Captain Quelch had, that morning, received a couple of wirelesses which he had told the operator to say nothing about. Eager for news of my missing reels, I had been with him in the Radio Room when he had dropped in on his way to the bridge. One wire was from Goldfish and this he showed me, but the other he folded and placed inside his white cotton jacket. He wore civilian clothes, this morning, apart from his cap and had the air of a man going courting, I said. He laughed. I was not far from the truth, he told me, tra-la-la. Was the Goldfish message of any immediate interest?
TITLE CHANGE NEEDED TRY OLD STOP AWAIT NEW STAR ARRIVING AIR ALEX IMMINENT STOP DO NOT PROCEED UNTIL YOU HAVE STARTED STOP WE HAVE PRINCE OF INDIA STOP WE DO ONE LOCATION REEL FOR THIS STOP IGNORE ALL PREVIOUS MESSAGES STOP CONFIRM EGYPTIAN CHARIOT TRACK STOP S.G.
The telegram is in my scrapbook. It is what is left of the evidence of my fame. Mrs Cornelius has more things in her boxes, she says, but lately she told me that the rats had got into the paper as the maggots got into the clothes in her cellar, so I suppose my clippings are returning to the slime as maggots crawl across the frozen moments, the rotting stills of long-since-crumbled celluloid. I only have this because, absent-mindedly, I forgot to show it to the others. I was thrown out, I think, by the notion of a rival actor coming to break up our circle just as things were going well again. Was the star a Constance Bennett or a Barrymore? Goldfish was famous for his sudden decisions to introduce ‘quality’—or more money—into a project. I put this unpleasant idea from my mind and, in doing so, forgot the wire until I found it again, much later. By noon, after the excitement of the British welcoming party, we were receiving yet another visitor who, by his appearance, could be none other than the captain’s brother, Professor Quelch, who came aboard, swinging his way up with a sprightliness which cost him most of his breath by the time he was on deck attempting to apologise. ‘Awfully sorry—dashed train—always late—should have left earlier—my fault—how do you do. Malcolm Quelch.’ And I grasped a bony, weather-beaten hand extending from a body even more angular than his brother’s. ‘Hope you people got my wire. I replied as soon as—’ A sign from Captain Quelch silenced him and he shook my hand with silent, bewildered fury while waiting for his brother to rescue him.
‘How could you have known we were arriving, Malcolm? The papers, I suppose! Something from Casablanca? I say, isn’t it amazing what communications have come to?’ Clearly Captain Quelch had planned for our arrival to coincide with his brother’s, so that a good British guide should at once be available to us. I saw nothing wrong in this. Captain Quelch’s chief concern was for our safety. He knew that he could trust his brother to look after us with the same conscientious good sense as he had. I, for one, was grateful.
‘Keepin’ it in ther family are we, gents?’ Mrs Cornelius grinned at the world in general. ‘Enjoy a drink, do yer, prof?’
Only just recovering himself, the tall academic, whose sallow features resembled ancient papyrus, whose jaw was if anything more lantern, his nose more a predatory beak, than his brother’s, and whose grey-blue eyes had the quality of a faded tomb-painting, turned what became a mild blink upon my friend. ‘Not at all, madam. I am a strict teetotaller born. My family are all TT.’
‘Totally tipsy, wot?’ Laughing, she slapped him on the back. He wore a crumpled European suit which, like his skin, had turned yellow in the Egyptian sun. He had removed his panama as he came aboard. His black, greying hair was stuck thinly against his scalp by sweat which he now attempted to mop with a handkerchief so well-laundered that it was almost startling against that otherwise somewhat weathered figure. He gave up a small, uncertain smile. I shall never know the reason why she accepted one person as readily as she rejected another. For my part I was glad I had purchased, very reasonably from Captain Quelch, a long-term supply of coca. His brother seemed something of a prig and would probably be shocked at any suggestion of his helping me obtain an illicit drug. Egypt was famous for its drug traffic. British-run customs people were forever alert on the seas and in the deserts, where the camel trains brought hashish, opium and heroin along the old trade-routes from Asia. But I did not wish to misjudge Malcolm Quelch. Perhaps one needed such people in Egypt to remind us to maintain at all times our European standards. He was what the Greeks call kalokagathos, the perfect gentleman. And a scholar, as I was to discover very quickly. He asked if we had enjoyed the ‘innumerable laughter of the waves’—’kymaton anerithmon gelasma, as Aeschylus has it?’
