The Heart Of The Matter Part 11

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, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sing, 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 pa.s.sing 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 embarra.s.s 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 rea.s.sure 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 n.o.body 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 gla.s.s: 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.

BOOK TWO.

PART ONE.

Chapter One.

1.

THEY stood on the verandah of the D.C.'s bungalow at Pende and watched the torches move on the other side of the wide pa.s.sive river. 'So that's France,' Druce said, using the native term for it.

Mrs Perrot said, 'Before the war we used to picnic in France.'

Perrot joined them from the bungalow, a drink in either hand: bandy-legged, he wore his mosquito-boots outside his trousers like riding-boots, and gave the impression of having only just got off a horse. 'Here's yours, Scobie.' He said, 'Of course ye know I find it hard to think of the French as enemies. My family came over with the Huguenots. It makes a difference, ye know.' His lean long yellow face cut in two by a nose like a wound was all the time arrogantly on the defensive: the importance of Perrot was an article of faith with Perrot -doubters would be repelled, persecuted if he had the chance ... the faith would never cease to be proclaimed.

Scobie said, 'If they ever joined the Germans, I suppose this is one of the points where they'd attack.'

'Don't I know it,' Perrot said, 'I was moved here in 1939. The Government had a shrewd idea of what was coming. Everything's prepared, ye know. Where's the doctor?'

'I think he's taking a last look at the beds,' Mrs Perrot said. 'You must be thankful your wife's arrived safely, Major Scobie. Those poor people over there. Forty days in the boats. It shakes one up to think of it.'

'It's the d.a.m.ned narrow channel between Dakar and Brazil that does it every time,' Perrot said.

The doctor came gloomily out on to the verandah.

Everything over the river was still and blank again: the torches were all out. The light burning on the small jetty below the bungalow showed a few feet of dark water sliding by. A piece of wood came out of the dark and floated so slowly through the patch of light that Scobie counted twenty before it went into darkness again.

'The Froggies haven't behaved too badly this time,' Druce said gloomily, picking a mosquito out of his gla.s.s.

'They've only brought the women, the old men and the dying,' the doctor said, pulling at his beard. 'They could hardly have done less.'

Suddenly like an invasion of insects the voices whined and burred upon the farther bank, Groups of torches moved like fireflies here and there: Scobie, lifting his binoculars, caught a black face momentarily illuminated: a hammock pole: a white arm: an officer's back. 'I think they've arrived,' he said. A long line of lights was dancing along the water's edge. 'Well,' Mrs Perrot said, 'we may as well go in now.' The mosquitoes whirred steadily around them like sewing machines. Druce exclaimed and struck his hand.

'Come in,' Mrs Perrot said. 'The mosquitoes here are all malarial.' The windows of the living-room were netted to keep them out; the state air was heavy with the coming rains.

'The stretchers will be across at six a.m.,' the doctor said. 'I think we are all set, Perrot. There's one case of blackwater and a few cases of fever, but most are just exhaustion - the worst disease of all. It's what most of us die of in the end.'

'Scobie and I will see the walking cases,' Druce said. 'You'll have to tell us how much interrogation they can stand, doctor. Your police will look after the carriers, Perrot, I suppose - see that they all go back the way they came.'

'Of course,' Perrot said. 'We're stripped for action here. Have another drink?' Mrs Perrot turned the k.n.o.b of the radio and the organ of the Orpheum Cinema, Clapham, sailed to them over three thousand miles. From across the river the excited voices of the carriers rose and fell. Somebody knocked on the verandah door. Scobie shifted uncomfortably in his chair: the music of the Wurlitzer organ moaned and boomed. It seemed to him outrageously immodest. The verandah door opened and Wilson came in.

'h.e.l.lo, Wilson,' Druce said. 'I didn't know you were here.'

'Mr Wilson's up to inspect the U.A.C. store,' Mrs Perrot explained. 'I hope the rest-house at the store is all right. It's not often used.'

'Oh yes, it's very comfortable,' Wilson said. 'Why, Major Scobie, I didn't expect to see you.'

'I don't know why you didn't,' Perrot said. 'I told you he'd be here. Sit down and have a drink.' Scobie remembered what Louise had once said to him about Wilson - phoney, she had called him. He looked across at Wilson and saw the blush at Perrot's betrayal fading from the boyish face, and the little wrinkles that gathered round the eyes and gave the lie to his youth.

'Have you heard from Mrs Scobie, sir?'

'She arrived safely last week.'

'I'm glad. I'm so glad.'

'Well,' Perrot said, 'what 'are the scandals from the big city?' The words 'big city' came out with a sneer - Perrot couldn't bear the thought that there was a place where people considered themselves important and where he was not regarded. Like a Huguenot imagining Rome, he built up a picture of frivolity, viciousness and corruption. 'We bushfolk,' Perrot went heavily on, 'live very quietly.' Scobie felt sorry for Mrs Perrot; she had heard these phrases so often: she must have forgotten long ago the time of courtship when she had believed in them. Now she sat close up against the radio with the music turned low listening or pretending to listen to the old Viennese melodies, while her mouth stiffened in the effort to ignore her husband in his familiar part. 'Well, Scobie, what are our superiors doing in the city?'

'Oh,' said Scobie vaguely, watching Mrs Perrot, 'nothing very much has been happening. People are too busy with the war ...'

'Oh, yes,' Perrot said, 'so many files to turn over in the Secretariat. I'd like to see them growing rice down here. They'd know what work was.'

'I suppose the greatest excitement recently,' Wilson said, 'would be the parrot, sir, wouldn't it?'

'Tallit's parrot?' Scobie asked.

'Or Yusef's according to Tallit,' Wilson said. 'Isn't that right, sir, or have I got the story wrong?'

'I don't think well ever know what's right,' Scobie said.

'But what is the story? We're out of touch with the great world of affairs here. We have only the French to think about'

'Well, about three weeks ago Tallit's cousin was leaving for Lisbon on one of the Portuguese ships. We searched his baggage and found nothing, but I'd heard rumours that sometimes diamonds had been smuggled in a bird's crop, so I kept the parrot back, and sure enough there were about a hundred pounds' worth of industrial diamonds inside. The ship hadn't sailed, so we fetched Tallit's cousin back on sh.o.r.e. It seemed a perfect case.'

'But it wasn't?'

'You can't beat a Syrian,' the doctor said.

'Tallit's cousin's boy swore that it wasn't Tallit's cousin's parrot - and so of course did Tallit's cousin. Their story was that the small boy had subst.i.tuted another bird to frame Tallit.'

'On behalf of Yusef, I suppose,' the doctor said.

'Of course. The trouble was the small boy disappeared. Of course there are two explanations of that - perhaps Yusef had given him his money and he'd cleared off, or just as possibly Tallit had given him money to throw the blame on Yusef.'

'Down here,' Perrot said, 'I'd have had 'em both in jail.'

'Up in town,' Scobie said, 'we have to think about the law.'