The Mule on the Minaret (31 page)

It was a warm, clear evening. The heavy summer heat had not descended yet. He had the hood of his car down. ‘Let's drive along the Bosphorus,' he said. He chose a restaurant on the water, a few
miles beyond Terapia. The terrace was sheltered and Eve took off her coat. He raised his eyebrows. ‘That certainly is something.'

She had bought in Beirut a length of blue brocade, adorned with cedars, out of which she had made a jacket.

‘It's the first time I've worn it. I thought you were the right man for it.' She would not have said that a month ago. He might have thought it ‘forward.' But the remark slipped out naturally He laughed. ‘That's a most flattering tribute.' He seemed genuinely pleased. ‘The food here won't amount to much after what you've been enjoying in the Lebanon, but it's a pleasant place.'

The waiter handed her a menu; but he did not give her time to study it.

‘Why don't we have simple Turkish things? That's what they do best. Imam Baialadi—the Imam swoons and Doner kebab. Plus one of their honey-rich desserts. How's that?'

She nodded. She was grateful to him for making up her mind for her.

‘And now for the wine,' he said. He studied the list with a student's care. ‘When I was here the other day they told me that they were expecting some new German wines. Yes, a Moselle, 1939. That's something you couldn't get in the Lebanon. Isn't it strange to think that they were gathering these grapes in the same week that their aeroplanes were bombing Warsaw? The two sides of Germany.'

It was a clean, fresh wine, with a faintly sweet aftertaste. ‘No,' he said. ‘I question if you got anything as good as this in Lebanon. I've heard a lot about their red wines. How were they?'

He asked her about the restaurants and the cabarets in the same way that Sedgwick had; but her answers seemed much livelier than they had in the I.S.L.O. offices. He was animated and interested. He made amusing comments; his wit evoked wit in her. He laughed outright several times. She had never thought of herself as being particularly funny; but she did feel that she was being funny now. She had felt that she was boring Sedgwick, she knew that she was entertaining Martin.

As her office's contact with the British Embassy, she had no secrets from him, though he had, inevitably, quite a few from her. In consequence, she was able to be open with him in a way that she could not be with her other friends. She could never remember offhand the sources of the information that she possessed; whether she had read it in a newspaper, heard it on the German radio, or
acquired it from an intercepted message in a code that had been broken. She was forced therefore to confine herself to gossip on trivial subjects. It made her self-conscious sometimes. She must seem so terribly trivial and limited; with Martin she could give herself free rein.

He asked her about the Beirut office. ‘How are Farrar and the Professor getting on? They seem a curiously assorted pair.'

‘I'd say they dovetailed very well. The one completes the other.'

‘Their summaries are certainly well written now. How's Farrar's love-life?'

She laughed. ‘I'd say a little confused. There's a young Armenian that keeps him guessing. He never can get alone with her. She's chaperoned by her brother.'

‘Isn't that rather a strain on him?'

She pouted. ‘I don't think he's too disturbed. Lebanon's French, remember. There are accommodations handy.'

And that was again something that she would have hesitated to say a month ago. She had avoided reference to sex. She was afraid of their being given a personal twist. Her inexperience had put her at a disadvantage. She had felt that he might laugh at her. She was on her guard. But now she felt no embarrassment.

‘So, on the whole, Beirut is not a man's paradise after all,' he said.

‘The competition is very keen.'

‘That's disappointing. I'm going there on leave next month.'

‘So that,' she thought, ‘is why he asked me out to dinner.' A month ago her pride would have been hurt. She had been fooled, fancying herself invited for the sake of her own company, without any ulterior motive. But now she was amused. How true to type he ran. Her answer came back pat: ‘I don't think you'll need to worry.'

‘That's another very flattering tribute.'

‘Oh, come now. Don't be modest. You know your value well enough. You're quite a dish.'

He looked at her quickly, searchingly. It was the kind of remark that, put in a letter, might have been interpreted in a hostile manner. But her voice held no catty undertone. It was frank and friendly; almost affectionate. She might have been teasing him, as a sister would.

‘It's a question of meeting the right people and I've got just the person for you.' She launched on a description of Jane Lester.
‘She's pretty and she's perplexed. She needs someone who'll be firm with her, who'll stand no nonsense. You'd be performing an act of charity, and from your point of view there's one supreme advantage. She's married to a prisoner-of-war. There's no possibility of your finding yourself involved.'

