The Heart of the Matter Read online

  A smile to-day, a song to-morrow,

  Wilson stared into the mirror and passed his fingers over the smooth, too smooth skin. The face looked back at him, pink and healthy, plump and hopeless. Harris went happily on, ‘I said once to Scobie,’ and immediately the clot of words lodged in Wilson’s sieve. He pondered aloud, ‘I wonder how he ever came to marry her.’

  ‘It’s what we all wonder, old man. Scobie’s not a bad sort.’

  ‘She’s too good for him.’

  ‘Louise?’ Harris exclaimed.

  ‘Of course. Who else?’

  ‘There’s no accounting for tastes. Go in and win, old man.’

  ‘I must be off.’

  ‘Be careful of the sweets.’ Harris went on with a small spurt of energy, ‘God knows I wouldn’t mind something to be careful of instead of Thursday’s curry. It is Thursday, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They came out into the passage and into the focus of the Indian eyes. ‘You’ll have to be done sooner or later, old man,’ Harris said. ‘He does everybody once. You’ll never have peace till he does you.’

  ‘I don’t believe in fortune-telling,’ Wilson lied.

  ‘Nor do I, but he’s pretty good. He did me the first week I was here. Told me I’d stay here for more than two and a half years. I thought then I was going to have leave after eighteen months. I know better now.’ The Indian watched triumphantly from the bath. He said, ‘I have a letter from the Director of Agriculture. And one from D.C. Parkes.’

  ‘All right,’ Wilson said. ‘Do me, but be quick about it.’

  ‘I’d better push off, old man, before the revelations begin.’

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ Wilson said.

  ‘Will you sit on the bath, sir?’ the Indian invited him courteously. He took Wilson’s hand in his. ‘It is a very interesting hand, sir,’ he said unconvincingly, weighing it up and down.

  ‘What are your charges?’

  ‘According to rank, sir. One like yourself, sir, I should charge ten shillings.’

  ‘That’s a bit steep.’

  ‘Junior officers are five shillings.’

  ‘I’m in the five-shilling class,’ Wilson said.

  ‘Oh no, sir. The Director of Agriculture gave me a pound.’

  ‘I’m only an accountant.’

  ‘That’s as you say, sir. A.D.C. and Major Scobie gave me ten shillings.’

  ‘Oh well,’ Wilson said. ‘Here’s ten bob. Go ahead.’

  ‘You have been here one, two weeks,’ the Indian said. ‘You are sometimes at night an impatient man. You think you do not make enough progress.’

  ‘Who with?’ Harris asked, lolling in the doorway.

  ‘You are very ambitious. You are a dreamer. You read much poetry.’

  Harris giggled and Wilson, raising his eyes from the finger which traced the lines upon his palm, watched the fortune-teller with apprehension.

  The Indian went inflexibly on. His turban was bowed under Wilson’s nose and bore the smell of stale food—he probably secreted stray pieces from the larder in its folds. He said, ‘You are a secret man. You do not tell your friends about your poetry—except one. One,’ he repeated. ‘You are very shy. You should take courage. You have a great line of success.’

  ‘Go in and win, old man,’ Harris repeated.

  Of course the whole thing was Couéism: if one believed in it enough, it would come true. Diffidence would be conquered. The mistake in a reading would be covered up.

  ‘You haven’t told me ten bob’s worth,’ Wilson said. ‘This is a five-bob fortune. Tell me something definite, something that’s going to happen.’ He shifted his seat uncomfortably on the sharp edge of the bath and watched a cockroach like a large blood blister flattened on the wall. The Indian bent forward over the two hands. He said, ‘I see great success. The Government will be very pleased with you.’

  Harris said, ‘Il pense that you are un bureaucrat.’

  ‘Why will the Government be pleased with me?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘You will capture your man.’

  ‘Why,’ Harris said, ‘I believe he thinks you are a new policeman.’

  ‘It looks like it,’ Wilson said. ‘Not much use wasting more time.’

  ‘And your private life, that will be a great success too. You will win the lady of your heart. You will sail away. Everything is going to be fine. For you,’ he added.

  ‘A real ten-bob fortune.’

