THE police van took its place in the long line of army lorries waiting for the ferry. Their headlamps were like a little village in the night. The trees came down on either side smelling of heat and rain, and somewhere at the end of the column a driver sang - the wailing, toneless voice rose and fell like a wind through a keyhole. Scobie slept and woke, slept and woke. When he woke he thought of Pemberton and wondered how he would feel if he were his father - that elderly, retired bank manager whose wife had died in giving birth to Pemberton - but when he slept he went smoothly back into a dream of perfect happiness and freedom. He was walking through a wide cool meadow with Ali at his heels: there was nobody else anywhere in his dream, and Ali never spoke. Birds went by far overhead, and once when he sat down the grass was parted by a small green snake which passed on to his hand and up his arm without fear, and before it slid down into the grass again touched his cheek with a cold, friendly, remote tongue.

     Once when he opened his eyes Ali was standing beside him waiting for him to awake. ‘Massa like bed,’ he stated gently, firmly, pointing to the camp-bed he had made up at the edge of the path with the mosquito-net tied from the branches overhead. ‘Two three hours,’ Ali said. ‘Plenty lorries.’ Scobie obeyed and lay down and was immediately back in that peaceful meadow where nothing ever happened. The next time he woke Ali was still there, this time with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits. ‘One hour,’ Ali said.

     Then at last it was the turn of the police van. They moved down the red laterite slope on to the raft, and then edged foot by foot across the dark styx-like stream towards the woods on the other side. The two ferrymen pulling on the rope wore nothing but girdles, as though they had left their clothes behind on the bank where life ended, and a third man beat time to them, making do for instrument in this between-world with an empty sardine-tin. The wailing tireless voice of the living singer shifted backwards.

     This was only the first of three ferries that had to be crossed, with the same queue forming each time. Scobie never succeeded in sleeping properly again; his head began to ache from the heave of the van: he ate some aspirin and hoped for the best He didn’t want a dose of fever when he was away from home. It was not Pemberton that worried him now - let the dead bury their dead - it was the promise he had made to Louise. Two hundred pounds was so small a sum: the figures rang their changes in his aching head like a peal of bells: 200 002 020: it worried him that he could not find a fourth combination: 002 200 020.

     They had come beyond the range of the tin-roofed shacks and the decayed wooden settlers’ huts; the villages they passed through were bush villages of mud and thatch: no light showed anywhere: doors were closed and shutters were up, and only a few goats’ eyes watched the headlamps of the convoy. 020 002 200 200 002 020. Ali squatting in the body of the van put an arm around his shoulder holding a mug of hot tea - somehow he had boiled another kettle in the lurching chassis. Louise was right - it was like the old days. If he had felt younger, if mere had been no problem of 200 020 002, he would have been happy. Poor Pemberton’s death would not have disturbed him - that was merely in the way of duty, and he had never liked Pemberton.

     ‘My head humbug me, Ali.’

     ‘Massa take plenty aspirin.’

     ‘Do you remember, Ali, that two hundred 002 trek we did twelve years ago in ten days, along the border; two of the carriers went sick...’

     He could see in the driver’s mirror Ali nodding and beaming. It seemed to him that this was all he needed of love or friendship. He could be happy with no more in the world than this - the grinding van, the hot tea against his lips, the heavy damp weight of the forest, even the aching head, the loneliness. If I could just arrange for her happiness first, he thought, and in the confusing night he forgot for the while what experience had taught him - that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another’s happiness. ‘One hour more,’ Ali said, and he noticed that the darkness was thinning. ‘Another mug of tea, Ali, and put some whisky in it.’ The convoy had separated from them a quarter of an hour ago, when the police van had turned away from the main road and bumped along a by-road farther into the bush. He shut his eyes and tried to draw his mind away from the broken peal of figures to the distasteful job. There was only a native police sergeant at Bamba, and he would like to be clear in his own mind as to what had happened before he received the sergeant’s illiterate report. It would be better, he considered reluctantly, to go first to the Mission and see Father Clay.

     Father Clay was up and waiting for him in the dismal little European house which had been built among the mud huts in laterite bricks to look like a Victorian presbytery. A hurricane-lamp shone on the priest’s short red hair and his young freckled Liverpool face. He couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes at a time, and then he would be up, pacing his tiny room from hideous oleograph to plaster statue and back to oleograph again. ‘I saw so little of him,’ he wailed, motioning with his hands as though he were at the altar. ‘He cared for nothing but cards and drinking. I don’t drink and I’ve never played cards - except demon, you know, except demon, and that’s a patience. It’s terrible, terrible.’

‘He hanged himself?’

     ‘Yes. His boy came over to me yesterday. He hadn’t seen him since the night before, but that was quite usual after a bout, you know, a bout. I told him to go to the police. That was right, wasn’t it? There was nothing I could do. Nothing. He was quite dead.’

     ‘Quite right. Would you mind giving me a glass of water and some aspirin?’

‘Let me mix the aspirin for you. You know, Major Scobie, for weeks and months nothing happens here at all. I just walk up and down here, up and down, and then suddenly out of the blue ... it’s terrible.’ His eyes were red and sleepless: he seemed to Scobie one of those who are quite unsuited to loneliness. There were no books to be seen except a little shelf with his breviary and a few religious tracts. He was a man without resources. He began to pace up and down again and suddenly, turning on Scobie, he shot out an excited question. ‘Mightn’t there be a hope that it’s murder?’

