The Heart of the Matter Read online

  ‘He thinks he is.’

  ‘It’s a good thing for him you are going. People like that become a nuisance in this climate. I’ll be kind to him while you are away.’

  ‘Ticki,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t see too much of him. I wouldn’t trust him. There’s something phoney about him.’

  ‘He’s young and romantic.’

  ‘He’s too romantic. He tells lies. Why does he say he doesn’t know a soul?’

  ‘I don’t think he does.’

  ‘He knows the Commissioner. I saw him going up there the other night at dinner-time.’

  ‘It’s just a way of talking.’

  Neither of them had any appetite for lunch, but the cook, who wanted to rise to the occasion, produced an enormous curry which filled a washing-basin in the middle of the table: round it were ranged the many small dishes that went with it—the fried bananas, red peppers, ground nuts, paw paw, orange-slices, chutney. They seemed to be sitting miles apart separated by a waste of dishes. The food chilled on their plates and there seemed nothing to talk about except, ‘I’m not hungry,’ ‘Try and eat a little,’ ‘I can’t touch a thing,’ ‘You ought to start off with a good meal,’ an endless friendly bicker about food. Ali came in and out to watch them: he was like a figure on a clock that records the striking of the hours. It seemed horrible to both of them that now they would be glad when the separation was complete; they could settle down when once this ragged leave-taking was over, to a different life which again would exclude change.

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got everything?’ This was another variant which enabled them to sit there not eating but occasionally picking at something easily swallowed, going through all the things that might have been forgotten.

  ‘It’s lucky there’s only one bedroom. They’ll have to let you keep the house to yourself.’

  ‘They may turn me out for a married couple.’

  ‘You’ll write every week?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Sufficient time had elapsed: they could persuade themselves that they had lunched. ‘If you can’t eat any more I may as well drive you down. The sergeant’s organized carriers at the wharf.’ They could say nothing now which wasn’t formal; unreality cloaked their movements. Although they could touch each other it was as if the whole coastline of a continent was already between them; their words were like the stilted sentences of a bad letter-writer.

  It was a relief to be on board and no longer alone together. Halifax, of the Public Works Department, bubbled over with false bonhomie. He cracked risky jokes and told the two women to drink plenty of gin. ‘It’s good for the bow-wows,’ he said. ‘First thing to go wrong on board ship are the bow-wows. Plenty of gin at night and what will cover a sixpence in the morning.’ The two women took stock of their cabin. They stood there in the shadow like cave-dwellers; they spoke in undertones that the men couldn’t catch: they were no longer wives—they were sisters belonging to a different race. ‘You and I are not wanted, old man,’ Halifax said. ‘They’ll be all right now. Me for the shore.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Everything had been unreal, but this suddenly was real pain, the moment of death. Like a prisoner he had not believed in the trial: it had been a dream: the condemnation had been a dream and the truck ride, and then suddenly here he was with his back to the blank wall and everything was true. One steeled oneself to end courageously. They went to the end of the passage, leaving the Halifaxes the cabin.

  ‘Good-bye, dear.’

  ‘Good-bye. Ticki, you’ll write every …’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘I’m an awful deserter.’

  ‘No, no. This isn’t the place for you.’

  ‘It would have been different if they’d made you Commissioner.’

  ‘I’ll come down for my leave. Let me know if you run short of money before then. I can fix things.’

  ‘You’ve always fixed things for me. Ticki, you’ll be glad to have no more scenes.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘Do you love me, Ticki?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Say it. One likes to hear it—even if it isn’t true.’

  ‘I love you, Louise. Of course it’s true.’

  ‘If I can’t bear it down there alone, Ticki, I’ll come back.’

  They kissed and went up on deck. From here the port was always beautiful; the thin layer of houses sparkled in the sun like quartz or lay in the shadow of the great green swollen hills. ‘You are well escorted,’ Scobie said. The destroyers and the corvettes sat around like dogs: signal flags rippled and a helio flashed. The fishing boats rested on the broad bay under their brown butterfly sails. ‘Look after yourself, Ticki.’

