The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [68]
I asked her how she met Trilipush, how they came to be engaged, and did she mind if I took notes.
“Oh, wonderful! Really, I wish everyone took notes when I spoke! Well, you don’t know Ralph? Oh, he’s just everything, you know. The fellows I meet around Boston, they’re not made of the same stuff, honest. I’ve had a few of Daddy’s managers look at me a certain way, some of the higher-up boys at the store, and there are some jazz men in a few of the places I go now and again, when Daddy and Inge let me, and there are some of Daddy’s business associates, J. P. O’Toole and them, but Ralph, well, he’s a whole other world, like out of storybooks for little girls. All my girlfriends say I must be pinching myself. He’s an explorer, you know, and from a family of explorers, and practically English nobility, but not the rich kind, and his accent—I mean you have a lovely accent too, Harry, but different. And he’s all alone in the world, his parents have died and he was an only child, but he had these wonderful friends at University in England, and one of them, his best friend, got killed at the end of the War, and Ralph was so heartsick, he just wanted to leave it all behind, even his country estate, which costs more money to keep up than he’s got, although he can always go back and open it up again if he wants to, and we might end up living there for a bit after the wedding. Anyway, after the War he came here to finish his book, which was a big hit, considering, you know, that it’s history, and then he started teaching at Harvard, which is the college here, and quite the best one in all of America, and now he’d rather live in America and write and teach, and after this expedition, he’s going to have pots of money, believe me, if you knew about this Egyptian stuff like Ralph does, you have to know where to look, but gold is just sitting under the sand over there.”
The fascinating thing about this little speech, Macy, was that while I didn’t doubt she thought it was true, she said it with such a tone, this little smile on her lips, as if to say that none of it meant a thing to her, not as long as I was there with her—not that I was so impressive, just that a part of her (afternoon) charm was that she’d never make you think her own fiancé mattered to her more than you, whoever you were, sitting with her just then. Maybe it was only for me, of course, and I’m sure I liked the idea that it was, at the time. She dazzled a bit, your auntie.
I repeated my question: how’d she meet this hero of our time? In her version, she had them engaged before the question of her father’s money ever arose, before the investment meeting, but she did know that Trilipush would please her father, and her father strongly supported the engagement, even if she had some doubts at the beginning. She had doubts? “Well, sure, I mean he is from a whole other world, maybe a little Boston thing like me . . .” And here, I thought, in her false modesty, she was skirting a hidden truth. I suspected she might’ve had some hesitations for good reason, something she could only sense but not yet say. I don’t compliment myself too much to say my presence helped her make comparisons, but it was clear that if she talked enough to a fellow totally unlike Trilipush, she might start realising a few things about how honest men reacted to her, and to women in general. She added: “And I did Daddy a favour by bringing Ralph to his club. I mean, I got to show him Ralph before one of the big museums funded him.”
Who was the poor, dead friend from the War? “Oh, yes, another archaeologist, his best friend from Oxford. Get a load of this name, Harry: Captain Hugo St. John Marlowe. Well, during the War, they were always taking leaves to go do their digging, and once he and Marlowe found this thing together—very mysterious name, Fragment C—and they thought they could guess where a tomb would be as a result of it, a tomb just positively filled with gold and art. They were going to look for