The Mistress of Nothing (31 page)

“How’s that? You look like an ordinary English lass to me.”

“I am, sir—English. But I’ve lived here in Egypt for these past years, in service to Lady Duff Gordon.”

“Duff Gordon, you say? And where is the great lady now?”

“She’s gone back to England, sir.”

“And left you here, on your own?” Mr. Gillespie looked outraged on my behalf and suspicious of me at the same time.

I felt sure he already knew my story but wanted to hear what I had to say for myself. “Yes, I—I wanted to stay. In Cairo. I prefer it here.”

“You do? How very peculiar. Let’s hear some Arab then.”

I hesitated, unsure what to say.

“Come on. Allan Dooley, or whatever it is they say all the time.”

“Alhamdullilah?”

“That’s right. I need someone like you. Let’s see your reference.”

I pushed my half-truths a little harder. “Lady Duff Gordon forgot to give it to me before she left. Most unfortunate. I’ve written to her though, and I’m certain it will arrive before too long.”

Mr. Gillespie harrumphed into his mustache. “All right. Start tomorrow. There are quarters out back for our European staff; I’ll get Mrs. Gillespie—that’s my wife, head of housekeeping—she’ll show you. There are rules, mind—no drink, and no men, though you look as though you’re beyond that now.”

I absorbed this comment in silence.

“And bring me that reference as soon as it arrives.” He stood up and, without warning, bellowed, “Mrs. G!”

AND SO THE SUMMER PASSED, WITH OMAR IN AND OUT OF HIS EMPLOYER,
Mr. Smith’s, cool house, where every evening before he walked home he laid out the clothes he had prepared for Mr. Smith to wear the following day; me in the Nile Hotel, where my fluency in Arabic quickly made me the primary go-between for the British and Egyptian staff, who, truth be told, seemed to need almost constant mediation; Abdullah at home with Mabrouka and Yasmina. I continued to visit my son every day. Mabrouka wanted to hear all about the new, much grander hotel and my life there with my colleagues. I quickly established the cast of hotel characters and entertained myself at work by collecting anecdotes to relate during my visits. To my surprise, I began to tell stories about my life in service in Esher as well, a life that felt as distant as a dream, and I took pleasure in seeing the growing amazement on Mabrouka’s face as I told her about how I used to take the train into London—by myself—to visit the Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum. Mabrouka found it difficult to imagine what it was like to move through the world as I did, unprotected, without security—she had never walked down a street by herself in her entire life—to work and, indeed, live surrounded by men. In return, I got to hear all about Mabrouka’s day at home with Abdullah and was happiest when listening to a grand tale about the baby and his extraordinary achievements: “He sat up by himself! He pulled himself up to stand beside the table! He ate all the grapes!”

At night in the room I shared with two other women—a much better room than I had when working for Roberto Magni (who had a tantrum and broke a chair when I told him I was leaving the next day)—I tried to picture myself in Mabrouka’s life, an Egyptian wife and daughter, closely observant of the established rituals of daily life, faithful to Allah, secure, kept as remote from the city outside as possible. I had realized, from the day of my first visit to Omar’s father’s house, that I would, in fact, be happy in Mabrouka’s life, that I would trade places with her any day, that I had had enough insecurity to last a lifetime, and all I wanted was peace and quiet for myself and my child. But this was not to be. I had made my bed, and now I had to continue to make it, over and over again.

But I felt truly welcome in the house of the father of Omar, and for that I was grateful. I rarely saw Omar on my own; he had dropped into the Nile Hotel to see how I was getting on, but we both quickly realized from the looks we attracted that this wasn’t such a good idea. Our situation was unexplainable—“He’s my Egyptian husband, but I don’t live with him”; no one would believe me. I couldn’t afford to have my reputation compromised again. But the Gillespies were good to me and sometimes I was allowed time off in the evening, and I would make my way to my husband’s house.

