The Serpent on the Crown - Elizabeth Peters [25]
They joined Katherine for a late luncheon and then the Vandergelts went with them to where their horses were waiting. Walking with Ramses, Bertie slowed his steps till they were some distance behind the others, and Ramses braced himself. He was Bertie’s chosen confidant, a role he would rather have refused, since he could offer the disconsolate lover no encouragement. Bertie had set his sights on the pretty Egyptian girl several years ago, but Ramses wouldn’t have given much for his chances. Jumana was an ardent feminist and fiercely dedicated to her career, and Bertie’s mother had done her best to discourage her son. Katherine had lost most of her prejudice against “colored races,” but marriage with her son was a different matter, the last barrier of bigotry, which few Europeans ever overcame.
“Perhaps you’ve been too assiduous,” he suggested. “Try ignoring her for a while, or pay attention to another girl.”
“I did try that,” Bertie said morosely. “It didn’t have the least effect.”
“Try again.”
“I guess I could.” Bertie tried to sound casual. “Is Maryam coming out this year?”
Ramses bit back a caustic comment. Bertie had an absolute gift for falling in love with women his mother considered totally unacceptable. Sethos’s daughter Maryam had even more strikes against her than Jumana; she was illegitimate, of what Katherine would call “mixed blood,” and the mother of a three-year-old son. Not to mention her earlier connections with a gang of criminals.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We haven’t heard from her or her father for some time. For God’s sake, Bertie, can’t you find yourself a nice harmless English or American girl? You don’t have to marry her, just—er—amuse her for a few months.”
“They’re all alike,” Bertie complained. “Dull, conventional little dolls.”
“How about Miss Petherick? She’s not dull.”
Bertie stared at him in horror. “You’re joking. She’s a dreadful woman!”
“Yes, I was joking. Not the sort of family one would care to become intimate with.”
The others were already mounted and waiting. Bertie stopped and said softly, “The brother. I thought his name was familiar, and now I’ve remembered. He was an ambulance driver. His ambulance took a direct hit, the wounded he was transporting were blown to smithereens. He got off without a scratch, but…”
“Shell shock?”
Bertie grimaced. “I heard they found him crawling along the road, collecting bloody arms and legs and heads and trying to fit them back together.”
“Good God.”
“So be easy on him.”
“I will. Thanks for telling me.”
Bertie’s story gave him a new sympathy for Adrian Petherick, but it didn’t make him any more eager to establish friendly relations—or relations of any kind. He could only hope he would be able to keep his mother away from the Pethericks.
There was one silver lining to his father’s absence. It gave them all some uninterrupted time to get on with their own work. The workmen’s village had contained masses of written material, some on the scraps of pottery called ostraca, some on papyrus. He had published one book of translations of the Deir el Medina papyri, and was working on a second. Before he excused himself he asked his mother what she intended to do for the remainder of the day. Her answer was a knowing smile. “With your father out of the way, I can work on that article he was supposed to have finished two months ago. Tea at five, as usual, my dear.”
It was an implicit promise that she wouldn’t go scooting back to Luxor. His father would be furious when he discovered she had finished his article, but insofar as Ramses was concerned, that was definitely the lesser of two evils.
We were not infrequently annoyed by uninvited visitors, most of them total strangers armed with letters of introduction from people we knew only slightly or did not know at all. Glancing from time to time out of the window of my little study, I saw several carriages and persons on donkey-back stop at the completed guardhouse. The structure lacked architectural merit, being only a square of mud brick