The Alexandria Quartet

  Yet our eyes were drawn, as if by the lines-of-force of some great marine painting, to a tiny clutter of dinghies snubbing together in the lee of one of the battleships which hovered against the sky like a grey cathedral. Their sails flapped and tossed, idly as butterflies contending with the breeze. There was some obscure movements of oars and arms belonging to figures too small at this range to distinguish or recognize. Yet this tiny commotion had force to draw the eye — by who knows what interior premonition? And as the cab rolled silently along the rim of the inner harbour we saw it unroll before us like some majestic seascape by a great master. The variety and distinction of the small refugee craft from every corner of the Levant — their differing designs and rigs — gave it a brilliant sensuality and rhythm against the glittering water. Everything was breath-taking yet normal; tugs hooted, children cried, from the cafés came the rattle of the trictrac boards and the voices of birds. The normality of an entire world surrounded that tiny central panel with its flicking sails, the gestures we could not interpret, the faint voices. The little craft tilted, arms rose and fell.

  ‘Something has happened’ said Balthazar with his narrow dark eye upon the scene, and as if his phrase had affected the horse it suddenly drew to a halt. Besides ourselves on the dockside only one man had also seen; he too stood gazing with curious open-mouthed distraction, aware that something out of the ordinary was afoot. Yet everywhere people bustled, the chandlers cried. At his feet three children played in complete absorption, placing marbles in the tramlines, hoped to see them ground to powder when the next tram passed. A water-carrier clashed his brass mugs, crying: ‘Come, ye thirsty ones.’ And unobtrusively in the background, as if travelling on silk, a liner stole noiselessly down the green thoroughfare towards the open sea.

  ‘It’s Pombal’ cried Clea at last, in puzzled tones, and with a gesture of anxiety put her arm through mine. It was indeed Pombal. What had befallen them was this. They had been drifting about the harbour in his little dinghy with their customary idleness and inattention and had strayed too near to one of the French battleships, carried into its lee and off their course by an unexpected swoop of the wind. How ironically it had been planned by the invisible stage-masters who direct human actions, and with what speed! For the French ships, though captive, had still retained both their small-arms and a sense of shame, which made their behaviour touchy and unpredictable. The sentries they mounted had orders to fire a warning shot across the bows of any craft which came within a dozen metres of any battleship. It was, then, only in response to orders that a sentry put a bullet through Pombal’s sail as the little dinghy whirled down on its rogue course towards his ship. It was merely a warning, which intended no deliberate harm. And even now this might have … but no: it could not have fallen out otherwise. For my friend, overcome with rage and mortification, at being treated thus by these cowards and lackbones of his own blood and faith, turned purple with indignation, and abandoned his tiller altogether in order to stand precariously upright and shake his huge fists, screaming: ‘Salauds!’ and ‘Espèces de cons!’ and — what was perhaps the definitive epithet — ‘Lâches!’

  Did he hear the bullets himself? It is doubtful whether in all the confusion he did, for the craft tilted, gybed, and turned about on another course, toppling him over. It was while he was lying there, recovering the precious tiller, that he noticed Fosca in the very act of falling, but with infinite slowness. Afterwards he said that she did not know she had been hit. She must have felt, perhaps, simply a vague and unusual dispersion of her attention, the swift anaesthesia of shock which follows so swiftly upon the wound. She tilted like a high tower, and felt the sternsheets coming up slowly to press themselves to her cheek. There she lay with her eyes wide open, plump and soft as a wounded pheasant will lie, still bright of eye in spite of the blood running from its beak. He shouted her name, and felt only the immense silence of the word, for the little freshet had sharpened and was now rushing them landward. A new sort of confusion supervened, for other craft, attracted as flies are by wounds, began to cluster with cries of advice and commiseration. Meanwhile Fosca lay with vague and open eyes, smiling to herself in the other kind of dream.

