The Alexandria Quartet (92 page)

Sighing, he rang for Errol. ‘You'd better glance at this' he said. His Head of Chancery sat himself down and began to read the document greedily. He nodded slowly from time to time. Mountolive cleared his throat: ‘It seems pretty incoherent to me' he said, despising himself for so trying to cast a doubt upon the clear words, to influence Errol in a judgement which, in his own secret mind, he had already made. Errol read it twice slowly, and handed it back across the desk. ‘It seems pretty extraordinary' he said tentatively, respectfully. It was not his place to offer evaluations of the message. They must by rights come from his Chief. ‘It all seems a bit out of proportion' he added helpfully, feeling his way.

Mountolive said sombrely: ‘I'm afraid it is typical of Pursewarden. It makes me sorry that I never took up your original recommendations about him. I was wrong, it seems, and you were right about his suitability.'

Errol's eye glinted with modest triumph. He said nothing, however, as he stared at Mountolive. ‘Of course,' said the latter, ‘as you well know, Hosnani has been suspect for some time.'

‘I know, sir.'

‘But there is no
evidence
here to support what he says.' He tapped the letter irritably twice. Enrol sat back and breathed through his nose. ‘I don't know' he said vaguely. ‘It sounds pretty conclusive to me.'

‘I don't think' said Mountolive ‘it would support a paper. Of course we'll report it to London as it stands. But I'm inclined not to give it to the Parquet to help them with their inquest. What do you say?'

Enrol cradled his knees. A slow smile of cunning crept around his mouth. ‘It might be the best way of getting it to the Egyptians' he said softly, ‘and they might choose to act on it. Of course, it would obviate the diplomatic pressure we might have to bring if … later on, the whole thing came out in a more concrete form. I know Hosnani was a friend of yours, sir.'

Mountolive felt himself colouring slightly. ‘In matters of business, a diplomat has no friends' he said stiffly, feeling that he spoke in the very accents of Pontius Pilate.

‘Quite, sir.' Errol gazed at him admiringly.

‘Once Hosnani's guilt is established we shall have to act. But without supporting evidence we should find ourselves in a weak position. With Memlik Pasha — you know he isn't very pro-British … I'm thinking.…'

‘Yes, sir?'

Mountolive waited, drinking the air like a wild animal, scenting that Errol was beginning to approve his judgement. They sat silently in the dusk for a while, thinking. Then, with a histrionic snap, the Ambassador switched on the desk-light and said decisively: ‘If you agree, we'll keep this out of Egyptian hands until we are better documented. London must have it. Classified of course. But not private persons, even next-of-kin. By the way, are you capable of undertaking the next-of-kin correspondence? I leave it to you to make up something.' He felt a pang as he saw Liza Pursewarden's face rise up before him.

‘Yes. I have his file here. There is only a sister at the Imperial Institute for the Blind, I think, apart from his wife.' Errol fussily consulted a green folder, but Mountolive said ‘Yes, yes. I know her.' Errol stood up.

Mountolive added: ‘And I think in all fairness we should copy to Maskelyne in Jerusalem, don't you?'

‘Most certainly, sir.'

‘And for the moment keep our own counsel?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Thank you very much' said Mountolive with unusual warmth. He felt all of a sudden very old and frail. Indeed he felt so weak that he doubted if his limbs could carry him downstairs to the Residence. ‘That is all at present.' Errol took his leave, closing the door behind him with the gravity of a mute.

Mountolive telephoned to the buttery and ordered himself a glass of beef-tea and biscuits. He ate and drank ravenously, staring the while at the white mask and the manuscript of a novel. He felt both a deep disgust and a sense of enormous bereavement — he could not tell which lay uppermost. Unwittingly, too, Pursewarden had, he reflected, separated him forever from Leila. Yes, that also, and perhaps forever.

That night, however, he made his witty prepared speech (written by Enrol) to the Alexandrian Chamber of Commerce, delighting the assembled bankers by his fluent French. The clapping swelled and expanded in the august banquet room of the Mohammed Ali Club. Nessim, seated at the opposite end of the long table, undertook the response with gravity and a calm address. Once or twice during the dinner Mountolive felt the dark eyes of his friend seeking his own, interrogating them, but he evaded them. A chasm now yawned between them which neither would know how to bridge. After dinner, he met Nessim briefly in the hall as he was putting on his coat. He suddenly felt the almost irresistible desire to refer to Pursewarden's death. The subject obtruded itself so starkly, stuck up jaggedly into the air between them. It shamed him as a physical deformity might; as if his handsome smile were disfigured by a missing front tooth. He said nothing and neither did Nessim. Nothing of what was going on beneath the surface showed in the elastic and capable manner of the two tall men who stood smoking by the front door, waiting for the car to arrive. But a new watchful, obdurate knowledge had been born between them. How strange that a few words scribbled on a piece of paper should make them enemies!

Then leaning back in his beflagged car, drawing softly on an excellent cigar, Mountolive felt his innermost soul become as dusty, as airless as an Egyptian tomb. It was strange too that side by side with these deeper preoccupations the shallower should coexist; he was delighted by the extent of his success in captivating the bankers! He had been undeniably brilliant. Discreetly circulated copies of his speech would, he knew, be printed verbatim in tomorrow's papers, illustrated by new photographs of himself. The Corps would be envious as usual. Why had nobody thought of making a public statement about the Gold Standard in this oblique fashion? He tried to keep his mind effervescent, solidly anchored to this level of self-congratulation, but it was useless. The Embassy would soon be moving back to its winter quarters. He had not seen Leila. Would he ever see her again?

Somewhere inside himself a barrier had collapsed, a dam had been broached. He had engaged upon a new conflict with himself which gave a new tautness to his features, a new purposeful rhythm to his walk.

