The Alexandria Quartet (85 page)

Errol nodded slowly. ‘He was at the airport, sir.' ‘I didn't notice. Please get my secretary to make out a card for tomorrow night. But ring him first and tell him if it is inconvenient to let me know. For eight-fifteen, black tie.”

‘I will, sir.'

‘I want particularly to talk to him as we are taking up some new dispositions and I want his co-operation. He is a brilliant officer, I have been told.'

Errol looked doubtful. ‘He has had some rather fierce exchanges with Pursewarden. Indeed, this last week he has more or less besieged the Embassy. He is clever, but … somewhat hard-headed?' Errol was tentative, appeared unwilling to go too far. ‘Well' said Mountolive, ‘let me talk to him and see for myself. I think the new arrangement will suit everyone, even Master Pursewarden.'

They said goodnight.

The next day was full of familiar routines for Mountolive, but conducted, so to speak, from a new angle — the unfamiliar angle of a position which brought people immediately to their feet. It was exciting and also disturbing; even up to the rank of councillor he had managed to have a comfortably-based relationship with the junior staff at every level. Even the hulking Marines who staffed the section of Chancery Guards were friendly and equable towards him in the happiest of colloquial manners. Now they shrank into postures of reserve, almost of self-defence. These were the bitter fruits of power, he reflected, accepting his new role with resignation.

However, the opening moves were smoothly played; and even his staff party of the evening went off so well that people seemed reluctant to leave. He was late in changing for his dinner-party and Maskelyne had already been shown into the anodyne drawing-room when he finally appeared, bathed and changed. ‘Ah, Mountolive!' said the soldier, standing up and extending his hand with a dry expressionless calm. ‘I have been waiting for your arrival with some anxiety.' Mountolive felt a sudden sting of pique after all the deference shown to him during the day to be left thus untitled by this personage. (‘Heavens' he thought, ‘am I really a provincial at heart?')

‘My dear Brigadier,' his opening remarks carried a small but perceptible coolness as a result. Perhaps the soldier simply wished to make it clear that he was a War Office body, and not a Foreign Office one? It was a clumsy way to do it. Nevertheless, and somewhat to his own annoyance, Mountolive felt himself rather drawn to this lean and solitary-looking figure with its tired eyes and lustreless voice. His ugliness had a certain determined elegance. His ancient dinner-clothes were not very carefully pressed and brushed, but the quality of the material and cut were both excellent. Maskelyne sipped his drink slowly and calmly, lowering his greyhound's muzzle towards his glass circumspectly. He scrutinized Mountolive with the utmost coolness. They exchanged the formal politeness of host and guest for a while, and somewhat to his own annoyance, Mountolive found himself liking him despite the dry precarious manner. He suddenly seemed to see in him one who, like himself, had hesitated to ascribe any particular meaning to life.

The presence of servants excluded any but the most general exchanges during the dinner they shared, seated out upon the lawn, and Maskelyne seemed content to bide his time. Only once the name of Pursewarden came up and he said with his offhand air: ‘Yes. I hardly know him, of course, except officially. The odd thing is that his father — surely the name is too uncommon for me to be wrong? — his father was in my company during the war. He picked up an M.C. Indeed, I actually composed the citation which put him up for it: and of course, I had the disagreeable next-of-kin jobs. The son must have been a mere child then, I suppose. Of course, I may be wrong — not that it matters.'

Mountolive was intrigued. ‘As a matter of fact' he said, ‘I think you
are
right — he mentioned something of the kind to me once. Have you ever talked to him about it?'

‘Good Heavens, no! Why should I?' Maskelyne seemed very faintly shocked. ‘The son isn't really … my kind of person' he said quietly but without animus, simply as a statement of fact. ‘He … I … well, I read a book of his once.' He stopped abruptly as if everything had been said; as if the subject had been disposed of for all time.

‘He must have been a brave man' said Mountolive after an interval.

‘Yes — or perhaps not' said his guest slowly, thoughtfully. He paused. ‘One wonders. He wasn't a real soldier. One saw it quite often at the front. Sometimes acts of gallantry come as much out of cowardice as bravery — that is the queer thing. His act, particularly, I mean, was really an unsoldierly one. Oddly enough.'

‘But ——' protested Mountolive.

