“Never mind. I’ve burnt all the papers. Never kept many papers anyway. We might as well all go together then. Rather fortuitous even.”
“Go where?” Herbert asked bluntly, shades of anger and despair gathering in his voice. The M.P.s had left their lorries and were ringing the plaza, blocking off the south end of the lane, their backs towards us. “I’ll really have to be getting back to my wife,” Herbert continued. “I’ve been out long enough already.”
Cherry and Usher had commitments in Egypt, I realised again, ties of pleasure and misfortune, and I suppose it must simply have been Usher’s dedication to form which made him run that night: a sense of keeping his end up. Or he may just have felt it was too good a chance to miss, a last excessive raspberry in the face of authority.
“Come on then, Herbert. I’ll drop you home.”
The chatter above us had suddenly died. There was a sound of glass breaking.
“I wonder who that was,” Usher said with real indignation. “That’s the second tonight of those goblets. Shan’t bring them out again.” He got back behind the wheel. “Give us a push.”
The huge car glided out of the garage like a boat, a noiseless blue craft indistinguishable as velvet in the darkness, the Union Jack moving in a steady circling arc at the distant end of the bonnet like a gunsight on the bows. Usher locked the wheel to the right with vigorous pumping movements, one hand flashing over the other, thwacking on the wood as it spun, his jowls shuddering, white hair bouncing in strands over one ear. With a yachting cap he would have been Sir Thomas Lipton caught in a squall.
Cherry and I crouched in the leather cathedral of the huge interior, Pearson propped up in the seat behind us. But as we moved away down the lane with nothing following us we got up off the floor, pulled the jump seats out, and sat down.
Usher still hadn’t fired the engine and I couldn’t make out whether he was trying to or not. We had long since left the lane, turned into Bab el Wazir and from there into the narrow streets which skirted the Mousky bazaar, going downhill, heading northeast, roughly in the direction of Opera Square. Market stalls lay within a foot of either side of us now, pressure lamps flaring above each of them in a snake-like dazzle that went all down the street, and a huge crush of people moving in between them, buying their evening meal. We had arrived in the middle of that interminable Egyptian supper time, in which whole streets of the city become dining rooms, and the going was difficult.
Usher fired the engine now, a delicious warbling, throaty roar, which was drowned only by the klaxon on the vehicle which he started to exercise violently. Whole families sprang from their food, running for the gutter in a clatter of tin dishes, galibeahs pulled about them, jumping for their lives. Our progress could not have been more noticeable or better judged to support Usher’s theories on the art of inconspicuousness.
And strangely enough few people seemed to pay us any real attention; no one shook fists after us in the rear mirror or threw marbles under the wheels. True, we were passing down one of the oldest parts of the mediaeval city, between the Blue Mosque and the Bazaar, whose populace, since the days of the Fatamids, had long been inured to foreign arrogance in a variety of the most eccentric forms. Not half a mile away the insomniac Caliph Khumaraweh had had himself rocked to sleep on an air mattress on a lake of mercury, a sybaritic transport not far removed from our own extravagant progress in the Rolls. For some of the older bystanders our headlong career may have seemed no more than happy evidence that the British had at last returned to Egypt and they could look forward to sharpening their wits and financial idioms again.
And we would have made any destination we chose in the city that night, I think, if an elderly, courteous policeman at the entrance to Opera Square had not spotted the car and its proud enamel colours on the radiator, and thought almost exactly this: not that the British had returned in any permanent form, but that they had come back temporarily and were on their way to a little reunion downtown, which he, among many of his colleagues, was helping to effect smoothly.
The man stepped gallantly up on the wide running board while we were at the lights at the top of Adly Street, saluted Usher with one white-gloved hand, while holding on to the side of the car with the other. The white gloves gave me the clue. Cairo police wore them on only the most auspicious occasions. But I couldn’t get any further. It seemed simply that we were being arrested with more than the usual Egyptian courtesy.
Then the blossomy round old face shouted at Usher above the din of traffic, “Montgunnery, sir! You wanting Montgunnery party. Follow me!” The man tightened his grip on the car, urged Usher forward, while at the same time lashing out at some luckless pedestrians with one foot. I would have run for it there and then if Usher hadn’t driven off smartly, breaking the lights, while thanking the old fellow profusely in Arabic.
Other traffic police waved the car on now in a gale of whistles, and we were passed through a barrier at the end of Adly Street and into Soliman Pasha which had been cleared of all traffic. The crowds were fairly thick on either pavement, held back by police every few yards, and further down by Lappa’s and Groppi’s they were six-deep, quiet, full of interest, devouring ice cornets.
Cherry and I sat rigid in the jump seats; prominent, upright men — detectives I supposed they’d think us — accompanying some Ambassador who had unaccountably dozed off in the back of the car. I straightened my tie and wondered if we should wave to the crowds in lieu of our master. Cherry drummed his fingers on the upholstered floor, his arms hanging down across his body in the minute seats, like an ape about to spring.
“What does Usher think he’s up to? We’ll never make it. Not a hope.”
“I should think that was exactly what we were going to do,” I replied.
The moon face was wild and sweating now, as he shook his head from side to side in desperation. He had at least managed a suit in place of his usual crumpled flannels and stained linen coat. Usher, of course, was resplendent, while my linen tropicals were still in fair order. From the sartorial point of view it struck me we would make it all too well. Conversation, on the other hand, might be more difficult.
“What was your war like, Herbert? A good armoured regiment, I hope. Monty has a horror of backsliders. And he’s northern Irish, isn’t he? Not southern.”
And there was Mr. Pearson of the International Press Agency dreaming of a Stop Press behind us. I wondered what Monty would make of him? He might take it that, on this occasion, the press had gone a little too far.
We swung round Soliman Pasha quickly and on down towards the river. There was a queue of limousines in front of us, turning off to the right at Bustani Street, light blazing from the covered terraces of the Mohammed Ali Club on the corner. Usher had stumbled on a suitable place for our Valhalla; the Club had been previously only less select than the Khedival Club; now it was where the Egyptian Foreign Ministry held their most dignified receptions.
We turned — there was no alternative now, the rest of Soliman Pasha was barred against us — and drew up outside the huge doorway with its two glittering brass street lanterns illuminating the red-carpeted space between us and the marble steps. A young army officer in full dress uniform approached and opened the back door. There was absolutely nothing for us to do but get out, leaving Pearson where he was, propped up in the corner of the seat, eyes closed, the foxy nervous face perfectly at peace, the not-too-popular ‘thirties bandleader coming into a show stopper, now a sweet melody that would fell them all at the Metro Ballroom, Huddersfield, next week.