  And it was now that Balthazar suddenly awoke from his trance, struggled out of the cab without a word and began his queer lurching, traipsing run across the dock to the little red field-ambulance telephone with its emergency line. I heard the small click of the receiver and the sound of his voice speaking, patient and collected. The summons was answered, too, with almost miraculous promptness, for the field-post with its ambulances was only about fifty yards away. I heard the sweet tinkle of the ambulance’s bell, and saw it racing along the cobbles towards us. And now all faces turned once more towards that little convoy of dinghies — faces on which was written only patient resignation or dread. Pombal was on his knees in the sheets with bent head. Behind him, deftly steering, was Ali the boatman who had been the first to comprehend and offer his help. All the other dinghies, flying along on the same course, stayed grouped around Pombal’s as if in active sympathy. I could read the name Manon which he had so proudly bestowed upon it, not six months ago. Everything seemed to have become bewildering, shaken into a new dimension which was swollen with doubts and fears.

  Balthazar stood on the quay in an agony of impatience, urging them in his mind to hurry. I heard his tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth teck tsch, clicking softly and reproachfully; a reproach, I wondered, directed against their slowness, or against life itself, its unpremeditated patterns?

  At last they were on us. One heard quite distinctly the sound of their breathing, and our own contribution, the snap of stretcher-thongs, the tinkle of polished steel, the small snap of heels studded with hobnails. It all mixed into a confusion of activity, the lowering and lifting, the grunts as dark hands found purchase on a rope to hold the dinghy steady, the sharp serrated edges of conflicting voices giving orders. ‘Stand by” and ‘Gently now’ all mixed with a distant foxtrot on a ship’s radio. A stretcher swinging like a cradle, like a basket of fruit upon the dark shoulders of an Arab. And steel doors opening on a white throat.

  Pombal wore an air of studied vagueness, his features all dispersed and quite livid in colour. He flopped on to the quay as if he had been dropped from a cloud, falling to his knees and recovering. He wandered vaguely after Balthazar and the stretcher-bearers bleating like a lost sheep. I suppose it must have been her blood splashed upon the expensive white espadrilles which he had bought a week before at Ghoshen’s Emporium. At such moments it is the small details which strike one like blows. He made a vague attempt to clamber into the white throat but was rudely ejected. The doors clanged in his face. Fosca belonged now to science and not to him. He waited with humbly bent head, like a man in church, until they should open once more and admit him. He seemed hardly to be breathing. I felt an involuntary desire to go to his side but Clea’s arm restrained me. We all waited in great patience and submissiveness like children, listening to the vague movements within the ambulance, the noise of boots. Then at long last the doors opened and the weary Balthazar climbed down and said: ‘Get in and come with us.’ Pombal gave one wild glance about him and turning his pain-racked countenance suddenly upon Clea and myself, delivered himself of a single gesture — spreading his arms in uncomprehending hopelessness before clapping a fat hand over each ear, as if to avoid hearing something. Balthazar’s voice suddenly cracked like parchment. ‘Get in’ he said roughly, angrily, as if he were speaking to a criminal; and as they climbed into the white interior I heard him add in a lower voice, ‘She is dying.’ A clang of iron doors closing, and I felt Clea’s hand turn icy in my own.

  So we sat, side by side and speechless on that magnificent spring afternoon which was already deepening into dusk. At last I lit a cigarette and walked a few yards along the quay among the chaffering Arabs who described the accident to each other in yelping tones. Ali was about to take the dinghy back to its moorings at the Yacht Club; all
he needed was a light for his cigarette. He came politely towards me and asked if he might light up from me. As he puffed I noticed that the flies had already found the little patch of blood on the dinghy’s floorboards. ‘I’ll clean it up’ said Ali, noticing the direction of my glance; with a lithe cat-like leap he jumped aboard and unloosed the sail. He turned to smile and wave. He wanted to say ‘A bad business’ but his English was inadequate. He shouted ‘Bad poison, sir.’ I nodded.

  Clea was still sitting in the gharry looking at her own hands. It was as if this sudden incident had somehow insulated us from one another.

  ‘Let’s go back’ I said at last, and directed the driver to turn back into the town we had so recently quitted.

  ‘Pray to goodness she will be all right’ said Clea at last. ‘It is too cruel.’

  ‘Balthazar said she was dying. I heard him.’

  ‘He may be wrong.’