     ‘Hope?’

     ‘Suicide,’ Father Clay said. ‘It’s too terrible. It puts a man outside mercy. I’ve been thinking about it all night.’

     ‘He wasn’t a Catholic. Perhaps that makes a difference. Invincible ignorance, eh?’

     ‘That’s what I try to think.’ Half-way between oleograph and statuette he suddenly started and stepped aside as though he had encountered another on his tiny parade. Then he looked quickly and slyly at Scobie to see whether his act had been noticed.

     ‘How often do you get down to the port?’ Scobie asked.

     ‘I was there for a night nine months ago. Why?’

     ‘Everybody needs a change. Have you many converts here?’

     ‘Fifteen. I try to persuade myself that young Pemberton had time - time, you know, while he died, to realize ...’

     ‘Difficult to think clearly when you are strangling, Father.’ He took a swig at the aspirin and the sour grains stuck in his throat ‘If it was murder you’d simply change your mortal sinner, Father,’ he said with an attempt at humour which wilted between the holy picture and the holy statue.

     ‘A murderer has time ...’ Father Clay said. He added wistfully, with nostalgia, ‘I used to do duty sometimes at Liverpool Gaol.’

     ‘Have you any idea why he did it?’

     ‘I didn’t know him well enough. We didn’t get on together.’

     ‘The only white men here. It seems a pity.’

     ‘He offered to lend me some books, but they weren’t at all the kind of books I care to read - love stories, novels ...’

     ‘What do you read, Father?’

     ‘Anything on the saints, Major Scobie. My great devotion is to the Little Flower.’

     ‘He drank a lot, didn’t he? Where did he get it from?’

     ‘Yusef’s store, I suppose.’

     ‘Yes. He may have been in debt?’

     ‘I don’t know. It’s terrible, terrible.’

     Scobie finished his aspirin. ‘I suppose I’d better go along.’ It was day now outside, and there was a peculiar innocence about the light, gentle and clear and fresh before the sun climbed.

     ‘I’ll come with you. Major Scobie.’

     The police sergeant sat in a deck-chair outside the D.C.’s bungalow. He rose and raggedly saluted, then immediately in his hollow unformed voice began to read his report. ‘At 3.30 p.m. yesterday, sah, I was woken by D.C.’s boy, who reported that D.C. Pemberton, sah ...’

     ‘That’s all right, sergeant, I’ll go inside and have a look round.’ The chief clerk waited for him just inside the door.

     The living-room of the bungalow had obviously once been the D.C.’s pride - that must have been in Butterworth’s day. There was an air of elegance and personal pride in the furniture; it hadn’t been supplied by the Government. There were eighteenth-century engravings of the old colony on the wall and in one bookcase were the volumes that Butterworth had left behind him - Scobie noted some titles and authors, Maitland’s Constitutional History, Sir Henry Maine, Bryce’s Holy Roman Empire, Hardy’s poems, and the Doomsday Records of Little Withington, privately printed. But imposed on all this were the traces of Pemberton - a gaudy leather pouf of so-called native work, the marks of cigarette-ends on the chairs, a stack of the books Father Clay had disliked - Somerset Maugham, an Edgar Wallace, two Horlers, and spread-eagled on the settee, Death Laughs at Locksmiths, The room was not properly dusted and Butterworth’s books were stained with damp.

     ‘The body is in the bedroom, sah,’ the sergeant said. Scobie opened the door and went in - Father Clay followed him. The body had been laid on the bed with a sheet over the face. When Scobie turned the sheet down to the shoulder he had the impression that he was looking at a child in a nightshirt quietly asleep: the pimples were the pimples of puberty and the dead face seemed to bear the trace of no experience beyond the class-room or the football field. ‘Poor child,’ he said aloud. The pious ejaculations of Father Clay irritated him. It seemed to him that unquestionably there must be mercy for someone so unformed. He asked abruptly, ‘How did he do it?’

     The police sergeant pointed to the picture rail that Butter-worth had meticulously fitted - no Government contractor would have thought of it. A picture - an early native king receiving missionaries under a State umbrella - leant against the wall and a cord remained twisted over the brass picture hanger. Who would have expected the flimsy contrivance not to collapse? He can weigh very little, he thought, and he remembered a child’s bones, light and brittle as a bird’s. His feet when he hung must have been only fifteen inches from the ground.

     ‘Did he leave any papers?’ Scobie asked the clerk. ‘They usually do. Men who are going to die are apt to become garrulous with self-revelations.

     ‘Yes, sah, in the office.’

     It needed only a casual inspection to realize how badly the office had been kept. The filing cabinet was unlocked: the trays on the desk were filled by papers dusty with inattention. The native clerk had obviously followed the same ways as his chief. ‘There, sah, on the pad.’

     Scobie read, in a hand-writing unformed as the face, a script-writing which hundreds of his school contemporaries must have been turning out all over the world: Dear Dad, - Forgive all this trouble. There doesn’t seem anything else to do. It’s a pity I’m not in the army because then I might be killed. Don’t go and pay the money I owe - the fellow doesn’t deserve it. They may try and get it out of you. Otherwise I wouldn’t mention it. It’s a rotten business for you, but it can’t be helped. Your loving son. The signature was ‘Dicky’. It was like a letter from school excusing a bad report.

     He handed the letter to Father Clay. ‘You are not going to tell me there’s anything unforgivable there, Father. If you or I did it, it would be despair - I grant you anything with us. We’d be damned because we know, but he doesn’t know a thing.’

