No good, then, thought Rosa. I am dedicated only to my debt. But Pennington was saying, ‘I am very fastidious. I like people to work hard. I strongly believe the book will make me very famous. Possibly rich, in which case I would pay you a bonus. Of course if you found me a bear or if I found you a slouch’ — and he fixed her sternly, all of a sudden — ‘we could of course agree to part. I have been through a couple of assistants already. Since I began, a dozen or so. Good ones are hard to come by. Do you know anything about Ancient Egypt?’
‘A little,’ she said. ‘I have spent a lot of time in the British Museum.’ He was staring at her, screwing his face into a thousand tucks and creases, mapping himself.
‘Well, we have all been to the British Museum,’ he said. ‘Anyone from your schoolboy to your young Turk’ — my young Turk? What was the man saying, she wondered briefly? — ‘has managed to go to the British Museum.’ He said this with disdain. He definitely had her down as one of them, a vulgar day-tripper, lagging on the steps with an ice cream.
‘If I held up this,’ and he held up a hieroglyph of a figure holding a quill. ‘What would it mean?’
‘To write?’ said Rosa.
‘Good! Good! And this?’ And he held up a hieroglyph of a figure with its arms raised.
‘To praise?’ guessed Rosa.
‘Excellent. And this?’ And he held up a picture of a man tied to a stake.
‘Prisoner?’
‘Wonderful. And this one?’ And he held up a picture of a figure sitting in an arch.
‘I don’t know,’ said Rosa.
‘That’s a god wearing the sun’s disk and grasping a palm branch in each hand,’ he said. ‘But that one was difficult.’
Idly, Rosa wondered how long the game went on. And she discovered it went on for quite some time, as Pennington asked her to guess the meanings of another batch of hieroglyphs and to translate a line of them. ‘See how you do!’ he said.
Pen in hand, she went to it. She still wasn’t sure what he was paying. He had a fixed stare. He smiled a lot, but she couldn’t tell how deep the charm went. Unmarried, she assumed. Simple and terrible in his way, with his staring eyes, his shocking refusal to break eye contact. He dropped this stare only when he was reading through her translation, laughing richly at her foolishness, then he lifted his eyes again and looked long and hard at her. Eventually he said, ‘Brilliant!’ He was laughing at her. ‘Complete nonsense! But they often are! How were you to know? How could you possibly do it? Impossible! You were bound to get it all wrong. And you did! But you tried, nonetheless, you tried. And that is very important.’
She thanked him while he snorted and told her not to worry, it was quite all right, he often — now that Egyptology had become so popular, something to do with Hollywood perhaps, and he said this with distaste — got applicants who were unsuitable. She apologised to Pennington for wasting his time. He nodded with a steely little smile. ‘Thanks so much, goodbye, dear, goodbye.’ Goodbye for ever, he meant, and Rosa thought, Well, that’s that. Once he had shut her out she went back out through the little gate. She side-stepped round a yellow digger, which was sitting on the kerb like an industrial scorpion. Pennington was nothing but a diversion. He was a wrong turn, if anything, and for a moment she wanted to go back and tell him. She had a few urgent questions to answer, and none of them, but none of them, had anything to do with Osiris. Except, it was Osiris who weighed you in the balance after death. It was Osiris who put a feather on one of the scales and your heart — or soul — on the other, and if your heart sank lower on the scales than the feather, then you were doomed. Well, we must all be doomed, she thought. Every last one of us! For who, in this day and age, can make any claim to having a heart lighter than a feather!
*
‘Mr Rivers is in a meeting,’ said the woman. Mandy had come back from the store cupboard with this news. ‘Really, are you sure?’ said Rosa. She tried to sound incredulous. Had Sharkbreath really not wanted to see her? ‘Can’t you try again?’ said Rosa.
‘He is too busy to see you,’ said Mandy. She said that with an officious twang, rustling her papers.
‘But I really do need to see him,’ said Rosa. ‘I’ve been a good client, a client of many years. It’s true, my debt is quite bad. I’m not pretending there’s no debt. But I am actively seeking work. I am busy about it. And I just need some flexibility on my debt.’
Mandy bridled. She was definitely becoming sanctimonious. ‘If you’re in debt, then there’s nothing I can do about that. Mr Rivers can’t see you. I can’t help you any more,’ she said.
‘Perhaps you can help me,’ said Rosa, in a tone of ill-advised optimism. Mandy shrugged and looked as if she thought it was unlikely. When Rosa said a couple more things Mandy told her she had to talk to Rivers. Shaking her head brusquely, Mandy walked away.
*
Eager and ready, awaiting enlightenment, Rosa sat on the top deck of a bus as it rounded the corner and moved on to Kensington Park Road. There was still much to anticipate. Today she had an interview and she hoped she would get the job. She had to go back to Jess’s flat, pass the day writing applications, and prepare herself. She had to prime herself for her interview at 4 p.m. It seemed a real possibility, this job she was going to win. Her deviation would be corrected; she would climb out of her fiscal pit. After that, when that was settled, she would really get to grips with the basics, with the essential mysteries and underlying causes. She inhaled sharply as a woman elbowed her in the face. She heard Arabic behind her and German to her left. Auch wenn wir nicht wollen: Gott reisst. Then she heard the tinny sound of an iPod, whispering a tune she couldn’t remember. The bus scraped past the parked cars and people. A scaffold and the sound of drills. The yellow-fronted self-service laundry, always for let. Shops with their windows full. Pale slabs. Enfeoffed, she thought. My kingdom for an epiphany. The sun ascending. The sky a lustrous pale blue. Soon it would be mid-morning. The morning was half-finished, half-begun. And onward the day went, unstoppable, quite incessant in its vigour.
Ahead she saw the blue bridge hanging over the road, cars filing across it. It was a slung construction of steel and on its curved belly were signs and shapes, cryptic clues, left there by the taggers. TEMP. She had a fine view of a high-rise block, faded turquoise trim on the windows. On a balcony she saw two eagles, painted in gilt. Then there was the pebble-dashed side of another bank. Another bank, she thought, with bars on the doors. But there was no point trying to get symbolic about the fact that she had ripped through her overdraft and failed to supply a payment plan. The glass shivered as the bus turned abruptly and everyone swayed, rubbing shoulders in a friendly way. For all of this, despite the deep sense of community, the Blitz spirit of the upper deck, Rosa found she had her head in her hands. Suddenly she wanted to get out, she was racked with a sense of unease, and when the bus came to a halt under the Westway she ran down the steps. At the side of the road, she wondered if she should wait for another bus or walk home. Indecision stopped her for a second, then she walked up the hill and along the street thinking that here was another Georgian terrace and here a window with the curtains gusting in the breeze. She picked her way past the station where an old man was chanting a mantra, begging for change. A man with a grey face was selling papers, his hands in fingerless gloves. He mouthed an ‘A’ at Rosa, and then she heard the rest: ‘ARSENAL WIN CUP’ he was saying, and then his voice faded again. Pressing her feet carefully on the pavement she walked up the hill, passing the stalls selling falafels, the late night shops, the all-night chemist. She noticed the taggers had scrawled new words along the walls. EASY I, she read. THAT and what? she thought. She couldn’t read it.