Daniel Martin (62 page)

Then he did something absurd. He got out of bed and found his notebook in his jacket pocket. There he jotted down not something profound about intimations of approaching changes of key in human minds, but the words: Remind Ben—mange-tout peas.

He had remembered they were one of Jenny’s greeds.

Dan developed, during the six-hour flight to Cairo, further doubts about the days ahead; or at least wondered if he had not underestimated the difference between an evening alone with someone and the kind of companionship now in prospect. Jane also seemed to be caught unawares by reality: they were too trivially, tritely solicitous towards each other to be natural. She had been far more at ease the day before, when they had met to get their visas—only briefly, for she had gone off, once the formalities were completed, to meet Roz and do some last shopping; and later, when they had met again at Roz’s for the family supper. It had gone well, Roz had put herself out to be nice to Caro, who had responded and perhaps learnt from the brisk way her cousin handled her mother, teased her over her still-latent financial and other qualms. Indeed, she had been more at ease earlier that very morning, before the takeoff. Roz had driven them to Heathrow, and kept the reality at bay.

Now they sat side by side, eating their lunches. She ate more of hers than he did. Dan had long ago preferred to go hungry rather than face most airline food; while there was a tiny air about Jane of being determined to have her money’s worth, like any true tourist. What conversation they had later was mainly about what they were reading: in Jane’s case, the old Blue Guide he had brought along. He was once more jumping through the biography of Kitchener he was using, to refresh his mind about one or two locations he must visit. He was already a little on the defensive there, explaining what it was about the old man that intrigued him. He felt Jane’s show of interest was diplomatic rather than genuine; as usual, she was forming her own opinions behind what he said. They talked for a while about the technicalities of film production. He suspected that this too was a sop to his vanity, her proof to herself as much as to him that she was not going to be critical of his way of life, but dutifully, or gratefully, concerned to know it better.

They were much more like chance embarrassed strangers than he had foreseen; perhaps on neither side able to forget the misleading impression given by the ring on her wedding finger.

And perhaps because he had had, soon after takeoff, a reminder that they were separated by more than private and personal things, for all their sitting side by side. There had been a first break in their conversation, and he had asked if she had brought plenty to read; then passed her the Blue Guide. As if she had forgotten, she stooped to the travelling bag by her feet and came out with a paperback and handed it to him with a small smile.

‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to.’

It was an anthology, Lukacs on Critical Realism, issued by some small leftwing publishing house.

‘That’s sweet of you, Jane.’

‘Since he was mentioned.’

‘I’ll read it where I can concentrate. On the boat.’

She glanced down at the book as he fingered through it, almost with a dismissiveness, now it had been presented.

‘There are bits.’

‘I’m sure. I shall look forward to it.’ He smiled. ‘Actually I must read for Cairo a bit now.’

She did seem to be genuinely eager for the experience of Egypt. It had been most noticeable when they met outside the consulate the previous morning. The first thing she had said, with a smile, was that it wasn’t too late for him to say no; and then that she would still get a visa, because she was ‘so hooked’ that she couldn’t not go now—even if it had to be alone. There at least he detected in her a readiness to be amused, the tentative resumption of an old and more extrovert self.

The two hours’ advance in local time meant that it was near sunset when they landed at Cairo. Malevich’s London office had already arranged a programme for Dan the next day, and had asked for him to be met, but he was not too sanguine that they would be; and even less so when they cleared immigration and customs and finally emerged into the seething and galleried central hail of the terminal—so much turmoil, so many faces of every shade of brown, the immediate plunge into a non-European world, and at first sight one principally indifferent to chaos and dirt. The place had the feel of a country at war, of an upset hive. Dan glanced at Jane beside him, as they were besieged by taxi-drivers and hotel touts. She smiled, but he could see this chorus of alien, demanding voices, the primeval mob, had set her back.

Then someone was sharply calling Dan’s name, and they turned. A tall, bald man stood by a pillar. He was well-dressed, in a light mackintosh and dark suit; he had a moustache, a broad, flat face, faintly hooded eyes, a kind of aristocratic disdain for the less fortunate beings around them. But when he saw he had guessed right, he smiled, raised his hand, and came quickly forward.

