Dreams of another day, p.1
Dreams of Another Day, page 1
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Contents
Daphne Wright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Ninteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Daphne Wright
Dreams of Another Day
Daphne Wright
Daphne Wright is a historical novelist with a special interest in the way wars have liberated women. Born in London, she worked in publishing for ten years before becoming a writer. After six historical novels, she turned to crime under the pseudonym of Natasha Cooper. She now divides her time between the city and the Somerset Levels.
Dedication
For
Jennifer Kavanagh
Chapter One
Two people were watching a young woman sitting in the shade at the foot of a massive lotus-headed pillar. Her eyes were shut and she was leaning against the stone as relaxed as though it were made of something soft, comfortable. A sharp-edged shadow lay over her and so she had taken off her hat, letting it lie in her lap.
One of the watchers was a man in a long, pale blue gown and dusty turban, who squatted unblinking in the shade opposite her, intent as a lizard waiting for its prey. He was waiting until the patch of shade, which had been slowly changing shape as he watched, moved far enough for the sun to reach the woman. He hoped that she would start and stumble up. With luck she would drop her bag or her camera or forget her hat.
Although she was very thin, he thought that she was rich, even beyond the usual, incomprehensible richness of all the foreigners who came to walk about the ruins. He had noticed the way the others had treated her with deference and allowed her to move away from them and be alone. He always watched the foreigners and rarely misjudged their resources.
The woman was dressed in a white drill skirt and a loose shirt of fine linen caught in at the waist with a wide belt of polished blue leather. There were white canvas shoes on her narrow feet and the hat she held loosely on her knees was made of local straw with only a simple blue ribbon round the crown. But her watch was gold and so was the heavy bracelet on her other wrist, and there were pearls around her slim neck.
Her name was Mary Alderbrook and she was English, single and thirty-one years old. To her friends, among whom she would have counted the other watcher, she was known as Ming.
The man waited patiently, ignoring the shrill cries of the other foreigners at the far end of the temple.
Ming heard them, but she ignored them too. There was a luxurious pleasure in sitting alone, feeling and thinking and not having to be polite. She had a guide book in her bag and had already read the description of the place, so she had a framework of facts into which to fit her own observations.
A sudden warmth reached through her skirt to her bare thigh, and she opened her eyes to the pale dazzle of the sun and smiled. Of all the places where they had stopped, Kom Ombo was the one she most liked.
Perched on a low promontory above the river, the temple was much less oppressive than the others she had seen on the stately voyage up the river, and the reliefs on its pale golden walls were clearer and more accessible than most of the others.
A white-sailed felucca slid into view against the low green trees on the farther shore. Ming watched it until it had passed out of her line of sight and then tilted her head back against the pillar, staring upwards at a broken section of the temple roof. She had not looked at it when she had chosen her shady seat and was amazed to see that it was not only carved but brightly coloured, too. The turquoise and black paint on the great outstretched wings of the eagles was fresh and clear, even after thousands of years.
So much had survived, she thought, and yet it was all so very dead. She had hoped vaguely that by coming so far and by searching the relics of a civilisation so utterly alien she might arrive at some knowledge or even intuition that would help her to find her own way, but so far nothing had happened. She had recovered her health in the astonishing air and revelled in the dry heat that seemed clean and invigorating after London’s grubby dampness, but she had come to no conclusions about herself or her life.
With the others from the boat, Ming had marvelled at the tombs and temples, relished the clarity and colour of the wall paintings, smiled at the optimism of a religion that portrayed all its gods as young, beautiful and happy, tried to decipher some of the hieroglyphs, and been interested in everything she saw. But the things that had moved her had been incidental.
A group of children playing on the edge of the river and risking bilharzia had caught her eye one day and she had watched them for at least ten minutes as the boat cruised slowly past their little beach between two fields of sugar cane. There had been both boys and girls there, and the girls were dressed in ragged gowns of bright cotton. The pinks and greens, purples and oranges of their clothes lit the monotonous landscape of dirty-green water, grey-brown earth and dull green palms as brightly as the children’s smiles illuminated their thin, brown faces. Ming had stood on the top deck wondering how those girls must feel when they reached the end of their childhood, when their hair was covered with black veils and their bright cottons were exchanged for the ubiquitous long black gowns the adult women wore.
The second watcher, a tall dark-haired woman with a very straight back and a commanding manner, saw that Ming was properly awake and moved forward out of the deep shadows cast by the temple forecourt.
‘Ming!’ she called. ‘Ming, are you there? We ought to go back now. The boat’s due to leave in fifteen minutes.’
