Beer in the Snooker Club (14 page)

And if, at such moments, you let your thoughts wander, they transcend every-day pettiness and smallness and seem to hover high up, gazing at the world detachedly and even benignly. And a perception, an awareness of the complete scene below is registered with a lucidity and a clarity which you sometimes imagine to come very briefly across during certain stages of drunkenness.

This hovering gaze which could have embraced the whole world in its scan, focused only on Edna, and with a terrible intensity I realized the extent of my love for her and also realized that we would have to part. I saw her bullied by nationalities and races and political events and revolutions and dictatorships and particularly by her own vague idealism. I held her tenderly in my arms and also saw my own shallowness and unworthiness in contrast to her deepness and sincerity.

She opened her eyes. We remained close, looking at one another.

No amount of talking or explaining will really bring two lovers or two friends closer than they can be in silence.

‘Please, Ram,’ she whispered. ‘Go away now.’

I dressed quietly and went out. Downstairs was Yehia’s car, which I had borrowed the night before and in which we had driven to the Pyramids.

I drove the car to Yehia’s, then walked home.

‘Haven’t you spent the night here?’ my mother asked.

‘No.’

‘Where, then?’

‘I was with Yehia,’ I said.

After a while she asked me what Yehia was now doing.

‘He’s at the university,’ I said.

‘Really? Hasn’t he finished his studies yet?’

‘No.’

‘Very strange. How long has he been at the university?’

‘Ten years.’

‘Of course they’re very rich,’ she said. ‘His mother was with me in school, you know. What
fou-rires
at the
pensionnat
! I remember the
mère-supérieure
insisting on putting us in different dormitories, we were such devils when together. She was very lucky, of course; Yehia’s father is a man
très comme-il-faut
. Deauville each year, my dear, and one beautiful mistress after another.’ She moved her head from side to side in appreciation.

‘I went to tante Noumi yesterday,’ I said.

‘
Tu as bien fait
, Ram. I am very happy you went to see her. I am always hoping you become good friends with your cousin Mounir. He is becoming very influential.
Il est trés élégant, ce garçon;
and then think of the future you may have with your aunt’s influence behind you. Can’t you see yourself, Ambassador in a European country? You have all the qualities for it; tall, good-looking, languages and then,
of course, your English education.
Un vrai gentleman
. People like you are very rare nowadays.’ Then she said she hoped I hadn’t gone empty-handed to my aunt, and I laughed.

‘Your father was very considerate in such matters,’ she said, ‘although he didn’t really belong to our milieu.
Dire à quoi nous sommes arrivés
, Ram. You were too young to remember my father’s house; what luxury. The servants, handsome Sudanese with starched robes and red bands round their waists … even your aunt Noumi doesn’t live in the style we were brought up in.’

We both lit cigarettes.

‘And what did you tell your aunt?’

‘I asked her to give me a thousand pounds,’ I said.

‘A thousand pounds? Why do you want so much? You haven’t been gambling again?’

‘No.’

‘What, then?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I want to go and live in Europe for a while.’

‘Be reasonable, my son.
Au fond
I don’t blame you. Where is the cosmopolitan life we led? Of course if you get into the Diplomatic Corps …’

I went outside to the balcony for a while, then came back.

‘As I was telling Mimi yesterday,’ my mother continued, ‘the boy has travelled and it is difficult for him to work here the same as everyone else.’

‘Do you think I can become Ambassador to London?’ I asked.

‘Why not? Who is our Ambassador there now?’

‘There is none.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? Of course you can’t become Ambassador straight away; you’re too young for one thing.’

‘Pity,’ I said. I went to my room and lay down on my bed.

Our servant, Corrollos, told me breakfast was ready. He is a Copt like us, Corrollos, with all the characteristic Coptic traits: the slyness and perpetual intrigue, the sychophancy, even his thin face with the blue veins sticking out at the temples, is us. He is always bending down a little, devouring the floor. He has been with us for twenty-five years.

‘How is your wife, Corrollos?’

He bent even further down and said she was very sick, bless me for asking.

‘And your children?’

God keep me, he was trying to save enough money to have a doctor look at them.

