The Heart of the Matter Read online

  ‘They are very ignorant, poor fellows.’

  ‘You weren’t as ignorant as all that, were you, Yusef?’

  ‘If you ask me, Major Scobie, it was Tallit. Otherwise, why does he pretend I sold him the diamonds?’

  Scobie drove slowly. The rough street was crowded. Thin black bodies weaved like daddy-long-legs in the dimmed headlights. ‘How long will the rice shortage go on, Yusef?’

  ‘You know as much about that as I do, Major Scobie.’

  ‘I know these poor devils can’t get rice at the controlled price.’

  ‘I’ve heard, Major Scobie, that they can’t get their share of the free distribution unless they tip the policeman at the gate.’

  It was quite true. There was a retort in this colony to every accusation. There was always a blacker corruption elsewhere to be pointed at. The scandalmongers of the secretariat fulfilled a useful purpose—they kept alive the idea that no one was to be trusted. That was better than complacence. Why, he wondered, swerving the car to avoid a dead pye-dog, do I love this place so much? Is it because here human nature hasn’t had time to disguise itself? Nobody here could ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its proper place on the other side of death, and on this side flourished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst: you didn’t love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed. He felt a sudden affection for Yusef. He said, ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right. One day, Yusef, you’ll find my foot under your fat arse.’

  ‘Maybe, Major Scobie, or maybe we’ll be friends together. That is what I should like more than anything in the world.’

  They drew up outside the Sharp Town house and Yusef’s steward ran out with a torch to light him in. ‘Major Scobie,’ Yusef said, ‘it would give me such pleasure to give you a glass of whisky. I think I could help you a lot. I am very patriotic, Major Scobie.’

  ‘That’s why you are hoarding your cottons against a Vichy invasion, isn’t it? They will be worth more than English pounds.’

  ‘The Esperança is in tomorrow, isn’t she?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘What a waste of time it is searching a big ship like that for diamonds. Unless you know beforehand exactly where they are. You know that when the ship returns to Angola a seaman reports where you looked. You will sift all the sugar in the hold. You will search the lard in the kitchens because someone once told Captain Druce that a diamond can be heated and dropped in the middle of a tin of lard. Of course the cabins and the ventilators and the lockers. Tubes of toothpaste. Do you think one day you will find one little diamond?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t either.’

  VI

  A hurricane-lamp burned at each corner of the wooden pyramids of crates. Across the black slow water he could just make out the naval depôt ship, a disused liner, where she lay, so it was believed, on a reef of empty whisky bottles. He stood quietly for a while breathing in the heavy smell of the sea. Within half a mile of him a whole convoy lay at anchor, but all he could detect were the long shadow of the depôt ship and a scatter of small red lights as though a street were up: he could hear nothing from the water but the water itself, slapping against the jetties. The magic of this place never failed him: here he kept his foothold on the very edge of a strange continent.

  Somewhere in the darkness two rats scuffled. These waterside rats were the size of rabbits. The natives called them pigs and ate them roasted; the name helped to distinguish them from the wharf rats, who were a human breed. Walking along a light railway Scobie made in the direction of the markets. At the corner of a warehouse he came on two policemen.

  ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘No, sah.’

  ‘Been along this way?’

  ‘Oh yes, sah, we just come from there.’

  He knew that they were lying: they would never go alone to that end of the wharf, the playground of the human rats, unless they had a white officer to guard them. The rats were cowards but dangerous—boys of sixteen or so, armed with razors or bits of broken bottle, they swarmed in groups around the warehouses, pilfering if they found an easily-opened case, settling like flies around any drunken sailor who stumbled their way, occasionally slashing a policeman who had made himself unpopular with one of their innumerable relatives. Gates couldn’t keep them off the wharf: they swam round from Kru Town or the fishing beaches.

  ‘Come on,’ Scobie said, ‘we’ll have another look.’

