Lawrence Durrell - The Alexandria Quartet

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 twentyfour 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 fight overcoat to hide his dinnerjacket. 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.

*******

Once 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.