  But he was not wrong, for both Fosca and the child were dead, though we did not get the news until later in the evening. We wandered listlessly about Clea’s rooms, unable to concentrate on anything. Finally she said: ‘You had better go back and spend the evening with him, don’t you think.’ I was uncertain. ‘He would rather remain alone I imagine.’

  ‘Go back’ she said, and added sharply, ‘I can’t bear you hanging about at a time like this.… Oh, darling, I’ve hurt you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Of course you haven’t, you fool. But I’ll go.’

  All the way down Rue Fuad I was thinking: such a small displacement of the pattern, a single human life, yet it had power to alter so much. Literally, such an eventuality had occurred to none of us. We simply could not stomach it, fit it into the picture which Pombal himself had built up with such care. It poisoned everything, this small stupid fact — even almost our affection for him, for it had turned to horror and sympathy! How inadequate as emotions they were, how powerless to be of use. My own instinct would have been to keep away altogether! I felt as if I never wanted to see him again — in order not to shame him. Bad poison, indeed. I repeated Ali’s phrase to myself over and over again.

  Pombal was already there when I got back, sitting in his gout-chair, apparently deep in thought. A full glass of neat whisky stood beside him which he did not seem to have touched. He had changed, however, into the familiar blue dressing-gown with the gold peacock pattern, and on his feet were his battered old Egyptian slippers like golden shovels. I went into the room quite quietly and sat down opposite him without a word. He did not appear to actually look at me, yet somehow I felt that he was conscious of my presence; yet his eye was vague and dreamy, fixed on the middle distance, and his fingers softly played a five-finger exercise on each other. And still looking at the window he said, in a squeaky little voice — as if the Words had power to move him although he did not quite know their meaning: ‘She’s dead, Darley. They are both dead.’ I felt a sensation of a leaden weight about my heart. ‘C’est pas juste’ he added absently and fell to pulling his side-beard with fat fingers. Quite unemotional, quite flat — like a man recovering from a severe stroke. Then he suddenly took a gulp of whisky and started up, choking and coughing. ‘It is neat’ he said in surprise and disgust, and put the glass down with a long shudder. Then, leaning forward he began to scribble, taking up a pencil and pad which were on the table — whorls and lozenges and dragons. Just like a child. ‘I must go to confession tomorrow for the first time for ages’ he said slowly, as if with infinite precaution. ‘I have told Hamid to wake me early. Will you mind if Cléa only comes?’ I shook my head, I understood that he meant to the funeral. He sighed with relief. ‘Bon’ he said, and standing up took the glass of whisky. At that moment the door opened and the distraught Pordre appeared. In a flash Pombal changed. He gave a long chain of deep sobs. The two men embraced muttering incoherent words and phrases, as if consoling each other for a disaster which was equally wounding to both. The old diplomat raised his white womanish fist in the air and said suddenly, fatuously: ‘I have already protested strongly.’ To whom, I wondered? To the invisible powers which decree that things shall fall out this way or that? The words sputtered out meaninglessly on the chill air of the drawing-room. Pombal was talking.

  ‘I must write and tell him everything’ he said. ‘Confess everything.’

  ‘Gaston’ said his Chief sharply, reprovingly, ‘you must not do any such thing. It would increase his misery in prison. C’est pas juste. Be advised by me: the whole matter must be forgotten.’

  ‘Forgotten!’ cried my friend as if he had been stung by a bee. ‘You do not understand. Forgotten! He must know for her sake.’

  ‘He must never know’ said the older man. ‘Never.’

  They stood for a long while holding hands, and gazing about them distractedly through their tears; and at this moment, as if to complete the picture, the door opened to admit the porcine outlines of Father Paul — who was never to be found far from the centre of any scandal. He paused inside the doorway with an air of unction, with his features registering a vast gluttonous self-satisfaction. ‘My poor boy’ he said, clearing his throat. He made a vague gesture of his paw as if scattering Holy Water over us all and sighed. He reminded me of some great hairless vulture. Then surprisingly he clattered out a few phrases of consolation in Latin.

