superior manner, his gently raised eyebrows, his air of polite attention to words that I realize cannot possibly be worth listening to, I wilt visibly, and find myself talking what I fully realize is sheer nonsense. Towards the end of the meal Mac administers a reproof.
‘Surely,’ he says gently in reply to a desperate statement of mine about the French Horn, ‘that is not so?’
He is, of course, perfectly right. It is not so.
After lunch, Max asks me what I think of Mac. I reply guardedly that he doesn’t seem to talk much. That, says Max, is an excellent thing. I have no idea, he says, what it is like to be stuck in the desert with someone who never stops talking! ‘I chose him because he seemed a silent sort of fellow.’
I admit there is something in that. Max goes on to say that he is probably shy, but will soon open up. ‘He’s probably terrified of you,’ he adds kindly.
I consider this heartening thought, but don’t feel convinced by it.
I try, however, to give myself a little mental treatment.
First of all, I say to myself, you are old enough to be Mac’s mother. You are also an authoress—a well-known authoress. Why, one of your characters has even been the clue in a Times crossword. (High-water mark of fame!) And what is more, you are the wife of the Leader of the Expedition! Come now, if anyone is to snub anyone, it is you who will snub the young man, not the young man who will snub you.
Later, we decide to go out to tea, and I go along to Mac’s room to ask him to come with us. I determine to be natural and friendly.
The room is unbelievably neat, and Mac is sitting on a folded plaid rug writing in his diary. He looks up in polite inquiry.
‘Won’t you come out with us and have tea?’
Mac rises.
‘Thank you!’
‘Afterwards, I expect you’d like to explore the town,’ I suggest. ‘It’s fun poking round a new place.’
Mac raises his eyebrows gently and says coldly: ‘Is it?’
Somewhat deflated, I lead the way to the hall where Max is waiting for us. Mac consumes a large tea in happy silence. Max is eating tea in the present, but his mind is roughly about 4000 B.C.
He comes out of his reverie with a sudden start as the last cake is eaten, and suggests that we go and see how our lorry is getting on.
We go forthwith to look at our lorry—a Ford chassis, to which a native body is being built. We have had to fall back on this as no second-hand one was to be obtained in sufficiently good condition.
The bodywork seems definitely optimistic, of the Inshallah nature, and the whole thing has a high and dignified appearance that is suspiciously too good to be true. Max is a little worried at the non-appearance of Hamoudi, who was to have met us in Beyrout by this date.
Mac scorns to look at the town and returns to his bedroom to sit on his rug and write in his diary. Interested speculation on my part as to what he writes in the diary.
An early awakening. At five a.m. our bedroom door opens, and a voice announces in Arabic: ‘Your foremen have come!’
Hamoudi and his two sons surge into the room with the eager charm that distinguishes them, seizing our hands, pressing them against their foreheads. ‘Shlon kefek?’ (How is your comfort?) ‘Kullish zen.’ (Very well.) ‘El hamdu lillah! El hamdu lillah!’ (We all praise God together!)
Shaking off the mists of sleep, we order tea, and Hamoudi and his sons squat down comfortably on the floor and proceed to exchange news with Max. The language barrier excludes me from this conversation. I have used all the Arabic I know. I long wistfully for sleep, and even wish that the Hamoudi family had postponed their greetings to a more seasonable hour. Still, I realize that to them it is the most natural thing in the world thus to arrive.
Tea dispels the mists of sleep, and Hamoudi addresses various remarks to me, which Max translates, as also my replies. All three of them beam with happiness, and I realize anew what very delightful people they are.
Preparations are now in full swing—buying of stores; engaging of a chauffeur and cook; visits to the Service des Antiquités; a delightful lunch with M. Seyrig, the Director, and his very charming wife. Nobody could be kinder to us than they are—and, incidentally, the lunch is delicious.
Disagreeing with the Turkish douanier’s opinion that I have too many shoes, I proceed to buy more shoes! Shoes in Beyrout are a delight to buy. If your size is not available, they are made for you in a couple of days—of good leather, perfectly fitting. It must be admitted that buying shoes is a weakness of mine. I shall not dare to return home through Turkey!
We wander through the native quarters and buy interesting lengths of material—a kind of thick white silk, embroidered in golden thread or in dark blue. We buy silk abas to send home as presents. Max is fascinated with all the different kinds of bread. Anyone with French blood in him loves good bread. Bread to a Frenchman means more than any other kind of food. I have heard an officer of the Services Spéciaux say of a colleague in a lonely frontier outpost: ‘Ce pauvre garçon! Il n’a même pas de pain là bas, seulement la galette Kurde!’ with deep and heartfelt pity.
We also have long and complicated dealings with the Bank. I am struck, as always in the East, with the reluctance of banks to do any business whatever. They are polite, charming, but anxious to evade any actual transaction. ‘Oui, oui!’ they murmur sympathetically. ‘Ecrivez une letter!’ And they settle down again with a sigh of relief at having postponed any action.
When action has been reluctantly forced upon them, they take revenge by a complicated system of ‘les timbres’. Every document, every cheque, every transaction whatever, is held up and complicated by a demand for ‘les timbres’. Continual small sums are disbursed. When everything is, as you think, finished, once more comes a hold-up!
‘Et deux francs cinquante centimes pour les timbres, s’il vous plaît.’
Still, at last transactions are completed, innumerable letters are written, incredible numbers of stamps are affixed. With a sigh of relief the Bank clerk sees a prospect of finally getting rid of us. As we leave the Bank, we hear him say firmly to another importunate client: ‘Ecrivez une lettre, s’il vous plaît.’
There still remains the engaging of a cook and chauffeur.
The chauffeur problem is solved first. Hamoudi arrives, beaming, and informs us that we are in good fortune—he has secured for us an excellent chauffeur.
How, Max asks, has Hamoudi obtained this treasure?
Very simply, it appears. He was standing on the water-front, and having had no job for some time, and being completely destitute, he will come very cheap. Thus, at once, we have effected an economy!
But is there any means of knowing whether he is a good chauffeur? Hamoudi waves such a question aside. A baker is a man who puts bread in an oven and bakes it. A chauffeur is a man who takes a car out and drives it!
Max, without any undue enthusiasm, agrees to engage Abdullah if nothing better offers, and Abdullah is summoned to an interview. He bears a remarkable resemblance to a camel, and Max says with a sigh that at any rate he seems stupid, and that is always satisfactory. I ask why, and Max says because he won’t have the brains to be dishonest.
On our last afternoon in Beyrout, we drive out to the Dog River, the Nahr el Kelb. Here, in a wooded gully running inland, is a café where you can drink coffee, and then wander pleasantly along a shady path.
But the real fascination of the Nahr el Kelb lies in the carved inscriptions on the rock where a pathway leads up to the pass over the Lebanon. For here, in countless wars, armies have marched and left their record. Here are Egyptian hieroglyphics—of Rameses II—and boasts made by Assyrian and Babylonian armies. There is the figure of Tiglathpileser I. Sennacherib