  With weary patience the policemen trailed behind him, half a mile one way, half a mile the other. Only the pigs moved on the wharf, and the water slapped. One of the policemen said self-righteously, ‘Quiet night, sah.’ They shone their torches with self-conscious assiduity from one side to another, lighting the abandoned chassis of a car, an empty truck, the corner of a tarpaulin, a bottle standing at the corner of a warehouse with palm leaves stuffed in for a cork. Scobie said, ‘What’s that?’ One of his official nightmares was an incendiary bomb: it was so easy to prepare: every day men from Vichy territory came into town with smuggled cattle—they were encouraged to come in for the sake of the meat supply. On this side of the border native saboteurs were being trained in case of invasion: why not on the other side?

  ‘Let me see it,’ he said, but neither of the policemen moved to touch it.

  ‘Only native medicine, sah,’ one of them said with a skin-deep sneer.

  Scobie picked the bottle up. It was a dimpled Haig, and when he drew out the palm leaves the stench of dog’s pizzle and nameless decay blew out like a gas escape. A nerve in his head beat with sudden irritation. For no reason at all he remembered Fraser’s flushed face and Thimblerigg’s giggle. The stench from the bottle moved him with nausea, and he felt his fingers polluted by the palm leaves. He threw the bottle over the wharf, and the hungry mouth of the water received it with a single belch. but the contents were scattered on the air, and the whole windless place smelt sour and ammoniac. The policemen were silent: Scobie was aware of their mute disapproval. He should have left the bottle where it stood: it had been placed there for one purpose, directed at one person, but now that its contents had been released, it was as if the evil thought were left to wander blindly through the air, to settle maybe on the innocent.

  ‘Good night,’ Scobie said and turned abruptly on his heel. He had not gone twenty yards before he heard their boots scuffling rapidly away from the dangerous area.

  Scobie drove up to the police station by way of Pitt Street. Outside the brothel on the left-hand side the girls were sitting along the pavement taking a bit of air. Within the police station behind the black-out blinds the scent of a monkey house thickened for the night. The sergeant on duty took his legs off the table in the charge-room and stood to attention.

  ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘Five drunk and disorderly, sah. I lock them in the big cell.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Two Frenchmen, sah, with no passes.’

  ‘Black?’

  ‘Yes, sah.’

  ‘Where were they found?’

  ‘In Pitt Street, sah.’

  ‘I’ll see them in the morning. What about the launch? Is it running all right? I shall want to go out to the Esperança.’

  ‘It’s broken, sah. Mr Fraser he try to mend it, sah, but it humbug all the time.’

  ‘What time does Mr Fraser come on duty?’

  ‘Seven, sah.’

  ‘Tell him I shan’t want him to go out to the Esperança. I’m going out myself. If the launch isn’t ready, I’ll go with the F.S.P.’

  ‘Yes, sah.’

  Climbing again into his car, pushing at the sluggish starter, Scobie thought that a man was surely entitled to that much revenge. Revenge was good for the character: out of revenge grew forgiveness. He began to whistle, driving back through Kru Town. He was almost happy: he only needed to be quite certain that nothing
had happened at the club after he left, that at this moment, 10.55 p.m., Louise was at ease, content. He could face the next hour when the next hour arrived.

  VII

  Before he went indoors he walked round to the seaward side of the house to check the black-out. He could hear the murmur of Louise’s voice inside: she was probably reading poetry. He thought: by God, what right has that young fool Fraser to despise her for that? and then his anger moved away again, like a shabby man, when he thought of Fraser’s disappointment in the morning—no Portuguese visit, no present for his best girl, only the hot humdrum office day. Feeling for the handle of the back door to avoid flashing his torch, he tore his right hand on a splinter.

  He came into the lighted room and saw that his hand was dripping with blood. ‘Oh, darling,’ Louise said, ‘what have you done?’ and covered her face. She couldn’t bear the sight of blood. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ Wilson asked. He tried to rise, but he was sitting in a low chair at Louise’s feet and his knees were piled with books.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Scobie said. ‘It’s only a scratch. I can see to it myself. Just tell Ali to bring a bottle of water.’ Half-way upstairs he heard the voice resume. Louise said, ‘A lovely poem about a pylon.’ Scobie walked into the bathroom, disturbing a rat that had been couched on the cool rim of the bath, like a cat on a gravestone.

