I would never have expected to hear from this rather prim man the secret language of the drug fancy. He told me that while he neither approved of cocaine nor used it himself he had grown partial to morphine when wounded in the military hospital of Addis Ababa. He had fought with El Orans himself. For much the same reasons as Lawrence he had been commissioned because of his knowledge of the Bedouin and their language. Lawrence was a great man, who romanticised his life so thoroughly he came to believe in the world’s legend. ‘Well, it’s a common enough delusion, I suppose. He’ll romanticise his dying moments if he gets the chance. You’ve read his books, of course.’
That doubtful pleasure was still to come. I am all for sex. But excessive sex coupled with a cloying philosemitism is not, I fear, to my old-fashioned taste. And now, of course, it is the common currency of television! Having no desire to be reminded of those dusty, evil days, I did not go to see the ‘biopic’. Some of the Desert Raider’s work was later set in England, but the desert was his true inspiration. At heart he remained a tubercular Midlands nancy-boy and was dead, of course, before I ever arrived in England. Or, at least, there was talk of a road accident. In Mexico, I think. Perhaps he really did want anonymity. Certainly Malcolm Quelch maintained that he had that familiar type of sex-drive which, seeking complete lack of emotional attachment, only functions with nameless people. ‘He had strong affections, however.’ The publication of his early Pit Life tales proves that. I am no philistine and am always prepared to give Art, no matter how unfamiliar, her due. But there is, everyone will agree, a distinct difference between the probing finger of truth and the vulgarisation of mere pornography!
The Crooked Path, now more familiar, had become less unattractive, especially after one of Quelch’s friends suggested that I suck upon the ivory mouthpiece of a goza, the water-cooled hashish pipe. As a rule I had a deep suspicion of narcotics, but was willing to relax my guard in a company which, no matter what its degenerate appetites, was considerably more tolerant, welcoming and better-mannered than I had recently enjoyed at the Savoy. I purchased some first-class neige from a pretty young woman in a blue shot-silk ‘flapper’ dress whose fashionable page-boy haircut resembled the traditional coiffure of the Egyptian dead. Her faintly green make-up added further to the impression that some deceased Emperor’s handmaiden had taken the evening off to sell cocaine in a European nightclub. Apart from some long-haired boys in excessively loose cotton lounge-suits, some, depending upon the tastes of their masters, with make-up and earrings, there were few natives here. Even the waiters were Greeks from Alexandria, or so they all claimed. The blood has mixed so thoroughly in the cities that it is impossible to tell one race from another, except by what they claim for themselves. And people think the South African government is mad!
The increasing attraction of The Crooked Path reminded me how easily and to my detriment I had slipped into bohemian living in St Petersburg, and I drew on my usual resources of self-discipline to leave Quelch in the company of a transvestite, clearly an old friend, and take a kalash back to our hotel. Halfway before I reached the Continental I had been asked for baksheesh in return for graphically mimed services by a score of little boys, a group of youths, two whores and the driver of my cab. I waved the rest away but suffered the boys through the gaudy streets of the Wasa’a district which even at that hour remained brilliantly lit with a mixture of stained-glass oil-lamps, electrics, naphtha and candles. Each little garish hovel offered the delights of Paradise and the temptations of Hell. Women of every European nation graphically advertised their charms and skill while their negro pimps, their Greek ‘protectors’, their Italian capos, whispered to you of unspeakable gratification and the smell of their perfume made you drunk on the heat of your own blood; yet you knew they promised only profound hunger. I had known that hunger in Odessa; again in Kiev and Constantinople. But here, it gnawed more fiercely than ever. I sensed the softness of professionally yielding flesh; flesh that was never angered, never shocked; flesh that had no morality, merely a price; flesh that could take without surprise the demands one dare not make of even the most obliging and loving sweetheart. And somewhere it seemed to me I heard the wild, vicious whistling of a whip; a whip I myself wielded; a whip that was wielded upon me. My own flesh became nameless until all that filled my universe was pain, lust, more pain and a draining, terrible satisfaction.
‘They use their bloody whips a good deal too bloody much,’ said Mrs Cornelius next morning, when I found her in the dining-room alone at breakfast. The large, net-curtained windows looked out upon wonderful landscaped gardens and a passing four-wheeler. Ezebekiya Square was the very centre of the European quarter. ‘It makes yer wanna walk everywhere, dunnit, Ivan?’ She and Seaman had gone to dinner that evening with Goldfish’s local representative. The Egyptian market was one of the most rapidly growing of all. Sir Ranalf Steeton, a cousin of Storrs Pasha, the immediate power in Egypt, was now principal agent for all the major British, French and American studios. He had also done some work as an independent producer, chiefly, he had told Mrs Cornelius, for the tourist market in Cairo and Port Said. ‘ ‘E reckons ‘e’s a plain, blunt Yorkshireman ‘oo don’t like ter beat abart ther bush,’ she said over her fried eggs and trimmings, ‘but ‘e sahnds like ther usual posh toff wot’s ‘ad ter find a job o’ work, nar the butler’s votin’ Labour an’ wants ‘is larst ten years’ back wages. Anyway, ‘e wos tellin’ us that Cairo’s the flash place ter be at ther mo’. Becos o’ Tutenkhamun an’ that. There’s plenty o’ money ‘ere an’ lots to be made, ‘e sez. But it’s bringin’ wot ‘e corls undesirables in. Conmen an’ stuff. So wotch yer bloody wallet, Ivan. Yore the first ter fall fer a line y’d be ashamed of if it woz one o’ yer own!’
This was my opportunity to mention my meeting with Major Nye. She brightened at the name. ‘Loverly ol’ geezer. I ‘ad a soft spot fer ‘im. ‘E understood me. Even when I wanted ter go back on ther stage.’
‘He seemed to think you might not be happy to see him.’
‘ ‘Appy? I’m ecstatic. I did ‘ave ter borrer a few quid ter set meself up an’ I ‘aven’t ‘ad ther chance ter pay ‘im back yet, but thass orl water under the bridge, eh, Ive?’
The English major was evidently in love with her and was terrified she would again reject him. He thought of the money only as a barrier he had unwittingly thrown between them.
‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘it turned art ter be a decent littel inves’ment orl in orl. I’ll get Wolfy ter write ‘im a cheque as a sub on me wages. Did ‘e say wot ‘e wos doin’ ‘ere?’
It was my belief he was on secret government business, probably in relation to the bandit problem. Acting as usual under the banners of ‘nationalism’, they had assassinated a couple of officials and ineptly blown up a few administrative and military buildings. No sane Egyptian condoned them. The king himself condemned these activities. Personally he favoured his country’s complete absorption into the fabric of the British Empire, where conditions for the common man would inevitably improve together with his own security. Islam, as is perpetually demonstrated today, habitually selects new leaders through a succession of murderous betrayals, rather than by the less dramatic and more prolonged methods of the West. Fanatics like the Wafd’s Roshdi threatened not only the king’s life but the lives of his entire family. The king knew as thoroughly as anyone that the rule of Law was synonymous with British rule and that the moment His Majesty’s advisers left, his country would revert to the blood-feuding characterising all those countries which had known only enslavement to Turkey or Baghdad or, in modern times, the Great Powers. How right he was to look at his choices and thankfully link his fortunes with the British! It takes an Arab to understand who makes the best master. He is used only to masters. It is all he can himself aspire to.