The Heart of the Matter (7 page)

Ali came in, his pink soles flapping on the floorboards, carrying a bottle of water from the filter. ‘The back door humbug me,’ Scobie explained. He held his hand out over the washbasin, while Ali poured the water over the wound. The boy made gentle clucking sounds of commiseration: his hands were as gentle as a girl’s. When Scobie said impatiently, ‘That’s enough,’ Ali paid him no attention. ‘Too much dirt,’ he said.

‘Now iodine.’ The smallest scratch in this country turned green if it were neglected for an hour. ‘Again,’ he said, ‘pour it over,’ wincing at the sting. Down below out of the swing of voices the word ‘beauty’ detached itself and sank back into the trough. ‘Now the Elastoplast.’

‘No,’ Ali said, ‘no. Bandage better.’

‘All right. Bandage then.’ Years ago he had taught Ali to bandage: now he could tie one as expertly as a doctor.

‘Good night, Ali. Go to bed. I shan’t want you again.’

‘Missus want drinks.’

‘No. I’ll attend to the drinks. You can go to bed.’ Alone he sat down again on the edge of the bath. The wound had jarred him a little and anyway he was unwilling to join the two downstairs, for his presence would embarrass Wilson. A man couldn’t listen to a woman reading poetry in the presence of an outsider. ‘I had rather be a kitten and cry mew …’ but that wasn’t really his attitude. He did not despise: he just couldn’t understand such bare relations of intimate feeling. And besides he was happy here, sitting where the rat had sat, in his own world. He began to think of the
Esperança
and of the next day’s work.

‘Darling,’ Louise called up the stairs, ‘are you all right? Can you drive Mr Wilson home?’

‘I can walk, Mrs Scobie.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Yes, really.’

‘Coming,’ Scobie called. ‘Of course I’ll drive you back.’ When he joined them Louise took the bandaged hand tenderly in hers. ‘Oh the poor hand,’ she said. ‘Does it hurt?’ She was not afraid of
the
clean white bandage: it was like a patient in a hospital with the sheets drawn tidily up to the chin. One could bring grapes and never know the details of the scalpel wound out of sight. She put her lips to the bandage and left a little smear of orange lipstick.

‘It’s quite all right,’ Scobie said.

‘Really, sir. I can walk.’

‘Of course you won’t walk. Come along, get in.’

The light from the dashboard lit up a patch of Wilson’s extraordinary suit. He leant out of the car and cried, ‘Good night, Mrs Scobie. It’s been lovely. I can’t thank you enough.’ The words vibrated with sincerity: it gave them the sound of a foreign language—the sound of English spoken in England. Here intonations changed in the course of a few months, became high-pitched and insincere, or flat and guarded. You could tell that Wilson was fresh from home.

‘You must come again soon,’ Scobie said, as they drove down the Burnside road towards the Bedford Hotel, remembering Louise’s happy face.

VIII

The smart of his wounded hand woke Scobie at two in the morning. He lay coiled like a watch-spring on the outside of the bed, trying to keep his body away from Louise’s: wherever they touched—if it were only a finger lying against a finger—sweat started. Even when they were separated the heat trembled between them. The moonlight lay on the dressing-table like coolness and fit the bottles of lotion, the little pots of cream, the edge of a photograph frame. At once he began to listen for Louise’s breathing.

It came irregularly in jerks. She was awake. He put his hand up and touched the hot moist hair: she lay stiffly, as though she were guarding a secret. Sick at heart, knowing what he would find, he moved his fingers down until they touched her lids. She was crying. He felt an enormous tiredness, bracing himself to comfort her. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘I love you.’ It was how he always began. Comfort, like the act of sex, developed a routine.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know.’ It was how she always answered. He blamed himself for being heartless because the idea occurred to
him
that it was two o’clock: this might go on for hours, and at six the day’s work began. He moved the hair away from her forehead and said, ‘The rains will soon be here. You’ll feel better then.’

‘I feel all right,’ she said and began to sob.

‘What is it, darling? Tell me.’ He swallowed. ‘Tell Ticki.’ He hated the name she had given him, but it always worked. She said, ‘Oh Ticki, Ticki. I can’t go on.’

‘I thought you were happy tonight.’

‘I was—but think of being happy because a U.A.C. clerk was nice to me. Ticki, why won’t they like me?’

‘Don’t be silly, darling. It’s just the heat: it makes you fancy things. They all like you.’

‘Only Wilson,’ she repeated with despair and shame and began to sob again.

‘Wilson’s all right.’

‘They won’t have him at the club. He gate-crashed with the dentist. They’ll be laughing about him and me. Oh Ticki, Ticki, please let me go away and begin again.’

‘Of course, darling,’ he said, ‘of course,’ staring out through the net and through the window to the quiet flat infested sea. ‘Where to?’

‘I could go to South Africa and wait until you have leave. Ticki, you’ll be retiring soon. I’ll get a home ready for you, Ticki.’

He flinched a little away from her, and then hurriedly in case she had noticed, lifted her damp hand and kissed the palm. ‘It will cost a lot, darling.’ The thought of retirement set his nerves twitching and straining: he always prayed that death would come first. He had prepared his life insurance in that hope: it was payable only on death. He thought of a home, a permanent home: the gay artistic curtains, the bookshelves full of Louise’s books, a pretty tiled bathroom, no office anywhere—a home for two until death, no change any more before eternity settled in.

‘Ticki, I can’t bear it any longer here.’

‘I’ll have to figure it out, darling.’

‘Ethel Maybury’s in South Africa, and the Collinses. We’ve got friends in South Africa.’

‘Prices are high.’

‘You could drop some of your silly old life insurances, Ticki.
And
, Ticki, you could economize here without me. You could have your meals at the mess and do without the cook.’

‘He doesn’t cost much.’

‘Every little helps, Ticki.’

‘I’d miss you,’ he said.

‘No, Ticki, you wouldn’t,’ she said, and surprised him by the range of her sad spasmodic understanding. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘there’s nobody to save for.’

He said gently, ‘I’ll try and work something out. You know if it’s possible I’d do anything for you—anything.’

‘This isn’t just two in the morning comfort, Ticki, is it? You will do something?’

‘Yes, dear. I’ll manage somehow.’ He was surprised how quickly she went to sleep: she was like a tired carrier who has slipped his load. She was asleep before he had finished his sentence, clutching one of his fingers like a child, breathing as easily. The load lay beside him now, and he prepared to lift it.

2

I

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, Robinson.’

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,’ Robinson 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 attempt 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 guarantee, 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.

II

Druce had come out himself to the
Esperança
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 hospitality 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 become 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 admiration 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 getting 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 cigarette. 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, presumably so 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.’