Shadows on the Nile Page 4

  That was news to Jessie.

  Something in her face must have raised doubts in his mind because he asked abruptly, ‘He did, didn’t he?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Lying about her brother’s whereabouts came naturally.

  ‘I thought he might have said something to you, Jessica. Especially as he has been spending so much time at your place in recent weeks.’

  Jessie hadn’t seen Timothy for at least a fortnight.

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘He said nothing. Have you contacted the museum to see if he’s been to work?’

  ‘Yes. They haven’t seen him since last Friday.’

  Jessie felt her stomach give a shaky lurch. Timothy loved his job at the British Museum, where he was employed to catalogue their Egyptian antiquities. For him to be missing from work was a bad sign. Bad enough to make her rise to her feet.

  ‘Have you contacted the police?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘Yes.’

  That surprised her.

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They didn’t want to know.’ Her father’s shoulders lost their stiff line. ‘They implied that I was making a fuss about nothing. They said, as you did, that Timothy is an adult and will turn up when he’s ready.’ He looked embarrassed for a moment and his grey eyes glanced away from her. ‘The sergeant suggested he had taken off with a girl. Is that true? Is there a girl, do you think?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  She stood there feeling stupid. Timothy did stay at her flat sometimes but not often, and when he did he told her little about his life. They usually talked about each other’s work and ended up going out to the cinema or dropping in on Tabitha at the jazz club. Timothy liked Tabitha almost as much as he liked a glass of scotch whisky in his hand.

  ‘I’m relying on you, Jessica.’

  ‘Oh, Pa.’

  ‘Don’t let me down.’

  She looked at the stern expression on his face, so familiar that she could draw every line and crease of it. He had always spent hours analysing, interpreting and weighing up the world around him, earnest and critical. Self-absorbed. But she heard the desperation in his voice and saw the exhaustion seeping down the hollows of his cheeks from sleepless nights spent listening for Timothy’s key in the lock. She knew she should go to this man whose beloved son had vanished from his home and put her arms round him. But she couldn’t. She would rather pluck her eyes out.

  ‘I’ll go and speak to Ma.’

  She turned quickly, jerking herself away from the grip of his eyes. He said nothing more.

  The drawing room felt chill. There was a fire in the elaborate Victorian marble grate but it was a reflection of her mother – bright and energetic but small. Jessie’s mother believed in keeping the body warm by constant activity, not by lazing in front of a blazing coal fire with feet up and a book in hand. The blood must always pump hard, the heart beat fast. She was knitting blanket squares, but not as other people knit. Not only did her fingers and metal needles flash in and out with a speed that defied gravity, but she strode up and down the room while doing so, the ball of white wool chasing behind her on the carpet like a pet mouse.

  ‘Jessica!’

  Catherine Kenton’s stride froze when her daughter walked into the room and for a brief moment Jessie could hear them both breathing heavily.

  ‘Hello, Ma. What’s all this I hear about Tim going missing? Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right.’ Her mother’s fine blonde hair was pinned into an elegant knot at the back of her head and she was wearing a blue wool dress, its colour just a shade too bright and its skirt a fraction too full, as if she had something to prove. She resumed her march across the room. ‘It’s your father who is worried. It’s really too bad of the boy not to get in touch.’

  There were flecks of scarlet high on her cheeks but otherwise her skin was pale and her lips pressed tight together. For a woman in her late forties her figure was still slight and lithe, forever in motion, as though running from its own shadow.

  ‘I was supposed to be at a meeting this evening,’ she added with a sigh. ‘Not here.’ She glared at the heavy stiff armchairs with their starched antimacassars, at the cabinet of antique snuffboxes that Jessie loathed, at the huge ornate mirror that dominated the mantelpiece. ‘Not here,’ she repeated. ‘Not waiting here like a …’

  Her voice trailed away. Waiting like a what, Ma? Like a proper mother? Instead of one who has always spent all her time at meetings. Political meetings, charitable meetings, social meetings, community meetings. It didn’t matter what they were for, as long as they had a cause she could espouse. As someone who had marched alongside Emmeline Pankhurst for female emancipation, the greatest sins in Catherine Kenton’s world were idleness and indifference. As children, Jessie and Timothy had quickly learned that in order to read their favourite Sherlock Holmes stories in old copies of their father’s Strand magazine, they had to polish their shoes at the same time. Hands had to be never still when their mother was around.

