‘Who from?’
‘He says Brown.’
‘Keep him a couple of minutes, there’s a good chap, and then boot him in.’ However diligently Wilson practised, the slang phrase sounded unnaturally on his lips. He folded up the cable and stuck it in the code book to keep his place: then he put the cable and the code book in the safe and pulled the door to. Pouring himself out a glass of water he looked out on the street; the mammies, their heads tied up in bright cotton cloths, passed under their coloured umbrellas. Their shapeless cotton gowns fell to the ankle: one with a design of matchboxes: another with kerosene lamps: the third - the latest from Manchester - covered with mauve cigarette- lighters on a yellow ground. Naked to the waist a young girl passed gleaming through the rain and Wilson watched her out of sight with melancholy lust. He swallowed and turned as the door opened.
‘Shut the door.’
The boy obeyed. He had apparently put on his best clothes for this morning calclass="underline" a white cotton shirt fell outside his white shorts. His gym shoes were immaculate in spite of the rain, except that his toes protruded.
‘You small boy at Yusef’s?’
‘Yes, sah.’
‘You got a message,’ Wilson said, ‘from my boy. He tell you what I want, eh? He’s your young brother, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, sah,’
‘Same father?’
‘Yes, sah.’
‘He says you good boy, honest. You want to be a steward, eh?’
‘Yes, sah.’
‘Can you read?’
‘No, sah.’
‘Write?’
‘No, sah.’
‘You got eyes in your head? Good ears? You see everything? You hear everything?’ The boy grinned - a gash of white in the smooth grey elephant hide of his face: he had a look of sleek intelligence. Intelligence, to Wilson, was more valuable than honesty. Honesty was a double-edged weapon, but intelligence looked after number one. Intelligence realized that a Syrian might one day go home to his own land, but the English stayed. Intelligence knew that it was a good thing to work for Government, whatever the Government. ‘How much you get as small boy?’
‘Ten shillings.’
‘I pay you five shillings more. If Yusef sack you I pay you ten shillings. If you stay with Yusef one year and give me good information - true information - no lies, I give you job as steward with white man. Understand?’ ‘Yes, sah.’
‘If you give me lies, then you go to prison. Maybe they shoot you. I don’t know. I don’t care. Understand?’
‘Yes, sah.’
‘Every day you see your brother at meat market. You tell him who comes to Yusef s house. Tell him where Yusef goes. You tell him any strange boys who come to Yusef’s house. You no tell lies, you tell truth. No humbug. If no one comes to Yusef’s house you say no one. You no make big lie. If you tell lie, I know it and you go to prison straight away.’ The wearisome recital went on. He was never quite sure how much was understood. The sweat ran off Wilson’s forehead and the cool contained grey face of the boy aggravated him like an accusation he couldn’t answer. ‘You go to prison and you stay in prison plenty long time.’ He could hear his own voice cracking with the desire to impress; he could hear himself, like the parody of a white man on the halls. He said, ‘Scobie? Do you know Major Scobie?’
‘Yes, sah. He very good man, sah.’ They were the first words apart from yes and no the boy had uttered.
‘You see him at your master’s?’
‘Yes, sah.’
‘How often?’
‘Once, twice, sah.’
‘He and your master - they are friends?’
‘My master he think Major Scobie very good man, sah.’ The reiteration of the phrase angered Wilson. He broke furiously out, ‘I don’t want to hear whether he’s good or not. I want to know where he meets Yusef, see? What do they talk about? You bring them in drinks some time when steward’s busy? What do you hear?’
‘Last time they have big palaver,’ the boy brought ingratiatingly out, as if he were showing a corner of his wares.
‘I bet they did. I want to know all about their palaver.’
‘When Major Scobie go away one time, my master he put pillow right on his face.’
‘What on earth do you mean by that?’
The boy folded his arms over his eyes in a gesture of great dignity and said, ‘His eyes make pillow wet.’
‘Good God,’ Wilson said, ‘what an extraordinary thing.’
‘Then he drink plenty whisky and go to sleep - ten, twelve hours. Then he go to his store in Bond Street and make plenty hell.’
‘Why?’
‘He say they humbug him.’
‘What’s that got to do with Major Scobie?’
The boy shrugged. As so many times before Wilson had the sense of a door closed in his face; he was always on the outside of the door.
When the boy had gone he opened his safe again, moving the knob of the combination first left to 32 - his age, secondly right to 10, the year of his birth, left again to 65, the number of his home in Western Avenue, Pinner, and took out the code books. 32946 78523 97042. Row after row of groups swam before his eyes. The telegram was headed Important, or he would have postponed the decoding till the evening. He knew how little important it really was - the usual ship had left Lobito carrying the usual suspects - diamonds, diamonds, diamonds. When he had decoded the telegram he would hand it to the long-suffering Commissioner, who had already probably received the same information or contradictory information from S.O.E. or one of the other secret organizations which took root on the coast like mangroves. Leave alone but do not repeat not pinpoint P. Ferreira passenger 1st class repeat P. Ferreira passenger 1st class. Ferreira was presumably an agent his organization had recruited on board. It was quite possible that the Commissioner would receive simultaneously a message from Colonel Wright that P. Ferreira was suspected of carrying diamonds and should be rigorously searched. 72391 87052 63847 92034. How did one simultaneously leave alone, not repeat not pinpoint, and rigorously search Mr Ferreira? That luckily was not his worry. Perhaps it was Scobie who would suffer any headache there was.
Again he went to the window for a glass of water and again he saw the same girl pass. Or maybe it was not the same girl. He watched the water trickling down between the two thin wing-like shoulder-blades. He remembered there was a time when he had not noticed a black skin. He felt as though he had passed years and not months on this coast, all the years between puberty and manhood.
4
‘Going out?’ Harris asked with surprise. ‘Where to?’
‘Just into town,’ Wilson said, loosening the knot round his mosquito-boots.
‘What on earth can you find to do in town at this hour?’
‘Business,’ Wilson said.
Well, he thought, it was business of a kind, the kind of joyless business one did alone, without friends. He had bought a second-hand car a few weeks ago, the first he had ever owned, and he was not yet a very reliable driver. No gadget survived the climate long and every few hundred yards he had to wipe the windscreen with his handkerchief. In Kru town the hut doors were open and families sat around the kerosene lamps waiting till it was cool enough to sleep. A dead pye-dog lay in the gutter with the rain running over its white swollen belly. He drove in second gear at little more than a walking pace, for civilian head-lamps had to be blacked out to the size of a visiting-card and he couldn’t see more than fifteen paces ahead. It took him ten minutes to reach the great cotton tree near the police station. There were no lights on in any of the officer’s rooms and he left his car outside the main entrance. If anyone saw it there they would assume he was inside. For a moment he sat with the door open hesitating. The image of the girl passing in the rain conflicting with the sight of Harris on his shoulder-blades reading a book with a glass of squash at his elbow. He thought sadly, as lust won the day, what a lot of trouble it was; the sadness of the after-taste fell upon his spirits beforehand.