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By Root 13955 0

hear the sharp pang of their tennis racquets every spring afternoon on the Legation court at an hour when everyone normally slept. They rode in the desert together or sat for hours side by side, studying the stars, at the telescope which Justine had had installed in the Summer Palace. They painted and shot in company. Indeed, since Mountolive’s return they had be-come once more almost inseparables. Tonight the soft light touched them both with an equal distinction, yet softly enough to disguise the white hairs at Mountolive’s temples and the crow’s-feet around those thoughtful arbitrator’s eyes. By candle-light the two men seemed exactly of an age if indeed not of the same family. A thousand faces whose reverberating expressions I do not understand (‘We are all racing under sealed handicaps’ says a

character in Pursewarden’s book), and out of them all there is one only I am burning to see, the black stern face of Justine. I must learn to see even myself in a new context, after reading those cold cruel words of Balthazar. How does a man look when he is ‘in love’? (The words in English should be uttered in a low bleating tone.) Peccavi! Imbecile! There I stand in my only decent suit, whose kneecaps are bagged and shiny with age, gazing fondly and short-sightedly around me for a glimpse of the woman who…. What does it matter? I do not need a Keats to photograph me. I do not suppose I am uglier than anyone else or less pleasant; and certainly my vanity is of a very general order — for how have I never stopped to ask myself for a second why Justine should turn aside to bestow her favours on me?

What could I give her that she could not get elsewhere? Does she want my bookish talk and amateurish love-making — she with the whole bargain-basement of male Alexandria in her grasp? ‘A decoy!’ I find this very wounding to understand, to swallow, yet it has all the authority of curt fact. Moreover, it explains several things which have been for me up to now inexplicable — such as the legacy Pursewarden left me. It was his guilt, I think, for what he knew Justine was doing to Melissa: in ‘lov ing’ me. While she, for her part, was simply protecting him against the possible power of Nessim (how gentle and calm he looks in the candle-light). He once said with a small sigh ‘Nothing is easier to arrange in our city than a death or a disappearance.’

A thousand conversations, seeking out for each other like the tap-roots of trees for moisture — the hidden meaning of lives dis-guised in brilliant smiles, in hands pressed upon the eyes, in malice, in fevers and contents. (Justine now breakfasted silently sur-rounded by tall black footmen, and dined by candle-light in bril-liant company. She had started from nothing — from the open street — and was now married to the city’s handsomest banker. How had all this come about? You would never be able to tell by watching that dark, graceful form with its untamed glances, the smile of the magnificent white teeth….). Yet one trite conversation can contain the germ of a whole life. Balthazar, for example, meet-ing Clea against a red brocade curtain, holding a glass of Pernod, could say. ‘Clea, I have something to tell you’; taking in as he spoke the warm gold of her hair and a skin honeyed almost to the

tone of burnt sugar by sea-bathing in the warm spring sunshine.

‘What?’ Her candid eyes were as blue as corn-flowers and set in her head like precision-made objects of beauty — the life-work of a jeweller. ‘Speak, my dear.’ Black head of hair (he dyed it), lowered voice set in its customary sardonic croak, Balthazar said: ‘Your father came to see me. He is worried about an illicit relationship you are supposed to have formed with another woman. Wait —

don’t speak, and don’t look hurt.’ For Clea looked now as if he were pressing upon a bruise, the sad grave mouth set in a childish expression, imploring no further penetration. ‘He says you are an innocent, a goose, and that Alexandria does not permit innocent people to….’

‘Please, Balthazar.’

‘I would not have spoken had I not been impressed