The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt. Michael Pearce
was to the British Museum, of course.’
‘A difficult balance of interests,’ said Paul, smiling and shaking his head. ‘Difficult for all of us.’
Nuri caught at his arm.
‘And therefore, my friend, to be approached with circumspection. You will urge that, won’t you? This could create such problems for us—’
‘A few antiquities?’
‘Not so few. Not these days. Now that the price of cotton is so low. Some of my colleagues are going in for it in a big way. Raquat Pasha was telling me that he had appointed a European agent. Sidki Narwas Pasha has a permanent arrangement with a German museum. Two or three are getting together. Even the Khedive—’
Owen listened with deepening gloom. They were all in it, the big Pashas, the Khedive, the museums. It was a national industry.
‘We rely on it,’ Nuri was saying with emphasis. ‘Absolutely rely on it. You must do something, my friend.’
Across the room Zeinab and Miss Skinner were bringing their conversation to an end.
‘Surely there is something you can do, mon cher?’ said Nuri earnestly to Paul. ‘Persuade her to take up other interests, perhaps?’
‘Well, there is the Women Question—’
‘Ah yes,’ said Nuri thoughtfully.
‘But more immediately,’ said Paul, ‘there are her archæological interests. I am taking her down to Der el Bahari at the end of this week.’
‘Are you? Are you, indeed?’
The conversation ended and the women rose together.
‘You do see now, don’t you, Pasha,’ said Paul quietly, ‘the importance of these political questions?’
‘Oh, quite,’ said Nuri. ‘Oh, quite.’
‘It would be very unfortunate if Miss Skinner were to get the wrong impression.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Nuri Pasha. ‘I know exactly how to handle Miss Skinner.’
Owen stuck his head into the bar room.
‘Trevelyan here?’
‘No,’ said someone. ‘He left this morning. He’s on his way to Der el Bahari by now.’
‘With our blessings,’ said someone else.
‘There’s a lot of money riding on it,’ said Carmichael, from Customs.
‘Why’s that?’ asked Owen, coming definitely into the room.
‘It’s that damned woman,’ said someone, Jopling, from Finance. ‘We’ve promised him free drinks for a month if he can keep her down there for a fortnight.’
‘More if he can do it for longer.’
‘It’s the end of the year,’ someone explained, ‘the financial year, that is. We’re up to our eyeballs in work reconciling everything in sight. And then this damned woman comes along, poking her nose in.’
‘I don’t mind her poking her nose in,’ said Jopling. ‘It’s having to take time off to answer her silly questions.’
‘If she’d just read the Accounts,’ said someone else, obviously also from Finance, ‘that would be fine. But she wants to go behind them, keeps asking what they mean.’
‘As if they meant anything, other than just an end-of-year story to keep everybody happy.’
‘So we promised Trevelyan he could have free drinks every evening if he’d only get her out of our hair.’
‘It’s worth it.’
‘It certainly is,’ said Owen. ‘I’d have cut myself in if I’d known. Wahid whisky-soda, min fadlak.’
He collected the whisky-soda and sat down in a corner with Jopling and Carmichael.
‘Has she been getting in your hair, too?’ asked Carmichael.
‘My God, Owen,’ said Jopling, ‘if she’s been looking at your finances—!’
‘Thank you, not yet. She’s concentrating on the whitewash boys rather than the workers. It’s the antiques export business,’ he said to Carmichael.
‘That? The export licence stuff?’
‘She can forget that,’ said Jopling. ‘The Treasury people back in Town are all Free-Traders. Now that the Liberals are back in power. They won’t hear of a licence.’
‘I don’t know where she stands on the licence business,’ said Owen. ‘From what I’ve gathered, it’s more a question of whether to allow antiques to be exported at all.’
‘She wants to ban that? Bloody hell, that would create a rumpus.’
‘It would. It is already.’
Jopling regarded him curiously.
‘How do you come to be involved? It’s not really your line, is it?’ Like many people, he was uncertain exactly what was the Mamur Zapt’s line. ‘More Carmichael’s.’
‘Enforcement,’ said Carmichael. ‘He’s on the enforcement side.’
‘Stopping the smuggling? Blimey, you’ve got a job on! Good luck, mate!’
He drained his glass. Carmichael ordered another round.
‘That’s not the only thing,’ said Owen. He told them about the incident in the Ataba.
‘Somebody tried to push her under a tram?’ said Jopling. ‘Wish I’d thought of that. Might have been cheaper than the beer.’
‘No one did anything,’ scoffed Carmichael. ‘She’s imagining things.’
‘That’s a bit like the conclusion I’m coming to,’ said Owen.
Owen heard the water-carrier before he saw him. Even in the uproar of the Ataba-el-Khadra he heard the clanging of the little brass cups. They gave out a note as clear as a bell.
And there he was, the brass cups slung round his neck in front of him, on his back a resplendent brass urn and, lower down, dangling from his waist, two black bulging water-skins.
In the richer parts of the city the water-sellers sometimes wore the old national dress; in the poorer, they dressed in rags. This one compromised, wearing shirt-style tunic on top, rags below, so that it didn’t matter when he walked into the Nile to replenish his skins.
As he moved through the crowd, slowly because of his burden, he gave the traditional cry: ‘May God compensate me!’
Owen caught his eye and the man moved towards him.
‘Compensation is at hand, brother!’ he said.
The man smiled, produced a cup, bent deftly and a cool, clear spurt of water leaped over his shoulder and into the cup without spilling a drop.
‘And there is yet more compensation if you can tell me what I seek to know.’
He took the cup and sipped it.
‘If I know, then I will tell you,’ said the man.
‘Two days ago,’ said Owen, ‘you were at this spot at this time and you were able to help a lady when she fell.’
The water-seller looked at him curiously.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I remember the lady.’
‘What else do you remember?’ asked Owen. ‘Did you see her fall?’
‘I saw her fall and I saw her hit the tram and I thought: God protect her! And I think He did, for when I got to her she was lying beside the tram, hurt, I think, but not