The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [328]
His secretary had neatly stacked his papers in their trays and placed the red despatch cases against the wall; the single bar of the electric fire kept the office at a tepid norm suitable for the routine work of the day. He settled to his telegrams with an exaggerated attention, and to the draft replies which had already been dictated by his team of juniors. He found himself chopping and changing phrases, inverting sentences here and there, adding marginalia; this was something new, for he had never had ex-cessive zeal in the matter of official English and indeed dreaded the portentous circumlocutions which his own drafts had been forced to harbour when he himself had been a junior, under a Minister who fancied himself as a stylist — are there any ex-ceptions in the Foreign Service? No. He had always been un-demanding in this way, but now the forcible concentration with
which he lived and worked had begun to bear fruit in a series of meddlesome pedantries which had begun mildly to irritate the diligent Errol and his staff. Though he knew this, nevertheless Mountolive persisted unshrinkingly; he criticized, quizzed and amended work which he knew to be well enough done already, working with the aid of the Unabridged Oxford Dictionary and a Skeat — for all the world like some medieval scholar splitting theological hairs. He would light a cheroot and smoke thought-fully as he jotted and scored on the marbled minute-paper. Today at ten there came the customary welcome clinking of cups and saucers and Bohn, the Chancery Guard, presented himself somewhat precariously with the cup of Bovril and a plate of rusks to announce a welcome interval for refreshment. Mount-olive relaxed in an armchair for a quarter of an hour as he sipped, staring heavily at the white wall with its group of neutral Japanese prints — the standard decoration chosen by the Ministry of Works for the offices of Ambassadors. In a little while it would be time to deal with the Palestine bag; already it was being sorted in the Archives Department — the heavy canvas ditty-bags lying about the floor with their mouths agape, the clerks sorting swiftly upon trestle tables, covered with green baize, the secretaries of the various departments waiting patiently outside the wooden pen each for her share of the spoils…. He felt a small premonitory unease this morning as he waited, for Maskelyne had not as yet shown any sign of life. He had not even acknowledged, let alone commented upon, Pursewarden’s last letter. He wondered why. There was a tap at the door, and Errol entered with his diffident ungainly walk, holding a bulky envelope impressively sealed and superscribed. ‘From Maskelyne, sir’ he said, and Mountolive rose and stretched with an elaborate show of nonchalance. ‘Good Lord!’
he said, weighing the parcel in his hand before handing it back to Errol. ‘So this came by pigeon-post, eh? Wonder what it can be? It looks like a novel, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, open it up, dear boy’ (he had picked up a lot of avuncular tricks of speech from Sir Louis, he noted sadly; he must make a note to reform the habit before it was too late.)
Errol slit the huge envelope clumsily with the paper-knife. A fat memorandum and a bundle of photostats tumbled out on
to the desk between them. Mountolive felt a small sense of shrinking as he recognized the spidery handwriting of the soldier upon the crowned notepaper of the covering letter. ‘What have we here?’ he said, settling himself at his desk. ‘My dear Am-bassador’; the rest of the letter was faultlessly typed in Primer. As Errol turned over the neatly stapled photostats with a curious finger, reading a few words here and there, he whistled softly. Mountolive read:
My dear Ambassador,
I am sure you will be interested in the enclosed data, all of which has been recently unearthed by my department in the course of a series of widespread investigations here in Pales-tine. I am able to supply a very large fragment of a detailed corre-spondence