Once again he looked at her quickly, searchingly. Once again she had used words that might, in a letter, have been misread. But, again, there was no snide undertone. She met his look with an open smile. She had a surprising feeling of self-confidence, of being in the stronger position. She leant back in her chair. ‘I'd very much like to read a novel of which you were the hero.'

That did surprise him. He could not think of an appropriate answer. ‘That's one of the strangest things that I've had said to me,' was, at length, the best that he could manage. ‘Why do you say that?'

‘Because I'm inquisitive. I can see you, as you are today, thirty and a second secretary. You've been to the right school and the right college. You got the right degree; you have the right connections. The road stretches straight ahead. Nothing can stop your being an ambassador. You won't make any mistakes. In four or five years' time you'll marry exactly the right girl: she'll embellish your career and help you with it. She'll probably have a certain amount of money; that kind of girl always does. And you'll really be in love with her. You won't propose to her because she's the right kind of girl. It will be a romance, for both of you. At the point when you're beginning to feel the need of a wife, the right kind of woman will appear. It'll be most romantic and unplanned. Because that's the kind of thing that happens to your kind of man. You have a sense of self-direction; it counsels you, warns you. It's the daemon, the inner voice that guided Socrates. I see you now, a complete, polished product.' She paused. She was slightly dazed by her own garrulity. But she was enjoying herself, as she never had before with him. He was staring at her, astounded. She revelled in it. He smiled. It was a respectful smile.

‘All this is very flattering,' he said, ‘and I am not contradicting you. I am not denying your estimate, but if that is what I am, and I suspect it is, and if you have so clear a picture of me, I am wondering why you should be inquisitive about me, why should you want to read a novel about me: since you already know how the story ended.'

‘Ah, but that's just the point. I want to know how it began. You
know those novels that start with a picture of a man in old age or middle life and then suddenly switch back, to explain how he reached that point? I know what you are, and what you are going to become, and I can see you as a little boy of nine going off to his preparatory school in your grey flannel shorts and blazer; and I can see you at Eton in your ridiculous tail coat, and high hat and stiff white collar. That's all clear, the alpha and the omega. But there must have been a crisis along the way. There must have been a watershed, when you asked yourself whether this was what you really wanted, whether there weren't other things in life? What happened then? Was there some girl who was quite impossible in terms of the life that had been planned for you, but who offered you another kind of life that might have been more worth while; or it may not have been a girl, it may have been a don at Oxford who opened up to you—what's the cliché?—other vistas—a life of scholarship and research. You, with your great talents, might have had a quite different career, that might actually have been more in keeping with your real self.'

She paused again. At the start, she had leant back in her chair; she had been nonchalant and casual. But now she leant forwad across the table, her elbows rested on it, her face cradled between her hands. The tone of her voice, too, had changed. It had deepened. It had grown warmer; it had softened; it had lost its irony.

‘Something must have happened,' she went on. ‘There must have been some crisis. That's what I'm curious to know: what was it? What made you what you are?'

She was exalted in a way that she had never been with him before. Up till now she had been his junior, his inferior, a little secretary, with whom he'd have liked to go to bed but didn't much mind whether he did or didn't. There were many others. He had set the pace. And she had been on her guard. But now she was setting the pace, and it was heady knowledge; she had become aware of herself, conscious of her powers, fulfilled, knowing what she amounted to. And that mocking look had left his face. There was surprise, but there was admiration; a feeling that he, too, in his turn was conscious of her powers, recognizing her for what she was; no longer seeing her as the potential plaything of an idle hour but a separate and distinct human being. Their eyes met and held each other's. A month ago he would have found some ready light-hearted reply that would have changed the tempo of their talk. He did not now.

‘Something's happened to you,' he said. ‘You're a different person. I'd like to read the story of your last three weeks.'

And that, too, was heady knowledge; that he, of all people, he who had been so casual, should recognize the change in her. Nobody else had seen it; but he had. ‘Maybe I'll tell you, some day,' she said. And then they changed the subject and again their talk was casual.

