The Heart Of The Matter Part 15

'No,' she confessed, looking away from him. 'You see, I only left school a year ago.'

'Did they teach you anything?' It seemed to him that what she needed more than anything else was just talk, silly aimless talk. She thought that she wanted to be alone, but what she was afraid of was the awful responsibility of receiving sympathy. How could a child like that act the part of a woman whose husband had been drowned more or less before her eyes? As well expect her to act Lady Macbeth. Mrs Carter would have had no sympathy with her inadequacy. Mrs Carter, of course, would have known how to behave, having buried one husband and three children.

She said, 'I was best at netball,' breaking in on his thoughts.

'Well,' he said, 'you haven't quite the figure for a gym instructor. Or have you, when you are well?'

Suddenly and without warning she began to talk. It was as if by the inadvertent use of a pa.s.sword he had induced a door to open: he couldn't tell now which word he had used. Perhaps it was 'gym instructor', for she began rapidly to tell him about the netball (Mrs Carter, he thought, had probably talked about forty days in an open boat and a three-weeks'-old husband). She said, 'I was in the school team for two years,' leaning forward excitedly with her chin on her hand and one bony elbow upon a bony knee. With her white skin -unyellowed yet by atabrine or sunlight - he was reminded of a bone the sea has washed and cast up. 'A year before that I was in the second team. I would have been captain if I'd stayed another year. In 1940 we beat Roedean and tied with Cheltenham.'

He listened with the intense interest one feels in a stranger's life, the interest the young mistake for love. He felt the security of his age sitting there listening with a gla.s.s of gin in his hand and the rain coming down. She told him her school was on the downs just behind Seaport: they had a French mistress called Mile Dupont who had a vile temper. The headmistress could read Greek just like English - Virgil...

'I always thought Virgil was Latin.'

'Oh yes. I meant Homer. I wasn't any good at Cla.s.sics.'

'Were you good at anything besides netball?'

'I think I was next best at maths, but I was never any good at trigonometry.' In summer they went into Seaport and bathed, and every Sat.u.r.day they had a picnic on the downs -sometimes a paper-chase on ponies, and once a disastrous affair on bicycles which spread out over the whole country, and two girls didn't return till one in the morning. He listened fascinated, revolving the heavy gin in his gla.s.s without drinking. The sirens squealed the All Clear through the rain, but neither of them paid any attention. He said, 'And then in the holidays you went back to Bury?'

Apparently her mother had died ten years ago, and her father was a clergyman attached in some way to the Cathedral. They had a very small house on Angel Hill. Perhaps she had not been as happy at Bury as at school, for she tacked back at the first opportunity to discuss the games mistress whose name was the same as her own - Helen, and for whom the whole of her year had an enormous schwarmerei. She laughed now at this pa.s.sion in a superior way: it was the only indication she gave him that she was grown-up, that she was - or rather had been - a married woman.

She broke suddenly off and said. 'What nonsense it is telling you all this.'

'I like it.'

'You haven't once asked me about - you know -'

He did know, for he had read the report. He knew exactly the water ration for each person in the boat - a cupful twice a day, which had been reduced after twenty-one days to half a cupful. That had been maintained until within twenty-four hours of the rescue mainly because the deaths had left a small surplus. Behind the school buildings of Seaport, the totem-pole of the netball game, he was aware of the intolerable surge, lifting the boat and dropping it again, lifting it and dropping it. 'I was miserable when I left - it was the end of July. I cried in the taxi all the way to the station.' Scobie counted the months - July to April: nine months: the period of gestation, and what had been born was a husband's death and the Atlantic pushing them like wreckage towards the long flat African beach and the sailor throwing himself over the side. He said, 'This is more interesting. I can guess the other.'

'What a lot I've talked. Do you know, I think I shall sleep tonight.'

'Haven't you been sleeping?'

'It was the breathing all round me at the hospital. People turning and breathing and muttering. When the light was out, it was just like - you know.'

'You'll sleep quietly here. No need to be afraid of anything. There's a watchman always on duty. I'll have a word with him.'

'You've been so kind,' she said. 'Mrs Carter and the others - they've all been kind.' She lifted her worn, frank, childish face and said, 'I like you so much.'

'I like you too,' he said gravely. They both had an immense sense of security: they were friends who could never be anything else than friends - they were safely divided by a dead husband, a living wife, a father who was a clergyman, a games mistress called Helen, and years and years of experience. They hadn't got to worry about what they should say to each other.

He said, 'Good night. Tomorrow I'm going to bring you some stamps for your alb.u.m.'

'How did you know about my alb.u.m?'

'That's my job. I'm a policeman.'

'Good night.'

He walked away, feeling an extraordinary happiness, but this he would not remember as happiness, as he would remember setting out in the darkness, in the rain, alone.

2.

