‘ ‘E was with some sort o’ special police, larst I ‘eard,’ she said. ‘A kind of elevated copper. Ter do wiv drugs or somefink. Y’d better wotch yer step, young Ivan.’
I told her I did not think I had much to fear from a white man.
‘Cairo’s ther world’s drug capital these days,’ she continued. ‘Opium an’ keef from Lebanon an’ Syria. Cocaine from Bulgaria, mostly. Morphine an’ heroin from orl over. Sir Ranny reckons ther big in’ernational racketeers’re gettin’ in’erested in Cairo. The p’lice fink they got it under control. They fink an ‘eavier fine and roundin’ up a few dealers an’ ‘ores ‘as solved it.’ She laughed. ‘I’ll tell yer, Ivan, wiv orl these crooks abart I’m on’y too pleased to be legit. Iss bad enough in bloody Whitechapel or Notting Dale when ther big crooks start fightin’ amongst themselves.’
I now understood exactly why both Stavisky and Major Nye were interested in this part of the world. Such a vast volume of tourist traffic would allow the, perhaps unconscious, travellers to carry the dope to where, of course, a large European market was willing to pay generous local prices. As well as the Egyptian upper classes who were all connoisseurs, the poor fellaheen made up the basic market for hasheesh and horribly adulterated heroin. I had already heard stories in The Crooked Path about the old woman near the Khalifa cemeteries who had discovered that ancient human skulls could be ground into a fine enough powder to ‘cut’ the heroin used by the area’s quarrymen and carters. The creature who told me this found it amusing that they were snorting the skulls of their own ancestors back into their living brains. I had merely been a little sickened by the anecdote.
‘I bet ther major’s ‘ere on account o’ ther drugs.’ Mrs Cornelius reached with conviction to the rack for another slice of toast. ‘That’ll be it.’
Privately I was in full agreement with Authority’s efforts to wipe out the trade in so-called ‘black’ drugs - the opium and hasheesh draining the energies of working people - but it seemed unsophisticated to ascribe the same life-sapping qualities to cocaine, for instance, which was ever a boon and a source of energy, a stimulant to the imagination. As for morphine, to make it unavailable to the likes of ex-servicemen like Quelch, needing to kill the pain of old wounds, was positively inhuman. There had to be selection and moderation in the control of drugs just as there was with alcohol, for instance. I found the whole subject distasteful, so asked gracefully after our great director.
‘Wolfy got up early ter go out ter give ther pyramids ther once-over. ‘E wants ter get down ter work as soon as poss. In that I’d agree wiv ‘im. I’m bored art o’ me pants, Ivan. It’ll be a relief ter ‘ave me nose ter the powder-puff again!’ And she laughed heartily at that and could not stop even when a sallow Quelch came almost surreptitiously into the restaurant, caught my eye reluctantly and then even more reluctantly advanced upon our table. I pulled back a chair for him. Slowly, in that deliberate way he had of re-ordering his limbs into a new position, he lowered himself to join us.
He was afraid I would embarrass him. He had not been in his bed when I rose that morning and came in as I was leaving. He had mumbled that he had only had time for a quick wash and change of clothes. He had no reason to distrust my discretion and as this came clear he even managed a small smile when Mrs Cornelius suggested that the sausages were a bit ‘funny-tastin’ ‘ and might be ‘strickly Moslem’, made from camel meat. Again she demonstrated her power to lift the ill-humour of someone whom she liked. Her effort, however, was not of quite the intensity it had been on yesterday’s train. I suspected her energies to be a little more widely distributed now. She called him a gay dog. She laughed and said I had told her he had not come home until after nine o’clock that night. ‘You’ve bin ‘angin’ rahnd them museums an’ libraries again, ‘aven’t yer, prof?’
He was happy to give some vague sign of acquiescence and even giggle as if she had somehow put her finger on his most terrible vice. My understanding of his character was growing with almost every passing hour! At a suitable time, perhaps when we were on the ship back to Los Angeles, I might indeed tell Mrs Cornelius that I had last seen her ‘innocent’ full of dope and ginger ale in the arms of an extravagantly dressed Albanian transvestite while he quoted excitedly from the more sensational passages of Juvenal! Pinching his cheek with the air of a fond mother who would be happier if her boy were just a little more manly, Mrs Cornelius finished her saucer of tea and rose from the table. ‘I’ll leave you two norty boys ter tork abart the Redline togewer.’ Referring jokingly to the district ‘redlined’ by the British for licensed brothels, she did not guess it was where Quelch and I had actually spent the better part of the evening. Meanwhile, our encounter at the Savoy offered sufficient explanation as to our whereabouts of the previous evening.
‘Our reputations, dear boy, remain intact,’ hissed Malcolm Quelch with a wink containing something of his brother’s devil-may-care insouciance, but the expression faded almost at once, as if he realised he had been in danger of revealing something to me. His features seemed visibly to narrow. ‘It would not do to disturb the lady’s feelings.’
For my part I did not offer any opinion. He could do very little to disturb that particular lady’s feelings! My friend was a woman of the world. Like me, she had lived by her wits throughout the entire period of the Bolshevik War. In those circumstances one very quickly learns to adapt. The Cornelius boy has a phrase I believe he has borrowed from one of his pop tunes. He says we must all ‘ride with the tide and go with the flow’. But I have no time for his washing-machine analogies. In certain terrible circumstances, it is true, the human being will adapt in order to survive. But might it not be our duty to ensure that the terrible circumstances themselves do not occur? Unless we learn to control our appetites we are doomed forever to be in the power of random Nature. This new romantic movement that talks about ‘ontology’ and ‘ecology’ instead of the Zeitgeist is merely another celebration of the irrationalism Jean-Jacques Rousseau turned to such a handsome profit while incidentally offering a posthumous blessing to the Terror - indeed, to a series of Terrors, some of which we are still enjoying! Has not this century seen enough of such tainted ideals?
It was almost noon before Quelch and I left the table, returning to our room where he would instruct me in some of the more important Egyptian symbols I might incorporate into my designs. I was in this, as in everything I did, conscientious to the point of obsession. I had already accumulated a great sheaf of designs, both of costumes and sets, and my script was ready for shooting. Though my own part would not be a starring one, I felt it would counter any suggestion that I was a mere ‘programmer’ idol and show me in my best light as a dramatic actor. I was still reluctant to include Esmé, but Seaman had insisted upon it. I could only agree with him that Esmé’s death would probably bring the audience to tears in the final reel and there were after all only two scenes where she appeared with Mrs Cornelius. Thus I combined talent with strategy, diplomacy with humanity, to help create a film to justify everything D.W. Griffith ever taught us - a romantic, stirring spectacle with a strong moral tone. That was what audiences had come to demand and it was what I could cheerfully give them. Today’s cinema has lost the willingness to combine those two key elements. What is the surprise if it is thus losing its audiences? Even in Weimar’s most decadent days we could be uplifted by a moving tale. There is certainly nothing amoral about Die Erdgeiste. Our movie had my full commitment on both levels. I became more and more absorbed in the realisation of my great story, in which the ancient and modern were (as in Griffith’s masterful Intolerance or De Mille’s Ten Commandments) held up as mirrors, one to the other. I began to feel it was almost ‘in the can’.