AS soon as he had handed over his work to Frazer and closed his office for the day, Scobie started out for the Nissen. He drove with his eyes half-closed, looking straight ahead: he told himself, now, today, I am going to clean up, whatever the cost. Life is going to start again: this nightmare of love is finished. It seemed to him that it had died for ever the previous night under the petrol drums. The sun blazed down on his hands, which were stuck to the wheel by sweat

     His mind was so concentrated on what had to come - the opening of a door, a few words, and closing a door again for ever - that he nearly passed Helen on the road. She was walking down the hill towards him, hatless. She didn’t even see the car. He had to run after her and catch her up. When she turned it was the face he had seen at Pende carried past him - defeated, broken, as ageless as a smashed glass.

     ‘What are you doing here? In the sun, without a hat.’

     She said vaguely, ‘I was looking for you,’ standing there, dithering on the laterite.

     ‘Come back to the car. You’ll get sunstroke.’ A look of cunning came into her eyes. ‘Is it as easy as all that?’ she asked, but she obeyed him.

     They sat side by side in the car. There seemed to be no object in driving farther: one could say good-bye here as easily as there. She said, ‘I heard this morning about Ali. Did you do it?’

     ‘I didn’t cut his throat myself,’ he said. ‘But he died because I existed.’

     ‘Do you know who did?’

     ‘I don’t know who held the knife. A wharf rat, I suppose,

     Yusef s boy who was with him has disappeared. Perhaps he did it or perhaps he’s dead too. We will never prove anything, I doubt if Yusef intended it’

     ‘You know,’ she said, ‘this is the end for us. I can’t go on ruining you any more. Don’t speak. Let me speak. I never thought it would be like this. Other people seem to have love affairs which start and end and are happy, but with us it doesn’t work. It seems to be all or nothing. So it’s got to be nothing. Please don’t speak. I’ve been thinking about this for weeks. I’m going to go away - right right away.’

     ‘Where to?’

     ‘I told you not to speak. Don’t ask questions.’ He could see in the windscreen a pale reflection of her desperation. It seemed to him as though he were being torn apart. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘don’t think it’s easy. I’ve never done anything so hard. It would be so much easier to die. You come into every’ thing. I can never again see a Nissen hut - or a Morris car. Or taste a pink gin. See a black face. Even a bed ... one has to steep in a bed. I don’t know where I’ll get away from you. It’s no use saying in a year it will be all right It’s a year I’ve got to get through. All the time knowing you are somewhere. I could send a telegram or a letter and you’d have to read it, even if you didn’t reply.’ He thought: how much easier it would be for her if I were dead. ‘But I mustn’t write,’ she said. She wasn’t crying: her eyes when he took a quick glance were dry and red, as he remembered them in hospital, exhausted. ‘Waking up will be the worst. There’s always a moment when one forgets that everything’s different.’

     He said, ‘I came up here to say good-bye too. But there are things I can’t do.’

     ‘Don’t talk, darling. Dm being good. Can’t you see I’m being good? You don’t have to go away from me - I’m going away from you. You won’t ever know where to. I hope I won’t be too much of a slut’

     ‘No,’ he said, ‘no.’

     ‘Be quiet darling. You are going to be all right you’ll see. You’ll be able to clean up. You’ll be a Catholic again - that’s what you really want, isn’t it, not a pack of women?’

     ‘I want to stop giving pain,’ he said.

     ‘You want peace, dear. You’ll have peace. You’ll see. Everything will be all right.’ She put her hand on his knee and began at last to weep in this effort to comfort him. He thought: where did she pick up this heartbreaking tenderness? Where do they learn to be so old so quickly?

     ‘Look, dear. Don’t come up to the hut. Open the car door for me. It’s stiff. Well say good-bye here, and you’ll just drive home - or to the office if you’d rather. That’s so much easier. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right’ He thought I missed that one death and now I’m having them all. He leant over her and wrenched at the car door: her tears touched his cheek. He could feel the mark like a burn. ‘There’s no objection to a farewell kiss. We haven’t quarrelled. There hasn’t been a scene. There’s no bitterness.’ As they kissed he was aware of pain under his mouth like the beating of a bird’s heart. They sat still, silent and the door of the car lay open. A few black labourers passing down the hill looked curiously hi.

     She said, ‘I can’t believe that this is the last time: that I’ll get out and you’ll drive away, and we won’t see each other again ever. I won’t go outside more than I can help till I get right away. I’ll be up here and you’ll be down there. Oh, God, I wish I hadn’t got the furniture you brought me.’

     ‘It’s just official furniture.’

     ‘The cane is broken in one of the chairs where you sat down too quickly.’

     ‘Dear, dear, this isn’t the way.’

     ‘Don’t speak, darling. I’m really being quite good, but I can’t say these things to another living soul. In books there’s always a confidant. But I haven’t got a confidant. I must say them all once.’ He thought again: if I were dead, she would be free of me. One forgets the dead quite quickly; one doesn’t wonder about the dead - what is he doing now, who is he with? This for her is the hard way.

     ‘Now, darling, I’m going to do it. Shut your eyes. Count three hundred slowly, and I won’t be in sight Turn the car quickly and drive like hell. I don’t want to see you go. And I’ll stop my ears. I don’t want to hear you change gear at the bottom of the hill. Cars do that a hundred times a day. I don’t want to hear you change gear.’

     O God, he prayed, his hands dripping over the wheel, kill me now, now. My God, you’ll never have more complete contrition. What a mess I am. I carry suffering with me like a body smell. Kill me. Put an end to me. Vermin don’t have to exterminate themselves. Kill me. Now. Now. Now.

     ‘Shut your eyes, darling. This is the end. Really the end.’ She said hopelessly, ‘It seems so silly though.’

     He said, ‘I won’t shut my eyes. I won’t leave you. I promised that.’

     ‘You aren’t leaving me. I’m le............