‘You have yet to hear from our masters in Hollywood, I take it?’ Seaman wanted to know.
‘I fear so, dear boy. It’s the holidays, do you see? Everyone’s in Florida or Vermont or wherever it is you chaps go at Christmas and the New Year. Valentino apparently left Le Havre on January 16th. I’ve sent to Alexandria and apparently Mr Barrymore walked out of his hotel and has not been seen for a couple of days. There is some suggestion that he transferred from the Hope Dempsey to Lord Witney’s yacht which was going to Corfu for the Hogmanay.’
‘Barrymore?’ said Mrs Cornelius, poised upon the running-board. ‘Wot?’
‘Your missing leading man, sweet lady. I’m most awfully sorry, but you were supposed to meet him, you see, in Alex. They were afraid he would get lost if you weren’t all there together. Apparently a wire went astray.’
‘There wos so many,’ she said.
‘Is it John or Lionel?’ Esmé was cautious.
‘I only know it isn’t Ethel. But it would not be the first time John has sent a substitute while he goes about his own business. He is, I gather, something of a prankster.’ His little, precise voice had its own peculiar melody, like the warbling of a self-contained canary, and it softened oddly when he addressed women, as if he sought to mesmerise them. I had never heard quite such a voice and I did not find it particularly pleasant. It seemed to me that Mrs Cornelius was rather repelled by him but made a considerable effort to be agreeable. Clearly, she was relieved when she could make her departure. It was left to Esmé to prove herself a most remarkable actress, with her display of reluctant separation from a man she found of consummate fascination. For his part he squeezed her hand, pinched her cheek, murmured a compliment in her tiny pink ear and let her slip slowly from him before swinging his chubby body from the rear seat to the front and, with an impatient wave, directing his driver back to Cairo.
As soon as the car was out of sight, Esmé linked her arm in mine. ‘Is it true we shall have no proper luncheon today?’ She stared with distaste at the remaining boxes in the hamper.
Seaman stopped with a sigh to pick up his portion. ‘I suspect we are on probation. At least until we hear from Hollywood. Sir Ranalf told me privately before he left I was not to worry about anything. He is genuinely on our side, I think.’
Mrs Cornelius looked at him with wondering sympathy. ‘That little porker’s a greedy bastard, mark my words. ‘E’s art fer hisself an’ ‘e’s orlready makin’ the most o’ this. ‘E’s up ter somefink. Come on. Let’s git shootin’ before it’s too bloody ‘ot an’ orl me effin make-up runs again!’
I watched the two women retreat to their costumes, unhappy tent-mates, calling for Grace and the Jewess.
Malcolm Quelch had found himself a folding chair and a garden umbrella. He sat some distance off with his lunch on his lap, observing the little natives as they ran about our perimeter shrieking with excitement, sticking out their tongues and occasionally pointing to their arses in a manner which was either inviting or insulting, it was impossible to guess. Quelch’s attitude was innocent and avuncular, but if any boy came too close he did not miss the chance to whack him smartly with his cane. Meanwhile Seaman was working himself up into the peculiar frenzy with which he normally directed studio flapper parties and which seemed oddly inappropriate here, hands waving and shrieking as wildly as our surrounding audience. Radonic, ballooning vivid lemon behind his camera, took readings off his grip and, having made-up and dressed, I busied myself with the trial scene, our opening shot where Mrs Cornelius and myself embrace against the background of the pyramids and Esmé strolls by to glance idly at me - an action which of course will have considerably greater significance later in the story. For these shots it did not matter if the watching crowd behaved in any way it pleased, but if the footage proved usable, we would employ it in the editing. If not, it would still give us needed information. I knew an immediate sense of elation as the ladies emerged in their special frocks, Esmé in deep blue, Mrs Cornelius in pale pink, a cloudscape of undulating feathers, lace and silk, to stop at last before me, to glance towards the camera and the whining, scowling Scandinavian who, with nervous hands upon the cameraman’s careless shoulders, was whispering complicated instructions in his native tongue, of which Radonic had not a syllable. Mrs Cornelius turned fabulous powder, mascara and rouge upon me so suddenly that a sharp, delicious frisson stabbed through my whole body. I moved dreamily into her embrace, my eye-shadow so weighting my lids that I was forced to raise them very slowly to stare into her exquisite blue eyes, automatically mouthing the lines which came from Seaman’s shriek of ‘Action’.
Bobby: I know that I have loved you since the world began.
Irene: And we shall love each other until the world shall end.
This was my epiphany. It was as if I had reached the quintessential moment of my existence, from which radiated all the possibilities of past, present and future. Behind me were the wars, the turbulence and terrible cruelties, the filth and the bloody corpses of the century’s struggles; ahead lay a silver and gold vision, the ethereal splendour of my independent flying republics, my healthy, handsome citizens in a cleaner, more rational world, with sentimentality abolished and self-respect made the rule. It was as if all the promises of my life were to be fulfilled and every disappointment and betrayal redeemed! It was almost as if I had been sent a heavenly sign, an affirmation and a confirmation of my noblest ideals. I was so close I could barely control my trembling. Her perfume was sweet as morning roses, her flesh so wonderfully soft it was scarcely flesh at all, her body radiating such sensuality I could barely control the shivering of my blood. Esmé was momentarily forgotten. Mrs Cornelius was my Goddess, my Muse, the great constant of my life, my Guardian Angel, the one friend who always cared for me (up or down, right or wrong), who shared so much of my vision and respected the wholesome idealism behind it, the hatred not of other peoples, but of confusion, of mongrelism. The love of my own culture and people is a fundamental of my life. She shared my distaste for lies and hypocrisy, my admiration for nobility, self-sacrifice and courage in all its forms, my willingness to extend a helping hand to anyone who wished to better himself, black, white, olive or yellow, so long as each accepted his equal responsibilities in the order of things. The simple moral lessons of my Russian childhood are not, I think, inappropriate to these chaotic times! Neither are they limited to the Slav. Nordic peoples share them in one form or another and they exist where Christians have left their mark, in Italy, Spain and, still, sometimes, in Greece, the centre of all our learning and our pride. They are the ideals of the Enlightenment, of the Age of Science, and if I alone still hope to convince the world of their message, and point to the road to our salvation, this does not, I hope, make me mad. I continue to speak for my people, for my past, for honest patriotism. Love of country, respect for one’s own culture surely helps us understand another’s emotions for the things he calls his own? The tribes of Europe might have co-existed peacefully for centuries had not the tribes of Oriental Africa, with their alien allegiances, observed our wealth and power and hungered for it. Let Palestine take her Jews and Morocco her Moors. I have no quarrel with them while they remain firmly on their own side of the Mittel Sea. My inventions and ideas would benefit everybody. I yearned to share my genius with the world. What a different place it would be today! This is the understanding I had in common with Mrs Cornelius. With me she is the only one left alive who knows how perfect was our lost future. I grieve for it, still.