‘Criticism!’ she echoed sharply, as if the word were an insult. And she smacked me full across the mouth — a stinging blow which brought tears to my eyes and cut the inside of my lip against my teeth. I retired to the bathroom to mop my mouth for I could feel the salty taste of the blood. It was interesting to see my teeth outlined in blood. I looked like an ogre who had just taken a mouthful of bleeding flesh from his victims. I washed my mouth, furiously enraged. She came in and sat down on the bidet, full of remorse. ‘Please forgive me’ she said. ‘I don’t know what sort of impulse came over me. Darley, please forgive’ she said.
‘One more performance like this’ I said grimly, ‘and I’ll give you a blow between those beautiful eyes which you’ll remember.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She put her arms round my shoulders from behind and kissed my neck. The blood had stopped. ‘What the devil is wrong?’ I said to her reflection in the mirror. ‘What has come over you these days? We’re drifting apart, Clea.’
‘I know.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ But her face had once more become hard and obstinate. She sat down on the bidet and stroked her chin thoughtfully, suddenly sunk in reflection once more. Then she lit a cigarette and walked back into her living-room. When I returned she was sitting silently before a painting gazing at it with an inattentive malevolent fixity.
‘I think we should separate for a while’ I said.
‘If you wish’ she rapped out mechanically.
‘Do you wish it?’
Suddenly she started crying and said ‘Oh, stop questioning me. If only you would stop asking me question after question. It’s like being in court these days.’
‘Very well’ I said.
This was only one of several such scenes. It seemed clear to me that to absent myself from the city was the only way to free her — to give her the time and space necessary to … what? I did not know. Later that winter I thought that she had begun running a small temperature in the evenings and incurred another furious scene by asking Balthazar to examine her. Yet despite her anger she submitted to the stethoscope with comparative quietness. Balthazar could find nothing physically wrong, except that her pulse rate was advanced and her blood pressure higher than normal. His prescription of stimulants she ignored, however. She had become much thinner at this time.
By patient lobbying I at last unearthed a small post for which I was not unsuitable and which somehow fitted into the general rhythm of things — for I did not envisage my separation from Clea as something final, something in the nature of a break. It was simply a planned withdrawal for a few months to make room for any longer-sighted resolutions which she might make. New factors were there, too, for with the ending of the war Europe was slowly becoming accessible once more — a new horizon opening beyond the battle-lines. One had almost stopped dreaming of it, the recondite shape of a Europe hammered flat by bombers, raked by famine and discontents. Nevertheless it was still there. So it was that when I came to tell her of my departure it was not with despondency or sorrow — but as a matter-of-fact decision which she must welcome for her own part. Only the manner in which she pronounced the word ‘Away’ with an indrawn breath suggested for a brief second that perhaps, after all, she might be afraid to be left alone. ‘You are going away, after all?’
‘For a few months. They are building a relay station on the island, and there is need for someone who knows the place and can speak the language.’
‘Back to the island?’ she said softly — and here I could not read the meaning of her voice or the design of her thought.
‘For a few short months only.’
‘Very well.’
She walked up and down the carpet with an air of perplexity, staring downwards at it, deep in thought. Suddenly she looked up at me with a soft expression that I recognized with a pang — the mixture of remorse and tenderness at inflicting unwitting sorrow upon others. It was the face of the old Clea. But I knew that it would not last, that once more the peculiar shadow of her discontent would cast itself over our relationship. There was no point in trusting myself once more to what could only prove a short respite. ‘Oh, Darley’ she said, ‘when do you go, my dear?’ taking my hands.
‘In a fortnight. Until then I propose not to see you at all. There is no point in our upsetting each other by these wrangles.’
‘As you wish.’
‘I’ll write to you.’
‘Yes of course.’
