The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [314]
‘Is the new chef any good? You might send him to me later in my office. I know a favourite dish of the Gilliatts’.’
Donkin nodded and scribbled a note before continuing in his toneless voice: ‘At six there is a cocktail party for Sir John at Haida’s. You have accepted to dine at the Italian Embassy — a dinner in honour of Signor Maribor. It will be a tight fit.’
‘I shall change before’ said Mountolive thoughtfully.
‘There are also one or two notes here in your hand which I couldn’t quite decipher, sir. One mentions the Scent Bazaar, Persian Lilac’
‘Good, yes. I promised to take Lady Gilliatt. Arrange transport for the visit please, and let them know I am coming. After lunch —
say, three-thirty.’
‘Then there is a note saying “Luncheon gifts”.’
‘Aha, yes’ said Mountolive, ‘I am becoming quite an oriental. You see, Sir John may be most useful to us in London, at the Office, so I thought I would make his visit as memorable as possible, knowing his interests. Will you be good enough to go down to Karda in Suleiman Pasha and shop me a couple of those little copies of the Tel Al Aktar figurines, the coloured ones? I’d be most grateful. They are pretty toys. And see that they are
wrapped with a card to put beside their plates? Thank you very much.’
Once more alone he sipped his tea and committed himself mentally to the crowded day which he saw stretching before him, rich in the promise of distractions which would leave no room for the more troubling self-questionings. He bathed and dressed slowly, deliberately, concentrating his mind on a choice of clothes suitable for his mid-morning official call, tying his tie carefully in the mirror. ‘I shall soon have to change my life radically’ he thought ‘or it will become completely empty. How best should that be done?’ Somewhere in the link of cause and effect he detected a hollow space which crystallized in his mind about the word
‘companionship’. He repeated it aloud to himself in the mirror. Yes, there was where a lack lay. ‘I shall have to get myself a dog’
he thought, somewhat pathetically ‘to keep me company. It will be something to look after. I can take it for walks by the Nile.’
Then a sense of absurdity beset him and he smiled. Nevertheless, in the course of his customary tour of the Embassy offices that morning, he stuck his head into the Chancery and asked Errol very seriously what sort of dog would make a good house pet. They had a long and pleasurable discussion of the various breeds and decided that some sort of fox-terrier might be the most suitable pet for a bachelor. A fox-terrier! He repeated the words as he crossed the landing to visit the Service attachés, smiling at his own asininity. ‘What next!’
His secretary had neatly stacked his papers in their trays and placed the red despatch cases against the wall; the single bar of the electric fire kept the office at a tepid norm suitable for the routine work of the day. He settled to his telegrams with an exaggerated attention, and to the draft replies which had already been dictated by his team of juniors. He found himself chopping and changing phrases, inverting sentences here and there, adding marginalia; this was something new, for he had never had ex-cessive zeal in the matter of official English and indeed dreaded the portentous circumlocutions which his own drafts had been forced to harbour when he himself had been a junior, under a Minister who fancied himself as a stylist — are there any ex-ceptions in the Foreign Service? No. He had always been un-demanding in this way, but now the forcible concentration with
which he lived and worked had begun to bear fruit in a series of meddlesome pedantries which had begun mildly to irritate the diligent Errol and his staff. Though he knew this, nevertheless Mountolive persisted unshrinkingly; he criticized, quizzed and amended work which he knew to be well enough done already, working with the aid of the Unabridged Oxford Dictionary and a Skeat