‘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. Nothing 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 anywhere 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 holiday.’
‘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 Protectorate, 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 exhausted 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.
In the evening the port became beautiful for perhaps five minutes. The laterite roads that were so ugly and clay-heavy by day became a delicate flower-like pink. It was the hour of content. Men who had left the port for ever would sometimes remember on a grey wet London evening the bloom and glow that faded as soon as it was seen: they would wonder why they had hated the coast and for a space of a drink they would long to return.
Scobie stopped his Morris at one of the great loops of the climbing road and looked back. He was just too late. The flower had withered upwards from the town; the white stones that marked the edge of the precipitous hill shone like candles in the new dusk.
‘I wonder if anybody will be there, Ticki.’
‘Sure to be. It’s library night.’
‘Do hurry up, dear. It’s so hot in the car. I’ll be glad when the rains come.’
‘Will you?’
‘If only they just went on for a month or two and men stopped.’
Scobie made the right reply. He never listened while his wife talked. He worked steadily to the even current of sound, but if a note of distress were struck he was aware of it at once. Like a wireless operator with a novel open in front of him, he could disregard every signal except the ship’s symbol and the SOS. He could even work better while she talked than when she was silent for so long as his ear-drum registered those tranquil sounds - the gossip of the club, comments on the sermons preached by Father Rank, the plot of a new novel, even complaints about the weather - he knew that all was well. It was silence that stopped him working - silence in which he might look up and see tears waiting in the eyes for his attention.
‘There’s a rumour going round that the refrigerators were all sunk last week.’
He considered, while she talked, his line of action with the Portuguese ship that was due in as soon as the boom opened in the morning. The fortnightly arrival of a neutral ship provided an outing for the junior officers: a change of food, a few glasses of real wine, even the opportunity of buying some small decorative object in the ship’s store for a girl. In return they had only to help the Field Security Police in the examination of passports, the searching of the suspects’ cabins: all the hard and disagreeable work was done by the F.S.P., in the hold, sifting sacks of rice for commercial diamonds, or in the heat of the kitchen, plunging the hand into tins
of lard, disembowelling the stuffed turkeys. To try to find a few diamonds in a liner of fifteen thousand tons was absurd: no malign tyrant in a fairy-story had ever set a goose girl a more impossible task, and yet as regularly as the ships called the cypher telegrams came in - ‘So and so travelling first class suspected of carrying diamonds. The following members of the ship’s crew suspected ...’ Nobody ever found anything. He thought: it’s Harris’s turn to go on board, and Eraser can go with him. I’m too old for these excursions. Let the boys have a little fun.