‘I wish you wouldn’t talk so much, Yusef. I’m not interested in your friendship.’
‘Your words are harder than your heart, Major Scobie. I want to explain why in my soul I have always felt your friend. You have made me feel secure. You will not frame me. You need facts, and I am sure the facts will always be in my favour.’ He dusted the ashes from his white trousers, leaving one more grey smear. ‘These are facts. I have burned all the IOU’s.’ ‘I may yet find traces, Yusef, of what kind of agreement you were intending to make with Pemberton. This station controls one of the main routes across the border from - damnation, I can’t think of names with this head.’ ‘Cattle smugglers. I’m not interested in cattle.’ ‘Other things are apt to go back the other way.’ ‘You are still dreaming of diamonds, Major Scobie. Everybody has gone crazy about diamonds since the war.’
‘Don’t feel too certain, Yusef, that I won’t find something when I go through Pemberton’s office.’
‘I feel quite certain, Major Scobie. You know I cannot read or write. Nothing is ever on paper. Everything is always in my head.’ Even while Yusef talked, Scobie dropped asleep - into one of those shallow sleeps that last a few seconds and have only time to reflect a preoccupation. Louise was coming towards him with both hands held out and a smile that he hadn’t seen upon her face for years. She said, ‘I am so happy, so happy,’ and he woke again to Yusef’s voice going soothingly on. ‘It is only your friends who do not trust you, Major Scobie. I trust you. Even that scoundrel Tallit trusts you.’
It took him a moment to get this other face into focus. His brain adjusted itself achingly from the phrase ‘so happy’ to the phrase ‘do not trust’. He said, ‘What are you talking about, Yusef?’ He could feel the mechanism of his brain creaking, grinding, scraping, cogs failing to connect, all with pain.
‘First, there is the Commissionership.’ ‘They need a young man,’ he said mechanically, and thought, if I hadn’t fever I would never discuss a matter like this with Yusef.
‘Then the special man they have sent from London ...’ ‘You must come back when I’m clearer, Yusef. I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.’
‘They have sent a special man from London to investigate the diamonds - they are crazy about diamonds - only the Commissioner must know about him none of the other officers, not even you.’
‘What rubbish you talk, Yusef. There’s no such man.’
‘Everybody guesses but you.’
‘Too absurd. You shouldn’t listen to rumour, Yusef.’
‘And a third thing. Tallit says everywhere you visit me.’
‘Tallit! Who believes what Tallit says?’
‘Everybody everywhere believes what is bad.’
‘Go away, Yusef. Why do you want to worry me now?’
‘I just want you to understand, Major Scobie, that you can depend on me. I have friendship for you in my soul. That is true, Major Scobie, it is true.’ The reek of hair-oil come closer as he bent towards the bed: the deep brown eyes were damp with what seemed to be emotion. ‘Let me pat your pillow. Major Scobie.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, keep away,’ Scobie said.
‘I know how things are. Major Scobie, and if I can help ..» I am a well-off man.’
‘I’m not looking for bribes, Yusef,’ he said wearily and turned his head away to escape the scent.
‘I am not offering you a bribe, Major Scobie. A loan at any time on a reasonable rate of interest - four per cent per annum. No conditions. You can arrest me next day if you have facts. I want to be your friend. Major Scobie. You need not be my friend. There is a Syrian poet who wrote, "Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away."‘
‘It sounds a very bad poem to me. But I’m no judge.’
‘It is a happy chance for me that we should be here together. In the town there are so many people watching. But here, Major Scobie, I can be of real help to you. May I fetch you more blankets?’
‘No, no, just leave me alone.’
‘I hate to see a man of your characteristics, Major Scobie, treated badly.’
‘I don’t mink the time’s ever likely to come, Yusef, when I shall need your pity. If you want to do something for me, though, go away and let me sleep.’
But when he slept the unhappy dreams returned. Upstairs Louise was crying, and he sat at a table writing his last letter. ‘It’s a rotten business for you, but it can’t be helped. Your loving husband, Dicky,’ and then as he turned to look for a weapon or a rope, it suddenly occurred to him that this was an act he could never do. Suicide was for ever out of his power - he couldn’t condemn himself for eternity - no cause was important enough. He tore up his letter and ran upstairs to tell Louise that after all everything was all right, but she had stopped crying and the silence welling out from inside the bedroom terrified him. He tried the door and the door was locked. He called out, ‘Louise, everything’s all right. I’ve booked your passage,’ but there was no answer. He cried again, ‘Louise,’ and then a key turned and the door slowly opened with a sense of irrecoverable disaster, and he saw standing just inside Father Clay, who said to him, ‘The teaching of the Church ...’ Then he woke again to the small stone room like a tomb.
He was away for a week, for it took three days for the fever to run its course and another two days before he was fit to travel. He did not see Yusef again.
It was past midnight when he drove into town. The houses were white as bones in the moonlight; the quiet streets stretched out on either side like the arms of a skeleton, and the faint sweet smell of flowers lay on the air. If he had been returning to an empty house he knew that he would have been contented. He was tired and he didn’t want to break the silence - it was too much to hope that Louise would be asleep, too much to hope that things would somehow have become easier in his absence and that he would see her free and happy as she had been in one of his dreams.
The small boy waved his torch from the door: the frogs croaked from the bushes, and the pye dogs wailed at the moon. He was home. Louise put her arms round him: the table was laid for a late supper, the boys ran to and fro with his boxes: he smiled and talked and kept the bustle going. He talked of Pemberton and Father Clay and mentioned Yusef, but he knew that sooner or later he would have to ask how things had been with her. He tried to eat, but he was too tired to taste the food.
‘Yesterday I cleared up his office and wrote my report - and that was that.’ He hesitated, ‘That’s all my news,’ and went reluctantly on, ‘How have things been here?’ He looked quickly up at her face and away again. There had been one chance in a thousand that she would have smiled and said vaguely, ‘Not so bad’ and then passed on to other things, but he knew from her mouth that he wasn’t so lucky as that Something fresh had happened.
But the outbreak - whatever it was to be - was delayed. She said, ‘Oh, Wilson’s been attentive.’
‘He’s a nice boy.’
‘He’s too intelligent for his job. I can’t think why he’s out here as just a clerk.’
‘He told me he drifted.’
‘I don’t mink I’ve spoken to anybody else since you’ve been away, except the small boy and the cook. Oh, and Mrs Halifax.’ Something in her voice told him that the danger point was reached. Always, hopelessly, he tried to evade it. He stretched and said, ‘My God, I’m tired. The fever’s left me limp as a rag. I think I’ll go to bed. It’s nearly half-past one, and I’ve got to be at the station at eight.’