The Mule on the Minaret (42 page)

It was cool though the sun was shining. She was wearing a rough off-white woollen coat and skirt; there were large buttons on the jacket and wide bands of a dark blue material stitched across it. It gave her the look of an hussar. And she was wearing a small white hat, side tilted, its narrow blue ribbon adorned with a pheasant's feather. She was half smiling as she walked up the steps with her lips parted; her eyes were clear and wide; there was a glow and gloss about her.

At the sight of him, her half-smile became a real smile. She held out her hand. Because of her height she never kissed friends in public. Her handshake was firm and friendly. There was no doubt that she was glad to see him.

‘That was a very smart car,' he said.

‘The Brazilian Minister's.'

‘You're moving in high circles.'

‘Our fathers were good friends. Brazil was an ally in the last war, remember?' She sat beside him on the terrace.

‘What'll you have?' he asked.

‘A Tom Collins.'

‘So'll I. That's a new scent you're wearing.'

‘Do you like it?'

‘It's rich and heavy, and it's right for you.'

‘I got it in the Souks. They're experts at that kind of thing.'

‘They should be: they've been at it longer. The Arabs discovered distillation.'

They sipped through straws at the cool sweet liquid. He watched her over his glass's rim. She had a radiant look. Was that because she was in love? Had she looked like this to strangers after that first trip to Damascus? He had been too much in love to notice.

‘How does Cairo compare with Beirut?' he asked.

She shrugged. ‘There's no comparison. It's a bigger place. It's a centre. It's more important than Washington or London at
the moment. It's where things are happening. It's the one place where there is fighting, apart from the Russian front, of course. Everyone has to come here, sooner or later. Beirut was small and provincial. The French wanted to keep it that way. There's a King here and a Court; there are Ambassadors instead of ministers; there's another thing, too; I hadn't realized it when I was actually in Beirut but I feel it now. For the English, Beirut was a side-show, a backwater. It was French, not English. Cairo is an extension of the British raj; it's the centre of the British war effort. You keep meeting here people whom you've known all your life; you can talk about your acquaintances and friends. You never could do that in Beirut, could you? We have a personal life outside the office, in a way that we never did in Beirut. One's in touch with the big world here.'

He asked her where she would like to lunch.

‘Why not here?' she said. ‘It's really very good. I like all this grandeur, and you don't want a small French restaurant. You have enough of that. You'll hear people say, “I can't bear hotel food,” but the Ritz is a hotel, after all.'

She was curious to hear all the Beirut gossip. ‘Tell me about Nigel Farrar. Is he ever going to do anything about Annabelle?'

‘It's hard to tell. Sometimes I think yes, sometimes I think no. They always flirt when they're together.'

‘He'll be a fool if he doesn't marry her.'

‘Lebanon's a long way from England.'

‘That's not going to matter so much after the war. England's going to be a different place. Why not recognize it.'

She was animated, friendly, gay. The talk did not flag for an instant. It was just as it had been in those first days, nearly a year ago. Yet there was a subtle difference. He had been always conscious then of a progression; they were moving towards a point. Each lunch, each dinner, was a stage, a landmark. Each time they had revealed a little more of themselves, or at least she had of herself; and through that revelation they had drawn close to one another. Later, when the final landmark had been passed, though their meals had started as today's had done with easy animated gossip, there had come a point when suddenly the whole spirit of their meeting underwent a change, when they would cease to be friends and become lovers, even though they did not talk of love. She had a habit, when they were sitting side by side, of lapsing into silence and leaning forward across the table, her elbows on it, her
hands closed and her chin rested on them. It was a signal, an invitation. And the tone of his voice would change; he would begin to woo her; with a difference not so much of words as of approach. He might be talking of poetry or of politics, but he would have the feeling that he was swinging incense before a shrine: he would be bathed in the memory of the previous night and the prospect of the enchantment waiting him.

‘You are looking wonderful,' he said.

‘I'm feeling wonderful.'

