chapter IV

Ifound myself reading these passages from Pursewarden’s notebooks with all the attention and amusement they deserved and without any thought of ‘exoneration’ — to use the phrase of Clea. On the contrary, it seemed to me that his observation was not lacking in accuracy and whatever whips and scorpions he had applied to my image were well justified. It is, moreover, useful as well as salutary to see oneself portrayed with such blistering candour by someone one admires! Yet I was a trifle surprised not to feel even a little wounded in my self-esteem. Not only were no bones broken, but at times, chuckling aloud at his sallies, I found myself addressing him under my breath as if he were actually present before me, uttering rather than writing down these unpalatable home-truths. ‘You bastard’ I said under my breath. ‘You just wait a little bit.’ Almost as if one day I might right the reckoning with him, pay off the score! It was troubling to raise my head and realize suddenly that he had already stepped behind the curtains, vanished from the scene; he was so much of a presence, popping up everywhere, with the strange mixture of strengths and weaknesses which made up his enigmatic character. ‘What are you chuckling at?’ said Telford, always anxious to share a jocose exchange of office wit provided it had the requisite moribund point. ‘A notebook,’ Telford was a large man draped in ill-cut clothes and a spotted blue bow tie. His complexion was blotchy and of the kind which tears easily under a razor-blade; consequently there was always a small tuft of cotton wool sticking to chin or ear, stanching a wound. Always voluble and bursting with the wrong sort of expansive bonhomie he gave the impression of being at war with his dentures, which were ill-fitting. He gobbled and gasped, biting on loose stoppings, or swallowing a soft palate, gasping like a fish as he uttered his pleasantries or laughed at his own jokes like a man riding a bone-shaker, his top set of teeth bumping up and down on his gums. ‘I say, old fruit, that was rich’ he would exclaim. I did not find him too disagreeable an inmate of the office which we shared at the censorship, for the work was not exacting and he, as an old hand, was always ready to give me advice or help with it; I enjoyed too his obstinately recurring stories of the mythical ‘old days’, when he, Little Tommy Telford, had been a personage of great importance, second only in rank and power to the great Maskelyne, our present Chief. He always referred to him as ‘The Brig’, and made it very clear that the department, which had once been Arab Bureau, had seen better times, had in fact been downgraded to a mere censorship department dealing with the ebb and flow of civilian correspondence over the Middle East. A menial role compared to ‘Espionage’ which he pronounced in four separate syllables. Stories of this ancient glory, which had now faded beyond recall, formed part of the Homeric Cycle, so to speak, of office life: to be recited wistfully during intervals between snatches of work or on afternoons when some small mishap like a broken fan had made concentration in those airless buildings all but impossible. It was from Telford that I learned of the long internecine struggle between Pursewarden and Maskelyne — a struggle which was, in a sense, continuing on another plane between the silent Brigadier and Mountolive, for Maskelyne was desperately anxious to rejoin his regiment and shed his civilian suit. This desire had been baulked. Mountolive, explained Telford with many a gusty sigh (waving chapped and podgy hands which were stuffed with bluish clusters of veins like plums in a cake) — Mountolive had ‘got at’ the War Office and persuaded them not to countenance Maskelyne’s resignation. I must say the Brigadier, whom I saw perhaps twice a week, did convey an impression of sullen, saturnine fury at being penned up in a civilian department while so much was going on in the desert, but of course any regular soldier would. ‘You see’ said Telford ingenuously, ‘when a war comes along there’s bags of promotion, old thing, bags of it. The Brig has a right to think of his career like any other man. It is different for us. We were born civilians, so to speak.’ He himself had spent many years in the currant trade in the Eastern Levant residing in places like Zante and Patras. His reasons for coming to Egypt were obscure. Perhaps he found life more congenial in a large British colony. Mrs Telford was a fattish little duck who used mauve lipstick and wore hats like pincushions. She only appeared to live for an invitation to the Embassy on the King’s birthday. (‘Mavis loves her little official “do”, she does.’) But if the administrative war with Mountolive was so far empty of victory there were consolations, said Telford, from which the Brig could derive a studied enjoyment: for Mountolive was very much in the same boat. This made him (Telford) ‘chortle’ — a characteristic phrase which he often used. Mount-olive, it seemed, was no less eager to abandon his post, and had indeed applied several times for a transfer from Egypt. Unluckily, however, the war had intervened with its policy of ‘freezing personnel’ and Kenilworth, no friend of the Ambassador, had been sent out to execute this policy. If the Brigadier was pinned down by the intrigues of Mountolive, the latter had been pinned down just as certainly by the newly appointed Personnel Adviser — pinned down ‘for the duration’! Telford rubbed unctuous hands as he retailed all this to me! ‘It’s a case of the biter bit all right’ he said. ‘And if you ask me the Brig will manage to get away sooner than Sir David. Mark my words, old fruit.’ A single solemn nod was enough to satisfy him that his point had been taken. Telford and Maskelyne were united by a curious sort of bond which intrigued me. The solitary monosyllabic soldier and the effusive bagman — what on earth could they have had in common? (Their very names on the printed duty rosters irresistibly suggested a music-hall team or a firm of respectable undertakers!) Yet I think the bond was one of admiration, for Telford behaved with a grotesque wonder and respect when in the presence of his Chief, fussing around him anxiously, eagerly, longing to anticipate his commands and so earn a word of commendation. His heavily salivated ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, sir’ popped out from between his dentures with the senseless regularity of cuckoos from a clock. Curiously enough there was nothing feigned in this sycophancy. It was in fact something like an administrative love-affair, for even when Maskelyne was not present Telford spoke of him with the greatest possible reverence, the profoundest hero-worship — compounded equally of social admiration for his rank and deep respect for his character and judgement. Out of curiosity I tried to see Maskelyne through my colleague’s eyes but failed to discern more than a rather bleak and well-bred soldier of narrow capacities and a clipped world-weary public school accent. Yet … ‘The Brig is a real cast-iron gentleman’ Telford would say with an emotion so great that it almost brought tears to his eyes. ‘He’s as straight as string, is the old Brig. Never stoop to do anything beneath him.’ It was perhaps true, yet it did not make our Chief less unremarkable in my eyes. Telford had several little menial duties which he himself had elected to perform for his hero — for example, to buy the week-old Daily Telegraph and place it on the great man’s desk each morning. He adopted a curious finicky walk as he crossed the polished floor of Maskelyne’s empty office (for we arrived early at work): almost as if he were afraid of leaving footprints behind him. He positively stole across to the desk. And the tenderness with which he folded the paper and ran his fingers down the creases before laying it reverently on the green blotter reminded me of a woman handling a husband’s newly starched and ironed shirt. Nor was the Brigadier himself unwilling to accept the burden of this guileless admiration. I imagine few men could resist it. At first I was puzzled by the fact that once or twice a week he would visit us, clearly with no special matter in mind, and would take a slow turn up and down between our desks, occasionally uttering an informal monochrome pleasantry — indicating the recipient of it by pointing the stem of his pipe at him lightly, almost shyly. Yet throughout these visitations his swarthy greyhound’s face, with its small crowsfeet under the eyes, never altered its expression, his voice never lost its studied inflections. At first, as I say, these appearances somewhat puzzled me, for Maskelyne was anything but a convivial soul and could seldom talk of anything but the work in hand. Then one day I detected, in the slow elaborate figure he traced between our desks, the traces of an unconscious coquetry — I was reminded of the way a peacock spreads its great studded fan of eyes before the female, or of the way a mannequin wheels in an arabesque designed to show off the clothes she is wearing. Maskelyne had in fact simply come to be admired, to spread out the riches of his character and breeding before Telford. Was it possible that this easy conquest provided him with some inner assurance he lacked? It would be hard to say. Yet he was inwardly basking in his colleague’s wide-eyed admiration I am sure it was quite unconscious — this gesture of a lonely man towards the only whole-hearted admirer he had as yet won from the world. From his own side, however, he could only reciprocate with the condescension bred by his education. Secretly he held Telford in contempt for not being a gentleman. ‘Poor Telford’ he would be heard to sigh when out of the other’s hearing. ‘Poor Telford.’ The commiserating fall of the voice suggested pity for someone who was worthy but hopelessly uninspired. — These, then, were my office familiars during the whole of that first wearing summer, and their companionship offered me no problem. The work left me easy and untroubled in mind. My ranking was a humble one and carried with it no social obligations whatsoever. For the rest we did not frequent each other outside the office. Telford lived somewhere near Rushdi in a small suburban villa, outside the centre of the town, while Maskelyne seldom appeared to stir from the gaunt bedroom on the top floor of the Cecil. Once free from the office, therefore, I felt able to throw it off completely and once more resume the life of the town, or what was left of it. With Clea also the new relationship offered no problems, perhaps because deliberately we avoided defining it too sharply, and allowed it to follow the curves of its own nature, to fulfil its own design. I did not, for example, always stay at her flat — for sometimes when she was working on a picture she would plead for a few days of complete solitude and seclusion in order to come to grips with her subject, and these intermittent intervals, sometimes of a week or more, sharpened and refreshed affection without harming it. Sometimes, however, after such a compact we would stumble upon each other by accident and out of weakness resume the suspended relationship before the promised three days or a week was up! It wasn’t easy. Sometimes at evening I might come upon her sitting absently alone on the little painted wooden terrace of the Café Baudrot, gazing into space. Her sketching blocks lay before her, unopened. Sitting there as still as a coney, she had forgotten to remove from her lips the tiny moustache of cream from her café viennois! At such a moment it needed all my self-possession not to vault the wooden balustrade and put my arms round her, so vividly did this touching detail seem to light up the memory of her; so childish and serene did she look. The loyal and ardent image of Clea the lover rose up before my eyes and all at once separation seemed unendurable! Conversely I might suddenly (sitting on a bench in a public garden, reading) feel cool hands pressed over my eyes and turn suddenly to embrace her and inhale once more the fragrance of her body through her crisp summer frock. At other times, and very often at moments when I was actually thinking of her, she would walk miraculously into the flat saying: ‘I felt you calling me to come’ or else ‘It suddenly came over me to need you very much.’ So these encounters bad a breathless sharp sweetness, unexpectedly re-igniting our ardour. It was as if we had been separated for years instead of days. This self-possession in the matter of planned absences from each other struck a spark of admiration from Pombal, who could no more achieve the same measure in his relations with Fosca than climb to the moon. He appeared to wake in the morning with her name on his lips. His first act was to telephone her anxiously to find out if she were well — as if her absence had exposed her to terrible unknown dangers. His official day with its various duties was a torment. He positively galloped home to lunch in order to see her again. In all justice I must say that his attachment was fully reciprocated for all that their relationship was like that of two elderly pensioners in its purity. If he were kept late at an official dinner she would work herself into a fever of apprehension. (‘No, it is not his fidelity that worries me, it is his safely. He drives so carelessly, as you know.’) Fortunately during this period the nightly bombardment of the harbour acted upon social activities almost like a curfew, so that it was possible to spend almost every evening together, playing chess or cards, or reading aloud. Fosca I found to be a thoughtful, almost intense young woman, a little lacking in humour but devoid of the priggishness which I had been inclined to suspect from Pombal’s own description of her .when first we met. She had a keen and mobile face whose premature wrinkles suggested that perhaps she had been marked by her experiences as a refugee. She never laughed aloud, and her smile had a touch of reflective sadness in it. But she was wise, and always had a spirited and thoughtful answer ready — indeed the quality of esprit which the French so rightly prize in a woman. The fact that she was nearing the term of her pregnancy only seemed to make Pombal more attentive and adoring — indeed he behaved with something like complacence about the child. Or was he simply trying to suggest that it was his own: as a show of face to a world which might think that he was ‘unmanned’? I could not decide. In the summer afternoons he would float about the harbour in his cutter while Fosca sat in the stern trailing one white hand in the sea. Sometimes she sang for him in a small true voice like a bird’s. This transported him, and he wore the look of a good bourgeois papa de famille as he beat time with his finger. At night they sat out the bombardment for preference over a chess board — a somewhat singular choice; but as the infernal racket of gunfire gave him nervous headaches he had skilfully constructed ear plugs for them both by cutting the filter-tips from cigarettes. So they were able to sit, concentrating in silence! But once or twice this peaceful harmony was overshadowed by outside events which provoked doubts and misgivings understandable enough in a relationship which was so nebulous — I mean so much discussed and anatomized and not acted out. One day I found him padding about in a dressing-gown and slippers looking suspiciously distraught, even a little red-eyed. ‘Ah, Darley!’ he sighed gustily, falling into his gout chair and catching his beard in his fingers as if he were about to dismantle it completely. ‘We will never understand them, never. Women! What bad luck. Perhaps I am just stupid. Fosca! Her husband!’ ‘He has been killed?’ I asked. Pombal shook his head sadly. ‘No. Taken prisoner and sent to Germany.’ ‘Well why the fuss?’ ‘I am ashamed, that is all. I did not fully realize until this news came, neither did she, that we were really expecting him to be killed. Unconsciously, of course. Now she is full of self-disgust. But the whole plan for our lives was unconsciously built upon the notion of him surrendering his own. It is monstrous. His death would have freed us; but now the whole problem is deferred perhaps for years, perhaps forever….’ He looked quite distracted and fanned himself with a newspaper, muttering under his breath. ‘Things take the strangest turns’ he went on at last. ‘For if Fosca is too honourable to confess the truth to him while he is at the front, she would equally never do it to a poor prisoner. I left her in tears. Everything is put off till the end of the war.’ He ground his back teeth together and sat staring at me. It was difficult to know what one could say by way of consolation. ‘Why doesn’t she write and tell him?’ ‘Impossible! Too cruel. And with the child coming on? Even I, Pombal, would not wish her to do such a thing. Never. I found her in tears, my friend, holding the telegram. She said in tones of anguish: “Oh, Georges-Gaston, for the first time I feel ashamed of my love, when I realize that we were wishing him to die rather than get captured this way.” It may sound complicated to you, but her emotions are so fine, her sense of honour and pride and so on. Then a queer thing happened. So great was our mutual pain that in trying to console her I slipped and we began to make real love without noticing it. It is a strange picture. And not an easy operation. Then when we came to ourselves she began to cry all over again and said: “Now for the first time I have a feeling of hate for you, Georges-Gaston, because now our love is on the same plane as everyone else’s. We have cheapened it.” Women always put you in the wrong somehow. I was so full of joy to have at last…. Suddenly her words plunged me into despair. I rushed away. I have not seen her for five hours. Perhaps this is the end of everything? Ah but it could have been the beginning of something which would at least sustain us until the whole problem sees the light of day.’ ‘Perhaps she is too stupid.’ Pombal was aghast. ‘How can you say that! All this comes from her exquisite finesse of spirit. That is all. Don’t add to my misery by saying foolish things about one so fine.’ ‘Well, telephone her.’ ‘Her phone is out of order. Aie! It is worse than toothache. I have been toying with the idea of suicide for the first time in my life. That will show you to what a point I’ve been driven.’ But at this moment the door opened and Fosca stepped into the room. She too had been crying. She stopped with a queer dignity and held out her hands to Pombal who gave an inarticulate growling cry of delight and bounded across the room in his dressing-gown to embrace her passionately. Then he drew her into the circle of his arm and they went slowly down the corridor to his room together and locked themselves in. Later that evening I saw him coming down Rue Fuad towards me, beaming. ‘Hurrah!’ he shouted and threw his expensive hat high into the air. ‘Je suis enfin là!’ The hat described a large parabola and settled in the middle of the road where it was immediately run over by three cars in rapid succession. Pombal clasped his hands together and beamed as if the sight gave him the greatest joy. Then he turned his moon-face up into the sky as if searching for a sign or portent. As I came abreast of him he caught my hands and said: ‘Divine logic of women! Truly there is nothing so wonderful on earth as the sight of a woman thinking out her feelings. I adore it. I adore it. Our love…. Fosca! It is complete now. I am so astonished, truthfully, I am astonished. I would never have been able to think it out so accurately. Listen, she could not bring herself to deceive a man who was in hourly danger of death. Right. But now that he is safely behind bars it is different. We are free to normalize ourselves. We will not, of course, hurt him by telling him as yet. We will simply help ourselves from the pantry, as Pursewarden used to say. My dear friend, isn’t it wonderful? Fosca is an angel.’ ‘She sounds like a woman after all.’ ‘A Woman! The word, magnificent as it is, is hardly enough for a spirit like hers.’ He burst into a whinny of laughter and punched me affectionately on the shoulder. Together we walked down the long street. ‘I am going to Pietrantoni to buy her an expensive present … I, who never give a woman presents, never in my life. It always seemed absurd. I once saw a film of penguins in the mating season. The male penguin, than which nothing could more ludicrously resemble man, collects stones and places them before the lady of his choice when he proposes. It must be seen to be appreciated. Now I am behaving like a male penguin. Never mind. Never mind. Now our story cannot help but have a happy ending.’ Fateful words which I have so often recalled since, for within a few months Fosca was to be a problem no more.