Read Herring on the Nile Online
Authors: L. C. Tyler
Occasionally the river split into strands around islands or broad mud flats. The
Khedive
steered well clear of both. In plotting my own personal course around the boat, I too steered
clear, as far as possible, of the obvious hazards. Even if Annabelle was not working on my death, I was concerned that she might nevertheless have a certain amount of unpleasantness planned, if and
when we should find ourselves alone together. I was relieved that she seemed happy for the moment to keep her distance. Later that afternoon she appeared on the sun deck in a very brief (and I
suspect expensive) bikini and occupied a lounger at the far end from where I was sitting. I glanced in her direction once or twice, but she gave no indication that she had noticed me. For a while
she engaged in conversation with Purbright and, I must admit, as her laughter reached my end of the boat, I did feel just a slight twinge of jealousy. But eventually she wrapped herself in a towel,
pulling it tight round her waist in a way that emphasized her slender figure, and went back to her cabin, looking straight ahead. I don’t think she had even noticed me.
Towards the end of the afternoon, we were offered a tour of the boat. Most of the passengers accepted, the only ones to decline being Proctor and Campion, each claiming some
task that would necessarily take priority. We first assembled amid the spotless stainless steel of the kitchen. Here we were reassured about hygiene and related matters. From there we proceeded
to the surprisingly large and airy engine room, where an engineer stood in a sort of pit, oilcan in hand, nursing the ancient engines. He looked worried and was not talkative. Mahmoud and Majid
were surprisingly attentive throughout, though I could not quite escape the idea that they were there mainly to watch Purbright and that Purbright was there mainly to watch them.
One small detail that we did pick up from the engine room during the tour was that the captain was not expecting to reach Kom Ombo that evening and that further emergency work on the engines
would be required when we did. We were assured that we could still make up time afterwards and reach Aswan more or less as planned.
The landscape underwent subtle changes as the day drew to a close. At noon the river had sparkled with constantly dancing points of light and the horizon was lost in haze. Now the sun was about
to set again and the river assumed a drab and mournful flatness. From competing minarets, gaudily lit with many coloured lights, the call to prayer sounded over the darkening, gently rippling
water.
‘I like it best in the evening, don’t you?’
I had been joined at the ship’s rail by Miss Watson. She had discarded the floppy hat, revealing her short hair – greyer than I had thought, but I doubted she would ever feel the
need to dye it. In putting aside her hat she had also lost her rather vague manner. Her words were firm and precise.
‘It’s certainly a lot less exciting than this morning,’ I said.
‘Yes, I was sorry to hear that you had come so close to being squashed.’ She paused, aware that this choice of words had been less than tactful. Then, perhaps deciding that she
didn’t much care what I thought, she added: ‘Do you know if anyone saw who was up on the roof?’
‘
Was
there somebody up there?’ I asked.
‘I understood that’s what the police had been told.’
‘Tom or John thought they saw somebody,’ I said.
‘That’s who saw the person, was it?’
‘One or the other. John, I think.’
‘But he couldn’t identify them?’
‘No,’ I said. I wondered whether to mention the floppy hat, but decided that that too would be tactless in view of her own choice of headgear. There had, as John said, been many
floppy hats in the temple that morning, some more criminal than others.
‘Elsie seemed to think that the new passenger – Lady Muntham, is it? – might have been up on the roof.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. I hoped that Elsie had not been deliberately making trouble.
‘Elsie said that Lady Muntham was formerly a pole dancer. Can that be true?’ asked Miss Watson.
‘Annabelle used to work as a model. Before her first marriage anyway. I don’t believe she has ever been a pole dancer.’
‘I suppose that Elsie could have made a genuine mistake about that?’
‘Yes, I suppose she could have done,’ I said.
‘And what about you? I hear you’re a writer,’ said Miss Watson, thankfully moving the conversation on.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you write under your own name?’
‘I write crime novels as Peter Fielding.’
‘Paul Fielder?’
‘No, Peter Fielding.’
She paused no longer than politeness dictated. Slightly less, actually. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It still doesn’t ring any bells.’
‘I also write as J. R. Elliot.’
‘Crime as well?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
She shook her head. I decided not to ask whether she read romantic fiction. She didn’t look the type.
