Part 3

Scobie had been out-manoeuvred in the interminable war over housing. During his last leave he had lost his bungalow in Cape Station, the main European quarter, to a senior sanitary in-spector called Fellowes, and had found himself relegated to a square two-storeyed house built originally for a Syrian trader on the flats below - a piece of reclaimed swamp which would return to swamp as soon as the nuns set in. From the windows he looked directly out to sea over a line of Creole houses; on the other side of the road lorries backed and churned in a military transport camp and vultures strolled like domestic turkeys in the regimental refuse. On the low ridge of hills be-hind him the bungalows of the station lay among the low clouds; lamps burned all day in the cupboards, mould gath-ered on the boots - nevertheless these were the houses for men of his rank. Women depended so much on pride, pride in themselves, their husbands, their surroundings. They were sel-dom proud, it seemed to him, of the invisible.

‘Louise,’ he called, ‘Louise.’ There was no reason to call: if she wasn’t in the living-room there was nowhere else for her to be but the bedroom (the kitchen was simply a shed in the yard opposite the back door), yet it was his habit to cry her name, a habit he had formed in the days of anxiety and love. The less he needed Louise the more conscious he became of his responsibility for her happiness. When he called her name he was crying like Canute against a tide - the tide of her melan-choly and disappointment.

In the old days she had replied, but she was not such a crea-ture of habit as he was - nor so false, he sometimes told himself. Kindness and pity had no power with her; she would never have pretended an emotion she didn’t feel, and like an animal she gave way completely to the momentary sickness and recovered as suddenly. When he found her in the bed-room under the mosquito-net she reminded him of a dog or a cat, she was so completely ‘out’. Her hair was matted, her eyes closed. He stood very still like a spy in foreign territory, and indeed he was in foreign territory now. If home for him meant the reduction of things to a friendly unchanging mini-mum, home to her was accumulation. The dressing-table was crammed with pots and photographs - himself as a young man in the curiously dated officer’s uniform of the last war: the Chief Justice’s wife whom for the moment she counted as her friend: their only child who had died at school in England three years ago - a little pious nine-year-old girl’s face in the white muslin of first communion: innumerable photographs of Louise herself, in groups with nursing sisters, with the Ad-miral’s party at Medley Beach, on a Yorkshire moor with Teddy Bromley and his wife. It was as if she were accumulat-ing evidence that she had friends like other people. He watch-ed her through the muslin net Her face had the ivory tinge of atabrine: her hair which had once been the colour of bot-tled honey was dark and stringy with sweat. These were the times of ugliness when he loved her, when pity and responsi-bility reached the intensity of a passion. It was pity that told him to go: he wouldn’t have woken his worst enemy from sleep, leave alone Louise. He tiptoed out and down the stairs. (The inside stairs could be found nowhere else in this bunga-low city except in Government House, and she had tried to make them an object of pride with stair-carpets and pictures on the wall.) In the living-room there was a bookcase full of her books, rugs on the floor, a native mask from Nigeria, more photographs. The books had to be wiped daily to remove the damp, and she had not succeeded very well in disguising with flowery curtains the food safe which stood with each foot in a little enamel basin of water to keep the ants out The boy was laying a single place for lunch.

The boy was short and squat with the broad ugly pleasant face of a Temne. His bare feet flapped like empty gloves across the floor.

‘What’s wrong with Missus?’ Scobie asked.

‘Belly humbug,’ Ali said.

Scobie took a Mende grammar from the bookcase: it was tucked away in the bottom shelf where its old untidy cover was least conspicuous. In the upper shelves were the flimsy rows of Louise’s authors - not so young modern poets and the novels of Virginia Woolf. He couldn’t concentrate: it was too hot and his wife’s absence was like a garrulous companion in the room reminding him of his responsibility. A fork fell on the floor and he watched Ali surreptitiously wipe it on his sleeve, watched him with affection. They had been together fifteen years - a year longer than his marriage - a long time to keep a servant He had been ‘small boy’ first then assistant steward in the days when one kept four servants, now he was plain steward. After each leave Ali would be on the landing-stage waiting to organize his luggage with three or four ragged carriers. In the intervals of leave many people tried to steal Ali’s services, but he had never yet failed to be waiting - ex-cept once when he had been in prison. There was no disgrace about prison; it was an obstacle that no one could avoid for ever.

