The Heart of the Matter Read online

  He said, ‘Good night. Tomorrow I’m going to bring you some stamps for your album.’

  ‘How did you know about my album?’

  ‘That’s my job. I’m a policeman.’

  ‘Good night.’

  He walked away, feeling an extraordinary happiness, but this he would not remember as happiness, as he would remember setting out in the darkness, in the rain, alone.

  II

  From eight-thirty in the morning until eleven he dealt with a case of petty larceny; there were six witnesses to examine, and he didn’t believe a word that any of them said. In European cases there are words one believes and words one distrusts: it is possible to draw a speculative line between the truth and the lies; at least the cui bono principle to some extent operates, and it is usually safe to assume, if the accusation is theft and there is no question of insurance, that something has at least been stolen. But here one could make no such assumption: one could draw no lines. He had known police officers whose nerves broke down in the effort to separate a single grain of incontestable truth; they ended, some of them, by striking a witness, they were pilloried in the local Creole papers and were invalided home or transferred. It woke in some men a virulent hatred of a black skin, but Scobie had long ago, during his fifteen years, passed through the dangerous stages; now lost in the tangle of lies he felt an extraordinary affection for these people who paralysed an alien form of justice by so simple a method.

  At last the office was clear again. There was nothing further on the charge-sheet, and taking out a pad and placing some blotting-paper under his wrist to catch the sweat, he prepared to write to Louise. Letter-writing never came easily to him. Perhaps because of his police training, he could never put even a comforting lie upon paper over his signature. He had to be accurate: he could comfort only by omission. So now, writing the two words My dear upon the paper, he prepared to omit. He wouldn’t write that he missed her, but he would leave out any phrase that told unmistakably that he was content. My dear, you must forgive a short letter again. You know I’m not much of a hand at letter writing. I got your third letter yesterday, the one telling me that you were staying with Mrs Halifax’s friend for a week outside Durban. Here everything is quiet. We had an alarm last night, but it turned out that an American pilot had mistaken a school of porpoises for submarines. The rains have started, of course. The Mrs Rolt I told you about in my last letter is out of hospital and they’ve put her to wait for a boat in one of the Nissen huts behind the transport park. I’ll do what I can to make her comfortable. The boy is still in hospital, but all right. I really think that’s about all the news. The Tallit affair drags on—I don’t think anything will come of it in the end. Ali had to go and have a couple of teeth out the other day. What a fuss he made! I had to drive him to the hospital or he’d never have gone. He paused, he hated the idea of the censors—who happened to be Mrs Carter and Calloway—reading these last phrases of affection. Look after yourself, my dear, and don’t worry about me. As long as you are happy, I’m happy. In another nine months I can take my leave and we’ll be together. He was going to write, ‘You are in my mind always,’ but that was not a statement he could sign. He wrote instead, you are in my mind so often during the day, and then pondered the signature. Reluctantly, because he believed it would please her, he wrote Your Ticki. For a moment he was reminded of that other letter signed ‘Dicky’ which had come back to him two or three times in dreams.

  The sergeant entered, marched to the middle of the floor, turned smartly to face him, saluted. He had time to address the envelope while all this was going on. ‘Yes, sergeant?’

  ‘The Commissioner, sah, he ask you to see him.’

  ‘Right.’

  The Commissioner was not alone. The Colonial Secretary’s face shone gently with sweat in the dusky room, and beside him sat a tall bony man Scobie had not seen before—he must have arrived by air, for there had been no ship in during the last ten days. He wore a colonel’s badges as though they didn’t belong to him on his loose untidy uniform.

  ‘This is Major Scobie, Colonel Wright.’ He could tell the Commissioner was worried and irritated. He said, ‘Sit down, Scobie. It’s about this Tallit business.’ The rain darkened the room and kept out the air. ‘Colonel Wright has come up from Cape Town to hear about it.’

  ‘From Cape Town, sir?’

  The Commissioner moved his legs, playing with a pen-knife. He said, ‘Colonel Wright is the M.I.5 representative.’

  The Colonial Secretary said softly, so that everybody had to bend their heads to hear him, ‘The whole thing’s been unfortunate.’ The Commissioner began to whittle the corner of his desk, ostentatiously not listening. ‘I don’t think the police should have acted—quite in the way they did—not without consultation.’