     ‘The Church’s teaching ...’

     ‘Even the Church can’t teach me that God doesn’t pity the young ...’ Scobie broke abruptly off. ‘Sergeant, see that a grave’s dug quickly before the sun gets too hot. And look out for any bills he owed. I want to have a word with someone about this.’ When he turned towards the window the light dazzled him. He put his hand over his eyes and said, ‘I wish to God my head ...’ and shivered. ‘I’m in for a dose if I can’t stop it. If you don’t mind Ali putting up my bed at your place, Father, I’ll try and sweat it out’

     He took a heavy dose of quinine and lay naked between the blankets. As the sun climbed it sometimes seemed to bun that the stone walk of the small cell-like room sweated with cold and sometimes were baked with heat. The door was open and Ali squatted on the step just outside whittling a piece of wood. Occasionally he chased away villagers who raised their voices within the area of sick-room silence. The peine forte et dure weighed on Scobie’s forehead: occasionally it pressed him into sleep.

     But in this sleep there were no pleasant dreams. Pemberton and Louise were obscurely linked. Over and over again he was reading a letter which consisted only of variations on the figure 200 and the signature at the bottom was sometimes ‘Dicky’ and sometimes ‘Ticki’; he had the sense of time passing and his own immobility between the blankets - mere was something he had to do, someone he had to save, Louise or Dicky or Ticki, but he was tied to the bed and they laid weights on his forehead as you lay weights on loose papers. Once the sergeant came to the door and Ali chased him away, once Father Clay tiptoed in and took a tract off a shelf, and once, but that might have been a dream, Yusef came to the door.

     About five in the evening he woke feeling dry and cool and weak and called Ali in. ‘I dreamed I saw Yusef.’

     ‘Yusef come for to see you, sah.’

    ‘Tell him I’ll see him now.’ He felt tired and beaten about the body: he turned to face the stone wall and was immediately asleep. In his sleep Louise wept silently beside him; he put out his hand and touched the stone wall again - ‘Everything shall be arranged. Everything. Ticki promises.’ When he awoke Yusef was beside him.

     ‘A touch of fever, Major Scobie. I am very sorry to see you poorly.’

     ‘I’m sorry to see you at all, Yusef.’

     ‘Ah, you always make fun of me.’

     ‘Sit down, Yusef. What did you have to do with Pemberton?’

     Yusef eased his great haunches on the hard chair and noticing that his flies were open put down a large and hairy hand to deal with them. ‘Nothing, Major Scobie.’

     ‘It’s an odd coincidence that you are here just at the moment when he commits suicide.’

     ‘I think myself it is providence.’

     ‘He owed you money, I suppose?’

     ‘He owed my store-manager money.’

     ‘What sort of pressure were you putting on nun, Yusef?’

     ‘Major, you give an evil name to a dog and the dog is finished. If the D.C. wants to buy at my store, how can my manager stop selling to him? If he does that, what will happen? Sooner or later there will be a first-class row. The Provincial Commissioner will find out. The D.C. will be sent home. If he does not stop selling, what happens then? The D.C. runs up more and more bills. My manager becomes afraid of me, he asks the D.C. to pay - there is a row that way. When you have a D.C. like poor young Pemberton, there will be a row one day whatever you do. And the Syrian is always wrong.’

     ‘There’s quite a lot in what you say, Yusef.’ The pain was beginning again. ‘Give me that whisky and quinine, Yusef.’

     ‘You are not taking too much quinine, Major Scobie? Remember blackwater.’

     ‘I don’t want to be stuck up here for days. I want to kill this at birth. I’ve too many things to do.’

     ‘Sit up a moment, Major, and let me beat your pillows.’

     ‘You aren’t a bad chap, Yusef.’

     Yusef said, ‘Your sergeant has been looking for bills, but he could not find any. Here are IOU’s though. From my manager’s safe.’ He flapped his thigh with a little sheaf of papers.

     ‘I see. What are you going to do with them?’

     ‘Burn them,’ Yusef said. He took out a cigarette-lighter and lit the corners. ‘There,’ Yusef said. ‘He has paid, poor boy. There is no reason to trouble his father.’

     ‘Why did you come up here?’

     ‘My manager was worried. I was going to propose an arrangement.’

     ‘One needs a long spoon to sup with you, Yusef.’

     ‘My enemies do. Not my friends. I would do a lot for you, Major Scobie.’

     ‘Why do you always call me a friend, Yusef?’

     ‘Major Scobie,’ Yusef said, leaning his great white head forward, reeking of hair oil, ‘friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something. You remember when you put me into court ten years ago?’

     ‘Yes, yes.’ Scobie turned his head away from the light of the door.

     ‘You nearly caught me, Major Scobie, that time. It was a matter of import duties, you remember. You could have caught me if you had told your policeman to say something a little different. I was quite overcome with astonishment, Major Scobie, to sit in a police court and hear true facts from the mouths of policemen. You must have taken a lot of trouble to find out what was true, and to make them say it. I said to myself, Yusef, a Daniel has come to the Colonial Police.’

     ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk so much, Yusef. I’m not interested in your friendship.’

     ‘Your words are harder than your heart, Major Scobie. I want to explain why in my soul I have always felt your friend. You have made me feel secure. You will not frame me. You need facts, and I am sure the facts will always be in my favour.’ He dusted the ashes from his white trousers, leaving one more grey smear. ‘These are facts. I have burned all the IOU’s.’

