“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to take the job you’ve been offered, Mr. Marlow. That’s all. If you’ve been in any doubt about it let me tell you it would be the best course open to you — for you and your wife. And your friend Mr. Edwards. And I want you to tell us all about it.”
“I thought you knew all about their operation here. You seem to.”
“In Egypt, yes. But I’m sure you won’t be spending all your life here. If you do well, and I think I can arrange things so that you will, you’ll be promoted, sent back to London, where some of the real news about the Middle East comes from. We’d like to know about that. Obviously. Does the whole thing shock you? I mean, you don’t seem to have been very enthusiastic about working for Usher and you may not be for us either.”
“I don’t think I have much choice — from either of you.”
“On the contrary. You do have a choice. You could go and tell Usher what’s happened and he’d have to pull you all out of here — including himself. We could put that to some advantage. We could make something of that.”
“You could round us all up and give us thirty years apiece too, couldn’t you? Or shoot us. Wouldn’t that be even better?”
“Yes, we could do that. If we had to, if it were forced upon us. But it’s a much better idea, isn’t it, now that we know about you all, so that your outfit is harmless to us anyway, to turn the screw the other way, to make it a long-term operation, find out how your people manage things at the centre, in London, as I was saying.”
“Why me? Why didn’t you go for Crowther? Or Edwards? You could have got a lot more from them.”
“We wouldn’t.”
The Colonel eased his cravat, ventilating his body against the heat, and looked out over the river. He drained his glass with an expression of kindly patience.
“You’re a beginner, not marked yet. Not trained. The others would have shut up shop at once, wouldn’t have given a thing away. They’d have had their thirty years rather than let out a squeak. And it would hardly have done to bring your wife into the matter.” He smiled, not facetiously, but in a way that made me think he meant this. “But really, what I’m getting at is if you thought it worth your while working for Usher — then why not us? Apart from the accident of your birth you’ve no special connections with Britain. Just the opposite in fact, I’d have thought — being Irish. You should ask yourself again — why work for Usher, why consider him and not us? What are you having next? There’s a set lunch or would you like to have something from the à la carte? There’s not a great deal, I’m afraid. Perhaps a salad and a steak. And some of Gianaclis’s Red? The Omar Khayyam. That’s rather good too.”
He rang a bell for the waiter who didn’t recommend the steak. We had Kebab Semiramis instead: the pieces of lamb and red pepper cold, on a skewer, in a marinade of oil and lemon; and Gianaclis’s Red.
“Personally I’ve always thought it madness to go round threatening people — prison sentences, shootings and so on — unless you have to. Think about it, be rational. What we’d want from you would be no more than Mr. Usher wants of you. And if you can in any way justify his needs in the matter above ours I’d be pleased to hear how you do it.”
“I can’t. I don’t see any justification for either point of view. And that’s the trouble surely — to do this sort of work properly you have to believe in it. And I don’t. I prefer looking out over the river, being here, in the world, drinking the wine. I’ve never taken to those hard-bitten frontiers of right and wrong — in nationalisms or private affairs; a sort of tabula rasa of belief, I’m afraid. I came too late to see countries in a pecking order, one above the other, one against the other, too late to see people as toy soldiers. I never played that game.”
I looked at the Colonel’s striped cravat, like a regimental tie, and thought: he has. And he’s tired of it in some way; the slacks and the chatter about wine; toy soldiers and some army’s colours; they suited him once, they were part of an obsession — but not any more.
I felt that I had talked to him in the way I had because some great disenchantment in his character had allowed it, encouraged it even; because he secretly agreed with me. There was none of Crowther’s cunning or Usher’s flamboyant theatricality in the Colonel. And I felt suddenly that Egypt might well be my home, as Bridget was my wife, and that between the two of them perhaps, if anywhere, lay the kernel of the only sort of belief I was capable of. I was beginning to like Colonel Hamdy.
“Yes, perhaps you’re right,” he said. “Toy soldiers. A younger generation, fed up with the mess; the kind of world we’ve left you with. I can see all that. You’re quite right to want no part of it, to get away from something that we’re trapped in. But you see — I can’t escape it — ”
“—Then what are we worrying about? You agree with me. I’m not your man.”
“I said I could see your point of view, Mr. Marlow; not that I could agree with it. That’s always the tragedy, isn’t it? Seeing but not believing, not being able to. You see, as far as we’re concerned in Egyptian security you are one of Usher’s people. There’s no going back on that. I may believe otherwise, in fact I do, but the others never will. And that being so the rest follows. What I said earlier.”
“That I work for both of you?”
“One without the other wouldn’t be much use to us.”
“And if not?”
“I’d prefer not to go over it all again. Believe me, I really don’t choose to use threats. I’d hoped to appeal to your logic, to suggest to you where your real interests might lie — and I still do: I want you to see the thing in reason. And I think you will. But the real point I was going to make before you interrupted was that you’re trapped, just as much as I am. With the toy soldiers. You’re completely compromised. And that wasn’t us, remember. That was Usher, Crowther, your friend Edwards. Your wife even. You were compromised by your friends, Mr. Marlow; you became part of their circle. They had no alternative but to include you in their real affairs. Nor have I.”
12
We met that afternoon at Groppi’s and had lemon ices on the terrace. It was July and the heat had become unbearable.
“Did you have lunch?”
“A sandwich.”
“Well, tell me all about it. What did they say to you?”
“Nothing much. Routine. They don’t have anything on us.”
I was lying to her, at last. I knew something which she didn’t. But I felt no sense of responsibility, of doing the right thing, the only thing; for her good and Henry’s. The Colonel’s secrets ran about in my mind, oppressive, inescapable, like the weather — an almost physical presence, I thought, which anyone could have recognized if they’d looked at me, like a tic or a bad haircut.
Bridget sat there easily on the little garden stool, the line of her body arched over the table, elbows on her knees, hands clasped around her face; there was an air of comfort and trust about her. She was like a tired child looking into the fire waiting for a story.
I thought: I could tell her now. Tell her all about the Coloneclass="underline" get it over with. Aren’t we more important than their games? Even than her parents, even Henry … Couldn’t we accept the consequences, ride it out together?