The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [108]
‘I want to stop giving pain,’ he said.
‘You want peace, dear. You’ll have peace. You’ll see. Everything will be all right.’ She put her hand on his knee and began at last to weep in this effort to comfort him. He thought: where did she pick up this heartbreaking tenderness? Where do they learn to be so old so quickly?
‘Look, dear. Don’t come up to the hut. Open the car door for me. It’s stiff. Well say good-bye here, and you’ll just drive home - or to the office if you’d rather. That’s so much easier. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right’ He thought I missed that one death and now I’m having them all. He leant over her and wrenched at the car door: her tears touched his cheek. He could feel the mark like a burn. ‘There’s no objection to a farewell kiss. We haven’t quarrelled. There hasn’t been a scene. There’s no bitterness.’ As they kissed he was aware of pain under his mouth like the beating of a bird’s heart. They sat still, silent and the door of the car lay open. A few black labourers passing down the hill looked curiously hi.
She said, ‘I can’t believe that this is the last time: that I’ll get out and you’ll drive away, and we won’t see each other again ever. I won’t go outside more than I can help till I get right away. I’ll be up here and you’ll be down there. Oh, God, I wish I hadn’t got the furniture you brought me.’
‘It’s just official furniture.’
‘The cane is broken in one of the chairs where you sat down too quickly.’
‘Dear, dear, this isn’t the way.’
‘Don’t speak, darling. I’m really being quite good, but I can’t say these things to another living soul. In books there’s always a confidant. But I haven’t got a confidant. I must say them all once.’ He thought again: if I were dead, she would be free of me. One forgets the dead quite quickly; one doesn’t wonder about the dead - what is he doing now, who is he with? This for her is the hard way.
‘Now, darling, I’m going to do it. Shut your eyes. Count three hundred slowly, and I won’t be in sight Turn the car quickly and drive like hell. I don’t want to see you go. And I’ll stop my ears. I don’t want to hear you change gear at the bottom of the hill. Cars do that a hundred times a day. I don’t want to hear you change gear.’
O God, he prayed, his hands dripping over the wheel, kill me now, now. My God, you’ll never have more complete contrition. What a mess I am. I carry suffering with me like a body smell. Kill me. Put an end to me. Vermin don’t have to exterminate themselves. Kill me. Now. Now. Now.
‘Shut your eyes, darling. This is the end. Really the end.’ She said hopelessly, ‘It seems so silly though.’
He said, ‘I won’t shut my eyes. I won’t leave you. I promised that.’
‘You aren’t leaving me. I’m leaving you.’
‘It won’t work. We love each other. It won’t work. I’d be up this evening to see how you were. I couldn’t steep...’
‘You can always sleep. I’ve never known such a sleeper. Oh, my dear, look. I’m beginning to laugh at you again just as though we weren’t saying good-bye.’
‘We aren’t. Not yet.’
‘But I’m only ruining you. I can’t give you any happiness,’
‘Happiness isn’t the point.’
‘I’d made up my mind.’
‘So had I.’
‘But, darling, what do we do?’ She surrendered completely. ‘I don’t mind going on as we are. I don’t mind the lies. Anything.’
‘Just leave it to me. I’ve got to think.’ He leant over her and closed the door of the car. Before the lock had clicked he had made his decision.
2
Scobie watched the small boy as he cleared away the evening meal, watched him come in and go out, watched the bare feet flap the floor. Louise said, ‘I know it’s a terrible thing, dear, but you’ve got to put it behind you. You can’t help Ali now.’ A new parcel of books had come from England and he watched her cutting the leaves of a volume of verse. There was more grey in her hair than when she had left for South Africa, but she looked, it seemed to him, yean younger because she was paying more attention to make-up: her dressing-table