‘Now here’s an interesting bit,’ he continued when the noise had subsided. ‘Nothing to do with us, but interesting. Your father says, “I am, as you know, in the Valley of the Kings, among the tombs and temples of ancient Egypt, and deeply interested in all the discoveries that are being made here. And also in the discoverers. To one man in particular I am much attracted. I am told he has lived here for years, earning his living as a worker in the excavations, but a man of considerable intellect, for he speaks several languages and is a fine Egyptologist. But he suffers from a curious form of amnesia.”’
‘What’s amnesia?’ asked Robert. ‘Is it measles?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Uncle Ambrose. ‘Amnesia is loss of memory and you should know that at your age. Where was I? If there is one thing I dislike more than a boy, it is an interrupting boy. Ah, here we are. “He does not know who he is or where he came from. Memory for him begins when, a young man, he found himself sailing down the Nile in a native boat. He had no luggage with him and nothing in his pockets that could give him any clue to his identity, or even to his nationality, for he found he could speak English, French, Italian, and the lingo of the Egyptian workers with equal ease. A most curious case and a most interesting man.”’ Uncle Ambrose folded the letter and put it away. ‘Well, we must get to our lessons. Come along, children. Hector, come to the Parthenon.’
Lessons that morning seemed to the children, and possibly to Uncle Ambrose too, little more than an interlude. They were all glad to find themselves once more in the dining room, especially as it was beef steak and kidney pie and treacle tart. After a moment of silent and happy repletion between courses, Uncle Ambrose drew breath and said, ‘Nan, I have received Lady Alicia’s permission to visit her this afternoon and I shall take it very kindly if you will give me the pleasure of your company.’
Nan flushed with delight. ‘Just me?’ she asked.
‘Just you. The entire family would, I think, be somewhat overwhelming for an old lady. Robert and Timothy will take great delight in entertaining Betsy in the garden while we are out.’
He fixed his stern eyes upon his nephews and such was his authority that their glowering glances were fixed on their plates only. Betsy, looking very smug, kicked them under the table. They dare not kick back lest she yell, but Timothy glanced up briefly with such a you just wait expression on his face that Ezra, handing the potatoes, sighed. It would be his part to keep the peace.
‘Until now I have respected Lady Alicia’s Wish to live unvisited,’ said Uncle Ambrose, ‘but I asked her in my recent note if once only I may do myself the honour of waiting upon her. I do not feel it right that her kindness to you children should remain unacknowledged on my part.’
Uncle Ambrose sounded pompous and Nan privately thought there was more in this than met the eye. She believed he was burning with curiosity to see Lady Alicia and her picture. Especially the picture. Then she saw that he was also a little embarrassed. He cleared his throat and Hector on his shoulder cleared his throat and scratched behind his ear in a self-conscious way. ‘Boys,’ went on Uncle Ambrose, ‘I may possibly be late home for preparation.’
His nephews lifted their transformed faces and fixed their eyes on his face in bright and wicked glee. Their mouths trembled, but they did not laugh.
‘Don’t worry, Uncle,’ said Robert. ‘If you’re very late and we get anxious we’ll come and fetch you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Uncle Ambrose dryly.
After his nap he and Nan set forth, Uncle Ambrose in his Sunday frock-coat and top hat and carrying a silver-headed walking stick, Nan wearing a clean pink linen smock and her Sunday hat wreathed in roses, for this was an occasion. When they reached the green they saw William Lawson lounging in the door of the Bulldog, smoking his pipe. When he saw Uncle Ambrose he straightened himself and touched his cap.
‘Good morning, Mr Lawson,’ said Uncle Ambrose. ‘I trust your toothache is less troublesome?’
‘Yes, sir, thank ee,’ said William Lawson. Eliza and the bulldog were not to be seen, and neither was Emma, or Frederick. Nan thought to herself, if they’ve gone up to the cave to see if the little figures are still there, and find that they are gone, what will they do? The iron gates into the shrubbery were difficult to open and William Lawson came over and helped them, swinging them wide with one great brawny arm.