  ‘Good night,’ Wilson said. ‘I won’t write you a recommendation on that.’ He got up from the bath, and the cockroach flashed into hiding. ‘I can’t bear those things,’ Wilson said, sidling through the door. He turned in the passage and repeated, ‘Good night.’

  ‘I couldn’t when I first came, old man. But I evolved a system. Just step into my room and I’ll show you.’

  ‘I ought to be off.’

  ‘Nobody will be punctual at Tallit’s.’ Harris opened his door and Wilson turned his eyes with a kind of shame from the first sight of its disorder. In his own room he would never have exposed himself quite like this—the dirty tooth-glass, the towel on the bed.

  ‘Look here, old man.’

  With relief he fixed his eyes on some symbols pencilled on the wall inside: the letter H, and under it a row of figures lined against dates as in a cash-book. Then the letters D.D., and under them more figures. ‘It’s my score in cockroaches, old man. Yesterday was an average day—four. My record’s nine. It makes you welcome the little brutes.’

  ‘What does D.D. stand for?’

  ‘Down the drain, old man. That’s when I knock them into the wash-basin and they go down the waste-pipe. It wouldn’t be fair to count them as dead, would it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And it wouldn’t do to cheat yourself either. You’d lose interest at once. The only thing is, it gets dull sometimes, playing against yourself. Why shouldn’t we make a match of it, old man? It needs skill, you know. They positively hear you coming, and they move like greased lightning. I do a stalk every evening with a torch.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind having a try, but I’ve got to be off now.’

  ‘I tell you what—I won’t start hunting till you come back from Tallit’s. We’ll have five minutes before bed. Just five minutes.’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I’ll come down with you, old man. I can smell the curry. You know I could have laughed when the old fool mixed you up with the new police officer.’

  ‘He got most of it wrong, didn’t he?’ Wilson said. ‘I mean the poetry.’

  II

  Tallit’s living-room to Wilson, who saw it for the first time, had the appearance of a country dance-hall. The furniture all lined the walls: hard chairs with tall uncomfortable backs, and in the corners the chaperons sitting out: old women in black silk dresses, yards and yards of silk, and a very old man in a smoking-cap. They watched him intently in complete silence, and evading their gaze he saw only bare walls except that at each corner sentimental French postcards were nailed up in a montage of ribbons and bows: young men smelling mauve flowers, a glossy cherry shoulder, an impassioned kiss.

  Wilson found there was only one other guest besides himself, Father Rank, a Catholic priest, wearing his long soutane. They sat in opposite corners of the room among the chaperons whom Father Rank explained were Tallit’s grandparents and parents, two uncles, what might have been a great-great-aunt, a cousin. Somewhere out of sight Tallit’s wife was preparing little dishes which were handed to the two guests by his younger brother and his sister. None of them spoke English except Tallit, and Wilson was embarrassed by the way Father Rank discussed his host and his host’s family resoundingly across the room. ‘Thank you, no,’ Father Rank would say, declining a sweet by shaking his grey tousled head. ‘I’d advise you to be careful of those, Mr Wilson. Tallit’s a good fellow, but he won’t learn what a western stomach will take. These old people have stomachs like ostriches.’

  ‘This is very interesting to me,’ Wilso
n said, catching the eye of a grandmother across the room and nodding and smiling at her. The grandmother obviously thought he wanted more sweets, and called angrily out for her granddaughter. ‘No, no,’ Wilson said vainly, shaking his head and smiling at the centenarian. The centenarian lifted his lip from a toothless gum and signalled with ferocity to Tallit’s younger brother, who hurried forward with yet another dish. ‘That’s quite safe,’ Father Rank shouted. ‘Just sugar and glycerine and a little flour.’ All the time their glasses were charged and recharged with whisky.

  ‘Wish you’d confess to me where you get this whisky from, Tallit,’ Father Rank called out with roguery, and Tallit beamed and slid agilely from end to end of the room, a word to Wilson, a word to Father Rank. He reminded Wilson of a young ballet dancer in his white trousers, his plaster of black hair and his grey polished alien face, and one glass eye like a puppet’s.

  ‘So the Esperança’s gone out,’ Father Rank shouted across the room. ‘Did they find anything, do you think?’

  ‘There was a rumour in the office,’ Wilson said, ‘about some diamonds.’