  ‘I’m sure he’s just with friends,’ Jessie said easily. ‘He probably got a bit drunk and is sleeping off a hangover. No real harm done.’ She tried a laugh.

  Her mother gave her a look.

  Jessie sighed, unbuttoned her wet coat and sank into an armchair near the fire. As she held her hands out to the flames, steam rose from her sleeves.

  ‘All right, Ma. Tell me what happened. Did he have a quarrel with Pa?’

  ‘Of course not. Your brother and father never quarrel.’

  That put her firmly in her place.

  ‘Did Tim mention anywhere that he was going? How did he seem?’

  ‘You should know. He’d been at your place for the night, hadn’t he?’

  Jessie didn’t even hesitate. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did the pair of you discuss anything he was planning to do?’

  ‘No, nothing special.’ Her eyes followed the imprint of her mother’s footsteps on the Persian rug, small and neat, but the gaps between them were irregular, the pace uneven. ‘Tell me,’ she said softly, ‘what happened when he came home that morning for a clean shirt.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Her mother’s tone was sharp. The tip of one smart patent shoe scuffed momentarily against the heel of the other. Jessie rose to her feet, scooped up the ball of white wool from the carpet and wound the soft thread around her own wrist, anchoring her mother to her. Slowly she reeled her in; forced her mother’s hands to cease their activity. The overhead light shone down on her pale skin, leeching the life out of it.

  ‘What happened, Ma? What did you say to Tim?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  But her fingers gave her away. They pushed the stitches along the needle, pressing them hard right down to the bottom, crushing whatever pictures had reared up in her head.

  ‘Ma, how can I find Tim if you won’t tell me the truth?’

  The words deepened the chill in the room, the same words she had uttered to her mother a thousand times while she was growing up. Except for the name. That was different.

  Ma, how can I find Georgie if you won’t tell me the truth?

  The answer never varied. Don’t ask me again.

  Don’t ask.

  Don’t.

  The unspoken name resonated in the small space between mother and daughter until Catherine Kenton’s blue eyes faltered and her lips parted as she dragged in a deep breath. She turned her gaze to the photograph on the mantelpiece, the one in the silver frame, the one of the young man with the wide laughing mouth and the eagerness for life brimming in his eyes. The one that was Timothy Kenton.

  ‘We had words.’

  Words. So deceptive a syllable. It stuck like a moth in Jessie’s mind. Tim never had words with his parents.

  ‘What about?’ she asked.

  Silence.

  ‘Ma?’

  Her mother’s eyes remained on the photograph, as though it too might disappear if she stopped looking at it. Th
e thread of wool between her fingers was tightening, cutting into Jessie’s wrist.

  ‘About his girlfriend,’ Catherine Kenton said at last and straightened her back, rising to her full height. She was still shorter than Jessie, even in her patent heels.

  ‘I didn’t know he had a girlfriend,’ Jessie said.

  ‘She’s a colleague at work. One of the staff at the museum, he told me. She came with him here to the house that morning and waited for him. On the doorstep.’

  ‘On the doorstep? Why not in the drawing room?’

  ‘She is Egyptian.’

  That took Jessie by surprise. Egyptian? Her curiosity was instantly roused and she could not suppress a smile. Good for Tim. She didn’t think he had it in him to be so unconventional.

  ‘What’s her name?’ she asked.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  One look at her mother’s face and Jessie became aware of a sick feeling tight under her ribcage. She could imagine only too well the words her mother had had with poor Tim.

  ‘Does Pa know?’

  ‘No.’ Suddenly her mother’s eyes abandoned the laughing face and swung back to Jessie. ‘You mustn’t tell him,’ she said fiercely.