  Scobie sat down on the edge of the bath and let his hand drip into the lavatory pail among the wood shavings. Just as in his own office the sense of home surrounded him. Louise’s ingenuity had been able to do little with this room: the bath of scratched enamel with a single tap which always ceased to work before the end of the dry season: the tin bucket under the lavatory seat emptied once a day: the fixed basin with another useless tap: bare floorboards: drab green black-out curtains. The only improvements Louise had been able to impose were the cork mat by the bath, the bright white medicine cabinet.

  The rest of the room was all his own. It was like a relic of his youth carried from house to house. It had been like this years ago in his first house before he married. This was the room in which he had always been alone.

  Ali came in, his pink soles flapping on the floorboards, carrying a bottle of water from the filter. ‘The back door humbug me,’ Scobie explained. He held his hand out over the washbasin, while Ali poured the water over the wound. The boy made gentle clucking sounds of commiseration: his hands were as gentle as a girl’s. When Scobie said impatiently, ‘That’s enough,’ Ali paid him no attention. ‘Too much dirt,’ he said.

  ‘Now iodine.’ The smallest scratch in this country turned green if it were neglected for an hour. ‘Again,’ he said, ‘pour it over,’ wincing at the sting. Down below out of the swing of voices the word ‘beauty’ detached itself and sank back into the trough. ‘Now the Elastoplast.’

  ‘No,’ Ali said, ‘no. Bandage better.’

  ‘All right. Bandage then.’ Years ago he had taught Ali to bandage: now he could tie one as expertly as a doctor.

  ‘Good night, Ali. Go to bed. I shan’t want you again.’

  ‘Missus want drinks.’

  ‘No. I’ll attend to the drinks. You can go to bed.’ Alone he sat down again on the edge of the bath. The wound had jarred him a little and anyway he was unwilling to join the two downstairs, for his presence would embarrass Wilson. A man couldn’t listen to a woman reading poetry in the presence of an outsider. ‘I had rather be a kitten and cry mew …’ but that wasn’t really his attitude. He did not despise: he just couldn’t understand such bare relations of intimate feeling. And besides he was happy here, sitting where the rat had sat, in his own world. He began to think of the Esperança and of the next day’s work.

  ‘Darling,’ Louise called up the stairs, ‘are you all right? Can you drive Mr Wilson home?’

  ‘I can walk, Mrs Scobie.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  ‘Coming,’ Scobie called. ‘Of course I’ll drive you back.’ When he joined them Louise took the bandaged hand tenderly in hers. ‘Oh the poor hand,’ she said. ‘Does it hurt?’ She was not afraid of the clean white bandage: it was like a patient in a hospital with the sheets drawn tidily up to the chin. One could bring grapes and never know the details of the scalpel wound out of sight. She put her lips to the bandage and left a little smear of orange lipstick.

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ Scobie said.

  ‘Really, sir. I can walk.’

  ‘Of course you won’t walk. Come along, get in.’

  The light from the dashboard lit up a patch of Wilson’s extraordinary suit. He leant out of the car and cried, ‘Good night, Mrs Scobie. It’s been lovely. I can’t thank you enough.’ The words vibrated with sincerity: it gave them the sound of a foreign language—the sound of English spoken in England. Here intonations changed in the course of a few months, became high-pitched and insincere, or flat and guarded. You could tell that Wilson was fresh from home.

  ‘You must come again soon,’ Scobie said, as they drove down the Burnside road towards the Bedford Hotel, remembering Louise’s happy face.

  VIII

  The smart of his wounded hand woke Scobie at two in the morning. He lay coiled like a watch-spring on the outside of the bed, trying to keep his body away from Louise’s: wherever they touched—if it were only a finger lying against a finger—sweat started. Even when they were separated the heat trembled between them. The moonlight lay on the dressing-table like coolness and fit the bottles of lotion, the little pots of cream, the edge of a photograph frame. At once he began to listen for Louise’s breathing.

