The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [99]
‘You know there is no end to us.’
‘Oh, but the Commissioner can’t have a mistress hidden away in a Nissen hut.’ The sting, of course, was in the ‘hidden away’, but how could he allow himself to feel the least irritation, remembering the letter she had written to him, offering herself as a sacrifice any way he liked, to keep or to throw away? Human beings couldn’t be heroic all the time: those who surrendered everything - for God or love - must be allowed sometimes in thought to take back their surrender. So many had never committed the heroic act, however rashly. It was the act that counted. He said, ‘If the Commissioner can’t keep you, then I shan’t be the Commissioner.’
‘Don’t be silly. After all,’ she said with fake reasonableness, and he recognized this as one of her bad days, ‘what do we get out of it?’
‘I get a lot,’ he said, and wondered: is that a lie for the sake of comfort? There were so many lies nowadays he couldn’t keep track of the small, the unimportant ones.
‘An hour or two every other day perhaps when you can slip away. Never so much as a night.’
He said hopelessly,’ Oh, I have plans,’
‘What plans?’
He said, ‘They are too vague still.’
She said with all the acid she could squeeze out, ‘Well, let me know in time. To fall in with your wishes, I mean.’
‘My dear, I haven’t come here to quarrel.’
‘I sometimes wonder what you do come here for.’
‘Well, today I brought some furniture.’
‘Oh yes, the furniture.’
‘I’ve got the car here. Let me take you to the beach.’
‘Oh, we can’t be seen there together.’
‘That’s nonsense. Louise is there now, I think.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Helen said, ‘keep that smug woman out of my sight’
‘All right then. I’ll take you for a run in the car.’
‘That would be safer, wouldn’t it?’
Scobie took her by the shoulders and said, ‘I’m not always thinking of safety.’
‘I thought you were.’
Suddenly he felt his resistance give way and he shouted at her, ‘The sacrifice isn’t all on your side.’ With despair he could see from a distance the scene coming up on both of them: like the tornado before the rains, that wheeling column of blackness which would soon cover the whole sky.
‘Of course work must suffer,’ she said with childish sarcasm. ‘All these snatched half-hours.’
‘I’ve given up hope,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve given up the future. I’ve damned myself.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. Anyway, you’ve just told me about the future - the Commissionership.’
‘I mean the real future - the future that goes on.’
She said, ‘If there’s one thing I hate it’s your Catholicism. I suppose it comes of having a pious wife. It’s so bogus. If you really believed you wouldn’t be here.’
‘But I do believe and I am here.’ He said with bewilderment, ‘I can’t explain it, but there it is. My eyes are open. I know what I’m doing. When Father Rank came down to the rail carrying the sacrament...’
Helen exclaimed with scorn and impatience, ‘You’ve told me all that before. You are trying to impress me. You don’t believe in Hell any more than I do.’
He took her wrists and held them furiously. He said, ‘You can’t get out of it that way. I believe, I tell you. I believe that I’m damned for all eternity - unless a miracle happens. I’m a policeman. I know what I’m saying. What I’ve done is far worse than murder - that’s an act, a blow, a stab, a shot: it’s over and done, but I’m carrying my corruption around with me. It’s the coating of my stomach.’ He threw her wrists aside like seeds towards the stony floor. ‘Never pretend I haven’t shown my love.’
‘Love for your wife, you mean. You were afraid she’d find out.’
Anger drained out of him. He said, ‘Love for both of you. If it were