Michael Pearce - The Bride Box

‘Well, there is heart in this …’

‘Not if you’re a penniless girl, there isn’t! It would have been a good match. Better than she would ever have hoped for on her own. She should have been pleased. Delighted! But still she clung to her first thought and would not let it go.’

‘Karim, you mean?’

‘Yes! And he was out of the question. And it would not have been right. Karim is … well, you know how Karim is. He could not be a good husband to her! Nor to anyone! Oh, she felt tender towards him, and sorry for him. But that is not the same thing. From her point of view, as well as from his, it had to be stopped. So I tried to turn her eyes in a different direction.’

‘You tried to arrange a marriage for her?’

‘Yes! In the ordinary way. It is what her mother would have done. And her father should have done. So I spoke to someone, and he agreed. He was willing to take her. And … and she would not even have had to leave the house. She could have gone on living there — yes. Yes, she could have gone on being kind to Karim. Of course, she couldn’t have … But, then, poor boy, I don’t think it could have happened anyway. Not on his side. There was no question of that. And her husband would not have minded. Not her being kind to Karim. Since there could be no question of more. He was willing for it to be like that; he knew Karim. I spoke to him about it and he was willing for it to be like that. It would have solved all the problems. She would have been happy, he would have been happy. Karim would have been happy. But she could not let it be so! She wanted more. More than we could give.’

‘Who was this man?’

‘Suleiman.’

There was a shift in the pattern of activity in the midan. Men were carrying the sacks of trocchee shells to the railway line and laying them alongside the track, and camels were coming in steady succession to the station to pick up the bales of gum arabic. When they were loaded, they were led to the far side of the midan, where camels and men were assembling. The camels were made to lie down but the loads were not removed. Owen realized that they were getting ready to leave.

He went to the station office, where he found Babikr standing in again. He said that his brother had still not recovered from his long ride to the Pasha’s estate and back.

‘But all is in order, Effendi,’ he assured Owen.

‘The loads are being readied for departure,’ said Owen.

‘Yes, Effendi,’ said Babikr. ‘There is a goods train coming in and the trocchee shells will be put on it. And some of the gum arabic. The rest will go by camel to the coast.’

‘And the boxes?’

Babikr hesitated. ‘Not here yet,’ he said.

At the last moment, a train of donkeys appeared with the boxes. The donkeys were lined up beside the tracks and their drivers stood by them. Other men joined them.

And then Owen saw him — the white man he had caught watching him earlier. He came up and stood by the boxes and appeared to be counting them. Apparently he was satisfied, for he nodded and stood back.

In the distance a train blew its whistle and, shortly afterwards, came into sight. It drew into the station and stopped. Immediately, there was a frenzy of activity. The doors of the wagons were thrown open and the sacks and bales put inside.

The boxes were loaded separately in a special wagon. The white man stood over the loading until it was complete and the door slammed closed again. Then he stepped away. He watched until the train drew out of the station.

‘Clarke Effendi likes to see that all is done as he had decreed,’ said Babikr.

‘And was Suleiman content?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘He was content,’ said the Pasha’s lady. ‘His other wife is growing old. And, besides, he knew he would be well rewarded.’

‘But Soraya was not content?’

‘No.’

‘Did Suleiman know this?’

‘He knew it and was angered. Who was Soraya, a poor basket maker’s daughter, to set herself up against a Pasha’s lady and a man of worth? Again, you see, it was presumption. “She will need to have it knocked out of her,” he said, “and that I will do. I promise you, after we are married.”’

‘Did her father know about this?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘Mustapha?’ The lady hesitated. ‘He knew I had marriage in mind for her. But I had not mentioned Suleiman’s name. It was not settled.’

‘He still hoped, perhaps with her, that …’

‘He was as foolish as his daughter. But the thing about a man like Mustapha is that, for the price of a drink, he will do whatever you ask. He was of no account.’

‘But Suleiman was of account?’

‘A worthy man,’ said the Pasha’s lady. ‘Too worthy for a girl like her.’

‘He knew what you were thinking of?’

‘Of course.’

‘And when he learned that she had refused him, was he angered?’

‘Of course. What man would not be? A chit of a girl! Who thought herself too good to be a servant with the other servants!’

‘And, of course, Suleiman was one of those servants.’

‘The thought that she might look down on him was intolerable to him. As anyone would expect!’

‘He was angered?’

‘Who would not be?’

‘And when he learned that she had refused him …?’

‘Angered again. But, perhaps, knowing who she was, and what she was like, not discontent.’

‘Yet angered,’ said Mahmoud. ‘And he was the one who was giving the slaver’s men their instructions?’

The Pasha’s lady said nothing.

‘Again I ask,’ said Mahmoud, ‘what were those instructions?’

‘And again I reply,’ said the Pasha’s lady, ‘that I do not know.’

‘But you must know. For you first gave Suleiman the instructions.’

‘I instructed him to tell them that they were to take her home, and her accursed bride box with her.’

‘And that was all?’

The lady was silent again. Then she gave a little shiver. ‘I know what you are thinking. But that was all.’

As Mahmoud rode back to Denderah, he was not displeased with the way things had gone. He felt that his investigation had advanced. True, there were further questions to be asked. But he felt that the number of people of whom they had to be asked had narrowed down. Admittedly, it was not going to be easy to ask them, since Suleiman was in the Sudan and likely to remain there: and the slavers were who knew where. But Suleiman would in the end be reached, and so, he thought, would be the slavers. They might well be in the same place. Their actual apprehension might have to be left to others. But in the end they would be brought home to the Parquet roost.

There was, he thought, little more that he could do here. So he was not as depressed, or as angered, as he might have been when he got back to Denderah and found a message recalling him at once to Cairo. Not as angered as he might have been, but nevertheless very surprised.

Owen was surprised, too, and thoughtful. Was this an expression of rivalries inside the Parquet? Of the jealousies of the old? He knew that Mahmoud’s speedy ascent was resented by some inside the Parquet. Mahmoud had told him that some of the senior people there had it in for him because of his political sympathies, that possibly his very assignment to the case had been a means of getting him out of the way. Owen thought that sometimes Mahmoud’s fear was overdone but guessed there might be something in it.

But what troubled him was the possibility that Mahmoud had been whisked back to Cairo precisely because someone there was worried that he was actually getting somewhere. And didn’t want him to.

And how far was this connected with the slavery issue? Strictly speaking, that was Owen’s concern and not Mahmoud’s; but the two cases — Soraya’s murder and the revival of slaving — were connected, and perhaps others knew that as well as he did. It was something to be looked into when he returned to Cairo.