Jealousy stabbed at him. He longed to question her, but knew he mustn't. If she had anything to say, then she would tell him. He tried to put himself in her position. She had come here on her guard. As she drove that morning from her office she must have thought, ‘This is going to be one of the most awkward two hours of my life. He will imagine that we are going to pick up the threads where we left them. I don't want to hurt him. I shall have to be tactful, diplomatic. What a strain.' Well, he could spare her that. And maybe, just for that, she would be grateful to him, until the story closed.

He asked her about the work. Was it more interesting here in a G.H.Q.? She shrugged. ‘It's a circle with a larger radius, but what's most fascinating for me, anyhow at the moment, is seeing how our Beirut problems appear in the Cairo office. I get all your reports, of course, and I think of you and Nigel drafting them, and then discussing them, and then that staff-sergeant putting it on the machine. It makes me nostalgic. But what's really entertaining is to see how certain things that seemed very important to us in Beirut don't seem so important here, and vice versa.'

‘Can you give me an example?'

‘That Turkish student. You put in so much work on him and they're not very excited over him; whereas they rate that cousin of Annabelle's very highly.'

‘Can you explain why?'

She hesitated. ‘It's the new policy. You'll hear all about that tomorrow. Michael Stallard's here.'

‘Michael Stallard?'

‘The controller. Don't you remember? He got you in our show.'

‘Of course.'

Stallard. That lunch at Ajalami's. The prelude to so much. Stallard. An idea came to him suddenly. ‘Do you remember a Major Johnson?'

‘I don't think so. Why?'

‘He was one of those Spears Missionaries who were sent out by mistake. He's at a loose end here in Cairo. He was a contemporary of mine at Sandhurst. I was wondering if there was a possible vacancy for him with you. Stallard would be the best man to ask, wouldn't he?'

‘I'd say so. He likes you.'

They talked easily, cosily; they might have been cousins, enjoying a family gossip. She was completely self-composed, but then she always had been. What was she thinking behind that mask? Was she wondering how she could maintain this calm, uncontroversial level? Like the heroine of a Victorian novel, hoping to avoid a proposal that she had no intention of accepting?

‘How long are you staying here?' she asked.

‘A week.'

‘That's fine. Did you hear that there's a cocktail party on Tuesday evening?'

‘Yes, I heard.'

‘Have you seen a programme of the conference?'

‘I haven't, no.'

‘I thought you might not have. I've brought along a copy. Your address is tomorrow afternoon. I fixed that. I thought you'd like to get it over early, so that you could relax and enjoy the rest of it.'

‘That was very thoughtful of you.'

‘I'll look forward to hearing what you have to tell us.'

‘It'll be familiar ground to you.'

‘Something new must have happened since I left. Besides, I want to hear you lecture. I never have, you know. I've always wanted to.'

It was almost the first thing that she had said to him. He recalled the tone of voice in which she had said it, recalled the light in her eyes and the way her lips had parted; recalled it with an over-powering sense of loss. Maybe he would never see that light in her eyes again, never hear that tone in her voice. She looked exactly the same, sitting beside him at a banquette table, her elbow rested on it, a glass of red wine cradled between her hands. But he was seeing only the shell, the surface; the Diana that her relatives knew and her acquaintances. The essential, the inner Diana had disappeared. He had taken the miracle of her for granted. He had not realized that she was the outcome of her mood and now that her mood had changed, she had become no different for him from
what she had been all her adult life to a hundred others. Would he ever again see the Diana he had known in those enchanted days?

The meal moved to its close. He glanced at his watch. Twenty to three. Time hadn't dawdled this time as it had at Sa'ad's.

‘When's the Brazilian Minister calling for you?' he asked.

‘He's not. I'll have to take a taxi.'

He was about to offer to drive her back, but checked; he did not want to sit beside her in that enclosed proximity.

‘I'll give myself an industrious afternoon, working on that lecture.'

‘You do that. I don't want to be disappointed and I don't want them to be. I've sung your praises till they're bored with me.'

