“The Guardsmen always used to faint, didn’t they? I remember in the old newsreels. And they just left them there. That was before Suez of course. Now they cart them away. Sic transit something … of course you being Irish you wouldn’t — really appreciate …” He left the idea hanging in the air, as if in a mental faint, and mopped his face.
A little elderly lady had appeared and Mr. Crowther ordered tea in such graceful tones that I wondered if there might not be cucumber sandwiches as well.
“No, it’s difficult. And very bad luck. I’d like to be able to help. It’s not that I’m overburdened with work at the moment either. But I’ve remembered now — it’s the Italians who deal with the Irish here. There was a nun in here last month. From Aswan or somewhere. She’d left the order. Something about a policeman — whether in Aswan or Tipperary I couldn’t quite gather. Anyway, we sent her on to the Italians. You might have a word with them. Though now I come to think of it they don’t marry people in their Embassies, one of the few countries that don’t. And you’re not Italian.”
I thought perhaps that I must have caught Mr. Crowther at a time of immediate personal pressure — “my wife or something” as he might have put it.
“What about the Cathedral — All Saints’? You could get married there, couldn’t you? Have you thought of that?” He seemed particularly pleased at the idea as if he’d solved the problem. “The Cathedral, yes. Now that would make a splendid setting. You couldn’t do better. But perhaps — ” he looked at me suddenly — “that might be a little too public for you, what? One wants a decent privacy in these things. One is not marrying one’s mother-in-law after all.”
“Ah, our tea. Thank you, Mrs. French. Lemon, Mr. Marlow?”
Mr. Crowther’s face cleared. He smiled for the first time, an awkward grin, like a dusty accountant who has got the figures out of the way with a wealthy client and feels the need to embark on brief innocuous banter to suggest his position as co-equal, if not in the social hierarchy, at least in matters of the world.
“You’ve been teaching out here, haven’t you? Edwards told me. At Albert College in Maadi — what’s it called now? — I can never remember.”
“Yes, but I’ve stopped. I’m giving private lessons.”
“But you could go back to teaching — I mean, if you wanted to. You’ve still got a resident’s permit — and a work permit, much more important?”
“Yes. But I’m not too keen. I may have to, I suppose.”
“Hmmm.”
Mr. Crowther paused and blew gently over the top of his tea, cup and saucer lifted to within an inch of his chin, little finger slightly extended, like a dowager at a tea party.
“There’s an ex-British school at Suez, isn’t there?”
“I think so. Yes. But I wouldn’t fancy going up there — was that what you meant?”
“Possibly. Edwards mentioned something about your looking for more congenial work. I’ve not been down to Suez yet. My assistant goes there sometimes, when there’s trouble on one of our boats. We used to have an honorary Consul there of course. A Greek gentleman, unfortunate business — I was just thinking. It probably wouldn’t suit you.” He fingered vaguely through my passport which had been lying on the desk in front of him along with my other papers; and then he stopped abruptly at a page near the beginning. “Born in London?” he said in astonishment. “I hadn’t realised that. I mean, that gives you dual nationality, English as well as Irish, if you wanted it. We could marry you then — you’d be a British subject, quite within our province. All we need is another passport for you — and a word with London.” He ran on in jubilation, stood up and looked through the first page of the passport against the light. “Another passport. That’s it of course! That’s the answer. Here, I’ll give you some forms to fill in.”
He seemed quite irrationally pleased with this outcome, as if it were he who had been trying to get married and not I.
“Ah! I see you went to Springhill,” he said glancing at my answers to the questionnaire under the heading “Education”—something which the wretched minor public school I’d been to in North Wales had conspicuously failed to give me.
“Yes, for a while.”
“We used to play them at cricket …”
A long time afterwards Mr. Crowther pumped my hand enthusiastically at the door, barely able to get to the goodbyes.
“You must come to our reception. Queen’s birthday. Very small do, I’m afraid. Not even official. Just a few of our friends in Cairo. After all you should be British by then. Half British anyway. You may even be married.”
We were — twenty-one days later. Henry and Bahaddin were the witnesses and Mr. Crowther officiated. The only thing I properly remember about it all was Crowther’s looking the door of his office during the short formalities …
Afterwards he smiled affably, and took us all to lunch at the Estoril. Henry, I remember, drank a little too much and spilt half a bottle of wine.
We sent a telegram to her parents and that evening went to Luxor for a week which used up the last of the money that I’d saved. It was the end of the school year too, exams were in full swing and my private lessons had dwindled to nothing.
10
June 13, the Queen’s birthday: the maple leaf over the British Embassy buildings wrapped around the flag post, a mourning drape in the still air, the heat rising like a smack in the face from the yellow, burning streets; kites motionless in the sky far away, specks in the distance, like aeroplanes, until they dipped suddenly, swerving over the trees on Gezira Island: the old Peugeot taxis braying across Kasr el Nil bridge, and the Mercedes, gliding by, curtained against the glare: a group of farmers up from the country, with sheep and goats and huge shallow metal dishes of simmering beans, camping under sheets of corrugated paper against the corniche in front of Shepheard’s Hotel. The harsh amplified prayers from a mosque at the corner of El Trahir: June 13, the Queen’s birthday.
We slunk into the Embassy grounds through the old ballroom at the back of the Residency which had been turned into the British Council’s library. Crowther’s Mrs. French took our cards at the desk for returned books, the muted crackle of Dimbleby’s commentary on Trooping the Colour coming from a portable radio behind her. Henry had come with us and we went on into the gardens in front of the Residency which ran down to the high wall which now formed one side of the corniche; before, the lawns had gone right to the banks of the river; before Suez.
It was late afternoon and the heat was dying a little and it was just bearable if one didn’t move around too much, and stayed under the flowering trees — flame trees and bougainvillea — which bordered the lawn on either side. Henry caught a suffragi in a red sash rushing past us with a tray of martinis and we gulped the warm mixture.
“Mr. and Mrs. Marlow!”
Mr. Crowther detached himself from a group of elderly ladies who were sitting on little gilded chairs at trestle tables and sped towards us with remarkable purpose — quite out of keeping with our importance as guests. A Sudanese bishop and an American in huge brogues and a Cabot Lodge tropical outfit just in front of us turned quite huffy as he passed them by with only the most perfunctory greetings.
“How nice to see you. And you’ve got drinks. How was Luxor? You stayed at the Winter Palace I hope? Not the best time of year really, though one does avoid all those awful German tourists.”
And we told him about the Valley of the Kings and Queen Hatshepsut’s temple among other inconsequential bits of chatter. But Crowther had something else on his mind; fidgeting and slightly red in the face, he seemed only to be waiting for a decent interval to pass with these opening formalities before broaching something much more important.