The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [115]
And I will make what you so endearingly call my “Find,” no matter the obstacles, no matter the misunderstandings or outright treachery, the yellow fog of crisscrossed letters. Your father is confused about me, or he was, but this will pass, if it has not already, and not another word need be spoken. On 19 November, your Ralph was thinking about you with love, no matter your father’s passing worries, no matter the curse of Ferrell you are suffering on my account. You will read this when I come home, and we will compare notes, and laugh at the distortions of time and distance and postage.
Since Trilipush’s find, I found Boston suddenly chilly. There was neither money nor love here. I had only that tongue-lashing I took from Finneran and Margaret’s refreshed insistence that Trilipush and only Trilipush was everything to her. Days passed and I didn’t hear from Margaret and I no longer went to their home. I was ready to wash my hands of the cursed Finnerans. If Trilipush had found his dirty gold, either he’d come home or he wouldn’t, and you know what my bet was. It made no difference to me, because if he’d killed Paul Caldwell, I’d go to Egypt to prove it, to shout it loud enough for even the stubborn Finnerans to hear round the world.
I spent slow, empty days checking my transcripts, redrafting notes, submitting my reports and expenses to London, interviewing another of Trilipush’s students, or explaining to HQ why my pursuit of Paul Davies had required so much time in Boston. I hardly think they cared. I wrote my other clients, telling Tommy Caldwell, Emma Hoyt, Ronald Barry, and the Marlowes of my progress.
I would sit in my hotel, doing this busywork, waiting for the day to head to New York, hoping Margaret would come looking for me one last time, or if, in some anger, I finally saw that that was unlikely, I was just waiting for news, for anything. I felt that something clear and clarifying would happen; there’d come a moment when it would be obvious that the time had come for me to move on to Egypt or, instead, to stay close to Margaret’s side, to protect her, to catch her in the storm that was sure to come. I was a young man, Macy. Something could’ve changed with her. Life could’ve taken any number of turns, you know. And so if I sometimes stood outside her home, raging in the dark, I know you can understand that, as a man of the world.
And I did see her a few more evenings: once she turned up, and all evening didn’t mention his name even once, just fell asleep on JP’s sofa with her head on my lap and her hand in mine, abusing me cruelly, and I watched her breathe for hours and hours. She’d appear at my hotel these last nights, and each time I had my little speech ready; maybe this was the night she would fall into my arms and I would save her. But the time was never right. She’d be vicious, call me a crybaby or a bore if I ever stopped making her laugh or refused to dance. On the way to the club she’d be telling me about Trilipush’s latest news (always good, always vague), and no sooner were we inside JP’s than she was climbing the stairs looking for the man himself and her drug. I’d sit there stroking her head, and then, when she was able, I’d walk her home, struggle, in the grey dawn light, for the words, for even the opportunity of words. I vowed again to end this.
Monday, 20 November, 1922
Withdraw pay for the men, though the account audibly creaks at the disbursement. It hardly matters. I will go without before they will; I will never abandon my men. And I am off to the site.
I arrived at just the right moment to prevent a cataclysm: I found the dark bastards setting at Door C with a sledgehammer. I was as affected as if they were striking me. Ahmed was sitting there, smoking one