The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [476]
‘Well, that’s everything’ I said at last, shoving the briefcase under my arm. ‘If there’s anything you need, you have only to ring me, I’ll be at the flat.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m off then for a while. Good-bye.’
As I closed the door of the little flat I heard her call my name once — but this again was one of those deceptions, those little accesses of pity or tenderness which deceive one. It would have been absurd to pay any attention to it, to return on my tracks, and open a new cycle of disagreements. I went on down the stairs, determined to let the future have every chance to heal itself. It was a brilliantly sunny spring day and the streets looked washed with colour. The feeling of having nowhere to go and nothing to do was both depressing and inspiriting. I returned to the flat and found on the mantelpiece a letter from Pombal in which he said that he was likely to be transferred to Italy shortly and did not think he would be able to keep the flat on. I was delighted as this enabled me to terminate the lease, my share of which I would soon not be able to afford.
It was at first somewhat strange, even perhaps a little numbing, to be left entirely to my own devices, but I rapidly became accustomed to it. Moreover there was quite a lot of work to be done in winding up my censorship duties and handing over the post to a successor while at the same time collecting practical
information for the little un it of technicians which was to install the radio post. Between the two departments with their different needs I was kept busy enough. During these days I kept my word and saw nothing of Clea. The time passed in a sort of limbo pitched between the world of desire and of farewell — though there were no emotions in very clear definition for me: I was not conscious of regrets or longings.
So it was that when at last that fatal day presented itself, it did so under the smiling guise of a spring sunshine hot enough to encourage the flies to begin hatching out upon the window-panes. It was their buzzing which awoke me. Sunlight was pouring into the room. For a moment, dazzled by it, I hardly recognized the smiling figure seated at the foot of my bed, waiting for me to open my eyes. It was the Clea of some forgotten original version, so to speak, clad in a brilliant summer frock of a crisp vine-leaf pattern, white sandals, and with her hair arranged in a new style. She was smoking a cigarette whose smoke hung in brilliant ash-veined whorls in the sunlight above us, and her smiling face was com-pletely relaxed and unshadowed by the least preoccupation. I stared, for she seemed so precisely and unequivocally the Clea I should always have remembered; the mischievous tenderness was back in the eyes. ‘Well’ I said in sleepy amazement. ‘What…?’
and I felt her warm breath on my cheek as she leaned down to embrace me.
‘Darley’ she said, ‘I suddenly realized that it’s tomorrow you are leaving; and that today is the Mulid of El Scob. I couldn’t resist the idea of spending the day together and visiting the shrine this evening. Oh, say you will! Look at the sunshine. It’s warm enough for a bathe, and we could take Balthazar.’
I was still not properly awake. I had completely forgotten the Name Day of the Pirate. ‘But it’s long past St George’s Day’
I said. ‘Surely that’s at the end of April.’
‘On the contrary. Their absurd method of lunar calendar reckoning has turned him into a movable