  Halifax came booming up behind them. ‘Who’s for shore? Got the police launch, Scobie? Mary’s down in the cabin, Mrs Scobie, wiping off the tears and putting on the powder for the passengers.’

  ‘Good-bye, dear.’

  ‘Good-bye.’ That was the real good-bye, the handshake with Halifax watching and the passengers from England looking curiously on. As the launch moved away she was almost at once indistinguishable; perhaps she had gone down to the cabin to join Mrs Halifax. The dream had finished: change was over: life had begun again.

  ‘I hate these good-byes,’ Halifax said. ‘Glad when it’s all over. Think I’ll go up to the Bedford and have a glass of beer. Join me?’

  ‘Sorry. I have to go on duty.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a nice little black girl to look after me now I’m alone,’ Halifax said. ‘However, faithful and true, old fidelity, that’s me,’ and as Scobie knew, it was.

  In the shade of a tarpaulined dump Wilson stood, looking out across the bay. Scobie paused. He was touched by the plump sad boyish face. ‘Sorry we didn’t see you,’ he said and lied harmlessly. ‘Louise sent her love.’

  IV

  It was nearly one in the morning before he returned. The light was out in the kitchen quarters and Ali was dozing on the steps of the house until the headlamps woke him, passing across his sleeping face. He jumped up and lit the way from the garage with his torch.

  ‘All right, Ali. Go to bed.’

  He let himself into the empty house—he had forgotten the deep tones of silence. Many a time he had come in late, after Louise was asleep, but there had never then been quite this quality of security and impregnability in the silence: his ears had listened for, even though they could not catch, the faint rustle of another person’s breath, the tiny movement. Now there was nothing to listen for. He went upstairs and looked into the bedroom. Everything had been tidied away; there was no sign of Louise’s departure or presence: Ali had even removed the photograph and put it in a drawer. He was indeed alone. In the bathroom a rat moved, and once the iron roof crumpled as a late vulture settled for the night.

  Scobie sat down in the living-room and put his feet upon another chair. He felt unwilling yet to go to bed, but he was sleepy—it had been a long day. Now that he was alone he could indulge in the most irrational act and sleep in a chair instead of a bed. The sadness was peeling off his mind, leaving contentment. He had done his duty: Louise was happy. He closed his eyes.

  The sound of a car driving in off the road, headlamps moving across the window, woke him. He imagined it was a police car—that night he was the responsible officer and he thought that some urgent and probably unnecessary telegram had come in. He opened the door and found Yusef on the step. ‘Forgive me, Major Scobie, I saw your light as I was passing, and I thought …’

  ‘Come in,’ he said, ‘I have whisky or would you prefer a little beer …?’

  Yusef said with surprise, ‘This is very hospitable of you, Major Scobie.’

  ‘If I know a man well enough to borrow money from him, surely I ought to be hospitable.’

  ‘A little beer then, Major Scobie.’

  ‘The Prophet doesn’t forbid it?’

  ‘The Prophet had no experience of bottled beer or whisky, Major Scobie. We have to interpret his
words in the modern light.’ He watched Scobie take the bottles from the ice chest. ‘Have you no refrigerator, Major Scobie?’

  ‘No. Mine’s waiting for a spare part—it will go on waiting till the end of the war, I imagine.’

  ‘I must not allow that. I have several spare refrigerators. Let me send one up to you.’

  ‘Oh, I can manage all right, Yusef. I’ve managed for two years. So you were passing by.’

  ‘Well, not exactly, Major Scobie. That was a way of speaking. As a matter of fact I waited until I knew your boys were asleep, and I borrowed a car from a garage. My own car is so well known. And I did not bring a chauffeur. I didn’t want to embarrass you, Major Scobie.’

  ‘I repeat, Yusef, that I shall never deny knowing a man from whom I have borrowed money.’

  ‘You do keep harping on that so, Major Scobie. That was just a business transaction. Four per cent is a fair interest. I ask for more only when I have doubt of the security. I wish you would let me send you a refrigerator.’

  ‘What did you want to see me about?’