  I left my friend among these elephantine comforters, relieved in a way that there was no place for me in all this incoherent parade of Latin commiserations. Simply pressing his hand once I slipped out of the flat and directed my thoughtful footsteps in the direction of Clea’s room.

  The funeral took place next day. Clea came back, looking pale and strained. She threw her hat across the room and shook out her hair with an impatient gesture — as if to expel the whole distasteful memory of the incident. Then she lay down exhaustedly on the sofa and put her arm over her eyes.

  ‘It was ghastly’ she said at last, ‘really ghastly, Darley. First of all it was a cremation. Pombal insisted on carrying out her wishes despite violent protests from Father Paul. What a beast that man is. He behaved as though her body had become Church property. Poor Pombal was furious. They had a terrible row settling the details I hear. And then … I had never visited the new Crematorium! It is unfinished. It stands in a bit of sandy waste-land littered with straw and old lemonade bottles, and flanked by a trash heap of old car-bodies. It looks in fact like a hastily improvised furnace in a concentration camp. Horrid little brick-lined beds with half-dead flowers sprouting from the sand. And a little railway with runners for the coffin. The ugliness! And the faces of all those consuls and acting consuls! Even Pombal seemed quite taken aback by the hideousness. And the heat! Father Paul was of course in the foreground of the picture, relishing his role. And then with an incongruous squeaking the coffin rolled away down the garden path and swerved into a steel hatch. We hung about, first on one leg then on the other; Father Paul showed some inclination to fill this awkward gap with impromptu prayers but at that moment a radio in a nearby house started playing Viennese waltzes. Attempts were made by various chauffeurs to locate and silence it, but in vain. Never have I felt unhappier than standing in this desolate chicken run in my best clothes. There was a dreadful charred smell from the furnace. I did not know then that Pombal intended to scatter the ashes in the desert, and that he had decided that I alone would accompany him on this journey. Nor, for that matter, did I know that Father Paul — who scented a chance of more prayers — had firmly made up his mind to do so as well. All that followed came as a surprise.

  ‘Well finally the casket was produced — and what a casket! That was a real poke in the eye for us. It was like a confectioner’s triumphant effort at something suitable for inexpensive chocolates. Father Paul tried to snatch it, but poor Pombal held on to it firmly as we trailed towards the car. I must say, here Pombal showed some backbone. “Not you” he said as the priest started to climb into the car. “I’m going alone with Clea.” He beckoned to me with his head.

  ‘“My son” said Father Paul
in a low grim voice, “I shall come too.”

  ‘“You won’t” said Pombal. “You’ve done your job.”

  ‘“My son, I am coming” said this obstinate wretch.

  ‘For a moment it seemed that all might end with an exchange of blows. Pombal shook his beard at the priest and glared at him with angry eyes. I climbed into the car, feeling extremely foolish. Then Pombal pushed Father Paul in the best French manner — hard in the chest — and climbed in, banging the door. A susurrus went up from the assembled consuls at this public slight to the cloth, but no word was uttered. The priest was white with rage and made a sort of involuntary gesture — as if he were going to shake his fist at Pombal, but thought better of it.

  ‘We were off; the chauffeur took the road to the eastern desert, acting apparently on previous instructions. Pombal sat quite still with this ghastly bonbonnère on his knees, breathing through his nose and with half-closed eyes. As if he were recovering his self-composure after all the trials of the morning. Then he put out his hand and took mine, and so we sat, silently watching the desert unroll on either side of the car. We went quite far out before he told the chauffeur to stop. He was breathing rather heavily. We got out and stood for a desultory moment at the roadside. Then he took a step or two into the sand and paused, looking back. “Now I shall do it” he said, and broke into his fat shambling run which carried him about twenty yards into the desert. I said hurriedly to the chauffeur, “Drive on for five minutes, and then come back for us.” The sound of the car starting did not make Pombal turn round. He had slumped down on his knees, like a child playing in a sand-pit; but he stayed quite still for a long time. I could hear him talking in a low confidential voice, though whether he was praying or reciting poetry I could not tell. It felt desperately forlorn on that empty desert road with the heat shimmering up from the tarmac.