The Egyptologist (65 page)

PERSONAL for Professor R. M. Trilipush

In care of the Department of Egyptian Studies
University of Harvard

Cambridge, The United States of America
29 September, 1922

My dearest Ralph,

I have just spent a positively dreary afternoon (and this on one of the rare sunny
days our moody, not to say bitchy, Heavenly Father has granted us of late). I was
forced to pass a rather exhausting hour or two with this little Australian fellow, all
spotty and orange-coloured, with a head of the most ludicrous fur. The very moment
he left I set pen to paper to you, as he was kind enough to give me your address at
dear, lovely Harvard. Harvard! How very grand! Of course, for old Balliol men like you
and me, perhaps just a bit provincial, no? Don't I recall Marlowe calling it some rather
amusing names? "The last refuge of the unemployable"?

Well, I see I've told a fib: no, I did not set pen to paper the very moment he left,
dear. I waited until he was well and truly out the building and on his way, and then I
had a bit of a sob first. I am no longer prone to dramatics, Ralph, not for a very long
time, but wretched little Mr. Ferrell, a detective of the dullest variety, delivered me the
confirmation of some very bad news. Nothing I hadn't suspected for years now, but
it's one thing to know something and quite another to
know
it, if you see my mean•
ing. When I saw your dear book autographed for Hugo's parents, well then I knew
what you of course have known for years already, what I daily feared but tried vainly
not to believe.

Calm down, ducks, I can imagine you running about in a frenzy. I have my grief
and my grievance, but no real complaint to make to you, considering the events with
fairness. Rending my garments whilst blithering to the constabulary and Hugo's
dreary family certainly holds no appeal. You are free, as far as I am concerned. As long
as I never actually meet you, I can imagine his face on you and tell myself he lives on
in you, but there are some things you should know, before you make any more fatal

errors. I should hate to see Hugo's creation meet his divine maker too soon. To begin
with, Hugo's unbearable parents are called Hector and Regina, our Hugo's persistent
claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Sit down, my angel, the story grows rather
more surprising.

I rather overdid it for Ferrell just now, but he was quite asking for it. Normally I
offer my more conservative visitors a mild and harmless atmosphere, but this one,
this vile little Aussie farmer, wasted hardly a moment before loosing his Wilde refer•
ences and sneering intolerably and asserting his taste in ladies. If I hadn't been curi•
ous to hear what he knew about our Hugo and you, I would have thrashed him
unconscious, dressed him in skirts, and left him in the street. As it was, I did perform
rather dramatically for him. The little man's face when l-preparing to ring a velvet
cord which led to nothing but a curtain-asked him if he wouldn't
"savour
an Arab
boy to go with his coffee" was all the entertainment I've had in weeks.

Also, I'm a wee bit
triste
because I have held on to the enclosed pages for years
now, despite enquiries from Hugo's family and our vulgar antipodal sleuth. But what
good are they to me now? You were led out of Egypt, not he.

I have become an impossible bore, these last years. I should be a hero to the
youth of London, and all I do is sit in my rooms, getting daily older. I had a visit the
other day from a Balliol chum, and he quite rightly chided me for becoming an old
woman, something out of Balzac. Have you read Balzac? Hugo described you as quite
maniacal for your field, but not much for other things. There is more to life than- Oh,
listen to me, as if I have any right to urge you to expand your horizons, when mine
have shrunk to a handful of letters from a dead soldier-boy.

I am enclosing five. They explain everything you need to know, except, I suppose,
where it all began. Originally, at Oxford, he was a bit of a joke, you see, just some easy
camouflage, a mutually corroborated name, a fellow we could all use when corre•
sponding with the
maters
and the
paters.
It had become dogma, you see, in our cir•
cles, that we were incurable, though there were still some glum fellows amongst us
who tried to resist, or curse our natures, or do as the aged parents demanded of us
and speak to some horrid specialist down in London, in Harley Street, who was pre•
scribing psycho-analysis, showers, travel, boxing. ("What about wrestling, love?" I
asked him.) How
all
the parents seemed to know of the same quack is beyond me. At
any rate, the boldest of us-Hugo, of course-simply said one day as the little club
was dining in our apartments, "What's wrong with you girls? You submit to this? I re-

fuse treatment. Why don't
they
seek treatment?" Delicious: the thought of our un•
comfortable fathers seeking out a cure for their persistent gynophilia from some del•
icate doctor of our choosing. We all loved Hugo, you know. I could never have him all
to myself, even then. But he was so very much what I longed to be. Women never
looked at him, of course; he was not built for them, and the beasts could sniff that out
from miles away, while my appearance always confounded them and had them
dropping their Jane Austen novels near me with significant looks in their eyes.

