When, next day, Seaman assembled us near the Sacred Pool and casually required my darling to remove her clothing and seem about to swim, I remained relaxed. There had, I accepted, to be continuity. Karnak, that bastion of a savage intellectualism, of a profoundly pagan art, helped establish in us a new mood. It had grown so hot that most of us were already wearing as little as possible, no more than a pair of shorts, a singlet and our lightest boots. This semi-nudity contributed to a mood of moral looseness which, with the slow pace of Luxor’s days, the high quality of the cocaine and the kif, was extremely seductive. I was young and relatively inexperienced. I do not blame myself for relaxing my standards a little. Perhaps, even by then, I could not have escaped. Now we had lights, so that we could shoot in the shadows of the temples, amongst the great pylons. We laid Esmé out upon a great fallen slab, stretched for sacrifice. And I, the priest of Ra, was supposed to raise my knife over her lovely, screaming head. I discussed this scene with Malcolm Quelch. I had an artistic, as well as an historical, problem. Surely there had been no such sacrifices made at that time? He said there was such a thing as imaginative human licence. I asked him if he meant ‘artistic licence’ and he said he did. He had become extremely off-hand in the past week.
Our days now had a peculiar, hermetic quality. We filmed in enclosures, in alcoves, in ruined chapels, among Karnak’s tall, knowing pillars which had witnessed all human folly, all human greed, all lust and dark, unnatural need. My inhibitions indeed seemed stupid in the presence of all this hot African sensuality. I was giving myself up to the past, to a barbaric civilisation that had grown old, tolerant and yet was still greedy for human feeling, for the thrill of flesh against flesh, the touch of a fingertip upon a nipple, the rush of blood and heat, the gasping desire, the stink of sweat and sex. Watching Esmé spreadeagled and perspiring on that rock I conceived such an almost uncontrollable desire for her I yelled with astonishment when Sir Ranalf s friendly hand fell upon my naked shoulder. ‘Isn’t she lovely, old boy? Such a deliriously natural young lady, don’t you know. Well, we should all know. Those things we do in secret!’ And he chuckled. I was offended. ‘What do you know of my private life?’ At once he became an avuncular tomcat. ‘Only what our little darling has told me,’ he purred. And, of course, it was then I knew she had betrayed me.
My emotion at that realisation is indescribable. Though I hated them both my lust for her had never been greater. Had I always hated her, always mistaken one intense emotion for another? Had I ever loved her? I became horribly confused. That dreadful passion threatened to engulf and activate my entire being. I was grasped by the twin fists of lust and rage.
My Esmé was a whore! She had been fucked so many times she had calluses on her cunt. They aren’t a bad bunch, the soldiers I’m with. Why had she betrayed me? She was my angel. Meyn batayt, meyn doppelgänger. It was my duty to rescue her. Yet I had so many other duties, not least to Art and to Science. To the Future.
‘Esmé?’ I moved to where she lay, chained and ready for sacrifice. ‘Sir Ranalf has confessed.’ I turned to still the cameras. This was not, I said quietly, a scene for the public view.
Her voice was a little sleepy, as if she had been dozing while waiting for the take. ‘But you told me it was all right, Dimka.’
Now, of course, I understood my own thoughtlessness. For all her exotic past my little girl was not trained in the ways of the larger world. I had protected her for too long. I softened. ‘I had not meant - ‘
‘Really, my dear Childe Max! As a man of the world!’ It was Sir Ranalf who had taken advantage of us. My respect for the man vanished in an instant. I turned. ‘How could you?’
‘My dear little knight-errant, don’t be cross! We’re all innocent bucolic lads and lasses here together, enjoying a little bit of pagan pleasure for the short years we are upon this Earth. What harm was meant, sweet Orpheus? These are games, no more! Natural games, you know, as between little boys and girls. Between chums and chumesses, eh? Yum, yum!’ And he placed his warm fingers on my arm to pat it. ‘No secret nastiness was intended. We are not the humdrum sort enchained and limited by awful, useless emotions of jealousy and possessiveness, surely? I had you down, dear Sir Galahad, for a Shelleyan like myself. A worshipper of all that is natural.’
Again, I was made to feel both inhumane and unsophisticated. An intolerable bigot. I blushed and cleared my throat, ‘I had not quite understood,’ I said. ‘It was a shock - ‘
‘Of course it was! I’m so very deeply sorry, dear, old pal. I thought all this was happening with your consent. I knew - ‘
‘Whereas I did not!’ But, hard as I strove for sophisticated acceptance, I was close to tears. So many different emotions flooded through me.
‘You will of course remember your professional commitment.’
I could not answer at once. My groin flashed white-hot. Seaman now joined us, followed by Quelch, who was now forever at the director’s shoulder. Perhaps as Mrs Cornelius had done a little earlier, I looked to Quelch for sympathy but he returned my glance with the same shifty warmth I interpreted as continuing embarrassment at my witnessing his Eastertime fellatial diversion. And Seaman seemed entirely without energy. His ‘Can I help?’ was almost timid.
‘We need you to persuade our baffled chum that what we demand is within the bounds of artistic good taste.’ Sir Ranalf was affable. ‘Really, there are pictures hanging in perfectly respectable Birmingham villas more suggestive than our little scene.’
‘It’s a question of conviction,’ said Seaman. ‘We need to startle them.’
‘We need to persuade the audience, you see, of the absolute authority of our mise-en-scène.’
As they talked we smoked a little kif and I began to understand what they were driving at. I recalled that I had read how many Egyptians went naked during festivals and special periods of worship. But not, surely, in such circumstances? I looked to Quelch who spread his hands. ‘I think, as I said earlier, that some licence . . .’
‘But, of course, it would help if you, too, could get a little closer to nature, to the olden times. Don’t you agree, Herr Seaman? Dear Maxie should divest himself of his own little kilt and perhaps substitute a tasteful ceremonial apron?’
I, of course, refused. At this rate what would be the difference, I asked, between our film and a piece of commercial pornography?
‘They have nothing in common,’ Sir Ranalf assured me in some outrage. ‘Our great moral work will stand as one of the milestones in the history of dramatic representation. It will be the Hamlet, the Pinero, the Birth of a Nation of its time. Because we dared, dear Maxie. Because we dared . . .’