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, Robin-son.’

     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.

     ‘Give me two hundred and fifty pounds,’ Scobie said with a nervous attempt at jocularity.

     ‘You people always think a bank’s made of money,’ Robin-son mechanically jested. ‘How much do you really want?’

     ‘Three fifty.’

     ‘What’s your balance at the moment?’

     ‘I think about thirty pounds. It’s the end of the month.’

     ‘We’d better check up on that.’ He called a clerk and while they waited Robinson paced the little room - six paces to the wall and round again. ‘There and back a hundred and seventy-six times,’ he said, ‘makes a mile. I try and put in three miles before lunch. It keeps one healthy. In Nigeria I used to walk a mile and a half to breakfast at the club, and then a mile and a half back to the office. Nowhere fit to walk here,’ he said, pivoting on the carpet A clerk, laid a slip of paper on the desk. Robinson held it close to his eyes, as though he wanted to smell it. ‘Twenty-eight pounds fifteen and sevenpence,’ he said.

     ‘I want to send my wife to South Africa.’

     ‘Oh yes. Yes.’

     ‘I daresay,’ Scobie said, ‘I might do it on a bit less. I shan’t be able to allow her very much on my salary though.’

     ‘I really don’t see how...’

     ‘I thought perhaps I could get an overdraft,’ he said vaguely. ‘Lots of people have them, don’t they? Do you know I believe I only had one once - for a few weeks - for about fifteen pounds. I didn’t like it. It scared me. I always felt I owed the bank manager the money.’

     ‘The trouble is, Scobie,’ Robinson said, ‘we’ve had orders to be very strict about overdrafts. It’s the war, you know, There’s one valuable security nobody can offer now, his life.’

    ‘Yes, I see that of course. But my life’s pretty good and I’m not stirring from here. No submarines for me. And the job’s secure, Robinson,’ he went on with the same ineffectual at’ tempt at flippancy.

     ‘The Commissioner’s retiring, isn’t he?’ Robinson said, reaching the safe at the end of the room and turning.

     ‘Yes, but I’m not’

     ‘I’m glad to hear that Scobie. There’ve been rumours .. .’

     ‘I suppose I’ll have to retire one day, but that’s a long way off. I’d much rather die in my boots. There’s always my life insurance policy, Robinson. What about that for security?’

     ‘You know you dropped one insurance three years ago.’

     ‘That was the year Louise went home for an operation.’

     ‘I don’t think the paid-up value of the other two amounts to much, Scobie.’

     ‘Still they protect you in case of death, don’t they?’

     ‘If you go on paying the premiums. We haven’t any guaran-tee, you know.’

     ‘Of course not,’ Scobie said, ‘I see that.’

     ‘I’m very sorry, Scobie. This isn’t personal. It’s the policy of the bank. If you’d wanted fifty pounds, I’d have lent it you myself.’

     ‘Forget it, Robinson,’ Scobie said. ‘It’s not important.’ He gave his embarrassed laugh. ‘The boys at the Secretariat would say I can always pick it up in bribes. How’s Molly?’

‘She’s very well, thank you. Wish I were the same.’

‘You read too many of those medical books, Robinson.’

‘A man’s got to know what’s wrong with him. Going to be at the club tonight?’

     ‘I don’t think so. Louise is tired. You know how it is before the rains. Sorry to have kept you, Robinson. I must be getting along to the wharf.’

     He walked rapidly down-hill from the bank with his head bent He felt as though he had been detected in a mean action - he had asked for money and had been refused. Louise had deserved better of him. It seemed to him that he must have failed in some way in manhood.

     Druce had come out himself to the Esperan?a with his squad of F.S.P. men. At the gangway a steward awaited them with an invitation to join the captain for drinks in his cabin. The officer in charge of the naval guard was already there before them. This was a regular part of the fortnightly routine - the establishment of friendly relations. By accepting his hospital-ity they tried to ease down for the neutral the bitter pill of search; below the bridge the search party would proceed smoothly without them. While the first-class passengers had their passports examined, their cabins would be ransacked by a squad of the F.S.P. Already others were going through the hold - the dreary hopeless business of sifting rice. What had Yusef said, ‘Have you ever found one little diamond? Do you think you ever will?’ In a few minutes when relations had be-come sufficiently smooth after the drinks Scobie would have the unpleasant task of searching the captain’s own cabin. The stiff disjointed conversation was carried on mainly by the naval lieutenant.

