"...your Western talk about love confuses me a great deal. You make such a fuss about such a simple thing!"
"It really cannot be described," Ramses said, staring abstractedly at the cat, now lying across his stomach. "It must be experienced. Like being extremely drunk."[loc. 6797]
This novel is set in Egypt in 1903. Ramses and David return, somewhat swashbucklingly, from six months with Sheik Mohammed (in which time Ramses has grown a moustache) and Nefret returns from her medical studies in London. We're also treated to excerpts from 'Manuscript H', being an edited third-person narrative based on Ramses' journal: it contrasts piquantly with his mother's first-person account of events.
Enid, nee Derbyshire, and her husband Donald Fraser have also returned to Egypt. This is because a spiritualist, Mrs Jones, has put Donald in touch with the spirit of an Ancient Egyptian princess who claims to be his soulmate. Enid, unsurprisingly, is not best pleased by this. When she and Ramses first met he offered to help her if she ever needed it: she's calling in the debt.
Meanwhile the Emersons are being warned away from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings: naturally this just encourages them to excavate, and they discover a mummified corpse dressed in modern clothing.
There is also a silly debutante who fancies herself in love with Ramses (whose affections are given elsewhere, unrequitedly), and the debutante's father, a veteran of the American Civil War, who has lost his wife. (But she has been found -- though not under the best of circumstances.)
With hindsight -- reading out of order -- I do wish that Peters had written another novel between The Hippopotamus Pool and this one: I'd have liked to see the developing relationships between Ramses, Nefret and David as they move towards adulthood, and I can't help wondering if there was a particular event that sparked Ramses' lengthy visit to Sheik Mohammed. Imagination provides ample possibilities for an exasperated Amelia and an unrepentant Ramses ...
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