A small, thin man — narrowed out to the point of emaciation — weaved his way like a dancer through the tables, tiny feet skipping across the terrace, out into the last of the sunlight, and over one corner of the pool, in a frienzied quickstep; a fox face, a double-breasted linen suit and thin jet-black hair combed straight back with a central parting completed the picture of a’ thirties dance band leader running from the management with the evening’s takings. He seemed excessively worried as well as pressed. But closer to, the deeply lined face and springy movements suggested that his nervous motion was habitual, not temporary. He waved round the table and there were the barest introductions before he squeezed himself into a seat next to Olive. I turned away and engaged Mr. Khoury in a concentrated talk about Egyptian folk drama. I wanted to hear what Michael Pearson was possibly in more of a hurry than usual about.
“… and what about these rural folk-art centres, the one in the Fayoum you mentioned? Are they really inspired by anything local, or just something got up by the government? …”
“Certainly they are real, Mr. Marlow: this is the true folk drama, centuries, millennia old …”
“… Hamdy … Army Intelligence …” I barely caught the words from across the table.
“… a drama based on centuries of oppression …”
“… can’t file anything. But we’ll see …”
“… ‘Words are the only weapons of the poor.’ You remember your Sean O’Casey …” Mr. Khoury boomed, spreading his arms upwards in a half circle. “A genuine peasant drama, Mr. Marlow. These people aren’t worrying about your angst like your John Osbornes or your Louis MacNeices — they are trapped — ”, another boom and shake of the arms, “—in a prodigious drama of real events, Mr. Marlow. That’s what it is, I assure you. And now under the revolution we are uncovering for the first time …”
I said, “Of course if the revolution is making things much better for everyone, if it’s lifted the oppression — as it has — the peasants won’t have much to dramatize, will they? The raison d’être for their fine words will have disappeared rather. When the saviour actually comes he puts an end to the drama, no?”
“Certainly not. You are being subtle, Mr. Marlow. I will take you to the cultural centre at Zagazig and you will see for yourself. Let me get you some more lemonade. I know the drink — at Oxford once, we were visiting with some chaps and we had it there by the river. You call it ‘Shandy Guff’, don’t you? ‘Give me Shandy Guff,’ I remember the fellows saying.”
Shandy Guff and Colonel Hassan Hamdy … a new strip cartoon for Rose el Yussef … The gaps in the talk between Olive and Pearson had been easy enough to filclass="underline" Colonel Hamdy and Egyptian Army Intelligence. And Mr. Pearson had been in a hurry about him. I noticed now that Whelan had turned round and was talking to them, Cherry having moved back to our side of the table.
Something was afoot about the Colonel, Yunis was under wraps and a journalist had been with him at the time of his arrest. Possibly Edwards, Olive thought. They were building something; the various people being connected in some way — or were they simply being connected by the International Press Agency? Colonel Hamdy and Yunis — I could see a connection there. But Edwards? They weren’t going to tell me — unless they came to believe that I held an essential clue to the whole affair.
I turned to Mr. Khoury again and said in a voice slightly sharper than usuaclass="underline" “Did you ever hear of a good writer, a friend of mine, Henry Edwards? He was fond of the folk drama. Very interested.”
“Edwards? I don’t think so. No,” Khoury said reluctantly. “But we will meet, certainly we will. You will introduce me.”
Pearson had looked up, I saw him out of the corner of my eye, his flat shiny hair reflecting the light for a second — the street lamp affair which had gone on above our table.
He turned away again at once but he’d seen the bait and I knew he’d come for it again. Henry counted for something, I realized now, in the rumours he was collecting — was one of the missing pieces in the puzzle which involved Yunis and Colonel Hamdy. And they weren’t looking for this man who’d been with Yunis, this possible Henry, because he was a journalist, but because he was a possible defector. If it had been Henry at the airport with Yunis, then Pearson’s interest in him was because he smelt a Blake or a Philby in the whole affair.
Journalists believed that our service, and particularly my own Middle East section, formed an inexhaustible source of sensational copy. They had good reasons for that belief. Like hunters at a rat hole they waited for the next exit — the man who came running from the grimy depths into the light and across the guns for a second, only to disappear down another bolt-hole on the far side of the common. They were rarely caught on this blind run through the dazzle, but they were seen, or thought to be seen, and the presses rolled with half-facts and rumour. And Pearson was a real “no smoke without fire” man. On some sort of tip-off he was getting his team together outside the warren, organizing the long vigil, and no doubt Whelan would have the exclusive North American rights. Was the rumour genuine, then, that Edwards was on the run, defecting? I’d not believed anything of the sort in London. But it struck me that Pearson wouldn’t have been so excited over anything less.
Cherry was squabbling again — with Mr. Khoury this time, wagging his finger at him about an article on Palestine in the last edition of Arab Focus. I took another dash of beer. The Palestine Problem: I’d gone through the Arab press about that for ten years in London — how did Cherry have the enthusiasm for it? It was his expatriate version of the Irish Question, I suppose.
In all this talk what I wanted was a hard fact or two: was Henry in Cairo — and if so, why? Had he defected, or just been caught by the Egyptians? That was the equation.
I got up to go to the pissoir next to the showers on the other side of the pool. There was a row of small frosted glass windows, half open, above the immense porcelain urinals, and I could see part of the driveway that ran round the front of the Club, down past the cricket pitch and out of the back entrance into Zamalek.
A woman had walked past, in a crowd of strollers, with her back to me now, carrying a string shopping bag: tall, in a light cardigan and headscarf, a thin body, coming out suddenly at the hips and in again, down to long narrowing legs; not typical of Cairo at all. Looking at her moving away from the Club I tried to put a face to the body. I imagined myself on the far side, up the drive, walking towards her. That way of walking, the confident brisk step, the flat backside: what would I see if I were looking at that figure the other way about?
And the face I saw when I reversed the image was Bridget’s.
By the time I’d run round back on to the terrace, out through the main entrance and on to the driveway she had disappeared. I raced along the grass verge but the road was crowded with people, cars pushing through them, their lights blinding me as I dodged in and out of the traffic. I tried to get ahead of the strollers so that I could look back along the headlights at their faces. But when I did there was no one I recognized in the long pencils of light. Nothing. If not her, I thought, then who?
When I came back up the Club steps again Olive Moustafa was in the hallway. She seemed to have just come out of the ladies’ room, but I had the impression she’d been looking for me.
“There you are. We thought you’d gone. We’re going to play some croquet. Do you play? Morsy has the court for seven o’clock and he’s suggested dinner with him afterwards.”