‘Oh yes, I believe,’ the little man said obstinately.
‘Then what are you worried about?’
‘I’m not ignorant, you see. I’ve always known what I’ve been doing. And I can’t absolve myself.’
‘Would Father José coming here have made all that difference?’
He had to wait a long while for his answer, and then he didn’t understand it when it came. ‘Another man . . . it makes it easier . . .’
‘Is there nothing more I can do for you?’
‘No. Nothing.’
The lieutenant reopened the door; mechanically putting his hand again upon his revolver he felt moody, as though now the last priest was under lock and key, there was nothing left to think about. The spring of action seemed to be broken. He looked back on the weeks of hunting as a happy time which was over now for ever. He felt without a purpose, as if life had drained out of the world. He said with bitter kindness (he couldn’t summon up any hate of the small hollow man), ‘Try to sleep.’
He was closing the door when a scared voice spoke. ‘Lieutenant.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve seen people shot. People like me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Does the pain go on – a long time?’
‘No, no. A second,’ he said roughly, and closed the door, and picked his way back across the whitewashed yard. He went into the office. The pictures of the priest and the gunman were still pinned up on the wall: he tore them down – they would never be wanted again. Then he sat at his desk and put his head upon his hands and fell asleep with utter weariness. He couldn’t remember afterwards anything of his dreams except laughter, laughter all the time, and a long passage in which he could find no door.
The priest sat on the floor, holding the brandy-flask. Presently he unscrewed the cap and put his mouth to it. The spirit didn’t do a thing to him – it might have been water. He put it down again and began some kind of a general confession, speaking in a whisper. He said, ‘I have committed fornication.’ The formal phrase meant nothing at all: it was like a sentence in a newspaper: you couldn’t feel repentance over a thing like that. He started again, ‘I have lain with a woman,’ and tried to imagine the other priest asking him, ‘How many times? Was she married?’ ‘No.’ Without thinking what he was doing, he took another drink of brandy.
As the liquid touched his tongue he remembered his child, coming in out of the glare: the sullen unhappy knowledgeable face. He said, ‘Oh God, help her. Damn me, I deserve it, but let her live for ever.’ This was the love he should have felt for every soul in the world: all the fear and the wish to save concentrated unjustly on the one child. He began to weep; it was as if he had to watch her from the shore drown slowly because he had forgotten how to swim. He thought: This is what I should feel all the time for everyone, and he tried to turn his brain away towards the half-caste, the lieutenant, even a dentist he had once sat with for a few minutes, the child at the banana station, calling up a long succession of faces, pushing at his attention as if it were a heavy door which wouldn’t budge. For those were all in danger too. He prayed, ‘God help them,’ but in the moment of prayer he switched back to his child beside the rubbish-dump, and he knew it was for her only that he prayed. Another failure.
After a while he began again: ‘I have been drunk – I don’t know how many times; there isn’t a duty I haven’t neglected; I have been guilty of pride, lack of charity . . .’ The words were becoming formal again, meaning nothing. He had no confessor to turn his mind away from the formula to the fact.
He took another drink of brandy, and getting up with pain because of his cramp he moved to the door and looked through the bars at the hot moony square. He could see the police asleep in their hammocks, and one man who couldn’t sleep lazily rocking up and down, up and down. There was an odd silence everywhere, even in the other cells; it was as if the whole world had tactfully turned away to avoid seeing him die. He felt his way back along the wall to the farthest corner and sat down with the flask between his knees. He thought: If I hadn’t been so useless, useless. . . . The eight hard hopeless years seemed to him to be only a caricature of service: a few communions, a few confessions, and an endless bad example. He thought: If I had only one soul to offer, so that I could say, Look what I’ve done. . . . People had died for him, they had deserved a saint, and a tinge of bitterness spread across his mind for their sake that God hadn’t thought fit to send them one. Padre José and me, he thought, Padre José and me, and he took a drink again from the brandy flask. He thought of the cold faces of the saints rejecting him.
