The Alexandria Quartet (76 page)

He noticed that Cowdell, the Head of Chancery, was trying to catch his eye. He finished the lesson unfalteringly, replaced the markers, and made his way slowly back to his seat. The chaplain uttered a short catarrhal sentence and with a riffling of pages they found themselves confronting the banal text of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers' in the eleventh edition of the Foreign Service Hymnal. The harmonium in the corner suddenly began to pant like a fat man running for a bus; then it found its voice and gave out a slow nasal rendering of the first two phrases in tones whose harshness across the wintry hush was like the pulling out of entrails. Mountolive repressed a shudder, waiting for the instrument to subside on the dominant as it always did — as if about to burst into all-too-human sobs. Raggedly they raised their voices to attest to … to what? Mountolive found himself wondering. They were a Christian enclave in a hostile land, a country which had become like a great concentration camp owing to a simple failure of the human reason. Cowdell was nudging his elbow and he nudged back to indicate a willingness to receive any urgent communication not strictly upon religious matters. The Head of Chancery sang:

‘Someone's lucky day todáy

Marching as to war
(fortissimo, with piety)

Ciphers have an urgent

Going on before
, (fortissimo, with piety).

Mountolive was annoyed. There was usually little to do on a Sunday, though the Cipher office remained open with a skeleton staff on duty. Why had they not, according to custom, telephoned to the villa and called him in? Perhaps it was something about the new liquidations? He started the next verse plaintively:

‘Someone should have told me

How was I to know?

Who's the duty cipherine?'

Cowdell shook his head and frowned as he added the rider:
‘She is still at work-ork-ork.'

They wheeled round the corner, so to speak, and drew collective breath while the music started to march down the aisle again. This respite enabled Cowdell to explain hoarsely: ‘No, it's an urgent
Personal
. Some groups corrupt still.'

They smoothed their faces and consciences for the rest of the hymn while Mountolive grappled with his perplexity. As they knelt on the uncomfortable dusty hassocks and buried their faces in their hands, Cowdell continued from between his fingers: ‘You've been put up for a “K” and a mission. Let me be the first to congratulate you, etc.'

‘Christ!' said Mountolive in a surprised whisper, to himself rather than to his Maker. He added ‘Thank you.' His knees suddenly felt weak. For once he had to study to achieve his air of imperturbability. Surely he was still too young? The ramblings of the Chaplain, who resembled a swordfish, filled him with more than the usual irritation. He clenched his teeth. Inside his mind he heard himself repeating the words: ‘To get out of Russia!' with ever-growing wonder. His heart leaped inside him.

At last the service ended and they trailed dolorously out of the ballroom and across the polished floors of the Residence, coughing and whispering. He managed to counterfeit a walk of slow piety, though it hardly matched his racing mind. But once in the Chancery, he closed the padded door slowly behind him, feeling it slowly suck up the air into its valve as it sealed, and then, drawing a sharp breath, clattered down the three flights of stairs to the wicket-gate which marked the entry to Archives. Here a duty-clerk dispensed tea to a couple of booted couriers who were banging the snow from their gloves and coats. The canvas bags were spread everywhere on the floor waiting to be loaded with the mail and chained up. Hoarse good-mornings followed him to the cipher-room door where he tapped sharply and waited for Miss Steele to let him in. She was smiling grimly. ‘I know what you want' she said. ‘It's in the tray — the Chancery copy. I've had it put in your tray and given a copy to the Secretary for H.E.'

She bent her pale head once more to her codes. There it was, the flimsy pink membrane of paper with its neatly typed message. He sat down in a chair and read it over slowly twice. Lit a cigarette. Miss Steele raised her head. ‘May I congratulate you, sir?' — ‘Thank you' said Mountolive vaguely. He reached his hands to the electric fire for a moment to warm his fingers as he thought deeply. He was beginning to feel a vastly different person. The sensation bemused him.

After a while he walked slowly and thoughtfully upstairs to his own office, still deep in this new and voluptuous dream. The curtains had been drawn back — that meant that his secretary had come in; he stood for a while watching the sentries cross and recross the snowlit entrance to the main gate with its ironwork piled heavily with ice. While he stood there with his dark eyes fixed upon an imagined world lying somewhere behind this huge snowscape, his secretary came in. She was smiling with jubilance. ‘It's come at last' she said. Mountolive smiled slowly back. ‘Yes. I wonder if H.E. will stand in my way?'

