'I'm not play-acting,' he said with a fury in which he could hear too easily the histrionic accent. He confronted her bookcase as though it were a witness she had forgotten. 'Do they play-act?'

'Not much,' she said. 'That's why I like them better than your poets.'

'All the same you came back.' His face lit up with wicked inspiration. 'Or was that just jealousy?'

She said, 'Jealousy? What on earth have I got to be jealous about?'

'They've been careful,' Wilson said, 'but not as careful as all that.'

'I don't know what you are talking about.'

'Your Ticki and Helen Rolt.'

Louise struck at his cheek and missing got his nose, which began to bleed copiously. She said, 'That's for calling him Ticki. n.o.body's going to do that except me. You know he hates it. Here, take my handkerchief if you haven't got one of your own.'

Wilson said, 'I bleed awfully easily. Do you mind if I lie on my back?' He stretched himself on the floor between the table and the meat safe, among the ants. First there had been Scobie watching his tears at Pende, and now - this.

'You wouldn't like me to put a key down your back?' Louise asked.

'No. No thank you.' The blood had stained the Downhamian page.

'I really am sorry. I've got a vile temper. This will cure you, Wilson.' But if romance is what one lives by, one must never be cured of it. The world has too many spoilt priests of this faith or that: better surely to pretend a belief than wander in that vicious vacuum of cruelty and despair. He said obstinately, 'Nothing will cure me, Louise. I love you. Nothing,' bleeding into her handkerchief.

'How strange,' she said, 'it would be if it were true.'

He grunted a query from the ground.

'I mean,' she explained, 'if you were one of those people who really love. I thought Henry was. It would be strange if really it was you all the time.' He felt an odd fear that after all he was going to be accepted at his own valuation, rather as a minor staff officer might feel during a rout when he finds that his claim to know the handling of the tanks will be accepted. It is too late to admit that he knows nothing but what he has read in the technical journals - 'O lyric love, half angel and half bird.' Bleeding into the handkerchief, he formed his lips carefully round a generous phrase, 'I expect he loves - in his way.'

'Who?' Louise said. 'Me? This Helen Rolt you are talking about? Or just himself?'

'I shouldn't have said that.'

'Isn't it true? Let's have a bit of truth, Wilson. You don't know how tired I am of comforting lies. Is she beautiful?'

'Oh no, no. Nothing of that sort.'

'She's young, of course, and I'm middle-aged. But surely she's a bit worn after what she's been through.'

'She's very worn.'

'But she's not a Catholic. She's lucky. She's free, Wilson.'

Wilson sat up against the leg of the table. He said with genuine pa.s.sion, 'I wish to G.o.d you wouldn't call me Wilson.'

'Edward. Eddie. Ted. Teddy.'

'I'm bleeding again,' he said dismally and lay back on the floor.

'What do you know about it all, Teddie?'

'I think I'd rather be Edward. Louise, I've seen him come away from her hut at two in the morning. He was up there yesterday afternoon.'

'He was at confession.'

'Harris saw him.'

'You're certainly watching him.'

'It's my belief Yusef is using him.'

'That's fantastic. You're going too far.'

She stood over him as though he were a corpse: the bloodstained handkerchief lay in his palm. They neither of them heard the car stop or the footsteps up to the threshold. It was strange to both of them, hearing a third voice from an outside world speaking into this room which had become as close and intimate and airless as a vault. 'Is anything wrong?' Scobie's voice asked.

'It's just...' Louise said and made a gesture of bewilderment - as though she were saying: where does one start explaining? Wilson scrambled to his feet and at once his nose began to bleed.

'Here,' Scobie said and taking out his bundle of keys dropped them inside Wilson's shirt collar. 'You'll see,' he said, 'the old-fashioned remedies are always best,' and sure enough the bleeding did stop within a few seconds. 'You should never lie on your back,' Scobie went reasonably on. 'Seconds use a sponge of cold water, and you certainly look as though you'd been in a fight, Wilson.'

'I always lie on my back,' Wilson said. 'Blood makes me I'll.'

'Have a drink?'

'No,' Wilson said, 'no. I must be' off.' He retrieved the keys with some difficulty and left the tail of his shirt dangling. He only discovered it when Harris pointed it out to him on his return to the Nissen, and he thought: that is how I looked while I walked away and they watched side by side.

2.

