The Minister did not rise to the jest but on the contrary looked rather pained. “You will soon know,” he said, turning to me, “just how lucky we are to have someone like the Prince to consult on policy. Egypt is terribly tricky politically, and doubly so at the moment with the present options.”
The talk then generalised itself into gossip about the war situation which, despite some lucky strokes on our side, was still appallingly full of hazards; it gave a highly provisional air to these orders and dispositions and it was obvious that the Minister was weighed down by these fearful contingencies which hedged us in between the deserts, still with inadequate forces and armour to confront the worst that the enemy might think up. He did not say any of this, but his tone implied it – and of course the facts of the general situation were so widely reported that there was nothing secret in the matter that any newspaper reader might not know. Our tea-party ended on an amiable but subdued note. “I know that you will be in and out of the Chancery on business matters,” said the Minister as we rose to shake hands, “I will tell my social sec to see that you receive all standing invitations. But if you ever need to see me personally, don’t hesitate to ring up and come round.” We thanked him for his warmth. A swerve of the water sprinklers sent a gust of cool air towards us; it dislodged a leaf from the bundle of despatch-paper on the little wicker table. I picked it up as it fell to the ground and handed it back. It looked at first to be a cipher. Then I saw that it was a game of chess described in cablese. He thanked me as he took the paper back and said, “I see you caught a glimpse of the positions. Do you play chess?” But there I had to disappoint him. “Canasta, bridge or pontoon – nothing else.” We took our leave.
So the long days of my secretarial engagements outlined themselves, full of variety and novelty. The interests of the Prince were multifarious; as president of the Red Cross he had a fine set of offices in the centre of the capital, where I was accorded a small room by the teleprinter from which I had to harvest a huge correspondence; then there was the dusty, agreeable Consulate which he so frequently visited – though here he had no foothold. We wandered about the Chancery at will. My palace office was the central one, the key to everything else. But the Prince, as an honorary Colonel of Regiment to the Egyptian Field Artillery, was also entitled to an imposing office at headquarters which he adored visiting in his uniform – a British colonel’s outfit topped with a traditional fez. He wore a spray of service decorations on his breast and it was obvious that they gave him immense pleasure, for he stroked them unendurably during formal conversations with the obsequious young officers of his regiment.
Yes, this new world is full of colour and sensation; nor would it be possible to overpraise the beauty of this gorgeous, dusty city with its bubble-domes topped with new moons, its blazing souks, its brilliantly lit riverside suburbs, its bursting shops. The whole of Europe is in darkness and we are here in a night-long incandescence permitted only to the cities which have been declared “open”. No bombers snarl out of this velvet-blue night sky. There are no signs of the war save the soldiers on leave. Occasionally, just before dawn, a stealth of tanks and carriers might emerge from the barracks and rustle across the deserted roads, making for the desert on tiptoe, as it were; but so circumspectly that they make less noise than the thudding of camel pads on the asphalt – for just before dawn long columns of camels bring in the vegetables to the town markets together with other loads like cotton, reeds, bercim – clover for animal fodder.
“The Princess rather mocks my uniform,” said the Prince, “but I keep it for it enables us to picnic in the Western Desert when we want; without it I would be a civilian and the desert is out of bounds to ordinary civilians. That reminds me, I must have you gazetted to the Egyptian army as a volunteer second lieutenant. Then you can come as my aide.” An alluring prospect – to wear British service kit with a scarlet flower-pot on my head. Strangely enough, both Prince and Princess were deeply moved when I walked in on them, dressed in full fig complete with tarboosh. “Now you are really one of us,” she cried, and tears came into her eyes. I looked an awful fool in the flower-pot.
