“Bon soir, my policeman!”
Montagne’s low voice was the first indication of his presence. He was in the act of sitting down.
He was the perfect small Christian employee, in broken shoes, dirty alpaca suit and frayed linen. They certainly learned a thing or two in the French service, Prayle thought. If there was anything wrong with his disguise, it was that he looked too well-fed—but well-fed he had never looked before. Only his deep, fanatical eyes were recognisable.
“Congratulations!” Prayle said. “I should never have known you.”
“I also am of the Mediterranean,” Montagne answered. “For us who were born in poverty it is not hard to appear poor.”
“And my felicitations on your freedom! We were all so glad.”
“That was easy. They wanted to put Lebanese guards over us. Well, we raised hell. And in the discussions I walked out.”
Prayle and Montagne went over to the icebox and chose the raw materials of their meal. Montagne waited without impatience for the food to be cooked, sipping his wine and refusing Prayle’s offer of a cigarette. He explained that lack of money had forced him to cut his smoking so low that now he no longer cared whether he smoked or not. His nerves were steady. Prayle, over the supper, felt for the underlying cause; he could only come to the instinctive and impossible conclusion that Montagne was more certain of his aim now that he could no longer have an aim at all.
“After your escape, how did you get clothes?” he asked. “I was interested professionally, you see.”
“In these reasonable countries and in the spring—a sack and an old army jacket, they were quite enough. From such a person one does not demand his passport. I worked on the railway, and then when you began to check passes I rode a goods wagon down to Egypt.”
“And here, how do you make a living?”
“If one has no pride,” Montagne answered, “it is not difficult to live in Egypt.”
“And how did Furney find you?”
“He did not attempt to find me. I found him. He is pleasant, your Furney, but a schoolmaster. Do you think he would bother himself with the disgraced?”
“He did, you know.”
“So he told me, but he was hardly successful,” said Montagne, sourly dismissing the subject. “I went to him because I wanted to join the French Army as a private, and no questions asked. That should not have been difficult for him to arrange. He said that he could not interfere with the French.”
“Have a heart!” Prayle exclaimed. “You know very well what the French would have said if they suspected us of knowing where you were and keeping our traps shut.”
“Perhaps. But it doesn’t matter.”
“I repeat—he tried to clear you.”
“Tried? My good little secret policeman, I trusted him. That is a word you will never understand. Suppose that our position had been reversed, and that he instead of I had been ruined by these Jews, I would have resigned my commission, I would have made the gesture of blowing my blasted brains out with his dossier upon my desk rather than assent to such injustice. He speaks as ever of his palace eunuchs, but he begins to smell of the seraglio himself.”
They arrived at the Casino just before the show began. On the whole, Prayle gave the place his blessing; it was not one of those dives which would wreck Armande’s health and complexion, and it was not primarily arranged for talking to the artistes in quiet corners. The Casino, he observed, was more a garden theatre than a cabaret, and, if there had been no Armande and no duty, he would have dragged Montagne off to some other joint more likely to reward his long abstinence upon the desert hills.
The audience he could not love. Yet why in the world he should consider the lazy gentle Egyptians and Egyptian Europeans to be less desirable contacts for Armande than boiled shirts and brigadiers he could not tell. The trouble was, he decided, that whenever he thought of Armande he was slightly corrupted himself by her conventional background.
He thought of her often and vividly, as if she were in the next tent or a village down the road, likely to turn up at any moment. He could not deny that she had become an essential part of his life, though he preferred to ascribe her intrusion simply to their partnership in the disposal of Fouad. He treasured her last message as evidence, at least, of friendship; a message which Fairfather, delivering it quite casually one day when they met over a crazy hunt for parachutists on the slopes of Hermon, swore that she had uttered with recent repentence and in all sincerity—Give him my love.
“Indigne!” murmured Montagne with bitter emphasis.
He referred to the acrobats. Prayle had been enjoying the ingenious contortions of the father, mother and three boneless children, but Montagne carried down his sympathy with the performers to a deeper level. Yes, in a sense it was an infamous trade—the sad, brown faces, the black tights covered with dust from the stage, the sandy dust that blew in from the desert, unperceived, with the evening breeze; and, thinking of Armande upon the same stage, it seemed sordid that the human body should be so sprawled and twisted just for money.
Damn Montagne anyway! This new Montagne—and the old one, too, to some extent—was as bad as an earnest reformer for taking the pleasure out of anything one might be doing. Thank God that he appeared to approve of the next turn! Miss Fatima’s rolypoly nakedness roused him to the remark:
“She works, that animal!”
But Mlle. Joliette failed to enchant. Montagne poured a whisky into the untidy gap between his beard and moustache and called her a putain.
Armande and Floarea floated on to the stage in their first number.
“And that—that is responsible,” said Montagne, as if marvelling that anyone so unimportant as a cabaret dancer, or, perhaps, anyone so substantial as Armande, could have caused him disaster.
“She suffered too,” Prayle reminded him.
“Yes, Furney explained to me. But all the same, what folly! Well, she must love those Zionists as much as I do. I did not remember that she was so pretty. Her face is more open than it was.”