  ‘First, Major Scobie, I wanted to ask after Mrs Scobie. Has she got a comfortable cabin? Is there anything she requires? The ship calls at Lagos, and I could have anything she needs sent on board there. I would telegraph my agent.’

  ‘I think she’s quite comfortable.’

  ‘Next, Major Scobie, I wanted to have a few words with you about diamonds.’

  Scobie put two more bottles of beer on the ice. He said slowly and gently, ‘Yusef, I don’t want you to think I am the kind of man who borrows money one day and insults his creditor the next to reassure his ego.’

  ‘Ego?’

  ‘Never mind. Self-esteem. What you like. I’m not going to pretend that we haven’t in a way become colleagues in a business, but my duties are strictly confined to paying you four per cent.’

  ‘I agree, Major Scobie. You have said all this before and I agree. I say again that I am never dreaming to ask you to do one thing for me. I would rather do things for you.’

  ‘What a queer chap you are, Yusef. I believe you do like me.’

  ‘Yes, I do like you, Major Scobie.’ Yusef sat on the edge of his chair which cut a sharp edge in his great expanding thighs: he was ill at ease in any house but his own. ‘And now may I talk to you about diamonds, Major Scobie?’

  ‘Fire away then.’

  ‘You know I think the Government is crazy about diamonds. They waste your time, the time of the Security Police: they send special agents down the coast: we even have one here—you know who, though nobody is supposed to know but the Commissioner: he spends money on every black or poor Syrian who tells him stories. Then he telegraphs it to England and all down the coast. And after all this, do they catch a single diamond?’

  ‘This has got nothing to do with us, Yusef.’

  ‘I want to talk to you as a friend, Major Scobie. There are diamonds and diamonds and Syrians and Syrians. You people hunt the wrong men. You want to stop industrial diamonds going to Portugal and then to Germany, or across the border to the Vichy French. But all the time you are chasing people who are not interested in industrial diamonds, people who just want to get a few gem stones in a safe place for when peace comes again.’

  ‘In other words you?’

  ‘Six times this month police have been into my stores making everything untidy. They will never find any industrial diamonds that way. Only small men are interested in industrial diamonds. Why, for a whole matchbox full of them, you would only get two hundred pounds. I call them gravel collectors,’ he said with contempt.

  Scobie said slowly, ‘Sooner or later, Yusef, I felt sure that you’d want something out of me. But you are going to get nothing but four per cent. Tomorrow I’m giving a full confidential report of our business arrangement to the Commissioner. Of course he may ask for my resignation, but I don’t think so. He trusts me.’ A memory pricked him. ‘I think he trusts me.’

  ‘Is that a wise thing to do, Major Scobie?’

  ‘I think it’s very wise. Any kind of secret between us two would go bad in time.’

  ‘Just as you like, Major Scobie. But I don’t want anything from you, I promise. I would like to give you things always. You will not take a refrigerator, but I thought you would perhaps take advice, information.’

  ‘I’m listening, Yusef.’

  ‘Tallit’s a small man. He is a Christian. Father Rank and other people go to his house. They say, “If there’s such a thing as an honest Syrian, then Tallit’s the man.” Tallit’s not very successful, and that looks just the same as honesty.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Tallit’s cousin is sailing in the next Portuguese boat. His luggage will be searched, of course, and nothing will be found. He will have a parrot with him in a cage. My advice, Major Scobie, is to let Tallit’s cousin go and keep his parrot.’

  ‘Why let the cousin go?’

  ‘You do not want to show your hand to Tallit. You can easily say the parrot is suffering from a disease and must stay. He will not dare to make a fuss.’

  ‘You mean the diamonds are in its crop?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has that trick been used before on the Portuguese boats?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It looks to me as if we’ll have to buy an aviary.’

  ‘Will you act on that information, Major Scobie?’

  ‘You give me information, Yusef. I don’t give you information.’

