Beer in the Snooker Club (15 page)

I felt like having a cold beer and eating salted peanuts by the pool; then a cigarette and another beer and more peanuts. I could do it, of course, even though I had no money. But I knew the pattern too well; the depression afterwards and the self-disgust.

I watched the swimmers. The club has no uniform, but there is a tiny, never-mentioned badge you wear when you are swimming. It doesn’t matter how expensive your bathing costume is, if it doesn’t bear the sign of Jantzen – a woman diving – you are not a genuine member. I remember one of my girl-cousins having a costume specially knit for her, and the matter-of-fact way she sewed an old Jantzen badge to it. That’s the trouble with me, you see. I stand there being bloody superior, and then I remember that my bathing costume also bears the sign of the
élite
. I remember that I have played croquet, and that if I played polo, I also would keep my back straight. No, I thought, definitely no drinking today.

‘Ram Bey. They are looking for a fourth in the bridge
room.’ The servants in the club have seen us grow up and call us by our Christian names, adding such honorific titles as ‘Bey’ and ‘Pasha’.

‘Who are they, Hassan?’

‘Your cousin Mounir,’ he said, ‘and two American ladies.’

‘Which ones, Hassan?’

‘They are new, Ram Bey.’ Then he told me they were very pretty. I had to be careful, since if I lost, I wouldn’t be able to pay.

‘Who is behind the bar this morning?’

‘Ali.’ That was bad. He refuses to lend money out of the till.

‘Half-half,’ Hassan said in English, and slipped me a five-pound note. ‘But please, Ram Bey, do not partner Mounir Effendi.’ There you are – Effendi being the least of the honorific titles.

The last time I had seen Mounir had been in a night-club, and then we had just ignored each other. Hassan vanished and I walked slowly towards the bridge room.

‘Hi there, Ram, how are things?’ my cousin Mounir shouted. ‘Sure am glad to see you. We’re looking for a fourth; inclined?’

‘Inclined,’ I said, ‘in a horizontal way.’ Which was stupid, but there is something about Mounir which drives me to say and do things alien to my nature. His American accent irritated me as usual, although only a short while earlier I myself had put on an accent with Lady Tannely’s husband. I pretended I wasn’t particularly noticing the two women he was with. They were both pretty in that neat and smart American way; the type you imagine to be of Scandinavian
origin; a bit hard. Women, you feel, who can look after themselves and so have sacrificed a bit of their femininity. Intelligent to a certain limit, although they would never recognize that limit. But very attractive.

One of them, slightly older than the other, said: ‘I’m Caroline, and that’s Sue. Now let’s get this straight; do you play Culbertson and the Blackwood-four-no-trumps, or are you Acol?’ I didn’t like her.

‘I’m Ram,’ I said, and shook hands with them, which seemed rather a strange thing to do.

‘Sure is nice to play with you again, Ram. What …’

‘Whisky,’ I said.

‘This guy’s my cousin,’ he said.

‘We’ll cut for partners,’ I said, ignoring Mounir, ‘and not change.’

‘Why not?’ Caroline asked.

‘You get to know your partner’s game.’

‘Sue and I will play together,’ she said.

‘We’ll cut,’ I insisted. There was a war going on between this Caroline and myself already. It seems difficult to imagine that there was an age when man was gallant to woman and kissed her hand and her desire was a command. To me, it is a little bit possible to imagine such a time, because gallantries, in Egypt, are still practised after a fashion and welcomed by the women. But I know that to be conspicuously gallant to the average European or American woman, makes her despise you. I don’t know why I think of that, except that this very hostility at the beginning with women I find attractive always seems to lead to something more than a passing acquaintance.

‘How much are we playing for?’ I asked.

‘A pound a hundred,’ Caroline said. A pound a hundred. I have played a pound a hundred before, but then it was gambling, real gambling with my sleeves rolled, and drinking coffee, and a dozen people watching. An event, what. The five pounds in my pocket suddenly became worth a shilling.

‘Sure thing,’ Mounir said, ‘it’s the usual.’ The liar; but then he loves to take his cheque book out and sign a cheque. He looked at me. He knew he’d have to pay my losses if I didn’t win.

‘All right,’ I said.

