The Hidden Oasis (12 page)

She came to the bedroom last. Draped from a hook behind the door was Alex’s old suede travelling jacket – Christ, how many years had she had that? Freya wrapped her arms around it and pressed her face into the worn material, then went over to the bed and sat down. On the bedside table were three books:
The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes,
by R.A. Bagnold;
The Heliopolitan Tomb of Imti-Khentika,
by Hassan Fadawi – since when had Alex been interested in Egyptology? – and, most poignantly, Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass,
the battered, dog-eared copy that had once belonged to their father. Three books and, also, three photographs: one of their parents; one of a handsome, dark-haired man, something vaguely academic-looking in his round spectacles and corduroy jacket; one …

She leant forward and lifted this third photo. It was of her, Freya, smiling uncomfortably and clutching the climbing world’s highest accolade, a Golden Piton award. She’d only won it last year so God knows how Alex had got hold of the photo. There it was, though, with a second, smaller photo tucked over it in the corner of the frame – a passport-booth shot of the two sisters, taken when they were in their teens, pulling faces at the camera and laughing. She clutched the photo to her chest, eyes blurring with tears.

‘I miss you,’ she whispered.

Later, much later, when she had composed herself, Freya left the house and walked out onto the desert. Climbing to the top of the nearest dune, she sat down cross-legged on
the sand. For a while she gazed at the sun as it inched its way down towards the western horizon, then she pulled out the crumpled envelope with the Egypt postmark and opened out the letter inside. The last letter Alex had written her. ‘To my beloved sister Freya,’ she read.

At the end of the afternoon, having completed his day’s lectures – Advanced Hieroglyphs, Theory and Practice in Field Archaeology, Ancient Egyptian Literature and, filling in for someone on annual leave, English for Beginners – Flin slipped into ‘Interesting’ Alan Peach’s office to try to find out more about the latter’s recent encounter with Hassan Fadawi.

‘Apparently Mubarak himself called for early release,’ Peach said distractedly, eyes focused on the desk in front of him where he was piecing together the fragmented sherds of a large earthenware pot. ‘Past services to Egyptology and all that. Still, even three years is bad enough. Would you … ?’

He nodded towards a tube of Duco Cement sitting on the corner of the desk. Flin removed the cap and passed it over. Peach ran a thin line of the adhesive along the edge of a sherd and pressed it firmly against another, holding the two pieces together while they bonded.

‘He’ll never work again, of course,’ he went on. ‘Not after what he did. Still can’t think what on earth possessed him. Absolute tragedy. Brilliant man. Really knew his pottery.’

He turned the fragments back and forth underneath his desk lamp, making sure they were smoothly aligned.

‘Bedja mould?’ Flin hazarded, knowing that the best, and indeed only way to keep his colleague in the conversation was to humour him with chat about his beloved ceramics. Peach nodded, laying the glued fragments carefully on the table and holding up another piece of the pot.

‘From the workers’ village at Giza,’ he said. ‘Take a look at this.’

The sherd was stamped with a badly faded cartouche, the hieroglyphic signs – sun disc, djed pillar, horned viper – barely visible.

‘Djedefre,’ read Flin.

‘Apart from the boat pit cartouches, the only direct mention of Khufu’s son ever found at Giza,’ beamed Peach. ‘Sexy or what!’

‘Very sexy,’ agreed Flin.

He gave it a moment while Peach laid aside the inscribed fragment and started to work through the other pieces searching for matches, then:

‘So what else did he say?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Fadawi. When you bumped into him. What else did he say?’

‘Oh, right.’

Peach seemed slightly nonplussed by the question, as though he had thought that particular line of conversation over and done with.

‘Well to be honest he was rambling a bit. Looked absolutely dreadful, poor man, thin as a rake. You know how fastidious he always was about his appearance, bit of a
ladies’ man by all accounts – I think playboy’s the technical term although I wouldn’t know myself. Anyway, to look at him now – aha!’

He held up two more sherds, the jagged edge of one marrying perfectly with that of the other.

‘Fadawi,’ coaxed Flin, trying to keep him to the point in hand.

‘What? Oh yes, yes. Kept going on about how he was innocent. How it was all a misunderstanding, that he’d been framed. Sad, really. I mean from what I heard the evidence was pretty damning. Even had some Tutankhamun stuff by all accounts. I just can’t imagine what possessed him.’

He shook his head and, leaning forward, trailed a snail-like streak of glue along the side of one of the sherds, clamping it against the other and, as before, holding them under the lamp to ensure the connection was neat.

‘Did he mention me?’

Flin tried to keep the question casual, matter-of-fact.

‘Hmm?’ Peach was squinting at the join, turning it back and forth.

‘Did he mention me?’ Flin repeated, louder.

‘Yes he did, as it happens.’

Peach’s eyes flicked up and then down again.