It was a strange listless way of parting after such a momentous relationship. A sort of ghostly anaesthesia had afflicted our emotions. There was a kind of deep ache inside me but it wasn’t sorrow. The dead handshake we exchanged only expressed a strange and truthful exhaustion of the spirit. She sat in a chair, quietly smoking and watching me as I gathered my possessions together and stuffed them into the old battered briefcase which I had borrowed from Telford and forgotten to return the summer before. The toothbrush was splayed. I threw it away. My pyjamas were torn at the shoulder but the bottom half, which I had never used, were still crisp and new. I assembled these objects with the air of a geologist sorting specimens of some remote age. A few books and papers. It all had a sort of unreality, but I cannot say that a single sharp regret was mixed with it.
‘How this war has aged and staled us’ she said suddenly, as if to herself. ‘In the old days one would have thought of going away in order, as we said, to get away from oneself. But to get away from it.…’
Now, writing the words down in all their tedious banality, I realize that she was really trying to say good-bye. The fatality of human wishes. For me the future lay open, uncommitted; and there was no part of it which I could then visualize as not containing, somehow, Clea. This parting was … well, it was only like changing the bandages until a wound should heal. Being unimaginative, I could not think definitively about a future which might make unexpected demands upon me; as something entirely new. It must be left to form itself upon the emptiness of the present. But for Clea the future had already closed, was already presenting a blank wall. The poor creature was afraid!
‘Well, that’s everything’ I said at last, shoving the briefcase under my arm. ‘If there’s anything you need, you have only to ring me, I’ll be at the flat.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m off then for a while. Good-bye.’
As I closed the door of the little flat I heard her call my name once — but this again was one of those deceptions, those little accesses of pity or tenderness which deceive one. It would have been absurd to pay any attention to it, to return on my tracks, and open a new cycle of disagreements. I went on down the stairs, determined to let the future have every chance to heal itself.
It was a brilliantly sunny spring day and the streets looked washed with colour. The feeling of having nowhere to go and nothing to do was both depressing and inspiriting. I returned to the flat and found on the mantelpiece a letter from Pombal in which he said that he was likely to be transferred to Italy shortly and did not think he would be able to keep the flat on. I was delighted as this enabled me to terminate the lease, my share of which I would soon not be able to afford.
It was at first somewhat strange, even perhaps a little numbing, to be left entirely to my own devices, but I rapidly became accustomed to it. Moreover there was quite a lot of work to be done in winding up my censorship duties and handing over the post to a successor while at the same time collecting practical information for the little unit of technicians which was to install the radio post. Between the two departments with their different needs I was kept busy enough. During these days I kept my word and saw nothing of Clea. The time passed in a sort of limbo pitched between the world of desire and of farewell — though there were no emotions in very clear definition for me: I was not conscious of regrets or longings.
So it was that when at last that fatal day presented itself, it did so under the smiling guise of a spring sunshine hot enough to encourage the flies to begin hatching out upo
n the window-panes. It was their buzzing which awoke me. Sunlight was pouring into the room. For a moment, dazzled by it, I hardly recognized the smiling figure seated at the foot of my bed, waiting for me to open my eyes. It was the Clea of some forgotten original version, so to speak, clad in a brilliant summer frock of a crisp vine-leaf pattern, white sandals, and with her hair arranged in a new style. She was smoking a cigarette whose smoke hung in brilliant ash-veined whorls in the sunlight above us, and her smiling face was completely relaxed and unshadowed by the least preoccupation. I stared, for she seemed so precisely and unequivocally the Clea I should always have remembered; the mischievous tenderness was back in the eyes. ‘Well’ I said in sleepy amazement. ‘What…?’ and I felt her warm breath on my cheek as she leaned down to embrace me.
‘Darley’ she said, ‘I suddenly realized that it’s tomorrow you are leaving; and that today is the Mulid of El Scob. I couldn’t resist the idea of spending the day together and visiting the shrine this evening. Oh, say you will! Look at the sunshine. It’s warm enough for a bathe, and we could take Balthazar.’
I was still not properly awake. I had completely forgotten the Name Day of the Pirate. ‘But it’s long past St George’s Day’ I said. ‘Surely that’s at the end of April.’
