The Heart of the Matter Page 4

  Scobie stopped his Morris at one of the great loops of the climbing road and looked back. He was just too late. The flower had withered upwards from the town; the white stones that marked the edge of the precipitous hill shone like candles in the new dusk.

  ‘I wonder if anybody will be there, Ticki.’

  ‘Sure to be. It’s library night.’

  ‘Do hurry up, dear. It’s so hot in the car. I’ll be glad when the rains come.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘If only they just went on for a month or two and then stopped.’

  Scobie made the right reply. He never listened while his wife talked. He worked steadily to the even current of sound, but if a note of distress were struck he was aware of it at once. Like a wireless operator with a novel open in front of him, he could disregard every signal except the ship’s symbol and the S O S. He could even work better while she talked than when she was silent, for so long as his ear-drum registered those tranquil sounds—the gossip of the club, comments on the sermons preached by Father Rank, the plot of a new novel, even complaints about the weather—he knew that all was well. It was silence that stopped him working—silence in which he might look up and see tears waiting in the eyes for his attention.

  ‘There’s a rumour going round that the refrigerators were all sunk last week.’

  He considered, while she talked, his line of action with the Portuguese ship that was due in as soon as the boom opened in the morning. The fortnightly arrival of a neutral ship provided an outing for the junior officers: a change of food, a few glasses of real wine, even the opportunity of buying some small decorative object in the ship’s store for a girl. In return they had only to help the Field Security Police in the examination of passports, the searching of the suspects’ cabins: all the hard and disagreeable work was done by the F.S.P., in the hold, sifting sacks of rice for commercial diamonds, or in the heat of the kitchen, plunging the hand into tins of lard, disembowelling the stuffed turkeys. To try to find a few diamonds in a liner of fifteen thousand tons was absurd: no malign tyrant in a fairy-story had ever set a goose girl a more impossible task, and yet as regularly as the ships called the cypher telegrams came in—‘So and so travelling first class suspected of carrying diamonds. The following members of the ship’s crew suspected …’ Nobody ever found anything. He thought: it’s Harris’s turn to go on board, and Fraser can go with him. I’m too old for these excursions. Let the boys have a little fun.

  ‘Last time half the books arrived damaged.’

  ‘Did they?’

  Judging from the number of cars, he thought, there were not many people at the club yet. He switched off his lights and waited for Louise to move, but she just sat there with a clenched fist showing in the switchboard light. ‘Well, dear, here we are,’ he said in the hearty voice that strangers took as a mark of stupidity. Louise said, ‘Do you think they all know by this time?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That you’ve been passed over.’

  ‘My dear, I thought we’d finished with all that. Look at all the generals who’ve been passed over since 1940. They won’t bother about a deputy-commissioner.’

  She said, ‘But they don’t like me.’

  Poor Louise, he thought, it is terrible not to be liked, and his mind went back to his own experience in that early tour when the blacks had slashed his tyres and written insults on his car. ‘Dear, how absurd you are. I’ve never known anyone with so many friends.’ He ran unconvincingly on. ‘Mrs Halifax, Mrs Castle …’ and then decided it was better after all not to list them.

  ‘They’ll all be waiting there,’ she said, ‘just waiting for me to walk in … I never wanted to come to the club tonight. Let’s go home.’

  ‘We can’t. Here’s Mrs Castle’s car arriving.’ He tried to laugh. ‘We’re trapped, Louise.’ He saw the fist open and close, the damp inefficient powder lying like snow in the ridges of the knuckles. ‘Oh, Ticki, Ticki,’ she said, ‘you won’t leave me ever, will you? I haven’t got any friends—not since the Tom Barlows went away.’ He lifted the moist hand and kissed the palm: he was bound by the pathos of her unattractiveness.

  They walked side by side like a couple of policemen on duty into the lounge where Mrs Halifax was dealing out the library books. It is seldom that anything is quite so bad as one fears: there was no reason to believe that they had been the subject of conversation. ‘Goody, goody,’ Mrs Halifax called to them, ‘the new Clemence Dane’s arrived.’ She was the most inoffensive woman in the station; she had long untidy hair, and one found hairpins inside the library books where she had marked her place. Scobie felt it quite safe to leave his wife in her company, for Mrs Halifax had no malice and no capacity for gossip; her memory was too bad for anything to lodge there for long: she read the same novels over and over again without knowing it.