As both girls were preserving a professional expression of innocent wistfulness, it was hard to see what he meant by open—not, in any case, an adjective which Prayle considered applicable to Armande. Her face was open as the sea at evening or a rich plain under slanting sun—open, if Montagne liked, but bringing first and overwhelmingly to mind the presence of mystery and detail unseen.
The dancers sank in a curtesy at the end of their waltz, and Prayle caught Armande’s eye. She looked at him almost with resentment, her expression changing instantly to delighted surprise. She waved a hand to assure him she would come over after the show.
Prayle was contented. His little doings hadn’t changed a bit. That moment of doubt, followed immediately by generosity, was like her. Of course the silly little piece would be ashamed to be kicking up her legs in front of a friend she used to patronise, and of course, one second afterwards, she would be happy that he was a friend and there.
Sergeant Prayle took a deep draught of his whisky and soda and relaxed. His meditation upon the essential innocence of Armande were rudely broken as the butterflies, wings flung up from shoulders to reveal the flushing whiteness of their bodies, alighted upon an imaginary flower.
“It appears to me,” said Montagne, “that the days of sentimental friendship are past. You will amuse yourself this evening.”
“Don’t know,” Prayle muttered. “Haven’t appointed the Planning Committee yet.”
Montagne’s criticisms of the dancers became anatomical. Prayle listened, in his mind a tumult of swift and contradictory images which was as near as he ever got to anger. He was not annoyed with Montagne—being well aware that the Frenchman was deliberately trying to sting him into some absurdity of sentiment—but with Armande. She had no right to place herself in a false position where the exquisiteness of her slender body could be compared with other bodies. Young, incomparable! And, anyway, what was all this sudden prudery? She was perfectly decently dressed. P
erfectly!
After the show Armande swept through the tables towards him, her movements followed by the turning of scores of deep brown, melancholy eyes. Prayle had never seen her so lovely, so spiritually unapproachable. She looked, he thought, like a priestess or like a willing sacrifice, a Jephthah’s daughter. Her only ornament was a gold belt. The pleats of her soft white frock opened and closed, as she walked, over the smooth outlines of knee and thigh.
“Well, Sergeant Prayle?” she asked, as he rose to meet her.
It was a general humorous question, inviting comment on everything from her surroundings to his military career. He saw now what Montagne had meant by open. Her face had changed; it had preserved its delicacy, but was less mannered.
“Too good for this place,” he answered, and then added, feeling obscurely that what he had said was a needless platitude: “Your dance, I mean.”
Armande smiled. Sergeant Prayle in his white suit and carnation was delicious. He looked like some tall, spare colonial stateman out on the spree, his crooked face so full of intelligence, embarrassment and good will.
“This is Mr. Makrisi,” he said.
Montagne put his hand on his heart, bowed and gabbled a compliment.
“Where did you learn such beautiful French?” Armande asked.
“In Paris, Madame.”
“You must have been born there.”
“I was,” he answered shortly. “Well, my sergeant, I am off. Tomorrow at eleven. Same place.”
“So soon?” Armande asked politely.
It was astonishing that a little employee of Mr. Makrisi’s type should go before being driven away, especially with a chance of free drinks at the expense of Field Security. Armande stared into the deep, hard eyes that for a moment deliberately met her own.
“My wife is waiting for me,” said Mr. Makrisi with the sudden, savage and alarming frankness of the Middle East. “When I am late, she makes me an intolerable scene.”
As soon as he had gone, Armande remarked:
“I’ve seen him before somewhere, and he hadn’t a beard. Should I or shouldn’t I try to remember?”
“Just bring to boiling point and let it simmer,” Prayle replied. “Who’s the red admiral?”
“Floarea Pitescu. A rather lovely person in a way. Would you like to talk to her?”
Armande reproached herself for impulsive, foolish unself-fishness. Prayle and Floarea would get on much too well together.
“Prefer fritillaries,” he replied.
“Pancakes?”
“Butterflies. They flit over marshes, all tender colours. What will we drink? Does the management give you coloured water in this place?”
“It does if we want it. But tonight,” she said, acknowledging his loyalty with soft and merry eyes, “I would like a very long, very strong whisky and soda with lots of ice in it. Tell me about Fouad.”
“Nothing to tell. We got away with it. He’s a full corporal, I hear, and bursting with pride. Fun to be an Arab when there’s war on!”
Floarea and the Romanova came down the steps, and sat at a beflowered table. Armande made no signal. After a while they joined Miss Fatima and a party of South Africans in civilian dress.
“I like Auntie,” said Prayle approvingly. “Circus horse retired. Does she take a commission?”
“Auntie does not,” Armande replied. “But she shares whatever is going, and she deserves it.”
Prayle grinned approvingly at her firmness.
“Doghouse for me,” he said. “But a year ago Auntie—well, she wouldn’t have been your type I’d have said.”
“She trained me.”
They sipped their drinks, and exchanged the bare facts of the recent past.
“Don’t you dance?” Armande asked.
“No.”
“Then what do you usually do in a place like this?”
