The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [379]
Here, too, it was all relatively unchanged save for the full khaki clouds of soldiers moving everywhere and the rash of new bars which had sprung up everywhere to feed them. Outside the Cecil long lines of transport-trucks had overflowed the taxi-ranks. Out-side the Consulate an unfamiliar naval sentry with rifle and bayonet. I could not say it was all irremediably changed, for these visitors had a shiftless and temporary look, like countrymen visiting a capital for a fair. Soon a sluice gate would open and they would be drawn off into the great reservoir of the desert battles. But there were surprises. At the Consulate, for example, a very fat man who sat like a king prawn at his desk, pressing white hands together whose long filbert nails had been carefully polished that morning, and who addressed me with familiarity. ‘My task may seem invidious’ he fluted, ‘yet it is necessary. We are trying to grab anyone who has a special apt itude before the Army gets them. I have been sent your name by the Ambassador who had desig-nated you for the censorship department which we have just opened, and which is grotesquely understaffed.’
‘The Ambassador?’ It was bewildering.
‘He’s a friend of yours, is he not?’
‘I hardly know him.’
‘Nevertheless I am bound to accept his direction, even though I am in charge of this operation.’
There were forms to be filled in. The fat man, who was not unamiable, and whose name was Kenilworth, obliged by helping
me. ‘It is a bit of mystery’ I said. He shrugged his shoulders and spread his white hands. ‘I suggest you discuss it with him when you meet.’
‘But I had no intention …’ I said. But it seemed pointless to discuss the matter further until I discovered what lay behind it. How could Mountolive…? But Kenilworth was talking again.
‘I suppose you might need a week to find yourself lodgings here before you settle in. Shall I tell the department so?’
‘If you wish’ I said in bewilderment. I was dismissed and spent some time in the cellars unearthing my battered cabin-trunk and selecting from it a few respectable city-clothes. With these in a brown paper parcel I walked slowly along the Corniche towards the Cecil, where I purposed to take a room, have a bath and shave, and prepare myself for the visit to the country house. This had begun to loom up rather in my mind, not exactly with anxiety but with the disquiet which suspense always brings. I stood for a while staring down at the still sea, and it was while I was standing thus that the silver Rolls with the daffodil hub-cups drew up and a large bearded personage jumped out and came galloping towards me with hands out-stretched. It was only when I felt his arms hugging my shoulders and the beard brushing my cheek in a Gallic greeting that I was able to gasp ‘Pombal!’
‘Darley’. Still holding my hands as tenderly, and with tears in his eyes, he drew me to one side and sat down heavily on one of the stone benches bordering the marine parade. Pombal was in the most elegant tenue. His starched cuffs rattled crisply. The dark beard and moustache gave him an imposing yet somehow forlorn air. Inside all these trappings he seemed quite unchanged. He peered through them, like a Tiberius in fancy-dress. We gazed at each other for a long moment of silence,