The Visitors Read online

  Sally Beauman was born in Devon, and read English Literature at Girton College, Cambridge. She has worked as a journalist and critic in America and the UK, and is the author of seven previous novels.

  BY SALLY BEAUMAN

  Destiny

  Dark Angel

  Lovers and Liars

  Danger Zones

  Sextet

  Rebecca’s Tale

  The Landscape of Love

  The Visitors

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Little, Brown

  978-1-4055-2510-7

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Sally Beauman 2014

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Map by Viv Mullett, The Flying Fish Studios Ltd

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  LITTLE, BROWN

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  The Visitors

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  By Sally Beauman

  COPYRIGHT

  Dedication

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  ONE: Sphinx Girl

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  TWO: The Opening of the Mouth

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  THREE: Three-Thousand-Year Effect

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  FOUR: Antique Land

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  FIVE: Oliver No. 9

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  SIX: The Book of the Dead

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  PEOPLE, PLACES, PROVENANCE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  For Ellie and her parents, James and Lucy

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  (the names of fictional characters are italicised)

  CAIRO, 1922 and later

  Lucy Payne, aged eleven, visiting from England

  Miss Myrtle Mackenzie, from Princeton, New Jersey; in loco parentis and escorting Lucy

  Hassan, their driver and dragoman

  Herbert Winlock, an American archaeologist, field director of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s excavations near Luxor

  Helen Chandler Winlock, his wife

  Frances Winlock, his young daughter

  Howard Carter, an English archaeologist, in charge of the Earl of Carnarvon’s excavations in the Valley of the Kings

  George Edward Stanhope Molyneaux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, of Highclere Castle, Hampshire; amateur archaeologist and collector of antiquities

  Lady Evelyn Herbert, his daughter, aged twenty

  Poppy d’Erlanger (formerly Countess of Strathaven), a beauty, bolter and divorcée

  Lady Rose, her young daughter, and Peter (Viscount Hurst), her infant son

  Wheeler, her maid

  Marcelle, Lady Evelyn Herbert’s maid

  Albert Lythgoe, curator of the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Egyptian Art: the museum’s éminence grise

  Arthur Mace, an English, Oxford-educated archaeologist, working with Lythgoe in Egypt. Associate Curator at the Metropolitan Museum, in charge of its Egyptian conservation work

  Harry Burton, English archaeologist, also part of the Metropolitan Museum’s team in Egypt, and its acclaimed photographer

  Minnie Burton, his rebarbative English wife

  Madame Masha, the familiar name for Countess Mariya Aleksandrovna Sheremeteva, formerly a prima ballerina in Moscow; directrice of an exclusive Cairene ballet school

  Fräulein von Essen, one of Madame Masha’s long-suffering pupils, and Frau von Essen, her mother, both visiting from Berlin

  Lieutenant Urquhart and Captain Carew, young officers in the British army, attached to the British Residency, serving in Egypt at a period when Cairo is under martial law

  LUXOR, 1922–3

  El-Deeb Effendi, a senior officer in the Egyptian police force, seasoned detective and admirer of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle

  Mrs Lythgoe, Albert Lythgoe’s wife; in charge of the domestic arrangements at the American House, the Metropolitan Museum’s sumptuous dig headquarters near the Valley of the Kings

  Michael-Peter Sa’ad, head cook at the American House

  Abd-el-Aal Ahmad Sayed, the senior servant at ‘Castle Carter’ (Howard Carter’s home near the Valley of the Kings), and Hosein, his much younger brother and fellow servant

  Ahmed Girigar, Howard Carter’s senior reis or foreman, in charge of his excavating team in the Valley of the Kings

  Ahmed Girigar, his namesake and grandson; aged six, one of the excavation team’s water boys

  Pierre Lacau, Director of the Antiquities Service, in charge of all excavation in Egypt, and keen to reform its practices – a radicalism that does not endear him to his archaeological peers

  Rex Engelbach, Chief Inspector for Antiquities, Upper Egypt, and thus directly responsible for supervising all finds made in the Valley of the Kings

  Ibrahim Effendi, his deputy inspector

  Mohammed, Ibrahim’s relative and sometime rival, an energetic informant; head cook on the Hatshepsut, a houseboat at Luxor hired by Miss Mackenzie and Lucy Payne

  Arthur ‘Pecky’ Callender, an Englishman, formerly an engineer on the Egyptian railways; an old friend of Howard Carter, brought in to assist with the work on Tutankhamun’s tomb

  Alfred Lucas, a distinguished English chemist working for the Antiquities Service in Cairo; enlisted to work with Arthur Mace on the conservation of objects found in the tomb

  Dr Alan Gardiner, of Oxford, the greatest philologist of his era, and an internationally renowned Egyptologist; friend to Lord Carnarvon; advising on inscriptions in the tomb

  Dr James H. Breasted, of Chicago, an equally renowned Egyptologist, advising on clay seals in the tomb

  A. S. Merton, special correspondent in Egypt for The Times; Howard Carter’s long-time friend

  Arthur Weigall, special correspondent for the Daily Mail; Howard Carter’s long-time enemy