‘Said some rather unpleasant things, actually. Very unpleasant. I mean I know it was you who blew the whistle and all that, but …’

He trailed off as he realized the join was uneven. With an annoyed click of the tongue he leant right into the lamp and delicately tried to ease the pieces into alignment.

‘What did he say?’ asked Flin.

No response.

‘What did Fadawi say, Alan?’

‘I really don’t think I want to repeat that sort of language here,’ muttered his colleague, driving the sherds hard against each other. ‘He’d got himself rather worked up and – oh sod it!’

The sherds had come apart in his hand. He threw an annoyed look across the desk as if to say ‘If you weren’t distracting me with damn fool questions that wouldn’t have happened’ and reached for the tube of Duco. Before he could grasp it Flin leant forward, picked it up and moved it out of the way, forcing Peach to look up at him.

‘What did he say, Alan?’

Their eyes held, then, with an exasperated sigh, Peach laid the two fragments on the table and sat back in his chair.

‘If the rumours I heard were true, pretty much what he said to you in court when they sentenced him. I’m sure you remember what that was.’

Flin certainly did remember. How could he forget?

‘I’ll kill you, Brodie!’ Fadawi had screamed. ‘I’ll cut off your balls and kill you, you filthy treacherous bastard!’

‘I wouldn’t take it too personally,’ said Peach.

‘How the hell else am I supposed to take it?’

‘Well I’m sure he didn’t mean it. He’s an archaeologist, after all, not a gangster. Well, an ex-archaeologist. Never work again after what he did. Really can’t think what on earth possessed him. Can I … ?’

He indicated the Duco. Flin passed it over and Peach bent down over the table again.

‘Are you going to Donald’s book launch tonight?’ he asked,
changing the subject. ‘Should be quite a jolly affair, provided that bloody boyfriend of his doesn’t turn up.’

Flin shook his head, and rose to his feet.

‘Got a 5 a.m. flight down to Dakhla. Enjoy.’

He raised a hand in farewell and made for the door.

‘Mentioned something about an oasis.’

Flin stopped and turned. Peach was still hunched over his pot, apparently oblivious to the effect this throwaway comment had had.

‘Couldn’t make much sense of it, to be honest,’ he continued, absorbed in his work. ‘Gabbling he was, very emotional. Claimed he’d found something. Or was it knew something? Can’t remember exactly. One of the two. About an oasis, anyway. And wasn’t going to tell anyone and that would be his revenge. Very worked up, he was, very emotional. And thin as a rake. Tragic when you think about it. Did I ever tell you about the Second Dynasty hieratic wine jar dockets from Abydos? Thief or not, he certainly knew his pottery, you’ve got to give him that.’

Peach looked up, but Flin was no longer there.

Sitting on top of the dune, a sudden, sharp breeze causing the sand around her to whisper and hiss, Freya went through Alex’s last letter, her sister’s voice ringing clear inside her head.

Wiping the tears from her eyes Freya laid the letter on the dune top and removed the flower from the envelope; its dried petals were thin as rice paper and coloured a deep, golden orange, like the sands around her. She gazed at it, then, folding it carefully inside the letter, wrapped her arms around her knees and watched as the sun inched its way slowly down towards the horizon, a soft breeze hissing across the sand, the desert rippling and swirling away into the distance like an expanse of crumpled taffeta.

They buried her early the next morning, not far from her house, in a grove of blossoming acacia trees, right on the very edge of the little oasis. There were flowers on the ground – zinnias and periwinkles – and a smell of honeysuckle in the air, and, from somewhere beyond the grove, the soft plash of water trickling into a cistern. It was, thought Freya, one of the most beautiful, peaceful places she had ever been.

There was only a small group present, which is how Alex would have wanted it: herself, Zahir, Dr Rashid from the hospital, Molly Kiernan and a handsome, slightly dishevelled man in a crumpled corduroy jacket, whom she recognized from the photo on Alex’s bedside table – Flin Brodie, as he introduced himself. There was a scatter of local people too. Farmers mostly, come to pay their respects, hanging back from the main group, and three Bedouin women, one of them Zahir’s wife, dressed in traditional costume – black robes, headscarves, intricate silver jewellery. As Alex’s coffin was lowered into the ground they came forward and started to sing – ‘Aloosh’, Zahir explained, a Bedouin love song ‘about very beautiful woman’. Their clear, nasal voices wove in and out of each other, rising and falling, one moment low and barely audible, the next swooping upwards so that the whole grove echoed to the music. There were no words to the song, or at least none that Freya could make out, just a winding thread of sound that nonetheless, in the way the tune shifted and contrasted, sometimes dark, sometimes light, seemed to tell
a story she could understand: of love and loss, joy and pain, hope and despair. She felt Molly Kiernan’s hand reach out and clasp hers, squeezing it tight, the song wafting over and around them until it dropped away and faded into silence, leaving just the tinkle of water and, from above, the low twitter of a pair of hoopoes.