The Heart Of The Matter

s from some devil of the bush. Without pause the hundred and forty-four inches of water continued their steady and ponderous descent upon the roofs of the port. It was incredible to imagine tha

an alter the whole concep

e invisible behind the rain. A torch gleamed momentarily in the transport park across the road, but, when he shouted, it went out: a coincidence: no one there could have heard his voice above the hammering of the water on the roof. Up i

considered getting his car from the garage, but the hut was only a couple of hundred yards away, and he walked. Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying m

the black roof like a tunnel. He had to knock twice before the door opened. The light fo

e to the intensely remembered features. He knew everyone in the colony. This was something that had come from outside ..

o are you? Do

bie of the police.

d. 'I don't remember a th

I fix yo

cks of furniture of the pattern allowed to junior officials with salaries under ￡500 a year. He said, 'They haven't done you very proud, have they? I wish I'd known. I could have helped.' He took her in closely now: the young worn-ou

y kind,' she said. 'Mrs Ca

raphs, no books, no trinkets of any kind, but then he remembered that

ny danger?' she

'Da

The si

h. Nothing ever happens.' He took another long look at her. 'They oug

anted to be alone. People

r want anything I'm just down the road. The two-storeyed

tay till the rain

. 'You see, it goes on until September,'

e noise

eside a railway. But you won't have to. They'll be sen

? Mrs Carter gave me a bottl

He noticed when she produced the bottle tha

'

given you a bo

what to ask him for. And h

been drinki

ouched it. The boy upset

oy in the morning,' Scobi

akly down in a chair. 'Don't think me a fool. I just don

e do you c

. In Suffolk. I was t

weren't. You we

I forgot

e pushed you out of the ho

arter said she'd find room for me, but I wanted to

dn't want to be with Mrs Carter, and you've

nd she talked about being rattled. He remembered the casualties in the report the chief engineer had made: the third officer and two seamen who had died, and the stoker who ha

thought out things? Sh

know. Perhaps

you had any

ing away from him. 'You see, I

as 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 ex

best at netball,' brea

quite the figure for a gym instruct

l (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 he

is age sitting there listening with a glass of gin in his hand and the rain coming down. She told him her school was on the downs just behind

s thought Vir

t Homer. I wasn't an

ood at anything

aper-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 t

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

and said. 'What nonsense i

'I li

once asked me ab

l 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

lked. Do you know, I thi

't you been

ital. People turning and breathing and muttering. W

be afraid of anything. There's a watchman

the others - they've all been kind.' She lifted her wo

ything else than friends - they were safely divided by a dead husband, a living wife, a father who was a clergyman, a games

morrow I'm going to bring you

you know abo

my job. I'm

Good n

but this he would not remember as happiness, as he would

and it is usually safe to assume, 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 assumption: 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

terday, 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

r, turned smartly to face him, saluted. He had time to addre

ioner, sah, he as

'Ri

side him sat a tall bony man Scobie had not seen before - he must have arrived by air, for there had been no ship in

irritated. He said, 'Sit down, Scobie. It's about this Tallit business.' The rain darkened

m Cape To

laying with a pen-knife. He said, 'Colo

thing's been unfortunate.' The Commissioner began to whittle the corner of his desk, ostentatiously not lis

ys understood it was our dut

nial Secretary said, 'There weren't a h

nly diamonds that ha

st Tallit, Scobie, was t

arrested. He w

e was brought forcibly

re lying. You surel

iculty we are up against. The Roman Catholic Syrians are claiming they are a

ection for Moslems than Catholics.' He had a sense that no one had mentioned the real purpose of this meeting. The Commissioner fl

nto inscrutable murmurs which Wright, stuffing his fingers into one ear, leaning his head sideways

, 'I couldn't he

I'd always take Tallit

s because you have only been

nterjected, 'How many years ha

'Fift

right grunted

and drove his knife viciously into the top. He said, 'Colonel

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 passed whistling his

cobie

said, 'Do you consid

t on what information is available - and th

to what

diamonds w

ry said, 'Do you get much

e first time I'v

t the Colonial Secretary s

t hear what

re you in touc

know what yo

you see h

three months I have seen h

On bus

home when his car had broken down. Once he cam

examining you, Scobie,'

ea, sir, that the

ne question. Tallit, Major Scobie, has made counter-accusations - against the

thing.' He felt an odd relief that h

ica was well within your private means.' Scobie sat back in his chair, sayi

r?' the Colonial Secr

asked a question. I repeat -

man to beware

have you'll realize the police are meant to deal wi

nt our tempers to

e an appointment.' The sweat stood on his forehead; his heart jumped with fury. This sho

ight, Scobie,' the

r bothering you. I received a report. I had to ta

face of the Colonial Secretary filled his field of vision. The Colonia

f an hour, sir,' Scobie said to the

; it was just possible that he might yet clear up, for his own satisfaction, if not legally, the Tallit affair. Driving slowly throu

