The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [73]
‘Yes, sah. He very good man, sah.’ They were the first words apart from yes and no the boy had uttered.
‘You see him at your master’s?’
‘Yes, sah.’
‘How often?’
‘Once, twice, sah.’
‘He and your master - they are friends?’
‘My master he think Major Scobie very good man, sah.’ The reiteration of the phrase angered Wilson. He broke furiously out, ‘I don’t want to hear whether he’s good or not. I want to know where he meets Yusef, see? What do they talk about? You bring them in drinks some time when steward’s busy? What do you hear?’
‘Last time they have big palaver,’ the boy brought ingratiatingly out, as if he were showing a corner of his wares.
‘I bet they did. I want to know all about their palaver.’
‘When Major Scobie go away one time, my master he put pillow right on his face.’
‘What on earth do you mean by that?’
The boy folded his arms over his eyes in a gesture of great dignity and said, ‘His eyes make pillow wet.’
‘Good God,’ Wilson said, ‘what an extraordinary thing.’
‘Then he drink plenty whisky and go to sleep - ten, twelve hours. Then he go to his store in Bond Street and make plenty hell.’
‘Why?’
‘He say they humbug him.’
‘What’s that got to do with Major Scobie?’
The boy shrugged. As so many times before Wilson had the sense of a door closed in his face; he was always on the outside of the door.
When the boy had gone he opened his safe again, moving the knob of the combination first left to 32 - his age, secondly right to 10, the year of his birth, left again to 65, the number of his home in Western Avenue, Pinner, and took out the code books. 32946 78523 97042. Row after row of groups swam before his eyes. The telegram was headed Important, or he would have postponed the decoding till the evening. He knew how little important it really was - the usual ship had left Lobito carrying the usual suspects - diamonds, diamonds, diamonds. When he had decoded the telegram he would hand it to the long-suffering Commissioner, who had already probably received the same information or contradictory information from S.O.E. or one of the other secret organizations which took root on the coast like mangroves. Leave alone but do not repeat not pinpoint P. Ferreira passenger 1st class repeat P. Ferreira passenger 1st class. Ferreira was presumably an agent his organization had recruited on board. It was quite possible that the Commissioner would receive simultaneously a message from Colonel Wright that P. Ferreira was suspected of carrying diamonds and should be rigorously searched. 72391 87052 63847 92034. How did one simultaneously leave alone, not repeat not pinpoint, and rigorously search Mr Ferreira? That luckily was not his worry. Perhaps it was Scobie who would suffer any headache there was.
Again he went to the window for a glass of water and again he saw the same girl pass. Or maybe it was not the same girl. He watched the water trickling down between the two thin wing-like shoulder-blades. He remembered there was a time when he had not noticed a black skin. He felt as though he had passed years and not months on this coast, all the years between puberty and manhood.
4
‘Going out?’ Harris asked with surprise. ‘Where to?’
‘Just into town,’ Wilson said, loosening the knot round his mosquito-boots.
‘What on earth can you find to do in town at this hour?’
‘Business,’ Wilson said.
Well, he thought, it was business of a kind, the kind of joyless business one did alone, without friends. He had bought a second-hand car a few weeks ago, the first he had ever owned, and he was not yet a very reliable driver. No gadget survived the climate long and every few hundred yards he had to wipe the windscreen with his handkerchief. In Kru town the hut doors were open and families sat around the kerosene lamps waiting till it was cool enough to sleep. A dead pye-dog lay in the gutter with the rain running over its white swollen belly.