  Jessie felt a flicker of anger but curbed it. ‘I’ll do what I can to find him,’ she promised. She waited for a thank you or even a faint smile, but none came. ‘I’ll take a look in his room first.’

  ‘What for? He’s not there.’

  ‘For clues.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Jessica, be serious! This isn’t one of your silly Sherlock Holmes games. This is real. This is …’ Her voice broke and she looked desperately back at the photograph. ‘This is my son,’ she whispered.

  ‘I know, Ma.’ Jessie muttered. ‘I know.’

  The bedroom felt chill and unloved. Jessie intended to give it a quick once-over, nothing more, because she didn’t really expect to find clues, though something with the name of Tim’s new girlfriend would be useful. A scribbled note or a telephone number.

  She skimmed through the bedside drawer, rummaging cursorily. Handkerchiefs, cufflinks, a passport, a jumble of bus tickets and a secret stash of Fry’s chocolate bars. Inside the wardrobe she checked his jacket pockets but found nothing more interesting than a pack of French letters. She felt like an intruder, uncomfortable and disloyal, spying on her brother like this. It was obvious that he had taken himself off in a huff – quite rightly in Jessie’s opinion – after his mother’s words. The thing that worried her most was the museum, the fact that he hadn’t gone into work. That nagged at her.

  It was when, as an afterthought, she knelt and peered under the bed that she felt the atmosphere change. Down here the air was warmer, thicker, and it brushed her cheek. Like the touch of a finger. Down here, lying on the bedside rug, Georgie came to her and made her cry.

  ‘Georgie,’ she whispered, and stretched out an arm into the dark empty space.

  His breath seemed to trickle over her fingers, his humming caressed her ears, and her cheeks ached with a sudden rush of need for him. They used to hide under his bed or under hers, concealed from the critical eyes of their mother or one of the nannies. Jessie would make up stories about a dog called Toby who had wild and breathless adventures, and Georgie would lay out two whole packs of one hundred and four playing cards face down in a jumble and would proceed to tell her what each card was when she pointed to it. He never got it wrong. It was if he possessed X-ray eyes.

  It’s easy, Jessie. Why can’t you do it?

  Now, with her forehead pressed against the rug, breathing in the musty, dusty under-bed smell, she fought back the tears and made herself sit up, his chortle of delight still alive in her head. She became angry with herself because this wasn’t even Georgie’s old room – his room was the small one at the end of the corridor that was now relegated to a boxroom full of suitcases and unwanted furniture. She jumped to her feet

  ‘This is stupid.’ She snapped the words out loud for the space under the bed to hear. ‘First you imagine he’s following you around London, out for revenge. Now you think he’s lying in wait under Tim’s bed.’ Colour rose to her cheeks. ‘You’re the one who is sick in the head, girl.’

  She strode towards the door, eager to be out of this room and to sweep the cobwebs of the past from her mind, but as her hand seized the brass doorknob, her eyes settled on the long shelf of books on the end wall and she hesitated. She walked over to the shelf, inspecting the titles and the state of the books. Some of them were old, the edges of their pages mustard-yellow and their spines dog-eared and cracked.

  ‘Oh, Tim. You kept them.’

  It was years since she’d been inside Tim’s bedroom. She put out a hand and brushed it along the books, relishing the brittle well-read feel of them, listening to their voices, remembering. Whispers in the darkness, the forbidden candle late into the night. The tremors of excitement as Sherlock tracked down his prey, a delicious fear of what the next page would bring.

  ‘You kept them,’ she smiled.

  She wanted to leave but the memories coiled through her head, holding her there. The books were copies of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, though now she noticed that Tim had added several volumes to them – Conan Doyle’s autobiography, Memories and Adventures, and right at the end of the shelf stood Conan Doyle’s final books – The History of Spiritualism and The Edge of the Unknown, the ones he wrote after the death of his beloved son Kingsley during the Great War. The great writer had died two years earlier in 1930 but his stories were still immensely popular.

  Her hand suddenly reached up and took down one of the early books. She studied its title: The Hound of the Baskervilles. She lifted it to her face and inhaled. Its well-remembered scent made her head spin and her hands were no longer steady as she turned the front cover. She stared down at what she knew she would find on the frontispiece.

