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By Root 2654 0

clock striking the hour. He tried out an act of contrition, but when he reached, ‘I am sorry and beg pardon’, a cloud formed over the door and drifted down over the whole room and he couldn’t remember what it was that he had to be sorry for. He had to hold himself upright with both hands, but he had forgotten the reason why he so held himself. Somewhere far away he thought he heard the sounds of pain. ‘A storm,’ he said aloud, ‘there’s going to be a storm,’ as the clouds grew, and he tried to get up to close the windows. ‘Ali,’ he called, ‘Ali.’ It seemed to him as though someone outside the room were seeking him, calling him, and he made a last effort to indicate that he was here. He got to his feet and heard the hammer of his heart beating out a reply. He had a message to convey, but the darkness and the storm drove it back within the case of his breast, and all the time outside the house, outside the world that drummed like hammer blows within his ear, someone wandered, seeking to get in, someone appealing for help, someone in need of nun. And automatically at the call of need, at the cry of a victim, Scobie strung himself to act He dredged his consciousness up from an infinite distance in order to make some reply. He said aloud, ‘Dear God, I love...’ but the effort was too great and he did not feel his body when it struck the floor or hear the small tinkle of the medal as it span like a coin under the ice-box - the saint whose name nobody could remember.

PART THREE

Chapter One

1

Wilson said, ‘I have kept away as long as I could, but I thought perhaps I could be of some help.’

‘Everybody,’ Louise said, ‘has been very kind,’

‘I had no idea that he was so ill.’

‘Your spying didn’t help you there, did it?’

‘That was my job,’ Wilson said, ‘and I love you.’

‘How glibly you use that word, Wilson.’

‘You don’t believe me?’

‘I don’t believe in anybody who says love, love, love. It means self, self, self.’

‘You won’t marry me then?’

‘It doesn’t seem likely, does it, but I might, in time. I don’t know what loneliness may do. But don’t let’s talk about love any more. It was his favourite lie.’

‘To both of you.’

‘How has she taken it, Wilson?’

‘I saw her on the beach this afternoon with Bagster. And I hear she was a bit pickled last night at the club.’

‘She hasn’t any dignity.’

‘I never knew what he saw in her. I’d never betray you, Louise.’

‘You know he even went up to see her the day he died.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It’s all written there. In his diary. He never lied in his diary. He never said things he didn’t mean - like love.’

Three days had passed since Scobie had been hastily buried. Dr Travis had signed the death certificate - angina pectoris. In that climate a post-mortem was difficult, and in any case unnecessary, though Dr Travis had taken the precaution of checking up on the Evipan.

‘Do you know,’ Wilson said, ‘when my boy told me he had died suddenly in the night, I thought it was suicide?’

‘It’s odd how easily I can talk about him,’ Louise said, ‘now that he’s gone. Yet I did love him, Wilson. I did love him, but he seems so very very gone.’

It was as if he had left nothing behind him in the house but a few suits of clothes and a Mende grammar: at the police station a drawer full of odds and ends and a pair of rusting handcuffs. And yet the house was no different: the shelves were as full of books; it seemed to Wilson that it must always have been her house, not his. Was it just imagination then that made their voices ring a little hollowly, as though the house were empty?

‘Did you know all the time - about her?’ Wilson asked.

‘It’s why I came home. Mrs Carter wrote to me. She said everybody was talking. Of course he never realized that. He thought he’d been so clever. And he nearly convinced me - that it was finished. Going to communion the way he did.’

‘How did he square that with his conscience?’

‘Some Catholics do, I suppose. Go to confession and start over again. I thought he was more honest though. When a man’s dead one begins to find out.’

‘He took money from Yusef.’

‘I can believe