The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [56]
‘You watch your step,’ Wilson said, ‘and Mrs Rolt...’
‘What on earth has Mrs Rolt got to do with it?’
‘Don’t think I don’t know why you’ve stayed behind, haunted the hospital... While we were all at the funeral, you slunk down here ...’
‘You really are crazy, Wilson,’ Scobie said.
Suddenly Wilson sat down; it was if he had been folded up by some large invisible hand He put his head in his hands and wept.
‘It’s the sun,’ Scobie said. ‘Just the sun. Go and lie down,’ and taking off his hat he put it on Wilson’s head. Wilson looked up at him between his fingers - at the man who had seen his tears - with hatred.
Chapter Two
1
THE sirens were wailing for a total black-out, wailing through the rain which fell interminably; the boys scrambled into the kitchen quarters, and bolted the door as though to protect themselves 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 that any human beings, let alone the dispirited fever-soaked defeated of Vichy territory, would open an assault at this time of the year, and yet of course one remembered the Heights of Abraham ... A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.
Scobie went out into the dripping darkness holding his big striped umbrella: a mackintosh was too hot to wear. He walked all round his quarters; not a light showed, the shutters of the kitchen were closed, and the Creole houses were 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 in Cape Station the officers’ mess was shining wetly towards the sea, but that was not his responsibility. The headlamps of the military lorries ran like a chain of beads along the edge of the hills, but that too was someone else’s affair.
Up the road behind the transport park a light went suddenly on in one of the Nissen huts where the minor officials lived; it was a hut that had been unoccupied the day before and presumably some visitor had just moved in. Scobie 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 moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity.
He knocked on the door of the Nissen hut, loudly because of the blows of the rain on the black roof like a tunnel. He had to knock twice before the door opened. The light for a moment blinded him. He said, ‘I’m sorry to bother you. One of your lights is showing.’
A woman’s voice said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. It was careless ...’ His eyes cleared, but for a moment he couldn’t put a name to the intensely remembered features. He knew everyone in the colony. This was something that had come from outside ... a river ... early morning ... a dying child. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘it’s Mrs Rolt, isn’t it? I thought you were in hospital?’
‘Yes. Who are you? Do I know you?’
‘I’m Major Scobie of the police. I saw you at Pende.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember a thing that happened there.’
‘Can I fix your light?’
‘Of course. Please.’ He came in and drew the curtains close and shifted a table lamp. The hut was divided in two by a curtain: on one side a bed, a makeshift dressing-table: on the other a table, a couple of chairs - the few sticks 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-out face, with the hair gone dead ... The pyjamas she was wearing were too large for her: the body was lost