‘But what has an I. Branch to do with us?’
‘Exactly, nothing. But the High Commissioner’s Political Section depended on Maskelyne’s Intelligence reports. I.C. Intelligence Collation was the central agency for the Middle East Central Archives and all that sort of thing.’
‘Where’s the quarrel?’
‘Pursewarden as political feels that the Embassy has also in a way inherited Maskelyne’s department from the Commission.
Maskelyne refuses to countenance this. He demands parity or even complete freedom for his show. It is military after all.’
‘Then set it under a military attache for the time being.’
‘Good, but Maskelyne refuses to agree to become part of your mission as his seniority is greater than your attache designate’s.’
‘What rubbish all this is. What is his rank?’
‘Brigadier. You see, since the end of the ’18 show, Cairo has been the senior post office of the intelligence network and all intelligence was funnelled through Maskelyne. Now Pursewarden is trying to appropriate him, bring him to heel. Battle royal, of course. Poor Errol, who I admit is rather weak in some ways, is flapping between them like a loose sail. That is why I thought your task would be easier if you shed Pursewarden.’
‘Or Maskelyne.’
‘Good, but he’s a War Office body. You couldn’t. At any rate, he is most eager for you to arrive and arbitrate. He feels sure you will establish his complete autonomy.’
‘I can’t tolerate an autonomous War Office Agency in a territory to which I am accredited, can I?’
‘I agree. I agree, my dear fellow.’
‘What does the War Office say?’
‘You know the military! They will stand by any decision you choose to make. They’ll have to. But they have been dug in there for years now. Own staff branches and their transmitter up in Alexandria. I think they would like to stay.’
‘Not independently. How could I?’
‘Exactly. That is what Pursewarden maintains. Good, but someone will have to go in the interests of equity. We can’t have all this pin-pricking.’
‘What pin-pricking?’
‘Well, Maskelyne withholding reports and being forced to disgorge them to Political Branch. Then Pursewarden criticizing their accuracy and questioning the value of I.C. Branch. I tell you, real fireworks. No joke. Better shed the fellow. Besides, you know, he’s something of a…, keeps odd company. Errol is troubled about his security. Mind you, there is nothing against Pursewarden.
It’s simply that’s he’s, well … a bit of a vulgarian, would you say?
I don’t know how to qualify it. It’s Errol’s paper.’ Mountolive sighed. ‘It’s surely only the difference between, say, Eton and Worthing, isn’t it?’ They stared at one another.
Neither thought the remark was funny. Kenilworth shrugged his shoulders with obvious pique. ‘My dear chap’ he said, ‘if you propose to make an issue of it with the S. of S. I can’t help it; you will get my proposals overruled. But my views have gone on record now. You’ll forgive me if I let them stay like that, as a comment upon Errol’s reports. After all, he has been running the show.’
‘I know.’
‘It is hardly fair on him.’ Stirring vaguely in his subconscious Mountolive felt once more the intimations of power now available to him — a power to take decisions in factors like these which had hitherto been left to fate, or the haphazard dictation of mediating wills; factors which had been unworth the resentments and doubts which their summary resolution by an act of thought would have bred. But if he was ever to claim the world of action as his true inheritance he must begin somewhere. A Head of Mission had the right to propose and sponsor the staff of his choice. Why should Pursewarden suffer through these small administrative troubles, endure the discomfort of a new posting to some uncongenial place?
‘I’m afraid the F.O. will lose him altogether if we play about with him’ he said unconvincingly; and then, as if to atone for a proposition so circuitous, added crisply: ‘At any rate, I propose to keep him for a while.’ The smile on Kenilworth’s face was one in which his eyes played no part. Mountolive felt the silence close upon them like the door of a vault. There was nothing to be done about it. He rose with an exaggerated purposefulness and extruded his cigarette-end into the ugly ashtray as he said: ‘At any rate, those are my views; and I can always send him packing if he is no use to me.’ Kenilworth swallowed quietly, like a toad under a stone, his expressionless eyes fixed upon the neutral wallpaper. The quiet susurrus of the London traffic came welling up between them.
‘I must go’ said Mountolive, by now beginning to feel annoyed with himself. ‘I am collecting all the files to take down to the country tomorrow evening. Today and tomorrow I’ll clear off routine interviews, and then … some leave I hope. Goodbye, Kenny.’
‘Goodbye.’ But he did not move from his desk. He only nodded smilingly at the door as Mountolive closed it; then he turned back with a sigh to Errol’s neatly-typed memoranda which had been assembled in the grey file marked Attention of Ambassador Designate. He read a few lines, and then looked up wearily at the dark window before crossing the room to draw the curtains and pick up the phone. ‘Give me Archives, please.’ It would be wiser for the moment not to press his view.
This trifling estrangement, however, had the effect of making Mountolive set aside his plan to take Kenilworth back to his club with him. It was in its way a relief. He rang up Liza Pursewarden instead and took her out to dinner.
It was only two hours down to Dewford Mallows but once they were outside London it was clear that the whole countryside was deeply under snow. They had to slow down to a crawl which delighted Mountolive but infuriated the driver of the dutycar. ‘We’ll be there for Christmas, sir’ he said, ‘if at all!’ Ice-Age villages, their thatched barns and cottages perfected by the floury whiteness of snow, glistening as if from the tray of an expert confectioner; curving white meadows printed in cuneiform with the small footmarks of birds or otters, or the thawing blotches of cattle. The car windows sealing up steadily, gummed by the frost. They had no chains and no heater. Three miles from the village they came upon a wrecked lorry with a couple of villagers and an A.A. man standing idly about it, blowing on their perished fingers. The telegraph poles were down hereabouts.
There was a dead bird lying on the glittering grey ice of Newton’s Pond — a hawk. They would never get over Parson’s Ridge, and Mountolive took pity on his driver and turned him back summarily on to the main road by the foot-bridge. ‘I live just over the hill’ he said. ‘It’ll take me just twenty—five minutes to walk it.’ The man was glad to turn back and unwilling to accept the tip Mountolive offered. Then he reversed slowly and turned the car away northward, while his passenger stepped forward into the brilliance, his condensing breath rising before him in a column.
He followed the familiar footpath across fields which tilted ever more steeply away towards an invisible skyline, describing (his memory had to do duty for his eyesight) something as perfected in its simplicity as Cavendish’s first plane. A ritual landscape made now overwhelmingly mysterious by the light of an invisible sun, moving somewhere up there behind the opaque screens of low mist which shifted before him, withdrawing and closing. It was a walk full of memories — but in default of visibility he was forced to imagine the two small hamlets on the hill-crown, the intent groves of beeches, the ruins of a Norman castle. His shoes cut a trembling mass of raindrops from the lush grass at every scythe-like step, until the bottoms of his trousers were soaked and his ankles turned to ice.