  Scobie said, ‘I’ve always understood it was our duty to stop diamond smuggling.’

  In his soft obscure voice the Colonial Secretary said, ‘There weren’t a hundred pounds’ worth of diamonds found.’

  ‘They are the only diamonds that have ever been found.’

  ‘The evidence against Tallit, Scobie, was too slender for an arrest.’

  ‘He wasn’t arrested. He was interrogated.’

  ‘His lawyers say he was brought forcibly to the police station.’

  ‘His lawyers are lying. You surely realize that much.’

  The Colonial Secretary said to Colonel Wright, ‘You see the kind of difficulty we are up against. The Roman Catholic Syrians are claiming they are a persecuted minority and that the police are in the pay of the Moslem Syrians.’

  Scobie said, ‘The same thing would have happened the other way round—only it would have been worse. Parliament has more affection for Moslems than Catholics.’ He had a sense that no one had mentioned the real purpose of this meeting. The Commissioner flaked chip after chip off his desk, disowning everything, and Colonel Wright sat back on his shoulder blades saying nothing at all.

  ‘Personally,’ the Colonial Secretary said, ‘I would always …’ and the soft voice faded off into inscrutable murmurs which Wright, stuffing his fingers into one ear, leaning his head sideways as though he were trying to hear something through a defective telephone, might possibly have caught.

  Scobie said, ‘I couldn’t hear what you said.’

  ‘I said personally I’d always take Tallit’s word against Yusef’s.’

  ‘That,’ Scobie said, ‘is because you have only been in this colony five years.’

  Colonel Wright suddenly interjected, ‘How many years have you been here, Major Scobie?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  Colonel Wright grunted non-committally.

  The Commissioner stopped whittling the corner of his desk and drove his knife viciously into the top. He said, ‘Colonel Wright wants to know the source of your information, Scobie.’

  ‘You know that, sir. Yusef.’ Wright and the Colonial Secretary sat side by side watching him. He stood back with lowered head, waiting for the next move, but no move came. He knew they were waiting for him to amplify his bald reply, and he knew too that they would take it for a confession of weakness if he did. The silence became more and more intolerable: it was like an accusation. Weeks ago he had told Yusef that he intended to let the Commissioner know the details of his loan; perhaps he had really had that intention, perhaps he had been bluffing; he couldn’t remember now. He only knew that now it was too late. That information should have been given before taking action against Tallit: it could not be an afterthought. In the corridor behind the office Fraser passed whistling his favourite tune; he opened the door of the office, said, ‘Sorry, sir,’ and retreated again, leaving a whiff of warm Zoo smell behind him. The murmur of the rain went on and on. The Commissioner took the knife out of the table and began to whittle again; it was as if, for a second time, he were deliberately disowning the whole business. The Colonial Secretary cleared his throat. ‘Yusef,’ he repeated.

  Scobie nodded.

  Colonel Wrigh
t said, ‘Do you consider Yusef trustworthy?’

  ‘Of course not, sir. But one has to act on what information is available—and this information proved correct up to a point.’

  ‘Up to what point?’

  ‘The diamonds were there.’

  The Colonial Secretary said, ‘Do you get much information from Yusef?’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve had any at all.’

  He couldn’t catch what the Colonial Secretary said beyond the word ‘Yusef.’

  ‘I can’t hear what you say, sir.’

  ‘I said are you in touch with Yusef?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that.’

  ‘Do you see him often?’

  ‘I think in the last three months I have seen him three—no, four times.’

  ‘On business?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Once I gave him a lift home when his car had broken down. Once he came to see me when I had fever at Bamba. Once …’

  ‘We are not cross-examining you, Scobie,’ the Commissioner said.

  ‘I had an idea, sir, that these gentlemen were.’

  Colonel Wright uncrossed his long legs and said, ‘Let’s boil it down to one question. Tallit, Major Scobie, has made counteraccusations—against the police, against you. He says in effect that Yusef has given you money. Has he?’

  ‘No, sir. Yusef has given me nothing.’ He felt an odd relief that he had not yet been called upon to lie.

