Read Online Shadows on the Nile by Kate Furnivall - Free Book Online
Authors: Kate Furnivall
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lecture by Professor Bascombe about the exciting new finds on the Giza plateau near Cairo, but …’ she blinked, just once, ‘but he told me he had somewhere else to go.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you ask?’
‘No.’
Jessie could imagine it. This young woman too proud to ask, and Tim too absorbed in his own turmoil to notice. Did he come to Putney? To seek out his big sister. But she had been out that Friday night at the jazz club with Tabitha. A kick like a mule’s hit her stomach but she didn’t even flinch. It was guilt. Her old friend.
‘If you hear from him – or hear anything that might give a clue as to where Tim is – please telephone me.’ Jessie placed her business card on the mahogany surface of the table beside the ancient bones. It looked out of place. As if a segment of 1932 had accidentally slid down a fissure into the wrong millennium.
Anippe did not even glance at it.
‘Goodbye, Miss Kalim.’
A faint nod was the only response, nothing more. Frustrated, Jessie walked away but as she did so, she felt a fierce sense of groping in the dark. Her footsteps echoed acrossthe floor, like the footsteps on the landing that echoed in her mind.
7
Feed me. Please. Feed me.
The words were silent. Locked inside the eyes that stared dully up at Jessie from the gutter. A little girl, sooty as a chimney sweep, was sitting on the kerb, hugging her bony knees to her chest. Her thin coat was belted with string and her feet were bare in her shoes, the tips of which had been cut off to allow for growth. Her hand stretched out limply towards Jessie as she passed, but it transformed itself instantly into a sharp little mousetrap when Jessie placed coins in it. With a scrabble of limbs, the child scuttled away down a narrow alleyway under lines of washing.
Jessie watched the skinny legs vanish and she felt a surge of anger. The National Government was a sham. It was doing nowhere near enough to sort out the economic disaster in Britain right now and Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald was a fool. A fool who had betrayed his own socialist cause. Each day the newspaper headlines grew worse and each day her stomach turned at the sight of despairing queues outside soup kitchens. The Great Depression they were calling it. The Slump. Though one MP had the gall to call it no more than a
set-back
. It didn’t matter what name the politicians pinned on it, it all meant the sameto the men and women in the street. Factories closed. No jobs. No bread on the table. Hardest hit were the workers of Scotland, Wales and the north of England where mass unemployment was rife, but even here in the East End of London conditions were appalling.
And now Sir John Gilmour, the Home Secretary, was going to snatch the roof from over their heads by cutting unemployment benefit and imposing a means test. The savagery of it had created unrest throughout the country, and here in these helpless, hopeless streets where people huddled, raw-faced in the wind, Jessie could sense the tension as thick as the yellow fog in the air. It made the hairs on her arms rise and the thickness of her winter coat feel like a disgrace.
‘Archie, open this blasted door!’
Jessie’s hand banged against the wood. Its paint was peeling and the smell of damp-rot sent sour spikes up into her nostrils. The dilapidated building was one of the many back-to-back terraced houses in a maze of narrow mean streets. It had outside steps leading down to a basement, and it was down this flight of crumbling stone stairs that she had descended to Archie Dashington’s basement flat. In the gloomy stairwell, set ten feet below street level, rubbish had accumulated: discarded Woodbine cigarette packets, fish and chip papers, a sodden
Sunday Pictorial
and a broken clothes-mangle. Jessie knew it was no good expecting Archie to clean up the mess. He wasn’t that type.
With one eye alert for rats, she rapped on the door once more and heard the soft pad of feet
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you ask?’
‘No.’
Jessie could imagine it. This young woman too proud to ask, and Tim too absorbed in his own turmoil to notice. Did he come to Putney? To seek out his big sister. But she had been out that Friday night at the jazz club with Tabitha. A kick like a mule’s hit her stomach but she didn’t even flinch. It was guilt. Her old friend.
‘If you hear from him – or hear anything that might give a clue as to where Tim is – please telephone me.’ Jessie placed her business card on the mahogany surface of the table beside the ancient bones. It looked out of place. As if a segment of 1932 had accidentally slid down a fissure into the wrong millennium.
Anippe did not even glance at it.
‘Goodbye, Miss Kalim.’
A faint nod was the only response, nothing more. Frustrated, Jessie walked away but as she did so, she felt a fierce sense of groping in the dark. Her footsteps echoed acrossthe floor, like the footsteps on the landing that echoed in her mind.
7
Feed me. Please. Feed me.
The words were silent. Locked inside the eyes that stared dully up at Jessie from the gutter. A little girl, sooty as a chimney sweep, was sitting on the kerb, hugging her bony knees to her chest. Her thin coat was belted with string and her feet were bare in her shoes, the tips of which had been cut off to allow for growth. Her hand stretched out limply towards Jessie as she passed, but it transformed itself instantly into a sharp little mousetrap when Jessie placed coins in it. With a scrabble of limbs, the child scuttled away down a narrow alleyway under lines of washing.
Jessie watched the skinny legs vanish and she felt a surge of anger. The National Government was a sham. It was doing nowhere near enough to sort out the economic disaster in Britain right now and Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald was a fool. A fool who had betrayed his own socialist cause. Each day the newspaper headlines grew worse and each day her stomach turned at the sight of despairing queues outside soup kitchens. The Great Depression they were calling it. The Slump. Though one MP had the gall to call it no more than a
set-back
. It didn’t matter what name the politicians pinned on it, it all meant the sameto the men and women in the street. Factories closed. No jobs. No bread on the table. Hardest hit were the workers of Scotland, Wales and the north of England where mass unemployment was rife, but even here in the East End of London conditions were appalling.
And now Sir John Gilmour, the Home Secretary, was going to snatch the roof from over their heads by cutting unemployment benefit and imposing a means test. The savagery of it had created unrest throughout the country, and here in these helpless, hopeless streets where people huddled, raw-faced in the wind, Jessie could sense the tension as thick as the yellow fog in the air. It made the hairs on her arms rise and the thickness of her winter coat feel like a disgrace.
‘Archie, open this blasted door!’
Jessie’s hand banged against the wood. Its paint was peeling and the smell of damp-rot sent sour spikes up into her nostrils. The dilapidated building was one of the many back-to-back terraced houses in a maze of narrow mean streets. It had outside steps leading down to a basement, and it was down this flight of crumbling stone stairs that she had descended to Archie Dashington’s basement flat. In the gloomy stairwell, set ten feet below street level, rubbish had accumulated: discarded Woodbine cigarette packets, fish and chip papers, a sodden
Sunday Pictorial
and a broken clothes-mangle. Jessie knew it was no good expecting Archie to clean up the mess. He wasn’t that type.
With one eye alert for rats, she rapped on the door once more and heard the soft pad of feet
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