‘Sorry, I wosn’t payin’ attention the first time neiver,’ said Mrs Cornelius, offering him a hug around his bony shoulders and causing his mouth to pop open in surprise as she bellowed good-humouredly into his face. ‘You’ll do, prof. Ho! Ho!’
The ill-named Wolf Seaman came pounding around the deck in a running costume which displayed the very hairs of his body, he had grown so plump. The suit alone was tight enough to provide the agony on his face as he came to a florid stop before us and glared through sweat and tears at the newcomer. ‘Good afternoon? Sir.’
‘This is Perfessor Q.—Don Q’s better-educated bruwer.’ Her arm tightly about Quelch’s waist, Mrs Cornelius steered him like a salvager with a new prize towards her would-be Svengali, her surly paramour. ‘Perfessor, this is Sweden’s greatest artist since ‘Ans Andersen. ‘E’s made orl sorts o’ posh pictures. An’ I’ve bin in some of ‘em meself.’ This with one of her smiles at the disconcerted archaeologist who lifted his hat to Seaman and to everyone else, as if he had just stepped by accident into a play in which he was expected to perform a part. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘viva, valeque, I must say.’
‘We’ll go to the saloon, I think, for a confab, shall we?’ says Captain Quelch with firm determination, for some reason wanting his brother off the deck. And we all troop down to the liar, where Captain Quelch himself acts as jerk and serves us our choices. His brother takes a soda-water and Captain Quelch does the same, in deference, no doubt, to their dead parents. And the first thing we do is toast the King of England, the King of Egypt, the President of the United States and Samuel Goldfish. The ice broken, we gather round a rather more relaxed Professor Quelch, who does not seem to mind being entirely surrounded by people with cocktails in their hands, who listen to the phonograph and try to help him join in the choruses of the songs. ‘Vive la bagatelle!’ he pronounces, and proves himself less of a prude than I had at first supposed. But he will not be, I fear, the comrade that Captain Quelch has been to me.
The celebration settled down as lunch was served by our happy laskars, who were no doubt looking forward to their own shore-leave. Professor Quelch was an expert on all things Egyptian. Indeed, the Ancient World seemed more familiar to him than the Modern and it was easy to see that he felt considerably more enthusiasm for problems of hieroglyphic interpretation than for the passing heroes and heroines of the moving-picture theatre, while Romance, I suspected, found fullest expression in the mystery of an oddly coloured ankh held by one of the less prominent Egyptian deities. He also had a rather confusing narrative style. Nonetheless Malcolm Quelch seemed the man we needed to guide us through both the shadow-realms of the distant past and the alleys and temptations of our immediate present. Certainly as shore beckoned there was much talk of temptation amongst the film-crew. Malcolm Quelch won the approval of our team and displayed his ability to respond to practical needs by recommending a salon des poules which, he guaranteed, was both safe and versatile. Only Esmé did not take to him and went below almost immediately to see, she said, to her packing. Seaman, too, divorced himself early from the happy table, needing solitude, he said, in which to mature his ideas. His absence displeased nobody. There was a noticeably looser atmosphere amongst us when he had gone. Goaded by Mrs Cornelius, the good-natured professor regaled us with a little of the Cairo gossip, which concerned people of whom we had never heard and mostly revolved around buggery and adultery, with a touch of incest for variety. I grew bored with this. I made an excuse to go back to my cabin where my bags were careful
ly packed, having passed inspection by a customs officer whose curiosity about my Georgian pistols was satisfied when I explained they were for use in the film. Tapping on the connecting door, I called out to Esmé so that she should not be startled. I heard something crash. I tried to open the door but it was locked. I asked if she had hurt herself and, after a moment, she replied that her case had fallen off her bunk. She began to murmur to herself as if embarrassed. I offered to help but she insisted shrilly that she could manage. She was a resourceful little creature, no matter what Mrs Cornelius believed. Reassured, I strolled up on deck and found Captain Quelch enjoying a pipe with the chief immigration officer, a sandy-haired man called Prestagne who handed my passport back to me saying he was honoured to make the acquaintance of such a talented man. (My passport gave my occupation as engineer, but my entry card, of course, explained my current employment.) For