  Valentine Williams, special correspondent for Reuters

  H. V. Morton, special correspondent for the Daily Express

  A. H. Bradstreet, special correspondent for the Morning Post and The New York Times

  CAMBRIDGE, 1922 and later

  Dr Robert Foxe-Payne, classicist and Fellow of Trinity College; Lucy’s father

  Marianne Emerson Payne, his late wife, Lucy’s mother; an American heiress

  Nicola Dunsire, a young blue-stocking, putative descendant of Sir Walter Scott; recently studying at Girton College, now Lucy’s governess

  Clair Lennox, Nicola’s alarming friend, once her fellow Girtonian, now an artist

  Eddie Vyne-Chance, a handsome, iconoclastic Cambridge poet with a thirst for al
cohol

  Dorothy (‘Dotty’) Lascelles, now training to be a doctor, and Meta, a scornful classicist, both Girtonian friends of Nicola Dunsire

  Mrs Grimshaw, wife of a Trinity College porter, cleaner at Dr Foxe-Payne’s house in Newnham for many years

  Dr Gerhardt, a Cambridge don once enlisted to tutor Lucy in German and French, and his sister Helga Gerhardt, a Fellow of Girton; both friends of Dr Foxe-Payne

  Mr Szabó, a Hungarian dealer in antiques and curios

  HIGHCLERE CASTLE, HAMPSHIRE, 1922

  Fletcher, a former ditch-digger on the Earl of Carnarvon’s estate, said to be a rogue

  Streatfield, Lord Carnarvon’s butler

  Almina, Lord Carnarvon’s wife, 5th Countess of Carnarvon. The heir (and allegedly the illegitimate daughter) of the millionaire banker, Alfred de Rothschild

  Dorothy Dennistoun, a woman with a reputation; one of Lady Carnarvon’s closest friends

  Helen, Lady Cunliffe-Owen, another friend; sometimes a reluctant medium at Lord Carnarvon’s seances at Highclere

  Brograve Beauchamp, candidate for the National Liberals in the forthcoming election; an admirer of Lord Carnarvon’s daughter, Lady Evelyn

  Stephen Donoghue, a great flat-racing jockey, winner of the English Triple Crown and (several times) of the Derby

  HIGHGATE, 2002

  Dr Benjamin Fong, an alert American Egyptologist; formerly of Berkeley, University of California, now a Fellow of University College London; conducting research for a high-budget jointly funded BBC/HBO television documentary

  ONE

  Sphinx Girl

  Here we are in Egypt, land of the Pharaohs, land of the Ptolemies, country of Cleopatra (as one says in high style)… What to say? What would you like me to write? I have hardly got over the first bedazzlement. It is like being thrown, fast asleep, into the middle of a Beethoven symphony…

  Gustave Flaubert, letter from Cairo to Dr Jules Cloquet, 15 January 1850

  1

  When I’d been in Cairo a week, I was taken to the pyramids; it was there that I saw Frances for the first time. It was January 1922, and Miss Mackenzie, in loco parentis, my guardian for our travels in Egypt, planned our visit with great care. She believed that if I could see the pyramids, ‘One of the greatest wonders of the ancient world, remember, Lucy, dear,’ and see them in the most powerful way possible – at sunrise – they would effect a change. They would stimulate; they would enthral; they would snap me back to life, and persuade me to re-engage with the world. For six days she had postponed this visit: I wasn’t yet strong enough. On the seventh day, the great moment finally arrived.

  Miss Mack, who had been a nurse in the war, believed in timetables as well as pyramids. She was convinced regimes were therapeutic. So the day of our expedition was planned with zeal. The list she drew up in her neat looped handwriting went like this:

  5 a.m.: The Pyramids at Giza. Departure prompt.

  Noon: Picnic luncheon at the Sphinx, in the shade of her paw.

  2.30 p.m.: Return Shepheard’s Hotel. Obligatory REST period.

  4 p.m.: Tea on the celebrated hotel terrace. An opportunity for conversazione.

  5 p.m.: Attendance, by invitation from the great lady herself, at Madame Masha’s legendary dancing class. Duration, one hour. Benefits, inestimable.

  ‘You see, Lucy,’ Miss Mack said, ‘if truth be told, and although I am an old Egypt hand, my contacts in Cairo are just a little bit rusty. What we need is an entrée. Friends, dear.’ She regarded the list sadly. ‘Fun.’

  I had forgotten what ‘fun’ was. It had disappeared into the fume and smoke that afflicted my mind then. But I was an obedient child, grateful to Miss Mack for her vigour – her ‘pep’, as she called it. I knew that my listlessness alarmed her; I knew that behind all her exhaustive planning lay anxiety, even fear. So I tried to reassure her: I rose early, in the Cairo dark. I endured the dousing with eau de cologne that kept flies at bay, and the sand shoes and the long socks; I accepted the cotton gloves: ‘Never insert your fingers into crevices, Lucy. The pyramid stones are notorious – beware of scorpions at all times.’ I submitted to the panama hat: that was to protect me from the fierce Egyptian sun – at least, that was the ostensible reason, the one Miss Mack always gave. Costuming complete, she turned me to the cheval glass, and we both inspected me. Should I snatch the hat off, expose the tragic state of my hair? The small girl in the glass met my gaze. Eleven years old, and she looked seven: thin as a reed, pinched around the nostrils, wary about the eyes. What a little nothingness: she was no one I recognised.