He walked out on to the terrace with her. A small bare-footed boy ran forward. ‘Taxi! Taxi!' She turned and they faced each other. He held out his hand.

‘This has been fun,' he said. She did not reply. She looked at him, very directly; almost questioningly, as though she wanted him to say something, something that would make things easier for her. He did not. He felt that by his silence he had gained not only a tactical but a strategic point.

She was sitting in the third row of the conference-room. There was an audience of about a hundred. Representatives had come from the various D.S.O. (Defence Security Office) organizations in the Middle East. There were a number of staff officers from G.H.Q. Middle East, also a few from H.Q. Eighth Army. He was relieved that Diana was sitting close. It meant that he did not need to look at her. He always addressed himself to someone in the back two rows. He knew that if his voice was pitched to the back of the hall he would be audible in the middle rows. If he became conscious of personalities in the front row he might not be heard at the back. And it was his practice while the chairman was introducing him to search the back two rows for a sympathetic face. If Diana had been at the back he could not have helped but be aware of her right through his address. As it was, he would only have to look at her three or four times during the half-hour that had been allotted him.

He rose to his feet with the self-confidence that came from long familiarity with the handling of an audience. He explained how the problems that had faced his organization in Lebanon and Syria were basically different from those which were presented to the D.S.O.s in Egypt, Cyprus, Palestine and Iraq. He reminded them
of the difference between M.I.6 and M.I.5. ‘M.I.5—and all our organizations are branches of M.I.5—is concerned with defensive security and it operates in those countries which are British colonies or are a part of the British Raj. It is counter-espionage, but it works through the local police which it controls or supervises. M.I.6, on the other hand, is counter-espionage, working in foreign countries. It cannot work openly with the police. It directs activities into enemy territory. Its representatives run the danger of being arrested as spies.

‘This difference between M.I.5 and M.I.6 explains the difference between our work in Lebanon and Syria, and that with which so many of you are concerned. In Palestine, Egypt, Cyprus and Iraq, M.I.5 was already firmly established in 1939. In Syria and the Lebanon it was not, because they were a French mandate. M.I.6 was operating there clandestinely. France was an ally, and a suspicious ally. Fifteen months ago, therefore, when the campaign against the Vichy French was concluded we had no existing network of agents through whom we could conduct our operations. We only had a few, a very few M.I.6 representatives. We had to start from scratch. During the last year we have, therefore, been busy building up that network.'

He described the methods of recruitment that they had adopted, and the results that those methods had achieved. ‘Our work,' he concluded, ‘has been exploratory. We now feel ourselves in a position to take a more active part in the bureau's work. We very much hope that during this conference we shall receive some guidance as to what that part should be. We do feel that ours could be important because of the proximity of Turkey. We and Iraq have a common frontier with Turkey. In the interests of our own security, we have to take cognizance of what the enemy are plotting against us in Turkey. We have to send agents across the frontier. In that respect our work at times overlaps the boundary between M.I.5 and M.I.6. We are hoping to receive guidance on this point.'

His talk ended twenty-nine minutes after it had begun. He was accustomed to finishing what he had to say within the time allotted him. He did not have, as one of the speakers had that morning, to hurry his last sentences. As he finished he looked down at Diana; she made a sign of silent hand-clapping. Her smile was warm. Well, anyhow, we're friends, he thought.

Stallard came up to him afterwards. ‘That was excellent. I knew it would be. But I didn't guess that it would be so good. You're
the right man in the right job. I can see that. Wish we'd known about you earlier. By the way, I think it's time you put a crown up. It won't make any difference to you financially. You're already drawing more than a major's pay, but if you don't go up after you've been in a show a year, people may think you're not any good. Security can defeat its own ends in that way. Besides, it's high time Nigel had a crown up and you two must keep level pegging. I'm going to be run off my feet these next three days, but let's have a quiet dinner on Friday, after the last meeting. You can? That's fine. In the meantime, is there anything on your mind?'