‘Mr Martin? I am very pleased to meet you. I am Jimmy Assad.’

Dan already knew of his existence. David Malevich had met him and meant to use him for the Egyptian side of the production.

They shook hands, and Dan introduced Jane, whose hand Assad rather formally bowed over; but the old-fashioned courtesy disappeared when it came to dismissing the touts and taxi-men who still clamoured round them. He drove them away with one or two sharply guttural Arabic phrases, then smiled at his guests, as if to tell them European civility cut no ice here. He had a car and driver waiting. Dan had a suspicion that for once Jane did not regret leading a privileged life.

They set off for Cairo, and found out more about Assad. He was a Copt, it seemed, not a Muslim. He had been in the local film industry most of his life, but had also worked briefly in England, where he had picked up his inappropriate first name, just after the Second World War. He didn’t speak the language very idiomatically, but fluently enough, and he seemed well informed as to what was going on in the rest of the movie world. They took to him: he showed at once a nice dryness both about himself and the faults of the United Arab Republic—like the airport, Cairo was overcrowded, it was because of the war situation, so many refugees from the banks of the Suez. Jane asked if a resumption of hostilities was likely.

‘You will see. In the newspapers. Every day it is going to happen tomorrow.’ The eyelids drooped. ‘You think Mr Churchill made great speeches of war? You have not heard Sadat. Here we call him Victory Tomorrow, Dirt Today.’ He slipped a look at Jane, twisted round from the front seat where he sat. ‘I say dirt for your sake, madame. Arabic is a frank language.’

‘Merde?’

‘Ah, très bien. Vous parlez francais?’

They established that they spoke French to each other’s satisfaction; and Dan had to come rather hastily in. His own spoken French was very limited.

‘Can one talk about the President like that in public?’

Assad raised his hand in regretful negation, but there was a glint in his hooded eyes.

‘But we are very lucky here in Egypt. All our secret police wear a uniform.’ He glanced towards the driver, then one of the eyelids flickered, as if with a tic. ‘Une stupidite stupefiante.’

One sensed at once with him membership of what is one of the most distinctive clubs in the world, and mercifully without frontiers: that of the political cynic. Dan decided he was probably a corrupt man, not above budget-fiddling, but an agreeable one.

It was dusk when they came into the city, with its unique mixture of the medieval and the modern: shabby boulevards, khaki and tired white facades, dust everywhere, the blend of European clothes and the flowing galabiyas, barefooted urchins, stalls, harrows, donkeys with vivid green bundles of fodder, the only fresh colour to be seen, tied to their sides. Wafts of strange smells, dung, something acrid—according to Assad fumes from the Helwan industrial complex up-Nile (‘We have to prove how western we are, so naturally we start by giving ourselves the big pollution problem’); but other richer, more spicy scents came through the windows of the car on the mild subtropical air.

At last they came out beside the Nile, too late to see the Ghiza pyramids in the distance, but the great river was a pearly grey, serene in the fast-dying light; then they were drawing up outside the hotel. Assad came in to see their reservations were all right, and they had a drink in the lounge. He was supposed to take Dan to meet a ministry high-up the next morning, but it was apparently a mere formality, and could be skipped unless Dan insisted. He did not. Then they would spend the day driving round likely locations, the ones Malevich had already inspected and wanted the writer to look at. Dan had already suggested to Jane that she do the major tourist sites while this was going on. Assad offered his wife’s services but Jane declined them; so they went to the desk and fixed a set day-tour for her: the antiquities museum and the city in the morning, the Pyramids in the afternoon. The eyelid showed its tic again.

‘Extremely boring, madame, but I think you must see them once.’

Having assured himself that they really wanted an early night, and no entertaining, he withdrew. But the following night, he insisted, they should have dinner with his wife and himself and some friends.