  The Colonial Secretary said, ‘Naturally sending your wife to South Africa was well within your private means.’ Scobie sat back in his chair, saying nothing. Again he was aware of the hungry silence waiting for his words.

  ‘You don’t answer?’ the Colonial Secretary said impatiently.

  ‘I didn’t know you had asked a question. I repeat—Yusef has given me nothing.’

  ‘He’s a man to beware of, Scobie.’

  ‘Perhaps when you have been here as long as I have you’ll realize the police are meant to deal with people who are not received at the Secretariat.’

  ‘We don’t want our tempers to get warm, do we?’

  Scobie stood up. ‘Can I go, sir? If these gentlemen have finished with me … I have an appointment.’ The sweat stood on his forehead; his heart jumped with fury. This should be the moment of caution, when the blood runs down the flanks and the red cloth waves.

  ‘That’s all right, Scobie,’ the Commissioner said.

  Colonel Wright said, ‘You must forgive me for bothering you. I received a report. I had to take the matter up officially. I’m quite satisfied.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ But the soothing words came too late: the damp face of the Colonial Secretary filled his field of vision. The Colonial Secretary said softly, ‘It’s just a matter of discretion, that’s all.’

  ‘If I’m wanted for the next half an hour, sir,’ Scobie said to the Commissioner, ‘I shall be at Yusef’s.’

  III

  After all they had forced him to tell a kind of lie: he had no appointment with Yusef. All the same he wanted a few words with Yusef; it was just possible that he might yet clear up, for his own satisfaction, if not legally, the Tallit affair. Driving slowly through the rain—his windscreen wiper had long ceased to function—he saw Harris struggling with his umbrella outside the Bedford Hotel.

  ‘Can I give you a lift? I’m going your way.’

  ‘The most exciting things have been happening,’ Harris said. His hollow face shone with rain and enthusiasm. ‘I’ve got a house at last.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘At least it’s not a house: it’s one of the huts up your way. But it’s a home,’ Harris said. ‘I’ll have to share it, but it’s a home.’

  ‘Who’s sharing it with you?’

  ‘I’m asking Wilson, but he’s gone away—to Lagos for a week or two. The damned elusive Pimpernel. Just when I wanted him. And that brings me to the second exciting thing. Do you know I’ve discovered we were both at Downham?’

  ‘Downham?’

  ‘The school, of course. I went into his room to borrow his ink while he was away, and there on his table I saw a copy of the old Downhamian.’

  ‘What a coincidence,’ Scobie said.

  ‘And do you know—it’s really been a day of extraordinary happenings—I was looking through the magazine and there at the end was a page which said, “The Secretary of the old Downhamian Association would like to get in touch with the following old boys with whom we have lost touch”—and there half-way down was my own name, in print, large as life. What do you think of that?’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Directly I got to the office I sat down and wrote—before I touched a cable, except of course “the most immediates,” but then I found I’d forgotten to put down the secretary’s address, so back I had to go for the paper. You wouldn’t care to come in, would you, and see what I’ve written?’

  ‘I can’t stay long.’ Harris had been given an office in a small unwanted room in the Elder Dempster Company’s premises. It was the size of an old-fashioned servant’s bedroom and this appearance was enhanced by a primitive washbasin with one cold tap and a gas-ring. A table littered with cable forms was squashed between the washbasin and a window no larger than a port-hole which looked straight out on to the water-front and the grey creased bay. An abridged version of Ivanhoe for the use of schools, and half a loaf of bread stood in an out-tray. ‘Excuse the muddle,’ Harris said. ‘Take a chair,’ but there was no spare chair.

  ‘Where’ve I put it?’ Harris wondered aloud, turning over the cables on his desk. ‘Ah, I remember! He opened Ivanhoe and fished out a folded sheet. ‘It’s only a rough draft,’ he said with anxiety. ‘Of course I’ve got to pull it together. I think I’d better keep it back till Wilson comes. You see I’ve mentioned him.’

