Wilson said, ‘I have kept away as long as I could, but I thought perhaps I could be of some help.’

     ‘Everybody,’ Louise said, ‘has been very kind,’

     ‘I had no idea that he was so ill.’

     ‘Your spying didn’t help you there, did it?’

     ‘That was my job,’ Wilson said, ‘and I love you.’

     ‘How glibly you use that word, Wilson.’

     ‘You don’t believe me?’

     ‘I don’t believe in anybody who says love, love, love. It means self, self, self.’

     ‘You won’t marry me then?’

    ‘It doesn’t seem likely, does it, but I might, in time. I don’t know what loneliness may do. But don’t let’s talk about love any more. It was his favourite lie.’

     ‘To both of you.’

     ‘How has she taken it, Wilson?’

     ‘I saw her on the beach this afternoon with Bagster. And I hear she was a bit pickled last night at the club.’

     ‘She hasn’t any dignity.’

     ‘I never knew what he saw in her. I’d never betray you, Louise.’

     ‘You know he even went up to see her the day he died.’

     ‘How do you know?’

     ‘It’s all written there. In his diary. He never lied in his diary. He never said things he didn’t mean - like love.’

     Three days had passed since Scobie had been hastily buried. Dr Travis had signed the death certificate - angina pectoris. In that climate a post-mortem was difficult, and in any case unnecessary, though Dr Travis had taken the precaution of checking up on the Evipan.

     ‘Do you know,’ Wilson said, ‘when my boy told me he had died suddenly in the night, I thought it was suicide?’

     ‘It’s odd how easily I can talk about him,’ Louise said, ‘now that he’s gone. Yet I did love him, Wilson. I did love him, but he seems so very very gone.’

     It was as if he had left nothing behind him in the house but a few suits of clothes and a Mende grammar: at the police station a drawer full of odds and ends and a pair of rusting handcuffs. And yet the house was no different: the shelves were as full of books; it seemed to Wilson that it must always have been her house, not his. Was it just imagination then that made their voices ring a little hollowly, as though the house were empty?

     ‘Did you know all the time - about her?’ Wilson asked.

     ‘It’s why I came home. Mrs Carter wrote to me. She said everybody was talking. Of course he never realized that. He thought he’d been so clever. And he nearly convinced me - that it was finished. Going to communion the way he did.’

     ‘How did he square that with his conscience?’

     ‘Some Catholics do, I suppose. Go to confession and start over again. I thought he was more honest though. When a man’s dead one begins to find out.’

     ‘He took money from Yusef.’

     ‘I can believe it now.’

     Wilson put his hand on Louise’s shoulder and said, ‘You can trust me, Louise. I love you.’

     ‘I really believe you do.’ They didn’t kiss; it was too soon for that, but they sat in the hollow room, holding hands, listening to the vultures clambering on the iron roof.

     ‘So that’s his diary,’ Wilson said.

     ‘He was writing in it when he died - oh nothing interesting, just the temperatures He always kept the temperatures. He wasn’t romantic. God knows what she saw in him to make it worth while.’

     ‘Would you mind if I looked at it?’

     ‘If you want to,’ she said, ‘poor Ticki, he hasn’t any secrets left.’

     ‘His secrets were never very secret.’ He turned a page and read and turned a page. He said, ‘Had he suffered from sleeplessness very long?’

     ‘I always thought that he slept like a log whatever happened.’

     Wilson said, ‘Have you noticed that he’s written in pieces about sleeplessness - afterwards?’

     ‘How do you know?’

     ‘You’ve only to compare the colour of the ink. And all these records of taking his Evipan - it’s very studied, very careful. But above all the colour of the ink.’ He said, ‘It makes one think.’

     She interrupted him with horror, ‘Oh no, he couldn’t have done that. After all, in spite of everything, he was a Catholic.’

2

‘Just let me come in for one little drink,’ Bagster pleaded.

     ‘We had four at the beach.’

     ‘Just one little one more.’

     ‘All right,’ Helen said. There seemed to be no reason so far as she could see to deny anyone anything any more for ever.

     Bagster said, ‘You know it’s the first time you’ve let me come in. Charming little place you’ve made of it. Who’d have thought a Nissen hut could be so homey?’ Flushed and smelling of pink gin, both of us, we are a pair, she thought. Bagster kissed her wetly on her upper lip and looked around again. ‘Ha ha,’ he said, ‘the good old bottle.’ When they had drunk one more gin he took off his uniform jacket and hung it carefully on a chair. He said, ‘Let’s take our back hair down and talk of love.’

     ‘Need we?’ Helen said. ‘Yet?’

     ‘Lighting up time,’ Bagster said. ‘The dusk. So well let George take over the controls ...’

     ‘Who’s George?’

     ‘............