‘I’ll get one of my doctor friends to see them,’ I said.

Impossible, he said. The likes of him could only afford the very cheapest of doctors.

‘You’ll not have to pay anything.’

He shook his head and brushed the carpet with his
hand
.

‘Are you sick, too?’

The Saviour knew, he was not thinking about himself; he was going to die soon anyway.

We Copts have something about being sick. I sprang out of bed and went to my mother.

‘You don’t look well,’ I told her.

‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to tell you, but I am a very sick person. I have never recovered from my operation.’

I smoked after breakfast and then didn’t know what to do with myself. I walked three times round my room, then to
the balcony, back to my room, and then to the sitting-room and my mother. A propos of nothing she suddenly said she had sacrificed her life for me.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘You cannot imagine …’

‘I can, Mummy. I
know
you have sacrificed your life for me.’

‘Ever since …’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Ever since you married.’

My mother didn’t love her husband, and she believes she married him solely to give me a respectable father. The fact that she conceived me two years after her marriage, she finds irrelevant. I was responsible for the whole thing.

‘Thank you, Mummy,’ I said.

I took a bath and dressed carefully. There is a tailor in old Cairo who has been cutting suits for our family for years. I go to him, choose a cloth, have it tailored, and somehow the bill is mysteriously paid.

‘Where are you going?’ my mother asked.

I stood at the door jingling the house-keys in my pocket. I didn’t know where I was going.

‘To the club,’ I decided.

There is something about that club. Just walking along the drive from the gate to the club-house, seeing the perfectly-kept lawns on either side, the specially-designed street-lamps hovering above you, the white stones lining the road, the car-park, and then the croquet lawn –
croquet!
a place where middle-aged people play croquet. Imagine being a
member
of a place where middle-aged people play croquet. This ease; this glide from one place to another; the crispy
notes in crocodile wallets; the elegant women floating here and there. Mobile sculptures. And then into the club-house, through it, and out to the swimming-pool where members move as though they were a soft breeze.

The strange thing about this club is that in the early days of the revolution, it was condemned as a symbol of exploitation and was taken over by a committee or something like that. Well, all the members are still members, with a few additional military members. I repeat the word ‘members’
à propos
the military newcomers, because they too have acquired this floating, breeze-like, ethereal quality.

I put my hand in my pocket and walked slowly towards the club-house. A beautiful open Mercedes drove past me and someone waved. I waved back. We all know each other. We know each other, all about each other, and how much land and money we possess. We also marry between us. The Moslem members marry Moslem members, and the Copts marry Copts.

‘Good morning, Ram.’

‘Good morning, sir.’ We didn’t shake hands. If we had carried sticks or umbrellas for support, we would both have stood at an inclined vertical, and anyone watching from a distance would have seen two tulips swaying slightly into a brief encounter. As it was, however, we had no sticks; so we stood, hand in pocket, smiling at each other.

The trouble with me is that I like that. I
like
to put my hand in my pocket with a bit of cuff showing; a suspicion of waistcoat under my coat, and a strip of handkerchief in my breast pocket. I like it. I am
aware
that I like it.

‘How are you?’

‘Very well, thank you, sir. How is Lady Tannely?’

‘Very happy indeed to be back here. She adores this country and considers it her home.’ I had lost my virginity to Lady Tannely, so had many of the young members. She took you home when you were sixteen or so, to teach her Arabic, she’d say; and while you were dying of excitement and love, she would be all vivacious and hysterical with anticipation. Then suddenly, you’d find yourself in bed with her and all at once she’d turn into a cold slab of marble who’d tell you, afterwards, ‘now wasn’t that nice?’ A terrible disillusionment.

I speak English without an accent, and yet, talking to him, slowly and involuntarily, an Oxfordish tinge began to colour my speech; and when I tried to erase that accent, I found it difficult to do so. Strange.

‘We spent a charming evening at your aunt’s residence,’ he said. You notice the word ‘residence’ of course. There it is;
Residence
.

‘Charming,’ he said.