‘Of course not' she said emphatically. ‘Why should he?'

Mountolive sat once more at his familiar desk and rubbed his chin. ‘He himself will be off in three months or so' said the girl. She looked at him curiously, almost angrily, for she could read no pleasure, no self-congratulation in his sober expression. Even good fortune could not pierce that carefully formulated reserve. ‘Well' he said slowly, for he was still swaddled by his own amazement, the voluptuous dream of an unmerited success. ‘We shall see.' He had been possessed now by another new and even more vertiginous thought. He opened his eyes widely as he stared at the window. Surely now, he would at long last be free to
act
? At last the long discipline of self-effacement, of perpetual delegation, was at an end? This was frightening to contemplate, but also exciting. He felt as if now his true personality would be able to find a field of expression in acts; and still full of this engrossing delusion he stood up and smiled at the girl as he said: ‘At any rate, I must ask H.E.'s blessing before we answer. He is not on deck this morning, so lock up. Tomorrow will do.' She hovered disappointedly for a moment over him before gathering up his tray and taking out the key to his private safe. ‘Very well' she said.

‘There's no hurry' said Mountolive. He felt that his real life now stretched before him; he was about to be reborn. ‘I don't see my
exequatur
coming through for a time yet. And so on.' But his mind was already racing upon a parallel track, saying: ‘In summer the whole Embassy moves to Alexandria, to summer quarters. If I could time my arrival.…'

And then, side by side with this sense of exhilaration, came a twinge of characteristic meanness. Mountolive like most people who have nobody on whom to lavish affection, tended towards meanness in money matters. Unreasonable as it was, he suddenly felt a pang of depression at the thought of the costly dress uniform which his new position would demand. Only last week there had been a catalogue from Skinners showing a greatly increased scale for Foreign Service uniforms.

He got up and went into the room next door to see the private secretary. It was empty. An electric fire glowed. A lighted cigarette smoked in the ashtray beside the two bells marked respectively
‘His Ex.'
and
‘Her Ex'
. On the pad beside them the Secretary had written in his round feminine hand ‘Not to be woken before eleven.' This obviously referred to
‘His Ex.'
, As for
‘Her Ex.'
, she had only managed to last six months in Moscow before retiring to the amenities of Nice where she awaited her husband upon his retirement. Mountolive stubbed out the cigarette.

It would be useless to call on his Chief before midday, for the morning in Russia afflicted Sir Louis with a splenetic apathy which often made him unresponsive to ideas; and while he could not, in all conscience, do anything to qualify Mountolive's good fortune, he might easily show pique at not having been consulted according to custom by the Principal Private Secretary. Anyway. He retired to his now empty office and plunged into the latest copy of
The Times
, waiting with ill-concealed impatience for the Chancery clock to mark out midday with its jangling whirrs and gasps. Then he went downstairs and slipped into the Residence again through the padded door, walking with his swift limping walk across the polished floors with their soft archipelagos of neutral rug. Everything smelt of disuse and Mansion polish; in the curtains a smell of cigar-smoke. At every window a screen of tossing snowflakes.

Merritt the valet was starting up the staircase with a tray containing a cocktail shaker full of Martini and a single glass. He was a pale heavily-built man who cultivated the gravity of a churchwarden while he moved about his tasks in the Residence. He stopped as Mountolive drew level and said hoarsely: ‘He's just up and dressing for a duty lunch, sir.' Mountolive nodded and passed him, taking the stairs two at a time. The servant turned back to the buttery to add a second glass to his tray.

Sir Louis whistled dispiritedly at his own reflection in the great mirror as he dressed himself. ‘Ah, my boy' he said vaguely as Mountolive appeared behind him. ‘Just dressing. I know, I know. It's my unlucky day. Chancery rang me at eleven. So you have done it at last. Congratulations.'

Mountolive sat down at the foot of the bed with relief to find the news taken so lightly. His Chief went on wrestling with a tie and a starched collar as he said: ‘I suppose you'll want to go off at once, eh? It's a loss to us.'

