The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [38]
2
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.’
She said, ‘Ticki, have you done anything at all?’
‘How do you mean, dear?’
‘About the passage.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll find a way, dear.’
‘You haven’t found one yet?’
‘No. I’ve got several ideas I’m working on. It’s just a question of borrowing.’ 200,020,002 rang in his brain.
‘Poor dear,’ she said, ‘don’t worry,’ and put her hand against his cheek. ‘You’re tired. You’ve bad fever. I’m not going to bait you now.’ Her hand, her words broke through every defence: he had expected tears, but he found them now in his own eyes. ‘Go up to bed, Henry,’ she said,
‘Aren’t you coming up?’
‘There are just one or two things I want to do.’
He lay on his back under the net and waited for her. It occurred to him, as it hadn’t occurred to him for years, that she loved him. Poor dear, she loved him: she was someone of human stature with her own sense of responsibility, not simply the object of his care and kindness. The sense of failure deepened round him. All the way back from Bamba he had faced one fact - that there was only one man in the city capable of lending him, and willing to lend him, the two hundred pounds, and that was a man he must not borrow from. It would have been safer to accept the Portuguese captain’s bribe. Slowly and drearily he had reached the decision to tell her that the money simply could not be found, that for the next six months at any rate, until his leave, she must stay. If he had not felt so tired he would have told her when she asked him and it would have been over now, but he had flinched away and she had been kind, and it would be harder now than it had ever been to disappoint her. There was silence all through the little house, but outside the half-starved pye dogs yapped and whined. He listened, leaning on his elbow; he felt oddly unmanned, lying in bed alone waiting for Louise to join him. She had always been the one to go first to bed. He felt uneasy, apprehensive, and suddenly his dream came to mind, how he had listened outside the door and knocked, and there was no reply. He struggled out from under the net and ran downstairs barefooted.