"Well, I refuse," said our Hugo. But some of the younger men were not as brave,
so Hugo suggested that we all tell our families that we were already cured, much bet•
ter, thanks, and thinking seriously of proposing to a young woman of good family
we'd met recently at a party. What was her name meant to be? Odd, now I cannot
produce more than Gwendolyn, but that isn't it. And, best of all, Mother and Father,
we have met the most marvellous fellow, greatest friend, just the fellow one goes up
to Oxford hoping to meet, he will probably be my second should I muster the nerve
to tell this lovely girl just how superlative I think she is, and he, well, he was flexible,
that was his charm; he was whatever you thought your parents wished to hear. If
they or that leech in Harley Street had had the audacity to discourage you from your
current circle of friends, just reassure them that you were now spending your free
moments in the company of a grand fellow, a tremendously trustworthy chap of
good breeding who was rowing like Odysseus that season, who was running like Her•
mes, who was certain to take a first in Egyptology (on this, Hugo insisted for unifor•
mity), who was engaged to Lady Mumblemumble, who was going to return to Kent
and refurbish the family Hall to its previous condition, and take his estates in hand,
show the local yeomen what a twentieth-century gentleman farmer looked like, and
on and on, to one's taste, or one's parents' taste, to be accurate. I am sure you have
heard it all, dear boy. Hugo provided an extensive biography for those fellows who
weren't terribly creative, even arranged for a few of the boys to have their photo•
graph done in sporting garb with a local man who fit the bill. We would even go to
Hugo for suggestions; "Mother wants to meet
him
next month. What shall I do?"
Hugo handled everything, calmed our nerves, scripted whatever tales we needed,
and our parents breathed easy. Our troublesome flaw acquired at school had quite
vanished at University.

I still cannot precisely make out what happened that November day in the desert.
I know what Hugo meant to do, dear Ralph. I do hope you have forgiven him that, old

man. Can you really blame him? No, no more than I can blame you for the result. (Or
blame myself: Hugo quite misconstrued my counsel.) But might you write me and
reminisce over the events? I think you owe me that filament of peace.

Did you love him, a little? I have to think you did. How could it have been other•
wise? How could he not inspire love? Especially in one whose heart is open a bit, you
who dare not speak your name. You knew him last. You could write me about Hugo
at War, describe his days.

Now then, with a packet of letters, you are all at once educated. But do not stop
being yourself! That would be, without question, the wrong moral of this tale! No, I
don't mean to discourage you, Ralph, any more than I mean to hunt you, or ask the
police to muck about in our lives. I am simply giving you the knowledge you need to
carry on, because, after all, you are our love's labour, dear boy, and you mustn't be
lost-your continued success does us honour. You are the walking expression of Hugo,
his Adam outliving him, but still performing just as he built you. Oh, by all means,
carry on, old Ralph, your Creator was proud of you, even if in a moment of weakness
he did try to destroy you. Gods can be like that. And when I hear of your triumphs
(such as this very droll little book of smut, which Hugo would have heartily admired),
I shall sing to myself that in you Hugo walks the earth still, as alive as when last I em•
braced him.

He crafted you out of bits of cloth and horsehair stuffing, just to make me laugh,
you know. Whatever you were to him, whatever he neglected to tell me, it is as
nothing compared to what we were and what a gift he made to me of you, his
Gui¬
gnol,
whose stage is everywhere and whose strings stretch all the way up to some
tastefully
louche
paradise. I can certainly imagine you today, nameless boy, talking as
much like Hugo as you can. Do you trim and stretch "good morning" into "g'd mmm-
morrrming"? Do you call people Sven when you can't recall their names? Do you bait
the gynophiles and call them ducks? Of course you do, ducks.

Only, as a favour to this acolyte, give a thought, from time to time, to what you let
die in a faraway desert. I do hope you were not cruel about it.

Your admirer,

B. Quint

16 January, 1918
Dearest Bevvy,

If you long for something cheering to enliven your dreary days in grey old
England, then I have a tale to amuse you without fail: I am being—oh, oh!
Mightn't there be a censor or two peering over your shoulder? Well, never
mind. I am an officer, and I shall slip this through to you clean somehow. I
know a wounded fellow heading home who can carry an envelope. Trust your
Go-go.

So out with it then: I am being
blackmailed
and it is delicious, I must tell
you. It has brightened my dull, dusty existence here no end. I thought I
should go mad if I had to interrogate one more of these old native women
suspected of some or another contact with the ferocious Enemy, as if the
Egyptians aren't one and all simply
delighted
to be our Allies and top chums,
from every little brown newborn to every old wrinkled labourer. Not to com•
plain overly, though. Thanks to the work, my Arabic has grown quite good, if
rather peculiar, for when I am the only interrogator in the room I am free to
try out my more
recherche
phrases on the freshest quivering, treasonous
youths.

But my tale.

You have no reason to know this, but here in our little home away from
hygiene we are but forty miles from a suburb called Tel el Kebir, an antipodal
colony, a festival of jolly waltzing matildas and swagmen, those remnants who
weren't sent off to splash their insides all over the Bosporus for what, I haven't
the slightest doubt, were unmistakably brilliant strategic considerations. For
the most part one avoids them, of course, though some of their officers are
not absolute ovinophiles and one is required to consult with them now and
again whilst in the thunderous councils of war, devising devilishly clever
coups to dazzle the fezzy heads of our wicked Enemy. I was even forced to
spend a week billeted amongst these odd marsupials,
liaising,
as we say,
though we say it in the least amusing sense of that word the Army could de•
vise. The point: one of these dear young upside-down fellows found me in
circumstances that merit illustration.

Some weeks after my return from the diggers' camp, I had quite put them
out of my mind. Then, one evening—one of those nights that make this