Sphinx Read online

  In the political chaos much of the original furniture had also been abandoned. Like many Alexandrian Europeans during the Suez Crisis in 1956, the plant manager had fled overnight but the Art Deco furniture, sofas and wall hangings remained; mementos of obscene wealth, all lovingly maintained by Ibrihim.

  The bedroom door was ajar. The curtains were drawn and it was dark inside; I almost stumbled over an oxygen cylinder abandoned on the floor next to a wetsuit and a diving mask. In the dim light I could just make out Isabella’s sleeping form sprawled on top of the bedcovers.

  Quietly, I switched on a side lamp. There were maps spread out over the rugs - the spidery cartography of the sea floor, a parallel subterranean landscape, seductive in its mystery. In the middle of this pile lay a sheet of paper showing a drawing of a metal contraption: a fantastical device of dials and cogs held together in a wooden casing. The dials were engraved with a series of marks or symbols, like clock faces. I knew this was a fictional depiction of the astrarium drawn by my art-student brother Gareth. Isabella was close to Gareth, closer than I was in fact, and had commissioned the illustration after briefing him from snippets of visual research that she had amassed over the years. And now here it was - my nemesis, the one thing we always argued about - placed like a shrine in the centre of the floor.

  Oblivious to the outside world, Isabella had fallen asleep with her clothes on. As I picked my way across the scattered papers it was easy to imagine her exhausted, falling across the bed after a day of diving. I didn’t have the heart to wake her.

  Instead, I sat in a battered leather armchair and watched her. The moonlight filtered in to illuminate her strong face.

  Isabella wasn’t a beautiful woman in any conventional sense of the word. Her profile was just a little too angular to be considered feminine, her lips a little too thin. She had no breasts to speak of, I could almost span the width of her hips with one hand, and there was a constant hunger in the way she held her body, a tipping forward as if she was always ready to run. But her eyes were exquisite. Her irises were black; a kind of ebony that changed to violet if you stared long enough. They were the most startling aspect of her face; disproportionately large, the rest of her features seemed to fall away from them. Then there were her hands - beautiful working hands with long fingers - tanned and worn, showing the hours immersed in water or spent painstakingly piecing together ancient objects.

  Outside the villa, a nightjar churred. Isabella stirred, groaned and rolled onto her side. I smiled and sighed, regretting our argument and the subsequent long weeks of angry silence. Isabella was how I anchored myself: to culture, to emotion, to place. And I was a man who craved place. I had grown up in a mining village in Cumbria and sometimes even now, in my dreams, I saw the sweeping plains of Ordovician limestone, the landscape of my childhood. I was drawn to solidity, to the slower-evolving manifestations of nature. If I were to describe myself it would be as a listener, a man of few words. Isabella was different. She used language to define herself, to ambush the moment and talk it into history. Nevertheless, she was able to read stillness, especially my stillness. That was the second reason why I’d fallen in love with her.

  Isabella did not move. Finally I couldn’t help myself. I leaned over and she woke, consciousness travelling slowly across her face to finally form a smile. Without saying anything she reached up and wrapped her arms around me. I sank down and joined her on the bed.

  Isabella’s sexuality was an organic part of her nature; a spontaneous wildness that kept us both excited. We made love in exotic places: a telephone booth, beneath the tarpaulin of a boat in full view of the busy Indian port of Kochi, on the Scottish moors. But whatever the context, Isabella liked to stay in control. With her eyelashes brushing my cheeks, we kissed and I caressed her. Soon it felt as if there was nothing but the flame of her irises, her hardening nipples, her wetness.

  I lay there afterwards, curled around her as she slipped back into sleep. Staring across the room, I listened to the sound of the rain lashing the windows. My last thought was one of thanks - for my marriage, for my life, for surviving. One of those moments of clarity one has in the dead of night: a quiet realisation that this might be happiness.