The first time I spent an evening with the family, I sat opposite Omar and Mabrouka and watched as Mabrouka, making a point in the conversation, placed her hand on Omar’s knee briefly. Omar brushed at the cloth of his trousers after Mabrouka removed her hand, as though to smooth some dirt away, and looked at me, his cheeks reddening: so, I thought, I was right, she is his wife once again. And what am I? I lifted Abdullah—who was growing heavier every day—into my lap and, like Omar, attempted to brush the thought away.

I did speak to Omar alone that evening. Mabrouka was putting the children to sleep, and Omar’s parents were out of the room, busy elsewhere in the house.

“I saw your sister, Ellen,” Omar said. “I never had the chance to tell you.”

“You did?”

“It was when Miss Janet came to tell my Lady that she would leave for Europe without her.”

“Yes.”

“Miss Naldrett had traveled with Miss Janet, of course. I thought you had already left for England.”

I nodded. “How was she?”

“She was very angry. On your behalf. I thought she was going to strike me, in fact.”

I smiled. “What did she say?”

“She told me I was disgusting. I pretended my English wasn’t good enough to understand what she was saying. That made her even angrier.”

Now I laughed.

“She told me I’d ruined your life. That you’d lost your position while I had flourished. That I’d made my way by climbing on your shoulders and allowing you to sink. She said you’d end up in a London gutter and that it would be my fault entirely.”

I smiled and took a sip of my tea. “It’s all true, of course,” I said, mildly. “Apart from the London gutter bit.”

“But you are all right now,” he said. “Aren’t you? Things are better for you now.”

I looked at him. Did he deserve to be put out of his misery? Who knows? I am not, perhaps, the best judge of that. “I’m all right now,” I said to my husband. “I think.”

MY LADY WROTE TO OMAR ONCE WHILE SHE WAS AWAY, AND THE
content of that letter was reported to me by Mabrouka; Omar had paid a scribe to come to the house to read it. The journey to Marseilles, as predicted by Omar, exacted a heavy toll on her health, and although the passage across the Mediterranean took only one week, by the time she arrived she was too unwell to continue onwards to Paris. She telegraphed Sir Alick and he traveled down to meet her, and then the whole family traveled by a variety of routes to Soden and, by the beginning of August, they were ensconced in rented rooms. I imagine it would have taken some time for them to accustom themselves to each other, to how much older they all were. Rainey was six now, and tall with it, but despite looking like an entirely different child from the one my Lady had last seen, she remembered her mother, and my Lady reported to Omar that she was ecstatic to be with her. Maurice was grown now, a young man, and my Lady’s mother, Sarah Austin, was very gray, and crippled with gout. This was sad news to me, as I was very fond of Mrs. Austin, who had always been kind to me. It took time also for my Lady to remember her European manners, and she said that her English clothes chafed her skin, but I could picture her relish as she revived her German and showed off her Arabic to whoever was interested.

The holiday was to last one month, one precious month of the family all together. Though my Lady did not report this to Omar, I’m sure that things were not entirely easy between my Lady and Sir Alick, as they had not been easy when he visited Egypt the previous autumn. He would have continued to be annoyed by the fact that she was without a lady’s maid, and they must have argued over whether or not she could go back to live in Egypt without finding a new one. He had, in fact, arranged the hire of a new girl without consulting my Lady, and presented the young woman, a Belgian named Marie, to his wife as a fait accompli towards the end of their stay. But my Lady was unable to object by then as she had caught a cold and fallen ill once again, coughing until she spat blood continually. It got so bad, my Lady wrote to Omar, that Sir Alick moved into his own room and left my Lady with a whistle which she was to blow if she needed assistance. Late one night, she did indeed blow the whistle with the last of her strength, and when Sir Alick rushed into the room, he found her lying in a pool of blood, hemorrhaging.