  ‘Diamonds, my eye,’ Father Rank said. ‘They’ll never find any diamonds. They don’t know where to look, do they, Tallit?’ He explained to Wilson, ‘Diamonds are a sore subject with Tallit. He was taken in by the false ones last year. Yusef humbugged you, eh, Tallit, you young rogue? Not so smart, eh? You a Catholic humbugged by a Mahomedan. I could have wrung your neck.’

  ‘It was a bad thing to do,’ Tallit said, standing midway between Wilson and the priest.

  ‘I’ve only been here a few weeks,’ Wilson said, ‘and everyone talks to me about Yusef. They say he passes false diamonds, smuggles real ones, sells bad liquor, hoards cottons against a French invasion, seduces the nursing sisters from the military hospital.’

  ‘He’s a dirty dog,’ Father Rank said with a kind of relish. ‘Not that you can believe a single thing you hear in this place. Otherwise everybody would be living with someone else’s wife, every police officer who wasn’t in Yusef’s pay would be bribed by Tallit here.’

  Tallit said, ‘Yusef is a very bad man.’

  ‘Why don’t the authorities run him in?’

  ‘I’ve been here for twenty-two years,’ Father Rank said, ‘and I’ve never known anything proved against a Syrian yet. Oh, often I’ve seen the police as pleased as Punch carrying their happy morning faces around, just going to pounce—and I think to myself, why bother to ask them what it’s about? they’ll just pounce on air.’

  ‘You ought to have been a policeman, Father.’

  ‘Ah,’ Father Rank said, ‘who knows? There are more policemen in this town than meet the eye—or so they say.’

  ‘Who say?’

  ‘Careful of those sweets,’ Father Rank said, ‘they are harmless in moderation, but you’ve taken four already. Look here, Tallit, Mr Wilson looks hungry. Can’t you bring on the bakemeats?’

  ‘Bakemeats?’

  ‘The feast,’ Father Rank said. His joviality filled the room with hollow sound. For twenty-two years that voice had been laughing, joking, urging people humorously on through the rainy and the dry months. Could its cheeriness ever have comforted a single soul? Wilson wondered: had it even comforted itself? It was like the noise one heard rebounding from the tiles in a public baths: the laughs and the splashes of strangers in the steam-heating.

  ‘Of course, Father Rank. Immediately, Father Rank.’ Father Rank, without being invited, rose from his chair and sat himself down at a table which like the chairs hugged the wall. There were only a few places laid and Wilson hesitated. ‘Come on. Sit down, Mr Wilson. Only the old folks will be eating with us—and Tallit of course.’

  ‘You were saying something about a rumour?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘My head is a hive of rumours,’ Father Rank said, making a humorous hopeless gesture. ‘If a man tells me anything I assume he wants me to pass it on. It’s a useful function, you know, at a time like this, when everything is an official secret, to remind people that their tongues were made to talk with and that the truth is meant to be spoken about. Look at Tallit now,’ Father Rank went on. Tallit was raising the corner of his black-out curtain and gazing into the dark street. ‘How’s Yusef, you young rogue?’ he asked. ‘Yusef’s got a big house across the street and Tallit wants it, don’t you, Tallit? What about dinner, Tallit, we’re hungry?’

  ‘It is here, Father, it is here,’ he said coming away from the window. He sat down silently beside the centenarian, and his sister served the dishes. ‘You always get a good meal in Tallit’s house,’ Father Rank said.

  ‘Yusef too is entertaining tonight.’

  ‘It doesn’t do for a priest to be choosy,’ Father Rank said, ‘but I find your dinner more digestible.’ His hollow laugh swung through the room.

  ‘Is it as bad as all that being seen at Yusef’s?’

  ‘It is, Mr Wilson. If I saw you there, I’d say to myself, “Yusef wants some information badly about cottons—what the imports are going to be next month, say—what’s on the way by sea, and he’ll pay for his information.” If I saw a girl go in, I’d think it was a pity, a great pity.’ He took a stab at his plate and laughed again. ‘But if Tallit went in I’d wait to hear the screams for help.’

  ‘If you saw a police officer?’ Tallit asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t believe my eyes,’ the priest said. ‘None of them are such fools after what happened to Bailey.’

  ‘The other night a police car brought Yusef home,’ Tallit said. ‘I saw it from here plainly.’

