FORTY-SEVEN

Blundell’s letter lay on a tray on the table. Yael looked at it for a moment longer, then went up the steps to the bathroom and removed her dusty clothes. The tap in the shower was dry but a large, filled jug stood next to a tin bowl. After washing herself all over with a soapy flannel, Yael stood in the bowl, trickling what remained of the clean water over her face and shoulders. It was pleasant to stand naked, with her feet in the cool water.

Wrapping herself in a robing gown, she returned to her own room, where she lay down on the bed in a shaft of sunlight and opened the gown. She could not recall a time when her breasts, her stomach, had ever been exposed to the sun’s rays. She was a lizard, she told herself as she bathed in the soft, intense warmth and light that flooded through the window, basking in God’s sun, and it was neither injurious nor immoral.

In the soporific warmth, Yael fell asleep. She dreamed of a place that, when she woke, she was unable to describe to herself, except through the sense she’d had there of ease, a contentment that in her waking life she had never experienced. Happiness, she thought as she pulled on the dress she’d had made at a little tailor’s in the rue des Soeurs, a road with the distinction of having a convent at one end and a brothel at the other. Yael fastened the buttons at her cuffs. The dress was a pale gingham check, the color of the dust at noon. Happiness of the kind she had imagined heaven to offer. That was what it was.

She finished dressing, put on her shoes, and went down the steps. The fountain in the little courtyard in the middle of the house was running again and a drab sparrow perched on the edge of the pool, dipping its beak down to the water and then throwing back its head, allowing the water to run down its throat. It watched her pass, seemingly unconcerned.

Sitting down at the table, she poured herself a glass of water. When she had drunk it, she opened Blundell’s letter. Yael had been expecting it. She had continued to postpone writing to her brother. He had put her in charge of his wife and daughter when he forced her to accompany them, she reasoned. He could have no quarrel with the decisions she then made, since he had put her in a position where she alone must make them. Since improving Harriet’s health was the purpose of the journey, it had been best for her to travel farther south. Agreed, Blundell might have preferred that Yael accompany them. He might even have expected it. But, having started the clinic, she was resolved to continue it for the length of time she had promised herself and God that she would.

Sister,

I trust all are well and Harriet’s health improved. You will be glad to know that Father carries on all right.

News from Egypt is worrying and there may be trouble ahead. I regret that I cannot allow you and Louisa and Harriet to remain any longer. Get back the others from wherever they may be, book your return journey, and inform me by telegraph of your likely arrival date at Southampton.

Yr affectionate brother,

Blundell

Yael sat on at the table, half listening to Suraya and her children, to the beat of the wings of the birds in the garden, giving themselves dust baths. She folded the sheet in half, replaced it in the envelope, and in one gesture tore it through the middle, from top to bottom.

Mustapha appeared with a tray.

“Dinner, ma’am,” he said. “No fish in the market today.”

“Thank you, Mustapha. Why no fish?”

He made a noncommittal movement of his head. “The boats did not leave.”

“I see. Well, never mind. It is not important.”

Yael pulled her chair in to the table and began to eat. The omelette was the same temperature as the air, as the fried potatoes and slices of pickled turnips and radishes that surrounded it in a ring. Somehow, she wasn’t sure when or how, Yael had adopted the native way of taking food. She found a curious pleasure in eating with her fingers. She ate the omelette slowly, using torn-off pieces of flat bread to soak up the oil and vinegar and juices left behind on the plate, the scraps of slightly burnt potato, the floating shreds of green herbs. Eggs seemed to her the very best type of food, digestible, nourishing, pleasing in shape and appearance, and involving no active methods of slaughter. For pudding there was a fruit salad of irregular geometry, apples and some kind of melon, further sweetened by dates.

When she had finished, she washed her hands and poured a glass of tea, watching as the leaves unfurled, floating and waving from the prison of the thick little glass. The agony of the leaves, tea planters called it.

She dated a sheet of paper May and gave as the address Alexandria.

Dear Blundell,

I expected to have heard again from you but have received no word. I shall not worry unduly, the post in this part of the world is not altogether reliable.

Alexandria is pleasant, and certainly quieter and safer than London. We are not troubled by drunkenness here or thieving, due to the strong beliefs of the Mussulmans.

Louisa and Harriet have taken a short trip farther south in search of better air. I occupy myself with a little charity work.

Please give my love to Father and remind Mrs. Darke that he likes his whisky at 6 p.m. sharp.

Yr affectionate sister,

Yael

Was there affection between them, she wondered as she put down the pen. There had been. Was there still? Her brother had changed since he was a boy. His eyes had grown grave and distant, his expression harder. That much was obvious and right. But the best parts of him, his sense of fair play, the concern he once showed for the most vulnerable living creatures, when he would rescue every spider and bedraggled fly from the ewer, release them onto a sunny leaf in the garden, those parts had been hidden away when he became a man. Either that or they were lost, left behind as surely as the rocking horse with the balding mane, the skiff on the lake in the grounds of their childhood home.

Theirs had been a happy childhood. They wanted for nothing, had never in their lives gone to bed hungry or walked barefoot except for the joy of it. Nonetheless, to remember it filled Yael with a sadness as deep and sweet and dark as the water in the lake.