of palm fronds on the bank. Above, the stars were violent sparks against the blue-black sky.

There was a slight movement behind her, and she turned. Hassan’s bare feet had made no sound on the deck. “Mrs. Shelley, you should stay in your cabin.” His voice was no more than a whisper against the whisper of the wind in the reeds.

“It’s too hot down there. And the night is too beautiful to miss.” Her mouth had gone dry.

She could see his smile, his teeth white against the dark silhouette of his face. “The night is for lovers, Mrs. Shelley.”

Her face burning, she stepped away from him, her knuckles tight on the deck rail. “The night is for poets and painters as well, Hassan.”

With half an ear she was listening for sounds from below deck. Her heart was beating very fast.

Her neighbour was looking at Louisa’s diary again, she could sense it. Anna sighed. He was beginning to irritate her. His glance was an invasion of her space, an intrusion. If he was not prepared to make a minimum of polite conversation, he had no business being interested in her reading material! Closing the diary, she forced herself to look up and smile at the seat-back in front of her. “Not long now.” She turned towards him. “Are you going on a cruise too?”

He was an attractive man, she realised suddenly, but even as she thought it, his face closed, and she saw it harden and the warmth vanished.

“I am indeed, but I very much doubt it is the same one as you.” His accent was difficult to place, very faint—slightly Scots perhaps, or Irish—because that was all he said. He shifted his shoulders slightly, turning away from her, and putting his head back against the seat, he closed his eyes once more.

She felt a surge of anger and resentment. Well, that had certainly put her in her place. How dare he assume anything about her! Turning abruptly towards the window, she stared out, astonished to find that far below them it was already dark. In the distance, she realised suddenly that she could see lights. They would soon be arriving at Luxor.

By the time she had been through passport control and retrieved her suitcase among the teeming throng of other tourists, Anna was exhausted. She hung onto her case, grimly waving away the offers of help from a surge of gesticulating, shouting would-be porters, and joined the queue for the bus.

The
White Egret
was a small boat. The brochure had shown the Victorian paddle steamer on a separate page from the other cruisers belonging to the travel company, emphasising its age, its history, and its selectness. There would be only eighteen passengers. It was a long shot, she had suspected, even to try and find a place on it, but she had made the effort because it was the closest she was likely to get to the kind of boat Louisa would have travelled on from Cairo to Luxor, and to her enormous delight and surprise they had written to say that there had been a cancellation, and she found herself allocated one of the only two single cabins.

A hasty glance round the bus showed her that her neighbour from the plane was not there. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or sorry. She had not enjoyed his rudeness. On the other hand, his would at least have been a familiar face amongst all these strangers. She made her way towards the back and sat down, her small holdall and camera bag on the seat beside her. Was she the only person there on her own? It seemed like it. Everyone else was sitting in pairs, and the level of excited conversation had escalated as the door closed and the bus pulled away. She gazed out into the darkness, feeling suddenly bleak and lonely, and then realised with an excited sense of shock which put all thoughts of her loneliness out of her head that beyond the reflections of the bus windows she could see palm trees and a man in a white turban perched on the rump of a tiny donkey trotting along the road in the dark.

The boat—three storeys, picked out in lights with a huge paddle wheel each side—was moored on the outskirts of the town. They were welcomed with hot towels for their hands and a drink of sweet fruit juice, then they were given their cabin keys.

Her cabin was small but adequate, her case already waiting for her in the middle of the floor. She looked round with interest. Her new domain provided her with a single bed, a bedside locker on which stood an old-fashioned internal telephone, a dressing table, and a narrow cupboard. It was scarcely luxury, but at least she did not have to share it with a stranger. Throwing her holdall, camera, and shoulder bag down on the bed, she closed the door behind her and went to the window. Pushing back the curtains and opening the shutters, she tried to see out, but the river bank beyond was dark. To her disappointment, she could see nothing. Pulling the curtains shut again, she turned back to the room. Half an hour, they had been told, until supper, and then in the morning they would be ferried across the River Nile and their first visit—to the Valley of the Kings, Louisa’s Valley of the Tombs—would begin. A wave of excitement swept over her.

It took no time at all to unpack, to hang up the dresses and skirts she had brought with her—there was no need of a Jane Treece to help her—and to lay out her few cosmetics on the dressing table. Amongst them she stood her little perfume bottle. It had seemed only right to bring it to the land of its origins, whether those origins had been in some lowly bazaar or in an ancient tomb.

There was time for a quick shower before dinner. Throwing off her clothes, she turned and ducked into the little bathroom. She stood for five minutes beneath the tepid trickle of water, letting it wash away the weariness of the journey, before forcing herself out of her reverie, and, stepping out onto the duckboard on the tiled, mosaic floor between the loo and the doll-sized basin, she reached for her towel.

Pulling it round her, she stepped back into her room. The temperature in the cabin had dropped. Shivering, she stared round, puzzled. There was no air conditioning control that she could see. Perhaps there was some central system on the boat. Pulling on her green cotton shift and slinging a lightweight sweater round her shoulders, she stopped in her tracks again, frowning. There was definitely something odd about the temperature in the room. She hoped she wouldn’t have to complain about it; she had expected Egypt to be hot! Shrugging, she gave one more glance round the cabin, and then she headed for the door.

This was the moment that she was dreading. She had to go out and meet the other passengers. This was her first sortie into life as a single woman once again. If she had imagined the people on the cruise with her at all, it was as a homogenous group of which she would be a part, not as a collection of couples where she would be the only one alone. With a deep sigh, she let herself out into the broad, carpeted corridor outside and, noting with relief how warm it was, began to make her way to the main staircase of the boat. Straight ahead lay the lounge and the bar and the double doors which led out onto the deck, and down the stairs, magnificently railed in brass and decorated with palms and Victorian spittoons was the dining room towards which everyone was now heading.