     The captain wiped his fat yellow face and said, ‘Of course for the English I feel in the heart an enormous admiration.’

     ‘We don’t like doing it, you know,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Hard luck being a neutral.’

     ‘My heart,’ the Portuguese captain said, ‘is full of admira-tion for your great struggle. There is no room for resentment. Some of my people feel resentment. Me none.’ The face streamed with sweat, and the eyeballs were contused. The man kept on speaking of his heart, but it seemed to Scobie that a long deep surgical operation would have been required to find it.

     ‘Very good of you,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Appreciate your attitude.’

     ‘Another glass of port, gentlemen?’

     ‘Don’t mind if I do. Nothing like this on shore you know. You, Scobie?’

     ‘No, thanks.’

     ‘I hope you won’t find it necessary to keep us here tonight, major?’

     Scobie said, ‘I don’t think there’s any possibility of your get-ting away before midday tomorrow.’

     ‘Will do our best, of course,’ the lieutenant said

     ‘On my honour, gentlemen, my hand upon my heart, you will find no bad hats among my passengers. And the crew - I know them all.’

     Druce said, ‘It’s a formality, captain, which we have to go through.’

     ‘Have a cigar,’ the captain said. ‘Throw away that cigar-ette. Here is a very special box.’

     Druce lit the cigar, which began to spark and crackle. The captain giggled. ‘Only my joke, gentlemen. Quite harmless. I keep the box for my friends. The English have a wonderful sense of humour. I know you will not be angry. A German yes, an Englishman no. It is quite cricket, eh?’

     ‘Very funny,’ Druce said sourly, laying the cigar down on the ash-tray the captain held out to him. The ash-tray, pre-sumably set off by the captain’s finger, began to play a little tinkly tune. Druce jerked again: he was overdue for leave and his nerves were unsteady. The captain smiled and sweated. ‘Swiss,’ he said. ‘A wonderful people. Neutral too.’

     One of the Field Security men came in and gave Druce a note. He passed it to Scobie to read. Steward, who is under notice of dismissal, says the captain has letters concealed in his bathroom.

     Druce said, ‘I think I’d better go and make them hustle down below. Coming, Evans? Many thanks for the port, cap-tain.’

     Scobie was left alone with the captain. This was the part of the job he always hated. These men were not criminals: they were merely breaking regulations enforced on the shipping companies by the navicert system. You never knew in a search what you would find. A man’s bedroom was his private life. Prying in drawers you came on humiliations; little petty vices were tucked out of sight like a soiled handkerchief. Under a pile of linen you might come on a grief he was trying to forget. Scobie said gently, ‘I’m afraid, captain, I’ll have to look around. You know it’s a formality.’

     ‘You must do your duty, major,’ the Portuguese said.

     Scobie went quickly and neatly through the cabin: he never moved a thing without replacing it exactly: he was like a care-ful housewife. The captain stood with his back to Scobie look-ing out on to the bridge; it was as if he preferred not to em-barrass his guest in the odious task. Scobie came to an end, closing the box of French letters and putting them carefully back in the top drawer of the locker with the handkerchiefs, the gaudy ties and the little bundle of dirty handkerchiefs. ‘All finished?’ the captain asked politely, turning his head.

     ‘That door,’ Scobie said, ‘what would be through there?’

     ‘That is only the bathroom, the w.c.’

     ‘I think I’d better take a look.’

     ‘Of course, major, but there is not much cover there to conceal anything.’

     ‘If you don’t mind...’

     ‘Of course not. It is your duty.’