‘On. the contrary. Their absurd method of lunar calendar reckoning has turned him into a movable feast like all the others. He slides up and down the calendar now like a domestic saint. In fact it was Balthazar who telephoned yesterday and told me or I would have missed it myself.’ She paused to puff her cigarette. ‘We shouldn’t miss it, should we?’ she added a little wistfully.
‘But of course not! How good of you to come.’
‘And the island? Perhaps you could come with us?’
The time was just ten o’clock. I could easily telephone to Telford to make some excuse for absenting myself for the day. My heart leaped.
‘I’d love to’ I said. ‘How does the wind sit?’
‘Calm as a nun with easterly freshets. Ideal for the cutter I should say. Are you sure you want to come?’
She had a wicker-covered demijohn and a basket with her. ‘I’ll go on and provision us up; you dress and meet me at the Yacht Club in an hour.’
‘Yes.’ It would give me ample time to visit my office and examine the duty mail. ‘A splendid idea.’
And in truth it was, for the day was clear and ringing with a promise of summer heat for the afternoon. Clip-clopping down the Grande Corniche I studied the light haze on the horizon and the flat blue expanse of sea with delight. The city glittered in sunshine like a jewel. Brilliantly rode the little craft in the inner basin, parodied by their shining reflections. The minarets shone loudly. In the Arab quarter the heat had hatched out the familiar smells of offal and drying mud, of carnations and jasmine, of animal sweat and clover. In Tatwig Street dark gnomes on ladders with scarlet flower-pot hats were stretching strings of flags from the balconies. I felt the sun warm on my fingers. We rolled past the site of the ancient Pharos whose shattered fragments still choke the shallows. Toby Mannering, I remembered, had once wanted to start a curio trade by selling fragments of the Pharos as paperweights. Scobie was to break them up with a hammer for him and he was to deliver them to retailers all over the world. Why had the scheme foundered? I could not remember. Perhaps Scobie found the work too arduous? Or perhaps it had got telescoped with that other scheme for selling Jordan water to Copts at a competitive price? Somewhere a military band was banging away.
They were down on the slip waiting for me. Balthazar waved his stick cheerfully. He was dressed in white trousers and sandals and a coloured shirt, and sported an ancient yellowing Panama hat.
‘The first day of summer’ I called cheerfully.
‘You’re wrong’ he croaked. ‘Look at that haze. It’s altogether too hot. I’ve betted Clea a thousand piastres we have a thunderstorm by this afternoon.’
‘He’s always got something gloomy to say’ smiled Clea.
‘I know my Alexandria’ said Balthazar.
And so amidst these idle pleasantries we three set forth, Clea at the tiller of her little craft. There was hardly a breath of wind inside the harbour and she lagged somewhat, only gathering way by the momentum of the currents which curved down towards the harbour entrance. We stole past the battleships and liners, breasting the choppy main-channel hesitantly, the mainsail hardly drawing as yet, until at last we reached the huddle of grey forts which marked the main harbour entrance. Here there was always a bundle of choppy water piled up by the tide and we wallowed and yawed for a while until suddenly she heeled and threaded herself upon the wind and settled her bowsprit true. We began to hiss through the sea like a flying fish, as if she were going to impale a star. I lay in the sheets now, staring up at the gold sun shining through the sails, hearing the smattering of the wavelets on the elegant prow of the cutter. Balthazar was humming an air. Clea’s brown wrist lay upon the tiller with a deceptive soft negligence. The sails were stiff. These are the heart-lifting joys of small sailing-craft in ideal weather. A speechless delight held me, a mixture of luxuries born of the warm sun, the racing wind, and the light cool touches of spray which dashed our cheeks from time to time. We went far out on an easterly course in order to come about and tack inshore. By now we had performed this manoeuvre so often that it had become second nature to Clea: to ride down upon the little island of Narouz and to judge the exact moment at which to turn into the eye of the wind and hang, fluttering like an eyelash, until I had run the sail in and scrambled ashore to make fast.…
‘Smart work indeed’ said Balthazar approvingly as he stepped into the water; and then ‘By God! It is quite fantastically warm.’