‘It would be convenient' admitted Mountolive slowly.

‘A pity. I was hoping you'd see me out. But anyway' he made a flamboyant gesture with a disengaged hand ‘you've done it. From tricorne and dirk to bicorne and sword — the final apotheosis.' He groped for cuff-links and went on thoughtfully. ‘Of course, you could stay a bit; it'll take time to get
agrement
. Then you'll have to go to the Palace and kiss hands and all that sort of thing. Eh?'

‘I have quite a lot of leave due' said Mountolive with the faintest trace of firmness underlying his diffident tone. Sir Louis retired to the bathroom and began scrubbing his false teeth under the tap. ‘And the next Honours List?' he shouted into the small mirror on the wall. ‘You'll wait for that?'

‘I suppose.' Merritt came in with the tray and the old man shouted ‘Put it anywhere. An extra glass?'

‘Yes sir.'

As the servant retired closing the door softly behind him, Mountolive got up to pour the cocktail. Sir Louis was talking to himself in a grumbling tone. ‘It's damn hard on the Mission. Well, anyway, David, I bet your first reaction to the news was: now I'm free to act, eh?' He chuckled like a fowl and returned to his dressing-table in a good humour. His junior paused in the act of pouring out, startled by such unusual insight. ‘How on earth did you know that?' he said, frowning. Sir Louis gave another self-satisfied cluck.

‘We all do. We all do. The final delusion. Have to go through it like the rest of us, you know. It's a tricky moment. You find yourself throwing your weight about — committing the sin against the Holy Ghost if you aren't careful.'

‘What would that be?'

‘In diplomacy it means trying to build a policy on a minority view. Everyone's weak spot. Look how often we are tempted to build something on the Right here. Eh? Won't do. Minorities are no use unless they're prepared to
fight
. That's the thing.' He accepted his drink in rosy old fingers, noting with approval the breath of dew upon the cold glasses. They toasted each other and smiled affectionately. In the last two years they had become the greatest of friends. ‘I shall miss you. But then, in another three months I shall be out of this … this place myself.' He said the words with undisguised fervour. ‘No more nonsense about Objectivity. Eastern can find some nice impartial products of the London School of Economics to do their reporting.' Recently the Foreign Office had complained that the Mission's despatches were lacking in balance. This had infuriated Sir Louis. He was fired even by the most fugitive memory of the slight. Putting down his empty glass he went on to himself in the mirror: ‘Balance! If the F.O. sent a mission to Polynesia they would expect their despatches to begin (he put on a cringing whining tone to enunciate it): “While it is true that the inhabitants eat each other, nevertheless the food consumption per head is remarkably high.”' He broke off suddenly and sitting down to lace his shoes said: ‘Oh, David my boy, who the devil am I going to be able to talk to when you go? Eh? You'll be walking about in your ludicrous uniform with an osprey feather in your hat looking like the mating plumage of some rare Indian bird and I — I shall be trotting backwards and forwards to the Kremlin to see those dull beasts.'

The cocktails were rather strong. They embarked upon a second, and Mountolive said: ‘Actually, I came wondering if I could buy your old uniform, unless it's bespoke. I could get it altered.'

‘Uniform?' said Sir Louis. ‘I hadn't thought of that.'

‘They are so fearfully expensive.'

‘I know. And they've gone up. But you'd have to send mine back to the taxidermist for an overhaul. And they never fit round the neck, you know. All that braid stuff. I'm a frogging or two loose I think. Thank God this isn't a monarchy — one good thing. Frock coats in order, what? Well I don't know.'

They sat pondering upon the question for a long moment. Then Sir Louis said: ‘What would you offer me?' His eye narrowed. Mountolive deliberated for a few moments before saying ‘Thirty pounds' in an unusually energetic and decisive tone. Sir Louis threw up his hands and simulated incoherence. ‘Only thirty? It cost me.…'

‘I know' said Mountolive.

Thirty pounds' meditated his Chief, hovering upon the fringes of outrage. ‘I think, dear boy ——”

‘The sword is a bit bent' said Mountolive obstinately.