England was an occasional pang, an occasional twinge of conscience away; the new life was all-engulfing in its variety, while the information which it profferred so liberally was persuading me to see this ancient country not as something exhausted by history, existing through its ruins, but as something still thrillingly contemporary, still full of an infernal mystery and magic. Of course I owed most of this to Affad, though at first, while I was settling in, I had little to do with him; my fellow scribes occupied the centre of the stage. Professor Baladi, for example, with his quaint Victorian-novel English, could have earned music-hall renown had he so wished. “Mr. Blanford, I esteem that there is nothing more sublime in nature than a glimpse of an English lady’s bubs.” He watched me curiously for my reaction, head on one side. “Really, Professor, you are making the blush start to my cheek.” He laughed airily and said with a certain archness, “I only said it to make you chortle.” And so I obliged him with a chortle – or what I took to be such a thing, something between a chirp and a giggle.
“I have been told that the Egyptians are mad about pink flesh, hence the pimp at Port Said who offered his little daughter, crying ‘all pink inside like English lady’.” It was a very old joke, but he had not heard it, and it threw him into a silent convulsion of decorous laughter; tears poured out of him. He mopped them with the sleeve of his coat. But we had put our foot in it. We realised this when we caught a glimpse of our fellow-scribe’s face – the face of poor Khanna the Copt. He was crimson with anguish and evidently deeply shocked. Baladi did a wonderful toad-swallowing act as he saw this, and his laughter abated somewhat, subsiding away into sighs touched with contrition, though from time to time a small seismic convulsion seized him midriff, and at the thought of the jest he hid his face for the space of a second in his sleeve. I thought the best way to atone was to go all silent, speechless and industrious for a full quarter of an hour, in order to let the dust settle. Outside on the green lawns the sun shone, the sprinklers played, turning and turning their slim necks like sunflowers. Somewhere in the palace the telephones rustled – their bells had been gagged, for their sound was judged indecorous. I pondered the war news in the Egyptian Gazette and allowed England a slight ache of nostalgia; but secretly my heart turned to the Pole Star of Provence – a Provence now forever peopled by Felix, Constance, Hilary, the vanished friends of that last summer of peace. Where might they all be now? Dead for all I knew. And the most painful evocation of all, that of Livia. Last heard of in Germany – the girl I had insisted on marrying, like a fool.
When Khanna withdrew to soothe his ruffled feelings and relieve himself in the ornate lavatory by the reception hall, Baladi jerked a thumb at his retreating back and whispered, “I think we pipped him rather.” I agreed solemnly.
“If you are free on Saturday night,” said Baladi, with the air of wanting to compensate me for my sparkling conversation, “I will ask you to accompany me to a house of joy for a little spree.” I accepted, but faint-heartedly, for I had just drifted into an affair with a young officer of the Field Transport Corps, a volunteer unit of rather over-bred girls which supplied the army with drivers, secretaries and field-messengers. One of these had taken a fancy to me and invited me to dinner at their mess. Anne Farnol, a Slade student, was a girl of about twenty-eight with brilliant blue eyes which kindled with bright intelligence and sympathy at the slightest excuse. She was unusual among the rather frigid dollies of her unit, for she exuded warmth and femininity which sorted ill with her martial attire. Yet when she sprang to attention and saluted before my desk the gesture had great charm. She brought the Embassy despatch-case which contained Red Cross minutes of which I took possession on behalf of my liege lord the Prince. For a moment, while I sorted the papers out, she accepted my invitation to sit down and smoke half a cigarette, which I cut for her with the office scissors. This pleasant little
ritual and the idle, friendly conversation which accompanied it had become a feature of my existence on Mondays and Fridays. I had warmed under the smiling gaze of this military young woman who wore her small lifeboat hat (these were, I afterwards discovered, known as cunt-caps among the girls themselves) and smoked her ration of tobacco, though she always refused coffee.