  Scobie joined a group on the verandah. Fellowes, the sanitary inspector, was talking fiercely to Reith, the Chief Assistant Colonial Secretary, and a naval officer called Brigstock. ‘After all this is a club,’ he was saying, ‘not a railway refreshment-room.’ Ever since Fellowes had snatched his house, Scobie had done his best to like the man—it was one of the rules by which he set his life, to be a good loser. But sometimes he found it very hard to like Fellowes. The hot evening had not been good to him: the thin damp ginger hair, the small prickly moustache, the goosegog eyes, the scarlet cheeks, and the old Lancing tie. ‘Quite,’ said Brigstock, swaying slightly.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ Scobie asked.

  Reith said, ‘He thinks we are not exclusive enough.’ He spoke with the comfortable irony of a man who had in his time been completely exclusive, who had in fact excluded from his solitary table in the Protectorate everyone but himself. Fellowes said hotly, ‘There are limits,’ fingering for confidence the Lancing tie.

  ‘Tha’s so,’ said Brigstock.

  ‘I knew it would happen,’ Fellowes said, ‘as soon as we made every officer in the place an honorary member. Sooner or later they would begin to bring in undesirables. I’m not a snob, but in a place like this you’ve got to draw lines—for the sake of the women. It’s not like it is at home.’

  ‘But what’s the trouble?’ Scobie asked.

  ‘Honorary members,’ Fellowes said, ‘should not be allowed to introduce guests. Only the other day we had a private brought in. The army can be democratic if it likes, but not at our expense. That’s another thing, there’s not enough drink to go round as it is without these fellows.’

  ‘Tha’s a point,’ Brigstock said, swaying more violently.

  ‘I wish I knew what it was all about,’ Scobie said.

  ‘The dentist from the 49th has brought in a civilian called Wilson, and this man Wilson wants to join the club. It puts everybody in a very embarrassing position.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He’s one of the U.A.C. clerks. He can join the club in Sharp Town. What does he want to come up here for?’

  ‘That club’s not functioning,’ Reith said.

  ‘Well, that’s their fault, isn’t it?’ Over the sanitary inspector’s shoulder Scobie could see the enormous range of the night. The fireflies signalled to and fro along the edge of the hill and the lamp of a patrol-boat moving on the bay could be distinguished only by its steadiness. ‘Black-out time,’ Reith said. ‘We’d better go in.’

  ‘Which is Wilson?’ Scobie asked him.

  ‘That’s him over there. The poor devil looks lonely. He’s only been out a few days.’

  Wilson stood uncomfortably alone in a wilderness of armchairs, pretending to look at a map on the wall. His pale face shone and trickled like plaster. He had obviously bought his tropical suit from a shipper who had worked off on him an unwanted line: it was oddly striped and liverish in colour. ‘You’re Wilson, aren’t you?’ Reith said. ‘I saw your name in Col. Sec.’s book today.’

  ‘Yes, that’s me,’ Wilson said.

  ‘My name’s Reith. I’m Chief Assistant Col. Sec.
This is Scobie, the deputy-commissioner.’

  ‘I saw you this morning outside the Bedford Hotel, sir,’ Wilson said. There was something defenceless, it seemed to Scobie, in his whole attitude: he stood there waiting for people to be friendly or unfriendly—he didn’t seem to expect one reaction more than another. He was like a dog. Nobody had yet drawn on his face the lines that make a human being.

  ‘Have a drink, Wilson.’

  ‘I don’t mind if I do, sir.’

  ‘Here’s my wife,’ Scobie said. ‘Louise, this is Mr Wilson.’

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about Mr Wilson already,’ Louise said stiffly.

  ‘You see, you’re famous, Wilson,’ Scobie said. ‘You’re a man from the town and you’ve gate-crashed Cape Station Club.’

  ‘I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong. Major Cooper invited me.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ Reith said, ‘I must make an appointment with Cooper. I think I’ve got an abscess.’ He slid away.