'What did he want?' Scobie said.

'He wanted to make love to me.'

'Does he love you?'

'He thinks he does. You can't ask much more than that, can you?'

'You seem to have hit him rather hard,' Scobie said, 'on the nose?'

'He made me angry. He called you Ticki. Darling, he's spying on you.'

'I know that.'

'Is he dangerous?'

'He might be - under some circ.u.mstances. But then it would be my fault.'

'Henry, do you never get furious at anyone? Don't you mind him making love to me?'

He said,' I'd be a hypocrite if I were angry at that. It's the kind of thing that happens to people. You know, quite pleasant normal people do fall in love.'

'Have you ever fallen in love?'

'Oh yes, yes.' He watched her closely while he excavated his smile. 'You know I have.'

'Henry, did you really feel ill this morning?'

'Yes.'

'It wasn't just an excuse?'

'No.'

'Then, darling, let's go to communion together tomorrow morning.'

'If you want to,' he said. It was the moment he had known would come. With bravado, to show that his hand was not shaking, he took down a gla.s.s. 'Drink?'

'It's too early, dear,' Louise said; he knew she was watching him closely like all the others. He put the gla.s.s down and said, 'I've just got to run back to the station for some papers. When I get back it will be time for drinks.'

He drove unsteadily down the road, his eyes blurred with nausea. O G.o.d, he thought, the decisions you force on people, suddenly, with no time to consider. I am too tired to think: this ought to be worked out on paper like a problem in mathematics, and the answer arrived at without pain. But the pain made him physically sick, so that he retched over the wheel. The trouble is, he thought, we know the answers - we Catholics are d.a.m.ned by our knowledge. There's no need for me to work anything out - there is only one answer: to kneel down in the confessional and say, 'Since my last confession I have committed adultery so many times etcetera etcetera'; to hear Father Rank telling me to avoid the occasion: never see the woman alone (speaking in those terrible abstract terms: Helen - the woman, the occasion, no longer the bewildered child clutching the stamp-alb.u.m, listening to Bagster howling outside the door: that moment of peace and darkness and tenderness and pity 'adultery'). And I to make my act of contrition, the promise 'never more to offend thee', and then tomorrow the communion: taking G.o.d in my mouth in what they call the state of grace. That's the right answer - there is no other answer: to save my own soul and abandon her to Bagster and despair. One must be reasonable, he told himself, and recognize that despair doesn't last (is that true?), that love doesn't last (but isn't that the very reason that despair does?), that in a few weeks or months she'll be all right again. She has survived forty days in an open boat and the death of her husband and can't she survive the mere death of love? As I can, as I know I can.

He drew up outside the church and sat hopelessly at the wheel. Death never comes when one desires it most. He thought: of course there's the ordinary honest wrong answer, to leave Louise, forget that private vow, resign my job. To abandon Helen to Bagster or Louise to what? I am trapped, he told himself, catching sight of an expressionless stranger's face in the driving mirror, trapped. Nevertheless he left the car and went into the church. While he was waiting for Father Rank to go into the confessional he knelt and prayed: the only prayer he could rake up. Even the words of the 'Our Father' and the 'Hail Mary' deserted him. He prayed for a miracle, 'O G.o.d convince me, help me, convince me. Make me feel that I am more important than that girl,' It was not Helen's face he saw as he prayed but the dying child who called him father: a face in a photograph staring from the dressing-table: the face of a black girl of twelve a sailor had raped and killed glaring blindly up at him in a yellow paraffin light. 'Make me put my own soul first Give me trust in your mercy to the one I abandon.' He could hear Father Rank close the door of his box and nausea twisted him again on his knees. 'O G.o.d,' he said, 'if instead I should abandon you, punish me but let the others get some happiness.' He went into the box. He thought, a miracle may still happen. Even Father Rank may for once find the word, the right word ... Kneeling in the s.p.a.ce of an upturned coffin he said, 'Since my last confession I have committed adultery.'

'How many times?'

'I don't know, Father, many times.'

'Are you married?'

'Yes.' He remembered that evening when Father Rank had nearly broken down before him, admitting his failure to help ... Was he, even while he was struggling to retain the complete anonymity of the confessional, remembering it too? He wanted to say, 'Help me, Father. Convince me that I would do right to abandon her to Bagster. Make me believe in the mercy of G.o.d,' but he knelt silently waiting: he was unaware of the slightest tremor of hope. Father Rank said, 'Is it one woman?'