  It came irregularly in jerks. She was awake. He put his hand up and touched the hot moist hair: she lay stiffly, as though she were guarding a secret. Sick at heart, knowing what he would find, he moved his fingers down until they touched her lids. She was crying. He felt an enormous tiredness, bracing himself to comfort her. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘I love you.’ It was how he always began. Comfort, like the act of sex, developed a routine.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know.’ It was how she always answered. He blamed himself for being heartless because the idea occurred to him that it was two o’clock: this might go on for hours, and at six the day’s work began. He moved the hair away from her forehead and said, ‘The rains will soon be here. You’ll feel better then.’

  ‘I feel all right,’ she said and began to sob.

  ‘What is it, darling? Tell me.’ He swallowed. ‘Tell Ticki.’ He hated the name she had given him, but it always worked. She said, ‘Oh Ticki, Ticki. I can’t go on.’

  ‘I thought you were happy tonight.’

  ‘I was—but think of being happy because a U.A.C. clerk was nice to me. Ticki, why won’t they like me?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling. It’s just the heat: it makes you fancy things. They all like you.’

  ‘Only Wilson,’ she repeated with despair and shame and began to sob again.

  ‘Wilson’s all right.’

  ‘They won’t have him at the club. He gate-crashed with the dentist. They’ll be laughing about him and me. Oh Ticki, Ticki, please let me go away and begin again.’

  ‘Of course, darling,’ he said, ‘of course,’ staring out through the net and through the window to the quiet flat infested sea. ‘Where to?’

  ‘I could go to South Africa and wait until you have leave. Ticki, you’ll be retiring soon. I’ll get a home ready for you, Ticki.’

  He flinched a little away from her, and then hurriedly in case she had noticed, lifted her damp hand and kissed the palm. ‘It will cost a lot, darling.’ The thought of retirement set his nerves twitching and straining: he always prayed that death would come first. He had prepared his life insurance in that hope: it was payable only on death. He thought of a home, a permanent home: the gay artistic curtains, the bookshelves full of Louise’s books, a pretty tiled bathroom, no office anywhere—a home for two until death, no change any more before eternity settled in.

  ‘Ticki, I can’t bear it
any longer here.’

  ‘I’ll have to figure it out, darling.’

  ‘Ethel Maybury’s in South Africa, and the Collinses. We’ve got friends in South Africa.’

  ‘Prices are high.’

  ‘You could drop some of your silly old life insurances, Ticki. And, Ticki, you could economize here without me. You could have your meals at the mess and do without the cook.’

  ‘He doesn’t cost much.’

  ‘Every little helps, Ticki.’

  ‘I’d miss you,’ he said.

  ‘No, Ticki, you wouldn’t,’ she said, and surprised him by the range of her sad spasmodic understanding. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘there’s nobody to save for.’

  He said gently, ‘I’ll try and work something out. You know if it’s possible I’d do anything for you—anything.’

  ‘This isn’t just two in the morning comfort, Ticki, is it? You will do something?’

  ‘Yes, dear. I’ll manage somehow.’ He was surprised how quickly she went to sleep: she was like a tired carrier who has slipped his load. She was asleep before he had finished his sentence, clutching one of his fingers like a child, breathing as easily. The load lay beside him now, and he prepared to lift it.

  2

  I

  AT EIGHT IN the morning on his way to the jetty Scobie called at the bank. The manager’s office was shaded and cool: a glass of iced water stood on top of a safe. ‘Good morning, Robinson.’

  Robinson was tall and hollow-chested and bitter because he hadn’t been posted to Nigeria. He said, ‘When will this filthy weather break? The rains are late.’

  ‘They’ve started in the Protectorate.’

  ‘In Nigeria,’ Robinson said, ‘one always knew where one was. What can I do for you, Scobie?’

  ‘Do you mind if I sit down?’

  ‘Of course. I never sit down before ten myself. Standing up keeps the digestion in order.’ He rambled restlessly across his office on legs like stilts: he took a sip of the iced water with distaste as though it were medicine. On his desk Scobie saw a book called Diseases of the Urinary Tract open at a coloured illustration. ‘What can I do for you?’ Robinson repeated.