The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [97]
‘You’d do much better to see a doctor,’ Robinson surprisingly advised him. ‘It’s a doctor who’s put me right, not the books. The tune I would have wasted ... I tell you, Scobie, the new young fellow they’ve got at the Argyll Hospital’s the best man they’ve sent to this colony since they discovered it.’
‘And he’s put you right?’
‘Go and see him. His name’s Travis. Tell him I sent you’
‘All the same, if I could just have a look...’
‘You’ll find it on the shelf. I keep ‘em there still because they look important. A bank manager has to be a reading man. People expect him to have solid books around.’
‘I’m glad your stomach’s cured.’
The manager took another sip of water. He said, ‘I’m not bothering about it any more. The truth of the matter is, Scobie, I’m...’
Scobie looked through the encyclopaedia for the word Angina and now he read on: CHARACTER OF THE PAIN. This is usually described as being ‘gripping’, ‘as though the chest were in a vice’. The pain is situated in the middle of the chest and under the sternum. It may run down either arm perhaps more commonly the left, or up into the neck or down into the abdomen. It lasts a few seconds, or at the most a minute or so. THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE PATIENT. This is characteristic. He holds himself absolutely still in whatever circumstances he may find himself.... Scobie’s eye passed rapidly down the cross-headings : CAUSE OF THE PAIN. TREATMENT. TERMINATION OF THE DISEASE. Then he put the book back on the shelf. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps I’ll drop in on your Dr Travis. I’d rather see him than Dr Sykes. I hope he cheers me up as he’s done you.’
‘Well, my case,’ the manager said evasively, ‘had peculiar features.’
‘Mine looks straightforward enough.’
‘You seem pretty well.’
‘Oh, I’m all right - bar a bit of pain now and then and sleeping badly.’
‘Your responsibilities do that for you.’
‘Perhaps.’
It seemed to Scobie that he had sowed enough - against what harvest? He couldn’t himself have told. He said goodbye and went out into the dazzling street. He carried his helmet and let the sun strike vertically down upon his thin greying hair. He offered himself for punishment all the way to the police station and was rejected. It had seemed to him these last three weeks that the damned must be in a special category; like the young men destined for some unhealthy foreign post in a trading company, they were reserved from their humdrum fellows, protected from the daily task, preserved carefully at special desks, so that the worst might happen later. Nothing now ever seemed to go wrong. The sun would not strike, the Colonial Secretary asked him to dinner ... He felt rejected by misfortune.
The Commissioner said, ‘Come in, Scobie. I’ve got good news for you,’ and Scobie prepared himself for yet another rejection.
‘Baker is not coining here. They need him in Palestine. They’ve decided after all to let the right man succeed me.’ Scobie sat down on the window-ledge and watched his hand tremble on his knee. He thought: so all this need not have happened. If Louise had stayed I should never have loved Helen, I would never have been blackmailed by Yusef, never have committed that act of despair. I would have been myself still - the same self that lay stacked in fifteen years of diaries, not this broken cast. But, of course, he told himself, it’s only because I have done these things that success comes. I am of the devil’s party. He looks after his own in this world. I shall go now from damned success to damned success, he thought with disgust.
‘I think Colonel Wright’s word was the deciding factor. You impressed him, Scobie.’
‘It’s come too late, sir.’
‘Why too late?’
‘I’m too old for the job. It needs a younger man.’
‘Nonsense. You’re only just fifty.’
‘My health’s not good.’
‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘I was telling Robinson at the bank today. I’ve been getting pains, and I’m sleeping badly.’ He talked rapidly, beating time on his knee. ‘Robinson swears by Travis. He seems to have worked wonders with him.’
‘Poor Robinson.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s been given two years to live.