call for help was answered sooner than I had dared hope; apparently I hadn’t been the only one to observe Jen’s sickly look. First on the scene was her devoted son, with Mary close on his heels.
Jen had resisted my attempt to lift her, curling herself into a ball with knees raised and arms clasped over her midsection, but when she saw John she made a gallant effort to smile.
‘Just my silly old tummy,’ she gasped. ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’ll be fine in a minute.’
Her face was now green instead of grey, and sticky with perspiration. Mary knelt by her with a little cry of sympathy.
‘Mother Tregarth!’
‘Get out of my way,’ John said brusquely. I didn’t know whether he meant me or his bride. Mary assumed it was me. As she bent tenderly over Jen, the latter was violently and messily sick. Mary stumbled to her feet and backed off, her face twisted with disgust.
John hoisted his mother into his arms and put her down again a few feet away. Contemplating the spots on my brand-new outfit I said, ‘Oh, shit,’ took a handful of tissues from my pocket, and began wiping Jen’s face.
‘I do admire a woman with an extensive vocabulary,’ John said under his breath. ‘Don’t just squat there, fetch the doctor.’
‘I’ll go,’ Mary said quickly. ‘I’m sorry, darling, I . . . I’ll go.’
When they returned they were accompanied by several of the other passengers, moved by kindly concern or morbid curiosity. It’s not always easy to tell the difference, I admit. I felt fairly sure it was the latter emotion that had moved Suzi to join us, but I was willing to give Blenkiron the benefit of the doubt. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
Jen demonstrated. I had hoped she would throw up on John, but he managed to avoid it, supporting her head and shoulders so she wouldn’t choke. She kept on heaving, poor thing, although she had obviously got rid of everything in her stomach.
I hadn’t paid much attention to Dr Carter when he was introduced the night before, except to hope devoutly I would not require his services. He was a particularly unnoticeable man – middle-aged, middle-sized in both height and girth, with a bland, pink face.
‘Just a case of the pharaoh’s curse,’ he said, with that infuriating blend of condescension and jollity some doctors’ mistake for a soothing roadside manner. ‘Relax, Mrs Tregarth; we’ll get you back to the boat and – ’
‘No.’ John didn’t look up. ‘I want her in hospital. The boat has moved on, we’re as close or closer to Cairo.’
‘Now, son, there’s nothing to worry about. This is a common affliction, and the infirmary is – ’
‘Moving steadily south, among other disadvantages,’ John said, in his most offensive drawl. ‘My mother is not a young woman, Doctor, and she has had difficulties of this sort before.’
Carter started to fuss, and Blenkiron murmured, ‘Mr Tregarth is right, Ben. It would be foolish to take chances. Perhaps the bus can take her to Cairo and then return for us?’
His voice was soft and hesitant, but when you are rich you don’t have to yell to get your point across.
‘Just what I was about to suggest,’ Carter exclaimed.
Jen was too weak to resist. She looked awful, her closed eyes sunken. ‘Wouldn’t an ambulance be better?’ I said anxiously.
Blenkiron directed a smile in my general direction. ‘The back seats on the bus fold down into a cot, Vicky. She’ll be far more comfortable there, and safely in Cairo by the time we could get an ambulance out here.’
John scooped his mother up and walked off, followed by Mary and Carter.
‘Wow,’ said Suzi, staring. ‘He’s stronger than he looks, isn’t he? The old lady must weigh a hundred and sixty, and he’s practically running.’
Since I knew exactly what she was thinking I decided to ignore this. Since Blenkiron did not know, he responded. ‘One can understand his concern, though I’m sure it’s unnecessary. Many travellers get some kind of digestive upset. It’s nice to see a young man so devoted to his mother, isn’t it?’
‘He’s not so young,’ I said.
‘Had you known him before?’
I recollected myself. Blenkiron’s question had been casually disinterested, but the gleam of avid curiosity in Suzi’s eyes warned me that she was the kind who thrives on scandal. ‘No,’ I said.