‘And what do you do?’ I asked.
‘I teach physical education.’ She named a girl’s boarding school on the south coast. It was well known and not far from where I live, though it was not one of the handful of
schools that had seen fit to invite me to talk to small and rather reluctant groups of teenagers about crime writing. Judging by its reputation for sportiness, the status of a teacher of physical
education there would have been quite high. ‘There’s not much call for my own sport, but I teach hockey and netball, and I organize the sailing.’
‘You clearly have a range of talents,’ I said.
‘I was pretty good when I was younger. I represented Great Britain at the Olympics once, and twice at the Commonwealth Games. Almost got a medal at the Olympics. Probably would have got
one if it hadn’t been for that bloody letter.’
‘Letter?’
‘The one kindly telling me what my husband was up to while I had been spending my time training. Friends thought it better that I knew. No mobiles in those far-off days – it was a
letter sent to my home address and then kindly forwarded, unopened, by my dear husband to the athletes’ village, along with other bits and pieces. If he’d just left it for me to read on
my return, I really think I might have got Silver . . . well, an outside chance of a Bronze, let’s say. But you don’t perform at your best when your mind is focusing on how best to cut
off somebody’s dick.’
I thought back to when my first, indeed my only, wife had walked out on me. Strangely I had never been able to be angry with her – or with my best friend, who had been the ostensible cause
of Geraldine’s departure. On the other hand, while I had understood and perhaps even sympathized with her inability to remain with me, I could not say that it had left me completely
untouched.
‘After Geraldine left me,’ I said, ‘I couldn’t write anything for a year – maybe eighteen months. But you get over it.’
‘You do, do you?’ she asked. ‘Maybe men are more forgiving than women then. In which case let me give you some advice: if you ever walk out on some poor woman, then watch your
back.’
‘Do you think so?’ I asked.
‘I know so,’ she said. ‘You can run, but sooner or later, we’ll catch up with you.’
The second night’s dinner was a formal affair, for which I wore the new white dinner jacket that I had sought and eventually purchased the previous week in Chichester. I
was pleased to see that Purbright was also wearing something similar, though Mahmoud and Majid had opted for lounge suits and Proctor appeared in an open-necked white shirt, black trousers and
cummerbund, which he described as ‘Red Sea Rig’. The phrase suggested an earlier nautical career for Proctor, of which the current trip up the Nile was merely a logical extension. The
two Americans apologized for the fact that they had been obliged to travel light, and they appeared, as usual, looking expensively casual. Campion was the last of the men to arrive, wearing the
open-necked shirt and cotton trousers that might have been appropriate for the evening before. He scowled at my dinner jacket as though I was wearing it simply to show him up. Of the ladies,
Elsie’s costume was certainly the most imaginative, and had it been the fancy dress evening, it is likely that she would have won a prize. As it was, I saw Miss Watson raise an eyebrow at
the brave combination of pink batik and orange paisley that Elsie had selected from her large suitcase as appropriate formal evening wear. Annabelle swept into the room, just as the first course
was being served, wearing a figure-hugging, black silk evening dress with a very low-cut neckline and a single row of pearls. My gaze probably followed her a moment longer than it should.
‘Your tie is crooked,’ said Elsie to me reprovingly. ‘And that dinner jacket makes you look like a spiv out of an Ealing Comedy. And . . . for God’s sake . . .
what’s that stuffed in your pocket?’
‘Just some interview questions I printed out before we left home,’ I said. ‘In case I couldn’t work on them on the computer.’ I tried shoving them further down and
out of sight. ‘I thought I might glance at them over coffee if I had a chance.’
Elsie briefly re-surveyed me to remind herself of the worst aspects of my appearance and character. She shook her head and fingered the batik that she was wearing. ‘It’s a good job
one of us has made an effort.’
Wine was included with the menu, but few of us seemed to be drinking alcohol. Only Herbie Proctor entered fully and enthusiastically into the concept of unlimited free wine. It would be a cheap
evening for the management.
‘We decided that, travelling in a Muslim country, we would drink what the locals drank,’ said Tom, indicating his
karkadé
– the bright purple drink that I had
previously seen Miss Watson drinking.
‘In New York,’ said John, ‘we obviously drink nothing but Martinis. That’s pretty much all that is available.’
