The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [71]
Harris turned a page or two and the title of a poem caught his eye. It was called ‘West Coast’ and it was dedicated to ‘L.S.’. He wasn’t very keen on poetry, but it struck him as interesting that somewhere on this enormous coastline of sand and smells there existed a third old Downhamian.
Another Tristram on this distant coast, he read
Raises the poisoned chalice to his lips,
Another Mark upon the palm-fringed shore
Watches his love’s eclipse.
It seemed to Harris obscure: his eye passed rapidly over the intervening verses to the initials at the foot: E.W. He nearly exclaimed aloud, but he restrained himself in time. In such close quarters as they now shared it was necessary to be circumspect. There wasn’t space to quarrel in. Who is L.S., he wondered, and thought, surely it can’t be ... the very idea crinkled his lips in a cruel smile. He said, ‘There’s not much in the mag. We beat Harpenden. There’s a poem called West Coast. Another poor devil out here, I suppose.’
‘Oh.’
‘Lovelorn,’ Harris said. ‘But I don’t read poetry.’
‘Nor do I,’ Wilson lied behind the barrier of the Wallace.
2
It had been a very narrow squeak. Wilson lay on his back in bed and listened to the rain on the roof and (he heavy breathing of the old Downhamian beyond the curtain. It was as if the hideous years had extended through the intervening mist to surround him again. What madness had induced him to send that poem to the Downhamian? But it wasn’t madness: he had long since become incapable of anything so honest as madness: he was one of those condemned in childhood to complexity. He knew what he had intended to do: to cut the poem out with no indication of its source and to send it to Louise. It wasn’t quite her sort of poem, he knew, but surely, he had argued, she would be impressed to some extent by the mere fact that the poem was in print. If she asked him where it had appeared, it would be easy to invent some convincing coterie name. The Downhamian luckily was well printed and on good paper. It was true, of course, that he would have to paste the cutting on opaque paper to disguise what was printed on the other side, but it would be easy to think up an explanation of that. It was as if his profession were slowly absorbing his whole life, just as school had done. His profession was to lie, to have the quick story ready, never to give himself away, and his private life was taking the same pattern. He lay on his back in a nausea of self-disgust.
The rain had momentarily stopped. It was one of those cool intervals that were the consolation of the sleepless. In Harris’s heavy dreams the rain went on. Wilson got softly out and mixed himself a bromide; the grains fizzed in the bottom of the glass and Harris spoke hoarsely and turned over behind the curtain. Wilson flashed his torch on his watch and read 2.25. Tiptoeing to the door so as not to waken Harris, he felt the little sting of a jigger under his toe-nail. In the morning he must get his boy to scoop it out. He stood on the small cement pavement above the marshy ground and let the cool air play on him with his pyjama jacket flapping open. All the huts were in darkness, and the moon was patched with the rain-clouds coming up. He was going to turn away when he heard someone stumble a few yards away and he flashed his torch. It lit on a man