     The bathroom was bare and extraordinarily dirty. The bath was rimmed with dry grey soap, and the tiles slopped under his feet. The problem was to find the right place quickly. He couldn’t linger here without disclosing the fact that he had special information. The search had got to have all the ap-pearances of formality - neither too lax nor too thorough. ‘This won’t take long,’ he said cheerily and caught sight of the fat calm face in the shaving-mirror. The information, of course, might be false, given by the steward simply in order to cause trouble.

     Scobie opened the medicine-cabinet and went rapidly through the contents: unscrewing the toothpaste, opening the razor box, dipping his finger into the shaving-cream. He did not expect to find anything there. But the search gave him time to think. He went next to the taps, turned the water on, felt up each funnel with his finger. The floor engaged his at-tention:, there were no possibilities of concealment there. The porthole: he examined the big screws and swung the inner mask to and fro. Every time he turned he caught sight of the captain’s face in the mirror, calm, patient, complacent. It said ‘cold, cold’ to him all the while, as in a children’s game.

     Finally, the lavatory: he lifted up the wooden seat: noth-ing had been laid between the porcelain and the wood. He put his hand on the lavatory chain, and in the mirror became aware for the first time of a tension: the brown eyes were no longer on his face, they were fixed on something else, and fol-lowing that gaze home, he saw his own hand tighten on the chain.

     Is the cistern empty of water? he wondered, and pulled. Gurgling and pounding in the pipes, the water flushed down. He turned away and the Portuguese said with a smugness he was unable to conceal, ‘You see, major.’ And at that moment Scobie did see. I’m becoming careless, he thought. He lifted the cap of the cistern. Fixed in the cap with adhesive tape and dear of the water lay a letter.

     He looked at the address - a Frau Groener in Friedrichstrasse, Leipzig. He repeated, ‘I’m sorry, captain,’ and because the man didn’t answer, he looked up and saw the tears begin-ning to pursue the sweat down the hot fat cheeks. ‘I’ll have to take it away,’ Scobie said, ‘and report...’

     ‘Oh, this war,’ the captain burst out, ‘how I hate this war.’

     ‘We’ve got cause to hate it too, you know,’ Scobie said.

     ‘A man is ruined because he writes to his daughter,’

     ‘Daughter?’

     ‘Yes. She is Frau Groener. Open it and read. You will see.’

‘I can’t do that. I must leave it to the censorship. Why didn’t you wait to write till you got to Lisbon, captain?’

     The man had lowered his bulk on to the edge of the bath as though it were a heavy sack his shoulders could no longer bear. He kept on wiping his eyes with the back of his hand like a child - an unattractive child, the fat boy of the school Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast. Scobie knew he should have taken the letter and gone; he could do no good with his sympathy.

     The captain moaned, ‘If you had a daughter you’d under-stand. You haven’t got one,’ he accused, as though there were a crime in sterility.

     ‘No.’

     ‘She is anxious about me. She loves me,’ he said, raising his tear-drenched face as though he must drive the unlikely state-ment home. ‘She loves me,’ he repeated mournfully.

     ‘But why not write from Lisbon?’ Scobie asked again. ‘Why run this risk?’

     ‘I am alone. I have no wife,’ the captain said. ‘One cannot always wait to speak. And in Lisbon - you know how things go - friends, wine. I have a little woman there too who is jealous even of my daughter. There are rows, the time passes. In a week I must be off again. It was always so easy before this voyage.’

     Scobie believed him. The story was sufficiently irrational to be true. Even in war-time one must sometimes exercise the faculty of belief if it is not to atrophy. He said, ‘I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do about it. Perhaps nothing will happen.’

     ‘Your authorities,’ the captain said, ‘will blacklist me. You know what that means. The consul will not give a navicert to any ship with me as captain. I shall starve on shore.’

     ‘There are so many slips,’ Scobie said, ‘in these matters. Files get mislaid. You may hear no more about it.’

     ‘I shall pray,’ the man said without hope.

     ‘Why not?’ Scobie said.

     ‘You are an Englishman. You wouldn’t believe in prayer.’

     ‘I’m a Catholic, too,’ Scobie said.

