That first evening in Cairo, I remember, I was dazed by the heat and the complexity of the vast overcrowded city, by the dense blend of exotic and familiar, of slender, pale fairy-tale towers and domes, of dark green tapering poplars and spreading cedars, of palms, of massive churches so strangely similar to those in my native country, of vividly-dressed Coptic women whose beauty was incomparable, almost alarming. I remember the blue air of the moonlit starry sky, a powerful sense of the great brooding sands lying all about us; there were perpetual stirrings in the streets, even when they seemed deserted, sudden echoes in high-walled alleys, warrens which could never be mapped, for Cairo is a city of worlds within worlds, of mazes within mazes and cisterns within cisterns, vaults leading to other vaults and caverns boring further and further into a past that set its stamp here before even the Pharaohs rose to dominate Egypt and, after five millennia, left, some think, more of their knowledge unrecorded than recorded. German and Russian scientists now have evidence they came to the Earth in their own flying cities, from another planet. It is the only way they know to explain the sudden flowering of civilisation on the green banks of a great African river. How else are we to accept the engineering miracles, the longevity of their Empire? I have never been entirely sure what to think of these theories. I agree it is hard to believe such a refined people emerged from the dust and mud of the Nile Delta. I read a piece by Evelyn Waugh on the subject and wrote to her, but never received a reply. I met her again much later at the Royal Society of Literature. By that time she was permanently dressing as a man and had grown plumply repulsive, though had yet to adopt the famous monocle. She could pose as a man, said J.B. Priestley, in whose honour the party was, but she would never convince anyone that she was a gentleman. I laughed so heartily at this that the Bard of Bradford - with a jolly ‘bugger the little snob’ - offered me a drop of whisky from his own bottle (the rest of us had only sherry); a mark, I was told, of considerable approval. I had gone to the party with Obtulowitz, the airman-poet, whose latest girlfriend had just been interned. If ‘Mr’ Waugh had read my letter she did not acknowledge it. She was unnecessarily rude when I broached the subject again and offered me the opinion that the only worthwhile thing to come out of Egypt was a cigarette and a style of kinema architecture. Perhaps she wanted me to invite her to the pictures. She brandished an empty holder. Maybe she only wanted me to offer her an exotic fag. This reminded me again of that first night in Cairo, at the nightclub Quelch took me to which reminded me powerfully of The Harlequin’s Retreat in Petersburg, a place of rabid perversity whose customers were devoted to every queer taste, in dress and no doubt in their sexual appetites. Quelch was surprised, he said, at my discomfort. He had understood from his brother that I was a man of the world. Of the world, I told him, most certainly. Of the demi-monde, I was not so sure. Quelch became a little impatient at this. In his view the club was the best place for cocktails as well as gossip, but if I felt ill at ease, he would be glad to take me somewhere a little less crowded. ‘Though you might find it a little less simpatica!’ This somewhat cryptic statement was never to be explained. We returned to the bar of the Savoy Hotel where we were almost the only people not in uniform and where it became quickly clear one was better served if one’s name were known to the staff. Realising I had done Quelch a disservice I was about to suggest we return to The Crooked Path when I recognised one of the men who had stepped into the bar. A little deeper tanned, his features as fleshless as ever, his handsome head crowned with rather more grey than when I had last seen him, Major Nye was in civilian evening clothes. The moment I signalled to him from where Quelch and I sat rather uncomfortably in cane chairs to one side of the bar, he approached with every sign of pleasure. ‘My dear old chap. How on earth did you manage to turn up in Cairo? I’d heard you were in the United States these days. By the way,’ dropping his voice, ‘no reminiscences, eh? I’m here on the quiet, rather. What?’ Naturally, I respected his incognito and merely introduced him to Malcolm Quelch as an old acquaintance from my soldiering days with the Army of the Don. Apologising for having a dinner engagement, Nye asked after Mrs Cornelius and was visibly moved to learn she was also in Cairo. I remained discreet. After insisting on ordering us some more cocktails from a noticeably more agreeable steward, he said he would send a message to my hotel. We would meet again as soon as he had a better idea of his appointments. He had only been back from India a week when London had sent him on here and he was still a bit of a new boy. Naturally I understood him to be on government work and did not press him for details. Mrs Cornelius, I said, would be delighted to know he was in Cairo. He did not, however, seem to share my certainty.
When Major Nye had gone to keep his date, Malcolm Quelch himself proposed that we should revisit The Crooked Path. I agreed to return with him to the club but if I still felt ill-at-ease I would be perfectly happy to leave him there and take a cab back to the hotel. As our one-horse kalash bore us through the cool sibilance of Cairo’s midnight streets, he murmured that his brother had mentioned ‘a certain penchant pour la neige’. In some surprise, I admitted a connoisseur’s taste for specific drogues blanches.