The night was slower than the last he had spent in prison because he was alone. Only the brandy, which he finished about two in the morning, gave him any sleep at all. He felt sick with fear, his stomach ached, and his mouth was dry with the drink. He began to talk aloud to himself because he couldn’t stand the silence any more. He complained miserably, ‘It’s all very well . . . for saints,’ and later, ‘How does he know it only lasts a second? How long’s a second?’ Then he began to cry, beating his head gently against the wall. They had given a chance to Padre José, but they had never given him a chance at all. Perhaps they had got it all wrong – just because he had escaped them for such a time. Perhaps they really thought he would refuse the conditions Padre José had accepted, that he would refuse to marry, that he was proud. Perhaps if he suggested it himself, he would escape yet. The hope calmed him for a while, and he fell asleep with his head against the wall.
He had a curious dream. He dreamed he was sitting at a café table in front of the high altar of the cathedral. About six dishes were spread before him, and he was eating hungrily. There was a smell of incense and an odd sense of elation. The dishes – like all food in dreams – did not taste of much, but he had a sense that when he had finished them, he would have the best dish of all. A priest passed to and fro before the altar saying Mass, but he took no notice: the service no longer seemed to concern him. At last the six plates were empty; someone out of sight rang the sanctus bell, and the serving priest knelt before he raised the Host. But he sat on, just waiting, paying no attention to the God over the altar, as though that were a God for other people and not for him. Then the glass by his plate began to fill with wine, and looking up he saw that the child from the banana station was serving him. She said, ‘I got it from my father’s room.’
‘You didn’t steal it?’
‘Not exactly,’ she said in her careful and precise voice.
He said, ‘It is very good of you. I had forgotten the code – what did you call it?’
‘Morse.’
‘That was it. Morse. Three long taps and one short one,’ and immediately the taps began: the priest by the altar tapped, a whole invisible congregation tapped along the aisles – three long and one short. He asked, ‘What is it?’
‘News,’ the child said, watching him with a stern, responsible and interested gaze.
When he woke up it was dawn. He woke with a huge feeling of hope which suddenly and completely left him at the first sight of the prison yard. It was the morning of his death. He crouched on the floor with the empty brandy-flask in his hand trying to remember an Act of Contrition. ‘O God, I am sorry and beg pardon for all my sins . . . crucified . . . worthy of thy dreadful punishments.’ He was confused, his mind was on other things: it was not the good death for which one always prayed. He caught sight of his own shadow on the cell wall; it had a look of surprise and grotesque unimportance. What a fool he had been to think that he was strong enough to stay when others fled. What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless. I have done nothing for anybody. I might just as well have never lived. His parents were dead – soon he wouldn’t even be a memory – perhaps after all he was not at the moment afraid of damnation – even the fear of pain was in the background. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy
to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted – to be a saint.
PART FOUR
Mrs Fellows lay in bed in the hot hotel room, listening to the siren of a boat on the river. She could see nothing because she had a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne over her eyes and forehead. She called sharply out, ‘My dear. My dear,’ but nobody replied. She felt that she had been prematurely buried in this big brass family tomb, all alone on two pillows, under a canopy. ‘Dear,’ she said again sharply, and waited.
‘Yes, Trixy?’ It was Captain Fellows. He said, ‘I was asleep, dreaming . . .’
‘Put some more Cologne on this handkerchief, dear. My head’s splitting.’
‘Yes, Trixy.’
He took the handkerchief away; he looked old and tired and bored – a man without a hobby, walking over to the dressing-table.
‘Not too much, dear. It will be days before we can get any more.’
He didn’t answer, and she said sharply, ‘You heard what I said, dear, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are so silent these days. You don’t realize what it is to be ill and alone.’
‘Well,’ Captain Fellows said, ‘you know how it is.’
‘But we agreed, dear, didn’t we, that it was better just to say nothing at all, ever. We mustn’t be morbid.’
‘No.’
‘We’ve got our own life to lead.’