  This book belongs to George Ambrose Kenton. If you steal it from me, I will track you down.

  Jessie turned abruptly and left the bedroom, the book thrust deep inside her coat pocket.

  5

  Georgie

  England 1932

  ‘Where are you?’

  The words lie like dust in my room.

  I shout them. Hot pokers in my chest. It’s Saturday, I know it’s Saturday, I know it is. I have counted back the days and ticked off each one with a pea-green pen on the calendar that I made and which lives under my mattress for safety.

  Saturday. Unless I missed a day. Sometimes it happens if I have a bad week and the needles come for me. They seek out my thigh, my buttocks, my arm, the way hunting dogs sniff out badgers with their sharp vicious wet noses. Sinking in their teeth.

  It’s afternoon. I can tell by the sunlight outside the window, even though today they have drawn a blind across the glass to try to fool me into thinking there is no sun out there, just a gloomy soul-stealing twilight. But I know better. I flick the light switch on and off and on again, on and off and on again. Brightness, blackness, brightness. If you’re outside, in the garden, striding over the finicky gardener’s weed-free lawn, you’ll know it’s me. You’ll come.

  Nothing.

  No footsteps outside my door. The rattle of a metal trolley further down the corridor makes me shout louder.

  ‘Where is he? Where is he? What have you done with him?’

  No answer. Not even a Stop that noise, George. I feel the straight lines inside my head starting to twist and buckle and I crash a fist against the door, against the panel that is already cracked in places because my fist and the wood are old friends. I press my head against the moulding around the panel, so hard it carves dents in my forehead, but still the straight lines are buckling. I whisper to the door. I feel my panic seep into the cracks.

  ‘Please,’ I beg. ‘Please. It’s Saturday. Let Timothy come and I promise I will eat that foul slop you call food.’

  They give me paper. Clean white sheets of it, quarto size, no lines, just as I asked. Dr
Churchward pushed it across his desk at me and did that odd thing with his mouth that I used to think was a snarl but you explained to me that it is what is called a nervous tic. What has he got to be nervous about? Does he still think I will jump on his desk and kick my bare foot in his face the way I did when I was twelve and he told me that none of my letters to Jessie had ever been allowed to reach her? I broke two toes but I broke his nose too. I didn’t like his blood on my skin.

  Sometimes during our interviews I stare hard at the bump on the bridge of Dr Churchward’s nose where it is not straight even now, thirteen years later, and I watch the veins in his neck thicken and the colour of his cheeks change to plum red. He doesn’t like me. That’s all right, I don’t like him. But I say ‘thank you’ when he gives me the paper I asked for, the way Jessie taught me and which for years I forgot until you reminded me.

  I sit at my desk. It’s not really a desk, it’s a wobbly bentwood chair that I like and a small mahogany table, but to me it is a desk. The paper waits in front of me. Alongside it sits the ink, a squat fat bottle of Quink. Royal-washable blue, not permanent blue, I was adamant about that. Permanent blue is an ugly colour, neither blue nor black, like the colour of sin, but washable blue is the colour of your eyes. No. I won’t think it. It will make the ache in my chest grow too fierce and I need to think clearly today. It is not always easy because of the drugs they put in my food. This morning I refused to eat breakfast, so I can think with precision, and I remember everything with perfect clarity.

  I pick up my Swan fountain pen, dip its nib in the wishing-pool of blue ink and work the tiny metal lever to make the rubber tube inside fill with ink. I find it pleases me, this small simple action. I like the efficiency of it. The cleverness. I make a mental note to discover who invented the fountain pen.

  I have decided to start at the beginning. It is the only way to discover why you have not come. At first I planned to start at the end and work my way backwards but no, that would be a mistake. During the night while I sat on my chair by the window, waiting to see if you would flash a signal from your torch in the garden, I realised that I was going about it the wrong way, that I need to study everything in the correct order. In a straight line. Logically. That way, I will not miss any clues.