‘The Egyptian wine is surprisingly palatable,’ said Professor Campion, putting down his glass. He had joined Proctor, though on a more modest scale.
‘Not tried it before?’ asked Proctor, possibly imagining he had asked a trick question.
‘I meant
this
Egyptian wine is very good. Yes, we used to drink it all the time when we were carrying out fieldwork in Nubia.’
‘I’ve been to Nubia,’ volunteered Lizzi Hull. ‘Did you do any work at Meroe?’
Campion shook his head. ‘Another site entirely,’ he said.
‘Have you done any work in Palestine?’ she asked.
‘No. Not my area. And a little dangerous now, perhaps.’
‘Palestine isn’t all suicide bombers.’
‘One or two would be more than enough,’ said Campion archly. ‘Though why anybody would want to be a suicide bomber escapes me.’
‘Wait until somebody steals your country from you, and see how you feel then.’
This last remark implied that Campion had been personally responsible for the creation of the state of Israel, which even Proctor would have been reluctantly obliged to admit was untrue. Around
the table there were almost certainly all shades of opinion about Palestine but, being for the most part British, we were disinclined to say anything that might cause the remotest offence to each
other. There could therefore have been a lengthy silence had Purbright not supported Lizzi by saying: ‘I think people who can’t understand why somebody would be a suicide bomber simply
lack the necessary imagination. We’ve become a bit too comfortable in the West. In other places there are still causes considered worth dying for. You don’t have to agree with the cause
to empathize with somebody who feels that way.’
Annabelle looked in my direction and said: ‘I can sympathize with anyone who has their home cruelly taken from them, by whatever means.’
Since, of the other passengers, only Elsie knew of the sale of Muntham Court, nobody was quite sure how to respond to this new contribution to the debate. Lizzi nodded supportively. Mahmoud
looked uncertainly at Majid and shrugged. Fortunately Proctor decided that the least controversial thing to do was to bait Campion to breaking point.
‘Which university exactly do you teach at, Professor?’ asked Proctor, with what he may have assumed was guile. A genuine query would not, however, have given quite the same sarcastic
emphasis to the word ‘Professor’.
‘UCL,’ said Campion. He had not so much seen through as failed to notice Proctor’s attempt at guile, and was now regarding him with a mixture of concern and contempt. The
mixture was slightly biased in favour of contempt, but that might yet change.
‘I’m quite interested in Egyptology,’ said Proctor improbably. ‘Maybe I should Google the UCL Egyptology department and check out the course? I might sign up for it. I
could check your own bit of the website too. I would imagine you’re mentioned?’
You had to know Proctor pretty well to realize that he was trying to be subtle.
‘If you wish,’ said Campion with a discernible sneer. It was likely he had seen Proctor’s antiquated phone and realized that the Google threat was not an immediate one.
‘You’re considering taking up archaeology as a profession, Mr Proctor?’
‘I’ve always liked digging. I’m reckoned to be pretty good at it.
Digging
.’
‘And what is your current line of work, Mr Proctor?’ asked Campion.
‘This and that,’ grinned Proctor. If I had had teeth like Proctor’s I would have grinned a little less and brushed a little more. Orthodontic work is expensive, but toothpaste
was probably not beyond Proctor’s budget.
‘Sounds like Tom’s old man,’ said John, breaking off from another conversation. ‘He just did a bit of this and that too. Or that was what he always told the
jury.’
‘They never managed to convict him,’ said Tom. ‘And at least he never worked for Nixon, like your father.’
‘Dad said he only ever worked for Nixon in an ironic and postmodern way.’
‘Shame he got three years for it.’
‘That’s what he thought too.’
Annabelle largely ignored me throughout the meal, though she talked in an animated fashion to Purbright, and laughed loudly at anything that he said that was even remotely amusing – and at
quite a few things that were not. Once or twice I noticed that she laid a hand on his arm as she spoke to him, and left it there while he replied. At the far end of the table Lizzi Hull was having
a fairly intense conversation in Arabic with Mahmoud and Majid. Sky Benson and Jane Watson had also found something in common that required discussion, though Jane Watson occasionally glanced in
the direction of the Arabic speakers, as though she had caught a phrase or two that she understood.