“Play the fool on the floor if I get drunk enough.”
“Did you never dance at home?”
“Not my style of beauty.”
Sergeant Prayle, then, had never been in love; or, if he had, had never made any determined effort to win his beloved. Armande warmed to him. He was so certain that he was not attractive to women; yet attractive he was, if one looked, as it were, at the vitality of the drawing and not the caricature itself.
He had already changed the subject, that alarming subject of holding her in his arms to dance, and was lecturing with staccato incoherence. She was suddenly certain that Sergeant Prayle was profoundly interested in her, and doubtful about admitting it even to himself.
“Now don’t get alarmed,” he was saying. “It has nothing to do with security this time.”
“What hasn’t?”
“Weren’t you listening?”
“I was thinking of something else. But tell me.”
“Mr. Makrisi and I came to see you about a job. Cloak and dagger.”
“I don’t want to be involved in any more of it,” she said.
“King and Country.”
“But they don’t need me.”
“They do. It’s all on the square. That’s why I was sent for to Cairo—to give you my word that it’s the real goods this time.”
“And do you think it is?”
“So real that I hope you’ll say no.”
“I’m so glad you think I’ll say yes. So glad.”
To Prayle the emotion in her voice was astounding. He had never dreamed that she cared what he thought of her. In fact he was sure that up to now, or up to, perhaps, some indefinable point in her private life, she never had cared. The whole essence of his relationship with her, since their first antagonistic interview was that neither his appearance nor his opinions could be to her of the slightest importance. That conviction permitted him to remain a disapproving adorer, a fascinated but detached observer.
“I know you so well, Mrs. Herne,” he said, his deep, tender voice expressing the melancholy of such useless knowledge.
“Why not Armande?”
“Always were, really.”
“Well?” she asked merrily. “And am I to go on calling you Sergeant Prayle?”
“Just Prayle. No nickname.”
“But what about your Christian name?”
“Damn awful.”
“I might like it. What is it?”
“Percy.”
“Yes. I wouldn’t choose it any more than you,” said Armande frankly. “Got any more?”
“Worse and worse. Dionysius.”
“Percy Dionysius Prayle,” she repeated with smiling respect. “It ought to have D.D. after it. An obscure but eminent scholar.”
“Probably what Pa intended.”
“What was he?”
“Under porter in an Oxford college.”
“Ah!” Armande exclaimed, suddenly seeing in proper perspective her sergeant’s classless intelligence, his social nihilism. “Well, I shall call you Dion.”
“So did my mother. I’ve never had the face to propose it to anyone else.”
“And what did you do when you grew up, Dion Prayle?”
“Nothing long.”
“But what?”
“This and that. Mining. Knocking about. Company secretary. Good little companies—not enough capital. Bad little companies—got out before they bust. Abroad a lot. Going my own way, and taking anything that looked like being fun.”
“What sort of fun?”
“Talking to people.”
“To men, you mean?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Don’t women count at all?”
“Not much. I just read what’s in their little pans, and sheer off.”
“Dion, you do talk such nonsense,” she said. “Look at Floarea—can you read her little pan, as you call it?”
“Yes. What does she want?”
“I won’t tell you. What’s her character?”
“Just that. All that matters to her and the Boss is—what does she want?”
Armande considered
the oracle. The answer was true. Floarea’s value to herself, humanity and the Boss—yes, the dear idiot couldn’t mean an earthly boss—depended entirely upon what she wanted. She was a fine creature because she wanted success in her profession and did not wholly measure success in terms of money. If she had wanted luxury, she would be dishonest; if love, she might be a jealous horror like Mr. Makrisi’s wife.
“What is it you and Mr. Makrisi wish me to do?” she asked.
“Not us. A G.H.Q. racket.”
“Tell me.”
Prayle from habit lowered his voice, though there was no chance of being overheard against the baaing of the dance band and the hum of conversation.
“They want you to stay behind if we lose Egypt.”
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully, “that is the real thing, isn’t it? Then am I clear?”
“No, Armande. The black-listing is just what makes you useful—so long as it’s widely known.”
She shivered at the implication that everyone must know her secret; yet it was obvious that there her value and safety lay.
“But someone important must trust me?”
“Yes. He used to be in our game before he took to this. He knows you are clear, but can’t prove it. You must think we are all off our rockers. But it’s not so easy. You did a spot of gunrunning, and you say you thought it was a nice, clean sport, all above board and hunky-dory. That’s the truth, but it’s wildly improbable. Especially as you were just one big question mark in Beirut. And in Jerusalem—well, a nice little cash payment into your bank and no transfers to your account from London. So you see it was my opinion against a big, thick file. Montagne was in the same boat.”
“What happened to Major Montagne?” she asked.
“Mr. Makrisi.”
“Of course!” Armande exclaimed. “But he’s not really so down-and-out, is he? I mean, Abu Tisein’s inventions couldn’t affect a security officer?”
“Couldn’t they just!”
Prayle sketched for her Montagne’s past; his escape and his probable position as he immediate chief in the Cairo underground.
“And this man you spoke of couldn’t clear him either?” she asked incredulously.
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