The German doctor effected a cure and insisted that his patient must not travel until she was completely recovered, but as usual, my Lady was having none of that. As soon as she had felt the familiar pain creeping into her side as her lungs filled up with fluid, she wanted to be back in Egypt, back in Luxor where she would be able to breathe more freely. If she could return to her Arab self, she wrote to Omar, the dry desert air would clear her chest. Besides, it was time for the children and Sir Alick to depart, to return to jobs and schools in England, and she did not want to be left behind on her own in Germany. The Belgian lady’s maid turned out to be a good thing after all, as, with her help, she was able to travel much earlier than the doctor had counseled. She would be arriving back in Egypt in early October.

MR. GILLESPIE KEPT FORGETTING TO ASK TO SEE MY REFERENCE UNTIL
it was too late and I had made myself as indispensable to the hotel as I had once been to Lady Duff Gordon. The Nile Hotel was a fine place to work, the best place, perhaps, I reasoned, given the circumstances. I rose through the ranks of housekeepers quickly and achieved a kind of unexpected freedom to do as I pleased; my job gave me a greater amount of power and prestige than I had ever experienced, even back when my Lady and I were ensconced in our busy sociable household at the Gordon Arms in Esher.

And then Omar was gone, back to Luxor with Lady Duff Gordon, and Mabrouka was without him once again. I found it easier not to miss him too badly, knowing Mabrouka was missing him as well.

CAIRO, 15 JULY 1869: FOUR YEARS LATER.

I AM THERE, WATCHING.

I keep my distance. In the City of the Dead, I want no one to see me.

But I can see what is taking place. I watch the boatmen lowering her body; she is wrapped in a linen shroud, like a Muslim. The boatmen don’t need to strain; illness made her light, and death lighter still. The doctor—the same doctor I saw just days before I gave birth and who did not notice my condition—is speaking but I can hear none of his words. There is an imam present, and a Christian priest. Omar is silent, head bowed. Perhaps he is weeping. When I think of Omar I remember our time together in Luxor after the birth of Abdullah and I feel his tears on my belly: warm salt, quickly cooling.

If my Lady had stayed in England, if we had never traveled to Egypt, she would soon have died; Egypt gave her seven years, seven extra years of life. But at what cost? It was as though she died when she first crossed the Mediterranean and her time in Egypt was a kind of afterlife. She chose Egypt, and she kept death at bay, for a time.

And my Lady won her battle in other ways as well: she drove me away and she drove Omar away from me and she kept Omar by her side, as she keeps him to this day. I have every reason to hate her, even now. But I do not. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here, in Cairo, city of my dreams. I wouldn’t have met Omar; I wouldn’t have had my baby. But that was not her intention, and it is not her victory: it is mine, and mine only.

My aunt Clara could not, or—I don’t know which is more true—did not want to keep Ellen and me when our parents died in that train wreck at Clapham. Strange though it may sound, I did not blame Aunt Clara at the time. Our parents were gone—our previous lives had vanished overnight—and it did not surprise me that there was no one who could shoulder the responsibility of our upbringing. I was only a child and life was what was presented to me, nothing more, nothing less. I knew no better.

But now I do know better, and in light of my Lady’s behavior towards me, I look back at Aunt Clara and I do blame her. How could she have seen me off, out of her house, into service, so quickly, so soon after the death of my parents? Me, her only sister’s elder child? Why is the world full of people who see fit to dispense with others as soon as it suits them? But I stop myself from having these thoughts, from thinking these things, and I get on with the task at hand. I’m very good at getting on with the task at hand: it’s what suits me.

Watching, I am unaware of myself, unaware that I am creeping closer and closer to the grave and the small crowd of mourners standing by it. Someone turns my way, a young Englishwoman, dressed as though she’s just stepped off a train from London, still pale despite the sun: our eyes meet. Yet another new lady’s maid? I pull my
tarhah
across my face and move away. She turns back to the grave.

I’ve seen enough. Lady Duff Gordon—my Lady—is dead. And I, Sally Naldrett, I am alive. I will carry on living.