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By Root 2666 0

You remember tomorrow?’ and of course he did remember, draining his glass: it was November the First - All Saints’ Day, and this All Souls’ Night. What ghost would pass over the whisky’s surface? ‘You are coming to communion, aren’t you, dear?’ and he thought wearily: there is no end to this: why should I draw the line now? One may as well go on damning oneself until the end. His loneliness was the only ghost his whisky could invoke, nodding across the table at him, taking a drink out of his glass. ‘The next occasion,’ loneliness told him, ‘will be Christmas - the Midnight Mass - you won’t be able to avoid that you know, and no excuse will serve you on that night, and after that’ - the long chain of feast days, of early Masses in spring and summer, unrolled themselves like a perpetual calendar. He had a sudden picture before his eyes of a bleeding face, of eyes closed by the continuous shower of blows: the punch-drunk head of God reeling sideways.

‘You are coming, Ticki?’ Louise called with what seemed to him a sudden anxiety, as though perhaps suspicion had momentarily breathed on her again - and he thought again, can Ali really be trusted? and all the stale coast wisdom of the traders and the remittance men told him, ‘Never trust a black. They’ll let you down in the end. Had my boy fifteen years ...’ The ghosts of distrust came out on All Souls’ Night and gathered around his glass. ‘Oh yes, my dear, I’m coming.’

‘You have only to say the word,’ he addressed God, ‘and legions of angels ...’ and he struck with his ringed hand under the eye and saw the bruised skin break. He thought, ‘And again at Christmas,’ thrusting the Child’s face into the filth of the stable. He cried up the stairs, ‘What’s that you said, dear?’

‘Oh, only that we’ve got so much to celebrate tomorrow. Being together and the Commissionership. Life is so happy, Ticki.’ And that, he told his loneliness with defiance, is my reward, splashing the whisky across the table, defying the ghosts to do their worst, watching God bleed.

Chapter Four

1

He could tell that Yusef was working late in his office on the quay. The little white two-storeyed building stood beside the wooden jetty on the edge of Africa, just beyond the army dumps of petrol, and a line of light showed under the curtains of the landward window. A policeman saluted Scobie as he picked his way between the crates. ‘All quiet, corporal?’

‘All quiet, sah.’

‘Have you patrolled at the Kru Town end?’

‘Oh yes, sah. All quiet, sah.’ He could tell from the promptitude of the reply how untrue it was.

‘The wharf rats out?’

‘Oh no, sah. All very quiet like the grave.’ The stale literary phrase showed that the man had been educated at a mission school.

‘Well, good night.’

‘Good night, sah.’

Scobie went on. It was many weeks now since he had seen Yusef - not since the night of the blackmail, and now he felt an odd yearning towards his tormentor. The little white building magnetized him, as though concealed there was his only companionship, the only man he could trust At least his blackmailer knew him as no one else did: he could sit opposite that fat absurd figure and tell the whole truth. In this new world of lies his blackmailer was at home: he knew the paths: he could advise: even help ... Round the comer of a crate came Wilson. Scobie’s torch lit his face like a map.

‘Why, Wilson,’ Scobie said, ‘you are out late.’

‘Yes,’ Wilson said, and Scobie thought uneasily, how he hates me.

‘You’ve got a pass for the quay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Keep away from the Kru Town end. It’s not safe there alone. No more nose bleeding?’

‘No,’ Wilson said. He made no attempt to move; it seemed always his way - to stand blocking a path: a man one had to walk round.

‘Well, I’ll be saying good night, Wilson. Look in any time. Louise ...’

Wilson said, ‘I love her, Scobie.’

‘I thought you did,’ Scobie said. ‘She likes you, Wilson.’

‘I love her,’ Wilson repeated. He plucked at the tarpaulin over the crate and said, ‘You wouldn’t know what that means.’

‘What means?’

‘Love. You don’t love anybody except yourself, your dirty