My aunt considers it suitable for her son Mounir to have Lady Tannely as ‘mistress’. (I put the word ‘mistress’ in inverted commas because you can’t have Lady Tannely as mistress. You just f— her.) Hence the charming evenings at my aunt’s Pyramid Road villa. Of course Mounir has never so much as touched Lady Tannely. Dinner parties! Jesus, he
is
stupid, that boy. Lady Tannely picks you if she wants you and that’s that. I like her, though.

‘Do you vote Labour?’ I suddenly asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Do you vote Labour?’ I repeated.

‘My dear chap, I’ve never been interested in politics.’

‘Suez,’ I said.

‘Oh,
that
was a blunder.’

‘Twenty-five thousand Egyptians dead,’ I exaggerated.

‘So many? Oh,
à la guerre comme à la guerre
 …’ and he laughed. I laughed too, and we parted.

The word ‘Egypt’ evokes in you, I suppose, a scene of a fellah trudging home in the twilight, a spade over his shoulder, and his son leading a cow behind him. Well, Egypt is a place where middle-aged people play croquet. I don’t know why this croquet thing suddenly impressed me. I have passed that lawn thousands of times without ever thinking about it. I turned round and sat on a bench to watch some people play. One of them was the same Mimi my mother had mentioned earlier on. All our young Mimis and Tatas and Sousous grow up and get married and have children, and their children have children, but they still remain young Mimis and Tatas and Sousous. This particular Mimi is a tall one with flat feet and a camelly walk. Any moment now, you’d think, she was going to pitch forward and kiss the ground. She has a bit of an Adam’s apple too. Together with the Tatas and the Sousous and my mother, she went to the French
pensionnat
. As a child I used to go and fetch my girl cousins from the same
pensionnat
, with the chauffeurs. It was a very severe place and you had to mention the girl’s secret number through a small hole before the door was, reluctantly you’d think, just hardly opened and a pale, black-dressed figure emerged and started putting on makeup before it even reached the car.

‘Coucou!’ Mimi called to me and waved.

‘Coucou!’ I called back. I tell you, I have been coucouing since I learnt to speak, but here I am, my coucou all self-conscious, and I am aware of sitting there calling ‘coucou’.
It is because of reading an article the day before in the
New Statesman
about the problems of irrigation in India. How can you read an article in the
New Statesman
about the problems of irrigation in India, and then sit down and shout ‘coucou’?

‘Coucou,’ I repeated.

‘He’s the nephew of …’ I heard her translate me to a man with a croquet mallet. I watched him, his mallet almost horizontal because of his belly, finally discovering he had to hang it sideways if it were ever to reach the ball. No, but this complete detachment from the game. Later on Mimi would phone my mother and say: ‘I played croquet today … what fun.’

Mimi swung her neck in my direction and humptily followed it.

‘Cochon
,
’
she said, playfully brandishing her mallet at me, ‘you are causing your mother endless worry with your political nonsense.’

‘You look beautiful in those slacks, Mimi,’ I said.

‘So you don’t call me
Tante
Mimi any more?
Cochon
, if I were a few years younger, I’d have an affair with you. I bought them at Kirka. You should see the beautiful things that are starting to come from Italy, Ram; makes all the stuff we’ve been wearing up to now seem rags. Come and play with us. Do you know who that is?’ she whispered. She told me who he was as he came towards us.

‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha,’ he said very quietly, putting his hand on my shoulder and shaking me slightly. Then he caught the lobe of my ear and pulled it. ‘I am a very great friend of your aunt,’ he said, ‘ha ha ha ha ha.’

‘C’est un homme charmant
,
’
Mimi told me.

I went up the steps and into the club-house. This solid spaciousness enveloped me in its ease. I could go straight across the entrance hall to the swimming-pool, in the grand veranda, and on down the steps to the playing fields and the foreign governesses, or I could turn right to the bridge room and the lounges. I stood undecided. From where I was, I could see a game of polo was due to start. It is a point of honour with polo players to keep their backs straight. I watched one examining the knee of a horse. He knelt, one knee to the ground in a worshipping posture, and extended his arms in royal elegance. Talk about the son leading the cow behind his father. Dukes of Edinburgh, all.