The Heart of the Matter (23 page)

‘I was a Prog,’ Wilson said.

‘Oh well,’ Harris admitted in a tone of disappointment, ‘there were some good chaps among the Progs.’ He laid the photograph flat down again as though it were something that hadn’t quite come off. ‘I was thinking we might have an old Downhamian dinner.’

‘Whatever for?’ Wilson asked. ‘There are only two of us.’

‘We could invite a guest each.’

‘I don’t see the point.’

Harris said bitterly, ‘Well, you are the real Downhamian, not me. I never joined the association. You get the magazine. I thought perhaps you had an interest in the place.’

‘My father made me a life member and he always forwards the bloody paper,’ Wilson said abruptly.

‘It was lying beside your bed. I thought you’d been reading it.’

‘I may have glanced at it.’

‘There was a bit about me in it. They wanted my address.’

‘Oh, but you know why that is?’ Wilson said. ‘They are sending out appeals to any old Downhamian they can rake up. The panelling in the Founders’ Hall is in need of repair. I’d keep your address quiet if I were you.’ He was one of those, it seemed to Harris, who always knew what was on, who gave advance information on extra halves, who knew why old So-and-So had not turned up to school, and what the row brewing at the Head’s special meeting was about. A few weeks ago he had been a new boy whom Harris had been delighted to befriend, to show around. He remembered the evening when Wilson would have put on evening dress for a Syrian’s dinner-party if he hadn’t been warned. But Harris from his first year at school had been fated to see how quickly new boys grew up: one term he was their kindly mentor—the next he was discarded. He could never progress as quickly as the newest unlicked boy. He remembered how even in the cockroach game—that
he
had invented—his rules had been challenged
on
the first evening. He said sadly, ‘I expect you are right. Perhaps I won’t send a letter after all.’ He added humbly, ‘I took the bed on this side, but I don’t mind a bit which I have …’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Wilson said.

‘I’ve only engaged one steward. I thought we could save a bit by sharing.’

‘The less boys we have knocking about here the better,’ Wilson said.

That night was the first night of their new comradeship. They sat reading on their twin Government chairs behind the black-out curtains. On the table was a bottle of whisky for Wilson and a bottle of barley-water flavoured with lime for Harris. A sense of extraordinary peace came to Harris while the rain tingled steadily on the roof and Wilson read a Wallace. Occasionally a few drunks from the R.A.F. mess passed by, shouting or revving their cars, but this only enhanced the sense of peace inside the hut. Sometimes his eyes strayed to the walls seeking a cockroach, but you couldn’t have everything.

‘Have you got
The Downhamian
handy, old man? I wouldn’t mind another glance at it. This book’s so dull.’

‘There’s a new one unopened on the dressing-table.’

‘You don’t mind my opening it?’

‘Why the hell should I?’

Harris turned first to the old Downhamian notes and read again how the whereabouts of H. R. Harris (1917–1921) was still wanted. He wondered whether it was possible that Wilson was wrong: there was no word here about the panelling in Hall. Perhaps after all he would send that letter and he pictured the reply he might receive from the Secretary.
My dear Harris
, it would go something like that,
we were all delighted to receive your letter from those romantic parts. Why not send us a full length contribution to the mag. and while I’m writing to you, what about membership of the Old Downhamian Association? I notice you’ve never joined. I’m speaking for all Old Downhamians when I say that we’ll be glad to welcome you
. He tried out ‘proud to welcome you’ on his tongue, but rejected that. He was a realist.

The Downhamians had had a fairly successful Christmas term. They had beaten Harpenden by one goal, Merchant Taylors by
two
, and had drawn with Lancing. Ducker and Tierney were coming on well as forwards, but the scrum was still slow in getting the ball out. He turned a page and read how the Opera Society had given an excellent rendering of
Patience
in the Founders’ Hall. F.J.K., who was obviously the English master, wrote:
Lane as Bunthorne displayed a degree of aestheticism which surprised all his companions of Vb. We would not hitherto have described his hand as mediaeval or associated him with lilies, but he persuaded us that we had misjudged him. A great performance, Lane
.