  ‘Cooper was telling me about the library,’ Wilson said, ‘and I thought perhaps …’

  ‘Do you like reading?’ Louise asked, and Scobie realized with relief that she was going to be kind to the poor devil. It was always a bit of a toss-up with Louise. Sometimes she could be the worst snob in the station, and it occurred to him with pity that perhaps now she believed she couldn’t afford to be snobbish. Any new face that didn’t ‘know’ was welcome.

  ‘Well,’ Wilson said, and fingered desperately at his thin moustache, ‘well …’ It was as if he were gathering strength for a great confession or a great evasion.

  ‘Detective stories?’ Louise asked.

  ‘I don’t mind detective stories,’ Wilson said uneasily. ‘Some detective stories.’

  ‘Personally,’ Louise said, ‘I like poetry.’

  ‘Poetry,’ Wilson said, ‘yes.’ He took his fingers reluctantly away from his moustache, and something in his dog-like look of gratitude and hope made Scobie think with happiness: have I really found her a friend?

  ‘I like poetry myself,’ Wilson said.

  Scobie moved away towards the bar: once again a load was lifted from his mind. The evening was not spoilt: she would come home happy, go to bed happy. During one night a mood did not change, and happiness would survive until he left to go on duty. He could sleep …

  He saw a gathering of his junior officers in the bar. Fraser was there and Tod and a new man from Palestine with the extraordinary name of Thimblerigg. Scobie hesitated to go in. They were enjoying themselves, and they would not want a senior officer with them. ‘Infernal cheek,’ Tod was saying. They were probably talking about poor Wilson. Then before he could move away he heard Fraser’s voice. ‘He’s punished for it. Literary Louise has got him.’ Thimblerigg gave a small gurgling laugh, a bubble of gin forming on a plump lip.

  Scobie walked rapidly back into the lounge. He went full tilt into an arm-chair and came to a halt. His vision moved jerkily back into focus, but sweat dripped into his right eye. The fingers that wiped it free shook like a drunkard’s. He told himself: Be careful. This isn’t a climate for emotion. It’s a climate for meanness, malice, snobbery, but anything like hate or love drives a man off his head. He remembered Bowers sent home for punching the Governor’s A.D.C. at a party, Makin the missionary who ended in an asylum at Chislehunt.

  ‘It’s damned hot,’ he said to someone who loomed vaguely beside him.

  ‘You look bad, Scobie. Have a drink.’

  ‘No, thank you. Got to drive round on inspection.’

  Beside the bookshelves Louise was talking happily to Wilson, but he could feel the malice and snobbery of the world padding up like wolves around her. They wouldn’t even let her enjoy her books, he thought, and his hand began to shake again. Approaching, he heard her say in her kindly Lady Bountiful manner, ‘You must come and have dinner with us one day. I’ve got a lot of books that might interest you.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ Wilson said.

  ‘Just ring us up and take pot luck.’

  Scobie thought: What are those others worth that they have the nerve to sneer at any human being? He knew every one of her faults. How often he had winced at her patronage of strangers. He knew each phrase, each intonation that alienated others. Sometimes he longed to warn her—don’t wear that dress, don’t say that again, as a mother might teach a daughter, but he had to remain silent aching with the foreknowledge of her loss of friends. The worst was when he detected in his colleagues an extra warmth of friendliness towards himself, as though they pitted him. What right have you, he longed to exclaim, to criticize her? This is my doing. This is what I’ve made of her. She wasn’t always like this.

  He came abruptly up to them and said, ‘My dear, I’ve got to go round the beats.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ll stay, dear. Mrs Halifax will run me home.’

  ‘I wish you’d come with me.’

  ‘What? Round the beats? It’s ages since I’ve been.’

  ‘That’s why I’d like you to come.’ He lifted her hand and kissed it: it was a challenge. He proclaimed to the whole club that he was not to be pitied, that he loved his wife, that they were happy. But nobody that mattered saw—Mrs Halifax was busy with the books, Reith had gone long ago, Brigstock was in the bar, Fellowes talked too busily to Mrs Castle to notice anything—nobody saw except Wilson.

  Louise said, ‘I’ll come another time, dear. But Mrs Halifax has just promised to run Mr Wilson home by our house. There’s a book I want to lend him.’