'Yes.'

'You must avoid seeing her. Is that possible?'

He shook his head.

'If you must see her, you must never be alone with her. Do you promise to do that, promise G.o.d not me?' He thought: how foolish it was of me to expect the magic word. This is the formula used so many times on so many people. Presumably people promised and went away and came back and confessed again. Did they really believe they were going to try? He thought: I am cheating human beings every day I live, I am not going to try to cheat myself or G.o.d. He replied, 'It would be no good my promising that, Father.'

'You must promise. You can't desire the end without desiring the means.'

Ah, but one can, he thought, one can: one can desire the peace of victory without desiring the ravaged towns.

Father Rank said, 'I don't need to tell you surely that there's nothing automatic in the confessional or in absolution. It depends on your state of mind whether you are forgiven. It's no good coming and kneeling hers unprepared. Before you come here you must know the wrong you've done.'

'I do know that'

'And you must have a real purpose of amendment. We are told to forgive our brother seventy times seven and we needn't fear G.o.d will be any less forgiving than we are, but n.o.body can begin to forgive the uncontrite. It's better to sin seventy times and repent each time than sin once and never repent.' He could see Father Rank's hand go up to wipe the sweat out of his eyes: it was like a gesture of weariness. He thought: what is the good of keeping him in this discomfort? He's right, of course, he's right. I was a fool to imagine that somehow in this airless box I would find a conviction ... He said, 'I think I was wrong to come, Father.'

'I don't want to refuse you absolution, but I think if you would just go away and turn things over in your mind, you'd come back in a better frame of mind.'

'Yes, Father.'

'I will pray for you.'

When he came out of the box it seemed to Scobie that for the first time his footsteps had taken him out of sight of hope. There was no hope anywhere he turned his eyes: the dead figure of the G.o.d upon the cross, the plaster Virgin, the hideous stations representing a series of events that had happened a long time ago. It seemed to him that he had only left for his exploration the territory of despair.

He drove down to the station, collected a file and returned home. 'You've been a long time,' Louise said. He didn't even know the lie he was going to tell before it was on his lips. 'That pain came back,' he said, 'so I waited for a while.'

'Do you think you ought to have a drink?'

'Yes. until anybody tells me not to.'

'And you'll see a doctor?'

'Of course.'

That night he dreamed that he was in a boat drifting down just such an underground river as his boyhood hero Allan Quatermain had taken towards the lost city of Milosis. But Quatermain had companions while he was alone, for you couldn't count the dead body on the stretcher as a companion. He felt a sense of urgency, for he told himself that bodies in this climate kept for a very short time and the smell of decay was already in his nostrils. Then, sitting there guiding the boat down the mid-stream, he realized that it was not the dead body that smelt but his own living one. He felt as though his blood had ceased to run: when he tried to lift his arm it dangled uselessly from his shoulder. He woke and it was Louise who had lifted his arm. She said, 'Darling, it's time to be off.'

'Off?' he asked.

'We're going to Ma.s.s,' and again he was aware of how closely she was watching him. What was the good of yet another delaying lie? He wondered what Wilson had said to her. Could he go on lying week after week, finding some reason of work, of health, of forgetfulness for avoiding the issue at the altar rail? He thought hopelessly: I am d.a.m.ned already -I may as well go the whole length of my chain. 'Yes,' he said, 'of course. I'll get up,' and was suddenly surprised by her putting the excuse into his mouth, giving him his chance. 'Darling,' she said, 'if you aren't well, stay where you are. I don't want to drag you to Ma.s.s.'

But the excuse it seemed to him was also a trap. He could see where the turf had been replaced over the hidden stakes. If he took the excuse she offered he would have all but confessed his guilt. Once and for all now at whatever eternal cost, he was determined that he would clear himself in her eyes and give her the rea.s.surance she needed. He said, 'No, no. I will come with you.' When he walked beside her into the church it was as if he had entered this building for the first time - a stranger. An immeasurable distance already separated him from these people who knelt and prayed and would presently receive G.o.d in peace. He knelt and pretended to pray.