     The fat face looked quickly up at him. ‘A Catholic?’ he exclaimed with hope. For the first time he began to plead. He was like a man who meets a fellow countryman in a strange continent. He began to talk rapidly of his daughter in Leipzig; he produced a battered pocket-book and a yellowing snap-shot of a stout young Portuguese woman as graceless as himself. The little bathroom was stiflingly hot and the captain repeated again and again. ‘You will understand.’ He had discovered suddenly how much they had in common: the plaster statues with the swords in the bleeding heart: the whisper behind the confessional curtains: the holy coats and the liquefaction of blood: the dark side chapels and the intricate movements, and somewhere behind it all the love of God. ‘And in Lisbon,’ he said, ‘she will be waiting, she will take me home, she will take away my trousers so that I cannot go out alone; every day it will be drink and quarrels until we go to bed. You will under-stand. I cannot write to my daughter from Lisbon. She loves me so much and she waits.’ He shifted his fat thigh and said, ‘The pureness of that love,’ and wept. They had in common all the wide region of repentance and longing.

     Their kinship gave the captain courage to try another angle. He said, ‘I am a poor man, but I have enough money to spare ...’ He would never have attempted to bribe an Englishman: it was the most sincere compliment he could pay to their com-mon religion.

     ‘I’m sorry,’ Scobie said.

     ‘I have English pounds. I will give you twenty English pounds... fifty.’ He implored. ‘A hundred... that is all I have saved.’

     ‘It can’t be done,’ Scobie said. He put the letter quickly in his pocket and turned away. The last time he saw the captain as he looked back from the door of the cabin, he was beating his head against the cistern, the tears catching in the folds of his cheeks. As he went down to join Druce in the saloon he could feel the millstone weighing on his breast. How I hate this war, he thought, in the very words the captain had used.

     The letter to the daughter in Leipzig, and a small bundle of correspondence found in the kitchens, was the sole result of eight hours’ search by fifteen men. It could be counted an average day. When Scobie reached the police station he looked in to see the Commissioner, but his office was empty, so he sat down in his own room under the handcuffs and began to write his report ‘A special search was made of the cabins and effects of the passengers named in your telegrams . -.. with no result’ The letter to the daughter in Leipzig lay on the desk beside him. Outside it was dark. The smell of the cells seeped in under the door, and in the next office Fraser was singing to him’ self the same tune he had sung every evening since his last leave:

 

                        ‘What will we care for

                        The why and the wherefore,

                        When you and I

                        Are pushing up the daisies?’

 

     It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we have committed our first major sin at seven, have mined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old death-bed? He wrote: A steward who had been dismissed for incompetence reported that the captain had correspondence concealed in his bathroom. I made a search and found the enclosed letter addressed to Frau Groener in Leipzig concealed in the lid of the lavatory cistern. An instruction on this hiding-place might well be circulated, as it has not been encountered before at this station. The letter was fixed by tape above the water-line ...

     He sat there staring at the paper, his brain confused with the conflict that had really been decided hours ago when Druce said to him in the saloon, ‘Anything?’ and he had shrugged his shoulders in a gesture he left Druce to interpret. Had he ever intended it to mean: ‘The usual private correspondence we are always finding.’ Druce had taken it for ‘No’. Scobie put his hand against his forehead and shivered: the sweat seeped between his fingers, and he thought, Am I in for a touch of fever? Perhaps it was because his temperature had risen that it seemed to him he was on the verge of a new life. One felt this way before a proposal of marriage or a first crime.

     Scobie took the letter and opened it. The act was irrevocable, for no one in this city had the right to open clandestine mail. A microphotograph might be concealed in the gum of an envelope. Even a simple word code would be beyond him; his knowledge of Portuguese would take him no farther than the most surface meaning. Every letter found - however obviously innocent - must be sent to the London censors unopened. Scobie against the strictest orders was exercising his own imperfect judgement. He thought to himself: If the letter is suspicious, I will send my report. I can explain the torn envelope. The captain insisted on opening the letter to show me the contents. But if he wrote that, he would be unjustly blackening the case against the captain, for what better way could he have found for destroying a microphotograph? There must be some lie to be told, Scobie thought, but he was unaccustomed to lies. With the letter in his hand, held carefully over the white blotting-pad, so that he could detect anything that might fall from between the leaves, he decided that he would write a full report on all the circumstances, including his own act.