‘Yes.’
He came across to the bed and laid the handkerchief over his wife’s eyes. Then sitting down on a chair, he slipped his hand under the net and felt for her hand. They gave an odd effect of being children, lost in a strange town, without adult care.
‘Have you got the tickets?’ she asked.
‘Yes, dear.’
‘I must get up later and pack, but my head hurts so. Did you tell them to collect the boxes?’
‘I forgot.’
‘You really must try to think of things,’ she said weakly and sullenly, ‘there’s no one else,’ and they both sat silent at a phrase they should have avoided. He said suddenly, ‘There’s a lot of excitement in town.’
‘Not a revolution?’
‘Oh no. They caught a priest and he’s being shot this morning, poor devil. I can’t help wondering whether it’s the man Coral – I mean the man we sheltered.’
‘It’s not likely.’
‘No.’
‘There are so many priests.’
He let go of her hand and going to the window looked out. Boats on the river, a small stony public garden with a bust and vultures everywhere.
Mrs Fellows said, ‘It will be good to be back home. I sometimes thought I should die in this place.’
‘Of course not, dear.’
‘Well, people do.’
‘Yes, they do,’ he said glumly.
‘Now, dear,’ Mrs Fellows said sharply, ‘your promise.’ She gave a long sigh, ‘My poor head.’
‘Would you like some aspirin?’
‘I don’t know where I’ve put it. Somehow nothing is ever in its place.’
‘Shall I go out and get you some more?’
‘No, dear, I can’t bear to be left alone.’ She went on with dramatic brightness, ‘I expect I shall be all right when we get home. I’ll have a proper doctor then. I sometimes think it’s more than a headache. Did I tell you that I’d heard from Norah?’
‘No.’
‘Get me my glasses, dear, and I’ll read you – what concerns us.’
‘They’re on your bed.’
‘So they are.’ One of the sailing-boats cast off and began to drift down the wide sluggish stream, going towards the sea. She read with satisfaction, ‘“Dear Trix: how you have suffered. That scoundrel . . .”’ She broke abruptly off. ‘Oh yes, and then she goes on: “Of course, you and Charles must stay with us for a while until you have found somewhere to live. If you don’t mind semi-detached . . .”’
Captain Fellows said suddenly and harshly, ‘I’m not going back.’
‘“The rent is only fifty-six pounds a year, exclusive, and there’s a maid’s bathroom.”’
‘I’m staying.’
‘“A cookanheat.” What on earth are you saying, dear?’
‘I’m not going back.’
‘We’ve been over that so often, dear. You know it would kill me to stay.’
‘You needn’t stay.’
‘But I couldn’t go alone,’ Mrs Fellows said. ‘What on earth would Norah think? Besides – oh, it’s absurd.’
‘A man here can do a job of work.’
‘Picking bananas,’ Mrs Fellows said. She gave a little cold laugh. ‘And you weren’t much good at that.’
He turned furiously towards the bed. ‘You don’t mind,’ he said, ‘do you – running away and leaving her . . .’
‘It wasn’t my fault. If you’d been at home . . .’ She began to cry hunched up under the mosquito-net. She said, ‘I’ll never get home alive.’
He came wearily over to the bed and took her hand again. It was no good. They had both been deserted. They had to stick together. ‘You won’t leave me alone, will you, dear?’ she asked. The room reeked of eau-de-Cologne.
‘No, dear.’
‘You do realize how absurd it is?’
‘Yes.’
They sat in silence for a long while, as the morning sun climbed outside and the room got stiflingly hot. Mrs Fellows said at last, ‘A penny, dear.’
‘What?’
‘For your thoughts.’
‘I was just thinking of that priest. A queer fellow. He drank. I wonder if it’s him.’
‘If it is, I expect he deserves all he gets.’
‘But the odd thing is – the way she went on afterwards – as if he’d told her things.’
‘Darling,’ Mrs Fellows repeated, with harsh weakness from the bed, ‘your promise.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. I was trying, but it seems to come up all the time.’
