The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [282]
Mountolive sank back into the accustomed pattern of things with a sense of sureness, almost of beatitude. Nessim had, so to speak, gone back into place like a picture into an alcove built for it, and the companionship of Justine — this dark-browed, queenly beauty at his side — enhanced rather than disturbed his relations with the outer world. Mountolive liked her, liked to feel her dark appraising eyes upon him lit with a sort of compassionate curiosity mixed with admiration. They made a splendid couple, he thought, with almost a touch of envy: like people trained to work together from childhood, instinctively responding to each other’s unspoken needs and desires, moving up unhesitatingly to support one another with their smiles. Though she was hand-some and reserved and appeared to speak little, Mountolive thought he detected an endearing candour cropping up the whole time among her sentences — as if from some hidden spring of secret warmth. Was she pleased to find someone who valued her husband as deeply as she herself did? The cool, guileless pressure of her fingers suggested that, as did her thrilling voice when she said ‘I have known you so long from hearsay as David that it will be hard to call you anything else.’ As for Nessim, he had lost nothing during the time of separation, had preserved all his graces, adding to them only the weight of a worldly judgement which made him seem strikingly European in such provincial surround-ings. His tact, for example, in never mentioning any subject which
might have an official bearing to Mountolive was deeply endearing
— and this despite the fact that they rode and shot together frequently, swam, sailed and painted. Such information upon political affairs as he had to put forward was always scrupulously relayed through Pursewarden. He never compromised their friend-ship by mixing work with pleasure, or forcing Mountolive to struggle between affection and duty.
Best of all, Pursewarden himself had reacted most favourably to his new position of eminence and was wearing what he called
‘his new leaf’. A couple of brusque minutes in the terrible red ink — the use of which is the prerogative only of Heads of Mission
— had quelled him and drawn from him a promise to ‘turn over a new fig-leaf’, which he had dutifully done. His response had indeed been wholehearted and Mountolive was both grateful and relieved to feel that at last he could rely upon a judgement which was determined not to overrun itself, or allow itself to founder among easy dependences and doubts. What else? Yes, the new Summer Residence was delightful and set in a cool garden full of pines above Roushdi. There were two excellent hard courts which rang all day to the pang of racquets. The staff seemed happy with their new head of mission. Only … Leila’s silence was still an enigma. Then one evening Nessim handed him an envelope on which he recognized her familiar hand. Mountolive put it in his pocket to read when he was alone.
‘Your reappearance in Egypt — you perhaps have guessed? —
has upset me somehow: upset my apple-cart. I am all over the place and cannot pick up the pieces as yet. It puzzles me, I admit. I have been living with you so long in my imagination —
quite alone there — that now I must almost reinvent you to bring you back to life. Perhaps I have been traducing you all these years, painting your picture to myself? You may be now simply a figment instead of a flesh and blood dignitary, moving among people and lights and policies. I can’t find the courage to compare the truth to reality as yet; I’m scared. Be patient with a silly headstrong woman who never seems to know her own mind. Of course, we should have met long since — but I shrank like a snail. Be patient. Somewhere inside me I must wait for a tide to turn. I was so angry when I heard you were coming that I cried with sheer