After all they had forced him to tell a kind of lie: he had no appointment with Yusef. All the same he wanted a few words with Yusef; it was just possible that he might yet clear up, for his own satisfaction, if not legally, the Tallit affair. Driving slowly through the rain - his windscreen wiper had long ceased to function - he saw Harris struggling with his umbrella outside the Bedford Hotel.
‘Can I give you a lift? I’m going your way.’
‘The most exciting things have been happening,’ Harris said. His hollow face shone with rain and enthusiasm. ‘I’ve got a house at last.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘At least it’s not a house: it’s one of the huts up your way. But it’s a home.’ Harris said. ‘I’ll have to share it, but it’s a home.’
‘Who’s sharing it with you?’
‘I’m asking Wilson, but he’s gone away - to Lagos for a week or two. The damned elusive Pimpernel. Just when I wanted him. And that brings me to the second exciting thing. Do you know I’ve discovered we were both at Downham?’
‘Downham?’
‘The school, of course. I went into his room to borrow his ink while he was away, and there on his table I saw a copy of the old Downhamian.’
‘What a coincidence,’ Scobie said.
‘And do you know - it’s really been a day of extraordinary happenings - I was looking through the magazine and there at the end was a page which said, ‘The Secretary of the old Downhamian Association would like to get in touch with the following old boys with whom we have lost touch’ - and mere half-way down was my own name, in print, large as life. What do you think of that?’
‘What did you do?’
‘Directly I got to the office I sat down and wrote - before I touched a cable, except of course “the most immediates”, but then I found I’d forgotten to put down the secretary’s address, so back I had to go for the paper. You wouldn’t care to come in, would you, and see what I’ve written?’
‘I can’t stay long.’ Harris had been given an office in a small unwanted room in the Elder Dempster Company’s premises. It was the size of an old-fashioned servant’s bedroom and this appearance was enhanced by a primitive washbasin with one cold tap and a gas-ring. A table littered with cable forms was squashed between the washbasin and a window no larger than a port-hole which looked straight out on to the water-front and the grey creased bay. An abridged version of Ivanhoe for the use of schools, and half a loaf of bread stood in an out-tray. ‘Excuse the muddle,’ Harris said. ‘Take a chair,’ but there was no spare chair.
‘Where’ve I put it?’ Harris wondered aloud, turning over the cables on his desk. ‘Ah, I remember.’ He opened Ivanhoe and fished out a folded sheet. ‘It’s only a rough draft,’ he said with anxiety. ‘Of course I’ve got to pull it together. I think I’d better keep it back till Wilson comes. You see I’ve mentioned him.’
Scobie read, Dear Secretary, - It was just by chance I came on a copy of the ‘Old Downhamian’ which another old Downhamian, E. Wilson (1923-1928), had in his room. I’m afraid I’ve been out of touch with the old place for a great many years and I was very pleased and a bit guilty to see that you have been trying to get into touch with me. Perhaps you’d like to know a bit about what I’m doing in ‘the white man’s grave’, but as I’m a cable censor you will understand that I can’t tell you much about my work. That will have to wait till we’ve won the war. We are in the middle of the rains now - and how it does rain. There’s a lot of fever about, but I’ve only had one dose and E. Wilson has so far escaped altogether. We are sharing a little house together, so that you can feel that old Downhamians even in this wild and distant part stick together. We’ve got an old Downhamian team of two and go out hunting together but only cockroaches {Ha! Ha!). Well, I must stop now and get on with winning the war. Cheerio to all old Downhamians from quite an old Coaster.
Scobie looking up met Harris’s anxious and embarrassed gaze. ‘Do you think it’s on the right lines?’ he asked. ‘I was a bit doubtful about “Dear Secretary”.’
‘I think you’ve caught the tone admirably.’
‘Of course you know it wasn’t a very good school, and I wasn’t very happy there. In fact I ran away once.’
‘And now they’ve caught up with you.’
‘It makes you think, doesn’t it?’ said Harris. He stared out over the grey water with tears in his bloodshot eyes. ‘I’ve always envied people who were happy there,’ he said.
Scobie said consolingly, ‘I didn’t much care for school myself.’
‘To start off happy,’ Harris said. ‘It must make an awful difference afterwards. Why, it might become a habit, mightn’t it?’ He took the piece of bread out of the out-tray and dropped it into the wastepaper-basket. ‘I always mean to get this place tidied up,’ he said.
‘Well, I must be going, Harris. I’m glad about the house -and the old Downhamian.’
‘I wonder if Wilson was happy there,’ Harris brooded. He took Ivanhoe out of the out-tray and looked around for somewhere to put it, but there wasn’t any place. He put it back again. ‘I don’t suppose he was,’ he said, ‘or why should he have turned up here?’
No comments:
Post a Comment