*******
Mountolive studied this document with great care. He found the tone annoying and the information mildly disturbing. But then, every mission was riven with faction; personal annoyances, divergent opinions, they were always coming to the fore. For a moment he wondered whether it would not be wiser to allow Pursewarden the transfer he desired; but he restrained the thought by allowing another to overlap it. If he was to act, he should not at this stage show irresolution — even with Kenilworth. He walked about in that wintry landscape waiting for events to take definite shape around his future. Finally, he composed a tardy note to Pursewarden, the fruit of much rewriting and thought, which he despatched through the bag room.
My dear P., I must thank you for your letter with the interesting data. I feel I cannot make any decisions before my own arrival. I don’t wish to prejudge issues. I have however decided to keep you attached to the Mission for another year. I shall ask for a greater attention to discipline than your Chancery appears to do; and I know you won’t fail me however disagreeable the prospect of staying seems to you. There is much to do this end, and much to decide before I leave.
Yours sincerely, David Mountolive.
It conveyed, he hoped, the right mixture of encouragement and censure. But of course, Pursewarden would not have written flippantly had he visualized serving under him. Nevertheless, if his career was to take the right shape he must start at the beginning.
But in his own mind he had already planned upon getting Maskelyne transferred and Pursewarden elevated in rank as his chief political adviser. Nevertheless a hint of uneasiness remained. But he could not help smiling when he received a postcard from the incorrigible. ‘My dear Ambassador’ it read. ‘Your news has worried me. You have so many great big bushy Etonians to choose from…. Nevertheless. At your service.’
*******
VI
The airplane stooped and began to slant slowly downwards, earthwards into the violet evening. The brown desert with its monotony of windcarved dunes had given place now to a remembered relief-map of the delta. The slow loops and tangents of the brown river lay directly below, with small craft drifting about upon it like seeds. Deserted estuaries and sand-bars — the empty unpopulated areas of the hinterland where the fish and birds congregated in secret. Here and there the river split like a bamboo, to bend and coil round an island with fig-trees, a minaret, some dying palms — the feather-softness of the palms furrowing the flat exhausted landscape with its hot airs and mirages and humid silences. Squares of cultivation laboriously darned it here and there like a worn tweed plaid; between segments of bituminous swamp embraced by slow contours of the brown water. Here and there too rose knuckles of rosy limestone.
It was frightfully hot in the little cabin of the airplane. Mountolive wrestled in a desultory tormented fashion with his uniform.
Skinners had done wonders with it — it fitted like a glove; but the weight of it. It was like being dressed in a boxing-glove. He would be parboiled. He felt the sweat pouring down his chest, tickling him. His mixed elation and alarm translated itself into queasiness. Was he going to be airsick — and for the first time in his life? He hoped not. It would be awful to be sick into this impressive refurbished hat. ‘Five minutes to touchdown’; words scribbled on a page torn from an operations pad. Good. Good.
He nodded mechanically and found himself fanning his face with this musical-comedy object. At any rate, it became him. He was quite surprised to see how handsome he looked in a mirror.
They circled softly down and the mauve dusk rose to meet them.
It was as if the whole of Egypt were settling softly into an inkwell.
Then flowering out of the golden whirls sent up by stray dust-devils he glimpsed the nippled minarets and towers of the famous tombs; the Moquattam hills were pink and nacreous as a fingernail.
On the airfield were grouped the dignitaries who had been detailed to receive him officially. They were flanked by the members of his own staff with their wives — all wearing gardenparty hats and gloves as if they were in the paddock at Longchamps. Everyone was nevertheless perspiring freely, indeed in streams. Mountolive felt terra firma under his polished dress shoes and drew a sigh of relief. The ground was almost hotter than the plane; but his nausea had vanished. He stepped foward tentatively to shake hands and realized that with the donning of his uniform everything had changed. A sudden loneliness smote him — for he realized that now, as an Ambassador, he must forever renounce the friendship of ordinary human beings in exchange for their deference. His uniform encased him like a suit of chainarmour. It shut him off from the ordinary world of human exchanges. ‘God!’ he thought. ‘I shall be forever soliciting a normal human reaction from people who are bound to defer to my rank!
I shall become like that dreadful parson in Sussex who always feebly swears in order to prove that he is really quite an ordinary human being despite the dog-collar!’ But the momentary spasm of loneliness passed in the joys of a new self-possession. There was nothing to do now but to exploit his charm to the full; to be handsome, to be capable, surely one had the right to enjoy the consciousness of these things without self-reproach? He proved himself upon the outer circle of Egyptian officials whom he greeted in excellent Arabic. Smiles broke out everywhere, at once merging into a confluence of selfcongratulatory looks. He knew also how to present himself in half-profile to the sudden stare of flash-bulbs as he made his first speech — a tissue of heart-warming platitudes pronounced with charming diffidence in Arabic which won murmurs of delight and excitement from the raffish circle of journalists.
A band suddenly struck up raggedly, playing woefully out of key; and under the plaintive iterations of a European melody played somehow in quartertones he recognized his own National Anthem. It was startling, and he had difficulty in not smiling. The police mission had been diligently training the Egyptian force in the uses of the slide-trombone. But the whole performance had a desultory and impromptu air, as if some rare form of ancient music (Palestrina?) were being interpreted on a set of fire-irons.
He stood stiffly to attention. An aged Bimbashi with a glass eye stood before the band, also at attention — albeit rather shakily.
Then it was over. ‘I’m sorry about the band’ said Nimrod Pasha under his breath. ‘You see, sir, it was a scratch team. Most of the musicians are ill.’ Mountolive nodded gravely, sympathetically, and addressed himself to the next task. He walked with profuse keenness up and down a guard of honour to inspect their bearing; the men smelt strongly of sesame oil and sweat and one or two smiled affably. This was delightful. He restrained the impulse to grin back. Then, turning, he completed his devoirs to the Protocol section, warm and smelly too in its brilliant red flowerpot hats.
Here the smiles rolled about, scattered all over the place like slices of unripe water-melon. An Ambassador who spoke Arabic! He put on the air of smiling diffidence which he knew best charmed.
He had learned this. His crooked smile was appealing — even his own staff was visibly much taken with him, he noted with pride; but particularly the wives. They relaxed and turned their faces towards him like flower-traps. He had a few words for each of the secretaries.