The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [96]
Louise touched his hand. ‘Dear, are you well?’ He thought: here is the second chance. The return of my pain. I can go out. But if he went out of church now, he knew that there would be only one thing left to do - to follow Father Rank’s advice, to settle his affairs, to desert, to come back in a few days’ time and take God with a clear conscience and a knowledge that he had pushed innocence back where it properly belonged - under the Atlantic surge. Innocence must die young if it isn’t to kill the souls of men.
‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.’
‘I’m all right,’ he said, the old longing pricking at the eyeballs, and looking up towards the cross on the altar he thought savagely: Take your sponge of gall. You made me what I am. Take the spear thrust. He didn’t need to open his Missal to know how this prayer ended. ‘May the receiving of Thy Body, O Lord Jesus Christ, which I unworthy presume to take, turn not to my judgment and condemnation.’ He shut his eyes and let the darkness in. Mass rushed towards its end: Domine, non sum dignus ... Domine, non sum dignus... Domine, non sum dignus.... At the foot of the scaffold he opened his eyes and saw the old black women shuffling up towards the altar rail, a few soldiers, an aircraft mechanic, one of his own policemen, a clerk from the bank: they moved sedately towards peace, and Scobie felt an envy of their simplicity, their goodness. Yes, now at this moment of time they were good.
‘Aren’t you coming, dear?’ Louise asked, and again the hand touched him: the kindly firm detective hand. He rose and followed her and knelt by her side like a spy in a foreign land who has been taught the customs and to speak the language like a native. Only a miracle can save me now, Scobie told himself, watching Father Rank at the altar opening the tabernacle, but God would never work a miracle to save Himself, I am the cross, he thought. He will never speak the word to save Himself from the cross, but if only wood were made so that it didn’t feel, if only the nails were senseless as people believed.
Father Rank came down the steps from the altar bearing the Host. The saliva had dried in Scobie’s mouth: it was as though his veins had dried. He couldn’t look up; he saw only the priest’s skirt like the skirt of the mediaeval war-horse bearing down upon him: the flapping of feet: the charge of God. If only the archers would let fly from ambush, and for a moment he dreamed that the priest’s steps had indeed faltered : perhaps after all something may yet happen before he reaches me: some incredible interposition ... But with open mouth (the time had come) he made one last attempt at prayer, ‘O God, I offer up my damnation to you. Take it. Use it for them,’ and was aware of the pale papery taste of an eternal sentence on the tongue.
Chapter Three
1
THE bank manager took a sip of feed water and exclaimed with more than professional warmth, ‘How glad you must be to have Mrs Scobie back well in time for Christmas.’
‘Christmas is a long way off still,’ Scobie said.
‘Time flies when the rains are over,’ the bank manager went on with his novel cheerfulness. Scobie had never before heard in his voice this note of optimism. He remembered the stork-like figure pacing to and fro, pausing at the medical books, so many hundred times a day.
‘I came along...’ Scobie began.
‘About your life insurance - or an overdraft, would it be?’
‘Well, it wasn’t either this time.’
‘You know I’ll always be glad to help you, Scobie, whatever it is.’ How quietly Robinson sat at his desk. Scobie said with wonder, ‘Have you given up your daily exercise?’
‘Ah, that was all stuff and nonsense,’ the manager said. ‘I had read too many books.’
‘I wanted to look in your medical encyclopaedia,’ Scobie explained.