  Scobie felt an immense gratitude to Wilson. ‘That’s fine,’ he said, ‘fine. But stay and have a drink till I get back. I’ll run you home to the Bedford. I shan’t be late.’ He put a hand on Wilson’s shoulder and prayed silently: Don’t let her patronize him too far: don’t let her be absurd: let her keep this friend at least. ‘I won’t say good night,’ he said, ‘I’ll expect to see you when I get back.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you, sir.’

  ‘You mustn’t sir me. You’re not a policeman, Wilson. Thank your stars for that.’

  V

  Scobie was later than he expected. It was the encounter with Yusef that delayed him. Half-way down the hill he found Yusef’s car stuck by the roadside, with Yusef sleeping quietly in the back: the light from Scobie’s car lit up the large pasty face, the lick of his white hair falling over the forehead, and just touched the beginning of the huge thighs in their tight white drill. Yusef’s shirt was open at the neck and tendrils of black breast-hair coiled around the buttons.

  ‘Can I help you?’ Scobie unwillingly asked, and Yusef opened his eyes: the gold tooth fitted by his brother, the dentist, flashed instantaneously like a torch. If Fellowes drives by now, what a story, Scobie thought. The deputy-commissioner meeting Yusef, the store-keeper, clandestinely at night. To give help to a Syrian was only a degree less dangerous than to receive help.

  ‘Ah, Major Scobie,’ Yusef said, ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed.’

  ‘Can I do anything for you?’

  ‘We have been stranded a half hour,’ Yusef said. ‘The cars have gone by, and I have thought—when will a Good Samaritan appear?’

  ‘I haven’t any spare oil to pour into your wounds, Yusef.’

  ‘Ha, ha, Major Scobie. That is very good. But if you would just give me a lift into town …’

  Yusef settled himself into the Morris, easing a large thigh against the brakes.

  ‘Your boy had better come in at the back.’

  ‘Let him stay here,’ Yusef said. ‘He will mend the car if he knows it is the only way he can get to bed.’ He folded his large fat hands over his knee and said, ‘You have a very fine car, Major Scobie. You must have paid four hundred pounds for it.’

  ‘One hundred and fifty,’ Scobie said.

  ‘I would pay you four hundred.’

  ‘It isn’t for sale, Yusef. Where would I get another?’

  ‘Not now, but maybe when you leave.’r />
  ‘I’m not leaving.’

  ‘Oh, I had heard that you were resigning, Major Scobie.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We shopkeepers hear so much—but all of it is unreliable gossip.’

  ‘How’s business?’

  ‘Oh, not bad. Not good.’

  ‘What I hear is that you’ve made several fortunes since the war. Unreliable gossip of course.’

  ‘Well, Major Scobie, you know how it is. My store in Sharp Town, that does fine because I am there to keep an eye on it. My store in Macaulay Street—that does not bad because my sister is there. But my stores in Durban Street and Bond Street they do badly. I am cheated all the time. Like all my countrymen, I cannot read or write, and everyone cheats me.’

  ‘Gossip says you can keep all your stocks in all your stores in your head.’

  Yusef chuckled and beamed. ‘My memory is not bad. But it keeps me awake at night, Major Scobie. Unless I take a lot of whisky I keep thinking about Durban Street and Bond Street and Macaulay Street.’

  ‘Which shall I drop you at now?’

  ‘Oh, now I go home to bed, Major Scobie. My house in Sharp Town, if you please. Won’t you come in and have a little whisky?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m on duty, Yusef.’

  ‘It is very kind of you, Major Scobie, to give me this lift. Would you let me show my gratitude by sending Mrs Scobie a roll of silk?’

  ‘Just what I wouldn’t like, Yusef.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I knew. It’s very hard, all this gossip. Just because there are some Syrians like Tallit.’

  ‘You would like Tallit out of your way, wouldn’t you, Yusef?’

  ‘Yes, Major Scobie. It would be for my good, but it would also be for your good.’

  ‘You sold him some of those fake diamonds last year, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, Major Scobie, you don’t really believe I’d get the better of anyone like that. Some of the poor Syrians suffered a great deal over those diamonds, Major Scobie. It would be a shame to deceive your own people like that.’

  ‘They shouldn’t have broken the law by buying diamonds. Some of them even had the nerve to complain to the police.’