Whispers in the Sand (3 page)

And now here was Phyllis, saying the same thing.

“You must start with a holiday, Anna dear. Change of scene. New people. Then you come back and sell that house. It’s been a prison for you.”

“But, Phyl—”

“No, Anna. Don’t argue, dear. Well, perhaps about the house, but not about the holiday. Felix used to take you to all those places where you did nothing but sit by swimming pools and watch him talk business. You need to go somewhere exciting. In fact, you need to go to Egypt.”

“Egypt?” Anna was beginning to feel her feet were being swept from beneath her. “Why Egypt?”

“Because when you were a little girl you talked about Egypt all the time. You had books about it. You drew pyramids and camels and ibises and you pestered me every time I saw you to tell you about Louisa.”

Anna nodded. “It’s strange. You’re right. And I haven’t thought about her for years.”

“Then it’s time you did. It is so easy to forget one’s childhood dreams. I sometimes think people expect to forget them. They abandon everything which would make their lives exciting. I think you should go out there and see the places Louisa saw. When they published some of her sketchbooks ten years ago, I was tempted to go myself, you know. I’d helped your father select the pictures and worked with the editor over the captions and potted history. I just wanted to see it so much. And perhaps I still will one day.” She smiled, the twinkle back in her eye, and Anna found herself thinking that it was entirely possible that the old lady would do it.

“She was an amazing woman, your great-great-grandmother,” Phyllis went on. “Amazing, brave, and very talented.”

Like you. Unlike me. Anna bit her lip and did not say it.

Frowning, she considered Phyllis’s words, aware that the old lady’s beady eyes were fixed unswervingly on her face.

“Well?” Anna smiled. “It’s very tempting.”

“Tempting? It’s a brilliant idea!”

Anna nodded. “I did actually suggest once or twice to Felix that we go to Egypt, but he was never interested.” She paused, aware of a stirring of something like excitement deep inside her. After all, why not? “You know, I think I might just take your advice. I haven’t exactly got a lot of pressing plans.”

Phyllis sat back in her chair. Closing her eyes, she turned her face to the sun, and a small smile played across her features for a moment. “Good. That’s settled then.” There was a pause, then she went on, “This is heaven. There is no nicer time of the year than the autumn. October is my favourite month.” Her eyes opened again and she studied Anna’s face. “Have you spoken to your father yet?”

Anna shook her head. “He hasn’t rung me since the divorce. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me.”

“For separating from Felix?”

Anna nodded. “He was so proud of having Felix for a son-in-law.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice for a moment. “The son he never had.”

“Silly man.” Phyllis sighed. “He’s gotten more and more impossible since your mother died, and that’s a good ten years ago now! Don’t let it upset you too much, darling. He’ll come round. You’re worth ten of any son he might have had, and one day he’ll realise it, I promise you.”

Anna looked away, concentrating as hard as she could on the drift of scarlet creeper on the wall on the edge of the terrace. She was not going to cry. She should have got used by now to her father’s insensitivity and his blatant lack of interest in her, his only child. She sniffed hard and turned her attention to the York stone slabs at her feet. Old lichens, long dried to white crusts, had formed circles and whorls in the stone. She realised suddenly that Phyllis had levered herself to her feet. Glancing up, she watched as her great-aunt disappeared back through the open French windows into the house, and, groping for her handkerchief, she mopped hurriedly at her eyes.

Phyllis was only gone two minutes. “I have something here which might interest you.” She did not look at Anna as she sat down once more. She had dropped a package onto the table in front of her. “When I was going through Louisa’s papers and sketchbooks, I despaired of ever finding anything personal. If there were letters, she must have destroyed them. There was nothing. Then a few months ago I decided to have an old desk restored. The veneers had lifted badly.” She paused. The restorer found one of the drawers had a false bottom, and inside he found this.” She passed the packet over to Anna.

Anna took it. “What is it?”

“Her journal.”

“Really?” Anna glanced down in sudden excitement. “But that must be incredibly valuable!”

“I expect so. And interesting.”

“You’ve read it?”

Phyllis shrugged. “I had a quick look at it, but the writing is very difficult, and my eyes aren’t so good these days. I think you should read it, Anna. It’s all about her months in Egypt. And in the meantime I think you should ring your father. Life is too short for huffs and puffs. Tell him he’s being an idiot, and you can say I said so.”

The diary was on the back seat of the car when it was time to leave. The last crimson rays of the sunset were fading as Anna climbed in and, reaching for the ignition, looked up at her aunt. “Thank you for being there. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Phyllis shook her head in mock anger. “You would cope very well indeed, as you know. Now, ring Edward tonight. Promise?”

“I’ll think about it. I’ll promise that much.”

She did think about it. In the queue of heavy traffic making its way slowly back into London after the sun-drenched weekend, she had plenty of time to reflect on Phyllis’s advice and review her situation. She was thirty-five years old, had been married for fourteen years, had never had a job of any description whatsoever, and was childless. Letting in the clutch, she edged the car forward a few yards as the streams of traffic converged from the motorway into the clogged London streets. Her mind glanced sideways, away from that last particular memory. She couldn’t cope yet with the idea of Felix as the father of another woman’s child. She had few friends, or so it seemed at the moment, a father who despised her, and a terrifying vista of emptiness before her. On the plus side, there was Phyllis, the photography, the garden, and whatever Phyllis said, the house.