‘I may yet find traces, Yusef, of what kind of agreement you were intending to make with Pemberton. This station controls one of the main routes across the border from - damnation, I can’t think of names with this head.’

‘Cattle smugglers. I’m not interested in cattle.’

‘Other things are apt to go back the other way.’

‘You are still dreaming of diamonds, Major Scobie. Everybody has gone crazy about diamonds since the war.’

     ‘Don’t feel too certain, Yusef, that I won’t find something when I go through Pemberton’s office.’

     ‘I feel quite certain, Major Scobie. You know I cannot read or write. Nothing is ever on paper. Everything is always in my head.’ Even while Yusef talked, Scobie dropped asleep - into one of those shallow sleeps that last a few seconds and have only time to reflect a preoccupation. Louise was coming towards him with both hands held out and a smile that he hadn’t seen upon her face for years. She said, ‘I am so happy, so happy,’ and he woke again to Yusef’s voice going soothingly on. ‘It is only your friends who do not trust you, Major Scobie. I trust you. Even that scoundrel Tallit trusts you.’

     It took him a moment to get this other face into focus. His brain adjusted itself achingly from the phrase ‘so happy’ to the phrase ‘do not trust’. He said, ‘What are you talking about, Yusef?’ He could feel the mechanism of his brain creaking, grinding, scraping, cogs failing to connect, all with pain.

     ‘First, there is the Commissionership.’

‘They need a young man,’ he said mechanically, and thought, if I hadn’t fever I would never discuss a matter like this with Yusef.

     ‘Then the special man they have sent from London ...’

‘You must come back when I’m clearer, Yusef. I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.’

     ‘They have sent a special man from London to investigate the diamonds - they are crazy about diamonds - only the Commissioner must know about him - none of the other officers, not even you.’

     ‘What rubbish you talk, Yusef. There’s no such man.’

     ‘Everybody guesses but you.’

     ‘Too absurd. You shouldn’t listen to rumour, Yusef.’

     ‘And a third thing. Tallit says everywhere you visit me.’

     ‘Tallit! Who believes what Tallit says?’

     ‘Everybody everywhere believes what is bad.’

     ‘Go away, Yusef. Why do you want to worry me now?’

     ‘I just want you to understand, Major Scobie, that you can depend on me. I have friendship for you in my soul. That is true, Major Scobie, it is true.’ The reek of hair-oil come closer as he bent towards the bed: the deep brown eyes were damp with what seemed to be emotion. ‘Let me pat your pillow. Major Scobie.’

     ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, keep away,’ Scobie said.

     ‘I know how things are. Major Scobie, and if I can help ..? I am a well-off man.’

     ‘I’m not looking for bribes, Yusef,’ he said wearily and turned his head away to escape the scent.

     ‘I am not offering you a bribe, Major Scobie. A loan at any time on a reasonable rate of interest - four per cent per annum. No conditions. You can arrest me next day if you have facts. I want to be your friend. Major Scobie. You need not be my friend. There is a Syrian poet who wrote, "Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away."‘

     ‘It sounds a very bad poem to me. But I’m no judge.’

     ‘It is a happy chance for me that we should be here together. In the town there are so many people watching. But here, Major Scobie, I can be of real help to you. May I fetch you more blankets?’

     ‘No, no, just leave me alone.’

     ‘I hate to see a man of your characteristics, Major Scobie, treated badly.’

     ‘I don’t mink the time’s ever likely to come, Yusef, when I shall need your pity. If you want to do something for me, though, go away and let me sleep.’

     But when he slept the unhappy dreams returned. Upstairs Louise was crying, and he sat at a table writing his last letter. ‘It’s a rotten business for you, but it can’t be helped. Your loving husband, Dicky,’ and then as he turned to look for a weapon or a rope, it suddenly occurred to him that this was an act he could never do. Suicide was for ever out of his power - he couldn’t condemn himself for eternity - no cause was important enough. He tore up his letter and ran upstairs to tell Louise that after all everything was all right, but she had stopped crying and the silence welling out from inside the bedroom terrified him. He tried the door and the door was locked. He called out, ‘Louise, everything’s all right. I’ve booked your passage,’ but there was no answer. He cried again, ‘Louise,’ and then a key turned and the door slowly opened with a sense of irrecoverable disaster, and he saw standing just inside Father Clay, who said to him, ‘The teaching of the Church ...’ Then he woke again to the small stone room like a tomb.

 

 

2

 

He was away for a week, for it took three days for the fever to run its course and another two days before he was fit to travel. He did not see Yusef again.

     It was past midnight when he drove into town. The houses were white as bones in the moonlight; the quiet streets stretched out on either side like the arms of a skeleton, and the faint sweet smell of flowers lay on the air. If he had been returning to an empty house he knew that he would have been contented. He was tired and he didn’t want to break the silence - it was too much to hope that Louise would be asleep, too much to hope that things would somehow have become easier in his absence and that he would see her free and happy as she had been in one of his dreams.

     The small boy waved his torch from the door: the frogs croaked from the bushes, and the pye dogs wailed at the moon. He was home. Louise put her arms round him: the table was laid for a late supper, the boys ran to and fro with his boxes: he smiled and talked and kept the bustle going. He talked of Pemberton and Father Clay and mentioned Yusef, but he knew that sooner or later he would have to ask how things had been with her. He tried to eat, but he was too tired to taste the food.