  ‘One of the drivers earning a bit on the side,’ Father Rank said.

  ‘I thought I saw Major Scobie. He was careful not to get out. Of course I am not perfectly sure. It looked like Major Scobie.’

  ‘My tongue runs away with me,’ the priest said. ‘What a garrulous fool I am. Why, if it was Scobie, I wouldn’t think twice about it: His eyes roamed the room. ‘Not twice,’ he said. ‘I’d lay next Sunday’s collection that everything was all right, absolutely all right,’ and he swung his great empty-sounding bell to and fro, Ho, ho, ho, like a leper proclaiming his misery.

  III

  The light was still on in Harris’s room when Wilson returned to the hotel. He was tired and worried and he tried to tiptoe by, but Harris heard him. ‘I’ve been listening for you, old man,’ he said, waving an electric torch. He wore his mosquito-boots outside his pyjamas and looked like a harassed air-raid warden.

  ‘It’s late. I thought you’d be asleep.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep until we’d had our hunt. The idea’s grown on me, old man. We might have a monthly prize. I can see the time coming when other people will want to join in.’

  Wilson said with irony, ‘There might be a silver cup.’

  ‘Stranger things have happened, old man. The Cockroach Championship.’

  He led the way, walking softly on the boards to the middle of his room: the iron bed stood under its greying net, the armchair with collapsible back, the dressing-table littered with old Picture Posts. It shocked Wilson once again to realize that a room could be a degree more cheerless than his own.

  ‘We’ll draw our rooms alternate nights, old man.’

  ‘What weapon shall I use?’

  ‘You can borrow one of my slippers.’ A board squeaked under Wilson’s feet and Harris turned warningly. ‘They have ears like rats,’ he said.

  ‘I’m a bit tired. Don’t you think that tonight …?’

  ‘Just five minutes, old man. I couldn’t sleep without a hunt. Look, there’s one—over the dressing-table. You can have first shot,’ but as the shadow of the slipper fell upon the plaster wall, the insect shot away.

  ‘No use doing it like that, old man. Watch me.’ Harris stalked his prey. The cockroach was half-way up the wall, and Harris, as he moved on tiptoe across the creaking floor, began to weave the light of his torch backwards and forwards over the cockroach. Then suddenly he struck and left a smear of blood. ‘One up,’ he said. ‘You
have to mesmerize them.’

  To and fro across the room they padded, weaving their lights, smashing down their shoes, occasionally losing their heads and pursuing wildly into corners: the lust of the hunt touched Wilson’s imagination. At first their manner to each other was ‘sporting’; they would call out, ‘Good-shot’ or ‘Hard Luck’, but once they met together against the wainscot over the same cockroach when the score was even, and their tempers became frayed.

  ‘No point in going after the same bird, old man,’ Harris said.

  ‘I started him.’

  ‘You lost your one, old man. This was mine.’

  ‘It was the same. He did a double turn.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Anyway, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go for the same one. You drove it towards me. Bad play on your part.’

  ‘Not allowed in the rules,’ Harris said shortly.

  ‘Perhaps not in your rules.’

  ‘Damn it all,’ Harris said, ‘I invented the game.’

  A cockroach sat upon the brown cake of soap in the washbasin. Wilson spied it and took a long shot with the shoe from six feet away. The shoe landed smartly on the soap and the cockroach span into the basin: Harris turned on the tap and washed it down. ‘Good shot, old man,’ he said placatingly. ‘One D.D.’

  ‘D.D. be damned,’ Wilson said. ‘It was dead when you turned on the tap.’

  ‘You couldn’t be sure of that. It might have been just unconscious—concussion. It’s D.D. according to the rules.’

  ‘Your rules again.’

  ‘My rules are the Queensberry rules in this town.’

  ‘They won’t be for long,’ Wilson threatened. He slammed the door hard behind him and the walls of his own room vibrated round him from the shock. His heart beat with rage and the hot night: the sweat drained from his armpits. But as he stood there beside his own bed, seeing the replica of Harris’s room around him, the washbasin, the table, the grey mosquito-net, even the cockroach fastened on the wall, anger trickled out of him and loneliness took its place. It was like quarrelling with one’s own image in the glass. I was crazy, he thought. What made me fly out like that? I’ve lost a friend.