They found they had adjoining rooms, overlooking the Nile, and that someone, perhaps Assad, had jumped to wrong conclusions. There was an interconnecting door. Dan did not try it to see if it was open. There was no key on his side, and he hoped it had been left on hers. Jane was going to have a bath, and he could hear the water running, occasional movements, as with tomorrow in mind he read through the Cairo scenes in the draft script copy he had brought with him. After a while he felt like opening the duty-free whisky he had bought at Heathrow and wondered whether Jane would like to join him; but he could bring himself neither to tap on the door between their rooms nor to use the telephone, which would somehow underline the awkwardness he felt. In the end he rang down and had Pellegrini and ice brought up; then, glass in hand, went to the window and stared down at the now dark river, with the lights of Gezira opposite tranquilly reflected in the water. There was far more traffic in this central part of Cairo than he recalled from his previous visit, an almost Californian stream of crawling headlights over a bridge to his right; and a continual blaring and hooting of horns. The whole city reminded him faintly of Los Angeles; perhaps it was the air and the temperature, the teem of it, the same stress, behind all the human and architectural differences. All cities grew one. Cairo was simply denser, older, more human. The medieval injustices and inequalities still existed, and everywhere; in the West they had simply been pushed out of sight. Here they remained open.

There were two taps behind him on the interconnecting door. He heard Jane call.

‘Dan? I’m ready, if you want to go down.’

‘Fine, Jane. Does this thing open?’

‘Yes, there’s a key.’

He heard her turn it, and she appeared. She had changed into the dark brown cottagey dress she had worn for the funeral, and made up her eyes a little.

‘I’m already beginning to feel I should have brought something dressier.’

‘Don’t be absurd. That dress is charming. Really.’ She gave a little mock bow of her head. Dan smiled. ‘Sorry about the door. I suspect it’s Assad trying to be sophisticated.’

‘I think it’s rather charmingly old-fashioned. He reminds me of one of the Arabists at home. I always thought he was trying to be more Oxford than Oxford, but perhaps it’s universal.’

‘How about a drink? Or shall we go to the bar?’

They elected for the bar. There were American voices, some French; and three men who Jane said were speaking Russian. Dan asked for first impressions. She thought time—layers of time, so many stages of history still coexisting here. The airport had shocked her; and the more crowded, working-class streets they had passed through. One forgot what real borderline poverty meant.

During dinner Dan suggested they could cry off Assad’s invitation for the next evening if she’d rather; but no, she looked forward to it, unless Dan himself…

‘Your treat, Jane. Your choice.’

‘I’d love to meet some real Egyptians. If they’re being offered.’

‘I’m not sure they’ll be very real. But let’s find out.’

‘Not if you… ‘ she smiled, she was insisting too much. ‘It’s all so new to me. But I don’t want you to be bored for my sake.’

‘The other guests will probably be people Assad wants us to hire for the film. And I’m not the one who has that sort of baksheesh to hand out. But don’t worry. Let’s go. We can always pull out early.’

The hotel dinner then and there was rather pretentiously French, especially in its menu, though they decided they liked the unleavened pancake bread. But Jane did not appear to mind the gastronomic disappointments; all these things, the people around them, came fresher to her than to Dan, and not just because he had been, though not in this hotel, in Egypt before. He had the amused impression that she was now being her age, her Oxford and staid self for his sake. Just as a slip can show momentarily beneath a skirt, he glimpsed a ghost of the girl he had known at Oxford. He could remember what she was like in those days before new experiences and new faces: a kind of impulsive intensity of interest, almost a concentration, that wasn’t factitious (as it usually was in Nell, who had shared something of the same trait), but could be misleading, especially to men who didn’t know her well… a directness, an absorption: this interests me, or you interest me, more than anything else at the moment.

They strolled through the traffic and beside the Nile for a few minutes after they had eaten. There were not many people on foot, just the passing cars; a little way along they leant over a parapet and watched down to where three large feluccas were moored side by side. In one of them three men, perhaps watchmen, sat round a hurricane lamp; an older man in a white burnoose, with a black overcoat hiding his galabiya, and two crouched younger ones, one more small enclave from a much older world. Beyond, the lights of Gezira and Dokki glistened in the smooth water. Now and again one would break into lines as some minor ripple broke the reflection. He glanced at Jane staring down at the dim circle of light in the central felucca. She had put on a coat for the stroll, the rather Russian-looking one he had first seen her in when she had met him at the station three weeks previously. And she wore the silver comb again. He thought of second-class tickets; thrift, simplicity.