  Yusef nodded and smiled. Raising his bulk with some care he touched Scobie’s sleeve quickly and shyly. ‘You are quite right, Major Scobie. Believe me, I never want to do you any harm at all. I shall be careful and you be careful too, and everything will be all right.’ It was as if they were in a conspiracy together to do no harm: even innocence in Yusef’s hands took on a dubious colour. He said, ‘If you were to say a good word to Tallit sometimes it would be safer. The agent visits him.’

  ‘I don’t know of any agent.’

  ‘You are quite right, Major Scobie.’ Yusef hovered like a fat moth on the edge of the light. He said, ‘Perhaps if you were writing one day to Mrs Scobie you would give her my best wishes. Oh no, letters are censored. You cannot do that. You could say, perhaps—no, better not. As long as you know, Major Scobie, that you have my best wishes—’ Stumbling on the narrow path, he made for his car. When he had turned on his lights he pressed his face against the glass: it showed up in the illumination of the dashboard, wide, pasty, untrustworthy, sincere. He made a tentative shy sketch of a wave towards Scobie, where he stood alone in the doorway of the quiet and empty house.

  BOOK TWO

  PART ONE

  1

  I

  THEY STOOD ON the verandah of the D.C.’s bungalow at Pende and watched the torches move on the other side of the wide passive river. ‘So that’s France,’ Druce said, using the native term for it.

  Mrs Perrot said, ‘Before the war we used to picnic in France.’

  Perrot joined them from the bungalow, a drink in either hand: bandy-legged, he wore his mosquito-boots outside his trousers like riding-boots, and gave the impression of having only just got off a horse. ‘Here’s yours, Scobie.’ He said, ‘Of course ye know I find it hard to think of the French as enemies. My family came over with the Huguenots. It makes a difference, ye know.’ His lean long yellow face cut in two by a nose like a wound was all the time arrogantly on the defensive: the importance of Perrot was an article of faith with Perrot—doubters would be repelled, persecuted if he had the chance … the faith would never cease to be proclaimed.

  Scobie said, ‘If they ever joined the Germans, I suppose this is one of the points where they’d attack.’

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ Perrot said, ‘I was moved here in 1939. The Government had a shrewd idea of what was coming. Everything’s prepared, ye know. Where’s the doctor?’

  ‘I think he’s taking a last look at the beds,’ Mrs Perrot said. ‘You must be thankful your wife’s arrived safely, Major Sc
obie. Those poor people over there. Forty days in the boats. It shakes one up to think of it.’

  ‘It’s the damned narrow channel between Dakar and Brazil that does it every time,’ Perrot said.

  The doctor came gloomily out on to the verandah.

  Everything over the river was still and blank again: the torches were all out. The light burning on the small jetty below the bungalow showed a few feet of dark water sliding by. A piece of wood came out of the dark and floated so slowly through the patch of light that Scobie counted twenty before it went into darkness again.

  ‘The Froggies haven’t behaved too badly this time,’ Druce said gloomily, picking a mosquito out of his glass.

  ‘They’ve only brought the women, the old men and the dying,’ the doctor said, pulling at his beard. ‘They could hardly have done less.’

  Suddenly like an invasion of insects the voices whined and burred upon the farther bank. Groups of torches moved like fireflies here and there: Scobie, lifting his binoculars, caught a black face momentarily illuminated: a hammock pole: a white arm: an officer’s back. ‘I think they’ve arrived,’ he said. A long line of lights was dancing along the water’s edge. ‘Well.’ Mrs Perrot said, ‘we may as well go in now.’ The mosquitoes whirred steadily around them like sewing machines. Druce exclaimed and struck his hand.

  ‘Come in,’ Mrs Perrot said. ‘The mosquitoes here are all malarial.’ The windows of the living-room were netted to keep them out; the stale air was heavy with the coming rains.

  ‘The stretchers will be across at six a.m.,’ the doctor said. ‘I think we are all set, Perrot. There’s one case of blackwater and a few cases of fever, but most are just exhaustion—the worst disease of all. It’s what most of us die of in the end.’

  ‘Scobie and I will see the walking cases,’ Druce said. ‘You’ll have to tell us how much interrogation they can stand, doctor. Your police will look after the carriers, Perrot, I suppose—see that they all go back the way they came.’