The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [257]
I don’t know how to qualify it. It’s Errol’s paper.’
Mountolive sighed. ‘It’s surely only the difference between, say, Eton and Worthing, isn’t it?’ They stared at one another. Neither thought the remark was funny. Kenilworth shrugged his shoulders with obvious pique. ‘My dear chap’ he said, ‘if you propose to make an issue of it with the S. of S. I can’t help it; you will get my proposals overruled. But my views have gone on record now. You’ll forgive me if I let them stay like that, as a comment upon Errol’s reports. After all, he has been running the show.’
‘I know.’
‘It is hardly fair on him.’
Stirring vaguely in his subconscious Mountolive felt once more the intimations of power now available to him — a power to take decisions in factors like these which had hitherto been left to fate, or the haphazard dictation of mediating wills; factors which had been unworth the resentments and doubts which their summary resolution by an act of thought would have bred. But if he was ever to claim the world of action as his true inheritance he must begin somewhere. A Head of Mission had the right to propose and spon-sor the staff of his choice. Why should Pursewarden suffer through these small administrative troubles, endure the discomfort of a new posting to some uncongenial place?
‘I’m afraid the F.O. will lose him altogether if we play about with him’ he said unconvincingly; and then, as if to atone for a proposition so circuitous, added crisply: ‘At any rate, I propose to keep him for a while.’
The smile on Kenilworth’s face was one in which his eyes played no part. Mountolive felt the silence close upon them like the door of a vault. There was nothing to be done about it. He rose with an exaggerated purposefulness and extruded his cigarette-end into the ugly ashtray as he said: ‘At any rate, those are my views; and I can always send him packing if he is no use to me.’
Kenilworth swallowed quietly, like a toad under a stone, his expressionless eyes fixed upon the neutral wall-paper. The quiet susurrus of the London traffic came welling up between them.
‘I must go’ said Mountolive, by now beginning to feel annoyed with himself. ‘I am collecting all the files to take down to the country tomorrow evening. Today and tomorrow I’ll clear off routine interviews, and then … some leave I hope. Good-bye, Kenny.’
‘Good-bye.’ But he did not move from his desk. He only nodded smilingly at the door as Mountolive closed it; then he turned back with a sigh to Errol’s neatly-typed memoranda which had been assembled in the grey file marked Attention of Am- bassador Designate. He read a few lines, and then looked up wearily at the dark window before crossing the room to draw the curtains and pick up the phone. ‘Give me Archives, please.’
It would be wiser for the moment not to press his view. This trifling estrangement, however, had the effect of making Mountolive set aside his plan to take Kenilworth back to his club with him. It was in its way a relief. He rang up Liza Pursewarden instead and took her out to dinner.
It was only two hours down to Dewford Mallows but once they were outside London it was clear that the whole country-side was deeply under snow. They had to slow down to a crawl which delighted Mountolive but infuriated the driver of the duty-car. ‘We’ll be there for Christmas, sir’ he said, ‘if at all!’
Ice-Age villages, their thatched barns and cottages perfected by the floury whiteness of snow, glistening as if from the tray of
an expert confectioner; curving white meadows printed in cunei-form with the small footmarks of birds or otters, or the thawing blotches of cattle. The car windows sealing up steadily, gummed by the frost. They had no chains and no heater. Three miles from the village they came upon a wrecked lorry