you a lift? I'm

ing,' Harris said. His hollow face shone with r

ongratu

he huts up your way. But it's a home.' Harris

sharing it

e damned elusive Pimpernel. Just when I wanted him. And that brings me to th

'Down

m to borrow his ink while he was away, and there

coincidence,'

end was a page which said, 'The Secretary of the old Downhamian Association would like to get in touch with the following old b

hat did

se "the most immediates", but then I found I'd forgotten to put down the secretary's address, so b

by a primitive washbasin with one cold tap and a gas-ring. A table littered with cable forms was squashed between the washbasin and a window no larger than a port-hole which looked straight out on to the water-

opened Ivanhoe and fished out a folded sheet. 'It's only a rough draft,' he said with anxiety. 'Of course I

d like to know a bit about what I'm doing in 'the white man's grave', but as I'm a cable censor you will understand that I can't tell you much about my work. That will have to wait till we've won the war. We are in the middle of the rains now - and how it does rain. There's a lot of fever about, but I've only had one dose and E. Wilson has so far escaped

assed gaze. 'Do you think it's on the right lines?' he

u've caught the

very good school, and I wasn't very h

they've caught

ed out over the grey water with tears in his bloodshot eyes

ingly, 'I didn't much c

it might become a habit, mightn't it?' He took the piece of bread out of the out-tray and d

Harris. I'm glad about the ho

ut-tray and looked around for somewhere to put it, but there wasn't any place. He put i

a gesture of contempt in the face of the Colonial Secretary. He

'Mass

dentically furnished with sofas and cushions and low tables for drinks like the rooms in a brothel. He passed from one to another, pulling

at his side and waited. The window was open, but the rain shut out the air as effectively as a curtain. Perhaps it was merely the want of air that caused the depression which now fell on his spirits, perhaps it was because he

the intensity of the watch he kept broke through the fog of bromide: the fat thighs shifted on the sofa. Yusef grunted, murmured, 'dear chap' in his deep sleep, and turned on his side, facing Scobie. Scobie stared again round the room, but he had examined it already thoroughly enough when he came here to arrange his loan: there was no change - the same hideous mauve silk cushions, the thr

were open and sought his; blurred with

isadvantage. For a moment Yusef seemed about to sink again

have a word abou

forgive me, Ma

d the di

ice half-way to sleep. He shook his head, so that the white lick of ha

ou frame Ta

his face and pulled the trigger. The soda water broke on his face and splashed all round him on the mauve silk. He gave

s not going to

ng well.' He shook his head up and down thoughtfully, as a man might shake a box to see whether anything rattles. 'You were saying something about Talli

bie repeated, 'won

d. One day he w

hey your dia

have made you suspicio

e small boy

ith the back of his hand. 'Of course he was, Ma

self free of the bromide, even though the limbs still lay sluggishly sp

t wider, as though to show the actual movement of the heart and little streams

Yusef. Tell me the truth. Were

uth to you, Major Scobie. I never t

hey wer

s, Major

e of me, Yusef. If only I had

f he was sent away. It is no good the Syrians being in two parties. If they were in one party you would be able to come to

smuggling would be i

ajor Scobie, that I make more money in one year from my smallest store than I would m

lt a strange unreality in his own words: the tangerine curtains hung there immovably. There are certain places one never leaves behind; the curtains

bolt upright. He said, 'Major Scobie, you h

f, you aren't a bad

rnestly, 'My friendship for you is the only good thing in this

afraid n

haps when nobody can see - to visit me and talk to me. Nothing else. Just that. I will tell you no more

be of great use to you if people believed w

must be how he looks, Scobie thought, at the store manager who has tried to deceive him about the figures he carries in

k him yo

cted and bitter. It urges me to go to th

obey your h

Tallit. But you did not fulfil your bargain, so I have come to him in reveng

eats and he had no belief in his own calmness: he did not even believe in this good-bye. What had happened in the mauve and orange room had been too important to become part of the

wondered, as though in the Syrian's voice

ox. Scobie, with his eyes fixed on the cross, prayed - the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Act of Contrition. The awful languor of routine fell on his spirits. He felt like a spectator -one of those many people round the cross over whom the gaze of Christ must have passed, seeking the face of a friend or an enemy. It sometimes seemed to him that his profession and his unifor

ost.' He said, 'Since my last confession a month ago I h

ou prevented

tle effort I could have a

'

he minimum. I've been unnecessarily harsh

that ev

o mean nothing to me. I've tried to love God, but -' he made a gesture which the priest

e. The penance I would give to a lot of people if I could is six months' leave.

re are other people waiting. I know these a

ooses,' the priest said. 'Now go along w

n't a rosary

re was nothing to relieve. They were a formula: the Latin words hustled together - a hocus pocus. He went out of the box and knelt down again, and this too was part of a routine. It seemed to him for a moment th