‘Thank you, Mr Lawson, I am much obliged,’ said Uncle Ambrose, and he stalked through into the shrubbery without looking back. Nan did not look back either, but all the way through the shrubbery she had a shivery feeling up and down her spine for fear William Lawson had slipped through after them. But when they were out in the wild garden she forgot her shivers, because Uncle Ambrose was so interested in all he saw. The japonica flowers and the apple blossom had long ago drifted away on the wind, but there were tangles of roses everywhere and foxgloves growing in the grass.
‘What a very beautiful house,’ said Uncle Ambrose, and he stopped still to look at it where it stood deep in the wild overgrown garden, shuttered, lovely, and blind.
‘But the front door is open!’ exclaimed Nan. ‘It hasn’t been opened for years and years, and now, look!’
It was wide open and under the gracious portico stood Moses in his Sunday livery. When Uncle Ambrose and Nan reached the terrace he stood aside and bowed, and the visitors walked in. He was, Nan realised, in a state of trembling happiness, as though he longed to believe the old days were coming back and yet dared not believe it. His hands were shaking as he took Uncle Ambrose’s hat and stick, but he was grinning from ear to ear.
‘This is an auspicious occasion, Moses,’ said Uncle Ambrose. ‘I am honoured that her ladyship is willing to receive me.’
‘Her ladyship is waiting, sir,’ said Moses. ‘Will you be pleased to come this way?’
He led the way up the stairs, with his bowed shoulders straightened and his head held high. The glory of the swinging cobwebs had disappeared and Nan felt a pang of sorrow, realising for the first time that every gain carries with it corresponding loss. Moses was happier, but he had swept away the cobwebs.
Lady Alicia received them in her boudoir in a very gracious and queenly manner. The weight of her years seemed to be weighing less heavily on her. She looked so much younger that Nan suddenly wondered if she was as old as she had thought she was. There was a sparkle in her eyes that matched the sparkle of her diamonds. It was wonderful to watch Uncle Ambrose bowing to her and kissing her hand, and to hear the exchange of elaborate old-fashioned courtesies that flowed between them.
Then a marvellous and ceremonial tea arrived. Moses entered first, carrying a large silver tray shoulder high, and Abednego, with Gertrude slung in her hammock on his back, came behind with another, also held shoulder high. Abednego was very much smartened up. He appeared to have brushed his face and was wearing his footman’s livery of worn green velvet. On the silver tray were not only iced cakes, but delicate sandwiches with lemon curd filling, scones, and sponge fingers. While the tea were being set out under Lady Alicia’s critical eye, Uncle Ambrose looked about him, not with vulgar curiosity, and not really appearing to do it, but doing it all the same. Nan watched his hawk’s nose turn here and there, and noticed the gleam in his eyes. He wasn’t missing much, she thought. His glance lingered long upon the tapestry.
But when Moses and Abednego had left the room he did not comment upon it, and somehow or other he led the conversation round to his youngest brother, the children’s father. ‘An army man, but an amateur Egyptologist,’ he said. ‘He is now in Egypt for a while before going on to India.’
‘My husband travelled a great deal in Egypt,’ said Lady Alicia. ‘Before you leave I will take you into his library. There are some Egyptian treasures you might like to see.’
‘I should be honoured,’ said Uncle Ambrose.
‘Since my husband left home for the last time,’ said Lady Alicia, ‘Moses alone had entered the room until Nan and Betsy went there by mistake the other day.’ She s
miled at Nan. ‘As they have seen it I find I do not mind you doing so too.’ She turned her bright glance to Uncle Ambrose. ‘These children, sir, are working havoc with my habits.’
‘With mine too, ma’am,’ said Uncle Ambrose with deep sympathy. ‘But I hope you feel the benefit?’
‘I believe that I do,’ said Lady Alicia, and laid her hand on Nan’s, while she continued her polite enquiries into the welfare of the children’s father. Uncle Ambrose told her about the man whom his brother had met, with his vast knowledge of Egypt and his complete forgetfulness of his own past. ‘Egypt affects the brain,’ said Lady Alicia. ‘I hope your brother will not stay there too long. My husband was more fatally bewitched by Egypt than by any other country in which he travelled. He was susceptible to witches. Is Emma Cobley still alive?’
