Arctic Summer (29 page)

Of course it was true: his main, abiding fear was for Mohammed. He saw everything now through his eyes. His loyalties had crossed the front lines and there were whole days when he felt quite limp with anxiety and outrage. When he read about Egyptians being arrested, Egyptians being shot or jailed, he saw only Mohammed's face. Though the outlets for anger were small, limited to rhetorical flourishes in certain newspapers.

Then, in the middle of the upheavals, a letter came, written in French, from a village near Mansourah. Mohammed had been arrested, it told him; he would be in jail for six months.

Nothing more was explained, but it sent Morgan into panic. He wrote back immediately, but the reply that followed didn't make the situation any clearer. All that he understood was that a fine of ten pounds needed to be paid, or Mohammed's sentence would be extended by three months. He paid the fine.

At the same time, the news coming in from India was equally disturbing. First reports were short on detail, but there had been some kind of massacre in Amritsar. A British general, confronted by a seditious crowd, had decided to let loose on them with rifle-fire.

Morgan's own memory of Amritsar was sketchy: he had visited the Golden Temple hastily, between trains, under a threatening storm, and retained only a vague impression of water and marble, and of holy books being fanned to keep them clean of impurities. He didn't know anybody there. So it was hard to visualise the shooting, the panic, the death, in the way that he could in Egypt. Perhaps because it was far from the recent theatre of war, India had fallen somewhat off the mental map of late.

Out of these events, a longing to see Masood came over him. He had avoided thinking of his Indian friend for some time, but now he allowed himself to dwell on him again and on some of what had passed between them. That tall, powerful frame, that long, handsome face with its despondent eyes and droopy moustache! Oh, he had missed him, though he couldn't allow himself to know it; he had felt the physical distance between them intensely, and the more painful distance that had opened between their lives, which was impossible to measure.

Masood was at present in Paris, attached in some vague, informal way to the Peace Conference. He would be drifting over the Channel shortly, and would continue to drift afterwards, among his English friends—at least one of whom was filled with anxiety at the prospect. Morgan wanted the coming reunion so badly that he pretended he didn't want it at all.

But when the moment finally arrived, it was as if Morgan was twenty-seven again and Masood was coming for his first Latin lesson. He was late, as always, and with the same distracted assurance he'd shown on their first meeting. Though age was wearing on him—he was noticeably stouter, his face a little looser—he remained tall and comely, his eyes were still sad, and his talent for rhetoric was undimmed. “Ah, my first and only English friend,” he cried, picking Morgan up in his arms and planting kisses on the top of his head. “I have thought of nothing but this doorstep since setting foot in Europe!”

It wasn't true—he had bought a whole new wardrobe in Paris and had seen many mutual friends already in London—but Morgan forgave him everything.

“I am happy to see you, Masood.”

“Happy?
Happy?
What a pale, pathetic English word. You must not be ‘happy' to see me. No, you must be enraptured, transported! You must be
overjoyed
. I have no use for ‘happy'. Let me come inside, please, I am desperate for tea.”

He greeted Lily and the maids with the same mournful ebullience; he had brought gifts for everybody, and his large spirit infected them all. He overflowed a sofa languidly, and his voice twined through the house. He had become very loud and orotund, and his inertia was wearying, but by the time he moved on a couple of days later the mood that hung over England like a pall seemed to have lifted a little.

Morgan saw him again a few times over the coming weeks. The vague dread of anticipation had given way to a renewal of intimacy. They didn't talk about what had happened in India; that was on the other side of the world. Instead they spoke about the last six years and how their lives had changed.

It took Morgan a while to mention Mohammed. Against all logic, he felt that this transfer of affections somehow constituted a betrayal. But eventually, blushing and stammering, he came out with it. “I had what you might call a romance. Or no, more accurately, it was love. While in Egypt.”

“Yes, yes, it was obvious. You were dissembling with me.”

“I was angry with you.”

“I know, I am guilty of everything, I deserve the most extreme punishment, but let's not talk about that now. I want to hear about your great love affair. I demand to know everything.”

They were circling the pond in Regent's Park at the time, a long autumn afternoon waning slowly around them, and the happy commotion of children and dogs and ducks only underscored for Morgan the strangeness of what he was describing. Had he really done those things? None of it sounded real. Yet once he started speaking, he couldn't hold back.

When Morgan mentioned Mohammed's child, he saw Masood flinch.

“He has named his son after you?”

“Yes, there is a little baby Egyptian named Morgan. Well, it is only his second name, but still. I am very pleased. Born last month.”

He couldn't help himself; he wanted to punish Masood a little. His Indian friend by now had two sons, Anwar and Akbar. He had asked Morgan in an airy way whether he would be a guardian to his boys, but it was a gesture, nothing more, and both of them knew it.

Now Masood sighed and waved a hand and said, “I will name all my future children in your honour.”

“No, you won't. You will promise and promise, and do nothing.”

“I have already conceded, I am a failure as a friend. Forgive your wretched servant, please, who cares only for your welfare.” Masood took his hand and slapped him lightly on the wrist.

“What was that for?”

“It is punishment, for your recklessness.”

“Do you think I have been reckless?”

“You have been courting danger, yes. You know it very well.”

“But you don't resent my happiness?”

“How could I, when it is what I want most in the world? I am glad for you, my dear fellow. But you must promise me that you will be more sensible and careful in the future. What is going on now with this tram conductor of yours?”

Mohammed's experience had wrecked the whole year for Morgan, the more so because he couldn't speak openly about it. Now he did, and the relief was palpable. Mohammed had eventually been released from prison, after four months inside. Only then had he related what had happened. In his version, two Australian soldiers had tried to sell him a firearm, which was tempting, because of the lawless state of the country. But he had refused their price, insulting them in the process, and in revenge they had had him arrested for trying to buy a weapon. It was a serious charge. He had been sentenced to six months' hard labour and a ten pound fine. In prison, he had been beaten and badly fed and treated with contempt.