One of the reasons Felix had left her the house was the garden. It was large for a London property, at first glance narrow and rectangular, but by some vagary of planning back in the eighteenth century, the end of the garden took a steep angular bend around the back of two other houses, whose own gardens were thus sharply curtailed, doubling its size. The garden was Anna’s passion. Felix had, as far as she knew, never even walked to the end of it. His interest began and ended with its uses as a place for entertaining corporate clients. Drinks. Barbecues. Sunday tea. The terrace with its jasmine and roses, its old terra-cotta pots of herbs—that was the extent of his interest. Beyond it, the winding paths, the high trellis-topped walls, the intricate beds with their carefully planned colours, the occasional half-hidden piece of sculpture lovingly garnered from trips to country antique shops, was her domain alone.

It had stunned her when, in the divorce settlement, Felix had specifically mentioned the garden. He had said she deserved it after all her work. It was the nicest thing he had ever said to her about it.

“Daddy. Can we talk?” She had sat by the phone in her bedroom for ten minutes before picking up the receiver to dial.

There was a moment’s silence, then: “I can’t imagine we have much to talk about, Anna.”

She bit her lip. “How about the fact that I might be miserable and lonely and need you?”

“I hardly think you need me.” The voice on the other end was cold. “After all, you did not need to consult me over the divorce.”

“Consult you?” The usual emotions of anger, incredulity, indignation, and finally impotence swept over her. “Why should I have consulted you?”

“It would have been courteous.”

Anna closed her eyes and began counting to ten. It had always been like this. Other parents might show affection or sympathy or even rage. Her father was worried about a lack of courtesy. She sighed audibly. “I’m sorry. I suppose I was too wound up about everything. It all came to a head too suddenly.”

“It should not have come to a head at all, Anna. You and Felix could have reached some accommodation. If you had consulted me, I could have talked to him—”

“No! No, Daddy, I’m sorry, but we could not have reached some accommodation. Our marriage is over. Our decision. No one else’s. If you feel slighted in some way, then I’m sorry. It was not intentional. I kept you informed all the way, if you remember. Every day.” Her temper was fraying.

“I don’t expect to be kept informed, Anna. I expect to be consulted. I am your father—”

“I am a grown woman, Daddy!”

“You are not behaving like one, if I may say so—”

Anna slammed down the phone. Her stomach was churning, and she was almost sobbing with rage.

Standing up, she walked across to the dressing table and stood staring down at it, unseeing. It was a small Georgian writing desk, transformed for its current use by an oval toilet mirror and the scatter of cosmetics and brushes and discarded jewellery. Focusing suddenly on her reflection in the mirror, she scowled furiously. He was right. She was not behaving like a grown woman. She was behaving as she was feeling, like an abandoned child.

Her hand strayed to the small scent bottle standing by the mirror, and she picked it up, staring at it miserably. About three inches high, the glass was a deep opaque blue, decorated with a thick, white, feathered design, the stopper a lump of shaped wax, pushed flush with the top and sealed. Phyllis had given it to her when it had caught her fancy as a child, and it had stayed with her ever since. “Take care of it, Anna,” the old lady had said. “It comes from Ancient Egypt, and it’s very, very old.”

Egypt.

Anna turned it round in her hand, staring at it. Felix had had it valued, of course, and the antique dealer had been very sniffy about it. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Anna, dear, but I’m afraid it probably came from a Victorian bazaar. The early visitors out there were always being conned into bringing back so-called artefacts. And this doesn’t even look Egyptian.” He had handed it back with a slight sneer, as though even by touching it he had somehow contaminated himself and his Bond Street reputation. Recalling that moment, Anna gave a weary smile. At least she no longer had to put up with Felix’s pretentious acquaintances, pretending they were so wise and acquiescing with their patronising dismissal of her, too, as no more than a decorative nonentity which he had picked up in a bazaar somewhere.

With a sigh she set down the bottle and stared once more into the mirror. She was tired, she was depressed, and she was fed up.

Phyllis, as always, was right. She needed a holiday.

“Have you ever been to Egypt before?”

Why hadn’t she thought of this when she asked for a window seat? Five hours of being trapped into conversation with whomever destiny had chosen to be her neighbour, and with no escape!

It was nearly four months since that glorious autumn day in Suffolk, but now, at last, she was on her way. Outside, the ground staff at Gatwick were completing the final checks on the loading of the plane and still spraying ice off its wings as they prepared for takeoff. Sleet slanted across the airport, whipping the faces of the men clustering round the plane into an angry painful colour.

Anna did not look up from her guidebook. “No, I haven’t.” She tried to sound unenthusiastic without being downright rude.

“Nor me.” She felt him glance at her sideways, but he said no more, groping in the bag by his feet for his own reading material.

Beyond him the aisle seat was still empty as the plane began to fill and the flight attendants shoe-horned people more and more tightly into place. Anna risked a quick look to her left. Forties; sandy hair, regular features, long eye-lashes clearly visible as he flipped through an already well-thumbed volume. She was suddenly sorry she had been so curt. But there was plenty of time to make up for it if she wanted to. All the time in the world. Beyond him an elderly man in a dog collar inserted himself into the third seat in the row. He leant forward to nod first to her and then their neighbour, then he reached for a pile of newspapers. She saw with a smile the
Church Times
was firmly tucked away beneath a copy of the
Sun
.