Her question shot out so suddenly that Uncle Ambrose was actually taken aback. It was a moment or two before he answered, ‘Very much alive.’
Nan had been sitting quiet as a mouse all this time, but now to her own astonishment she heard herself say, ‘Lady Alicia, Uncle Ambrose has given me the little parlour that was yours. There were some of your books in the cupboard.’
‘Some of my childhood’s books, no doubt,’ said Lady Alicia. ‘I hope you enjoy them, my dear.’
‘Yes I do,’ said Nan. ‘But there was another. A book of spells.’
Lady Alicia withdrew her hand from Nan’s and was silent for a moment, and then she said with horror, ‘That thing? I thought I had burnt it.’
‘It was hidden right at the back of the cupboard,’ said Nan.
‘Perhaps I couldn’t find it to burn it,’ said Lady Alicia, and she put her hand over her eyes. ‘I forget. It is so long ago.’
‘Nan,’ said Uncle Ambrose sternly, ‘this is a painful topic of conversation for our hostess.’
‘No,’ said Lady Alicia with sudden vigour. ‘This must be explained. One day when I was a girl my father sent me to see Emma about some parish matter. She was young, too, then. The front door opened straight into her little sitting room and it was ajar and I saw her sitting writing at her desk in the corner. I knocked and she closed what looked like a diary and pulled her work-bag over it before she came to the door. We talked and she went upstairs to fetch some magazine my father had lent her. For my father, I must tell you, was fond of Emma and would never believe the stories told about her in the village.’
‘Did you believe them?’ asked Uncle Ambrose.
‘I believed the few harmless stories of her cures that had been told to me, but I was not afraid of her. Perhaps if I had been afraid I would not have done the naughty thing I did next.’ She smiled at Nan. ‘I was a young and giddy girl at the time and I was as naughty as Betsy was in the library the other day. What was Emma writing in her diary? I wondered, and while she was upstairs I took her work-bag off the book and opened it, and it opened at the page on which she had been copying out a spell for making a coolness come between a man and a woman. Then I was afraid. I was already very much in love with Hugo Valerian and I knew that village gossip said Emma was too. I guessed she was trying to separate us, and the wild idea came to me that without her book she would be powerless to do so. I hid it in my muff and when Emma came downstairs I was standing at the front door. I took my father’s magazine from her, said goodbye and went quickly away. When I got home the post was in and there was a letter from my aunt in Paris, asking me to come to her as quickly as I could, for there was a ball to which she wanted to take me. I knew Hugo Valerian was in Paris and in wild excitement I packed and went. At that ball he proposed to me and we were married in Paris. I was so happy that I forgot Emma’s book, and when I came home, if I remembered it again, I expect I thought I had destroyed it before I left for Paris, and Emma’s power with it.’
‘So you read no more of the book than that one spell?’ asked Uncle Ambrose.
‘And only part of that,’ said Lady Alicia. ‘She had not finished copying it. It was only later, much later, when I knew more about Emma, that I realised I had done something she would never forgive. There, Nan, that is the explanation of the book in the cupboard. I beg you, my dear, to destroy it now.’
‘It is burnt already,’ said Nan.
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Lady Alicia.
‘In these enlightened days,’ said Uncle Ambrose politely but firmly, ‘we have learnt that spells and charms and so on are mere superstition. Those who fear them fear no more than a bad dream.’
‘How fortunate we are then that we now live in days in which bad dreams have lost their power,’ said Lady Alicia, but she said it dryly and changed the conversation to mushrooms, which she said she had loved to gather in her youth in the fields near the Vicarage.
After tea they went to the library, where Hugo Valerian’s cloak still lay over the back of the chair and his gloves and riding-crop on the desk. Lady Alicia picked up the gloves and drew them through her hands caressingly. Her face looked suddenly as soft and bright as a girl’s. The room felt quite different today. It seemed alive and so full of a sense of expectancy that for a moment or two no one said anything, and Uncle Ambrose half-turned towards the door, as though ready to bow to someone who should come in, but no one came in and he turned his attention to the Egyptian treasures in the glass cases. These fascinated him, and so did the pictures and books. He and Lady Alicia discussed them together, while Nan stood at the window looking out on the garden of the fountain.