  2

  Two hours later I woke to find Isabella standing by the open balcony door; hair flying wildly, naked against the early morning, the silk curtains swirling dervishes propelled by the wind.

  ‘Isabella, it’s freezing!’

  Ignoring me, she stared out at the thunderous clouds low over the trees. I got out of bed, grabbed a dressing gown and wrapped her in it, then shut the doors.

  ‘Please, can we get some sleep?’

  ‘I can’t. Oliver, how many years have I worked towards finding this astrarium? Ten? Fifteen? And it will be today, I know it!’

  I glanced back at the window - the sky was as dark as it had been yesterday. ‘That’s not diving weather.’

  ‘I’m diving anyway.’

  ‘Can’t it wait a couple of days until the storm blows over?’

  ‘No. Oliver, you don’t understand—’ She broke off, staring into the distance. I decided to change my argument.

  ‘I’m assuming you have back-up with you - some of the French archaeologists, the Italians?’

  Apart from an English archaeologist called Amelia Lynhurst, and a new young French academic who had just set up offices near the Stadium, marine archaeology was virtually unheard of in Alexandria, despite rumours of Cleopatra’s sunken palace in the bay. Up until recently the political situation, dealing with poverty and the needs of Alexandria’s citizens, had taken precedence.

  Isabella smiled wryly. ‘I’m afraid it’s only me and Faakhir.’

  Faakhir Alsayla was a young diver with whom Isabella had been working over the past few months. Although he was trustworthy and enthusiastic as well as a great diver, the young Arab was not an archaeologist.

  ‘Christ, Isabella.’ I would have preferred her to be part of an authorised team. It was dangerous to dive illegally in Egypt, a country understandably nervous of both clandestine military surveillance from its enemies and of further plundering of its ancient underwater treasures. The only way to do it legally was to be accompanied by an Egyptian official and a recognised team of foreign archaeologists, rules by which Isabella never really abided. She was a rebel in her own field and was not liked for it. But whatever her professional standing she was often lucky in her chosen sites. A mixed blessing, it was this mysterious accuracy that was the cause of both suspicion and fear from her peers.

  We seemed to share this gift of divination, something I refused to discuss. I’d always felt that to have acknowledged this shared intuition meant I would be undermining not just my scientific training but also the fierce atheism I had adopted in reaction against my strict Catholic upbringing.

  ‘Let’s talk about it later.’ I tried to pull Isabella back towards the bed, with no success.

  ‘Oliver, I have to dive today! It’s all planned. We’ve found the site of a Ra shipwreck that I’m sure belongs to Cleopatra. It dates from the Battle of Actium. The astrarium could have been on board - the Greek historian Siculus mentions such an object being given to Cleopatra at her coronation.’

  ‘What’s the rush? You’ve waited years. Surely it can wait a few days?’

  ‘I don’t have a few days.’ Her desperation seemed to have reached new heights and I didn’t fully understand the nature of her distress: all I knew was that Isabella could easily become intractable. I looked at her, searching for another tactic.

  ‘Sweetheart, the whole area’s a military zone.’ I slipped an arm around her waist.

  ‘I’ve made provisions. There’ll be an official on the boat.’

  ‘Really? Or is this some dubious character you’ve bribed?’

  She shrugged off my arm. ‘I’m making that dive, no matter what!’

  But under her anger I thought she looked apprehensive. Perhaps about us, the marriage, our careers. But, if I hadn’t known
her better, I might have assumed it was fear.

  ‘So you really believe the astrarium was aboard this ship?’ I asked, more conciliatory. ‘Why would Cleopatra take it into the middle of a raging sea battle?’

  ‘She was desperate. The political alliances of the time had shifted, putting her and Mark Antony into a dangerous position while Octavian tried to establish his power. She knew that Mark Antony was delusional about his military supremacy. She also knew that if Octavian won, he would murder her lover and sacrifice their children. This was a woman who had staked all on winning. Siculus described the astrarium as a powerful weapon that could predict when to sail and when to attack. She must have taken it to help her lover.’

