I found myself talking to the smart-suited clergyman when I came out again into the Salamlek. He was among a group of people, which included the red-headed American priest, being lectured to by Herbert in his best hectoring, low-church manner: he had chosen the Problems and Principles of Ecumenicism as his theme. His argument seemed to be that his church, the Church of Ireland, that is — and I remembered the arrogant granite parish building in Greystones — should be the ideal to aim for in the present attempts at a united Christian congregation, that its lack of mystery, its plain speaking, its dowdiness even, represented the proper Christian ambition in these confused times. Cherry had his tongue in his cheek, but they weren’t the sort of people to notice that. Just the opposite: the two divines were part of an ecumenical study group visiting Egypt and the Middle East, set up by some excessively wealthy American foundation to consider just such fool-headed opinions as Herbert’s. Thus they paid him careful and completely unmerited attention.
“I wasn’t aware there were so many differences between the Anglican and Irish communions,” Mr. Rostock said to me, smiling. He was the incumbent of a new town near Aylesbury.
“I think you’d be surprised. We manage to make our version of the faith very dull in Ireland — practically invisible. You’re not hoping to rope the prophet Mohammed into your united congregation, are you?”
“No, indeed. Not in any strict sense of a shared communion. Though we naturally hope for greater bonds between all faiths — as a result of our deliberations. Our visit here is part of a general look at the Anglican communion in the Middle East. The diocese here, of course, is administered by the Archbishop in Jerusalem.”
“Of course, though you’ve not actually come from there, have you?”
“Well, no, as a matter of fact. There are one or two temporary difficulties in the way of direct travel about the diocese at the moment. We came via Cyprus actually. I’m staying with the Provost’s deputy at All Saints’ here. Mr. Hawthorn. Do you happen to know him?”
“Not the present occupant, I think. I knew his predecessor. He gave the prizes away one year at a school I was at in Cairo. He had a loud voice — most of them do, I suppose?”
“You ought to look him up then, the Cathedral on the corniche. He’d be pleased to see you. They’re doing a lot of interesting work; here in the UAR, in Libya and the Sudan. In fact Hawthorn’s making a trip this week to Alexandria and then on to the sub-diocese in Benghazi and the one in Tobruk. They’re extending the parsonage there. A tour of the parish, you might say. It could make quite a nice story for your paper.”
“How does Mr. Hawthorn travel on these pastoral missions?’
“Oh, my goodness me, I know all about that. I’ve been hearing about it non-stop for days: the immense efforts over the past five years with the parishioners here. Raffles, bingo, jumble sales, amateur dramatics — even the lenten collections: they’ve got themselves a long wheel-based Land Rover. Can you imagine? Punitive import taxes, but they managed it in the end. A real go-getter, that’s all I can say, Mr. Hawthorn. A very smart affair. He’s anxious for a long spin in it.”
“Well, I must look him up, if I have the time. He certainly sounds a forward looking man.”
“‘Six forward and two reverse’—as he says of his progress in the parish here. Talking about the gears of course.”
The Rev. Mr. Rostock chuckled, but not convincingly, vaguely aware of the banality of the joke. He was young really, hardly out of his thirties. Only a comprehensive and premature baldness gave him an irredeemably older, careworn look, as if his hair alone had succumbed to the unhopeful routines of a home counties presbytery — visiting the antiseptic, Scandinavian bungalows on the new estates and counting ten times the plate money at Christmas and Easter — while the rest of his body yearned for gospel safaris in the Libyan desert.
The idea struck me then and there, of course. There was a British air base at Tobruk, a direct RAF Transport Command flight back to Brize Norton. But Usher had said to keep my ticket and go to the airport. That would be tomorrow.
I saw Usher put his arm round Pearson and manoeuvre him towards the little cell at the end of the room, and then Leila Tewfik bumped into me.
Tomorrow, I thought, and that will be the last of it; not any more of it — ever. Not here. For she looked at me with a quite unexpected warmth. There would be an end of that, the chances of women in foreign places, and it might be no bad thing: I had gone through that routine once before in these parts. Yet how easily I could have taken up with Leila at that moment, not for any sort of consolation, just the opposite: we would fall to it with all the skill of trained adventurers, believing that having emerged from the vengeance and disappointment of one affair we were now qualified to avoid those pitfalls in a second. Leila put one in mind of a really professional, joyous few weeks. I don’t suppose it was a realistic notion; such thoughts at Cairo parties rarely are — and it was this potential of the city that I was going to miss: its electric vacancy which begins by making every plan possible and ends by making them all unnecessary; the airs of a place whose citizens have long ago come to genuine terms with their ambitions.
“Well,” she said, “did you get plenty of work done this morning?”
“Thank you. I’d meant to say so before but I’ve not stopped running. I gave the keys back to Ahmed.”
“How long are you staying here?” She crooked her glass in an elbow, took off her glasses and wiped them.
“What are you thinking? A trip to Helwan on a boat together? I’ve never done that.”
She put her glasses back on and blinked at me for a moment, focusing, her eyes narrowing a fraction into the smallest of smiles, nose dipping in an even smaller nod.
“Trouble is I’m supposed to be going back tomorrow. If all goes well.’
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I’ll come and do some more work on the roof if I may. Where do the boats go from these days?”
“Below Shephearďs, by Garden City. Why don’t you come? Tomorrow morning. Morsy might come. And he might not. I could find out.”
The little conspiracy was perfectly presented.
“Can I let you know?” A suffragi had tapped my arm; Usher wanted me to come to his cell.
“Please. Will you let me know?”
“I’ll be back.”
Yes, we could have begun there and then; trips to Helwan and the Viceregal kiosk by the pyramids, cocktails on the Semiramis terrace, and cold hangover beers in the stuffy back bar of the Cosmopolitan: we could have pushed off straight away into the infinitely shoddy glamour of the city which would so soon become precious for us. But again, I was bitten by tomorrow: a half view of St. Paul’s lurking behind the vile new concrete, from a matchbox office where one would hardly remember the crumbling architecture of this changeless valley.
I saw that Cherry had been given the same message from Usher and was following me through the crush of people. The festivities were at their height.
Usher was standing at the door and when we were both inside the small room, he closed it carefully and locked it. Pearson was lying stretched out full length on the Moroccan counterpane, legs apart, arms wide in a position of suggestive abandon. His shoes were on the floor and his tie loose. For a moment I thought he was awake and waiting for something untoward, and that Cherry and I had been invited to participate or witness it. And then I remembered Usher’s phrase, that he “had something” for Pearson. He had obviously received it.