The sweet-smelling flowers of June were in bloom now, bergamot, lavender, roses, and honeysuckle. She opened the window and leaned out and the voices of the two elderly people in the room behind her died away. The man in the fountain was grave, serene, and still, but not sad today, and she listened as he bade her to the sharp staccato cries of delight made by the little brown bird who was sitting on his hand and talking to him. Other birds were flying around, sometimes perching on his knee or shoulder and all singing their special songs of delight, but it was the little eager sharp-voiced bird in which he was particularly delighting at this moment, and wishing her to delight. But she could not at this distance see what sort of bird it was and he wanted her to see. He leaned a little forward and lifted up the hand on which the bird was perching, and she leaned forward too and held out her hand, and the bird flew up and came to her finger with soft whirring wings. It was a very small speckled bird, cheeky looking, with a very bright eye, a sharp beak, and a perked-up tail. It chatted to Nan in a high, trifling voice which matched its appearance, and Nan and the man in the fountain looked at each other across the sun-warmed space of blue that separated them and laughed to hear it. Then they were both silent, listening. And then the bird flew away.
‘I am sorry, my dear,’ said Lady Alicia, in the room behind Nan. ‘I moved.’
Nan drew back from the window and saw that Lady Alicia and Uncle Ambrose were close to her, and looking at her lovingly. To her surprise she saw that Lady Alicia had tears in her eyes. Uncle Ambrose took out a large clean handkerchief, unfolded it and trumpeted loudly. But in mid-trumpet he suddenly paused, peering over the top of his handkerchief. Then with rather shaky hands he polished his spectacles with the handkerchief and stared again. And then he smiled and nodded as though to a friend.
‘A beautiful statue, is it not?’ said Lady Alicia. ‘My husband bought it in Italy, but the sculptor was a Greek.’
Uncle Ambrose struggled for composure, cleared his throat and began to discuss the statue with Lady Alicia. But he did not stay much longer after that. They went back to the parlour and he and Lady Alicia bade each other a protracted Edwardian farewell, the silver bell was rung and Moses and Abednego summoned. They were conducted down the stairs and seen off with all proper ceremony.
But at the corner of the house, instead of turning towards the garden to go home, Uncle Ambrose stopped and said, ‘Nan, will you take me to call on the gentleman whom you call Daft Davie?’
Nan was very much taken aback. ‘But it’s up through the woods and then a long climb,
’ she said. ‘Ezra can’t manage that climb.’
‘I retain the use of both legs,’ said Uncle Ambrose severely, ‘and am less aged than I appear.’
‘But he may be out,’ said Nan.
‘In that case I will leave my calling card,’ said Uncle Ambrose. ‘Whether the gentleman’s cave is within the boundary of my parish or not I am not quite sure, but in any case I reproach myself that a human creature in his unfortunate condition has remained unvisited all these years. I may be able to be of assistance to him.’ Full of misgivings Nan led the way up through the woods. She went first up the rock, glancing anxiously behind her every now and then to see how Uncle Ambrose was managing, and each time it was very well, for his long legs made light of the steep steps that nearly defeated her. Sometimes indeed he gave her a shove up from behind and always his tall hat remained in position. Right at the top, looking out over the murmuring sea of green leaves below them, she found that he was as moved as she was by this mounting up and up from floor to floor of one of the mansions of the world.
‘To have the clouds lapping against one’s feet, like the leaves do now, wouldn’t it be wonderful?’ she said ecstatically.
‘I have experienced that on mountain tops,’ said Uncle Ambrose. ‘These ascents are not only physical, Nan. The world of the spirit too has many mansions. We live upon a staircase.’
They climbed on over the Lion’s paw and down into the little valley beyond. Uncle Ambrose looked about him and seemed to have no words for his delight. Dragonflies were darting over the stream and foxgloves with speckled bells grew in the lush green grass as tall as Nan herself. The Lion’s head was golden and glowing in the sun.