We decided to cut for partners after all and I found myself stuck with Mounir, when he suddenly shouted: ‘For cryin’ out loud, this deck’s been used before!’ This is typical Mounir. He ordered a new pack of cards, and I seized the opportunity to cut again, and partnered Sue. She played with automatic dexterity probably born of long practice, but which left you wondering whether she possessed any imagination. We won the first three rubbers.

‘Moony!’ Caroline screamed for the third time, ‘I’ve passed
twice
.’ I doubled and they went down again.

Mounir revoked.

‘Moony! You are the limit!’

‘Sure am not concentrating.’

The four of us were drinking quite a bit. When you sit with Mounir and accept a whisky, the waiter automatically serves you a new glass as soon as the one you have is empty. The noise from the swimming-pool – you can always detect swimming-pools from a distance, children seem to have a cry peculiar to them – was barely audible in the bridge room. The strong sun outside and the comparative darkness
of the room, the coolness, the sort of hush you can hear, and the whisky – everything mingled with beautiful Sue and Caroline – would have been nice and even briefly perfect, if it hadn’t been for Caroline giving Mounir hell:

‘Moony, you’ve seen me discard spades
twice …
’

‘I sure did …’

‘And then,’ she continued, ‘you have the cheek, the darned cheek, to lead hearts.’

‘I sure …’ he started, and I burst out laughing.

‘I’m glad
you
are enjoying yourself,’ she said coldly.

‘I am,’ I said.

‘That’s fine.’

‘It is.’

There was silence. Even Mounir, intoxicated because he doesn’t drink much as a rule, sensed danger. But quite unexpectedly, Caroline smiled and I smiled back and we became friends. I tell you, it’s strange with American or European women.

‘I’ll partner Mounir in the next rubber,’ I said.

‘I hope you can afford it.’

‘Fact is, I can’t.’ Suddenly it pleased me to be poor in that room; I even wished I were genuinely poor and unable to eat enough. But then I wouldn’t be in the club, and anywhere else but in the club it is very unattractive to be poor.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Caroline said. I insisted on it.

‘I’ll ask Moony,’ she said. ‘Moony, is your cousin poor?’

‘He sure knows if he needs anything, all he has to do is to ask me.’

We stopped playing while we were speaking and were just about to resume, when a tall, plumpish man in his
forties came and put his hands on Caroline’s shoulders. He wore spectacles and was bald on top.

‘Hiya,’ she said, ‘working this afternoon?’

‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘We’re having trouble with a man called … let me see, Abracadabra or something like that.’ He looked in his wallet and took a card out. ‘I guess we’ll have to ask you for help, Moony.’ He gave Mounir the card.

‘Abdelkerim,’ Mounir read. He pronounced it as though to him, too, it was difficult to pronounce. ‘I’ll fix him.’

‘Jack,’ Caroline said, ‘this is Ram, Moony’s cousin.’ Jack powerfully shook hands with me and said he was very glad to meet me, and, because I liked him (he looked gentle) I said: ‘Glad to meet you too, sir.’ Call an American ‘sir’ and he’s half in love with you.

‘Are you in the same department as Moony?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Jack is my husband,’ Caroline said.

‘Are you working here?’ I asked, disappointed because I didn’t know the girls were married. Neither wore a ring. ‘I thought you were tourists.’

‘Jack is on a “fact-finding” mission,’ Caroline said.

‘Your husband on the same mission too?’ I asked Sue. She shook her head. After a while she said: ‘I am not married.’

‘Sue’s my sister,’ Jack said. ‘Ever since these two girls read
Sinuhe the Egyptian
, they’ve wanted to come here.’

Mounir called the waiter and Jack ordered a Coca Cola. The score sheets lay neglected on the table, mingled with the playing cards, and any moment now the servant would come and clear the table, throwing the score sheets away.

‘What facts,’ I asked, absent-mindedly making a neat
pack of the cards and retrieving the score sheets, ‘are you trying to find, sir?’

‘Just call him Jack,’ Caroline said.

‘Jack,’ I said.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘we are a team of people going from one country to another, living
with
the people, the
same way
the people are living, sharing their everyday lives, and finding out what they truly think of the States, and finding out how we can foster and encourage friendship between
us
and
you
.’ He pulled up a chair and sat, his face near mine, his hand on the back of my chair; every sentence emphasized neatly and concisely. I remember a pair of American young men belonging to the Mormon sect, who rang at my door in London one day. In the same neat and earnest way, they recited the fact that God is divided into three distinct entities … or is it the other way round, I forget which.

