But there was nothing. Darling Liza, let us celebrate the old b …’s birthday, shall we? You and I and David Mountolive here — as if we were French or Italian, as if it meant something.”
The snow was falling fast, the last sodden leaves lying in mounds, the pigeons uttering their guttural clotted noises. “Shall we, Liza?” A spot of bright pink had appeared in each of her cheeks.
Her lips were parted. Snowflakes like dissolving jewels in her dark hair. “How?” she said. “Just how?”
‘ “We will dance for Blake” said Pursewarden, with a comical look of seriousness on his face, and taking her in his arms he started to waltz, humming the Blue Danube. Over his shoulder, through the falling snowflakes, he said: “This is for Will and Kate Blake.” I don’t know why I felt astonished and rather touched.
They moved in perfect measure gradually increasing in speed until they were skimming across the square under the bronze lions, hardly heavier than the whiffs of spray from the fountains. Like pebbles skimming across a smooth lake or stones across an icebound pond…. It was a strange spectacle. I forgot my cold hands and the snow melting on my collar as I watched them. So they went, completing a long gradual ellipse across the open space, scattering the leaves and the pigeons, their breath steaming on the night-air. And then, gently, effortlessly spinning out the arc to bring them back to me — to where I stood now with a highly doubtful-looking policeman at my side. It was rather amusing.
“What’s goin’ on ’ere?” said the bobby, staring at them with a distrustful admiration. Their waltzing was so perfect that I think even he was stirred by it. On they went and on, magnificently in accord, the dark girl’s hair flying behind her, her sightless face turned up towards the old admiral on his sooty perch. “They are celebrating Blake’s birthday” I explained in rather a shamefaced fashion, and the officer looked a shade more relieved as he followed them with an admiring eye. He coughed and said “Well, he can’t be drunk to dance like that, can he? The things people get up to on their birthdays!”
‘At long last they were back, laughing and panting and kissing one another. Pursewarden’s good humour seemed to be quite restored now, and he bade me the warmest of goodnights as I put them both in a taxi and sent them on their way. There! My dear Leila, I don’t know what you will make of all this. I learned nothing of his private circumstances or background, but I shall be able to look him up; and you will be able to meet him when he comes to Egypt. I am sending you a small printed collection of his newest verses which he gave me. They have not appeared anywhere as yet.’ In the warm central heating of the club bedroom, he turned the pages of the little book, more with a sense of duty than one of pleasure. It was not only modern poetry which bored him, but all poetry. He could never get the wavelength, so to speak, however hard he tried. He was forced to reduce the words to paraphrase in his own mind, so that they stopped their dance.
This inadequacy in himself (Leila had taught him to regard it as such) irritated him. Yet as he turned the pages of the little book he was suddenly interested by a poem which impinged upon his memory, filling him with a sudden chill of misgiving. It was inscribed to the poet’s sister and was unmistakingly a love-poem to ‘a blind girl whose hair is painted black’. At once he saw the white serene face of Liza Pursewarden rising up from the text.
Greek statues with their bullet holes for eyes Blinded as Eros by surprise, The secrets of the foundling heart disguise, Lover and loved….
It had a kind of savage deliberate awkwardness of surface; but it was the sort of poem a modern Catullus might have written.
It made Mountolive extremely thoughtful. Swallowing, he read it again. It had the simple beauty of shamelessness. He stared gravely at the wall for a long time before slipping the book into an envelope and addressing it to Leila.
There were no further meetings during that month, though once or twice Mountolive tried to telephone to Pursewarden at his office. But each time he was either on leave or on some obscure mission in the north of England. Nevertheless he traced the sister and took her out to dinner on several occasions, finding her a delightful and somehow moving companion.
Leila wrote in due course to thank him for his information, adding characteristically: ‘The poems were splendid. But of course I would not wish to meet an artist I admired. The work has no connection with the man, I think. But I am glad he is coming to Egypt. Perhaps Nessim can help him — perhaps he can help Nessim? We shall see.’ Mountolive did not know what the penultimate phrase meant.
The following summer, however, his leave coincided with a visit to Paris by Nessim, and the two friends met to enjoy the galleries and plan a painting holiday in Brittany. They had both recently started to try their hands at painting and were full of the fervour of amateurs in a new medium. It was here in Paris that they ran into Pursewarden. It was a happy accident, and Mountolive was delighted at the chance of making his path smooth for him by this lucky introduction. Pursewarden himself was quite transfigured and in the happiest of moods, and Nessim seemed to like him immensely. When the time came to say goodbye, Mountolive had the genuine conviction that a friendship had been established and cemented over all this good food and blithe living. He saw them off at the station and that very evening reported to Leila on the notepaper of his favourite cafe: ‘It was a real regret to put them on the train and to think that this week I shall be back in Russia! My heart sinks at the thought. But I have grown to like P. very much, to understand him better. I am inclined to put down his robust scolding manners not to boorishness as I did, but to a profoundly hidden shyness, almost a feeling of guilt.
His conversation this time was quite captivating. You must ask Nessim. I believe he liked him even more than I did. And so … what? An empty space, a long frozen journey. Ah! my dear Leila, how much I miss you — what you stand for. When will we meet again, I wonder? If I have enough money on my next leave I may fly down to visit you….’ He was unaware that quite soon he would once more find his way back to Egypt — the beloved country to which distance and exile lent a haunting brilliance as of tapestry. Could anything as rich as memory be a cheat? He never asked himself the question.
*******
III
The central heating in the Embassy ballroom gave out a thick furry warmth which made the air taste twice-used; but the warmth itself was a welcome contrast to the frigid pinestarred landscapes outside the tall windows where the snow fell steadily, not only over Russia, it seemed, but over the whole world. It had been falling now for weeks on end. The numb drowsiness of the Soviet winter had engulfed them all. There seemed so little motion, so little sound in the world outside the walls which enclosed them. The tramp of soldiers’ boots between the shabby sentry-boxes outside the iron gates had died away now in the winter silence. In the gardens the branches of the trees bowed lower and lower under the freight of falling whiteness until one by one they sprang back shedding their parcels of snow, in soundless explosions of glittering crystals; then the whole process began again, the soft white load of the tumbling snowflakes gathering upon them, pressing them down like springs until the weight became unendurable.
Today it was Mountolive’s turn to read the lesson. Looking up from the lectern from time to time he saw the looming faces of his staff and fellow secretaries in the shadowy gloom of the ballroom as they followed his voice; faces gleaming white and sunless — he had a sudden image of them all floating belly upwards in a snowy lake, like bodies of trapped frogs gleaming upwards through the mirror of ice. He coughed behind his hand, and the contagion spread into a ripple of coughing which subsided once more into that spiritless silence, with only the susurrus of the pipes echoing through it. Everyone today looked morose and ill.