The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [255]
‘No, we’ll have to set the chessboard up for you properly. It’s not everyone who’d consider Egypt a plum. All the better for you.’
Mountolive was mentally unrolling a map of Egypt with its green central spine bounded by deserts, the dusty anomalies of its peoples and creeds; and then watching it fade in three directions
into incoherent desert and grassland; to the north Suez like a caesarian section through which the East was untimely ripped; then again the sinuous complex of mountains and dead granite, orchards and plains which were geographically distributed about the map at hazard, boundaries marked by dots…. The metaphor from chess was an apposite one. Cairo lay to the centre of this cobweb. He sighed and took his leave, preparing a new face with which to greet the unhappy Kenilworth.
As he walked thoughtfully back to the janitors on the first floor he noted with alarm that he was already ten minutes late for his second interview and prayed under his breath that this would not be regarded as a deliberate slight.
‘Mr. Kenilworth has phoned down twice, sir. I told him where you were.’
Mountolive breathed more freely and addressed himself once more to the staircase, only to turn right this time and wind down several cold but odourless corridors to where Kenilworth waited, tapping his rimless pince-nez against a large and shapely thumb. They greeted one another with a grotesque effusion which effec-tively masked a reciprocal distaste. ‘My dear David’…. Was it, Mountolive wondered, simply an antipathy to a physical type?
Kenilworth was of a large and porcine aspect, over two hundred pounds of food-and-culture snob. He was prematurely grey. His fat, well-manicured fingers held a pen with a delicacy suggest-ing inc ipient crewel-work or crochet. ‘My dear David!’ They embraced warmly. All the fat on Kenilworth’s large body hung down when he stood up. His flesh was knitted in a heavy cable stitch. ‘My dear Kenny’ said Mountolive with apprehension and self-disgust. ‘What splendid news. I flatter myself Kenilworth put on an arch expression ‘that I may have had something, quite small, quite ins ignificant, to do with it. Your Arabic weighed with the S. of S. and it was I who remembered it! A long memory. Paper work.’ He chuckled confusedly and sat down motioning Mount-olive to a chair. They discussed commonplaces for a while and at last Kenilworth joined his fingers into a gesture reminiscent of a pout and said: ‘But to our moutons, dear boy. I’ve assembled all the personal papers for you to browse over. It is all in order. It’s a well-found mission, you’ll find, very well-found. I’ve every confidence in your Head of Chancery, Errol. Of course, your own
recommendations will weigh. You will look into the staff structure, won’t you, and let me know? Think about an A.D.C. too, eh?
And I don’t know how you feel about a P.A. unless you can rob the typists’ pool. But as a bachelor, you’ll need someone for the social side, won’t you? I don’t think your third secretary would be much good.’
‘Surely I can do all this on the spot?’
‘Of course, of course. I was just anxious to see you settled in as comfortably as possible.’
‘Thank you.’
‘There is only one change I was contemplating on my own. That was Pursewarden as first political.’
‘Pursewarden?’ said Mountolive with a start.
‘I am transferring him. He has done statutory time, and he isn’t really happy about it. Needs a change in my view.’
‘Has he said so?’
‘Not in so