Shadows on the Nile by Kate Furnivall Read Free Book Online Page B

neatly and place it over my face, holding it there with the tips of my fingers. ‘Go away. Go away.’
    You reach out and snatch the handkerchief from my face, leaving me naked, but still I don’t look at your face. I see that your sleeve is smeared with yellow from my egg yolk. I bite my tongue so hard it bleeds, coppery and slick inside my mouth, but I notice your hands. They are not the hands that belong to your glossy blond curls, or to your voice that says love-me each time you speak, they are hands that do things. Build things. Dig things. Makethings. There is a long jagged scar down the thumb of your left hand, the skin of it silvery white. Where a saw slipped? Or a rock-edge tore it open? If I do not leave now I will put my fork through your wrist, so I push myself to my feet but you lean forward, too close but you do not touch. As though you know you mustn’t touch me.
    ‘Georgie,’ you say softly in your love-mevoice, ‘talk to me. Please.’

6

    The British Museum looms like a mighty fortress of antiquity in Blooms bury, tucked deep in the heart of London. The building was designed by Sir Robert Smirke in 1823 to house the finest and largest collection of ancient artefacts in existence anywhere in the world. The original collection was established by Sir Hans Sloane and added to by avid collectors like the 7th Earl of Elgin who removed the marble statues from the Parthenon and Acropolis in Athens.
    Pillaged
was the word that always leapt to Jessie’s mind. Not
removed
. Pillaged the statues.
    She glanced at the grandiose neo-classical exterior of the museum, guarded by forty-four colossal ionic columns, each one forty-five feet high. Jessie’s head was full of these facts.
Robert Smirke. Hans Sloane. 1823. Forty-four columns.
It was Tim’s fault. He was always bombarding her with them.
    She approached along Great Russell Street, a tree-lined thoroughfare, dodging a lumbering dray hauling beer barrels as she crossed the road from Bloomsbury Square. A massive pediment loomed over the museum’s main entrance and immediately she heard Tim’s voice chattering in her head, full of enthusiasmand brimming with knowledge.
    ‘See the sculptures on it, sis?’
    Jessie had scowled at the fifteen allegorical figures poised above the entrance.
    ‘They’re by Sir Richard Westmacott. Installed in 1852,’ he informed her. ‘Superb, aren’t they? It’s a shame they are so high up and people are—’
    ‘People are thinking,’ Jessie cut in with a shake of her head, ‘what a monument to British hubris and greed they are.’
    ‘Now, Jess, don’t start on that.’
    ‘How would you like it if the Egyptians or Italians or Greeks came over and stole all the remains of our history the way we stole theirs? You would be the first to shout, ‘“Whoa, something is not right here!”’
    He had turned solemn blue eyes on her. Reproachful eyes. Eyes that made her sigh and want to snatch back her words. He could do that to her.
    ‘Jess,’ he laid both his hands on her shoulders, pinning her to the pavement, ‘if explorers and archaeologists hadn’t devoted their lives to rescuing these exquisite moments of history from the sand and the sea and the dank cellars where they were languishing, they would have been lost to civilisation for ever. Look at Henry Salt! Look at Howard Carter!’
    He released one of her shoulders and waved a hand towards the monolithic building in which he worked. Despite herself, Jessie was always impressed by it.
    ‘We owe them so much,’ Tim reminded her.
    ‘Thieves,’ she muttered.
    ‘Caretakers of the world’s creative instinct.’
    ‘Robbers.’
    ‘Just wait until you see Amenhotep’s head.’ Her brother’s eyes were shining. His hair, worn longer than their father liked, gleamed honey-gold in the sunlight.
    Jessie had slipped her hand in his with a sigh of resignation. ‘Lead on, “my intimate friend and associate”.’
    He had thrown back his head andlaughed, and it was