‘Perhaps not in your rules.’
‘Damn it all,’ Harris said, ‘I invented the game.’
A cockroach sat upon the brown cake of soap in the washbasin. Wilson spied it and took a long shot with the shoe from six feet away. The shoe landed smartly on the soap and the cockroach span into the bam: Harris turned on the tap and washed it down. ‘Good shot, old man,’ he said placatingly. ‘One D.D.’
‘D.D, be damned,’ Wilson said. ‘It was dead when you turned on the tap.’
‘You couldn’t be sure of mat. It might have been just unconscious - concussion. It’s D.D. according to the rules.’
‘Your rules again.’
‘My rules are the Queensberry rules in this town.’
‘They won’t be for long,’ Wilson threatened. He slammed the door hard behind him and the walls of his own room vibrated round him from the shock. His heart beat with rage and the hot night: the sweat drained from his armpits. But as he stood there beside his own bed, seeing the replica of Harris’s room around him, the washbasin, the table, the grey mosquito-net, even the cockroach fastened on the wall, anger trickled out of nun and loneliness took its place. It was like quarrelling with one’s own image in the glass. I was crazy, he thought. What made me fly out like that? I’ve lost a friend.
That night it took him a long while to sleep, and when he slept at last he dreamed that he had committed a crime, so that he woke with the sense of guilt still heavy upon him. On his way down to breakfast he paused outside Harris’s door. There was no sound. He knocked, but there was no answer. He opened the door a little way and saw obscurely through the grey net Harris’s damp bed. He asked softly, ‘Are you awake?’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry Harris, about last night.’
‘My fault, old man. I’ve got a touch of fever. I was sickening for it. Touchy.’
‘No, it’s my fault. You are quite right. It was D.D.’
‘We’ll toss up for it, old man.’
‘I’ll come in tonight.’
‘That’s fine.’
But after breakfast something took his mind right away from Harris. He had been in to the Commissioner’s office on his way down town and coming out he ran into Scobie.
‘Hallo,’ Scobie said, ‘what are you doing here?’
‘Been in to see the Commissioner about a pass. There are so many passes one has to have in this town, sir. I wanted one for the wharf.’
‘When are you going to can on us again, Wilson?’
‘You don’t want to be bothered with strangers, sir.’
‘Nonsense. Louise would like another chat about books. I don’t read them myself, you know, Wilson.’
‘I don’t suppose you have much time.’
‘Oh, there’s an awful lot of time around,’ Scobie said, ‘in a country like this. I just don’t have a taste for reading, that’s all. Come into my office a moment while I ring up Louise. She’ll be glad to see you. Wish you’d call in and take her for a walk. She doesn’t get enough exercise.’
‘I’d love to,’ Wilson said, and blushed hurriedly in the shadows. He looked around him: this was Scobie’s office. He examined it as a general might examine a battleground, and yet it was difficult to regard Scobie as an enemy. The rusty handcuffs jangled on the wall as Scobie leant back from his desk and dialled.
‘Free this evening?’
He brought his mind sharply back, aware that Scobie was watching him: the slightly protruding, slightly reddened eyes dwelt on him with a kind of speculation. ‘I wonder why you came out here,’ Scobie said. ‘You aren’t the type.’
‘One drifts into things,’ Wilson lied.
‘I don’t,’ Scobie said, ‘I’ve always been a planner. You see, I even plan for other people.’ He began to talk into the telephone. His intonation changed: it was as if he were reading a part - a part which called for tenderness and patience, a part which had been read so often that the eyes were blank above the mouth. Putting down the receiver, he said, ‘That’s fine. That’s settled then.’
‘It seems a very good plan to me,’ Wilson said.
‘My plans always start out well,’ Scobie said. ‘You two go for a walk, and when you get back I’ll have a drink ready for you. Stay to dinner,’ he went on with a hint of anxiety. ‘We’ll be glad of your company.’
When Wilson had gone, Scobie went in to the Commissioner. He said, ‘I was just coming along to see you, sir, when I ran into Wilson.’
‘Oh yes, Wilson,’ the Commissioner said. ‘He came in to have a word with me about one of their lightermen.’
‘I see.’ The shutters were down in the office to cut out the morning sun. A sergeant passed through carrying with him, as well as his file, a breath of the Zoo behind. The day was heavy with unshed rain: already at 8.30 in the morning the body ran with sweat. Scobie said, ‘He told me he’d come about a pass.’
‘Oh yes,’ the Commissioner said, ‘that too.’ He put a piece of blotting-paper under his wrist to absorb the sweat as he wrote. ‘Yes, there was something about a pass too, Scobie.’
Chapter Two
MRS SCOBIE led the way, scrambling down towards the bridge over the river that still carried the sleepers of an abandoned railway.
‘I’d never have found this path by myself,’ Wilson said, panting a little with the burden of his plumpness.
Louise Scobie said, ‘It’s my favourite walk.’
On the dry dusty slope above the path an old man sat in the doorway of a hut doing nothing. A girl with small crescent breasts climbed down towards them balancing a pail of water on her head; a child naked except for a red bead necklace round the waist played in a little dust-paved yard among the chickens; labourers carrying hatchets came across the bridge at the end of their day. It was the hour of comparative coolness, the hour of peace.
‘You wouldn’t guess, would you, that the city’s just behind us?’ Mrs Scobie said. ‘And a few hundred yards up there over the hill the boys are bringing in the drinks.’
The path wound along the slope of the hill. Down below him Wilson could see the huge harbour spread out. A convoy was gathering inside the boom; tiny boats moved like flies between the ships; above them the ashy trees and the burnt scrubs hid the summit of the ridge. Wilson stumbled once or twice as his toes caught in the ledges left by the sleepers.
Louise Scobie said, ‘This is what I thought it was all going to be like.’
‘Your husband loves the place, doesn’t he?’
‘Oh, I think sometimes he’s got a kind of selective eyesight. He sees what he likes to see. He doesn’t seem to see the snobbery, and he doesn’t hear the gossip.’
‘He sees you,’ Wilson said.
‘Thank God he doesn’t, because I’ve caught the disease.’
‘You aren’t a snob.’
‘Oh yes, I am.’
‘You took me up,’ Wilson said, blushing and contorting his face into a careful careless whistle. But he couldn’t whistle. The plump lips blew empty air, like a fish.
‘For God’s sake,’ Louise said, ‘don’t be humble.’
‘I’m not really humble,’ Wilson said. He stood aside to let a labourer go by. He explained, ‘I’ve got inordinate ambitions.’
‘In two minutes,’ Louise said, ‘we get to the best point of all - where you can’t see a single house.’
‘It’s good of you to show me ...’ Wilson muttered, stumbling on again along the ridge track. He had no small talk: with a woman he could be romantic, but nothing else.
‘There,’ Louise said, but he had hardly time to take the view in - the harsh green slopes falling down towards the great flat glaring bay - when she wanted to be off again, back the way they had come. ‘Henry will be in soon,’ she said.
‘Who’s Henry?’
‘My husband.’
‘I didn’t know his name. I’d heard you call him something else - something like Ticki.’
‘Poor Henry,’ she said. ‘How he hates it. I try not to when other people are there, but I forget. Let’s go.’