  Scobie read, Dear Secretary,—It was just by chance I came on a copy of the ‘Old Downhamian’ which another old Downhamian, E. Wilson (1923–1928), had in his room. I’m afraid I’ve been out of touch with the old place for a great many years and I was very pleased and a bit guilty to see that you have been trying to get into touch with me. Perhaps you’d like to know a bit about what I’m doing in ‘the white man’s grave’, but as I’m a cable censor you will understand that I can’t tell you much about my work. That will have to wait till we’ve won the war. We are in the middle of the rains now—and how it does rain. There’s a lot of fever about, but I’ve only had one dose and E. Wilson has so far escaped altogether. We are sharing a little house together, so that you can feel that old Downhamians even in this wild and distant part stick together. We’ve got an old Downhamian team of two and go out hunting together but only cockroaches (Ha! Ha!). Well, I must stop now and get on with winning the war. Cheerio to all old Downhamians from quite an old Coaster.

  Scobie looking up met Harris’s anxious and embarrassed gaze. ‘Do you think it’s on the right lines?’ he asked. ‘I was a bit doubtful about “Dear Secretary.”’

  ‘I think you’ve caught the tone admirably.’

  ‘Of course you know it wasn’t a very good school, and I wasn’t very happy there. In fact I ran away once.’

  ‘And now they’ve caught up with you.’

  ‘It makes you think, doesn’t it?’ said Harris. He stared out over the gray water with tears in his bloodshot eyes. ‘I’ve always envied people who were happy there,’ he said.

  Scobie said consolingly, ‘I didn’t much care for school myself.’

  ‘To start off happy,’ Harris said. ‘It must make an awful difference afterwards. Why, it might become a habit, mightn’t it?’ He took the piece of bread out of the out-tray and dropped it into the wastepaper-basket. ‘I always mean to get this place tidied up,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I must be going, Harris. I’m glad about the house—and the old Downhamian.’

  ‘I wonder if Wilson was happy there,’ Harris brooded. He took Ivanhoe out of the out-tray and looked around for somewhere to put it, but there wasn’t any
place. He put it back again. ‘I don’t suppose he was,’ he said, ‘or why should he have turned up here?’

  IV

  Scobie left his car immediately outside Yusef’s door: it was like a gesture of contempt in the face of the Colonial Secretary. He said to the steward, ‘I want to see your master. I know the way.’

  ‘Massa out.’

  ‘Then I’ll wait for him.’ He pushed the steward to one side and walked in. The bungalow was divided into a succession of small rooms identically furnished with sofas and cushions and low tables for drinks like the rooms in a brothel. He passed from one to another, pulling the curtains aside, till he reached the little room where nearly two months ago now he had lost his integrity. On the sofa Yusef lay asleep.

  He lay on his back in his white duck trousers with his mouth open, breathing heavily. A glass was on a table at his side, and Scobie noticed the small white grains at the bottom. Yusef had taken a bromide. Scobie sat down at his side and waited. The window was open, but the rain shut out the air as effectively as a curtain. Perhaps it was merely the want of air that caused the depression which now fell on his spirits, perhaps it was because he had returned to the scene of a crime. Useless to tell himself that he had committed no offence. Like a woman who has made a loveless marriage he recognized in the room as anonymous as an hotel bedroom the memory of an adultery.

  Just over the window there was a defective gutter which emptied itself like a tap, so that all the time you could hear the two sounds of the rain—the murmur and the gush. Scobie lit a cigarette, watching Yusef. He couldn’t feel any hatred of the man. He had trapped Yusef as consciously and as effectively as Yusef had trapped him. The marriage had been made by both of them. Perhaps the intensity of the watch he kept broke through the fog of bromide: the fat thighs shifted on the sofa. Yusef grunted, murmured, ‘dear chap’ in his deep sleep, and turned on his side, facing Scobie. Scobie stared again round the room, but he had examined it already thoroughly enough when he came here to arrange his loan: there was no change—the same hideous mauve silk cushions, the threads showing where the damp was rotting the covers, the tangerine curtains. Even the blue syphon of soda was in the same place: they had an eternal air like the furnishings of hell. There were no bookshelves, for Yusef couldn’t read: no desk because he couldn’t write. It would have been useless to search for papers—papers were useless to Yusef. Everything was inside that large Roman head.