‘Coming, Connie,’ said Ming a little wearily as she stood up, clasping her bag and hat and camera. The hat slipped just as Constance Wroughton appeared between the vast pillars, and Ming left it where it had fallen as she moved forwards. There were two patches of golden dust on the back of her skirt and her thin shirt, but she ignored them. The man who had been waiting moved as quickly as any lizard, picked up the hat and followed her. He reached Ming just as she realised that she was missing something and turned. Her gentle face hardened as she saw what had happened. The man offered her the hat and for a moment she refused to take it. Then she shrugged, reached out for the hat and waited for the familiar words and action. The man held out his cupped hand in a gesture that ought to have been supplicating, but to Ming expressed a predatory threat.
‘Baksheesh,’ he ordered.
Ming understood the customs of the place and knew that compared with the men who held out their dusty, calloused hands wherever she went in the country she was rich beyond any dream of avarice, and yet she hated being coerced into endless tipping. Throughout her life she had done everything that was expected of her and buried the few rebellious feelings she had allowed herself to recognise, but suddenly her temper snapped.
‘Imshi!’ she said almost viciously and let her hand drop to her side, leaving him with the hat. The man looked at her as though he could not believe what he had heard. Ming turned away and began to walk fast towards the shore. Constance opened her bag, found a suitable note, and handed it to the man who gave her the hat and went muttering back to the shade.
‘I’m sorry, Connie,’ said Ming when the other woman caught up with her. ‘I don’t know what came over me.’
‘It doesn’t matter at all,’ answered the older woman. ‘But do put your hat on; the sun’s hot.’
Ming obeyed.
‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me,’ she said hopelessly. ‘I keep getting furious for no reason at all.’
‘The perennial demand for baksheesh is terribly.…’
‘That’s not what I mean.’ Ming sighed. ‘It’s not just out here. It was happening in London, too, although I usually managed to hold it back. Poor man!’ She laughed sadly. ‘It’s rather unfair that the dam should have burst over him.’
Connie slid her hand into the crook of Ming’s elbow and urged her forward, thankful that the first crack had appeared in her defences.
‘Come and have tea,’ she said. ‘We mustn’t miss the boat.’
‘I don’t think I’ll bother with tea,’ said Ming. ‘I think I’ll go and lie down. I must be what Nanny used to call “over-tired and fractious and silly”.’
They walked along the dusty yellow path, screwing up their eyes against the sun’s brilliance, until they reached the boat. As they crossed the rickety gangplank that connected it to the shore, Connie said:
‘Don’t you think you’ve rested enough, Ming?’ There was kindness in her voice but a certain implacability, which the other woman heard with an odd combination of dread and relief.
‘Perhaps,’ she said with her usual polite deference. ‘But I still seem to get so appallingly tired all the time. The doctors warned me I would.’
‘Come and have tea,’ said Connie again as she led the way to the upper deck of the boat. It was furnished with long cane chairs and cheerful striped canvas awnings. Several of the other passengers were already installed on the far side of the deck and Connie chose a pair of chairs well away from them all.
Ming lay back in one of the chairs and closed her eyes. Connie ordered tea from the smiling waiter on duty and sat back in silence, lighting a cigarette. As she drew the smoke into her lungs, she watched the still face of her friend with its fine bones, charming nose and slightly short upper lip. It was an extraordinarily pretty face but recently it had become lifeless, as though it was no more than a mask for an unhappiness that had been growing worse for a long time.
A different waiter appeared with a tray of tea and Connie tipped him. Accepting the money he said, in an accent so strong as to make the words barely comprehensible:
‘You are sisters?’
‘No, not sisters,’ answered Connie as patiently as though it were not the fortieth time she had answered that question since they had embarked at Cairo.
‘You are her mother?’
Connie shook her head and waved him away, almost losing patience herself. She was only twelve years older than Ming, and they were not related at all, although they shared a brother-in-law. After Connie’s sister, Diana, had died her husband had married one of Ming’s sisters and the two families had merged.
Hearing the waiter walk away to the opposite end of the deck, Ming opened her dark blue eyes and smiled at Connie with the familiar sweetness that seemed to express both attentiveness and a charming acquiescence. It was a smile that had attracted innumerable people over the years and it was backed by a gentleness that had kept them enslaved. Only Connie and a few other deeply concerned friends had begun to suspect that it was a gentleness that was also keeping Ming herself enslaved.
‘Shall I pour?’ asked Ming, swinging her slim legs over the side of the chair. ‘You mustn’t pay any attention to me,’ she added as she handed Connie a cup of tea and poured out her own. ‘It’s only a bad case of self-pity, and I’ll deal with it. I‘m miserably discontented and yet I have everything anyone could reasonably want.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Connie as she stubbed out her cigarette.
Ming looked up at her, surprised.
‘I have friends and family, and since my godmother died enough money to make me independent of everyone else,’ she said, adding in an attempt at lightness, ‘I am as free as anyone could ever expect to be.’