     ‘Yesterday I cleared up his office and wrote my report - and that was that.’ He hesitated, ‘That’s all my news,’ and went reluctantly on, ‘How have things been here?’ He looked quickly up at her face and away again. There had been one chance in a thousand that she would have smiled and said vaguely, ‘Not so bad’ and then passed on to other things, but he knew from her mouth that he wasn’t so lucky as that Something fresh had happened.

     But the outbreak - whatever it was to be - was delayed. She said, ‘Oh, Wilson’s been attentive.’

     ‘He’s a nice boy.’

     ‘He’s too intelligent for his job. I can’t think why he’s out here as just a clerk.’

     ‘He told me he drifted.’

     ‘I don’t mink I’ve spoken to anybody else since you’ve been away, except the small boy and the cook. Oh, and Mrs Halifax.’ Something in her voice told him that the danger point was reached. Always, hopelessly, he tried to evade it. He stretched and said, ‘My God, I’m tired. The fever’s left me limp as a rag. I think I’ll go to bed. It’s nearly half-past one, and I’ve got to be at the station at eight.’

     She said, ‘Ticki, have you done anything at all?’

     ‘How do you mean, dear?’

     ‘About the passage.’

     ‘Don’t worry. I’ll find a way, dear.’

     ‘You haven’t found one yet?’

     ‘No. I’ve got several ideas I’m working on. It’s just a question of borrowing.’ 200,020,002 rang in his brain.

     ‘Poor dear,’ she said, ‘don’t worry,’ and put her hand against his cheek. ‘You’re tired. You’ve bad fever. I’m not going to bait you now.’ Her hand, her words broke through every defence: he had expected tears, but he found them now in his own eyes. ‘Go up to bed, Henry,’ she said,

     ‘Aren’t you coming up?’

     ‘There are just one or two things I want to do.’

    He lay on his back under the net and waited for her. It occurred to him, as it hadn’t occurred to him for years, that she loved him. Poor dear, she loved him: she was someone of human stature with her own sense of responsibility, not simply the object of his care and kindness. The sense of failure deepened round him. All the way back from Bamba he had faced one fact - that there was only one man in the city capable of lending him, and willing to lend him, the two hundred pounds, and that was a man he must not borrow from. It would have been safer to accept the Portuguese captain’s bribe. Slowly and drearily he had reached the decision to tell her that the money simply could not be found, that for the next six months at any rate, until his leave, she must stay. If he had not felt so tired he would have told her when she asked him and it would have been over now, but he had flinched away and she had been kind, and it would be harder now than it had ever been to disappoint her. There was silence all through the little house, but outside the half-starved pye dogs yapped and whined. He listened, leaning on his elbow; he felt oddly unmanned, lying in bed alone waiting for Louise to join him. She had always been the one to go first to bed. He felt uneasy, apprehensive, and suddenly his dream came to mind, how he had listened outside the door and knocked, and there was no reply. He struggled out from under the net and ran downstairs barefooted.

     Louise was sitting at the table with a pad of notepaper in front of her, but she had written nothing but a name. The winged ants beat against the light and dropped then- wings over the table. Where the light touched her head he saw the grey hairs.

     ‘What is it, dear?’

     ‘Everything was so quiet,’ he said, ‘I wondered whether something had happened. I had a bad dream about you the other night. Pemberton’s suicide upset me.’

     ‘How silly, dear. Nothing like that could ever happen with us.’

     ‘Yes, of course. I just wanted to see you,’ he said, putting his hand on her hair. Over her shoulder he read the only words she had written, ‘Dear Mrs Halifax’...

     ‘You haven’t got your shoes on,’ she said. ‘You’ll be catching jiggers.’

     ‘I just wanted to see you,’ he repeated and wondered whether the stains on the paper were sweat or tears.

     ‘Listen, dear,’ she said. ‘You are not to worry any more. I’ve baited you and baited you. It’s like fever, you know. It comes and goes. Well, now it’s gone - for a while. I know you can’t raise the money. It’s not your fault. If it hadn’t been for that stupid operation ... It’s just the way things are, Henry.’

     ‘What’s it all got to do with Mrs Halifax?’

     ‘She and another woman have a two-berth cabin in the next ship and the other woman’s fallen out. She thought perhaps I could slip in - if her husband spoke to the agent.’

     ‘That’s in about a fortnight,’ he said.

     ‘Darling, give up trying. It’s better just to give up. Anyway, I had to let Mrs Halifax know tomorrow. And I’m letting her know that I shan’t be going.’

     He spoke rapidly - he wanted the words out beyond recall. ‘Write and tell her that you can go.’

     ‘Ticki,’ she said, ‘what do you mean?’ Her face hardened. ‘Ticki, please don’t promise something which can’t happen. I know you’re tired and afraid of a scene. But there isn’t going to be a scene. I mustn’t let Mrs Halifax down.’

     ‘You won’t. I know where I can borrow the money.’

     ‘Why didn’t you tell me when you came back?’

     ‘I wanted to give you your ticket. A surprise.’

     She was not so happy as he would have expected: she always saw a little farther than he hoped. ‘And you are not worrying any more?’ she asked.

     ‘I’m not worrying any more. Are you happy?’

     ‘Oh yes,’ she said in a puzzled voice. ‘I’m happy, dear.’

