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His pace slowed and his smile faded when I took off my dark glasses and he realized he was mistaken about my identity. Yes, that flat-voweled Ohio accent is familiar, his embarrassed little laugh seemed to say, but you are definitely not the lovely Lillian Cutler.
Hoping Rosie would mind her ma
“How extraordinary,” he murmured after a brief handshake that seemed as reluctant as his words were warm. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last, Miss Shanklin. Lillie and Douglas told me so much about you.” And then, once more, he giggled.
You doubt me, perhaps. No, Agnes. Lawrence was a scholar and a soldier. Surely such a man would not giggle like a girl! But that giggle turned out to be as much a part of him as his small stature and great strength of will. Often, it invited you to follow his quirky logic. Sometimes, it was a warning. More rarely, it was a spontaneous outburst of genuine amusement. On the occasion of our first meeting, it simply conveyed relief that he had not, after all, shouted across a busy hotel lobby at an utter stranger.
He glanced beyond me toward the tall woman, who had by now dismissed the policemen and was taking the doorman and the dragoman aside. Perhaps because she herself spoke softly, their dispute became a conversation. Colonel Lawrence seemed to accept this lady’s intervention as a given. “If you wish to insult a Muslim, call him a dog,” he told me in a low, quick voice. “The gist of the doorman’s case is that your pet is unwelcome.”
“But— No!” I cried. “The Cook’s agent in Cleveland said—”
“Gerty will sort it out. How is Lillie? Is she here with you?” Colonel Lawrence asked eagerly. “No,” he said when he saw my look. “How?”
“Influenza.”
“My father as well,” he told me then, in the brief way we all had in those days. We’d acknowledge a private drop or two of grief in that ocean of general mourning and change the subject without providing the full roll of our dreadful losses.
“So. What brings you to Cairo?” he asked, blue eyes narrowed, his glance sidelong. “Are you a missionary, as your sister was?”
“Heavens, no!” I said with a bit more vehemence than I intended. “I’ve never been sufficiently confident in my faith to offer myself to others as exemplary.”
“My mother has recently decided to bring Christianity to the Chinese,” Colonel Lawrence informed me, then dropped his voice to confide, “She could, I’m afraid, testify that being exemplary is not a requirement for missionary work.”
My land! What a thing to say about his own mother, Mumma cried, and indeed, Colonel Lawrence snickered like a naughty boy aware of his transgression.
Perhaps, I thought, I am not the only one whose mother whispers unwelcome commentary. To my own surprise, I said, “I take it you learned cynicism at home, Colonel Lawrence?”
Another giggle, this one with a darker note that confirmed my guess. “Why Cairo then,” he asked, “if not to spread the faith?
Well, I could hardly say, Mark Twain advised me to travel. I searched, and found a different truth. “The war, you know. The influenza. I think— Well, one needs to make new memories, don’t you agree?”
For a little time, he seemed quite far away. So many veterans had that look. “Yes,” he said finally, blinking himself back into the present. “Yes. Well put.”
We fell into an instant friendship, our conversation built on the scaffolding of our shared regard for Lillie. “I shall never forget how welcoming and kind she was,” Lawrence told me. “I was a pe
He was just suggesting that we meet for tea the next afternoon when the towering woman he called Gerty took her place at his side. Deliberately, I think, she put an arm over his shoulder, in a gesture that was both maternal and proprietary. In that pose, she asked, “And who have we here, dear boy?”
Colonel Lawrence moved away from her touch, becoming formal and adult. “Miss Gertrude Bell, may I introduce Miss Agnes Shanklin? I knew her sister, Lillian, before the war. Miss Shanklin: Miss Bell, who knows everyone and everything Middle East. What have negotiations accomplished, Gert?”
“Take her to the Continental,” Miss Bell told him. “They’ll never let her in here.”
Her lips hardly moved when she spoke. I thought of Mumma taking down a hem, telling me to turn with her mouth full of pins. U
“Hold your head up,” Miss Bell commanded. “Look people straight in the eye and state your position without hesitation. It’s the only way to get anything done.”
I felt both admonished and encouraged, like a failing student who’s been told how to earn a better mark on the next assignment. It took all my self-possession not to say, “Yes, miss. Thank you, miss.”
She took a small, flat silver case from her handbag and extracted a cigarette with stained yellow fingers, tapping one end on sterling to settle its tobacco. “The dear boy and I stayed at the Continental before the war. We were colleagues at the Arab Bureau,” she said. “The rooms are quite adequate. I’ll ring ahead for you and make the arrangements.”
“Will they allow Rosie in?” I asked.
“If I tell them to.”
She seemed barely to register my thanks as she placed her cigarette between lips permanently puckered by the habit and leaned expectantly toward Colonel Lawrence.
He spread his empty hands and suggested, “Ask Winston.”
She rolled her eyes toward heaven. “The dear boy has no vices, Miss Shanklin. Very tiresome for those of us who do.”
“I have many vices,” Lawrence said. “It’s a vesta I lack.” A match, he meant. That’s what British people called matches back then.
Miss Bell sighed, and turned, and raised her hand to catch the attention of a balding, thickish person who stood gesticulating with a cigar amid a knot of gentlemen in the lobby. “Winston Darling!” she called. “Light me, will you, please?”
With that, she sailed off and docked at Mr. Darling’s side. He produced a lighter, and again she leaned forward—almost coquettishly steadying the flame with a hand upon his wrist. Pulling in the smoke with evident pleasure, she released a long plume into the air and took the round arm he offered. Mr. Darling was evidently undismayed to appear so short and soft in comparison to Miss Bell’s own commanding physique.
“Don’t worry, dear boy,” Miss Bell called over her shoulder as she and Mr. Darling swa
Colonel Lawrence’s face went very still. I winced. “Next,” I whispered with sympathetic a
Lawrence giggled, but rather grimly this time. “I don’t know why I let that kind of thing get up my nose, but—”
“Maybe she’s self-conscious about being so tall,” I suggested.
Lawrence gestured toward the door, where the dragoman still waited, and changed the subject. “Winston is His Majesty’s secretary of state for air and the colonies,” Lawrence began. “He was navy during the—”
“Oh, and Miss Shanklin?” Halfway across the lobby, Miss Bell had turned around to address me once more in her loud, carrying voice. “Do find something more suitable to wear while you are in the Middle East,” she advised. “That clothing is far too revealing. The doorman took you for a whore.”