     Dear little money spider, the letter began, your father who loves you more than anything upon earth will try to send you a little more money this time. I know how hard things are for you, and my heart bleeds. Little money spider, if only I could feel your fingers running across my cheek. How is it that a great fat father like I am should have so tiny and beautiful a daughter. Now little money spider, I will tell you everything that has happened to me. We left Lobito a week ago after only four days in port. I stayed one night with Se?or Aranjuez and I drank more wine than was good for me, but all my talk was of you. I was good all the time I was in port because I had promised my little money spider, and I went to Confession and Communion, so that if anything should happen to me on the way to Lisbon - for who knows in these terrible days? - I should not have to live my eternity away from my little spider. Since we left Lobito we have had good weather. Even the passengers are not sea-sick. Tomorrow night, because Africa will be at last behind us, we shall have a ship’s concert, and I shall perform on my whistle. All the time I perform I shall remember the days when my little money spider sat on my knee and listened. My dear, I am growing old, and after every voyage I am fatter: I am not a good man, and sometimes I fear that my soul in all this hulk of flesh is no larger than a pea. You do not know how easy it is for a man like me to commit the unforgivable despair. Then I think of my daughter. There was just enough good in me once for you to be fashioned. A wife shares too much of a man’s sin for perfect love. But a daughter may save him at the last. Pray for me, little spider. Your father who loves you more than life.

     Mais que a vida. Scobie felt no doubt at all of the sincerity of this letter. This was not written to conceal a photograph of the Cape Town defences or a microphotograph report on troop movements at Durban. It should, he knew, be tested for secret ink, examined under a microscope, and the inner lining of the envelope exposed. Nothing should be left to chance with a clandestine letter. But he had committed himself to a belief. He tore the letter up, and his own report with it, and carried the scraps out to the incinerator in the yard - a petrol-tin standing upon two bricks with its sides punctured to make a draught. As he struck a match to light the papers, Fraser joined him in the yard. ‘What will we care for the why and the wherefore?’ On the top of the scraps lay unmistakably half a foreign envelope: one could even read part of the address -Friedrichstrasse. He quickly held the match to the uppermost scrap as Fraser crossed the yard, striding with unbearable youth. The scrap went up in flame, and in the heat of the fire another scrap uncurled the name of Groener. Fraser said cheerfully, ‘Burning the evidence?’ and looked down into the tin. The name had blackened: there was nothing there surely that Fraser could see - except a brown triangle of envelope that seemed to Scobie obviously foreign. He ground it out of existence with a stick and looked up at Fraser to see whether he could detect any surprise or suspicion. There was nothing to be read in the vacuous face, blank as a school notice-board out of term. Only his own heart-beats told him he was guilty -that he had joined the ranks of the corrupt police officers -Bailey who had kept a safe deposit in another city, Crayshaw who had been found with diamonds, Boyston against whom nothing had been definitely proved and who had been invalided out. They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.

     ‘What sort of day, sir?’ Fraser asked, staring at the small pile of ash. Perhaps he was thinking that it should have been his day.

     ‘The usual kind of a day,’ Scobie said.

     ‘How about the captain?’ Fraser asked, looking down into the petrol-tin, beginning to hum again his languid tune.

     ‘The captain?’ Scobie said.

     ‘Oh, Druce told me some fellow informed on him.’

     ‘Just the usual thing,’ Scobie said. ‘A dismissed steward with a grudge. Didn’t Druce tell you we found nothing?’

     ‘No,’ Fraser said, ‘he didn’t seem to be sure. Good night, sir. I must be pushing off to the mess.’

     ‘Thimblerigg on duty?’

     ‘Yes, sir.’