 

 

3

 

The liner came in on a Saturday evening; from the bedroom window they could see its long grey form steal past the boom, beyond the palms. They watched it with a sinking of the heart - happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness - hand in hand they watched their separation anchor in the bay. ‘Well,’ Scobie said, ‘that means tomorrow afternoon.’

     ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘when this time is over, I’ll be good to you again. I just couldn’t stand this life any more.’

     They could hear a clatter below stain as Ali, who had also been watching the sea, brought out the trunks and boxes. It was as if the house were tumbling down around them, and the vultures took off from the roof, rattling the corrugated-iron as though they felt the tremor in the walls. Scobie said, ‘While you are sorting your things upstairs, I’ll pack your books.’ It was as if they had been playing these last two weeks at infidelity, and now the process of divorce had them in its grasp: the division of one life into two: the sharing out of the sad spoils.

     ‘Shall I leave you this photograph, Ticki?’ He took a quick sideways glance at the first communion face and said, ‘No. You have it.’

     ‘I’ll leave you this one of us with the Ted Bromleys.’

     ‘Yes, leave that’ He watched her for a moment laying out her clothes and then he went downstairs. One by one he took out the books and wiped them with a cloth: the Oxford Verse, the Woolfs, the younger poets. Afterwards the shelves were almost empty: his own books took up so little room.

     Next day they went to Mass together early. Kneeling together at the Communion rail they seemed to claim that this was not separation. He thought: I’ve prayed for peace and now I’m getting it. It’s terrible the way that prayer is answered. It had better be good, I’ve paid a high enough price for it As they walked back he said anxiously, ‘You are happy?’

     ‘Yes, Ticki, and you?’

     ‘I’m happy as long as you are happy.’

     ‘It will be all right when I’ve got on board and settled down. I expect I shall drink a bit tonight Why don’t you have someone in, Ticki?’

     ‘Oh, I prefer being alone.’

     ‘Write to me every week.’

     ‘Of course.’

     ‘And Ticki, you won’t be lazy about Mass? You’ll go when I’m not there?’

     ‘Of course.’

     Wilson came up the road. His face shone with sweat and anxiety. He said, ‘Are you really off? Ali told me at the house that you are going on board this afternoon.’

‘She’s off,’ Scobie said. ‘You never told me it was close like this.’

     ‘I forgot,’ Louise said, ‘there was so much to do.’

‘I never thought you’d really go. I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t run into Halifax at the agent’s.’

     ‘Oh well,’ Louise said, ‘you and Henry will have to keep an eye on each other.’

     ‘It’s incredible,’ Wilson said, kicking the dusty road. He hung there, between them and the house, not stirring to let them by. He said, ‘I don’t know a soul but you - and Harris of course.’

     ‘You’ll have to start making acquaintances,’ Louise said. ‘You’ll have to excuse us now. There’s so much to do.’

     They walked round him because he didn’t move, and Scobie, looking back, gave him a kindly wave - he looked so lost and unprotected and out of place on the blistered road. ‘Poor Wilson,’ he said, ‘I think he’s in love with you.’

     ‘He thinks he is.’

     ‘It’s a good thing for him you are going. People like that become a nuisance in this climate. I’ll be kind to him while you are away.’

     ‘Ticki,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t see too much of him. I wouldn’t trust him. There’s something phoney about him.’

     ‘He’s young and romantic.’

     ‘He’s too romantic. He tells lies. Why does he say he doesn’t know a soul?’

     ‘I don’t think he does.’

     ‘He knows the Commissioner. I saw him going up there the other night at dinner-time.’

     ‘It’s just a way of talking.’

     Neither of them had any appetite for lunch, but the cook, who wanted to rise to the occasion, produced an enormous curry which filled a washing-basin in the middle of the table: round it were ranged (he many small dishes that went with it -the fried bananas, red peppers, ground nuts, paw paw, orange-slices, chutney. They seemed to be sitting miles apart separated by a waste of dishes. The food chilled on their plates and there seemed nothing to talk about except, ‘I’m not hungry,’ ‘Try and eat a little,’ ‘I can’t touch a thing,’ ‘You ought to start off with a good meal,’ an endless friendly bicker about food. Ali came in and out to watch them: he was like a figure on a clock that records the striking of the hours. It seemed horrible to both of them that now they would be glad when the separation was complete; they could settle down when once this ragged leave-taking was over, to a different life which again would exclude change.

     ‘Are you sure you’ve got everything?’ This was another variant which enabled them to sit there not eating but occasionally picking at something easily swallowed, going through all the things that might have been forgotten.

     ‘It’s lucky there’s only one bedroom. They’ll have to let you keep the house to yourself.’

‘They may turn me out for a married couple.’

‘You’ll write every week?’

‘Of course.’

     Sufficient time had elapsed: they could persuade themselves that they had lunched. ‘If you can’t eat any more I may as well drive you down. The sergeant’s organized carriers at the wharf.’ They could say nothing now which wasn’t formal; unreality cloaked their movements. Although they could touch each other it was as if the whole coastline of a continent was already between them; their words were like the stilted sentences of a bad letter-writer.

     It was a relief to be on board and no longer alone together. Halifax, of the Public Works Department, bubbled over with false bonhomie. He cracked risky jokes: and told the two women to drink plenty of gin. ‘It’s good for the bow-wows,’ he said. ‘First thing to go wrong on board ship are the bowwows. Plenty of gin at night and what will cover a sixpence in the morning.’ The two women took stock of their cabin. They stood there in the shadow like cave-dwellers; they spoke in undertones that the men couldn’t catch: they were no longer wives - they were sisters belonging to a different race. ‘You and I are not wanted, old man,’ Halifax said. ‘They’ll be all right now. Me for the shore.’

