red-handed… Yes, a tomb built for Queen Hatshepsut, so my hopes were high… A sixty-foot passageway into the rock, two hundred tons of rubble to clear, and all we found was an empty unused sarcophagus. The tomb was so well hidden Hatshepsut could have lain there unmolested for millennia. But she ruled as a king, and was determined to be buried as one. So she constructed a new tomb for herself in the Valley, where it was plundered in antiquity like all the others. A king’s status she aped, and a king’s fate she shared.’
‘Oh, Mr Carter, too exciting, how marvellously brave ,’ one of the admirers sighed – and I silently agreed.
What I thought of as my best Carter sighting came at the celebrated Mena House Hotel in the desert outside Cairo. It was a place where the rich – British, American, Egyptian and European – went to swim, play tennis or golf, to admire the antiques, to sample the delicious food – or simply to see and be seen. It had originally been built by the Khedive, the then-monarch of Egypt, as a sporting lodge for desert shooting parties; and such shoots, organised by British officers, were still popular. They’d massacre ducks at dawn on the Nile marshes, then assemble at the Mena House for hearty breakfasts of porridge, bacon and eggs.
The interior was that peculiar marriage I’d begun to recognise as Anglo-Oriental: you’d be served Earl Grey tea while lounging on divans; your scones or Victoria sponge cake would be served by a man in Bedouin robes. You could stroll outside to admire the famous herbaceous borders, where Egyptian gardeners in djellabas kept up a constant watering regime. You’d discover that, thanks to determination, an inexhaustible supply of money and dirt-cheap labour, the lavender, delphiniums and roses of an English manor house garden could be made to thrive in the desert, within yards of the pyramids.
Carter was alone that evening at Mena House – and he showed no wish to greet or even acknowledge the numerous friends and acquaintances of his who were present. In misfit-mode, scowling and abstracted, he made his way across the terrace, ignoring those who called his name or rose to waylay him. From the windows of the crowded hotel dining room, I watched him stroll outside, and then make his way across the lush lawns, from which the view of the nearby pyramids was justly famous.
Carter lingered there, in the lurid after-glow that follows an Egyptian sunset, framed by palms, oleanders, roses and dahlias; he was staring in the direction of the desert and the darkening blood-red sky. After a while, he took out a silver cigarette box and a gold holder, lit a cigarette and stood smoking it contemplatively. Outlined against the violent mauve of the oleanders, with the vast black shape of a pyramid looming over him, he remained there for some time. I watched the pyramid creep up on him – a celebrated and eerie effect, caused by some trickery of the light. This uncanny advance continued; then, when the pyramid had crept so close it seemed about to crush the garden and Carter with it, he extracted the cigarette from its glittering holder, threw a precautionary glance over his shoulder, tossed the stub into the flower borders and turned to go.
I expected him to return to the hotel and was sure he would come across to our table: we were with the Winlocks; Lord Carnarvon’s daughter, Lady Evelyn, had just joined us, and she had known Carter from her childhood, as Frances had explained. Surely they would catch his eye and, seeing such old friends, he’d gladly join us? I nerved myself for a meeting, but Mr Carter never materialised; when I next looked out to the gardens, darkness had fallen and he had vanished into thin air.
By then, and just as Miss Mack had hoped, I was discovering what fun was. The days of dutiful perambulations from one must-see tourist site to another, and of religious readings from the guidebooks, were over. We’d dispensed with the regulation
‘Oh, Mr Carter, too exciting, how marvellously brave ,’ one of the admirers sighed – and I silently agreed.
What I thought of as my best Carter sighting came at the celebrated Mena House Hotel in the desert outside Cairo. It was a place where the rich – British, American, Egyptian and European – went to swim, play tennis or golf, to admire the antiques, to sample the delicious food – or simply to see and be seen. It had originally been built by the Khedive, the then-monarch of Egypt, as a sporting lodge for desert shooting parties; and such shoots, organised by British officers, were still popular. They’d massacre ducks at dawn on the Nile marshes, then assemble at the Mena House for hearty breakfasts of porridge, bacon and eggs.
The interior was that peculiar marriage I’d begun to recognise as Anglo-Oriental: you’d be served Earl Grey tea while lounging on divans; your scones or Victoria sponge cake would be served by a man in Bedouin robes. You could stroll outside to admire the famous herbaceous borders, where Egyptian gardeners in djellabas kept up a constant watering regime. You’d discover that, thanks to determination, an inexhaustible supply of money and dirt-cheap labour, the lavender, delphiniums and roses of an English manor house garden could be made to thrive in the desert, within yards of the pyramids.
Carter was alone that evening at Mena House – and he showed no wish to greet or even acknowledge the numerous friends and acquaintances of his who were present. In misfit-mode, scowling and abstracted, he made his way across the terrace, ignoring those who called his name or rose to waylay him. From the windows of the crowded hotel dining room, I watched him stroll outside, and then make his way across the lush lawns, from which the view of the nearby pyramids was justly famous.
Carter lingered there, in the lurid after-glow that follows an Egyptian sunset, framed by palms, oleanders, roses and dahlias; he was staring in the direction of the desert and the darkening blood-red sky. After a while, he took out a silver cigarette box and a gold holder, lit a cigarette and stood smoking it contemplatively. Outlined against the violent mauve of the oleanders, with the vast black shape of a pyramid looming over him, he remained there for some time. I watched the pyramid creep up on him – a celebrated and eerie effect, caused by some trickery of the light. This uncanny advance continued; then, when the pyramid had crept so close it seemed about to crush the garden and Carter with it, he extracted the cigarette from its glittering holder, threw a precautionary glance over his shoulder, tossed the stub into the flower borders and turned to go.
I expected him to return to the hotel and was sure he would come across to our table: we were with the Winlocks; Lord Carnarvon’s daughter, Lady Evelyn, had just joined us, and she had known Carter from her childhood, as Frances had explained. Surely they would catch his eye and, seeing such old friends, he’d gladly join us? I nerved myself for a meeting, but Mr Carter never materialised; when I next looked out to the gardens, darkness had fallen and he had vanished into thin air.
By then, and just as Miss Mack had hoped, I was discovering what fun was. The days of dutiful perambulations from one must-see tourist site to another, and of religious readings from the guidebooks, were over. We’d dispensed with the regulation
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