The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [45]
‘I don’t know of any agent.’
‘You are quite right, Major Scobie.’ Yusef hovered like a fat moth on the edge of the light. He said, ‘Perhaps if you were writing one day to Mrs Scobie you would give her my best wishes. Oh no, letters are censored. You cannot do that You could say, perhaps - no, better not. As long as you know, Major Scobie, that you have my best wishes -’ Stumbling on the narrow path, he made for his car. When he had turned on his lights he pressed his face against the glass: it showed up in the illumination of the dashboard, wide, pasty, untrustworthy, sincere. He made a tentative shy sketch of a wave towards Scobie, where he stood alone in the doorway of the quiet and empty house.
BOOK TWO
-----------------
PART ONE
Chapter One
1
THEY stood on the verandah of the D.C.’s bungalow at Pende and watched the torches move on the other side of the wide passive river. ‘So that’s France,’ Druce said, using the native term for it.
Mrs Perrot said, ‘Before the war we used to picnic in France.’
Perrot joined them from the bungalow, a drink in either hand: bandy-legged, he wore his mosquito-boots outside his trousers like riding-boots, and gave the impression of having only just got off a horse. ‘Here’s yours, Scobie.’ He said, ‘Of course ye know I find it hard to think of the French as enemies. My family came over with the Huguenots. It makes a difference, ye know.’ His lean long yellow face cut in two by a nose like a wound was all the time arrogantly on the defensive: the importance of Perrot was an article of faith with Perrot -doubters would be repelled, persecuted if he had the chance ... the faith would never cease to be proclaimed.
Scobie said, ‘If they ever joined the Germans, I suppose this is one of the points where they’d attack.’
‘Don’t I know it,’ Perrot said, ‘I was moved here in 1939. The Government had a shrewd idea of what was coming. Everything’s prepared, ye know. Where’s the doctor?’
‘I think he’s taking a last look at the beds,’ Mrs Perrot said. ‘You must be thankful your wife’s arrived safely, Major Scobie. Those poor people over there. Forty days in the boats. It shakes one up to think of it.’
‘It’s the damned narrow channel between Dakar and Brazil that does it every time,’ Perrot said.
The doctor came gloomily out on to the verandah.
Everything over the river was still and blank again: the torches were all out. The light burning on the small jetty below the bungalow showed a few feet of dark water sliding by. A piece of wood came out of the dark and floated so slowly through the patch of light that Scobie counted twenty before it went into darkness again.
‘The Froggies haven’t behaved too badly this time,’ Druce said gloomily, picking a mosquito out of his glass.
‘They’ve only brought the women, the old men and the dying,’ the doctor said, pulling at his beard. ‘They could hardly have done less.’
Suddenly like an invasion of insects the voices whined and burred upon the farther bank, Groups of torches moved like fireflies here and there: Scobie, lifting his binoculars, caught a black face momentarily illuminated: a hammock pole: a white arm: an officer’s back. ‘I think they’ve arrived,’ he said. A long line of lights was dancing along the water’s edge. ‘Well,’ Mrs Perrot said, ‘we may as well go in now.’ The mosquitoes whirred steadily around them like sewing machines. Druce exclaimed and struck his hand.
‘Come in,’ Mrs Perrot said. ‘The mosquitoes here are all malarial.’ The windows of the living-room were netted to keep them out; the state air was heavy with the coming rains.
‘The stretchers will be across at six a.m.,’ the doctor said. ‘I think we are all set, Perrot. There’s one case of blackwater and a few cases