The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [83]
‘It wouldn’t be easy to get a sleeping-draught in Bamba,’ Dr Sykes said. ‘It was probably a sudden decision.’
‘I wouldn’t have caused all that fuss,’ said Fellowes. ‘A chap’s got the right to take his own life, of course, but there’s no need for fuss. An overdose of sleeping-draught - I agree with Wilson - that’s the way.’
‘You still have to get your prescription,’ Dr Sykes said.
Scobie with his fingers on the telegram remembered the letter signed ‘Dicky’, the immature handwriting, the marks of cigarettes on the chairs, the novels of Wallace, the stigmata of loneliness. Through two thousand years, he thought, we have discussed Christ’s agony in just this disinterested way.
‘Pemberton was always a bit of a fool,’ Fellowes said.
‘A sleeping-draught is invariably tricky,’ Dr Sykes said. Her big lenses reflected the electric globe as she turned them like a lighthouse in Scobie’s direction. ‘Your experience will tell you how tricky. Insurance companies never like sleeping-draughts, and no coroner could tend himself to a deliberate fraud.’
‘How can they tell ?’ Wilson asked.
‘Take luminal, for instance. Nobody could really take enough luminal by accident ...’ Scobie looked across the table at Helen. She ate slowly, without appetite, her eyes on her plate. Their silences seemed to isolate them: this was a subject the unhappy could never discuss impersonally. Again he was aware of Wilson looking from one to another of them, and Scobie drew desperately at his mind for any phrase that would end their dangerous solitude. They could not even be silent together with safety.
He said, ‘What’s the way out you’d recommend, Dr Sykes?’
‘Well, there are bathing accidents - but even they need a good deal of explanation. If a man’s brave enough to step in front of a car, but it’s too uncertain ...’
‘And involves somebody else,’ Scobie said. ‘Personally,’ Dr Sykes said, grinning under her glasses, ‘I should have no difficulties. In my position, I should classify myself as an angina case and then get one of my colleagues to prescribe.. .’
Helen said with sudden violence, ‘What a beastly talk this is. You’ve got no business to tell...’
‘My dear,’ Dr Sykes said, revolving her malevolent beams, ‘when you’ve been a doctor as long as I have been you know your company. I don’t think any of us are likely...’
Mrs Fellowes said, ‘Have another helping of fruit salad, Mrs Rolt.’
‘Are you a Catholic, Mrs Rolt?’ Fellowes asked. ‘Of course they take very strong views.’
‘No, I’m not a Catholic.’
‘But they do, don’t they, Scobie?’
‘We are taught,’ Scobie said, ‘that it’s the unforgivable sin.’
‘But do you really, seriously, Major Scobie,’ Dr Sykes asked, ‘believe in Hell?’
‘Oh yes, I do.’
‘In flames and torment?’
‘Perhaps not quite that. They tell us it may be a permanent sense of loss.’
‘That sort of Hell wouldn’t worry me! Fellowes said.
‘Perhaps you’ve never lost anything of any importance,’ Scobie said.
The real object of the dinner-party had been the Argentine beef. With that consumed there was nothing to keep them together (Mrs Fellowes didn’t play cards). Fellowes busied himself about the beer, and Wilson was wedged between the sour silence of Mrs Fellowes and Dr Sykes’ garrulity.
‘Let’s get a breath of air,’ Scobie suggested.
‘Wise?’
‘It would look odd if we didn’t,’ Scobie said.
‘Going to look at the stars?’ Fellowes called, pouring out the beer. ‘Making up for lost time, Scobie? Take your glasses
with you.’
They balanced their glasses on the rail of the verandah. Helen said, ‘I haven’t found your letter.’
‘Forget it’
‘Wasn’t that what you wanted to see me about?’
‘No.’
He could see the outline of her face against the sky doomed to go out as the rain clouds advanced. He said, ‘I’ve got bad news.’
‘Somebody knows?’
‘Oh no, nobody knows.’ He said, ‘Last night I had a telegram from my wife. She’s on the way home.’ One of the glasses fell from the rail and smashed in the yard.
The lips repeated bitterly