They made it an early evening. As she stood up by the table, she remembered how often the last twenty minutes of an evening had marred the three preceding hours; either he would try to persuade her to come back to his apartment ‘for a night-cap'; or he would want to drive out along the Golden Horn and see the moonlight with all that that involved; or else he would be sarcastic and contemptuous. She had found herself dreading that last twenty minutes as she sipped her coffee. She had often declined to join him in a liqueur because she had been afraid that it would deaden her reactions, making her say something she would regret. But this time she accepted a cognac and sipped it slowly, appreciatively, feeling the fire along her veins. Nothing could spoil tonight.

He held the door of the car open for her, then, walking round in front, sat down beside her. He said nothing as he put the car into gear. He did not ask where she wanted to be driven. He drove towards her flat. He did not speak during the drive. But, outside the building, he leant forward across the wheel, as he had after their last dinner. Then he turned towards her, raised his hand under her chin, lifted her face to his and kissed her very gently on the lips.

Her sleep was cradled by fond dreams.

In Beirut, Reid was at work on the creation of his first notional character.

‘Lucille Moumahnan,' he wrote, ‘is a Lebanese girl, twenty years old. She is employed as a nurse in the military hospital. Many of her patients are men in the armed forces, French and British, who were wounded in the June campaign. They are often visited by their comrades in arms. She has many opportunities of overhearing gossip. Alexis has known her slightly for a little time. He is going to develop this acquaintanceship. She is pretty. He enjoys her company, and he would not be averse to an entanglement. She can inform him as to which units are still in the area.'

Reid re-read what he had written; it seemed satisfactory. He started on his second notional character. ‘The father of one of Alexis' ex-fellow students, an Armenian, has been recruited locally as a typist in the Spears Mission. He has been put into uniform. He was carefully vetted before he was enrolled. He is thoroughly pro-British, and anti-Turkish. He is anti-German because the Germans were the Turks' allies in the last war. His son shares his views. The father believes that the only chance of a united Armenia lies through the British. The father does not have access to secret documents; he is employed on routine typing; but he has opportunities of overhearing gossip. He talks about the office when he gets home. He knows nothing really very secret, but he knows a little. Alexis has found that by posing as being anti-British he can goad the son, André, into pro-British tirades. He will say, for instance, “The British are doing nothing in this war. They held
back their air force in the Battle of France. They are letting the Russians do all the fighting now; and in a year's time they'll be making way for the Americans.” When Alexis says that, André's eyes blaze; he starts enumerating all that Britain has done and is doing with her Fleet, her Air Force, in her factories; he draws on the information that his father has given him. Every now and then he will back up his argument with an incident that has not been reported in the press. Alexis is not going to become a friend of André's. He gets more out of him as an adversary.'

He re-read what he had written, then went down the passage to Farrar's office. ‘Here's my attempt. Can I see yours?'

‘Certainly. You won't find them very scholarly. Don't put me on the carpet for their English.'

‘Alexis' mother,' so the first page started, ‘entertains French and English officers. One of these, a Frenchman called Dupré, is a major in the Commissariat. He is a man of forty. He is married. He has two young children. He is a career officer. He would have preferred to stay with his regiment, but he was not popular with his brother officers. He was not
sportif.
He was not fun on parties. When an application list for transfers to the service side of the army came in, his colonel suggested that he should apply for a transfer. He was posted to the Lebanon in 1938. When the 1941 campaign was over, and he was offered the choice between returning to France or becoming a
rallié
under de Gaulle he was in a quandary. He had no sympathy for de Gaulle or for the British. Yet he was afraid if he went back to France he would be relegated to the reserve, on the same principle that his colonel had suggested his transfer to the Q branch. He has two young children. He had their interests to consider. Also his wife's, to whom he is devoted. Finally he became a
rallié.
Now he regrets his choice: he resents the de Gaullists who are getting the best appointments; he speaks little English and dislikes the British for having disturbed a comfortable way of life. Why could not they have been practical like the French and accepted the fact of their defeat, and waited for time to adjust the balance? He is at outs with everyone. He feels at ease in Alexis' family because they are Armenians. It is the one house in Beirut where he can be outspoken. He is often indiscreet. Alexis feels that if he listens carefully, he will learn something of interest to his friends across the frontier.'