     ‘I’ll come with you.’ Everything had been unreal, but this suddenly was real pain, the moment of death. Like a prisoner he had not believed in the trial: it had been a dream: the condemnation had been a dream and the truck ride, and then suddenly here he was with his back to the blank wall and everything was true. One steeled oneself to end courageously. They went to the end of the passage, leaving the Halifaxes the cabin.

     ‘Good-bye, dear.’

     ‘Good-bye. Ticki, you’ll write every ...’

     ‘Yes, dear.’

     ‘I’m an awful deserter.’

     ‘No, no. This isn’t the place for you.’

     ‘It would have been different if they’d made you Commissioner.’

     ‘I’ll come down for my leave. Let me know if you run short of money before then. I can fix things.’

     ‘You’ve always fixed things for me. Ticki, you’ll be glad to have no more scenes.’

     ‘Nonsense.’

     ‘Do you love me, Ticki?’

     ‘What do you think?’

     ‘Say it. One likes to hear it - even if it isn’t true.’

     ‘I love you, Louise. Of course it’s true.’

     ‘If I can’t bear it down there alone, Ticki, I’ll come back.’

     They kissed and went up on deck. From here the port was always beautiful; the thin layer of houses sparkled in the sun like quartz or lay in the shadow of the great green swollen hills. ‘You are well escorted,’ Scobie said. The destroyers and the corvettes sat around like dogs: signal flags rippled and a helio flashed. The fishing boats rested on the broad bay under their brown butterfly sails. ‘Look after yourself, Ticki.’

    Halifax came booming up behind them. ‘Who’s for shore? Got the police launch, Scobie? Mary’s down in the cabin, Mrs Scobie, wiping off the tears and putting on the powder for the passengers.’

     ‘Good-bye, dear.’

     ‘Good-bye.’ That was the real good-bye, the handshake with Halifax watching and the passengers from England looking curiously on. As the launch moved away she was almost at once indistinguishable; perhaps she had gone down to the cabin to join Mrs Halifax. The dream had finished: change was over: life had begun again.

     ‘I hate these good-byes,’ Halifax said. ‘Glad when it’s all over. Think I’ll go up to the Bedford and have a glass of beer. Join me?’

     ‘Sorry. I have to go on duty.’

     ‘I wouldn’t mind a nice little black girl to look after me now I’m alone,’ Halifax said. ‘However, faithful and true, old fidelity, that’s me,’ and as Scobie knew, it was.

     In the shade of a tarpaulined dump Wilson stood, looking out across the bay. Scobie paused. He was touched by the plump sad boyish face. ‘Sorry we didn’t see you,’ he said and lied harmlessly. ‘Louise sent her love.’

 

 

4

 

It was nearly one in the morning before he returned. The light was out in the kitchen quarters and Ali was dozing on the steps of the house until the headlamps woke him, passing across his sleeping face. He jumped up and lit the way from the garage with his torch.

     ‘All right, Ali. Go to bed.’

     He let himself into the empty house - he had forgotten the deep tones of silence. Many a time he had come in late, after Louise was asleep, but there had never then been quite this quality of security and impregnability in the silence: his ears had listened for, even though they could not catch, the faint rustle of another person’s breath, the tiny movement. Now there was nothing to listen for. He went upstairs and looked into the bedroom. Everything had been tidied away; there was no sign of Louise’s departure or presence: Ali had even removed the photograph and put it in a drawer. He was indeed alone. In the bathroom a rat moved, and once the iron roof crumpled as a late vulture settled for the night.

     Scobie sat down in the living-room and put his feet upon another chair. He felt unwilling yet to go to bed, but he was sleepy - it had been a long day. Now that he was alone he could indulge in the most irrational act and sleep in a chair instead of a bed. The sadness was peeling off his mind, leaving contentment. He had done his duty: Louise was happy. He closed his eyes.

     The sound of a car driving in off the road, headlamps moving across the window, woke him. He imagined it was a police car - that night he was the responsible officer and he thought that some urgent and probably unnecessary telegram had come in. He opened the door and found Yusef on the step. ‘Forgive me, Major Scobie, I saw your light as I was passing, and I thought...’

     ‘Come in,’ he said, ‘I have whisky or would you prefer a little beer ...?’

     Yusef said with surprise, ‘This is very hospitable of you, Major Scobie.’

     ‘If I know a man well enough to borrow money from him, surely I ought to be hospitable.’

     ‘A little beer then, Major Scobie.’

     ‘The Prophet doesn’t forbid it?’

     ‘The Prophet had no experience of bottled beer or whisky. Major Scobie. We have to interpret his words in the modern light.’ He watched Scobie take the bottles from the ice chest ‘Have you no refrigerator, Major Scobie?’

     ‘No. Mine’s waiting for a spare part - it will go on waiting till the end of the war, I imagine.’

     ‘I must not allow that. I have several spare refrigerators. Let me send one up to you.’

     ‘Oh, I can manage all right, Yusef. I’ve managed for two years. So you were passing by.’

     ‘Well, not exactly. Major Scobie. That was a way of speaking. As a matter of fact I waited until I knew your boys were asleep, and I borrowed a car from a garage. My own car is so well known. And I did not bring a chauffeur. I didn’t want to embarrass you, Major Scobie.’