me the stamps and visa gave the passport a substance and validity it had never previously possessed. I had the approval of His Majesty’s Government. In those days, of course, such approval also meant complete security. The British Empire took that responsibility for its dominions and protectorates, to maintain the law equally for all. That was why the Empire was the admiration of the world. I have always been contemptuous of those people who drag up a few obscure incidents to indict the British, to prove they were no better than the French, say, or the Dutch, at running an empire. I disagree. While they ran their Empire on Roman lines they knew nothing but success, the spread of a common justice. They had to be stern, both in Egypt as well as India and parts of Africa, in particular, for that was all the natives would recognise as authority. They had no conception of the institutions which protected them. I have often wondered at this notion of nationalism, of freedom. All they ever seem to want, when it comes down to it, is the freedom to slaughter one another in acts of horrible sectarian violence. They were taught about the institutions. They claimed to envy them, to desire them for themselves. But they did not have the appropriate history, experience or intellect to understand them. A few Indians might well have died at Amritsar. How many more died in 1948 when the British were gone? They are greedy for ‘freedom’ the way our ancestors were greedy for the millennium. And, as when the millennium failed to come, they are inclined to riot if disappointed. Yet your fellaheen, your basic descendant of the people who built the pyramids and conquered much of Africa and Asia Minor, is without doubt the salt of the earth, a willing worker and a cheerful servant, if not unmanned by the bilharzia which now infects the whole Nile, thanks to the British dam, or by the hasheesh he smokes to forget his troubles. ‘It is the same in China, with the coolies,’ Professor Quelch told me. He had been on more than one archaeological expedition to the Far East. ‘I was little more than a youth, then. But I can tell you, Mr Peters, that neither Alexandria nor Cairo can compete with the fleshpots of Macao or Shanghai. Such sweet little creatures. You would not think them of this planet at all! I am old-fashioned in my tastes, I’m afraid. The modern girl does nothing for me.’
‘It depends what you want, dunnit,’ says Mrs Cornelius, ready in Gainsborough hat and blue-trimmed lace, to face the pleasures and the pressures of Alexandria. She winked at her new ‘beau’. I was almost jealous, but I knew there was a deeper bond between Mrs Cornelius and myself than any passing fancy. She was followed at a distance by sailor-suited Esmé, escorted by a somewhat more cheerful Wolf Seaman, no doubt pleased at the prospect of taking charge again. He wore a pale blue suit that looked a size too small for him. He had put on at least a stone since we had left Los Angeles. I wondered, since he had been so frequently sick, how he had managed to hold so much food. Esmé, with a smile to Seaman, whom she was clearly lobbying for a substantial part, took my offered arm. I handed her over the side in Mrs Cornelius’s wake. She fluttered into the swaying launch like a paper doll. Billowing awful black smoke, the boat took us to the passenger dock where a car from the hotel took us to our lodgings. When I saw the round Nubian face behind the car’s wheel I almost thought Mr Mix had come back, to reveal an elaborate trick. But I quickly realised this negro, while handsome and cheerful enough, was nothing like my friend who was an altogether more refined type.
‘I fear you’ll find the people here something of a rudis indigestaque moles,’ called Professor Quelch beside the river brushing back the touts with his malacca. ‘And the city itself is almost completely bereft of archaeological interest. It was torn down by various victors, you know.’ He hid a titter behind his long fingers, as if he had said something rather infra dig.
His brother had come with me to the quay. I shook hands briefly, unsuccessfully trying to stop my tears. ‘Good luck,’ I said.
‘And the same to you, lad. Malcolm’s picked up a lot, don’t you think, since I doctored his soda water with a spot of Gordons?’ He winked and gave me a hearty buffet on the arm. ‘Good luck to you, too, old chum. If I hear about your films and your darkie I’ll find a way to let you know.’
There was a wealth of affection in those few words and gestures. Warmed by this, I saluted and climbed into the car, facing a haughty Herr Seaman and an eager Esmé who was, as always, delighted by the prospect of a new city with new shops. Mrs Cornelius sat beside me. ‘I ‘ope they ‘ave cold beer at this place. It’s not too English, is it?’
