The Last Cut. Michael Pearce

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      ‘Even the ones who come up for the Inundation,’ said Ferguson. ‘We’ve known them for years. Every year, there they are. Really, there are too many of them. I ought to turn some away. They’re needed elsewhere in the system. But we know them and they know us.’

      ‘Good men,’ said Macrae.

      ‘What, all of them?’ said Owen.

      ‘Look,’ said Macrae. ‘I know what they say about Egyptian workmen. But ours are not like that.’

      ‘All of them?’ said Owen. ‘I’m looking for one, that’s the point.’

      ‘We’d have got rid of them if they were.’

      ‘Well, that, too, could be the point.’

      ‘What are you saying?’

      ‘I’m asking, not saying. I’m asking why anyone would want to do a thing like this. And the answer I come up with is: because they’ve got a grudge.’

      ‘Grudge?’ said Ferguson. ‘Who against?’

      ‘The Department. You.’

      ‘Not our workmen,’ said Macrae positively. ‘Why would they have a grudge?’

      ‘Because they fancied they’d been wronged. Let’s have a try. Any injuries lately?’

      ‘Nothing serious. It’s not construction work. It’s not like Aswan. And when there are injuries we look after them.’

      ‘But you do have injuries?’

      ‘Yes, but –’

      ‘I’d like the names. Next, dismissals.’

      ‘We don’t have any.’

      ‘You said yourself that if people weren’t up to the mark you got rid of them.’

      ‘Yes. But – Look, all that is in the past. We haven’t needed to get rid of anyone for –’

      ‘Years,’ filled in Ferguson.

      ‘What about disciplinary problems? Don’t tell me you haven’t had any of those!’

      ‘If we have, we’ve known how to handle them.’

      ‘But that’s the point: how they were handled.’

      ‘Look –’

      ‘We’ve had words,’ said Ferguson. ‘I don’t deny that. But nothing serious.’

      ‘Blows?’

      ‘I don’t believe in blows,’ said Macrae. ‘If you can’t manage without blows, you can’t manage.’

      ‘Fine!’ said Owen. ‘But let me have the names, will you?’

      ‘The Department’s got the records,’ said Ferguson.

      ‘In any case,’ said Macrae, ‘aren’t you barking up the wrong tree? If they had a grudge against us, wouldn’t they want to take it out on us? Not on a dam they depend on for their livelihood. The only people they’d be hurting there would be themselves!’

      Out by the damaged regulator the crowds were thinning now and the carts could turn more easily. They were still coming. The long line still stretched across the gardens. It was testimony to the engineers’ capacity for getting things done that they had been able to organize so many loads in such a short space of time.

      The loads, inevitably, were an incongruous mixture. There was masonry, rubble, rocks, wood, mattresses – even old chairs and tables. Not so old, as a matter of fact. Some of them were quite new.

      ‘Mr Macrae said anything would do,’ explained the hot young man marshalling the carts. His pinkness told that he was fresh from England. ‘He said that I could raid the houses if necessary. A lot of them are just standing empty, you know.’

      A cart went by piled high with swathes of fine velvet curtaining. On top teetered a beautiful old escritoire.

      ‘Just a minute –’ said Owen.

      ‘Where did you get that?’ asked Ferguson.

      ‘Oh, a sort of villa over there,’ said the young man, pointing along the river bank.

      ‘But –’ said Ferguson.

      ‘Anything wrong?’ inquired the pink youth anxiously.

      ‘That’s the Khedive’s Summer Chalet,’ said Owen.

      ‘Murderers!’ muttered the gardener wrathfully, struggling to restore a rose-bed.

      ‘Take heart, man,’ counselled Owen, standing beside him. The people will go, the gardens remain.’

      ‘But what will they be like?’ asked the gardener.

      ‘In time they will be as new.’

      ‘Ah, yes,’ said the gardener, ‘but how much time? A garden like this isn’t built in a day, you know.’

      ‘It takes time,’ agreed Owen soothingly.

      ‘And work! A garden is built with one’s back.’

      ‘But out of the sweat of one’s brow a thing of beauty emerges.’

      ‘Well –’

      ‘This is truly one of the Wonders of Egypt,’ said Owen, looking round.

      ‘Well –’ said the gardener modestly.

      ‘Of Egypt? No, of the world!’

      ‘It’s pretty good,’ acknowledged the gardener. ‘Though I say it myself.’

      ‘Who better to say it?’

      ‘And those stupid bastards –’

      ‘Yes, yes,’ said Owen hurriedly. ‘But, tell me, Abdullah, you of all men must know the gardens well?’

      ‘Like the back of my hand.’

      ‘Just so. And you will be able to tell me this: if you were coming by night and making for the Manufiya Regulator, and did not wish to be seen, by what way would you come?’

      The gardener gave him a shrewd look.

      ‘Would you be carrying something, Effendi?’

      ‘You might. You might well.’

      ‘Then there is only one way you would come. For if you came by any other you would have to cross canals. And you would not want, would you, Effendi, to get your load wet?’

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