     ‘I repeat, Yusef, that I shall never deny knowing a man from whom I have borrowed money.’

     ‘You do keep harping on that so, Major Scobie. That was just a business transaction. Four per cent is a fair interest. I ask for more only when I have doubt of the security. I wish you would let me send you a refrigerator.’

     ‘What did you want to see me about?’

     ‘First, Major Scobie, I wanted to ask after Mrs Scobie. Has she got a comfortable cabin? Is there anything she requires? The ship calls at Lagos, and I could- have anything she needs sent on board there. I would telegraph my agent.’

     ‘I think she’s quite comfortable.’

     ‘Next, Major Scobie, I wanted to have a few words with you about diamonds.’

     Scobie put two more bottles of beer on the ice. He said slowly and gently, ‘Yusef, I don’t want you to think I am the kind of man who borrows money one day and insults his creditor the next to reassure his ego.’

     ‘Ego?’

     ‘Never mind. Self-esteem. What you like. I’m not going to pretend that we haven’t in a way become colleagues in a business, but my duties are strictly confined to paying you four per cent.’

     ‘I agree, Major Scobie. You have said all this before and I agree. I say again that I am never dreaming to ask you to do one thing for me. I would rather do things for you.’

     ‘What a queer chap you are, Yusef. I believe you do like me.’

     ‘Yes, I do like you, Major Scobie.’ Yusef sat on the edge of his chair which cut a sharp edge in his great expanding thighs: he was I’ll at ease in any house but his own. ‘And now may I talk to you about diamonds, Major Scobie?’

     ‘Fire away then.’

     ‘You know I think the Government is crazy about diamonds. They waste your time, the time of the Security Police: they send special agents down the coast: we even have one here - you know who, though nobody is supposed to know but the Commissioner: he spends money on every black or poor Syrian who tells him stories. Then he telegraphs it to England and all down the coast. And after all this, do they catch a single diamond?’

     ‘This has got nothing to do with us, Yusef.’

     ‘I want to talk to you as a friend, Major Scobie. There are diamonds and diamonds and Syrians and Syrians. You people hunt the wrong men. You want to stop industrial diamonds going to Portugal and then to Germany, or across the border to the Vichy French. But all the time you are chasing people who are not interested in industrial diamonds, people who just want to get a few gem stones in a safe place for when peace comes again.’

     ‘In other words you? ‘

     ‘Six times this month police have been into my stores making everything untidy. They will never find any industrial diamonds that way. Only small men are interested in industrial diamonds. Why, for a whole matchbox full of them, you would only get two hundred pounds. I call them gravel collectors,’ he said with contempt

     Scobie said slowly, ‘Sooner or later, Yusef, I felt sure that you’d want something out of me. But you are going to get nothing but four per cent. Tomorrow I’m giving a full confidential report of our business arrangement to the Commissioner. Of course he may ask for my resignation, but I don’t think so. He trusts me.’ A memory pricked him. ‘I think he trusts me.’

     ‘Is that a wise thing to do, Major Scobie?’

     ‘I think it’s very wise. Any kind of secret between us two would go bad in time.’

     ‘Just as you like, Major Scobie. But I don’t want anything from you, I promise. I would like to give you things always. You will not take a refrigerator, but I thought you would perhaps take advice, information.’

     I’m listening, Yusef.’

     ‘Tallit’s a small man. He is a Christian. Father Rank and other people go to his house. They say, ‘If there’s such a thing as an honest Syrian, then Tallit’s the man.’ Tallit’s not very successful, and that looks just the same as honesty.’

     ‘Go on.’

     ‘Tallit’s cousin is sailing in the next Portuguese boat. His luggage will be searched, of course, and nothing will be found. He will have a parrot with him in a cage. My advice, Major Scobie, is to let Tallit’s cousin go and keep his parrot.’

     ‘Why let the cousin go?’

     ‘You do not want to show your hand to Tallit. You can easily say the parrot is suffering from a disease and must stay. He will not dare to make a fuss.’

     ‘You mean the diamonds are in its crop?’

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘Has that trick been used before on the Portuguese boats?’

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘It looks to me as if well have to buy an aviary.’

     ‘Will you act on that information, Major Scobie?’

     ‘You give me information, Yusef. I don’t give you information.’

     Yusef nodded and smiled. Raising his bulk with some care he touched Scobie’s sleeve quickly and shyly. ‘You are quite right, Major Scobie. Believe me, I never want to do you any harm at all. I shall be careful and you be careful too, and everything will be all right.’ It was as if they were in a conspiracy together to do no harm: even innocence in Yusef’s hands took on a dubious colour. He said, ‘If you were to say a good word to Tallit sometimes it would be safer. The agent visits him.’

     ‘I don’t know of any agent.’

     ‘You are quite right, Major Scobie.’ Yusef hovered like a fat moth on the edge of the light. He said, ‘Perhaps if you were writing one day to Mrs Scobie you would give her my best wishes. Oh no, letters are censored. You cannot do that You could say, perhaps - no, better not. As long as you know, Major Scobie, that you have my best wishes -’ Stumbling on the narrow path, he made for his car. When he had turned on his lights he pressed his face against the glass: it showed up in the illumination of the dashboard, wide, pasty, untrustworthy, sincere. He made a tentative shy sketch of a wave towards Scobie, where he stood alone in the doorway of the quiet and empty house.