When I pointed out that it was only about 65°—a temperature we had come to think of as cool in Los Angeles—she replied that she had always hated warm beer, even in winter.
Before the car started, Captain Quelch leaned through the open window and said, sotto voce to me, ‘Oh, and by the way, old boy, it looks like the law’s caught up with poor Bolsover. I hear he’s to be arrested this afternoon. Drugs, apparently, poor chap.’ He winked and blew me a platonic kiss. And then he was stepping back. ‘Remember, dear boy,’ as the car moved off, ‘put your trust only in God and Anarchy.’
We turned now onto a palm-lined seafront promenade of white hotels and summer residences looking directly at the sea. With its wrought-iron balconies and its air of calm gentility, it reminded me very much of Yalta in the spring. But I could not have saved those girls if I had tried. They were thoroughly given up to the thrill of the situation. I had no intention of joining in and left them all to it. Along the promenade, a light wind stirred breakers and fronds while the traffic was chiefly horse-cabs, private motors and the occasional tram, all as spick and span and Bristol-fashion as was ever possible in that dusty nation. Even in Alexandria, between the ocean and a lake, one quickly became used to the fine, khaki-coloured dust that settled on newspapers, books, clothing and the well-polished counters of bazaars. Everything turned yellow or brown. Now, as the ochre fog cleared, a soft blue sky appeared above the stately rooftops. Pale, golden light gradually spread over blue waters, white promenade and stern granite institutions, intensifying the delicate colouring of the palms from lemon-yellow to sage-green. The oranges, browns and reds of their trunks, the variety of grasses which grew at their bases, helped the palms soften the severity of authority’s brick and diplomacy’s sandstone, giving a gaiety rather than a dignity to the national flags and blazons, giving the stucco flanks of native palaces the sheen of freshly woven cotton. In those moments the city seemed to possess the patina of an old mural; it was as if her vivid colours forced themselves through layers of time before they reached us. I grew almost drowsy with the pleasure of the vision alone and, since I had slept very little that night, was dozing by the time the car pulled up outside an edifice that was a cross between a crusader castle and a Mexican bordello. Professor Quelch was amused by my surprise as I dismounted from the running-board and looked up at the hotel’s five magnificent storeys. ‘This is what we should have seen if the Moors had conquered Troon,’ he whispered. His remark came to mean something only twenty or more years later, when I visited Scotland. The British have a habit of taking a local style and turning it into something cheerfully unalarming. The cool interior of the hotel smelled of beeswax and jasmine, her palms were washed and polished to
unnatural brilliance, at one with the dark woods and Turkish inlays of the reception hall. We were welcomed by the manager, a Greek with a French name. We had been given an entire floor of the hotel for ourselves. The Christmas holidays had begun and many residents were up-country or visiting relatives in England. The wealthy Egyptians and the British all tended to summer in Alexandria but remained in Cairo during the cooler months. I never did keep the name of the hotel in my mind, but I think it was named after some English lord, perhaps the Hotel Churchill. Its airy rooms looked out to the corniche and harbour where, if you felt a little nervous of the country’s interior, or her natives, you were immediately reassured to see the British flag flying from the masts of half-a-dozen modern ships of war, while from time to time came the well-disciplined riders of the Egyptian Mounted Police, in handsome blue or scarlet, with red fezzes or képis, riding their beautiful Syrian Arabs along the wide roadways, their assured masculinity in contrast to the soft, white ghosts who drifted in and out of the shadows, pausing to murmur to one another or address some disconcerted tourist already in difficulties with his Baedecker or Guide Bleu. Many of these wore the official tarboosh, cream gelabea and red slippers of the official guides, who displayed large bronze discs around their necks as proof of their legality, the self-styled dragomans whose daily ambition was to attach themselves to a party of well-heeled Americans greedy for a certain kind of Romance. Little groups of children, frequently in rags and bearing the signs of disease, scuttled about the beaches and gardens, avoiding the police, running after any carriage which bore a European or an Egyptian of the better class. Strolling native policemen gestured them on their way with stern good humour. Here was the daily bustle of a modern cosmopolitan port. I had returned to civilisation!
Jerusalem Commands Page 21