From eight-thirty in the morning until eleven he dealt with a case of petty larceny; there were six witnesses to examine, and he didn't believe a word that any of them said. In European cases there are words one believes and words one distrusts: it is possible to draw a speculative line between the truth and the lies; at least the cui bono principle to some extent operates, and it is usually safe to a.s.sume, if the accusation is theft and there is no question of insurance, that something has at least been stolen. But here one could make no such a.s.sumption: one could draw no lines. He had known police officers whose nerves broke down in the effort to separate a single grain of incontestable truth; they ended, some of them, by striking a witness, they were pilloried in the local Creole papers and were invalided home or transferred. It woke in some men a virulent hatred of a black skin, but Scobie had long ago, during his fifteen years, pa.s.sed through the dangerous stages; now lost in the tangle of lies he felt an extraordinary affection for these people who paralysed an alien form of justice by so simple a method.

At last the office was clear again. There was nothing further on the charge-sheet, and taking out a pad and placing some blotting-paper under his wrist to catch the sweat, he prepared to write to Louise. Letter-writing never came easily to him. Perhaps because of his police training, he could never put even a comforting lie upon paper over his signature. He had to be accurate: he could comfort only by omission. So now, writing the two words My dear upon the paper, he prepared to omit He wouldn't write that he missed her, but he would leave out any phrase that told unmistakably that he was content. My dear, you must forgive a short letter again. You know I'm not much of a hand at letter writing. I got your third letter yesterday, the one telling me that you were staying -with Mrs Halifax's friend for a week outside Durban. Here everything is quiet. We had an alarm last night, but it turned out that an American pilot had mistaken a school of porpoises for submarines. The rains have started, of course. The Mrs Rolt I told you about in my last letter is out of hospital and they've put her to wait for a boat in one of the Nissen huts behind the transport park, I'll do what I can to make her comfortable. The boy is still in hospital, but all right. I natty think that's about all the news. The Tallit affair drags on - I don't think anything will come of it in the end. Ali had to go and have a couple of teeth out the other day. What a fuss he made! I had to drive him to the hospital or he'd never have gone. He paused: he hated the idea of the censors - who happened to be Mrs Carter and Galloway - reading these last phrases of affection. Look after yourself, my dear, and don't worry about me. As long as you are happy, I'm happy. In another nine months I can take my leave and we'll be together. He was going to write, 'You are in my mind always,' but that was not a statement he could sign. He wrote instead, you are in my mind so often during the day, and then pondered the signature. Reluctantly, because he believed it would please her, he wrote Your Ticki. For a moment he was reminded of that other letter signed 'd.i.c.ky' which had come back to him two or three times in dreams.

The sergeant entered, marched to the middle of the floor, turned smartly to face him, saluted. He had time to address the envelope while all this was going on. 'Yes, sergeant?'

'The Commissioner, sah, he ask you to see him.'

'Right.'

The Commissioner was not alone. The Colonial Secretary's face shone gently with sweat in the dusky room, and beside him sat a tall bony man Scobie had not seen before - he must have arrived by air, for there had been no ship in during the last ten days. He wore a colonel's badges as though they didn't belong to him on his loose untidy uniform.

'This is Major Scobie, Colonel Wright.' He could tell the Commissioner was worried and irritated. He said, 'Sit down, Scobie. It's about this Tallit business.' The rain darkened the room and kept out the air. 'Colonel Wright has come up from Cape Town to hear about it.'

'From Cape Town, sir?'

The Commissioner moved his legs, playing with a pen-knife. He said, 'Colonel Wright is the M.I.5 representative.'

The Colonial Secretary said softly, so that everybody had to bend their heads to hear him, 'The whole thing's been unfortunate.' The Commissioner began to whittle the corner of his desk, ostentatiously not listening. 'I don't think the police should have acted - quite in the way they did - not without consultation.'

Scobie said, 'I've always understood it was our duty to stop diamond smuggling.'

In his soft obscure voice the Colonial Secretary said, 'There weren't a hundred pounds' worth of diamonds found.'

'They are the only diamonds that have ever been found.'

'The evidence against Tallit, Scobie, was too slender for an arrest.'

'He wasn't arrested. He was interrogated.'

'His lawyers say he was brought forcibly to the police station.'

'His lawyers are lying. You surely realize that much.'

The Colonial Secretary said to Colonel Wright, 'You see the kind of difficulty we are up against. The Roman Catholic Syrians are claiming they are a persecuted minority and that the police are in the pay of the Moslem Syrians.'

Scobie said, 'The same thing would have happened the other way round - only it would have been worse. Parliament has more affection for Moslems than Catholics.' He had a sense that no one had mentioned the real purpose of this meeting. The Commissioner flaked chip after chip off his desk, disowning everything, and Colonel Wright sat back on his shoulder-blades saying nothing at all.

'Personally,' the Colonial Secretary said, 'I would always ...' and the soft voice faded off into inscrutable murmurs which Wright, stuffing his fingers into one ear, leaning his head sideways as though he were trying to hear something through a defective telephone, might possibly have caught.

