‘You were at the British school in Heliopolis, then?’ Mrs Taufiq seemed anxious to confirm a point in Graham’s past which I had not mentioned.
‘Briefly. Just for two terms. Before I went on to Victoria College.’
‘You were with Pendlebury in Heliopolis — no? And the Frenchman. What was his name? Jabovitch. Well, Franco-Russian. White Russian,’ Mrs Taufiq added as if the man had been a bad wine. ‘With a monocle.’
‘Pendlebury, yes. He was the head in my time. But the other fellow — with a monocle?’
I’d known about Pendlebury from the files McCoy had got together. But the Franco-Russian was outside my area completely. There’d been nothing on him. I couldn’t therefore risk any flat confirmation or denial.
‘You must have known him,’ Mrs Taufiq went on. ‘I had a daughter there at the time who used to give imitations of him when she came home. Quite shocking.’
If this was a test I had to accept it full face. I smiled at Mrs Taufiq, almost lovingly, taking her eye to eye, letting the creases gather sagely all over my face.
‘You know, it’s such a long while ago. And there were so many odd foreigners about in Cairo then. Monocles were the least of it. Did you ever come across Malt? Did English in Heliopolis for a while. Used to come to class in a dressing-gown and throw books at the dunderheads from the gallery in assembly hall. Brilliant man, a fine scholar, quite out of his depth with children. Fell under a train at Bab-el-Luk on Black Saturday. Remember — when they burnt Shepheard’s? There was so much going on then I’ve really forgotten Jabovitch.’
She tried to come in again but I didn’t let her.
‘I was on the terrace of Shepheard’s that morning, in fact. With one of the British Council men. Man named Beresford, small fellow with red hair. You must have come across him. Lived in Garden City, always giving parties.’
The trick was to turn the questions back to her, allowing only the facts I knew about Graham to emerge, embellished by my own later knowledge of the city — to pour out the authorised version of my tale, leaving no moment for her to get a finger in a crack and prise open the invention. Wheel stood by as audience for the performance.
‘I loved Egypt, you know. I was able to get around quite a bit with the Council, used to give lectures — in Tanta, Zagazig, Alex. Doing the Lake Poets in some stuffy upstairs room looking over the tram terminus to a lot of dazed old ladies and young nationalists who stood up at the back and wanted to know what Wordsworth had to do with the liberation of the Egyptian people — there were no daffodils in Egypt, of course — and when we were getting out of the Canal Zone?’
Mrs Taufiq shared some mild laughter with Wheel. I felt I’d passed. I didn’t expect any more questions. And there were none. Instead Mrs Taufiq started to speak of the city of Cairo and its people in the same tones of affectionate remembrance as I myself had used.
‘Yes, I must have been at some of your lectures. I used to go quite often to the Council.’ She looked at me carefully, with appreciation or irony I couldn’t say. ‘You know, it’s funny, because although I don’t remember you, Mr Graham, I remember someone very like you in Cairo. Not in the mid-fifties, but a few years later. A teacher at Victoria College in Maadi where my son was. I saw him once or twice at the school and at the Sporting Club there. An Irishman, I think. I don’t remember his name. Not you, of course, because this was after Suez. But like you. Tall, chatty, rather liked jokes.’
Mrs Taufiq drew out each of these last descriptions slowly, as though in doing so, she could the better resurrect the total memory of this person, give the cloudy mixtures time to coagulate and take a shape which she could then drive through her mind, from the past to the present, into a clear vision and identity.
I waited, petrified. She was looking for myself, trying to disinter something as deeply buried as anything Graham possessed in the same place and time.
‘Quite a good-looking fellow,’ she went on, distantly, with regret, as though this favourable attribute was an unfortunate hurdle in the journey of recall and she was sad that I lacked a squint or a gammy leg which would have immediately confirmed her ageing perceptions.
‘Oh yes?’ I said lightly.
‘Yes. I remember he married the daughter of some friends of mine. The Girgises in Maadi. It came to a bad end I seem to remember.’
I took out Graham’s pipe with its chipped bowl and filled it with the aromatic Dutch tobacco he used.
Mrs Taufiq paused, thinking. I lit a match and the little steel room was filled with sweetness. She seemed to have given herself over to the memory of it all, completely — to someone, to something that had happened on an evening long ago on a terrace in Maadi, as if the tobacco had become a little madeleine for her and through its aroma she was just on the point of breaking into time and recapturing the past. I felt her thoughts brush past and around me, lightly but insistently, searching for the key, disembodied characteristics looking for a name.
But she failed in her arithmetic, or seemed to have done. She looked at me again, making a last attempt, wrinkling her eyes up quizzically, then giving the blurred negative up for lost. Yet even if she had failed to identify me, I wasn’t sure at all of the innocence of her attempt.
‘Well, that’s a coincidence,’ I filled the silence.
‘Come on, Soheir,’ Wheel broke in lightly. ‘You’re always seeing ghosts —’
‘Oh yes. Always,’ she interrupted. ‘Farouk, Nasser, the Maadi Sporting Club — all ghosts —’
‘And now you’re seeing Mr Graham here — who’s from Scotland — as an Irishman on the hard courts in Maadi and holding the bar up afterwards with a gin sling. You know, Soheir — you’ll have to write your memoirs. I’ve always told you. She’s full of coincidences.’ Wheel turned to me. ‘Everything links up in the end, isn’t that right, Soheir? Full circle, in the eastern mythology. The Wheel of Karma, you used to call me. Mr Graham was a handsome dragon in a previous incarnation. She goes big on all that sort of thing, Mr Graham,’ Wheel added, gently ribbing her. ‘I was a Manhattan Indian — remember, Soheir? — before the Dutch bought me out for twenty-four dollars and a string of beads. Don’t take any notice of her, Mr Graham, or she’ll have you in on one of her table-tapping sessions. Talk about coincidences — if Mr Graham looks like your friend in Maadi, then you’re Mrs Meir. I’ve always told you. Sitting down — couldn’t tell you apart.’
This must have been an old joke between them and indeed there was a distinct resemblance. But at the moment Mrs Taufiq wasn’t in a mood for jokes. She was still thinking.
‘No, Adam. It’s got nothing to do with mysticism. It’s just a likeness, that’s all. A nice likeness.’ She looked up at me again. ‘What was that Irishman’s name?’
‘That’s the only thing with Soheir,’ Wheel said, chatting to me on the way back to his office. ‘She has this spiritual kick, a little of the crystal ball. Take no notice. It doesn’t mean a thing.’
‘I’m sure,’ I lied. ‘Of course.’ And I drew hard on Graham’s pipe like a lifeline.
‘Come on. I’ll introduce you to the Delegates’ Lounge. Best bar in New York. You could use a beer, no? Cultural shock — arrival in the New World, tall buildings, going round in circles. Don’t want you jumping out a window on your first day.’