I laughed. “One could get caught easily enough doing just that. The Egyptians probably know I’ve come here today and they’d certainly think something was up if I kept on seeing people here.”
“You wouldn’t — or necessarily see either of us again. You’d deal entirely with your friend Mr. Edwards. It was he who suggested you to us — you hardly think we’d have advanced this far in the matter without establishing the most comprehensive bona fides as to your character and so on. What else did he say, Basil? — that you had an “insatiably curious approach to life’—just what we need, a sharp pair of eyes.”
“Even so — I mightn’t like the idea and you’ve told me rather a lot for someone who might refuse your offer and disappear — over to the other side, who knows?” The martinis had begun to sink in.
“There’s always a risk — and a much more prevalent one, I may say, among our permanent staff who know far more about us than you do. No, once we’re certain about someone we prefer a completely open handed approach.”
“How can you be ‘certain’—about me?”
“Well, to be blunt, we thought it suited you — in your present circumstances. With a wife to support and all that. You don’t want to lose out on that — on her, I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you don’t want to be the odd man out. I don’t see you going over to the ‘other side’, as you rather melodramatically put it, without your wife. And I can’t see her going off on such a caper. She’s with us too. An I O posting actually. Not active, but completely reliable, been with us some years now. So you see our offer to you is really in the nature of a safety measure — though I’m confident you can be of value to us in your own right. You’d have probably found out about Miss Girgis — Mrs. Marlow, I beg your pardon — in due course; marriage leads to so many sorts of intimacy, God help us, and this is a way of ensuring a sort of mutual security in the matter. It’s better having everyone in it together. Loose ends in this sort of operation are the only really dangerous thing. Once you married Miss Girgis we had to do something about it; you see our point, either dispense with her, which might have been awkward to say the least, or take you on — which I’m sure you’ll agree was much the more civilized response. I’m confident you won’t let us down — your marriage may depend on it.”
I looked at Usher in astonishment, yet savouring the beginnings of that elegant considerate double talk which was afterwards to become so familiar to me. Part of what he had said was true, certainly. But which part — and for what reasons? And why the need for lies and truths in the first place — and why those particular lies and truths? I hardly know now what I had no inkling of then.
“Do think about it — think about what I’ve said. We’re not scoundrels, old fellow. We didn’t hire the Embassy for the afternoon, you’re not being invited to join some illegal organization, a lot of gangsters; this is all perfectly above board — relatively speaking.”
He ended the sentence in high good humour, accentuating the idea of a gang being involved in this charade as a ham actor might play up the role of a wicked uncle in a Victorian melodrama.
“And now, Basil, would you help me indoors before that inquisitive Bishop finds me here. Though perhaps,” he said, turning to me, “only the truly inquisitive could have found their way into this privy. You’ve really invited this on yourself, Marlow. Uncanny really, we thought we might have to use some pretext … it shows very suitable initiative on your part, if I may say so. Just what we want.” And he bowed slightly in my direction, inclining his great white head just a fraction in a gesture of patriarchal assent; and then an equally limited flicker of his eyelids, the skin passing very rapidly up and down over the watery blue orbs, like a coquette in a silent film. And he was gone, propelled by Crowther on what I now saw to be not only a deck chair but a deck chair on wheels.
It was impossible to say whether he really had a bad leg, was pretending to have — or had no legs at all. Henry didn’t seem to know either.
“I couldn’t tell you about it. They had to make their own minds up. I put you in touch with them — they knew about you anyway, through Bridget. I told Crowther I thought you could work for us — and what he told you about ditching Bridget was perfectly true. It may seem nasty — I mean underhand in a personal way, from your point of view, but the alternative could have been worse — ”
“Christ Almighty — how could it be worse? Marrying someone who doesn’t tell you what they’re doing, what they’re really up to. What could be worse?”
I’d left the Embassy, furious. “You’d better talk to Henry, I can’t explain,” Bridget had said. “Obviously not,” I’d added, and Henry and I had gone once more to a corner of the bar at the Cosmopolitan.
“What sort of lark is this anyway? If it was anything serious you can be sure they wouldn’t have let me in on it — those two pooves. That reptile Usher — does he really have a bad leg, or no legs — or what? It’s a lot of utter nonsense. Cloak and dagger nonsense.”
“I don’t know how many legs he works on. I deal with Crowther anyway.”
Henry smiled wearily and shuffled his hair about with unusual timidity. I wondered how much of his explanation had been prepared, for he must have been briefed about, expected, this confrontation for some time. Were there to be lies from him as well? — lies one would never know of. Henry had always seemed to me congenitally blunt and straightforward; it was difficult to see in his character any sort of restraint — least of all a discretion imposed on him by others.
“Yes, it is a bloody lark,” he went on. “And cloak and dagger. The lark part — is Usher and Crowther. But remember, they’re only ‘countrymen’—liaison with London. And at that end it’s all perfectly serious. The more so now since the serious gents, the hatchet men, who used to be here, they’ve all been chucked out. Crowther and Usher are the only two left here with what’s called ‘open cover’; they can live here under quite proper bona fides — Crowther in the Consulate and Usher in his Mameluke house by the Citadel. He’s an Arabist, a Moslem — and God knows what else in that line. The place is crawling with all sorts of youngsters and desert knick-knacks. The fact is the two of them can behave pretty much as they like, for the moment — drum up every schoolboy fantasy, since they’re the only two senior people left in the circle out here. They’re indispensable from London’s point of view — and they know it. Hence their rather unorthodox approach in your case. It’s also true of course that they really want someone in Suez. They tried to send me. Anyway, that’s about them. In fact they must have complete confidence in you, or else, as you say, they’d have hardly embarked on the details today. Usher would have just weighed you up and I wouldn’t have been saying all this.”
The son of an Egyptian landowner, down to his last million, and a regular at the Cosmopolitan at this time of night, struggled up to the far end of the bar, swinging his arms about and shouting, in a wave of lonely bonhomie. Henry returned his greeting diffidently, only raising his hand towards him, palm outwards, in a way they had always acknowledged each other’s presence. On other nights Henry would have joined him, or he us, but tonight something kept us apart; again, that unexpected restraint on Henry’s part — like a drunkard far gone, embarking unwillingly and for the first time on a cure. Henry had a job to do with me. I wondered what it was.