Ming paused and drank some tea to control her slightly quivering voice.
‘I’m healthy enough now and I’ve no grounds whatsoever for complaining or being angry. I ought to be happy.’
The boat’s engines started up their familiar, comforting throb, the crew unhitched the ropes, and the boat slid out into the middle of the river again. Ming put down her cup and turned to Connie, unaware of the other tourists on the deck.
‘But I’m not. What am I going to do? What’s wrong with me?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ said Connie with an energy in her voice that startled Ming. More slowly she added: ‘And as for what you ought to do, I’d say: “Be a bit selfish. Say what you actually think occasionally. Cause trouble.”’
At that Ming laughed and all her intelligence and humour showed through the distress.
‘Oh, I don’t need any urging to be selfish.’
‘I think you do,’ said Connie seriously. ‘Not only do you always try to make peace between warring factions, which is admirable enough I suppose – although I suspect sometimes people want to go on warring for a bit …’
Ming managed to smile at that.
‘But you also expend most of your energies suppressing everything in yourself that you are afraid will upset someone else. Don’t you think you ought to use your brains and your strength for something a bit more constructive?’
‘Such as?’ Ming was taken aback at the thought that she could be so much criticised for something that seemed to her to be basic common sense.
‘Something that makes you use everything you’ve got instead of burying it. I’m not a religious woman, Ming, but I can’t help thinking of the parable of the talents whenever I look at you. Your godmother’s legacy has done you no good.’
‘Except freed me from the work I’d come to detest.’ Ming smiled slightly. ‘You can’t imagine how awful it was to realise quite how much I hated it when I’d once loved doing it. And what a revelation it was to discover that I could just dump it. That was selfish, if you like.’
‘Why did you hate it so much?’ Connie finished her tea and put the cup back on the wicker tray. She felt in her bag for her cigarettes. ‘I’m not suggesting you were wrong; I’m just curious as to why you should have loathed it so.’
Ming pulled herself out of the long chair and went to lean against the rail, looking out at the slowly passing shore. All the manifold irritations of the job she had done as secretary to a Member of Parliament were too petty to have given rise to the unbearable frustration that had driven her away after so long.
‘I suppose the feeling that everything I did was to help Roger achieve things for himself,’ she said eventually, keeping her eyes on the figure of a turbanned man riding through the sugar cane on a donkey that looked far too small to support his weight. His green-and-white striped gown was hitched up to his knees, revealing long, thin bare legs and leather slip-on shoes with heels at least an inch and a half high.
‘All my satisfactions were second-hand,’ Ming went on when the man had ridden out of sight. ‘The things that had once excited me – like drafting his speeches, sorting out his constituents’problems, inventing parliamentary questions for him to ask – became so many dreary chores.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Connie, but Ming was not listening. In her mind she was back in the House of Commons. She no longer saw the palms and the passing feluccas; only the green leather benches and the endless coming and going of dark-suited men.
‘I found myself listening to his speeches sometimes and getting furious when he put the wrong emphasis on what I’d written for him or noticing where he’d changed it because he had missed the point. You see, you’re wrong. I’m not the sweet, helpful, dutiful, unselfish creature you seem to think me.’
‘Good.’ Connie’s quietly satisfied voice reached through Ming’s preoccupations and she went back to her chair. Connie twisted her neck so that she could look at Ming and saw that her eyes were narrowed and her pointed chin looked stubborn.
‘You are all those things, Ming,’ she declared. ‘But there’s much more to you than that. I think all that’s happened is that you’ve discovered what most of us knew from the moment you started working for Roger Sillhorne: that you’re twice as clever as he and could do his job standing on your head. It’s no wonder that you were frustrated by playing second fiddle to him all the time. You ought to be doing a job of your own.’
‘But I’ve had no education,’ protested Ming, coming back to sit down. ‘What with the war getting in the way.’ Connie poured her another cup of tea.
‘Did you never think of training for anything?’
‘No. Even though my sister went to London University in 1946, somehow after all that had happened the idea of sitting about learning things seemed … irrelevant, and by the time I’d come to my senses it was too late. But you’re right: I must find something to do. I feel so pathetic!’
Connie almost laughed. Anything less pathetic than Ming’s incisive voice just then would have been hard to imagine. Before Connie could say anything they heard something bang into the side of the boat and then fall into the river with a heavy splash. She swung her legs over the side of her long chair and stood up to see what was happening, shading her eyes. A group of young men were yelling and gesticulating at the boat. Some were stooping to pick up stones from a pile at their feet; others were actually throwing them. To Connie there was something dream-like and unreal about the big, white boat gliding so slowly past the furiously shouting Egyptians on the shore.
