Chapter Thirty-Three

London, January 1973

The morning after her telephone conversation with Ana, Eve renewed her search for the gold unguent container. It preyed on her mind that it might be cursed and that’s what was causing her strokes. Of course, she couldn’t discuss it with Brograve—he would simply tease her—but she’d always had a creepy feeling about it because of the harsh, unpleasant smell. It seemed incredible that the contents still had an oily quality and a strong scent after three thousand years locked in an airless environment, and even more incredible that they retained them out in the open air. That alone made it feel sinister. Could the unguent have been cursed by Maya? She tried to cling to the rational view, but it was hard not to feel anxious.

If only she had never taken it from the tomb. It hadn’t brought her any pleasure. She had never put it on display in any of her homes but had hidden it away in cupboards and then the attic, to stop that strange smell pervading their living space.

A memory came to her of the day they moved from London to Framfield. What age had Patricia been? It was just before she started school, so probably four. She kept getting under the feet of the removal men as they carried furniture out to their van.

“Go and play in the sitting room,” Eve told her. All the furniture had already been moved from there and only a few boxes remained. Patricia was quiet for ages so Eve left her alone, grateful for the peace. When she finally glanced in, she got the fright of her life. Patricia had found the unguent container and was playing with it.

“What are you doing?” she cried, rushing over. “Don’t touch that!” She pried it from Patricia’s hand and lifted her. The smell was especially strong when she buried her nose in her daughter’s neck.

“I put the perfume on,” Patricia said.

Irrational fear took hold. Eve rushed her to the bathroom and used a scratchy old towel that had been left behind to scrub at her daughter’s hands, face, and neck. The scent was in her hair too. She hesitated. Was there time to wash it? There would have to be. She got Eve to crouch with her head over the side of the bath and rinsed her hair under the tap, lathering with a sliver of soap, then rinsing again. Patricia was crying, terrified by her mother’s panic.

“What on earth are you doing?” Brograve asked, coming into the bathroom.

As Eve explained, she could hear how odd her actions sounded. What harm could it do? There couldn’t be anything toxic in the unguent. It just had an unpleasant odor.

Brograve was looking at her as if worried she’d lost her mind, but when he spoke, he was his usual pragmatic self: “It will be nice to have clean hair for the new house,” he said. “I’ll open the car windows to help it dry on the way there.”

“Silly Mummy,” Eve said, hugging Patricia, and surreptitiously checking that no trace of the scent lingered. “Fancy me making a fuss over nothing!”

When they arrived at Framfield, Eve directed the removal men to put the cardboard box with the gold container directly into the attic. She could remember it said “Lyons Tea. Always the Best” on the side.

But there was no Lyons Tea box in their cupboards now. She established that quite quickly. Most of the remaining boxes had their contents written on labels on the sides. Perhaps the container was in one of the old suitcases. She asked Sionead to lift them down, recognizing the brown leather one she had taken on her honeymoon. The lock had rusted, but Sionead managed to prize it open using a chisel. Inside she found her wedding veil and a crumbling posy of dried flowers, on top of an embroidered silk bedspread that a cousin of Brograve’s had given them as a wedding present. Eve had never liked the color, like spilled tea, so it hadn’t been used. She picked it up and thought she caught a vague whiff of the scent of the tomb. Perhaps this was the cloth she had used to wrap the container in back in Charles Street, but it wasn’t there anymore.

Another suitcase had some old toys of Patricia’s—dolls with china faces, a miniature tea set, some dollhouse furniture. Yet another contained Brograve’s model railway and a Meccano set from when he was a boy. He had never let her throw them away. But none contained the gold box.

Over lunch, she asked Brograve where he thought it might be.

“Do you remember about ten years ago we had to have the roof repaired at Framfield?” he asked.

She didn’t, but nodded all the same.

“We gave a lot of things from the attic to jumble sales at that time. Maybe your Egyptian box was among them.”

Eve had no memory of it, but she was sure she wouldn’t have let it go to a jumble sale. It was far too valuable, its history too significant. Imagine if someone bought it for a shilling, not knowing what it was? She shivered. That couldn’t be right. But where else might it be?

If it had begun to scare her, might she have wrapped it up and sent it back to the museum in Cairo, in an anonymous parcel, and not told Brograve? But if she had done that, Ana would know. It wouldn’t be on her list of missing items.

Eve strained her memory, focusing on the image of the gold box and the Lyons Tea logo, trying to force her brain to remember, but nothing came. Whole years of her life—decades even—had been swallowed up by the strokes. She sometimes wondered if the memories were still there, hiding among the curls of gray matter in her brain, or if they had been wiped clean as a blackboard, without leaving the faintest impression. She hoped it was the former, hoped they would all reappear one day, the way the streets of London reappeared after the blanket of snow melted—first in patches and then altogether.