‘Let me make myself clear. There is a difference between a necessary act of bravery and an unnecessary one. If he had remembered his training as a soldier, he would not have done what he did. It may sound like a quibble. He lost his head, quite literally, and acted without thinking. I admire him enormously as a man, but not as a soldier. Our life is a good deal more exacting — it is a science, you know, or should be.'

He spoke thoughtfully in his dry, clearly enunciated way. It was clear that the topic was one which he had often debated in his own mind.

‘I wonder' said Mountolive.

‘I may be wrong' admitted the soldier.

The soft-footed servants had withdrawn at last, leaving them to their wine and cigars, and Maskelyne felt free to touch upon the real subject of his visit. ‘I expect you've studied all the differences which have arisen between ourselves and your political branch. They have been extremely sharp; and we are all waiting for you to resolve them.'

Mountolive nodded. ‘They have all been resolved as far as I am concerned' he said with the faintest tinge of annoyance (he disliked being hurried). ‘I had a conference with your General on Tuesday and set out a new grouping which I am sure will please you. You will get a confirming signal this week ordering you to transfer your show to Jerusalem, which is to become the senior post and headquarters. This will obviate questions of rank and precedence; you can leave a staging post here under Telford, who is a civilian, but it will of course be a junior post. For convenience it can work to us and liaise with our Service Departments.'

A silence fell. Maskelyne studied the ash of his cigar while the faintest trace of a smile hovered at the edges of his mouth.

‘So Pursewarden wins' he said quietly. ‘Well, well!' Mountolive was both surprised and insulted by his smile, though in truth it seemed entirely without malice.

‘Pursewarden' he said quietly ‘has been reprimanded for suppressing a War Office paper; on the other hand, I happen to know the subject of the paper rather well and I agree that you should supplement it more fully before asking us to take action.'

‘We are trying, as a matter of fact; Telford is putting down a grid about this Hosnani man — but some of the candidates put forward by Pursewarden seem to be rather … well, prejudicial, to put it mildly. However, Telford is trying to humour him by engaging them. But … well, there's one who sells information to the Press, and one who is at present consoling the Hosnani lady. Then there's another, Scobie, who spends his time dressed as a woman walking about the harbour at Alexandria — it would be a charity to suppose him in quest of police information. Altogether, I shall be quite glad to confide the net to Telford and tackle something a bit more serious. What people!'

‘As I don't know the circumstances yet' said Mountolive quietly ‘I can't comment. But I shall look into it.'

‘I'll give you an example' said Maskelyne ‘of their general efficiency. Last week Telford detailed this policeman called Scobie to do a routine job. When the Syrians want to be clever, they don't use a diplomatic courier; they confide their pouch to a lady, the vice-consul's niece, who takes it down to Cairo by train. We wanted to see the contents of one particular pouch — details of arms shipments, we thought. Gave Scobie some doped chocolates — with the doped one clearly marked. His job was to send the lady to sleep for a couple of hours and walk off with her pouch. Do you know what happened? He was found doped in the train when it got to Cairo and couldn't be wakened for nearly twenty-four hours. We had to put him into the American hospital. Apparently as he sat down in the lady's compartment, the train gave a sudden jolt and all the chocolates turned over in their wrappers. The one we had so carefully marked was now upside down; he could not remember which it was. In his panic, he ate it himself. Now I ask you.…' Maskelyne's humourless eye flashed as he retailed this story. ‘Such people are not to be trusted' he added, acidly.

‘I promise you I'll investigate the suitability of anyone proposed by Pursewarden; I also promise that if you mark papers to me there will be no hitch, and no repetition of this unauthorized behaviour.'

‘Thank you.' He seemed genuinely grateful as he rose to take his leave. He waved away the beflagged duty car at the front door, muttering something about ‘an evening constitutional', and walked off down the drive, putting on a light overcoat to hide his dinner-jacket. Mountolive stood at the front door and watched his tall, lean figure moving in and out of the yellow pools of lamplight, absurdly elongated by distance. He sighed with relief and weariness. It had been a heavy day. ‘So much for Maskelyne.'

He returned to the deserted lawns to have one last drink in the silence before he retired to bed. Altogether, the work completed that day had not been unsatisfactory. He had disposed of a dozen disagreeable duties of which telling Maskelyne about his future had been perhaps the hardest. Now he could relax.

