The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea

do you do that?’

He sighed deeply and said: ‘It is not what you think. You know how much I like him and how well we get on. It is only the pretence, the eternal play-acting one has to indulge in even with one’s friends. If only we did not have to keep on acting a part, Justine.’

But he saw that she was looking at him wide-eyed now, with an expression suggesting something that was close to horror or dismay. ‘Ah’ she said thoughtfully, sorrowfully after a moment, closing her eyes, ‘ah, Nessim! Then I should not know who I was.’

* * * * *

The two men sat in the warm conservatory, silently facing each other over the magnificent chessboard with its ivories — in perfect companionship. The set was a twenty-first birthday gift, from Mountolive’s mother. As they sat, each occasionally mused aloud, absently. It wasn’t conversation, but simply thinking aloud, a communion of minds which were really occupied by the grand strategy of chess: a by-product of friendship which was rooted in the fecund silences of the royal game. Balthazar spoke of Pursewarden. ‘It annoys me, his suicide. I feel I had somehow missed the point. I take it to have been an expression of contempt for the world, contempt for the conduct of the world.’

Mountolive glanced up quickly. ‘No, no. A conflict between duty and affection.’ Then he added swiftly ‘But I can’t tell you very much. When his sister comes, she will tell you more, perhaps, if she can.’ They were silent. Balthazar sighed and said ‘Truth naked and unashamed. That’s a splendid phrase. But we always see her as she seems, never as she is. Each man has his own interpretation.’

Another long silence. Balthazar loquitur, musingly, to himself. ‘Sometimes one is caught pretending to be God and learns a bitter lesson. Now I hated Dmitri Randidi, though not his lovely daughter; but just to humiliate him (I was disguised as a gipsy woman at the carnival ball), I told her fortune. Tomorrow, I said, she would have a life-experience which she must on no account miss — a man sitting in the ruined tower at Taposiris. “You will not speak” I said “but walk straight into his arms, your eyes closed. His name begins with an L, his family name with J.” (I had in fact already thought of a particularly hideous young man with these initials, and he was across the road at the Cervonis’ ball. Colourless eyelashes, a snout, sandy hair.) I chuckled when she believed me. Having told her this prophecy — everyone believes the tale of a gipsy, and with my black face and hook nose I made a splendid gipsy — having arranged this, I went across the road and sought out L. J., telling him I had a message for him. I knew him to be superstitious. He did not recognize me. I told him of the part he should play. Malign, spiteful, I suppose. I only planned to annoy Randidi. And it all turned out as I had planned. For the lovely girl obeyed the gipsy and fell in love with this freckled toad with the red hair. A more unsuitable conjunction cannot be imagined. But that was the idea — to make Randidi hop! It did, yes, very much, and I was so pleased by my own cleverness. He of course forbade the marriage. The lovers — which I invented, my lovers — were separated. Then Gaby Randidi, the beautiful girl, took poison. You can imagine how clever I felt. This broke her father’s health and the neurasthenia (never very far from the surface in the family) overwhelmed him at last. Last autumn he was found hanging from the trellis which supports the most famous grapevine in the city and from which….’

In the silence which followed he could be heard to add the words: ‘It is only another story of our pitiless city. But check to your Queen, unless I am mistaken….’

* * * * *

XIII

With the first thin effervescence of autumn rain Mountolive found himself back for the winter spell in Cairo with nothing of capital importance as yet decided in the field of policy; London was silent on the revelations contained in Pursewarden’s farewell letter and apparently disposed rather to condole with a Chief of Mission whose subordinates proved of doubtful worth than to criticize him or subject the whole matter to any deep scrutiny. Perhaps the feeling was best expressed in the long and pompous letter in which Kenilworth felt disposed to discuss the tragedy, offering assurances that everyone ‘at the Office’ was sad though not surprised. Pursewarden had always been considered rather outre, had he not? Apparently some such outcome had long been suspected. ‘His charm’ wrote Kenilworth in the august prose style reserved for what was known as ‘a balanced appraisal’, ‘could not disguise his aberrations. I do not need to dilate on the personal file which I showed you. In Pace Requiescat. But you have our sympathy for the loyal way in which you brushed aside these considerations to give him another chance with a Mission which had already found his manners insupportable, his views unsound.’ Mountolive squirmed as he read; yet his repugnance was irrationally mixed with a phantom relief for he saw, cowering behind these deliberations as it were, the shadows of Nessim and Justine, the outlaws.