  I turned my back on the girl and followed Miss Mack downstairs to the palace of hubbub that was the lobby of Shepheard’s Hotel. Escorted by a flurry of flunkies in ballooning white trousers and red boleros, I crept out in her wake to the flaring torches, the hotel steps and the eddying darkness beyond. A fracas ensued. Miss Mack, American, fiercely republican and principled, believed in frugality but was a woman of generosity. She scattered baksheesh like manna from the heavens: she bestowed her bounty on everyone, the beggars who swarmed throughout Cairo, the fake and the genuinely afflicted alike, the ragged half-starved children, the street vendors, jasmine-sellers and snake-charmers, the touts who, crying, ‘Antika, sweet lady, first class, very ancient,’ produced from their sleeves scarabs manufactured the previous day. Her soft heart had been spotted within days of our arrival, and the instant she appeared on the hotel step she was surrounded by an importunate horde.

  I waited in the entrance as the inevitable turmoil commenced, then, feeling the familiar faintness, sank down on the stone steps between the sphinxes either side. Below me, the hotel’s safragis were reminding Miss Mack that there was unrest in Cairo, that she must not contemplate setting off without a dragoman. When this appeal failed – as an old Egypt hand Miss Mack scorned guides – the hotel servants, clustering around her and shouldering the beggars aside, began insisting she hire a motorcar: a line of gleaming tourist cars now waited outside the hotel where, in her youth, a multitude of donkey boys had plied their trade. I saw Miss Mack hesitate: the night before she had been loud in her condemnation of automobiles – dust, gasoline fumes, speed, convenience, where was the romance, the poetry there? Now she glanced towards my seated figure, and I saw her reconsider. There was a risk in overtiring me… The hired cars were expensive, and all her thrifty instincts argued against them. But on the other hand my maternal grandparents, American grandees, formerly estranged and unknown to me beyond their handwriting, were now languidly assisting, wiring top-up funds, paying Miss Mack a ‘retainer’ and insisting money was no object – as indeed, in their case, it was not. They had insisted that on this voyage no expense should be spared.

  ‘Perhaps an automobile might be advisable after all, Lucy,’ Miss Mack said, fighting her way past the encircling safragis, and returning to the steps. ‘We must not exhaust you. Maybe this wasn’t wise – such an early start… ?⁠’

  I rose to my feet, and held on firmly to the hotel balustrade. If I concentrated hard, I could banish that smoky confusion from my mind for brief periods. I knew Miss Mack’s plans and it seemed cruel to disappoint her. I said, ‘Oh, please – not a car. I was looking forward to the carriage – and look, Hassan is there as usual, across the road.’

  Miss Mack wheeled about. Beyond the shrieking crowd of hawkers and professional beggars forever on duty on the hotel steps, she glimpsed her paragon. There he sat, on the far side of Ibrahim Pasha Street, bent over the reins of his carriage, waiting for custom that was, these days, infrequent and poorly paid. His attitude was one of stoic resolve; on glimpsing Miss Mack, he lifted his hand in salute. In an instant she was resolute again. Out came her purse; munificent tips were conferred. Hassan was whistled across; bags, baskets, rugs, stools were transferred in seconds; the carriage hood was drawn up; and I was installed, Miss Mack beside me, confident once more and ready for anything in hand-made tweeds. Hassan’s horse pricked its ears and neighed; the sound startled a pair of red k
ites, tireless scavengers that roosted in the palm trees of the Ezbekieh Gardens opposite.

  They rose up with a clatter of wings, circled overhead, and gave us a fly-past. ‘Now, Lucy,’ said Miss Mack in a hopeful tone, ‘now your great adventure begins.’

  Hassan was Miss Mack’s paragon for many reasons: he was a kind, knowledgeable man and he cared for his elderly horse in an exemplary way; his carriage was resplendent with shining trinkets, powerful amulets and charms. He spoke English, French, Turkish and Arabic, and in his youth had served in the British army under Lord Kitchener… Miss Mack sang his praises for the expedition’s first half-hour. I was tired from all the dressing and packing and loading and talk. I examined the dark sky and the fantastic glitter of the low-slung Egyptian stars. I breathed in the sweet talcum scent of the lebbek trees. Cairo, which I thought of as a city of consternation, was strangely quiet at this hour.

  ‘How well I remember the first time I made this journey to the pyramids, Lucy,’ Miss Mack was saying. She wiped a tear from her eye. ‘We took a carriage just like this one. I was only a child, a little older than you are now. Just twelve, and it was the first time I’d ever left Princeton. Why, it must have been 1878 – can it really be that long ago? The excitement! “Now, Myrtle, prepare yourself,” my dear father, God rest him, said to me. But I was screwed up to such a pitch of excitement that I could not stop fidgeting. I was hopping about like a bug on a blanket – and then, on the horizon, as the sun rose, I saw… ’