The Visitors Read Free Page A

mother was dead of typhoid and I was expected to share her fate; but Miss Mack had been there to nurse me and, by some quirk that my father described as merciful, I survived. Now here I was, teleported to a desert, sitting in the shade of the Sphinx’s massive paw. I inspected its weathered crumbling stones. No scorpions that I could see.
    ‘The word “typhoid” is taken from the Greek typhos , Lucy,’ my classicist father had explained. ‘It means “stupor”, but the term was also used to describe a hazy state of mind. This disorientation, or “smokiness” as you insist on calling it, is a well-documented symptom of the disease. It’s known to linger on, after the illness has apparently run its course. It will pass, I promise you. But you must learn to be patient, and give it time.’
    Eight months since my alleged ‘recovery’, and the fogginess had not cleared. My father really should not make promises he could not keep, I felt. Yet that seemed disloyal: those remarks had been made when we’d just spent our first Christmas without my mother, a period that had been painful for both of us. All I could remember of those weeks were walks around a cold, foggy, deserted Cambridge, and one terrible expedition along the banks of the Cam towards Grantchester, in the course of which my silent father broke down. Turning away from me, hiding his face, he’d left me there by the riverside. Walking at a brisk pace towards the town, he disappeared. After an interval, I too set off and reached home without incident: no harm done… I decided I’d write my father a letter that very night: I would describe the pyramids and the Sphinx and Hassan. I’d describe the further delights of the day, as laid out in Miss Mack’s master plan. I’d say nothing of Empress Eugénie; nothing of a hallucinatory pharaoh . I’d make everything lucid, including my improving health and gratitude. Yes: a lucid letter from daughter Lucy. I began to word it, stopped at Dear Father , and scanned the sands.
    The heat of the morning was pleasant, still bearable, and just sufficient to make the light bend, waver and deceive. In the distance, Miss Mack was supervising the unloading of baskets, a small folding table and snow-white napery. I took another swallow of water and forced it down. I turned my gaze towards the Great Pyramid, where the man called Bertie had finally reached the summit. He removed his tweed cap and shouted, ‘Huzzah!’ Loud cheers came from the spectators below. Bertie, it seemed, had come prepared: from inside his Norfolk jacket he produced a small flag and waved it victoriously. I raised the field glasses and focused them. The flag was a Union Jack. Bertie fixed it between the stones at the pyramid’s summit where it fluttered briefly. There were more cheers, then groans as the flag blew away.
    Behind this group, I saw, a large car was approaching, bumping its way across the sand. It described a circle, made for the Sphinx, reconsidered, and finally came to a halt in the shade of some palm trees about fifty yards away. I watched as its occupants climbed from the car: first, a young but portly man, balding and with a markedly high, prominent forehead, wearing a flamboyant bow tie; then a woman, festooned with scarves; and finally a girl of around my own age, who jumped from the car, ran a few yards, and then performed a cartwheel. I watched as she followed it up with a somersault, and then reached into the car and fetched out desert gear. A fly-switch, a pair of dark glasses. I stared in astonishment as she put them on. Such sophistication, dark glasses for a child, how I envied her this protection from the punitive light; how free she looked, how her dark hair, almost black, shone.
    ‘Hot, hot, hot ,’ she called to her mother – was it her mother? They were the first words I heard her say. ‘Daddy, it’s baking. I told you it would be.’
    Her voice was light, discernibly American. Her father shrugged. ‘Sure it’s