The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [57]
‘Everybody’s been very kind,’ she said. ‘Mrs Carter gave me a lovely pouf.’
His eyes wandered: there was nothing personal anywhere: no photographs, no books, no trinkets of any kind, but then he remembered that she had brought nothing out of the sea except herself and a stamp-album.
‘Is there any danger?’ she asked anxiously,
‘Danger?’
‘The sirens.’
‘Oh, none at all. These are just alarms. We get about one a month. Nothing ever happens.’ He took another long look at her. ‘They oughtn’t to have let you out of hospital so soon. It’s not six weeks ...’
‘I wanted to go. I wanted to be alone. People kept on coming to see me.’
‘Well, I’ll be going now myself. Remember if you ever want anything I’m just down the road. The two-storeyed white house beyond the transport park sitting in a swamp.’
‘Won’t you stay till the rain stops?’ she asked.
‘I don’t think I’d better,’ he said. ‘You see, it goes on until September,’ and won out of her a stiff unused smile.
‘The noise is awful.’
‘You get used to it in a few weeks. Like living beside a railway. But you won’t have to. They’ll be sending you home very soon. There’s a boat in a fortnight.’
‘Would you like a drink? Mrs Carter gave me a bottle of gin as well as the pouf.’
‘I’d better help you to drink it then.’ He noticed when she produced the bottle that nearly half had gone. ‘Have you any limes?’
‘No.’
‘They’ve given you a boy, I suppose?’
‘Yes, but I don’t know what to ask him for. And he never seems to be around.’
‘You’ve been drinking it neat?’
‘Oh no, I haven’t touched it. The boy upset it - that was his story.’
‘I’ll talk to your boy in the morning,’ Scobie said. ‘Got an ice-box?’
‘Yes, but the boy can’t get me any ice.’ She sat weakly down in a chair. ‘Don’t think me a fool. I just don’t know where I am. I’ve never been anywhere like this.’
‘Where do you come from?’
‘Bury St Edmunds. In Suffolk. I was there eight weeks ago.’
‘Oh no, you weren’t. You were in that boat.’
‘Yes. I forgot the boat.’
‘They oughtn’t to have pushed you out of the hospital all alone like this.’
‘I’m all right. They had to have my bed. Mrs Carter said she’d find room for me, but I wanted to be alone. The doctor told them to do what I wanted.’
Scobie said, ‘I can understand you wouldn’t want to be with Mrs Carter, and you’ve only got to say the word and I’ll be off too.’
‘I’d rather you waited till the All Clear. I’m a bit rattled, you know.’ The stamina of women had always amazed Scobie. This one had survived forty days in an open boat and she talked about being rattled. He remembered the casualties in the report the chief engineer had made: the third officer and two seamen who had died, and the stoker who had gone off his head as a result of drinking sea water and drowned himself. When it came to strain it was always a man who broke. Now she lay back on her weakness as on a pillow.
He said, ‘Have you thought out things? Shall you go back to Bury?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll get a job.’
‘Have you had any experience?’
‘No,’ she confessed, looking away from him. ‘You see, I only left school a year ago.’
‘Did they teach you anything?’ It seemed to him that what she needed more than anything else was just talk, silly aimless talk. She thought that she wanted to be alone, but what she was afraid of was the awful responsibility of receiving sympathy. How could a child like that act the part of a woman whose husband had been drowned more or less before her eyes? As well expect her to act Lady Macbeth. Mrs Carter would have had no sympathy with her inadequacy. Mrs Carter, of course, would have known how to behave, having buried one husband and three children.
She said, ‘I was best at netball,’ breaking in on his thoughts.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you haven’t quite the figure for a gym instructor. Or have you, when you are well?’
Suddenly and without warning she began to talk. It was as if by the inadvertent use of a password he had induced a door to open: