Chapter Thirty-Two

Cairo, March 16, 1923

From Aswan, Eve and Pups caught a train directly to Cairo, where he had plans to meet Pierre Lacau to discuss the management of the tomb. They checked into the Grand Continental Hotel overlooking Opera Square and Eve changed her clothes, ready to meet some friends of Pups’s for dinner, then to watch a film. When she knocked on Pups’s door, he said he couldn’t face dinner.

“My face is aching where that dratted mosquito bit me,” he said, cupping his palm over it.

Eve had a look close-up: the bite seemed inflamed, with a tiny cut at the edge where he had nicked it while shaving. She found some iodine in her medical kit and dabbed it on, staining the skin brown.

“I’ll cancel our dinner,” she said. “We can eat in the hotel. I’m sure you’ll feel better after an early night.”

The next morning, when she went to Pups’s room to collect him for breakfast, he answered the door looking baggy-eyed. His forehead was burning, and when she touched the glands in his neck, as her mother had taught her to do, they were hard and swollen. Pups knew an English doctor in Cairo, by the name of Fletcher Barrett, so Eve telephoned and asked if he would stop by. It was probably just a mild infection, she told herself. He might need a few days’ bed rest.

Dr. Barrett examined the mosquito bite, listened to her father’s chest, checked his vital signs, and asked several questions about his health in recent days.

“That mosquito bite has become infected,” he said at last, “and I fear it has caused blood poisoning.”

Eve felt a cold chill of fear. “What should we do? How long will it take to heal?”

The doctor sat down and addressed them both, his tone serious. “A fit young man with a strong constitution would probably fight this off in no time, but I’m afraid your father’s medical history could cause complications. I suggest you send your mother a telegram. She will be aware of the implications of blood poisoning.”

There was a buzzing sound in Eve’s ears and she was conscious of the beating of her heart. “What treatments can you give him? I put iodine on the bite last night. Shall I keep doing that?”

He nodded slowly. “Let me take a blood sample to confirm my diagnosis, and I’ll return in a couple of hours with some medicine. Make sure he keeps sipping boiled water or light broths, and apply cloths soaked in tepid water to his brow and pulse points.”

Eve was glad to be given tasks. First, she scribbled a telegram to her mother and got the concierge to send it, then she asked for plentiful boiled water to be brought to her father’s room, along with some light chicken broth and a pot of tea for her. She would be his personal nurse, and she’d do everything in her power to make him well again. No patient would ever have been nursed as well as she would nurse him.

What if he dies? a voice in her head asked. She shook herself. It was unthinkable. She simply wouldn’t let him.

While Pups slept that afternoon, she telephoned her uncle Mervyn, who promised to visit, and she sent telegrams to Howard Carter, to Lady Allenby, and to Brograve. To each of them she said that the illness was serious, but that he was receiving the best of care and no word should be leaked to the press. She knew her father would not want it to hit the headlines.

Her mother sent a telegram by return saying that she was flying out immediately in a De Havilland monoplane. They would have to refuel several times en route but it was by far the fastest way. That’s when Eve knew it was a matter of life and death, because her mother was petrified of flying. A sob formed in her throat and wouldn’t shift.

Brograve telegrammed offering to come to Cairo to support her. She replied that he should wait for now. She was spending all her time at her father’s bedside and wouldn’t be able to see him if he turned up.

Some friends visited the hotel, but Uncle Mervyn was the only one she admitted to Pups’s sickroom. He was fevered and anxious, dozing fitfully, and often groaning in his sleep. Mervyn tried to talk to him but didn’t get a coherent response.

“Call me, day or night,” he told Eve. “Anything you need, I will arrange it.”

“I need him to recover,” Eve said, and Mervyn squeezed her hand hard.

The following morning, Pups seemed more lucid. Eve fed him spoonfuls of broth and they talked about the book Howard was planning to write about the tomb, along with Arthur Mace. It would be illustrated with Harry Burton’s photographs, and Pups was to contribute a foreword. The public were crying out for information and this would be the first reliable source.

Pups fell asleep again, and when he wakened later, he was less coherent. “We shouldn’t have disturbed the spirits,” he murmured.

“What spirits?” Eve asked. “What are you talking about?”

“The spirits in the tomb,” he said. “Malevolent spirits. We disturbed them.”

“There weren’t any spirits, Pups,” she assured him, but she remembered the cloying scent that had irritated her throat, and that feeling like a finger poking at the back of her skull. And then Marie Corelli’s warning came back to her: “A disease no doctor can diagnose.” But that wasn’t true because Fletcher Barrett had diagnosed it. What nonsense! She tried to wipe the thought from her brain.

The next morning, there was a brisk knock on the door and Almina bustled into the room, already in nurse mode despite the challenging journey. Eve had never been so glad to see her. Say what you liked about Almina, she was a talented nurse. All her ex-patients raved about her.

“What’s his temperature?” she asked, and Eve told her the latest reading. She picked up his wrist to feel his pulse and tutted.

“Is it bad, Mama?” Eve whispered, trying not to let her panic show.

Her mother sucked air through her teeth. “Only time will tell.”

Almina took over the task of making him sip liquids and mopping his brow, her voice calm and soothing, but Eve didn’t leave the room. She sat in an armchair, listening to every sound her father made in his sleep, and trying to communicate with him whenever he was awake. He developed an alarming cough, his lungs making a wheezing sound like an old water tank, and he was gasping for breath at times. Her mother arranged the pillows so that he was propped upright, and he seemed easier that way.

When Fletcher Barrett came, he examined the patient, then talked to Almina in a low voice. Eve could hardly hear, but she made out the words pneumonia and critical and dug her fingernails into her palms. This couldn’t be happening.

After he left, Almina started to weep, very softly. That was a huge shock. Eve had never seen her mother cry before—not ever. She leaped to her feet and rushed to hug her. It felt odd, because she and Almina usually exchanged only the most cursory embraces, but now they clung to each other.

“Please don’t cry, Mama. I’m sure he’ll recover now you’re here. Between us, we will save him.”

That made her mother cry harder and Eve cried too. Who would have thought it? Almina didn’t spend more than a few weeks a year with her husband, but she clearly cared deeply for him.

“Your father’s a very dear man, who’s been good to me,” she said, dabbing her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “It wasn’t ever a romantic match, not like you and Brograve . . .”

Eve was surprised by that. It almost sounded like grudging approval of her choice of husband.

“But we gave each other a lot of freedom in our marriage and it worked for us.”

Eve was alarmed that she was talking in the past tense. “You could still have years ahead, Mama. No one dies of a mosquito bite. It’s absurd!”

Almina looked at her sadly. “I hope you’re right,” she said, and turned to place a cloth on the patient’s brow. Eve felt glad that Pups was with two women who loved him, and hoped the strength of their love would tether him to this world like invisible ropes.

A message was slipped under the door saying that Howard Carter was in the hotel, hoping to see Lord Carnarvon. Eve hurried downstairs to update him, but told him her father was too ill for visitors. She said the same to Lady Allenby, and Arthur Mace, and all the other friends who came, bearing flowers and fruit baskets and sympathy. Her father would hate for anyone to see him in this state. The only person she admitted was Porchy, who arrived on the fourth of April, posthaste from Alexandria.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Eve said, jumping up to hug him. She didn’t say, but she thought, Thank goodness you made it in time.

“I got the steamer from Marseilles. It took forever,” he said, white-faced with shock when he saw the state of his father.

Pups was barely conscious, racked by coughing fits, vomiting up any liquid they could entice him to swallow. It was harrowing to watch. Eve, Porchy, and their mother sat by the bedside, stroking his hands and whispering reassurance.

“I’m scared,” he croaked, his voice little more than a whisper.

“We love you, Pups,” Eve told him. “You are the best father a girl could wish for. Please fight this. Please keep trying.”

“We need you, Pups,” Porchy said, anguish in his voice. Eve knew he must be thinking about the burden of the estate, which would fall on his shoulders if Pups died. He was only twenty-four, and must have hoped for much more time to learn how it all worked.

But in the early hours on the fifth, Pups’s breathing slowed to a labored hiss and then stopped. Almina listened to his chest, felt the pulse in his neck, and her voice cracked as she said, “He’s gone.”

Eve wanted to scream, No! He can’t be! He was far too young to die. She needed him. Who would give her away at her wedding? It should have been taking place later that month, but she couldn’t get married now, not without her father.

She bent to kiss his sweet face, on the side of his temple, and whispered, “Come back, Pups. Please come back.” But there was no response. He wasn’t there anymore.

She couldn’t bear to stay in the room a moment longer. She ran outside, barging straight into some reporters who were hovering in the corridor like vultures. Someone must have tipped them off. She shoved through the midst of them, ignoring their questions, and slammed the door of her own room behind her before throwing herself on the bed.

With deep certainty, she knew she would never recover from this loss. She’d always thought of herself as a lucky person, but this was the very worst of luck. The innocent happiness of her youth had been destroyed overnight and it felt as though everything was going to change for the worse.