Morgan couldn't entirely believe Mohammed's account of buying the gun, but he didn't say so, out of loyalty. And there were other elements of the story that he couldn't mention either—such as, for example, that Mohammed had performed sexual favours on the guards in order to obtain leniency, nor that he spoke openly now of his hatred for the English, calling them cruel, and of his desire for revenge. These things might not reflect well on his friend.

Masood listened calmly, nodding from time to time. In the end he merely said, “It is the same in India.”

“Not so bad, surely?”

“Oh, yes, it is bad. It is all up with you English and your Empire. A matter of time now, you will see. You will be pushed back onto your little island.”

“Where you have always been a most welcome guest, I might add.” He upset himself and almost cried. “It is not
my
Empire, Masood, why will you never admit it?”

“Friendship is your Empire, Morgan, I know that very well. I am only teasing you. Please remember that you were a welcome guest in India too. Though you are too afraid to come back.”

“I'm not afraid of it.”

“When will you come?”

“I don't know, this isn't the time to decide. Perhaps it won't be soon. I have my mother to think of. I abandoned her during the War, I can't do it so quickly again.”

But he continued to think about it, and the subject returned a few weeks later, just before Masood's departure. Morgan had gone down to London to see him and they were sitting in the garden of a mutual friend, chatting inconsequentially, when a bereft sensation came over him. “Perhaps,” he mused aloud, “I must come out to India again, if I am ever to finish my novel.”

“Your novel! Your Indian novel!” It was as if the idea were striking Masood for the very first time. “How is it going? Are you close to completing it?”

Morgan laughed with unfeigned merriment. “It's hopeless, really. I should throw it away.”

“Oh, nonsense, you are only being modest. I know you too well. It is a work of genius and it is almost done.”

But it wasn't a work of genius and it was nowhere near done. Over the last six years—since starting
Maurice
—he had barely touched it. Not long after getting back to England, he had made a serious attempt to pick it up again, but that had ended quickly after a few days. He was usually a calm and methodical worker, but the words wouldn't join in any sensible way. There had been a terrible afternoon when he had come close to screaming dementedly over it, alone in the attic. He had put it away after that and not looked at it again.

Instead he had occupied himself with his articles and his Alexandrian book. He was always busy, always working, but none of it was creative and at certain moments, when this came clear to him, he fell into despondency. He saw his middle years as a continuation of the same. He had a small paunch and the beginnings of baldness, and the reddish tinge of his nose seemed permanent. He felt he was a spent force, his finest time somewhere behind him. He didn't think he would ever complete his novel.

 

* * *

 

And yet, after Masood had finally sailed, the Indian story remained behind, bothering him. As before, in India, Masood's absence enlarged the presence of his book. By now he had a curious relationship with all that unfinished material. He could see it from a little way off, with its promise and its shortcomings. There was something in it, something unformed as yet, which pulled at him. But in order to proceed, he would have to become involved in it again, with the almost sensual imagining that its private world required. He wasn't sure how to do that.

“Simply by taking up your pen,” Leonard Woolf told him.

There weren't many people before whom he could throw out his writerly woes, but with the Woolfs he could. They paid such attention! Though without always fully understanding.

“It's not that simple,” he protested. “I do take up my pen. I am fingering the keys, as it were, but I seem to produce only discords so far.”

“Well, persist. Your problems are not unusual.”

“Do you think so?” Morgan was genuinely surprised; his lameness felt unique to him. “I was reading it over recently and I lost all hope.”

“No, don't thwart yourself. Really, you are worse than Virginia. You have to finish. If I could order you, I would.”

This conversation was only possible because for once they were alone. A great busyness usually surrounded the Woolfs, but today the entourage had withdrawn. He knew everybody in the group that had accreted around them; as individuals he mostly liked them, but collectively they made him shrink a little. They were all so interwoven and intimate, changing relationships and sexual tastes the way other people changed hats. To say nothing of their cleverness, which was sometimes cruel, and used against friend and enemy indiscriminately. He couldn't air his failures too completely in front of them, and it was mostly to Leonard and Virginia that he turned.

“I told Masood that perhaps I need to go back to India,” he said now. “The place is vague in my mind, so much has come between. Egypt, the War, other writing. I have almost forgotten it.”

“Go back then,” Leonard told him brusquely. “If that is what you need to do.”

The advice was so hard-edged that it seemed like an object. Leonard did not speak whimsically. And of course, he had spent years of his own life out there, in the East; he knew very well what was involved.

Morgan said faintly, “Perhaps I will.”

Virginia was sitting nearby, smoking one of her shag cigarettes. Her presence had an intensity that made his spirit lean backward. Yet he had also grown to like her, with her long, lantern-shaped face, inhabited by sharp intelligence. She studied Morgan intently with the two bright nails of her eyes, then told him, “You know, I can't imagine you there.”

“But I have been there already. For six months.”

“Yes, I know. You corresponded with me. I am simply saying I cannot picture you in that place. The failure is mine.”

Though somehow, with Virginia, the failure seemed always to be his.

 

* * *

 

His Alexandrian book was done and in the aftermath there was little to keep him occupied. His old talent for idleness took over, with its attendant self-reproach. Months passed, leaving no mark.

He kept in touch with Mohammed, of course, but the news that came wasn't good. Little baby Morgan had sickened and died, and that was sad enough. But Morgan had never seen the child and his very existence seemed like a fable. Far more real and distressing was that Mohammed's health was also under strain. Since his time in prison, the old sickness, consumption or whatever it was, had returned. And he still struggled for work, and was noticeably more bitter that his English friend couldn't help him.