‘Ticki,’ a voice wailed, and Scobie rose at once. ‘Ticki.’ He went upstairs.

His wife was sitting up under the mosquito-net and for a moment he had the impression of a joint under a meat-cover. But pity trod on the heels of the cruel image and hustled it away. ‘Are you feeling better, darling?’

Louise said, ‘Mrs Castle’s been in.’

‘Enough to make anyone ill,’ Scobie said.

‘She’s been telling me about you,’

‘What about me?’ He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Noth-ing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one’s hands altogether by death,

‘She says the Commissioner’s retiring, and they’ve passed you over.’

‘Her husband talks too much in his sleep.’

‘Is it true?’

‘Yes, I’ve known it for weeks. It doesn’t matter, dear, really.’

Louise said, ‘I’ll never be able to show my face at the club again.’

‘It s not as bad as that. These things happen, you know.’

‘You’ll resign, won’t you, Ticki?’

‘I don’t think I can do that, dear.’

‘Mrs Castle’s on our side. She’s furious. She says everyone’s talking about it and saying things. Darling, you aren’t in the pay of the Syrians, are you?’

‘No, dear.’

‘I was so upset I came out of Mass before the end. It’s so mean of them, Ticki. You can’t take it lying down. You’ve got to think of me.’

‘Yes, I do. All the time.’ He sat down on the bed and put his hand under the net and touched hers. Little beads of sweat started where their skins touched. He said, ‘I do think of you, dear. But I’ve been fifteen years in this place. I’d be lost any-where else, even if they gave me another job. It isn’t much of a recommendation, you know, being passed over,’

‘We could retire.’

‘The pension isn’t much to live on.’

‘I’m sure I could make a little money writing. Mrs Castle says I ought to be a professional. With all this experience,’ Louise said, gazing through the white muslin tent as far as her dressing-table: there another face in white muslin stared back and she looked away. She said, ‘If only we could go to South Africa. I can’t bear the people here.’

‘Perhaps I could arrange a passage for you. There haven’t been many sinkings that way lately. You ought to have a holi-day.’

‘There was a time when you wanted to retire too. You used to count the years. You made plans - for all of us.’

‘Oh well, one changes,’ he said.

She said mercilessly, ‘You didn’t think you’d be alone with me then.’

He pressed his sweating hand against hers. ‘What nonsense you talk, dear. You must get up and have some food...’

‘Do you love anyone, Ticki, except yourself?’

‘No, I just love myself, that’s all. And Ali. I forgot Ali. Of course I love him too. But not you,’ he ran on with worn mechanical raillery, stroking her hand, smiling, soothing. . .

‘And Ali’s sister?’

‘Has he got a sister?’

‘They’ve an got sisters, haven’t they? Why didn’t you go to Mass today?’

‘It was my morning on duty, dear. You know that’

‘You could have changed it. You haven’t got much faith, have you, Ticki?’

‘You’ve got enough for both of us, dear. Come and have some food.’

‘Ticki, I sometimes think you just became a Catholic to marry me. It doesn’t mean a thing to you, does it?’

‘Listen, darling, you want to come down and eat a bit Then you want to take the car along to the beach and have some fresh air.’

‘How different the whole day would have been,’ she said, staring out of her net, ‘if you’d come home and said, ‘Darling, I’m going to be the Commissioner.’’

Scobie said slowly, ‘You know, dear, in a place like this in war-time - an important harbour - the Vichy French just across the border - all this diamond smuggling from the Pro-tectorate, they need a younger man.’ He didn’t believe a word he was saying.

‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘That’s the only reason. You can’t blame anyone. It’s the war.’

‘The war does spoil everything, doesn’t it?’

‘It gives the younger men a chance.’

‘Darling, perhaps I’ll come down and just pick at a little cold meat’

‘That’s right dear.’ He withdrew his hand: it was dripping with sweat. ‘I’ll tell Ali.’

Downstairs he shouted ‘Ali’ out of the back door.

‘Massa?’

‘Lay two places. Missus better.’

The first faint breeze of the day came off the sea, blowing up over the bushes and between the Creole huts. A vulture flapped heavily upwards from the iron roof and down again in me yard next door. Scobie drew a deep breath; he felt ex-hausted and victorious: he had persuaded Louise to pick a little meat. It had always been his responsibility to maintain happiness in those he loved. One was safe now, for ever, and the other was going to eat her lunch.