The light drill trousers squeezed to the edge of the chair: for one moment Scobie thought that Yusef was going on his knees to him. He said, ‘Major Scobie, I implore you ... It is important for you as well as for me.’ His voice broke with genuine emotion, ‘I want to be a friend.’
Scobie said, Td better warn you before you say any more, Yusef, that the Commissioner does know about our arrangement.’
‘I daresay, I daresay, but this is so much worse, Major Scobie, on my word of honour, this will do no harm to anyone. Just do this one act of friendship, and I’ll never ask another. Do it of your own free will. Major Scobie. There is no bribe. I offer no bribe.’
His eye went back to the letter: My darling, this is serius. Serius - his eye this time read it as servus - a slave: a servant of the servants of God. It was like an unwise command which he had none the less to obey. He felt as though he were turning his back on peace for ever. With his eyes open, knowing the consequences, he entered the territory of lies without a passport for return.
‘What were you saying, Yusef? I didn’t catch...’
‘Just once more I ask you...’
‘No, Yusef.’
‘Major Scobie,’ Yusef said, sitting bolt upright in his chair, speaking with a sudden odd formality, as though a stranger had joined them and they were no longer alone, ‘you remember Pemberton?’
‘Of course.’
‘His boy came into my employ.’
‘Pemberton’s boy?’ Nothing you say to me is a promise.
‘Pemberton’s boy is Mrs Rolt’s boy.’
Scobie’s eyes remained on the letter, but he no longer read what he saw.
‘Her boy brought me a letter. You see I asked him to keep his eyes - bare - is that the right word?’
‘You have a very good knowledge of English, Yusef. Who read it to you?’
‘That does not matter.’
The formal voice suddenly stopped and the old Yusef implored again, ‘Oh, Major Scobie, what made you write such a letter? It was asking for trouble.’
‘One can’t be wise all the time, Yusef. One would die of disgust.’
‘You see it has put you in my hands.’
‘I wouldn’t mind that so much. But to put three people in your hands...’
‘If only you would have done an act of friendship...’
‘Go on, Yusef. You must complete your blackmail. You can’t get away with half a threat.’
‘I wish I could dig a hole and put the package in it. But the war’s going badly, Major Scobie. I am doing this not for myself, but for my father and mother, my half brother, my three sisters - and there are cousins too/
‘Quite a family.’
‘You see if the English are beaten all my stores have no value at all.’
‘What do you propose to do with the letter, Yusef?’
‘I hear from a clerk in the cable company that your wife is on her way back. I will have the letter handed to her as soon as she lands.’
He remembered the telegram signed Louise Scobie: have been a fool stop love. It would be a cold welcome, he thought.
‘And if I give your package to the captain of the Esperan?a?’
‘My boy will be waiting on the wharf. In return for the captain’s receipt he will give you an envelope with your letter inside.’
‘You trust your boy?’
‘Just as you trust Ali.’
‘Suppose I demand the letter first and gave you my word...’
‘It is the penalty of the blackmailer, Major Scobie, that he has no debts of honour. You would be quite right to cheat me.’
‘Suppose you cheat me?’
‘That wouldn’t be right. And formerly I was your friend.’
‘You very nearly were,’ Scobie reluctantly admitted.
‘I am the base Indian.’
‘The base Indian?’
‘Who threw away a pearl,’ Yusef sadly said. ‘That was in the play by Shakespeare the Ordnance Corps gave in the Memorial Hall. I have always remembered it.’
2
‘Well,’ Druce said, ‘I’m afraid well have to get to work now.’
‘One more glass,’ the captain of the Esperan?a said. ‘Not if we are going to release you before the boom closes.
See you later, Scobie.’ When the door of the cabin closed the captain said breathlessly, ‘I am still here.’
‘So I see. I told you there are often mistakes - minutes go to the wrong place, files are lost.’
‘I believe none of that,’ the captain said. ‘I believe you helped me.’ He dripped gently with sweat in the stuffy cabin. He added, ‘I pray for you at Mass, and I have brought you this. It was all that I could find for you in Lobito. She is a very obscure saint,’ and he slid across the table between them a holy medal the size of a nickel piece. ‘Santa - I don’t remember her name. She had something to do with Angola I think,’ the captain explained.
‘Thank you,’ Scobie said. The package in his pocket seemed to him to weigh as heavily as a gun against his thigh. He let the last drops of port settle in the well of his glass and then drained them. He said, ‘This time I have something for you.’ A terrible reluctance cramped his fingers.
‘For me?’
‘Yes.’
How light the little package actually was now that it was on the table between them. What had weighed like a gun in the pocket might now have contained little more than fifty cigarettes. He said, ‘Someone who comes on board with the pilot at Lisbon will ask you if you have any American cigarettes. You will give him this package.’
‘Is this Government business?’
‘No. The Government would never pay as well as this.’ He laid a packet of notes upon the table.
‘This surprises me,’ the captain said with an odd note of disappointment. ‘You have put yourself in my hands.’
‘You were in mine,’ Scobie said.
‘I don’t forget. Nor will my daughter. She is married outside the Church, but she has faith. She prays for you too.’
‘The prayers we pray then don’t count, surely?’
‘No, but when the moment of Grace returns they rise,’ the captain raised his fat arms in an absurd and touching gesture, ‘all at once together like a flock of birds.’
‘I shall be glad of them,’ Scobie said.
‘You can trust me, of course.’
‘Of course. Now I must search your cabin.’
‘You do not trust me very far.’
‘That package,’ Scobie said, ‘has nothing to do with the war.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I am nearly sure.’
He began his search. Once, pausing by a mirror, he saw poised over his own shoulder a stranger’s face, a fat, sweating, unreliable face. Momentarily he wondered: who can that be? before he realized that it was only this new unfamiliar look of pity which made it strange to him. He thought: am I really one of those whom people pity?
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