So the invitation to dinner fell naturally into place; and one evening I found myself in front of a smart apartment block of buildings in the Sharia El Nil, negotiating a lift which took me to the fourth floor where her small apartment was. The door was ajar and there was a note on it to say that she had just slipped out for a moment, but that I was to make myself at home and await her, which is what I did. I spied upon her in her absence, examining the poor meagre treasures around which she had woven her new nomadic life – postcards of Hastings, a family group, father and mother and then a handsome young man with hurt eyes clad in a sculptor’s smock. He held a mallet. The husband, I supposed, for she wore a ring on her marriage finger. A sudden sadness, inexplicable really, came over me. I riffled her sketchbooks. The room was deep in the scent of flowers – where else do flowers smell like they do in Egypt, as if they had just passed through the Underworld and across the breath of an open oven?
I sat for a while so, smoking and reflecting, upon her balcony above the buzzing thoroughfare beneath. She was beautiful and self-possessed and I desired her, yes; but my infernal English upbringing stood in the way of any enterprise which might bring about a fitting conclusion to this chance meeting of exiles so far away from the beleaguered island. She came at last, looking somewhat pale I thought; she had been back to the mess to draw her ration of whisky in my honour. I was ashamed, for with what the Prince was paying me I could have brought her a case of the stuff. I made a mental note to have one sent. She was as sensible as she was beautiful, and thanks to her my stupid diffidence which so often gives the impression of sulkiness, was thawed out, and I began to tell her a little about my life and ask her questions about hers. As a married officer she was entitled to a flat of her own, while the other girls of the unit, or those not in her position, had to be content to live in a sort of Y.M.C.A. with strict hours and visiting rules. It was quite late when I rose in awkward desperation and made a gesture to simulate departure. I walked out on to the cool balcony; the night all round was deep, furry and dark, while directly below us the street blazed with light. We stood there in the darkness looking down, like gargoyles on the leads of some medieval church – just two heads sculpted in darkness. I had at last the courage to say, “I would like to stay with you,” and she put her hand on my arm, saying, “I hoped you would – I am so homesick, I sleep badly and this town makes me restless.”
With the lights turned off, the flat became a dark burrow lit at one end by the theatrical flaring light of the street. We made love suddenly, precipitately, with a sort of involuntary desperation. She was still in uniform, I felt the cold buttons of her tunic on my flesh. It was terribly exciting – so much so that she began to weep a little bit, which increased my lust for her. Afterwards we lay side by side on the bed in the darkness and I could feel the steady drumming of her heart and the little shudders of pleasure slowly diminishing. I lit a match to look deeply into those steady blue eyes, which stared at me through their unnecessary tears. “It is the first time I have made love to an officer on active service; it’s wildly exciting to do it in your uniform. Let’s repeat it.” But she was already slid from her clothes and lay naked in my arms, smelling gorgeously of some Cairo perfume and our own delightful rankness. Our kisses grew steady, we composed and aimed them with more love, more direction, less haphazardly. All night we lay in each other’s arms, too excited to sleep more than fitfully, in short snatches. And we talked in whispers, sometimes falling back into sleep in mid-phrase.
The next day I watched the dawn come up over the desert from her balcony while she lay buried in the heaped bedclothes in an abandon of quiet sleep. The night had brought us both a wonderful animal happiness and a new calm. I felt a disposition to sing as I put the kettle on in the tiny kitchen and prepared the table for an early breakfast, for we both had offices to attend before the heat of the day declared itself. In her tousled, sleepy awakening she looked divinely beautiful and vulnerable. Yawning, she joined me and let me help her to coffee. “Strange what contentment,” she said, shaking her head, “and yet nothing we do has any future, any meaning. Everything has become sort of provisional and fragile. I mean, next week I may be dead or posted. So may you – no, I forgot, you are not really in the war as yet, so you can’t feel the strange posthumous feeling about things. Does it matter what one does? It has no future, no substance.”
“If you go on philosophising at me like this, so early in the morning, I shall quote Valéry to you.”
“What did he say?”
“Elle pense, donc je fuis.”
“Unfair to my sex.”
“Sorry.”
