The Heart of the Matter (18 page)

IV

In the morning he told the doctor that he would stay till proper transport arrived: Miss Malcott could have his place in the police van. It was better to get her moving, for the child’s death had upset her again, and it was by no means certain that there would not be other deaths. They buried the child next day, using the only coffin they could get: it had been designed for a tall man. In this climate delay was unwise. Scobie did not attend the funeral service which was read by Mr Bowles, but the Perrots were present, Wilson and some of the court messengers: the doctor was busy in the rest-house. Instead, Scobie walked rapidly through the rice-fields, talked to the agricultural officer about irrigation, kept away. Later, when he had exhausted the possibilities of irrigation, he went into the store and sat in the dark among all the tins, the tinned jams and the tinned soups, the tinned butter, the tinned biscuits, the tinned milk, the tinned potatoes, the tinned chocolates, and waited for Wilson. But Wilson didn’t come: perhaps the funeral had been too much for all of them, and they had returned to the D.C.’s bungalow for drinks. Scobie went down to the jetty and watched the sailing boats move down towards the sea. Once he found himself saying aloud as though to a man at his elbow, ‘Why didn’t you let her drown?’ A court messenger looked at him askance and he moved on, up the hill.

Mrs Bowles was taking the air outside the rest-house: taking it literally, in doses like medicine. She stood there with her mouth opening and closing, inhaling and expelling. She said, ‘Good afternoon,’ stiffly, and took another dose. ‘You weren’t at the funeral, major?’

‘No.’

‘Mr Bowles and I can seldom attend a funeral together. Except when we’re on leave.’

‘Are there going to be any more funerals?’

‘One more, I think. The rest will be all right in time.’

‘Which of them is dying?’

‘The old lady. She took a turn for the worse last night. She had been getting on well.’

He felt a merciless relief. He said, ‘The boy’s all right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Mrs Rolt?’

‘She’s not out of danger, but I think she’ll do. She’s conscious now.’

‘Does she know her husband’s dead?’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Bowles began to swing her arms, up and down, from the shoulder. Then she stood on tip-toe six times. He said, ‘I wish there was something I could do to help.’

‘Can you read aloud?’ Mrs Bowles asked, rising on her toes.

I suppose so. Yes.’

‘You can read to the boy. He’s getting bored and boredom’s bad for him.’

‘Where shall I find a book?’

‘There are plenty at the Mission. Shelves of them.’

Anything was better than doing nothing. He walked up to the Mission and found, as Mrs Bowles said, plenty of books. He wasn’t much used to books, but even to his eye these hardly seemed a bright collection for reading to a sick boy. Damp-stained and late Victorian, the bindings bore titles like
Twenty Years in the Mission Field, Lost and Found, The Narrow Way, The Missionary’s Warning
. Obviously at some time there had been an appeal for books for the Mission library, and here were the scrapings of many pious shelves at home.
The Poems of John Oxenham, Fishers of Men
. He took a book at random out of the shelf and returned to the rest-house. Mrs Bowles was in her dispensary mixing medicines.

‘Found something?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are safe with any of those books,’ Mrs Bowles said. ‘They are censored by the committee before they come out. Sometimes people try to send the most unsuitable books. We are not teaching the children here to read in order that they shall read—well, novels.’

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Let me see what you’ve chosen.’

He looked at the title himself for the first time:
A Bishop among the Bantus
.

‘That should be interesting,’ Mrs Bowles said. He agreed doubtfully.

‘You know where to find him. You can read to him for a quarter of an hour—not more.’

The old lady had been moved into the innermost room where the child had died, the man with the bottle-nose had been shifted into what Mrs Bowles now called the convalescence ward, so that the middle room could be given up to the boy and Mrs Rolt. Mrs Rolt lay facing the wall with her eyes closed. They had apparently succeeded in removing the album from her clutch and it lay on a chair beside the bed. The boy watched Scobie with the bright intelligent gaze of fever.

‘My name’s Scobie. What’s yours?’

‘Fisher.’

Scobie said nervously, ‘Mrs Bowles asked me to read to you.’

‘What are you? A soldier?’

‘No, a policeman.’

‘Is it a murder story?’

‘No. I don’t think it is.’ He opened the book at random and came on a photograph of the bishop sitting in his robes on a hard drawing-room chair outside a little tin-roofed church: he was surrounded by Bantus, who grinned at the camera.