If he had been reluctant to leave Alexandria, it was only because the unresolved problem of Leila nagged him still. He was afraid of the new thoughts he was forced to consider concerning her and her possible share in the conspiracy — if such it was — he felt like a criminal harbouring the guilt for some as yet undiscovered deed. Would it not be better to force his way in upon her — to arrive unannounced at Karm Abu Girg one day and coax the truth out of her? He could not do it. His nerve failed him at this point. He averted his mind from the ominous future and packed with many a sigh for his journey, planning to plunge once more into the tepid stream of his social activities in order to divert his mind.

For the first time now the aridities of his official duty seemed almost delightful, almost enticing. Time-killers and pain-killers at once, he followed out the prescribed round of entertainments with a concentration and attention that made them seem almost a narcotic. Never had he radiated such calculated charm, such attentiveness to considered trifles which turned them into social endearments. A whole colony of bores began to seek him out. It was a little time before people began to notice how much and in how short a time he had been aged, and to attribute the change to the unceasing round of pleasure into which he cast himself with such ravenous enthusiasm. What irony! His popularity expanded around him in waves. But now it began to seem to him that there was little enough behind the handsome indolent mask which he exposed to the world save a terror and uncertainty which were entirely new. Cut off in this way from Leila, he felt dispossessed, orphaned. All that remained was the bitter drug of duties to which he held desperately.

Waking in the morning to the sound of his curtains being drawn by the butler — slowly and reverently as one might slide back the curtains of Juliet’s tomb — he would call for the papers and read them eagerly as he tackled a breakfast-tray loaded with the prescribed delicacies to which his life had made him accustomed. But already he was impatient for the tapping on the door which would herald the appearance of his young bearded third secretary, bringing him his appointments book and other impedimenta of his work. He would hope frantically that the day would be a full one, and felt almost anguish on those rare occasions when there were few engagements to be met. As he lay back on his pillows with controlled impatience Donkin would read the day’s agenda in the manner of someone embarking on a formal recitation of the Creed. Dull as they always sounded, these official engagements, they rang in Mountolive’s ear with a note of promise, a prescription for boredom and unease. He listened like an anxious voluptuary to the voice reciting: ‘There is a call on Rahad Pasha at eleven to deliver an aide- memoire on investment by British subjects. Chancery have the data. Then Sir John and Lady Gilliatt are coming to lunch. Errol met the plane. Yes, we sent the flowers to the hotel for her. They will sign the book at eleven today. Their daughter is indisposed which rather mucked up the lunch-seating, but as you already had Haida Pasha and the American Minister, I took the liberty of popping in Errol and wife; the placement works out like this. I didn’t need to consult protocol because Sir John is here on a private visit — this has been publicly announced in the Press.’ Laying down all the beautifully-typed memoranda on its stiff crested paper, Mountolive sighed and said ‘Is the new chef any good? You might send him to me later in my office. I know a favourite dish of the Gilliatts’.’

Donkin nodded and scribbled a note before continuing in his toneless voice: ‘At six there is a cocktail party for Sir John at Haida’s. You have accepted to dine at the Italian Embassy — a dinner in honour of Signor Maribor. It will be a tight fit.’

‘I shall change before’ said Mountolive thoughtfully.

‘There are also one or two notes here in your hand which I couldn’t quite decipher, sir. One mentions the Scent Bazaar, Persian Lilac.’

‘Good, yes. I promised to take Lady Gilliatt. Arrange transport for the visit please, and let them know I am coming. After lunch — say, three-thirty.’