That night he was visited by an excruciating attack of the ear-ache with which he always celebrated his return home. This was the first time he had ever been attacked while he was outside the stockade of his mother's security, and the attack alarmed him. He tried ineffectually to doctor himself with the homely specific she always used, but he heated the salad oil too much by mistake and burnt himself severely in the process. He spent three restless days in bed after this incident, reading detective stories and pausing for long moments to stare at the whitewashed wall. It at least obviated his attendance at Pursewarden's cremation — he would have been sure to meet Nessim there. Among the many messages and presents which began to flow in when the news of his indisposition became known, was a splendid bunch of flowers from Nessim and Justine, wishing him a speedy recovery. As Alexandrians and friends, they could hardly do less!

He pondered deeply upon them during those long sleepless days and nights and for the first time he saw them, in the light of this new knowledge, as enigmas. They were puzzles now, and even their private moral relationship haunted him with a sense of something he had never properly understood, never clearly evaluated. Somehow his friendship for them had prevented him from thinking of them as people who might, like himself, be living on several different levels at once. As conspirators, as lovers — what was the key to the enigma? He could not guess.

But perhaps the clues that he sought lay further back in the past — further than either he or Pursewarden could see from a vantage-point in the present time.

There were many facts about Justine and Nessim which had not come to his knowledge — some of them critical for an understanding of their case. But in order to include them it is necessary once more to retrace our steps briefly to the period immediately before their marriage.

X

T
he blue Alexandrian dusk was not yet fully upon them. “But do you … how shall one say it? … Do you really
care
for her, Nessim? I know of course how you have been haunting her; and she knows what is in your mind.'

Clea's golden head against the window remained steady, her gaze was fixed upon the chalk drawing she was doing. It was nearly finished; a few more of those swift, flowing strokes and she could release her subject. Nessim had put on a striped pullover to model for her. He lay upon her uncomfortable little sofa holding a guitar which he could not play, and frowning. ‘How do you spell love in Alexandria?' he said at last, softly. ‘That is the question. Sleeplessness, loneliness,
bonheur, chagrin
— I do not want to harm or annoy her, Clea. But I feel that somehow, somewhere, she must need me as I need her. Speak, Clea.' He knew he was lying. Clea did not.

She shook her head doubtfully, still with her attention on the paper, and then shrugged her shoulders. ‘Loving you both as I do, who could wish for anything better? And I
have
spoken to her, as you asked me, tried to provoke her, probe her. It seems hopeless.' Was this strictly true, she asked herself? She had too great a tendency to believe what people said.

‘False pride?' he said sharply.

‘She laughs hopelessly and' Clea imitated a gesture of hopelessness ‘like that! I think she feels that she has had all the clothes stripped off her back in the street by that book
Moeurs
. She thinks herself no longer able to bring anyone peace of mind! Or so she says.'

‘Who asks for that?'

‘She thinks you would. Then of course, there is your social position. And then she is, after all, a Jew. Put yourself in her place.' Clea was silent for a moment. Then she added in the same abstract tone: ‘If she needs you at all it is to use your fortune to help her search for the child. And she is too proud to do that. But… you have read
Moeurs
. Why repeat myself?'

‘I have never read
Moeurs'
he said hotly, ‘and she knows that I never will. I have told her that. Oh, Clea dear!' He sighed. This was another lie.

Clea paused, smiling, to consider his dark face. Then she continued, rubbing at the corner of the drawing with her thumb as she said:
‘Chevalier sans peur
, etc. That is like you, Nessim. But is it wise to idealize us women so? You are a bit of a baby still, for an Alexandrian.'

‘I don't idealize; I know exactly how sad, mad or bad she is. Who does not? Her past and her present… they are known to everyone. It is just that I feel she would match perfectly my own.…'

‘Your own what?'

‘Aridity'
he said surprisingly, rolling over, smiling and frowning at the same time. ‘Yes, I sometimes think I shall never be able to fall in love properly until after my mother dies — and she is still comparatively young. Speak, Clea!'

The blonde head shook slowly. Clea took a puff from the cigarette burning in the ashtray beside the easel and bent once more to the work in hand. ‘Well' said Nessim, ‘I shall see her myself this evening and make a serious attempt to make her understand.'

‘You do not say “make her love”!'

‘How could I?'

‘If she
cannot
love, it would be dishonourable to pretend.'

‘I do not know whether I can yet either; we are both
âmes veuves
in a queer way, don't you see?'

‘Oh, la, la!' said Clea, doubtfully but still smiling.

‘Love may be for a time
incognito
with us' he said, frowning at the wall and setting his face. ‘But it is there. I must try to make her see.' He bit his lip. ‘Do I really present such an enigma?' He really meant ‘Do I succeed in deluding you?'

‘Now you've moved' she said reproachfully; and then after a moment went on quietly: ‘Yes. It is an enigma. Your passion sounds so
voulue
. A
besoin d'aimer
without a
besoin d'être aimé?
Damn!' He had moved again. She stopped in vexation and was about to reprove him when she caught sight of the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘It's time to go' she said. ‘You must not keep her waiting.'

‘Good' he said sharply, and rising, stripped off the pullover and donned his own well-cut coat, groping in the pocket for the keys of the car as he turned. Then, remembering, he brushed his dark hair back swiftly, impatiently, in the mirror, trying suddenly to imagine how hew must look to Justine. ‘I wish I could say exactly what I mean. Do you not believe in love-contracts for those whose souls aren't yet up to loving? A
tendresse
against an
amour-passion
, Clea? If she had parents I would have bought her from them unhesitatingly. If she had been thirteen she would have had nothing to say or feel, eh?'