Clea was still sitting in the gharry looking at her own hands.
It was as if this sudden incident had somehow insulated us from one another.
‘Let’s go back’ I said at last, and directed the driver to turn back into the town we had so recently quitted.
‘Pray to goodness she will be all right’ said Clea at last. ‘It is too cruel.’
‘Balthazar said she was dying. I heard him.’
‘He may be wrong.’ But he was not wrong, for both Fosca and the child were dead, though we did not get the news until later in the evening. We wandered listlessly about Clea’s rooms, unable to concentrate on anything. Finally she said: ‘You had better go back and spend the evening with him, don’t you think.’ I was uncertain. ‘He would rather remain alone I imagine.’
‘Go back’ she said, and added sharply, ‘I can’t bear you hanging about at a time like this…. Oh, darling, I’ve hurt you. I’m sorry.’
‘Of course you haven’t, you fool. But I’ll go.’ All the way down Rue Fuad I was thinking: such a small displacement of the pattern, a single human life, yet it had power to alter so much. Literally, such an eventuality had occurred to none of us. We simply could not stomach it, fit it into the picture which Pombal himself had built up with such care. It poisoned everything, this small stupid fact — even almost our affection for him, for it had turned to horror and sympathy! How inadequate as emotions they were, how powerless to be of use. My own instinct would have been to keep away altogether! I felt as if I never wanted to see him again — in order not to shame him. Bad poison, indeed. I repeated Ali’s phrase to myself over and over again.
Pombal was already there when I got back, sitting in his goutchair, apparently deep in thought. A full glass of neat whisky stood beside him which he did not seem to have touched. He had changed, however, into the familiar blue dressing-gown with the gold peacock pattern, and on his feet were his battered old Egyptian slippers like golden shovels. I went into the room quite quietly and sat down opposite him without a word. He did not appear to actually look at me, yet somehow I felt that he was conscious of my presence; yet his eye was vague and dreamy, fixed on the middle distance, and his fingers softly played a fivefinger exercise on each other. And still looking at the window he said, in a squeaky little voice — as if the words had power to move him although he did not quite know their meaning: ‘She’s dead, Darley. They are both dead.’ I felt a sensation of a leaden weight about my heart. ‘C’est pas juste’ he added absently and fell to pulling his side-beard with fat fingers. Quite unemotional, quite flat — like a man recovering from a severe stroke. Then he suddenly took a gulp of whisky and started up, choking and coughing. ‘It is neat’ he said in surprise and disgust, and put the glass down with a long shudder. Then, leaning forward he began to scribble, taking up a pencil and pad which were on the table — whorls and lozenges and dragons. Just like a child. ‘I must go to confession tomorrow for the first time for ages’ he said slowly, as if with infinite precaution. ‘I have told Hamid to wake me early.
Will you mind if Clea only comes?’ I shook my head, I understood that he meant to the funeral. He sighed with relief. ‘Bon’ he said, and standing up took the glass of whisky. At that moment the door opened and the distraught Pordre appeared. In a flash Pombal changed. He gave a long chain of deep sobs. The two men embraced muttering incoherent words and phrases, as if consoling each other for a disaster which was equally wounding to both.
The old diplomat raised his white womanish fist in the air and said suddenly, fatuously: ‘I have already protested strongly.’ To whom, I wondered? To the invisible powers which decree that things shall fall out this way or that? The words sputtered out meaninglessly on the chill air of the drawing-room. Pombal was talking.
‘I must write and tell him everything’ he said. ‘Confess everything.’
‘Gaston’ said his Chief sharply, reprovingly, ‘you must not do any such thing. It would increase his misery in prison. C’est pas juste. Be advised by me: the whole matter must be forgotten.’
‘Forgotten!’ cried my friend as if he had been stung by a bee.
‘You do not understand. Forgotten! He must know for her sake.’
‘He must never know’ said the older man. ‘Never.’ They stood for a long while holding hands, and gazing about them distractedly through their tears; and at this moment, as if to complete the picture, the door opened to admit the porcine outlines of Father Paul — who was never to be found far from the centre of any scandal. He paused inside the doorway with an air of unction, with his features registering a vast gluttonous self-satisfaction. ‘My poor boy’ he said, clearing his throat. He made a vague gesture of his paw as if scattering Holy Water over us all and sighed. He reminded me of some great hairless vulture. Then surprisingly he clattered out a few phrases of consolation in Latin.
I left my friend among these elephantine comforters, relieved in a way that there was no place for me in all this incoherent parade of Latin commiserations. Simply pressing his hand once I slipped out of the flat and directed my thoughtful footsteps in the direction of Clea’s room.
The funeral took place next day. Clea came back, looking pale and strained. She threw her hat across the room and shook out her hair with an impatient gesture — as if to expel the whole distasteful memory of the incident. Then she lay down exhaustedly on the sofa and put her arm over her eyes.
‘It was ghastly’ she said at last, ‘really ghastly, Darley. First of all it was a cremation. Pombal insisted on carrying out her wishes despite violent protests from Father Paul. What a beast that man is. He behaved as though her body had become Church property. Poor Pombal was furious. They had a terrible row settling the details I hear. And then … I had never visited the new Crematorium! It is unfinished. It stands in a bit of sandy waste-land littered with straw and old lemonade bottles, and flanked by a trash heap of old car-bodies. It looks in fact like a hastily improvised furnace in a concentration camp. Horrid little brick-lined beds with half-dead flowers sprouting from the sand.
And a little railway with runners for the coffin. The ugliness!
And the faces of all those consuls and acting consuls! Even Pombal seemed quite taken aback by the hideousness. And the heat! Father Paul was of course in the foreground of the picture, relishing his role. And then with an incongruous squeaking the coffin rolled away down the garden path and swerved into a steel hatch. We hung about, first on one leg then on the other; Father Paul showed some inclination to fill this awkward gap with impromptu prayers but at that moment a radio in a nearby house started playing Viennese waltzes. Attempts were made by various chauffeurs to locate and silence it, but in vain. Never have I felt unhappier than standing in this desolate chicken run in my best clothes. There was a dreadful charred smell from the furnace. I did not know then that Pombal intended to scatter the ashes in the desert, and that he had decided that I alone would accompany him on this journey. Nor, for that matter, did I know that Father Paul — who scented a chance of more prayers — had firmly made up his mind to do so as well. All that followed came as a surprise.