‘I’d like a murder story. Have you ever been in a murder?’

‘Not what you’d call a real murder with clues and a chase.’

‘What sort of a murder then?’

‘Well, people get stabbed sometimes fighting.’ He spoke in a low voice so as not to disturb Mrs Rolt. She lay with her fist clenched on the sheet—a fist not much bigger than a tennis ball.

‘What’s the name of the book you’ve brought? Perhaps I’ve read it. I read
Treasure Island
on the boat. I wouldn’t mind a pirate story. What’s it called?’

Scobie said dubiously, ‘
A Bishop among the Bantus
.’

‘What does that mean?’

Scobie drew a long breath. ‘Well, you see, Bishop is the name of the hero.’

‘But you said
a
Bishop.’

‘Yes. His name was Arthur.’

‘It’s a soppy name.’

‘Yes, but he’s a soppy hero.’ Suddenly, avoiding the boy’s eyes, he noticed that Mrs Rolt was not asleep: she was staring at the wall, listening. He went wildly on, ‘The real heroes are the Bantus.’

‘What are Bantus?’

‘They were a peculiarly ferocious lot of pirates who haunted the West Indies and preyed on all the shipping in that part of the Atlantic.’

‘Does Arthur Bishop pursue them?’

‘Yes. It’s a kind of detective story too because he’s a secret agent of the British Government. He dresses up as an ordinary seaman and sails on a merchantman so that he can be captured by the Bantus. You know they always give the ordinary seamen a chance to join them. If he’d been an officer they would have made him walk the plank. Then he discovers all their secret passwords and hiding-places and their plans of raids, of course, so that he can betray them when the time is ripe.’

‘He sounds a bit of a swine,’ the boy said.

‘Yes, and he falls in love with the daughter of the captain of the Bantus and that’s when he turns soppy. But that comes near the end and we won’t get as far as that. There are a lot of fights and murders before then.’

‘It sounds all right. Let’s begin.’

‘Well, you see, Mrs Bowles told me I was only to stay a short time today, so I’ve just told you about the book, and we can start it tomorrow.’

‘You may not be here tomorrow. There may be a murder or something.’

‘But the book will be here. I’ll leave it with Mrs Bowles. It’s her book. Of course it may sound a bit different when
she
reads it.’

‘Just begin it,’ the boy pleaded.

‘Yes, begin it,’ said a low voice from the other bed, so low that he would have discounted it as an illusion if he hadn’t looked up and seen her watching him, the eyes large as a child’s in the starved face.

Scobie said, ‘I’m a very bad reader.’

‘Go on,’ the boy said impatiently. ‘Anyone can read aloud.’

Scobie found his eyes fixed on an opening paragraph which stated,
I shall never forget my first glimpse of the continent where I was to labour for thirty of the best years of my life
. He said slowly, ‘From the moment that they left Bermuda the low lean rakehelly craft had followed in their wake. The captain was evidently worried, for he watched the strange ship continually through his spyglass. When night fell it was still on their trail, and at dawn it was the first sight that met their eyes. Can it be, Arthur Bishop wondered, that I am about to meet the object of my quest, Blackbeard, the leader of the Bantus himself, or his blood-thirsty lieutenant …’ He turned a page and was temporarily put out by a portrait of the bishop in whites with a clerical collar and a topee, standing before a wicket and blocking a ball a Bantu had just bowled him.

‘Go on,’ the boy said.

‘… Batty Davis, so called because of his insane rages when he would send a whole ship’s crew to the plank? It was evident that Captain Buller feared the worst, for he crowded on all canvas and it seemed for a time that he would show the strange ship a clean pair of heels. Suddenly over the water came the boom of a gun, and a cannon-ball struck the water twenty yards ahead of them. Captain Buller had his glass to his eye and called down from the bridge to Arthur Bishop, “The jolly Roger, by God.” He was the only one of the ship’s company who knew the secret of Arthur’s strange quest.’

Mrs Bowles came briskly in. ‘There, that will do. Quite enough for the day. And what’s he been reading you, Jimmy?’

‘Bishop among the Bantus.’

‘I hope you enjoyed it.’

‘It’s wizard.’

‘You’re a very sensible boy,’ Mrs Bowles said approvingly.

‘Thank you,’ a voice said from the other bed and Scobie turned again reluctantly to take in the young devastated face. ‘Will you read again tomorrow?’