A wonderful feeling of physical well-being possessed me; I had not realised that, despite my present colourful and delightful activities, I could be a little lonely – simply for lack of the sort of company which I would, for preference, keep. I hoped that this bond would continue and strengthen, despite the threat to it posed by the chance of postings to other war theatres, like, for example, Syria. I had, in my optimism, even ventured to sketch in a few possibilities as to our spare time. I knew that my hosts (I could not bring myself to think of them as employers, so kind and familiar were they) would be delighted if I were to discover a personable English girl to visit museums with, or make desert excursions with.… It seemed that fate had put a lucky experience in my way, perhaps to make me forget the harvest of bitter memories I nursed of Livia and the Provençal summer she had virtually ruined by her behaviour – that of an allumeuse, to put the matter plainly. Now she had diminished in size, so to speak, though not in poignance; but this new experience might help me to qualify the pain of the old. Perhaps I was too forthcoming, for my companion did not respond to my suggestion with anything like my own exuberance; indeed, there was something rather lame about her responses, though she agreed in principle, and even allowed me to suggest taking tickets for a recital of native music.
Two mornings later at my desk I awaited her arrival. I had already halved the statutory cigarette which she accepted. But no Anne manifested herself. After quite a longish interval another girl appeared – indeed, Anne’s commanding officer – and it was she who bore the despatch-case. Placing it on the desk before me she said, “I suppose you have heard about Anne?” I looked blank, as who might not, and shook my head. The girl drew up a chair and sat facing me across the desk as she said, “It’s been a bit of a shock to us all. She’s dead. She was discovered on Thursday morning.”
“But I went to dinner with her.”
“I know you did; she told me where she could be reached if need be.”
“Was it an accident?”
“No. Suicide.”
She had taken the big estate car which formed part of the unit’s car-pool, tanked it up fully, and then parked it in front of the garage, as if to await a duty call. There was nothing suspect in such a gesture; their work often fell at irregular times, irregular hours – they were, after all, on active service. But after dinner, when the mechanics went home and the Arab watchmen locked up, she borrowed the keys of the night watchman and sent him home. Then she drove the car into the garage, and into the hangar where cars were washed – it was practically hermetic when the sliding doors were shut. Indeed, when they were you could not tell there was a car inside at all. She locked the garage from the inside, turned out all the lights, and started the engine of the big duty car. In the morning of course she was found dead in the driver’s seat, a death by carbon monoxide poisoning. “She left no messages for anyone. I have the unpleasant task of writing to her mother, who lives in Hampshire.”
“But why on earth?” I exclaimed in an outburst of chagrin. It is absurd, but I have
noticed that one often does this – it seems such a personal affront! “She seemed so well and so happy.” The commanding officer eyed me for a moment and then said, “She said nothing to you, then? When she came to the mess to fetch that bottle there was a service signal for her saying that her husband had been lost at sea. He was in mine-sweepers apparently. She just put it in her bag and went off to join you for the evening. Nobody but I saw the signal. I think it’s the reason why for the suicide at such short notice. What do you think?”
I could think nothing. I was speechless, in a daze.
To have appeared and disappeared with such startling suddenness … I felt absolutely bereft, not only deprived of her warm physical presence but also of the future of meetings which might have been in store for us. It was as if she had overturned the desk at which I was working. If my business associates found me distracted and thoughtful that day they did not remark on the fact. I felt completely dumbfounded. And it was with an effort that I picked up the threads of my daily life in the city. Fortunately there was plenty of work to do; indeed my sleeve was being plucked at almost half-minute intervals, so that I could at least use the excuse of my duties to occupy my attention. I thought the image of the girl would fade quite soon, for I knew so little about her; but on the contrary she continued to exist in memory with a remarkable clarity of outline and focus. She was like a statue in a niche, corresponding to nothing else, cut off from space and time, yet quite complete and separate. Anne Farnol! The modest name vibrated on in my memory for whole months which succeeded her disappearance from the scene, from the war, from time.
The Avignon Quintet Page 62