Scobie said, 'I couldn't hear what you said.'

'I said personally I'd always take Tallit's word against Yusef's.'

'That,' Scobie said, 'is because you have only been in this colony five years.'

Colonel Wright suddenly interjected, 'How many years have you been here, Major Scobie?'

'Fifteen.'

Colonel Wright grunted non-committally.

The Commissioner stopped whittling the corner of his desk and drove his knife viciously into the top. He said, 'Colonel Wright wants to know the source of your information, Scobie.'

'You know that, sir. Yusef.' Wright and the Colonial Secretary sat side by side watching him. He stood back with lowered head, waiting for the next move, but no move came. He knew they were waiting for him to amplify his bald reply, and he knew too that they would take it for a confession of weakness if he did. The silence became more and more intolerable: it was like an accusation. Weeks ago he had told Yusef that he intended to let the Commissioner know the details of his loan; perhaps he had really had that intention, perhaps he had been bluffing; he couldn't remember now. He only knew that now it was too late. That information should have been given before taking action against Tallit: it could not be an afterthought. In the corridor behind the office Fraser pa.s.sed whistling his favourite tune; he opened the door of the office, said, 'Sorry, sir,' and retreated again, leaving a whiff of warm Zoo smell behind him. The murmur of the rain went on and on. The Commissioner took the knife out of the table and began to whittle again; it was as if, for a second time, he were deliberately disowning the whole business. The Colonial Secretary cleared his throat' Yusef,' he repeated.

Scobie nodded.

Colonel Wright said, 'Do you consider Yusef trustworthy?'

'Of course not, sir. But one has to act on what information is available - and this information proved correct up to a point.'

'Up to what point?'

'The diamonds were there.'

The Colonial Secretary said, 'Do you get much information from Yusef?'

'This is the first time I've had any at all.'

He couldn't catch what the Colonial Secretary said beyond the word 'Yusef'.

'I can't hear what you say, sir.'

'I said are you in touch with Yusef?'

'I don't know what you mean by that'

'Do you see him often?'

'I think in the last three months I have seen him three - no, four times.'

'On business?'

'Not necessarily. Once I gave him a lift home when his car had broken down. Once he came to see me when I had fever at Bamba. Once ...'

'We are not cross-examining you, Scobie,' the Commissioner said.

'I had an idea, sir, that these gentlemen were.'

Colonel Wright uncrossed his long legs and said, 'Let's boil it down to one question. Tallit, Major Scobie, has made counter-accusations - against the police, against you. He says in effect that Yusef has given you money. Has he?'

'No, sir. Yusef has given me nothing.' He felt an odd relief that he had not yet been called upon to lie.

The Colonial Secretary said, 'Naturally sending your wife to South Africa was well within your private means.' Scobie sat back in his chair, saying nothing. Again he was aware of the hungry silence waiting for his words.

'You don't answer?' the Colonial Secretary said impatiently.

'I didn't know you had asked a question. I repeat - Yusef has given me nothing.'

'He's a man to beware of, Scobie.'

'Perhaps when you have been here as long as I have you'll realize the police are meant to deal with people who are not received at the Secretariat.'

'We don't want our tempers to get warm, do we?'

Scobie stood up. 'Can I go, sir? If these gentlemen have finished with me ... I have an appointment.' The sweat stood on his forehead; his heart jumped with fury. This should be the moment of caution, when the blood runs down the flanks and the red cloth waves.

'That's all right, Scobie,' the Commissioner said.

Colonel Wright said, 'You must forgive me for bothering you. I received a report. I had to take the matter up officially. I'm quite satisfied.'

'Thank you, sir.' But the soothing words came too late: the damp face of the Colonial Secretary filled his field of vision. The Colonial Secretary said softly, 'It's just a matter of discretion, that's all.'

'If I'm wanted for the next half an hour, sir,' Scobie said to the Commissioner, 'I shall be at Yusef's'

3.

After all they had forced him to tell a kind of lie: he had no appointment with Yusef. All the same he wanted a few words with Yusef; it was just possible that he might yet clear up, for his own satisfaction, if not legally, the Tallit affair. Driving slowly through the rain - his windscreen wiper had long ceased to function - he saw Harris struggling with his umbrella outside the Bedford Hotel.

'Can I give you a lift? I'm going your way.'

'The most exciting things have been happening,' Harris said. His hollow face shone with rain and enthusiasm. 'I've got a house at last.'

'Congratulations.'

'At least it's not a house: it's one of the huts up your way. But it's a home.' Harris said. 'I'll have to share it, but it's a home.'

'Who's sharing it with you?'

'I'm asking Wilson, but he's gone away - to Lagos for a week or two. The d.a.m.ned elusive Pimpernel. Just when I wanted him. And that brings me to the second exciting thing. Do you know I've discovered we were both at Downham?'

'Downham?'