‘I don’t believe we’ve met formally,’ Blenkiron said. ‘First names are easier and friendlier; mine is Larry.’
He looked younger and more relaxed in a sweat-stained shirt open at the throat and a pair of wrinkled khaki pants. I noted with sympathetic amusement that he was wearing a pith helmet. The damned things
‘I believe this is your first visit to Egypt?’ he went on, looking down at me and offering me his hand.
I let him pull me to my feet. He was still looking down at me; not many people can do that. A part of my mind I try to ignore assessed the breadth of his shoulders and his flat stomach and decided he wasn’t at all bad for a man of fifty-odd. And he was a multi-millionaire. Or a billionaire? What’s a few million more or less? I thought tolerantly.
‘Does everyone on the boat know I’m a fraud?’ I asked.
‘Now, Vicky, don’t call yourself names. You have quite a reputation. I read your article on the Riemenschneider reliquary with great interest.’
‘I’m flattered. But I don’t know a damn thing about Egyptology,’ I admitted, with one of my most winning smiles.
‘Would you like me to show you around? I’m only an amateur, but I know Sakkara fairly well.’
It was one of the most fascinating mornings I have ever spent. Sakkara is a very complicated site; there are several smaller, ruined pyramids in addition to the Step Pyramid, which is surrounded by a maze of subsidiary buildings, temples and courtyards, corridors and chapels. There are underground structures whose function is still unclear, and a lot of private tombs built for high officials. The larger of these mastabas, as they are called, are mazes in themselves. One has thirty-four separate rooms in the superstructure and a tomb shaft below. I had given the guidebook a hasty perusal the night before and ended up with my head stuffed full of miscellaneous, unrelated facts. Larry made sense of it all.
‘You’ve missed your calling,’ I said, as we left the temple complex. ‘You ought to be a guide.’
He looked absurdly pleased at the silly compliment. We were getting on like a house on fire, I thought complacently. No wonder the poor man fled from women like Suzi; he must be sick of being relentlessly pursued. All he wanted was to be treated as an intellectual equal, to be admired for his brains instead of his money. I could sympathize with that, though in my case it wasn’t money that distracted admirers from my intellectual achievements.
‘It’s easier to simplify a complex subject when one is an amateur,’ he said modestly. ‘Shall we have a look at one of the mastabas before lunch? As an art historian you are probably familiar with the reliefs.’
‘I remember some Old Kingdom reliefs – they were wonderful, very delicate and detailed – but at this moment I couldn’t tell you which tomb they were from There was one of a baby hippopotamus . . .’
‘You’re probably thinkihg of Mereruka.’ Larry took my arm. ‘But some of the other tombs are equally remarkable. We’ll see which is least crowded.’
They were all crowded, at least to the eyes of someone like me, whose definition of too many people is three, but Larry said, ‘Never seen so few people here at this time of year. Tourism is down, people are afraid of terrorists. Nice for us, but unfortunate for the Egyptian economy.’
I got to see my baby hippopotamus, who was ambling along through the river reeds apparently unaware of the huge crocodile right on his heels (if hippos have heels). He had no cause for alarm; his devoted mum had grabbed the predator and was in the process of biting it in two.
The photographs I’d seen hadn’t done the carving justice. To an eye accustomed to Western sculpture the reliefs had a simplicity that verged on naivety, but the more I studied them the more I realized that that impression was deceptive. The technique was sure and skilled and highly sophisticated; only an ignoramus or an observer who was unable to put aside his unconscious prejudices would have undervalued them.
Larry absolutely agreed with me and told me how clever I was to have reached that conclusion. We were having a lovely time when I heard shuffling footsteps and a familiar voice. ‘That’s Feisal, surely,’ I said.
Larry looked at his watch. ‘He is right on schedule. It’s later than I thought. The time has gone very
