The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [418]
compounded equally of social admiration for his rank and deep respect for his character and judgement. Out of curiosity I tried to see Maskelyne through my colleague’s eyes but failed to discern more than a rather bleak and well-bred soldier of narrow capacities
and a clipped world-weary public school accent. Yet … ‘The Brig is a real cast-iron gentleman’ Telford would say with an emotion so great that it almost brought tears to his eyes. ‘He’s as straight as string, is the old Brig. Never stoop to do anything beneath him.’ It was perhaps true, yet it did not make our Chief less unremarkable in my eyes.
Telford had several little menial duties which he himself had elected to perform for his hero — for example, to buy the week-old Daily Telegraph and place it on the great man’s desk each morning. He adopted a curious finicky walk as he crossed the polished floor of Maskelyne’s empty office (for we arrived early at work): almost as if he were afraid of leaving footprints behind him. He positive ly stole across to the desk. And the tenderness with which he folded the paper and ran his fingers down the creases before laying it reverently on the green blotter reminded me of a woman handling a husband’s newly starched and ironed shirt.
Nor was the Brigadier himself unwilling to accept the burden of this guileless admiration. I imagine few men could resist it. At first I was puzzled by the fact that once or twice a week he would visit us, clearly with no special matter in mind, and would take a slow turn up and down between our desks, occasionally uttering an informal monochrome pleasantry — ind icating the recipient of it by pointing the stem of his pipe at him lightly, almost shyly. Yet throughout these visitations his swarthy grey-hound’s face, with its small crowsfeet under the eyes, never altered its expression, his voice never lost its stud ied inflections. At first, as I say, these appearances somewhat puzzled me, for Maskelyne was anything but a convivial soul and could seldom talk of anything but the work in hand. Then one day I detected, in the slow elabor-ate figure he traced between our desks, the traces of an uncon-scious coquetry — I was reminded of the way a peacock spreads its great studded fan of eyes before the female, or of the way a mannequin wheels in an arabesque designed to show off the clothes she is wearing. Maskelyne had in fact simply come to be admired, to spread out the riches of his character and breeding before Telford. Was it possible that this easy conquest provided him with some inner assurance he lacked? It would be hard to say. Yet he was inwardly basking in his colleague’s wide-eyed admiration
I am sure it was quite unconscious — this gesture of a lonely man towards the only whole-hearted admirer he had as yet won from the world. From his own side, however, he could only reciprocate with the condescension bred by his education. Secretly he held Telford in contempt for not being a gentleman. ‘Poor Telford’ he would be heard to sigh when out of the other’s hearing. ‘Poor Telford.’ The commiserating fall of the voice suggested pity for someone who was worthy but hopelessly uninspired. —
These, then, were my office familiars during the whole of that first wearing summer, and their companionship offered me no problem. The work left me easy and untroubled in mind. My ranking was a humble one and carried with it no social obligations whatsoever. For the rest we did not frequent each other outside the office. Telford lived somewhere near Rushdi in a small suburban villa, outside the centre of the town, while Maskelyne seldom appeared to stir from the gaunt bedroom on the top floor of the Cecil. Once free from the office, therefore, I felt able to throw it off completely and once more resume the life of the town, or what was left of it.