The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [281]
‘Thank you.’ He seemed genuinely grateful as he rose to take his leave. He waved away the beflagged duty car at the front door, muttering something about ‘an evening constitutional’, and walked off down the drive, putting on a fight overcoat to hide his dinner-jacket. Mountolive stood at the front door and watched his tall, lean figure moving in and out of the yellow pools of lamplight, absurdly elongated by distance. He sighed with relief and weari-ness. It had been a heavy day. ‘So much for Maskelyne.’
He returned to the deserted lawns to have one last drink in the silence before he retired to bed. Altogether, the work com-pleted that day had not been unsatisfactory. He had disposed of a dozen disagreeable duties of which telling Maskelyne about his future had been perhaps the hardest. Now he could relax. Yet before climbing the staircase, he walked about for a while in the silent house, going from room to room, thinking; hugging the knowledge of his accession to power with all the secret pride of a woman who has discovered that she is pregnant.
* * * * *
VII
nce his official duties in the capital had been performed to his private satisfaction, Mountolive felt free
to
O anticipate the Court by transferring his headquarters to the second capital, Alexandria. So far everything had gone quite smoothly. The King himself had praised his fluency in Arabic and he had won the unusual distinction of press popularity by his judicious public use of the language. From every newspaper these days pictures of himself stared out, always with that crooked, diffident smile. Sorting out the little mound of press cuttings he found himself wondering: ‘My God, am I slowly becoming irresistible to myself?’ They were excellent pictures; he was undeniably handsome with his greying temples and crisply cut features. ‘But the mere habit of culture is not enough to defend one from one’s own charm. I shall be buried alive among these soft, easy aridities of a social practice which I do not even enjoy.’
He thought with his chin upon his wrist: ‘Why does not Leila write? Perhaps when I am in Alexandria I shall have word?’
But he could at least leave Cairo with a good following wind. The other foreign missions were mad with envy at his success!
The move itself was completed with exemplary despatch by the diligent Errol and the Residence staff. He himself could afford to saunter down late when the special train had been loaded with all the diplomatic impedimenta which would enable them to make a show of working while they were away … suitcases and crates and scarlet despatch-boxes with their gold monograms. Cairo had by this time become unbearably hot. Yet their hearts were light as the train rasped out across the desert to the coast. It was the best time of the year to remove, for the ugly spring khamseens were over and the town had put on its summer wear —
coloured awnings along the Grande Corniche, and the ranks of coloured island craft which lay in shelves below the black turrets of the battleships and framed the blue Yacht Club harbour, atwinkle with sails. The season of parties had also begun and Nessim was able to give his long-promised reception for his returning friend. It was a barbaric spread and all Alexandr ia
turned out to do Mountolive honour, for all the world as if he were a prodigal son returning, though in fact he knew few people apart from Nessim and his family. But he was glad to renew his acquain-tance with Balthazar and Amaril, the two doctors who were always together, always chaffing each other; and with Clea whom he had once met in Europe. The sunlight, fading over the evening sea, blazed in upon the great brass-framed windows, turning them to molten diamonds before it melted and softened once more into the aquamarine twilight of Egypt. The curtains were drawn and now a hundred candles’ breathing shone softly upon the white napery of the long tables, winking among the slender