‘How busy everybody is!’ said Mrs Mercado. ‘It makes me feel dreadfully idle. Of course I am idle.’
‘Why shouldn’t you be if you like?’ said Mrs Leidner.
Her voice was quite uninterested.
At twelve we had lunch. Afterwards Dr Leidner and Mr Mercado cleaned some pottery, pouring a solution of hydrochloric acid over it. One pot went a lovely plum colour and a pattern of bulls’ horns came out on another one. It was really quite magical. All the dried mud that no washing would remove sort of foamed and boiled away.
Mr Carey and Mr Coleman went out on the dig and Mr Reiter went off to the photographic-room.
‘What will you do, Louise?’ Dr Leidner asked his wife. ‘I suppose you’ll rest for a bit?’
I gathered that Mrs Leidner usually lay down every afternoon.
‘I’ll rest for about an hour. Then perhaps I’ll go out for a short stroll.’
‘Good. Nurse will go with you, won’t you?’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘No, no,’ said Mrs Leidner, ‘I like going alone. Nurse isn’t to feel so much on duty that I’m not allowed out of her sight.’
‘Oh, but I’d like to come,’ I said.
‘No, really, I’d rather you didn’t.’ She was quite firm – almost peremptory. ‘I must be by myself every now and then. It’s necessary to me.’
I didn’t insist, of course. But as I went off for a short sleep myself it struck me as odd that Mrs Leidner, with her nervous terrors, should be quite content to walk by herself without any kind of protection.
When I came out of my room at half-past three the courtyard was deserted save for a little boy with a large copper bath who was washing pottery, and Mr Emmott, who was sorting and arranging it. As I went towards them Mrs Leidner came in through the archway. She looked more alive than I had seen her yet. Her eyes shone and she looked uplifted and almost gay.
Dr Leidner came out from the laboratory and joined her. He was showing her a big dish with bulls’ horns on it.
‘The prehistoric levels are being extraordinarily productive,’ he said. ‘It’s been a good season so far. Finding that tomb right at the beginning was a real piece of luck. The only person who might complain is Father Lavigny. We’ve had hardly any tablets so far.’
‘He doesn’t seem to have done very much with the few we have had,’ said Mrs Leidner dryly. ‘He may be a very fine epigraphist but he’s a remarkably lazy one. He spends all his afternoons sleeping.’
‘We miss Byrd,’ said Dr Leidner. ‘This man strikes me as slightly unorthodox – though, of course, I’m not competent to judge. But one or two of his translations have been surprising, to say the least of it. I can hardly believe, for instance, that he’s right about that inscribed brick, and yet he must know.’
After tea Mrs Leidner asked me if I would like to stroll down to the river. I thought that perhaps she feared that her refusal to let me accompany her earlier in the afternoon might have hurt my feelings.
I wanted her to know that I wasn’t the touchy kind, so I accepted at once.
It was a lovely evening. A path led between barley fields and then through some flowering fruit trees. Finally we came to the edge of the Tigris. Immediately on our left was the Tell with the workmen singing in their queer monotonous chant. A little to our right was a big water-wheel which made a queer groaning noise. It used to set my teeth on edge at first. But in the end I got fond of it and it had a queer soothing effect on me. Beyond the water-wheel was the village from which most of the workmen came.
‘It’s rather beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Leidner.
‘It’s very peaceful,’ I said. ‘It seems funny to me to be so far away from everywhere.’
‘Far from everywhere,’ repeated Mrs Leidner. ‘Yes. Here at least one might expect to be safe.’
I glanced at her sharply, but I think she was speaking more to herself than to me, and I don’t think she realized that her words had been revealing.
We began to walk back to the house.
Suddenly Mrs Leidner clutched my arm so violently that I nearly cried out.
‘Who’s that, nurse? What’s he doing?’
Some distance ahead of us, just where the path ran near the expedition house, a man was standing. He wore European clothes and he seemed to be standing on tiptoe and trying to look in at one of the windows.
As we watched he glanced round, caught sight of us, and immediately continued on the path towards us. I felt Mrs Leidner’s clutch tighten.
‘Nurse,’ she whispered. ‘Nurse…’
‘It’s all right, my dear, it’s all right,’ I said reassuringly.
The man came along and passed us. He was an Iraqi, and as soon as she saw him near to, Mrs Leidner relaxed with a sigh.
‘He’s only an Iraqi after all,’ she said.
We went on our way. I glanced up at the windows as I passed. Not only were they barred, but they were too high from the ground to permit of anyone seeing in, for the level of the ground was lower here than on the inside of the courtyard.
‘It must have been just curiosity,’ I said.
Mrs Leidner nodded.
‘That’s all. But just for a minute I thought–’
She broke off.
I thought to myself. ‘You thought what? That’s what I’d like to know.What did you think?’
But I knew one thing now – that Mrs Leidner was afraid of a definite flesh-and-blood person.
Chapter 8. Night Alarm
It’s a little difficult to know exactly what to note in the week that followed my arrival at Tell Yarimjah.
Looking back as I do from my present standpoint of knowledge I can see a good many little signs and indications that I was quite blind to at the time.
To tell the story properly, however, I think I ought to try to recapture the point of view that I actually held – puzzled, uneasy and increasingly conscious of something wrong.
For one thing was certain, that curious sense of strain and constraint was not imagined. It was genuine. Even Bill Coleman the insensitive commented upon it.
‘This place gets under my skin,’ I heard him say. ‘Are they always such a glum lot?’
It was David Emmott to whom he spoke, the other assistant. I had taken rather a fancy to Mr Emmott, his taciturnity was not, I felt sure, unfriendly. There was something about him that seemed very steadfast and reassuring in an atmosphere where one was uncertain what anyone was feeling or thinking.
‘No,’ he said in answer to Mr Coleman. ‘It wasn’t like this last year.’
But he didn’t enlarge on the theme, or say any more.
‘What I can’t make out is what it’s all about,’ said Mr Coleman in an aggrieved voice.
Emmott shrugged his shoulders but didn’t answer.
I had a rather enlightening conversation with Miss Johnson. I liked her very much. She was capable, practical and intelligent. She had, it was quite obvious, a distinct hero worship for Dr Leidner.
On this occasion she told me the story of his life since his young days. She knew every site he had dug, and the results of the dig. I would almost dare swear she could quote from every lecture he had ever delivered. She considered him, she told me, quite the finest field archaeologist living.
‘And he’s so simple. So completely unworldly. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word conceit. Only a really great man could be so simple.’
‘That’s true enough,’ I said. ‘Big people don’t need to throw their weight about.’
‘And he’s so light-hearted too, I can’t tell you what fun we used to have – he and Richard Carey and I – the first years we were out here. We were such a happy party. Richard Carey worked with him in Palestine, of course. Theirs is a friendship of ten years or so. Oh, well, I’ve known him for seven.’
‘What a handsome man Mr Carey is,’ I said.
‘Yes – I suppose he is.’
She said it rather curtly.