Harris skimmed through the account of five matches, a fantasy called ‘The Tick of the Clock’ beginning
There was once a little old lady whose most beloved possession
… The walls of Downham—the red brick laced with yellow, the extraordinary crockets, the mid-Victorian gargoyles—rose around him: boots beat on stone stairs and a cracked dinner-bell rang to rouse him to another miserable day. He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness—the sense that that is where we really belong. His eyes filled with tears, he took a sip of his barley-water and thought, ‘I’ll post that letter whatever Wilson says.’ Somebody outside shouted, ‘Bagster. Where are you, Bagster, you sod?’ and stumbled in a ditch. He might have been back at Downham, except of course that they wouldn’t have used
that
word.

Harris turned a page or two and the title of a poem caught his eye. It was called ‘West Coast’ and it was dedicated to ‘L.S.’. He wasn’t very keen on poetry, but it struck him as interesting that somewhere on this enormous coastline of sand and smells there existed a third old Downhamian.

Another Tristram on this distant coast,
he read

Raises the poisoned chalice to his lips,

Another Mark upon the palm-fringed shore

Watches his love’s eclipse.

It seemed to Harris obscure: his eye passed rapidly over the intervening verses to the initials at the foot: E.W. He nearly exclaimed aloud, but he restrained himself in time. In such close quarters as they now shared it was necessary to be circumspect. There wasn’t space to quarrel in. Who is L.S., he wondered, and thought, surely
it
can’t be … the very idea crinkled his lips in a cruel smile. He said, ‘There’s not much in the mag. We beat Harpenden. There’s a poem called West Coast. Another poor devil out here, I suppose.’

‘Oh.’

‘Lovelorn,’ Harris said. ‘But I don’t read poetry.’

‘Nor do I,’ Wilson lied behind the barrier of the Wallace.

II

It had been a very narrow squeak. Wilson lay on his back in bed and listened to the rain on the roof and the heavy breathing of the old Downhamian beyond the curtain. It was as if the hideous years had extended through the intervening mist to surround him again. What madness had induced him to send that poem to the Downhamian? But it wasn’t madness: he had long since become incapable of anything so honest as madness: he was one of those condemned in childhood to complexity. He knew what he had intended to do: to cut the poem out with no indication of its source and to send it to Louise. It wasn’t quite her sort of poem, he knew, but surely, he had argued, she would be impressed to some extent by the mere fact that the poem was in print. If she asked him where it had appeared, it would be easy to invent some convincing coterie name. The
Downhamian
luckily was well printed and on good paper. It was true of course, that he would have to paste the cutting on opaque paper to disguise what was printed on the other side, but it would be easy to think up an explanation of that. It was as if his profession were slowly absorbing his whole life, just as school had done. His profession was to lie, to have the quick story ready, never to give himself away, and his private life was taking the same pattern. He lay on his back in a nausea of self-disgust.

The rain had momentarily stopped. It was one of those cool intervals that were the consolation of the sleepless. In Harris’s heavy dreams the rain went on. Wilson got softly out and mixed himself a bromide; the grains fizzed in the bottom of the glass and Harris spoke hoarsely and turned over behind the curtain. Wilson flashed his torch on his watch and read 2.25. Tiptoeing to the door so as
not
to waken Harris, he felt the little sting of a jigger under his toe-nail. In the morning he must get his boy to scoop it out. He stood on the small cement pavement above the marshy ground and let the cool air play on him with his pyjama jacket flapping open. All the huts were in darkness, and the moon was patched with the rain-clouds coming up. He was going to turn away when he heard someone stumble a few yards away and he flashed his torch. It lit on a man’s bowed back moving between the huts towards the road. ‘Scobie,’ Wilson exclaimed and the man turned.

‘Hullo, Wilson,’ Scobie said, ‘I didn’t know you lived up here.’

‘I’m sharing with Harris,’ Wilson said, watching the man who had watched his tears.

‘I’ve been taking a walk,’ Scobie said unconvincingly, ‘I couldn’t sleep.’ It seemed to Wilson that Scobie was still a novice in the world of deceit: he hadn’t lived in it since childhood, and he felt an odd elderly envy for Scobie, much as an old lag might envy the young crook serving his first sentence, to whom all this was new.

III

Wilson sat in his little stuffy room in the U.A.C. office. Several of the firm’s journals and day books bound in quarter pigskin formed a barrier between him and the door. Surreptitiously, like a schoolboy using a crib, Wilson behind the barrier worked at his code books, translating a cable. A commercial calendar showed a week old date—June 20, and a motto:
The best investments are honesty and enterprise. William P. Cornforth
. A clerk knocked and said, ‘There’s a nigger for you, Wilson, with a note.’

‘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 call: 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.’