Michael Pearce - The Snake Catcher’s Daughter

A little group of people came out on to the verandah, where Owen and Paul were sitting. Normally, it was cooler out there but tonight the temperature was like that of an oven. “Cooler indoors,” said one of the group. “Let’s go back inside.” As he turned, one of the men saw Owen and Paul.

“Hello!” he said, dropping into a chair opposite them. “What’s this I hear about Wainwright? Coming back out here to give evidence or something?”

“Not so far as I know,” said Paul, “not unless he’s completely taken leave of his senses.”

“You remember Wainwright, of course?”

Paul shook his head.

“Before my time. Before yours, too, wasn’t he?” he said to Owen.

“A couple of years before,” said Owen.

“Oh! Well, he was Chief of Police. Nice chap. Very active in the Horticultural Society. You should have seen his garden! Envy of all the rest of us, I can tell you. It will be nice to have him back. Pick his brain over my oleander.”

“I doubt, actually, if he’ll come.”

“Oh? Pottinger seemed quite certain about it. His missus has had a letter from Wainwright’s missus. She’ll be coming too-the Khedive’s paying, after all-and they’ve asked the Pottingers to put them up.”

“Kind of them,” said Paul.

“It’ll be rather nice to have him around,” said his informant happily. “We’ll be able to talk over a thing or two.”

“It’s a long way to come.”

“You’d think there was too much happening in the garden.”

“First thought that came into my head.”

“Decent chap, Wainwright. You never knew him?”

“Afraid not. A decent chap, you say?”

“Oh yes. He was our secretary for, well, it must have been nearly ten years. Everybody liked him. Always willing to do anyone a good turn.”

“I’m sure.”

“Nice chap. Straightforward.”

“Straightforward?” said Paul. “Oh!”

The voice sounded familiar.

“Who are you?”

“A friend of Philipides.”

“Does Philipides wish to speak with me?”

“No. I wish to speak with you.”

“What about?”

“Philipides.”

He had placed the voice now. It was the girl who had been in his bed.

“Come to my office.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Philipides would hear.”

“Will he not hear if I come to your appartement?”

“It is not my appartement. It belongs to a friend.”

“If I come, you had better be sure I leave.”

“I know, I know,” said the voice impatiently. “You will bring men. They will watch the house. You need not worry. There is only me.”

“Very well. I will come.”

“This evening, then.”

He decided to take Selim. Selim was not the brightest but he was the biggest. Selim, spotting another rung on the ladder, was ecstatic.

“Effendi,” he said, “you can rely on me.”

“Give me an hour,” said Owen, “and then break in.”

“Effendi, I will.”

Selim’s confidence fell a little when he saw the building.

“Effendi,” he said, in worried tones, “this is a bit high class. Are you sure I am to break in?”

“After an hour,” said Owen, “you break in. There may be a chain on the door. Do you know how to handle that?”

“Oh yes, effendi. There was a chain on the door of a House for the Girls we called on last week and that was no problem.”

“An hour, then.”

The appartement was on an upper floor and there was a chain. “Leave that,” said Owen, as she made to replace it after letting him in.

The girl shrugged. She was dressed in the mixed way of many Levantine girls, in a European dress but with a heavy black veil which concealed her hair and the lower part of her face. Owen could not help remembering her as she had been without either.

She led him into a dark inner room lavishly furnished with rich, thick carpets, on both floor and walls, and not much else apart from a low divan and an even lower table on which were coffee cups. Beside the table was a brazier with a coffee pot nestling in its top. Most of the light in the room came from the brazier but there was a small oil lamp in a niche in the wall.

The girl sat down at one end of the divan, nearest the brazier, and motioned to Owen to sit at the other. She poured him some coffee. Owen thanked her and put his lips to the cup but did not drink until he had seen her do so.

“My name is Mariam,” she said.

“You know my name.”

“Gareth.”

“My friends call me that.”

“Yes, Gareth.”

Owen was a little taken aback. Their relationship had, indeed, begun on an intimate note; but he was surprised to find that it had already progressed so far.

“You are also a friend of Philipides,” he said.

“I am his wife.”

“But-”

“Why are you surprised? Do you think it strange that a woman should wish to do what she could for her husband?”

“No, but I find it a little strange that she should wish to do what she could for someone else as well. Especially a casual stranger.”

“But you are not a casual stranger. Our lives are bound up.”

“I must admit that had escaped me up till now.”

“You are new to Cairo. All our lives are bound together.”

“Only up to a point.”

“More than you think. You have power over my husband. You have power over me.”

“I shall not exercise that power. Unless-”

“Ah, you see! It is that ‘unless’.”

“What your husband did is past, paid for. I had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t even here at the time. I only come into it if he does something new.”

“No,” she said. “No. You have the power to alter the past. You can make things right.”

“Right?”

“They say you are a just man. A man of craft, yes, well, perhaps that is right, the Mamur Zapt has to be like that; Mustapha was-”

“You know Mustapha Mir?”

“Intimately. But that was in the past. But perhaps for him, too, it has to be put right.”

“What are you saying? That your husband was unjustly treated? That he was not guilty of the charges of corruption that were brought against him?”

“He was no more corrupt than anyone else.”

“That is not the point.”

“But it is the point. He was trying to change things from the inside. As Mustapha Mir was. It was a difficult position to be in. But he was honest. Corrupt, yes, but also honest. Wainwright Pasha had told Mustapha that things must be cleaned up, and that is what they were trying to do. But from the inside. It has to be from the inside if you wish to do anything in Egypt. You Effendis come and you sweep things away and put new things in their places, but the old things had their share of good and the new things do not work. Oh, you think they work, but they do not really. Your new ways only scratch the surface. If you want to get anywhere, you have to begin from within. That is what my husband was trying to do and you put him in prison-”

“The case is being reinvestigated.”

“I know. My husband said that you were there. But he said that you looked cold, that you did not understand. You see it through their eyes, the eyes of the Effendis, and not through our eyes, you do not see it as it was.”

“I will try to see it honestly.”

“No. That is not enough. You must see it sympathetically.”

“But that would be to prejudge-”

He stopped. Hadn’t McPhee said something like this?

“I shall try to see with sympathy,” he concluded lamely.

“I hope so. They say you have the gift. But I do not know how that can be,” she said despondently. “You are not part of Egypt.”

“You speak passionately for your husband.”

“I love him.”