‘What did I tell you?’ said Clea busy in the locker.
‘It only proves my point about a thunderstorm.’
And curiously enough, at this moment, there came a distinct rumble of thunder out of that cloudless sky. ‘There’ said Balthazar in triumph. ‘We will get a fine soaking and you will owe me some money, Clea.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘It was a shore battery’ I said.
‘Rubbish’ said Balthazar.
So we secured the cutter and carried our provisions ashore. Balthazar lay on his back with his hat over his nose in the best of humours. He would not bathe, pleading the indifference of his swimming, so Clea and I dived once more into the familiar pool which we had neglected all winter long. Nothing had changed. The sentinels were still there, grouped in silent debate, though the winter tides had altered their dispositions somewhat, grouping them a little nearer to the wreck. Ironically yet respectfully we greeted them, recognizing in these ancient gestures and underwater smiles a familiar happiness growing up in the sheer act of swimming once more together. It was as if the blood had started to flow again in veins long withered from disuse. I caught her by the heel and rolled her in a long somersault towards the dead mariners, and turning expertly she repaid the debt by coming up behind me to drag me down by the shoulders and climb surfacewards before I could retaliate. It was here, spiralling up through the water with her hair coiled out behind her, that the image of Clea was restored once more. Time had rendered her up, whole and intact again — “natural as a city’s grey-eyed Muse” — to quote the Greek poem. Swiftly, precisely the fingers which pressed upon my shoulder re-evoked her as we slid through the silent pool.
And then: to sit once more in the simple sunlight, sipping the red wine of St Menas as she broke up the warm brown loaf of French bread, and hunted for a particular cheese or a cluster of dates: while Balthazar talked discursively (half asleep) of the Vineyard of Ammon, the Kings of the Harpoon Kingdom and their battles, or of the Mareotic wine to which, not history, but the gossiping Horace once attributed Cleopatra’s distempers of mind … (‘History sanctions everything, pardons everything — even what we do not pardon ourselves.’)
So the warm noon drew on as we lay there on the hot pebbles: and so at last — to Balthazar’s great delight and C
lea’s discomfiture — the predicted thunderstorm made its appearance, heralded by a great livid cloud which rolled up from the east and squatted over the city, bruising the sky. So suddenly too — as when an ink-squid in alarm puffs out its bag and suddenly fogs clear water in a cloud of black — rain flowed down in glittering sheets, thunder bellowed and insisted. At each peal Balthazar clapped his hands with delight — not only to be proved right, but also because here we were sitting in full sunlight, fully at our ease, eating oranges and drinking wine beside an untroubled blue sea.
‘Stop crowing’ said Clea severely.
It was one of those freak storms so prevalent in the early spring with its sharp changes of temperature born of sea and desert. They turned the streets to torrents in the twinkling of an eye, yet never endured above half an hour. Suddenly the cloud would be whisked away by a scrap of wind, utterly to disappear. ‘And mark me now’ said Balthazar, inebriated by the success of his prediction. ‘By the time we get back to harbour everything will be dry again, dry as a bone.’
But now the afternoon brought us another phenomenon to delight us — something rarely seen in summer in the waters of Alexandria, belonging as it did to those days preceding winter storms when the glass was falling steeply. The waters of the pool darkened appreciably, curdled, and then became phosphorescent. It was Clea who first noticed. ‘Look’ she cried with delight, crushing her heels down in the shallows to watch the twinkling prickling light spark from them. ‘Phosphorus!’ Balthazar started saying something learned about the organism which causes this spectacle but unheeding we plunged side by side and ranged down into the water, transformed into figures of flame, the sparks flashing from the tips of our fingers and toes with the glitter of static electricity. A swimmer seen underwater looks like an early picture of the fall of Lucifer, literally on fire. So bright was the electrical crackle that we could not help wondering how it was that we were not scorched by it. So we played, glittering like comets, among the quiet mariners who sat, watching us perhaps in their thoughts, faintly echoing the twitching of the tide in their canvas sacks.
The Alexandria Quartet Page 102