‘We’ve got each other, dear,’ Mrs Fellows said, and the letter from Norah rustled as she turned her head, swathed in handkerchief, away from the hard outdoor light.
Mr Tench bent over the enamel basin washing his hands with pink soap. He said in his bad Spanish, ‘You don’t need to be afraid. You can tell me directly it hurts.’
The jefe’s room had been fixed up as a kind of temporary dentistry – at considerable expense, for it had entailed transporting not only Mr Tench himself but Mr Tench’s cabinet, chair, and all sorts of mysterious packing-cases which seemed to contain little but straw and which were unlikely to return empty.
‘I’ve had it for months,’ the jefe said. ‘You can’t imagine the pain . . .’
‘It was foolish of you not to call me in sooner. Your mouth’s in a very bad state. You are lucky to have escaped pyorrhoea.’
He finished washing and suddenly stood, towel in hand, thinking of something. ‘What’s the matter?’ the jefe asked. Mr Tench woke with a jump, and coming forward to his cabinet, began to lay out the drill needles in a little metallic row of pain. The jefe watched with apprehension. He said, ‘Your hand is very jumpy. Are you quite sure you are well enough this morning?’
‘It’s indigestion,’ Mr Tench said. ‘Sometimes I have so many spots in front of my eyes I might be wearing a veil.’ He fitted a needle into the drill and bent the arm round. ‘Now open your mouth very wide.’ He began to stuff the jefe’s mouth with plugs of cotton. He said, ‘I’ve never seen a mouth as bad as yours – except once.’
The jefe struggled to speak. Only a dentist could have interpreted the muffled and uneasy question.
‘He wasn’t a patient. I expect someone cured him. You cure a lot of people in this country, don’t you, with bullets?’
As he picked and picked at the tooth, he tried to keep up a running fire of conversation; that was how one
did things at Southend. He said, ‘An odd thing happened to me just before I came up the river. I got a letter from my wife. Hadn’t so much as heard from her for – oh, twenty years. Then out of the blue she . . .’ he leant closer and levered furiously with his pick: the jefe beat the air and grunted. ‘Wash out your mouth,’ Mr Tench said, and began grimly to fix his drill. He said, ‘What was I talking about? Oh, the wife, wasn’t it? Seems she had got religion of some kind. Some sort of a group – Oxford. What would she be doing in Oxford? Wrote to say that she had forgiven me and wanted to make things legal. Divorce, I mean. Forgiven me,’ Mr Tench said, looking round the little hideous room, lost in thought, with his hand on the drill. He belched and put his other hand against his stomach, pressing, pressing, seeking an obscure pain which was nearly always there. The jefe leant back exhausted with his mouth wide open.
‘It comes and goes,’ Mr Tench said, losing the thread of his thought completely. ‘Of course, it’s nothing. Just indigestion. But it gets me locked.’ He stared moodily into the mouth as though a crystal were concealed between the carious teeth. Then, as if he were exerting an awful effort of will, he leant forward, brought the arm of the drill round and began to pedal. Buzz and grate. Buzz and grate. The jefe stiffened all over and clutched the arms of the chair, and Mr Tench’s foot went up and down, up and down. The jefe made odd sounds and waved his hands. ‘Hold hard,’ Mr Tench said, ‘hold hard. There’s just one tiny corner. Nearly finished. There she comes. There.’ He stopped and said, ‘Good God, what’s that?’
He left the jefe altogether and went to the window. In the yard below a squad of police had just grounded their arms. With his hand on his stomach he protested, ‘Not another revolution?’
The jefe levered himself upright and spat out a gag. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘A man’s being shot.’
‘What for?’
‘Treason.’
‘I thought you generally did it,’ Mr Tench said, ‘up by the cemetery?’ A horrid fascination kept him by the window: this was something he had never seen. He and the vultures looked down together on the little whitewashed courtyard.
The Power and the Glory Page 23
