‘For a few short months only.’
‘Very well.’
She walked up and down the carpet with an air of perplexity, staring downwards at it, deep in thought. Suddenly she looked up at me with a soft expression that I recognized with a pang — the mixture of remorse and tenderness at inflicting unwitting sorrow upon others. It was the face of the old Clea. But I knew that it would not last, that once more the peculiar shadow of her discontent would cast itself over our relationship. There was no point in trusting myself once more to what could only prove a short respite. ‘Oh, Darley’ she said, ‘when do you go, my dear?’ taking my hands.
‘In a fortnight. Until then I propose not to see you at all. There is no point in our upsetting each other by these wrangles.’
‘As you wish.’
‘I’ll write to you.’
‘Yes of course.’
It was a strange listless way of parting after such a momentous relationship. A sort of ghostly anaesthesia had afflicted our emotions. There was a kind of deep ache inside me but it wasn’t sorrow. The dead handshake we exchanged only expressed a strange and truthful exhaustion of the spirit. She sat in a chair, quietly smoking and watching me as I gathered my possessions together and stuffed them into the old battered briefcase which I had borrowed from Telford and forgotten to return the summer before. The toothbrush was splayed. I threw it away. My pyjamas were torn at the shoulder but the bottom half, which I had never used, were still crisp and new. I assembled these objects with the air of a geologist sorting specimens of some remote age. A few books and papers. It all had a sort of unreality, but I cannot say that a single sharp regret was mixed with it.
‘How this war has aged and staled us’ she said suddenly, as if to herself. ‘In the old days one would have thought of going away in order, as we said, to get away from oneself. But to get away from
Now, writing the words down in all their tedious banality, I realize that she was really trying to say good-bye. The fatality of human wishes. For me the future lay open, uncommitted; and there was no part of it which I could then visualize as not containing, somehow, Clea. This parting was … well, it was only like changing the bandages until a wound should heal. Being unimaginative, I could not think definitively about a future which might make unexpected demands upon me; as something entirely new. It must be left to form itself upon the emptiness of the present. But for Clea the future had already closed, was already presenting a blank wall. The poor creature was afraid!
‘Well, that’s everything’ I said at last, shoving the briefcase under my arm. ‘If there’s anything you need, you have only to ring me, I’ll be at the flat.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m off then for a while. Good-bye.’
As I closed the door of the little flat I heard her call my name once — but this again was one of those deceptions, those little accesses of pity or tenderness which deceive one. It would have been absurd to pay any attention to it, to return on my tracks, and open a new cycle of disagreements. I went on down the stairs, determined to let the future have every chance to heal itself.
It was a brilliantly sunny spring day and the streets looked washed with colour. The feeling of having nowhere to go and nothing to do was both depressing and inspiriting. I returned to the flat and found on the mantelpiece a letter from Pombal in which he said that he was likely to be transferred to Italy shortly and did not think he would be able to keep the flat on. I was delighted as this enabled me to terminate the lease, my share of which I would soon not be able to afford.
It was at first somewhat strange, even perhaps a little numbing, to be left entirely to my own devices, but I rapidly became accustomed to it. Moreover there was quite a lot of work to be done in winding up my censorship duties and handing over the post to a successor while at the same time collecting practical information for the little unit of technicians which was to install the radio post. Between the two departments with their different needs I was kept busy enough. During these days I kept my word and saw nothing of Clea. The time passed in a sort of limbo pitched between the world of desire and of farewell — though there were no emotions in very clear definition for me: I was not conscious of regrets or longings.
So it was that when at last that fatal day presented itself, it did so under the smiling guise of a spring sunshine hot enough to encourage the flies to begin hatching out upon the window-panes. It was their buzzing which awoke me. Sunlight was pouring into the room. For a moment, dazzled by it, I hardly recognized the smiling figure seated at the foot of my bed, waiting for me to open my eyes. It was the Clea of some forgotten original version, so to speak, clad in a brilliant summer frock of a crisp vine-leaf pattern, white sandals, and with her hair arranged in a new style. She was smoking a cigarette whose smoke hung in brilliant ash-veined whorls in the sunlight above us, and her smiling face was completely relaxed and unshadowed by the least preoccupation. I stared, for she seemed so precisely and unequivocally the Clea I should always have remembered; the mischievous tenderness was back in the eyes. ‘Well’ I said in sleepy amazement. ‘What …?’ and I felt her warm breath on my cheek as she leaned down to embrace me.
‘Darley’ she said, ‘I suddenly realized that it’s tomorrow you are leaving; and that today is the Mulid of El Scob. I couldn’t resist the idea of spending the day together and visiting the shrine this evening. Oh, say you will! Look at the sunshine. It’s warm enough for a bathe, and we could take Balthazar.’
I was still not properly awake. I had completely forgotten the Name Day of the Pirate. ‘But it’s long past St George’s Day’ I said. ‘Surely that’s at the end of April.’
‘On the contrary. Their absurd method of lunar calendar reckoning has turned him into a movable feast like all the others. He slides up and down the calendar now like a domestic saint. In fact it was Balthazar who telephoned yesterday and told me or I would have missed it myself.’ She paused to puff her cigarette. ‘We shouldn’t miss it, should we?’ she added a little wistfully.
‘But of course not! How good of you to come.’
‘And the island? Perhaps you could come with us?’
The time was just ten o’clock. I could easily telephone to Telford to make some excuse for absenting myself for the day. My heart leaped.
‘I’d love to’ I said. ‘How does the wind sit?’
‘Calm as a nun with easterly freshets. Ideal for the cutter I should say. Are you sure you want to come?’
She had a wicker-covered demijohn and a basket with her. ‘I’ll go on and provision us up; you dress and meet me at the Yacht Club in an hour.’
‘Yes.’ It would give me ample time to visit my office and examine the duty mail. ‘A splendid idea.’
And in truth it was, for the day was clear and ringing with a promise of summer heat for the afternoon. Clip- clopping down the Grande Corniche I studied the light haze on the horizon and the flat blue expanse of sea with delight. The city glittered in sunshine like a jewel. Brilliantly rode the little craft in the inner basin, parodied by their shining reflections. The minarets shone loudly. In the Arab quarter the heat had hatched out the familiar smells of offal and drying mud, of carnations and jasmine, of animal sweat and clover. In Tatwig Street dark gnomes on ladders with scarlet flower-pot hats were stretching strings of flags from the balconies. I felt the sun warm on my fingers. We rolled past the site of the ancient Pharos whose shattered fragments still choke the shallows. Toby Mannering, I remembered, had once wanted to start a curio trade by selling fragments of the Pharos as paperweights. Scobie was to break them up with a hammer for him and he was to deliver them to retailers all over the world. Why had the scheme foundered? I could not remember. Perhaps Scobie found the work too arduous? Or perhaps it had got telescoped with that other scheme for selling Jordan water to Copts at a competitive price? Somewhere a military band was banging away.
They were down on the slip waiting for me. Balthazar waved his stick cheerfully. He was dressed in white trousers and sandals and a coloured shirt, and sported an ancient yellowing Panama hat.
‘The first day of summer’ I called cheerfully.
‘You’re wrong’ he croaked. ‘Look at that haze. It’s altogether too hot. I’ve betted Clea a thousand piastres we have a thunder-storm by this afternoon.’
‘He’s always got something gloomy to say’ smiled Clea.
‘I know my Alexandria’ said Balthazar.
And so amidst these idle pleasantries we three set forth, Clea at the tiller of her little craft. There was hardly