     Scobie watched him go. The back was as vacuous as the face: one could read nothing there. Scobie thought, what a fool I have been. What a fool. He owed his duty to Louise, not to a fat sentimental Portuguese skipper who had broken the rules of his own company for the sake of a daughter equally unattractive. That had been the turning point, the daughter. And now, Scobie thought, I must return home: I shall put the car away in the garage, and Ali will come forward with his torch to light me to the door. She will be sitting there between two draughts for coolness, and I shall read on her face the story of what she has been thinking all day. She will have been hoping that everything is fixed, that I shall say, ‘I’ve put your name down at the agent’s for South Africa.’ but she’ll be afraid that nothing so good as that will ever happen to us. She’ll wait for me to speak, and I shall try to talk about anything under the sun to postpone seeing her misery (it would be waiting at the corners of her mouth to take possession of her whole face). He knew exactly how things would go: it had happened so often before. He rehearsed every word, going back into his office, locking his desk, going down to his car. People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person’s habitual misery. He forgot Fraser: he forgot everything but the scene ahead: I shall go in and say, ‘Good evening, sweet’ heart,’ and shell say, ‘Good evening, darling. What kind of a day?’ and I’ll talk and talk, but all the time I shall know I’m coming nearer to the moment when I shall say, ‘What about you, darling?’ and let the misery in.

     ‘What about you, darling?’ He turned quickly away from her and began to fix two more pink gins. There was a tacit understanding between them that ‘liquor helped’; growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.

     ‘You don’t really want to know about me.’

     ‘Of course I do, darling. What sort of a day have you had?’

     ‘Ticki, why are you such a coward? Why don’t you tell me it’s all off?’

     ‘All off?’

     ‘You know what I mean - the passage. You’ve been talking and talking since you came in about the Esperan?a. There’s a Portuguese ship in once a fortnight. You don’t talk that way every time. I’m not a child, Ticki. Why don’t you say straight out - ‘you can’t go’?’

     He grinned miserably at his glass, twisting it round and round to let the angostura cling along the curve. He said, ‘That wouldn’t be true. I’ll find some way.’ Reluctantly he had recourse to the hated nickname. If that failed, the misery would deepen and go right on through the short night he needed for sleep. ‘Trust Ticki,’ he said. It was as if a ligament tightened in his brain with the suspense. If only I could postpone the misery, he thought, until daylight. Misery is worse in the darkness: there’s nothing to look at except the green black-out curtains, the Government furniture, the flying ants scattering their wings over the table: a hundred yards away the Creoles’ pye-dogs yapped and wailed. ‘Look at that little beggar,’ he said, pointing at the house lizard that always came out upon the wall about this time to hunt for moths and cockroaches. He said, ‘We only got the idea last night. These things take time to fix. Ways and means, ways and means,’ he said with strained humour.

     ‘Have you been to the bank?’

     ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

     ‘And you couldn’t get the money?’

     ‘No. They couldn’t manage it Have another gin and bitters, darling?’

     She held her glass out to him, crying dumbly; her face reddened when she cried - she looked ten years older, a middle-aged and abandoned woman - it was like the terrible breath of the future on his cheek. He went down on one knee beside her and held the pink gin to her lips as though it were medicine. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I’ll find a way. Have a drink.’

     ‘Ticki, I can’t bear this place any longer. I know I’ve said it before, but I mean it this time. I shall go mad. Ticki, I’m so lonely. I haven’t a friend, Ticki.’

     ‘Let’s have Wilson up tomorrow.’

     ‘Ticki, for God’s sake don’t always mention Wilson. Please, please do something.’

     ‘Of course I will Just be patient a while, dear. These things take time.’

     ‘What will you do, Ticki?’

     ‘I’m full of ideas, darling,’ he said wearily. (What a day it had been.) ‘Just let them simmer for a little while.’

     ‘Tell me one idea. Just one.’