‘That’s very nice,’ I said. ‘Is this mission government sponsored?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘indirectly; but we have ourselves formed a committee and have ourselves financed the project.’

‘I hope you find it pleasant here,’ I said.

‘I guess we met with much more hospitality than we reckoned with, and the folks back in the States will be very happy to know we have a large … a very large number of friends in this country, Egypt.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ I said.

‘Sure met with great kindness,’ he said.

I didn’t want the conversation to carry away the table; there was this matter of the money I had good on the score sheet.

‘Do you play bridge, Jack?’ I asked.

‘I do,’ he said, then: ‘That’s another bond between our people and you. We have common hobbies, we play the same cards, we speak the same language.’

‘Do you play croquet in the States?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can’t say that we do. But there is no reason why we should not.’

‘Would be something more in common,’ I said.

‘Sure would.’

I folded the score sheets, unfolded them, and folded them again. There was this long pause which meant we might all leave the bridge room.

‘What’s the trouble with this man you just mentioned?’ I asked.

‘Well, this man Abracadabra,’ he smiled broadly at his joke, then suddenly pulled a very straight face, ‘… now don’t get me wrong. If I can’t pronounce his name it’s my own darned fault and I don’t mean any disrespect.’

‘Of course not,’ I said.

‘Well, this man is in charge of public relations concerning the President of Egypt; and I would like a photograph of myself shaking the hand of your President.’

I could see the picture, probably the frontispiece of one of the thousands of books in American libraries all over the world, with the caption: The author shaking hands with the President.

‘Just leave it to me,’ Mounir said.

‘Just leave it to Moony,’ I repeated. Then I asked him where they were staying, and he said with Moony.

‘It must be useful for your fact-findings,’ I said, ‘to be living with an Egyptian family.’

‘It is indeed,’ he said, ‘my observations are written
down while I am living with the very people I have come to observe.’

‘Excellent,’ I said. Then I asked him how did the standard of living compare with that in the United States.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘there is a lot of untruth said about this country, Egypt. The folks back home will be surprised when I tell them some of the facts I have accumulated while living here with your cousin and your aunt. Now let me give you a personal example of what I mean.’ His eyes wide open, his mouth practically brushing my ear, using his finger for emphasis, he unveiled the accumulated facts gathered whilst living with my cousin and my aunt. ‘Back in L.A. where we live,’ he continued, ‘we have one maid and one cook and no more. My wife Caroline has to do a lot of housework her own self. Well, here the housewife does not do any housework, she has a gardener, a chauffeur, two cooks … I believe,’ he looked at Mounir for verification, and Mounir nodded wisely, ‘and a servant for the housework.’

‘You’re doing a fine job, Jack,’ I said with an American accent. Then I stood up and said I was going to have a swim and as I might not see them later, I’d better collect this little money I had won at bridge. ‘Let me see,’ I said. ‘That’s sixty pounds you’ve lost, Caroline.’ I put the score sheet in front of her.

‘Jack, will you give Ram sixty pounds?’

‘Sure. Now let me see. How much is that in dollars?’ Whereupon Mounir took out his gold pen and calculated how much that was in dollars and then took out his cheque book enclosed in a leather jacket and started writing out a cheque for Sue. Jack gave me two hundred-dollar notes,
which is more than sixty pounds but was in accordance with Mounir’s gold-pen calculation.

‘Anyone else feel like swimming?’ I asked, in an attempt on Sue.

‘Yes,’ Caroline said, standing up. ‘See you later.’ We walked away together.

‘Have you a bathing costume with you?’

She didn’t have one. I have a locker in the club containing mine. We stood for a while watching the swimmers. Around the pool people were having lunch and drinking.

‘Gee, I do feel like swimming.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’ll get you a costume.’ I asked her to look at the people around the pool and to tell me if she found a girl of her size. She pointed to a girl reading a book beneath an umbrella.

‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ I said, and walked towards the girl.

‘Loula,’ I said, ‘be a sport and lend me your bathing costume.’

‘We were talking about you yesterday, Ram,’ she said.