But Mrs Cornelius is in poor temper and will not, this time, be mollified. What’s more, she announces, she finds the food less and less to her taste. If she is forced to eat one more fish that looks as if it would rather eat her she intends to become a vegetarian. The food is excellent, if more to my subtle Ukrainian appetite. I came to enjoy Turkish cuisine in Constantinople and discovered how well the Egyptians had learned from their masters! If the Levant owes nothing else to the Turks, it must forever thank them for their brik, their pastilla. My taste for corn and various beans is another preference baffling to Mrs Cornelius; neither does she have much relish for rice, especially with her fish. The fish is incomplete without the chip, she insists, just as pie is not a real pie without gravy. The baby eels are inferior to those of Whitechapel while the schnitzels and beefsteaks would, she assures me, be hurled at the wall by the diners of Aldgate or Notting Dale. On hearing this, Professor Quelch opens an eye and rises from the rainbow canvas of his chair to announce that it was very often possible to get a better meal for a shilling in Stepney than for a fiver in the West End. Certainly, if we were judging food by Mayfair standards, ours is more than adequate. Growing sentimental for her ancestral pie-shops and ale-houses, Mrs Cornelius asks him if he knows Sammy’s in Whitechapel. It is famous, she prompts, in the East End. Professor Quelch reminisces vaguely of delicious chops and sausages and thinks he might have eaten some exceptional eels there.
‘Sammy never did eels.’ She frowns. ‘ ‘E wos strictly pie an’ mash, chops an’ mash, sausages an’ mash. The eel-shop was Tafler’s next door. I never fancied ‘is likker. Wot wos it yer wos doin’ in ther East End, prof? Mish’nry work wos it?’
‘An uncle of mine took an interest in the orphaned boys.’
Esmé, chewing on a straw, casts uncomprehending eyes upon the palm-lined banks. Her thoughts are in some more urban paradise. Mrs Cornelius asks after one or two acquaintances in the various dockland missions, but he shakes his lifted head. ‘I have not been back in England since before the War, cara madonna. I really don’t think there’s anything to go back for, do you? The socialists are giving away the Empire! Ireland’s the thin end of the wedge.’
‘Well, everywhere ‘as its ups and darns, prof.’ Mrs Cornelius’s discomfort is swiftly forgotten. She sips an early gin. ‘One door closes, anower opens. You lose somefink ‘ere, yer gain somefink there. Thass life.’ She smacked optimistic carmine.
‘I happen to believe certain standards existed before the War and are worth hanging on to,’ he pronounces almost balefully - Luther summoning good Immaneus for the whore of Babylon.
But she agrees with him. ‘It’s a changin’ world, though, perfesser, an’ it’s best ter change wiv it. Any ower way’s barmy, doncher fink? I wouldn’t mind seem’ wot it wos like again.’ She grows nostalgic for London since she found old copies of The Tatler and The Play Pictorial in the little niche that serves us for a library and working-room. She is like a migratory animal which, at certain times, feels an instinctive pull towards its home territory. ‘An’ meetin’ ol’ Major Nye like that, wiv orl ‘is noos of the ‘alls an’ everythin’, I orlmos’ teared up, yer know.’ This is the first time she has referred to the evening before we left Cairo and her single dinner with the Major. Obviously he had asked her to say nothing and I had respected her silence.
‘Nye’s coming to Luxor?’ Professor Quelch is alert. ‘Dear lady? That’s the police chap?’
‘Don’ worry, prof. ‘E ‘asn’t come ter take yer ‘ome. The socialists won’t be able ter ‘urt ya. Besides ‘e’s not ‘ere fer ther dope.’ She reaches to pat his sallow cheek. ‘Picked art yer costume yet?’ The next day was Seaman’s birthday. As a concession, the Swede had authorised a limited use of the props basket. The main costumes, for the leading actors, could not be used, but there were considerable numbers of slave and soldier outfits in which it was proposed we dress the locals once we were filming again in Karnak. In our first scene the ancient city would come to life in a reverse dissolve. Ali Pasha Khamsa had recommended a family of skilled plaster-casters who would recreate the monuments of Ramesid Egypt as they had been at the height of their glory. This weary land of ruins would flourish again. It would be our tribute to the ancient world’s master-builders. How the natives would marvel when they saw their own past reborn! But would they feel pride or shame?
Esmé had been fascinated to watch the few rushes in which she had appeared. She admitted she had fallen in love with herself. We laughed about it. ‘Now we have something else in common,’ I said. Sir Ranalf Steeton had equipped the boat with its own darkroom and viewing-saloon, a projector already firmly in place for us, and even some films to look at if we wished. I watched a few. They were low-grade things, unmistakably British or local in origin, involving frequent loss of clothing. I had never been fond of Chaplin, let alone these badly-shot imitations, but the other men seemed to enjoy them. I was not surprised. They were almost all first-or second-generation peasants from the backward European nations. A turd on a top-hat would have been the epitome of sophisticated comedy. Today they would make a perfect audience for the Andy Warhoon comedy-Western I was forced to watch at the Essoldo last week. Thark at the Whitehall was another such fairground entertainment. Mrs Cornelius loved it. I pointed to the rest of the audience and told her to note the straws in their hair. We might have been gathered around a village marketplace watching one itinerant peasant belabour another with a blown-up pig’s bladder. The British genius is for making the banal and vulgar respectable. It is the secret of British television and why Benny Hill is watched round the world. The most splendid triumph of British philistinism came when the BBC discovered at last the lowest common denominator and blessed it as Art. P.J. Proby only understood part of the equation when he exposed his bottom to the teenage eye. Nobody would have minded if he had been wearing a dog-collar and a pair of pince-nez. Within a few years he would have received a knighthood, another Attenborough. I have watched all the careerists. In Bolshevik Russia, in Paris, in the literary and scientific communities, in Fascist Italy and Socialist Britain, in Berlin and in Hollywood they climbed by means of familiar ambition. I am no stranger to their strategies. However, my own pride refuses to let me employ such techniques. I remain, I suppose, too much of an idealistic individual.
Women recognise this. It is why some of them find me dangerous. Even Esmé said so more than once and Mrs Cornelius confirmed my girl’s opinion. ‘If ya weren’t so dumb ya’d be dangerous.’ She meant that my own good nature was frequently my downfall. She has never belittled my intellect.
The ardour of reconquest abated, I passed some time in reading to my little girl from the books we had found on board. My favourite was an English translation of Salammbô. How right was Kingsley Amis when he remarked that this, rather than Madame Bovary, was Flaubert’s masterpiece. It is much more colourful. Flaubert read a thousand books for every chapter of his own. His research for that other, far more depressing novel, was minimal. It was through this exquisite romance that Esmé and I became acquainted with the depths and complexities of Carthage, although in those days I was naive enough to believe the book no more than a piece of wonderful fiction. Insufficient has been written about Flaubert’s gift of prophecy.