The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene [84]
‘I believe none of that,’ the captain said. ‘I believe you helped me.’ He dripped gently with sweat in the stuffy cabin. He added, ‘I pray for you at Mass, and I have brought you this. It was all that I could find for you in Lobito. She is a very obscure saint,’ and he slid across the table between them a holy medal the size of a nickel piece. ‘Santa - I don’t remember her name. She had something to do with Angola I think,’ the captain explained.
‘Thank you,’ Scobie said. The package in his pocket seemed to him to weigh as heavily as a gun against his thigh. He let the last drops of port settle in the well of his glass and then drained them. He said, ‘This time I have something for you.’ A terrible reluctance cramped his fingers.
‘For me?’
‘Yes.’
How light the little package actually was now that it was on the table between them. What had weighed like a gun in the pocket might now have contained little more than fifty cigarettes. He said, ‘Someone who comes on board with the pilot at Lisbon will ask you if you have any American cigarettes. You will give him this package.’
‘Is this Government business?’
‘No. The Government would never pay as well as this.’ He laid a packet of notes upon the table.
‘This surprises me,’ the captain said with an odd note of disappointment. ‘You have put yourself in my hands.’
‘You were in mine,’ Scobie said.
‘I don’t forget. Nor will my daughter. She is married outside the Church, but she has faith. She prays for you too.’
‘The prayers we pray then don’t count, surely?’
‘No, but when the moment of Grace returns they rise,’ the captain raised his fat arms in an absurd and touching gesture, ‘all at once together like a flock of birds.’
‘I shall be glad of them,’ Scobie said.
‘You can trust me, of course.’
‘Of course. Now I must search your cabin.’
‘You do not trust me very far.’
‘That package,’ Scobie said, ‘has nothing to do with the war.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I am nearly sure.’
He began his search. Once, pausing by a mirror, he saw poised over his own shoulder a stranger’s face, a fat, sweating, unreliable face. Momentarily he wondered: who can that be? before he realized that it was only this new unfamiliar look of pity which made it strange to him. He thought: am I really one of those whom people pity?
BOOK THREE
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PART ONE
Chapter One
1
THE rains were over and the earth steamed. Flies everywhere settled in clouds, and the hospital was full of malaria patients. Farther up the coast they were dying of blackwater, and yet for a while there was a sense of relief. It was as if the world had become quiet again, now that the drumming on the iron roofs was over. In the town the deep scent of flowers modified the Zoo smell in the corridors of the police station. An hour after the boom was opened the liner moved in from the south unescorted.
Scobie went out in the police boat as soon as the liner anchored. His mouth felt stiff with welcome; he practised on his tongue phrases which would seem warm and unaffected, and he thought: what a long way I have travelled to make me rehearse a welcome. He hoped he would find Louise in one of the public rooms; it would be easier to greet her in front of strangers, but there was no sign of her anywhere. He had to ask at the purser’s office for her cabin number.
Even then, of course, there was the hope that it would be shared. No cabin nowadays held less than six passengers.
But when he knocked and the door was opened, nobody was there but Louise. He felt like a caller at a strange house with something to sell. There was a question-mark at the end of his voice when he said, ‘Louise?’
‘Henry.’ She added, ‘Come inside.’ When once he was with’ in the cabin there was nothing to do but kiss. He avoided her mouth - the mouth reveals so much, but she wouldn’t be content until she had pulled his face round and left the seal of her return on his lips. ‘Oh my dear, here I am.’
‘Here you are,’ he said, seeking desperately for the phrases he had rehearsed.
‘They’ve all been so sweet,’ she explained. They are keeping away, so that I can see you alone.