The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [242]
Then he suddenly sat up and said ‘My Goodness!’ He had caught sight of a familiar face in a far corner of the cellar: that of Nessim. He was seated at a table among a group of elderly men in evening-dress, smoking a lean cheroot and nodding from time to time. They were taking scant notice of the cabaret. A magnum of champagne stood upon the table. It was too far to depend upon signals and Mountolive sent over a card, waiting until he saw Nessim follow the waiter’s po int ing finger before he smiled and raised a hand. They both stood up, and Nessim at once came over to his table with his warm shy smile to utter the conventional exclamations of surprise and delight. He was, he said, in Berlin on a two-day business visit. ‘Trying to market tungsten’ he added quietly. He was flying back to Egypt at dawn next morning. Mountolive introduced him to his own host and persuaded him to spend a few moments at their table. ‘It is such a rare pleasure —
and now.’ But Nessim had already heard the rumour of his impending appointment. ‘I know it isn’t confirmed yet,’ he said,
‘but it leaked just the same — needless to say via Pursewarden. You can imagine our delight after so long.’
They talked on for a while, Nessim smiling as he answered Mountolive’s questions. Only Leila was at first not mentioned. After a while Nessim’s face took on a curious expression — a sort of chaste cunning, and he said with hesitation : ‘Leila will be so delighted.’ He gave him a swift upward glance from under his long lashes and then looked hastily away. He stubbed out his cheroot and gave Mountolive another equivocal glance. He stood up and glanced anxiously back in the direction of his party at the far table. ‘I must go’ he said.
They discussed plans for a possible meeting in England before Mountolive should fly Out to his new appointment. Nessim was vague, unsure of his movements. They would have to wait upon the event. But now Mountolive’s host had returned from the cloak-room, a fact which effectively prevented any further private exchanges. They said good-bye with good grace and Nessim walked slowly back to his table.
‘Is your friend in armaments?’ asked the Chargé d’Affaires as they were leaving. Mountolive shook his head. ‘He’s a banker. Unless tungsten plays a part in armaments — I don’t really know.’
‘It isn’t important. Just idle curiosity. You see, the people at his table are all from Krupps, and so I wondered. That was all.’
* * * * *
IV
o London he always returned with the tremulous eagerness of a lover who has been separated a long time from his T mistress; he returned, so to speak, upon a note of inter-rogation. Had life altered? Had anything been changed? Perhaps the nation had, after all, woken up and begun to live? The thin black drizzle over Trafalgar Square, the soot-encrusted cornices of Whitehall, the slur of rubber tyres spinning upon macadam, the haunting conspiratorial voice of river traffic behind the veils of mist — they were both a reassurance and a threat. He loved it inarticulately, the melancholy of it, though he knew in his heart he could no longer live here permanently, for his profession had
made an expatriate of him. He walked in the soft clinging rain towards Downing Street, muffled in his heavy overcoat, comparing himself from time to time, not without a certain complacence, to the histrionic Grand Duke who smiled at him from the occasional hoardings advertising De Reszke cigarettes.
He smiled to himself as he remembered some of Pursewarden’s acid strictures on their native capital, repeating them in his own mind with pleasure, as compliments almost. Pursewarden trans-ferring his sister