The Alexandria Quartet: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Clea

into a bit of headache for us. It’s such a crowded quarter. This morning he sent a whole string of he-camels on heat into the town with bercim clover. You know how horrible they smell. And when they’re in season they get that horrible jelly-like excrescence on their necks. It must irritate them or suppurate or something for they’re scratching their necks the whole time on walls and posts. Two of them had a fight. It took hours to untangle the affair. The place was blocked.’

Suddenly a series of bangs sounded from the direction of the harbour and a series of bright coloured rockets traced their splendid grooves across the night, drooping and falling away with a patter and a hiss. ‘Aha!’ said Nimrod with self-satisfaction. ‘There goes the Navy. I’m glad they remembered.’

‘Navy?’ I echoed as another long line of rockets tossed their brilliant plumage across the soft night.

‘The boys of H.M.S. Milton’ he chuckled. ‘I happened to dine on board last night. The wardroom was much taken by my story of an old Merchant Seaman who had been beatified. I naturally did not tell them very much about Scobie; least of all about his death. But I did hint that a few fireworks would be appropriate as coming from British mariners, and I also added that as a political gesture of respect it would earn them good marks with the worshippers. The idea caught on at once, and the Admiral was asked for permission. And there we go!’

We sat for a while in companionable silence watching the fireworks and the highly delighted crowd which saluted each salvo with long quivering exclamations of pleasure. ‘All—ah! All—ah!’ Finally Nimrod cleared his throat and said: ‘Darley, can I ask you a question? Do you know what Justine is up to?’ I must have looked very blank for he went on at once without hesitation. ‘I only ask you because she rang me yesterday and said that she was going to break parole today, come into town deliberately, and that she wanted me to arrest her. It sounds quite absurd — I mean to come all the way into town to give herself up to the Police. She said she wanted to force a personal interview with Memlik. It had to be me as reports from the British officers on the force would carry weight and draw Memlik’s attention. It sounds a bit of a rigmarole doesn’t it? But I’ve got a date with her at the Central Station in half an hour.’

‘I know nothing about the matter.’

‘I wondered if you did. Anyway, keep it under your hat.’

‘I will.’

He stood up and held out his hand to say good-bye. ‘You’re off tonight I gather. Good luck.’ As he stepped down from the little wooden platform he said: ‘By the way, Balthazar is looking for you. He’s somewhere down at the shrine — what a word!’ With a brief nod his tall figure moved away into the brilliant swirling street. I paid for my drink and walked down towards Tatwig Street, bumped and jostled by the holiday crowd.

Ribbons and bunting and huge coloured gonfalons had been hung from every balcony along the street. The little piece of waste land under the arched doors was now the most sumptuous of saloons. Huge tents with their brilliant embroidered designs had been set up creating a ceremonial parade ground where the dancing and chanting would be held when the procession reached its destination. This area was crowded with children. The drone of prayers and the shrill tongue-trills of women came from the shrine which was dimly lit. The suppliants were invoking fruitfulness of Scobie’s bath-tub. The long quavering lines of the Suras spun themselves on the night in a web of melodious sound. I quested round a bit among the crowd like a gun-dog, hunting for Balthazar. At last I caught sight of him sitting somewhat apart at an outdoor cafe. I made my way to his side. ‘Good’ he said. ‘I was on the look out for you. Hamid said you were off tonight. He telephoned to ask for a job and told me. Besides I wanted to share with you my mixture of shame and relief over this hideous accident. Shame at the stupidity, relief that she isn’t dead. Both mixed. I’m rather drunk with relief, and dazed with the shame.’ He was indeed rather tipsy. ‘But it will be all right, thank God!’

‘What does Amaril think?’

‘Nothing as yet. Or if he does he won’t say. She must have a comfortable twenty-four hours of rest before anything is decided. Are you really going?’ His voice fell with reproof. ‘You should stay, you know.’

‘She doesn’t want me to stay.’

‘I know. I was a bit shocked when she said she had told you to go; but she said “You don’t understand. I shall see if I can’t will him back again. We aren’t quite ripe for each other yet. It will come.” I was amazed to see her so self-confident and radiant again. Really amazed. Sit down, my dear chap, and have a couple of stiff drinks with me. We’ll see the procession quite well from here. No crowding.’ He clapped his hands rather unsteadily and called for more mastika.

When the glasses were brought he sat for a long while silent with his chin on his hands, staring at them. Then he gave a sigh and shook his head sadly.

‘What is it?’ I said, removing his glass from the tray and placing it squarely before him on the tin table.

‘Leila is dead’ he said quietly. The words seemed to weight him down with sorrow. ‘Nessim telephoned this evening to tell me. The strange thing is that he sounded exhilarated by the news. He has managed to get permission to fly down and make arrangements for her funeral. D’you know what he said?’ Balthazar looked at me with that dark all-comprehending eye and went on. ‘He said: “While I loved her and all that, her death has freed me in a curious sort of way. A new life is opening before me. I feel years younger.” I don’t know if it was a trick of the telephone or what but he sounded younger. His voice was full of suppressed excitement. He knew, of course, that Leila and I were the oldest of friends but not that all through this period of absence she was writing to me. She was a rare soul, Darley, one of the rare flowers of Alexandria. She wrote: “I know I am dying, my dear Balthazar, but all too slowly. Do not believe the doctors and their diagnoses, you of all men. I am dying of heartsickness like a true Alexandrian.”’ Balthazar blew his nose in an old sock which he took from the breast-pocket of his coat; carefully folded it to resemble a clean handkerchief and pedantically replaced it. ‘Yes’ he said again, gravely, ‘what a word it is — “heartsickness”! And it seems to me that while (from what you tell me) Liza Pursewarden was administering her death-warrant to her brother, Mountolive was giving the same back-hander to Leila. So we pass the loving-cup about, the poisoned loving-cup!’ He nodded and took a loud sip of his drink. He went on slowly, with immense care and effort, like someone translating from an obscure and recondite text. ‘Yes, just as Liza’s letter to Pursewarden telling him that at last the stranger had appeared was his coup de grace so to speak, so Leila received, I suppose, exactly the same letter. Who knows how these things are arranged? Perhaps in the very same words. The same words of passionate gratitude: “I bless you, I thank you with all my heart that through you I am at last able to receive the precious gift which can never come to those who are ignorant of its powers.” Those are the words of Mountolive. For Leila quoted them to me. All this was after she went away. She wrote to me. It was as if she were cut off from Nessim and had nobody to turn to, nobody to talk to. Hence the long letters in which she went over it all, backwards and forwards, with that marvellous candour and clear-sightedness which I so loved in her. She refused every self-deception. Ah! but she fell between two stools, Leila, between two lives, two loves. She said something like this in explaining it to me: “I thought at first when I got his letter that it was just another attachment — as it was in the past for his Russian ballerina. There was never any secret between us of his loves, and that is what made ours seem so truthful, so immortal in its way. It was a love without reserves. But this time everything became clear to me when he refused to tell me her name, to share her with me, so to speak! I knew then that everything was ended. Of course in another corner of my mind I had always been waiting for this moment; I pictured myself facing it with magnanimity. This I found, to my surprise, was impossible. That was why for a long time, even when I knew he was in Egypt, and anxious to see me, I could not bring myself to see him. Of course I pretended it was for other reasons, purely feminine ones. But it was not that. It wasn’t lack of courage because of my smashed beauty, no! For I have in reality the heart of a man.”’

Balthazar sat for a moment staring at the empty glasses with wide eyes, pressing his fingers softly together. His story meant very little to me — except that I was amazed to imagine Mountolive capable of any very deep feeling, and at a loss to imagine this secret relationship with the mother of Nessim.

‘The Dark Swallow!’ said Balthazar and clapped his hands for more drink to be brought. ‘We shall not look upon her like again.’

But gradually the raucous night around us was swelling with the deeper rumour of the approaching procession. One saw the rosy light of the cressets among the roofs. The streets, already congested, were now black with people. They buzzed like a great hive with the contagion of the knowledge. You could hear the distant bumping of drums and the hissing splash of cymbals, keeping time with the strange archaic peristaltic rhythms of the dance — its relatively slow walking pace broken by queer halts, to enable the dancers, as the ecstasy seized them, to twirl in and out of their syncopated measures and return once more to their places in the line of march. It