The Heart of the Matter Read Online Free PDF

photographs of Louise herself, in groups with nursing sisters, with the Admiral’s party at Medley Beach, on a Yorkshire moor with Teddy Bromley and his wife. It was as if she were accumulating evidence that she had friends like other people. He watched her through the muslin net. Her face had the ivory tinge of atabrine: her hair which had once been the colour of bottled honey was dark and stringy with sweat. These were the times of ugliness when he loved her, when pity and responsibility reached the intensity of a passion. It was pity that told him to go: he wouldn’t have woken his worst enemy from sleep, leave alone Louise. He tiptoed out and down the stairs. (The inside stairs could be found nowhere else in this bungalow city except in Government House, and she had tried to make them an object of pride with stair-carpets and pictures on the wall.) In the living-room there was a bookcase full of her books, rugs on the floor, a native mask from Nigeria, more photographs. The books had to be wiped daily to remove the damp, and she had not succeeded very well in disguising with flowery curtains the food safe which stood with each foot in a little enamel basin of water to keep the ants out. The boy was laying a single place for lunch.
    The boy was short and squat with the broad ugly pleasant face of a Temne. His bare feet flapped like empty gloves across the floor.
    ‘What’s wrong with Missus?’ Scobie asked.
    ‘Belly humbug,’ Ali said.
    Scobie took a Mende grammar from the bookcase: it was tucked away in the bottom shelf where its old untidy cover was least conspicuous. In the upper shelves were the flimsy rows of Louise’s authors—not so young modern poets and the novels of Virginia Woolf. He couldn’t concentrate: it was too hot and his wife’s absence was like a garrulous companion in the room reminding him of his responsibility. A fork fell on the floor and he watched Ali surreptitiously wipe it on his sleeve, watched him with affection. They had been together fifteen years—a year longer than his marriage—a long time to keep a servant. He had been ‘small boy’ first, then assistant steward in the days when one kept four servants, now he was plain steward. After each leave Ali would be on the landing-stage waiting to organize his luggage with three or four ragged carriers. In the intervals of leave many people tried to steal Ali’s services, but he had never yet failed to be waiting—except once when he had been in prison. There was no disgrace about prison; it was an obstacle that no one could avoid for ever.
    ‘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