I practically snort out my champagne. “Can you imagine? As if that would make it more palatable for me.”
“What are you two whispering about?” Mama glares at us, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
I rush to answer; I don’t want the tipsy Porchey to tell her the truth. “We were talking about the success of our Christmas Drive today at the church. I think we gave blankets and Christmas meals to over a hundred people, don’t you, Porchey?”
“Sounds about right.”
Mama nods then turns back to Papa, as I knew she would. She’d been uninterested in our efforts to resuscitate the old Highclere Christmas Eve tradition of distributing goods to the needy when I first suggested it several weeks ago. Strange for a woman who found her calling nursing severely wounded soldiers and running hospitals. Mama’s focus has returned to society.
But it appears as though Papa is finished with the topic of the shoot scheduled for the day after Christmas. He rubs his hands together expectantly as the plates are cleared. I assume he’s readying himself for the dessert course. Even though he’s not gluttonous in general, heisinsatiable when it comes to patisserie. In fact, he employs an Austrian pastry chef to create rich, decadent confections for tea and dessert. No traditional plum pudding or trifle for us.
Strangely, he keeps glancing at the Christmas tree in the corner of the dining room. It’s a lovely ten-foot fir, festooned with Father Christmas–shaped ornaments and lit candles and topped off with an exquisite porcelain Christmas fairy. If our Saloon Christmas tree werenot so enormous and breathtaking, this tree would be considered the pièce de résistance.
“I say,” he calls out, “are those presents under the tree?”
I hear a note of false surprise in his voice, and I wonder what he’s playing at. We never have presents under the Dining Room tree, only the Saloon tree.
“Ah.” He reaches down for a parcel and then lifts up a box wrapped in silvery tissue paper and a red silk ribbon. “This one even has a name on it—Eve. Looks as though Father Christmas came early this year,” he adds with a wide, self-satisfied grin.
Rising, I walk over to Papa. He hands me the present, winks, and says, “I wonder what’s inside?”
What on earth is happening? Curiosity piqued, Porchey leans forward in his seat, and even Mama scoots toward us. She doesn’t seem to be in on whatever game Papa is playing.
Without returning to my seat, I untie the ribbon and the tissue paper slips off the box. There are no store names emblazoned on the top, no distinctive symbols. What is in here? Why the dramatic presentation? I glance at Papa, who shrugs, and Mama, who looks confused and annoyed.
Placing the box down on the table, I lift the lid off. There, on a bed of tissue, sits a ticket. To Egypt.
Chapter Thirteen
JANUARY 28, 1920
THEMEDITERRANEAN
The waves crest white against the blue-black depths of the Mediterranean Sea. The ship seesaws in time with the motion of the water, yet the constant roll doesn’t bother me. How couldanythingbother me? I am on my way to Egypt.
“My God, the smell.” Mama stands next to me, clutching the railing, inhaling deeply.
“Isn’t it glorious?” I say, closing my eyes and breathing in the salty air. My hand, stuffed deep into my warm pocket, plays with the scarab I’ve brought with me from England. Broughtback, more like.
“How on earth can you say that, Eve? The stench coming out of the crews’ quarters nearly made me gag. This lack of hygiene would have never happened under my watch.” She holds a scented linen handkerchief to her nose.
Ah, I think,more complaints about the ship. More than once, I’d watched my mother tend a gangrenous stump of an arm—the smell of which is lodged forever in my nostrils—and it’s hard to believe that nurse is the same woman standing before me. It’s as if there are two very different Almina Herberts—that caring, self-sacrificing nurse and my mother, the Countess of Carnarvon. Since the war ended, only the latter is in evidence, but I much prefer the former.
“I hadn’t noticed, Mama,” I lie, sliding my hand out of my pockets and placing it on the railing alongside Mama’s. Of course, the smell had registered, but what good would it do to complain? It isn’t as ifwe could disembark mid-sea. And I would endureanythingto finally reach the land of legend.
Papa joins us at the railing, declaring, “Nothing like the brace of ocean air, is there?”
Mama shoots him a scathing look, but he is unmoved. Finding no purchase for her grievances, she walks off in a huff, mumbling something about “unnecessary journey.”
Papa glances over at me, one eyebrow raised. “Was it something I said?”
I smile, benignly adding, “Rather I think it was something neither of us said about the state of the ship.”
He chuckles, understanding well that my mother’s misery enjoys company. But Papa feels the same excitement as I do about this long-awaited journey and cannot offer it to her. Not to mention, the destination will bestow upon him the added gift of the dry air so necessary for the health of his lungs, the condition that first prompted his travels to Egypt years ago. He never complains, but I see how easily he tires and how prone he is to fits of coughing.
Not that Mama is wrong in her criticism. The travel to the ship was arduous in itself: ferrying from England to Boulogne, taking the train from there to Paris, where we briefly visited Papa’s half brother Aubrey, then boarding another train from Paris to Marseille, where we finally got on this ship to Alexandria, via Tunisia. But the Great War devastation we witnessed along the way—to buildings, bridges, countryside, people—quashed any objections I may have had to this hastily converted warship, which had, only months ago, been utilized to transport injured soldiers. Even if, as Mama suspects, it had not been cleaned properly before the ship admitted regular travelers, causing infections in several of our fellow passengers.
I try not to think about the poor men, bleeding and sick on the very deck where I now stand. Unlike most girls I know, I saw bloodshed, wounds, and illness aplenty during wartime, in the halls of Highclere and our London home, which Mama also used for the injured and dying. And I’m longing to experience a very different sort of history now, one that predates the war by millennia.