Yet before climbing the staircase, he walked about for a while in the silent house, going from room to room, thinking; hugging the knowledge of his accession to power with all the secret pride of a woman who has discovered that she is pregnant.

VII

O
nce his official duties in the capital had been performed to his private satisfaction, Mountolive felt free to anticipate the Court by transferring his headquarters to the second capital, Alexandria. So far everything had gone quite smoothly. The King himself had praised his fluency in Arabic and he had won the unusual distinction of press popularity by his judicious public use of the language. From every newspaper these days pictures of himself stared out, always with that crooked, diffident smile. Sorting out the little mound of press cuttings he found himself wondering: ‘My God, am I slowly becoming irresistible to myself?' They were excellent pictures; he was undeniably handsome with his greying temples and crisply cut features. ‘But the mere habit of culture is not enough to defend one from one's own charm. I shall be buried alive among these soft, easy aridities of a social practice which I do not even enjoy.' He thought with his chin upon his wrist: ‘Why does not Leila write? Perhaps when I am in Alexandria I shall have word?' But he could at least leave Cairo with a good following wind. The other foreign missions were mad with envy at his success!

The move itself was completed with exemplary despatch by the diligent Errol and the Residence staff. He himself could afford to saunter down late when the special train had been loaded with all the diplomatic impedimenta which would enable them to make a show of working while they were away … suitcases and crates and scarlet despatch-boxes with their gold monograms. Cairo had by this time become unbearably hot. Yet their hearts were light as the train rasped out across the desert to the coast.

It was the best time of the year to remove, for the ugly spring khamseens were over and the town had put on its summer wear — coloured awnings along the Grande Corniche, and the ranks of coloured island craft which lay in shelves below the black turrets of the battleships and framed the blue Yacht Club harbour, atwinkle with sails. The season of parties had also begun and Nessim was able to give his long-promised reception for his returning friend. It was a barbaric spread and all Alexandria turned out to do Mountolive honour, for all the world as if he were a prodigal son returning, though in fact he knew few people apart from Nessim and his family. But he was glad to renew his acquaintance with Balthazar and Amaril, the two doctors who were always together, always chaffing each other; and with Clea whom he had once met in Europe. The sunlight, fading over the evening sea, blazed in upon the great brass-framed windows, turning them to molten diamonds before it melted and softened once more into the aquamarine twilight of Egypt. The curtains were drawn and now a hundred candles' breathing shone softly upon the white napery of the long tables, winking among the slender stems of the glasses. It was the season of ease, for the balls and rides and swimming-parties had started or were about to be planned. The cool sea-winds kept the temperature low, the air was fresh and invigorating.

Mountolive sank back into the accustomed pattern of things with a sense of sureness, almost of beatitude. Nessim had, so to speak, gone back into place like a picture into an alcove built for it, and the companionship of Justine — this dark-browed, queenly beauty at his side — enhanced rather than disturbed his relations with the outer world. Mountolive liked her, liked to feel her dark appraising eyes upon him lit with a sort of compassionate curiosity mixed with admiration. They made a splendid couple, he thought, with almost a touch of envy: like people trained to work together from childhood, instinctively responding to each other's unspoken needs and desires, moving up unhesitatingly to support one another with their smiles. Though she was handsome and reserved and appeared to speak little, Mountolive thought he detected an endearing candour cropping up the whole time among her sentences — as if from some hidden spring of secret warmth. Was she pleased to find someone who valued her husband as deeply as she herself did? The cool, guileless pressure of her fingers suggested that, as did her thrilling voice when she said ‘I have known you so long from hearsay as David that it will be hard to call you anything else.' As for Nessim, he had lost nothing during the time of separation, had preserved all his graces, adding to them only the weight of a worldly judgement which made him seem strikingly European in such provincial surroundings. His tact, for example, in never mentioning any subject which might have an official bearing to Mountolive was deeply endearing — and this despite the fact that they rode and shot together frequently, swam, sailed and painted. Such information upon political affairs as he had to put forward was always scrupulously relayed through Pursewarden. He never compromised their friendship by mixing work with pleasure, or forcing Mountolive to struggle between affection and duty.