     His eyes followed the lizard as it pounced; then he picked an ant wing out of his gin and drank again. He thought to himself: what a fool I really was not to take the hundred pounds. I destroyed the letter for nothing. I took the risk. I might just as well... Louise said, ‘I’ve known it for years. You don’t love me.’ She spoke with calm. He knew that calm - it meant they had reached the quiet centre of the storm: always in this region at about this time they began to speak the truth at each other. The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths. He involved himself in what he always knew was a vain struggle to retain the lies. ‘Don’t be absurd, darling. Who do you mink I love if I don’t love you?’

     ‘You don’t love anybody.’

     ‘Is that why I treat you so badly?’ He tried to hit a light note, and it sounded hollowly back at him.

     ‘That’s your conscience,’ she said, ‘your sense of duty. You’ve never loved anyone since Catherine died.’

     ‘Except myself, of course. You always say I love myself.’

     ‘No, I don’t think you do.’

     He defended himself by evasions. In this cyclonic centre he was powerless to give the comforting lie. ‘I try all the time to keep you happy. I work hard for that.’

     ‘Ticki, you won’t even say you love me. Go on. Say it once.’

     He eyed her bitterly over the pink gin, the visible sign of his failure: the skin a little yellow with atabrine, the eyes bloodshot with tears. No man could guarantee love for ever, but he had sworn fourteen years ago, at Ealing, silently, during the horrible little elegant ceremony among the lace and candles, that he would at least always see to it that she was happy. ‘Ticki, I’ve got nothing except you, and you’ve got - nearly everything.’ The lizard flicked across the wall and came to rest again, the wings of a moth in his small crocodile jaws. The ants struck tiny muffled blows at the electric globe.

     ‘And yet you want to go away from me,’ he said.

     ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know you aren’t happy either. Without me you’ll have peace.’

     This was what he always left out of account - the accuracy of her observation. He had nearly everything, and all he needed was peace. Everything meant work, the daily regular routine in the little bare office, the change of seasons in a place he loved. How often he had been pitied for the austerity of the work, the bareness of the rewards. But Louise knew him better than that. If he had become young again this was the life he would have chosen to live; only this time he would not have expected any other person to share it with him, the rat upon the bath, the lizard on the wall, the tornado blowing open the windows at one in the morning, and the last pink light upon the laterite roads at sundown.

     ‘You are talking nonsense, dear,’ he said, and went through the doomed motions of mixing another gin and bitters. Again the nerve in his head tightened; unhappiness had uncoiled with its inevitable routine - first her misery and his strained attempts to leave everything unsaid: then her own calm statement of truths much better lied about, and finally the snapping of his own control - truths flung back at her as though she were his enemy. As he embarked on this last stage, crying suddenly and truthfully out at her while the angostura trembled in his hand, ‘You can’t give me peace,’ he already knew what would succeed it, the reconciliation and the easy lies again until the next scene.

     ‘That’s what I say,’ she said, ‘if I go away, you’ll have your peace.’

     ‘You haven’t any conception,’ he accused her, ‘of what peace means.’ It was as if she had spoken slightingly of a woman he loved. For he dreamed of peace by day and night. Once in sleep it had appeared to him as the great glowing shoulder of the moon heaving across his window like an iceberg, Arctic and destructive in the moment before the world was struck: by day he tried to win a few moments of its company, crouched under the rusting handcuffs in the locked office, reading the reports from the sub-stations. Peace seemed to him the most beautiful word in the language: My peace I give you, my peace I leave with you: O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. In the Mass he pressed his fingers against his eyes to keep the tears of longing in.

     Louise said with the old tenderness, ‘Poor dear, you wish I were dead like Catherine. You want to be alone.’

     He replied obstinately, ‘I want you to be happy.’

     She said wearily, ‘Just tell me you love me. That helps a little.’ They were through again, on the other side of the scene: he thought coolly and collectedly, this one wasn’t so bad: we shall be able to sleep tonight He said, ‘Of course I love you, darling. And I’ll fix that passage. You’ll see.’

     He would still have made the promise even if he could have foreseen all that would come of it He had always been prepared to accept the responsibility for his actions, and he had always been half aware too, from the time he made his terrible private vow that she should be happy, how far this action might carry him. Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practises. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.