‘Don’t worry Major Scobie, Helen,’ Mrs Bowles rebuked her. ‘He’s got to get back to the port. They’ll all be murdering each other without him.’

‘You a policeman?’

‘Yes.’

‘I knew a policeman once—in our town—’ the voice trailed off into sleep. He stood a minute looking down at her face. Like a fortune-teller’s cards it showed unmistakably the past—a voyage, a loss, a sickness. In the next deal perhaps it would be possible to see the future. He took up the stamp-album and opened it at the fly-leaf: it was inscribed, ‘Helen, from her loving father on her fourteenth birthday.’ Then it fell open at Paraguay, full of the decorative images of parakeets—the kind of picture stamps a child collects. ‘We’ll have to find her some new stamps,’ he said sadly.

V

Wilson was waiting for him outside. He said, ‘I’ve been looking for you, Major Scobie, ever since the funeral.’

‘I’ve been doing good works,’ Scobie said.

‘How’s Mrs Rolt?’

‘They think she’ll pull through—and the boy too.’

‘Oh yes, the boy.’ Wilson kicked a loose stone in the path and said, ‘I want your advice, Major Scobie. I’m a bit worried.’

‘Yes?’

‘You know I’ve been down here checking up on our store. Well, I find that our manager has been buying military stuff. There’s a lot of tinned food that never came from our exporters.’

‘Isn’t the answer fairly simple—sack him?’

‘It seems a pity to sack the small thief if he could lead one to the big thief, but of course that’s your job. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.’ Wilson paused and that extraordinary tell-tale blush spread over his face. He said, ‘You see, he got the stuff from Yusef’s man.’

‘I could have guessed that.’

‘You could?’

‘Yes, but you see, Yusef’s man is not the same as Yusef. It’s easy for him to disown a country storekeeper. In fact, for all we know, Yusef may be innocent. It’s unlikely, but not impossible. Your own
evidence
would point to it. After all you’ve only just learned yourself what your storekeeper was doing.’

‘If there were clear evidence,’ Wilson said, ‘would the police prosecute?’

Scobie came to a standstill. ‘What’s that?’

Wilson blushed and mumbled. Then, with a venom that took Scobie completely by surprise, he said, ‘There are rumours going about that Yusef is protected.’

‘You’ve been here long enough to know what rumours are worth.’

‘They are all round the town.’

‘Spread by Tallit—or Yusef himself.’

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ Wilson said. ‘You’ve been very kind to me—and Mrs Scobie has too. I thought you ought to know what’s been said.’

‘I’ve been here fifteen years, Wilson.’

‘Oh, I know,’ Wilson said, ‘this is impertinent. But people are worried about Tallit’s parrot. They say he was framed because Yusef wants him run out of town.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard that.’

‘They say that you and Yusef are on visiting terms. It’s a lie, of course, but …’

‘It’s perfectly true. I’m also on visiting terms with the sanitary inspector, but it wouldn’t prevent my prosecuting him …’ He stopped abruptly. He said, ‘I have no intention of defending myself to you, Wilson.’

Wilson repeated, ‘I just thought you ought to know.’

‘You are too young for your job, Wilson.’

‘My job?’

‘Whatever it is.’

For the second time Wilson took him by surprise, breaking out with a crack in his voice, ‘Oh, you are unbearable. You are too damned honest to live.’ His face was aflame, even his knees seemed to blush with rage, shame, self-depreciation.

‘You ought to wear a hat, Wilson,’ was all Scobie said.

They stood facing each other on the stony path between the D.C.’s bungalow and the rest-house; the light lay flat across the
rice
-fields below them, and Scobie was conscious of how prominently they were silhouetted to the eyes of any watcher. ‘You sent Louise away,’ Wilson said, ‘because you were afraid of me.’

Scobie laughed gently. ‘This is sun, Wilson, just sun. We’ll forget about it in the morning.’

‘She couldn’t stand your stupid, unintelligent … you don’t know what a woman like Louise thinks.’

‘I don’t suppose I do. Nobody wants another person to know that, Wilson.’

Wilson said, ‘l kissed her that evening …’

‘It’s the colonial sport, Wilson.’ He hadn’t meant to madden the young man: he was only anxious to let the occasion pass lightly, so that in the morning they could behave naturally to each other. It was just a touch of sun, he told himself; he had seen this happen times out of mind during fifteen years.

Wilson said, ‘She’s too good for you.’