  I struggled to keep my expression neutral. I believed in a world of cause and effect: crushed carbon made diamonds; crushed limestone, marble; compressed organic material, oil. This was my world: palpable, exploitable. Isabella’s world was far more spiritual: there was a karmic logic to the outcome of events; the personal had an immediate impact on the political, the micro on the macro. I thought this a misinformed perception; an anthropocentric outlook that bred complacency; the determinist’s investment in the notion of meaningful destiny.

  ‘If Cleopatra had the astrarium and it was able to influence the outcome of the battle, why did she flee and abandon Mark Antony to Octavian?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. But if it had been me, I would have fought to change my fate right up to the last minute. The astrarium would have saved her, I know it.’ Her obsessive tone worried me. Again, the desire to protect her shot through me but I knew that to stand between Isabella and her quest would mean the end of our marriage and certainly any respect she held for me. A fiercely independent woman who had consciously fought both her family and her culture for the right to pursue her profession, I had no choice but to trust her judgement. Nevertheless there was something unsettling about this particular dive that I couldn’t quite place my finger on - all of her obsession seemed to be leading to this one event.

  There was a huge clap of thunder outside. A violent gust of wind threw open the French windows and pushed over a cane chair.

  ‘That’s cyclone weather,’ I told her as I secured the doors. ‘You are not diving today!’

  ‘It’s too dangerous for me not to dive!’ she yelled.

  Isabella was almost hysterical by now and I knew it was pointless to continue to argue.

  ‘You can dive tomorrow, first light,’ I said, pulling her into an embrace. ‘I’ll go with you, okay? But this day is for us. We’ll do something nice. Isn’t it the anniversary of your grandfather’s birthday? We could visit your grandmother. By tomorrow morning the storm will have cleared and visibility is going to be much better.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she murmured into my chest. But she let me guide her back to bed.

  Back then I thought we had all the time in the world.

  Already the salty tang of the sea air was discernible above the exhaust fumes and the wafting scent of incense billowing from jars placed outside night stalls, an odour tainted by the ubiquitous but faint smell of sewage. Isabella wound up the taxi window; we were driving down the Corniche - the long seafront path that swung around the glittering curve of the Eastern Harbour. We stopped at a red light and I glanced across at the cafés on the sidewalk. Huddled around small tables were groups of men, some dressed in pale brown jellabas and blue turbans, the traditional dress of the fellahin, others in Western clothes, sharing the large hookah pipes with their colourful corded stems snaking out into the mouth of the smoker. Inside one of the cafés a black-and-white television blared out to a small argumentative knot of men and youths. A football game was playing. A penalty was being taken and a sudden cheer catapulted through the men, reminding me of England and the long afternoons spent watching football with my father and brother.

  I turned back to face the Mediterranean. The emptiness of the panorama was in stark contrast to the frenetic metropolis nestled up beside it. Liberating the eye, this elemental minimalism was always a comfort to me. It took me away from humanity, from the mistakes we make, the noisiness of life. In Alexandria, as in the rest of Egypt, this polarity was exaggerated. The desert touched the sea, just as the green fecundity of the delta surrounding the Nile and its canals butted right up against the sand. It was said that Alexandria had a front door and a back door and little else.

  North-west of the bay, out there under the waves, lay Isabella’s archaeological site. A place where once the great sea battle between Mark Antony and Octavian had taken place, it was easy to imagine the long ancient wooden bat+tleships, oars creaking as they raced against each other, galley slaves lighting the flaming balls to catapult them high across the waves, the battering rams ready. Isabella had grown up among myths of Cleopatra’s subterranean city Herakleion, and family friends would tell stories of swimming amongst strange sunken statues, ruins of palaces. Tales that buried themselves deep in her psyche, drawing her irredeemably to their mystery. I couldn’t help being proud of the explorer within her, regardless of how it impacted on our relationship. Reaching across, I took her hand as the taxi continued down towards her grandmother’s villa.

  The wealthy suburb of Bulkely still retained some of its original mansions, wrought-iron gates enclosing gardens of tumbling bougainvillea, Lotus trees and blossoming cacti as well as palm trees. Isabella’s family, the Brambillas, had once been one of the key dynasties within the large and influential Italian-Alexandrian community. Isabella’s father, Paolo, had died shortly after the Suez Crisis in 1956 when, in reaction to the military attack on Egypt by the French, British and Israelis - an attack triggered by President Nasser’s decision to nationalise the Suez canal after the US and Britain withdrew an offer to fund the building of the Aswan Dam - Nasser took control of all of the foreign-owned companies and exiled many of the old colonial class. President of the Italian Rowing Club, the Rotary Club and owner of a large and highly successful cotton-ginning mill, Paolo had been transformed from owner to manager overnight and the factory that processed the cottonseed had been handed over to the fellahin who had worked the cotton fields for centuries. The humiliation had been too much for the Don and he had died of a heart attack several weeks later. Cecilia, his young wife, remarried within the year and moved back to Italy, leaving her eight-year-old daughter with her in-laws to be brought up.

  Isabella had barely talked to her mother over the years. Her grandfather Giovanni Brambilla, a man broken by the death of his son and the decline of the family, had retreated into the two passions that had always preoccupied him - hunting and Egyptology - until his death ten years ago. Now his widow, Francesca Brambrilla, was forced to rent out the top floor of her villa and had been pawning her jewellery for decades. Nevertheless, she retained her loyal Sudanese housekeeper, Aadeel, who had come with her as part of her trousseau. Although Aadeel was an official tenant of the villa these days and not an indentured employee, he still wore the uniform of the pre-Revolution servant: a red turban and traditional Egyptian male attire. It was the last act in a drama that both were determined to play out: obsolete roles from a bygone era.

  The Brambilla villa, although dilapidated, was still impressive. A familiar sense of intimidation rose in me as the taxi pulled up in front of its marble-pillared entrance. Isabella’s background was one of assumed wealth, even when most of the money had been lost. But I’d come from nothing. I’d grown up with a miner for a father and an Irish Catholic mother who was deeply religious, yet had outraged her own parents by marrying a Protestant. It had always seemed to me that she’d never quite forgiven my father for seducing her away from her own family. She was a piano teacher who had greater aspirations for her children than did my pragmatic, deeply stoic father who thought it good enough for his sons to follow him down into the mine. Despite this ongoing feud, my parents’ marriage had been one of great love and after my mother died a couple of years ago my father had become as lost as a rudderless boat.

  My
childhood had taught me that if there was a God he’d certainly abandoned my parents to their hardships. It seemed to me that the poorer you were the more religious you were likely to be - an abdication of taking responsibility of one’s fate - and it had led to my abandonment of Catholicism, to socialist tendencies at university and finally to my material aspirations.

  As we both climbed out of the taxi we noticed a yellow Fiat sports car. ‘That’s Hermes’s car,’ Isabella said with a wary tone to her voice. ‘That’ll make it an interesting encounter.’

  I glanced over, surprised. Normally Isabella would have been enthusiastic about seeing Hermes, one of her few mentors.

  ‘I thought Francesca hated him?’

  ‘Exactly, but today would’ve been my grandfather’s birthday and Hermes always visits, as he did when my grandfather was still alive. Nonna is just too well-bred to refuse him.’

  Hermes Hemiedes, an Egyptologist, had been an old friend of Isabella’s grandfather. When Giovanni Brambilla died, Hermes had formed a relationship with the granddaughter, sharing a fascination - obsession, I thought - with mysticism, astrology and spiritual philosophies. A very reputable interpreter, he and Isabella spent hours together poring over hieroglyphs that she needed translated. Isabella trusted him completely and although I didn’t approve of Hermes’s influence over Isabella in mystical matters he had a dry wit that I found appealing.