The words of the Ma.s.s were like an indictment. 'I will go in unto the altar of G.o.d: to G.o.d who giveth joy to my youth.' But there was no joy anywhere. He looked up from between his hands and the plaster images of the Virgin and the saints seemed to be holding out hands to everyone, on either side, beyond him. He was the unknown guest at a party who is introduced to no one. The gentle painted smiles were unbearably directed elsewhere. When the Kyrie Eleison was reached he again tried to pray. 'Lord have mercy ... Christ have mercy ... Lord have mercy,' but the fear and the shame of the act he was going to commit chilled his brain. Those ruined priests who presided at a Black Ma.s.s, consecrating the Host over the naked body of a woman, consuming G.o.d in an absurd and horrifying ritual, were at least performing the act of d.a.m.nation with an emotion larger than human love: they were doing it from hate of G.o.d or some odd perverse devotion to G.o.d's enemy. But he had no love of evil or hate of G.o.d. How was he to hate this G.o.d who of His own accord was surrendering Himself into his power? He was desecrating G.o.d because he loved a woman - was it even love, or was it just a feeling of pity and responsibility? He tried again to excuse himself: 'You can look after yourself. You survive the cross every day. You can only suffer. You can never be lost. Admit that you must come second to these others.' And myself, he thought, watching the priest pour the wine and water into the chalice, his own d.a.m.nation being prepared like a meal at the altar, I must come last: I am the Deputy Commissioner of Police: a hundred men serve under me: I am the responsible man. It is my job to look after the others. I am conditioned to serve.

Sanctus. Sanctus. Sanctus. The Canon of the Ma.s.s had started: Father Rank's whisper at the altar hurried remorselessly towards the consecration. 'To order our days in thy peace ... that we be preserved from eternal d.a.m.nation ...' Pax, pacis, pacem: all the declinations of the word 'peace' drummed on his ears through the Ma.s.s. He thought: I have left even the hope of peace for ever. I am the responsible man. I shall soon have gone too far in my design of deception ever to go back. Hoc est enim Corpus: the bell rang, and Father Rank raised G.o.d in his fingers - this G.o.d as light now as a wafer whose coming lay or Scobie's heart as heavily as lead. Hic est enim calix sanguinis and the second bell.

Louise touched his hand. 'Dear, are you well?' He thought: here is the second chance. The return of my pain. I can go out. But if he went out of church now, he knew that there would be only one thing left to do - to follow Father Rank's advice, to settle his affairs, to desert, to come back in a few days' time and take G.o.d with a clear conscience and a knowledge that he had pushed innocence back where it properly belonged - under the Atlantic surge. Innocence must die young if it isn't to kill the souls of men.

'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.'

'I'm all right,' he said, the old longing p.r.i.c.king at the eyeb.a.l.l.s, and looking up towards the cross on the altar he thought savagely: Take your sponge of gall. You made me what I am. Take the spear thrust. He didn't need to open his Missal to know how this prayer ended. 'May the receiving of Thy Body, O Lord Jesus Christ, which I unworthy presume to take, turn not to my judgment and condemnation.' He shut his eyes and let the darkness in. Ma.s.s rushed towards its end: Domine, non sum dignus ... Domine, non sum dignus... Domine, non sum dignus.... At the foot of the scaffold he opened his eyes and saw the old black women shuffling up towards the altar rail, a few soldiers, an aircraft mechanic, one of his own policemen, a clerk from the bank: they moved sedately towards peace, and Scobie felt an envy of their simplicity, their goodness. Yes, now at this moment of time they were good.

'Aren't you coming, dear?' Louise asked, and again the hand touched him: the kindly firm detective hand. He rose and followed her and knelt by her side like a spy in a foreign land who has been taught the customs and to speak the language like a native. Only a miracle can save me now, Scobie told himself, watching Father Rank at the altar opening the tabernacle, but G.o.d would never work a miracle to save Himself, I am the cross, he thought. He will never speak the word to save Himself from the cross, but if only wood were made so that it didn't feel, if only the nails were senseless as people believed.

Father Rank came down the steps from the altar bearing the Host. The saliva had dried in Scobie's mouth: it was as though his veins had dried. He couldn't look up; he saw only the priest's skirt like the skirt of the mediaeval war-horse bearing down upon him: the flapping of feet: the charge of G.o.d. If only the archers would let fly from ambush, and for a moment he dreamed that the priest's steps had indeed faltered : perhaps after all something may yet happen before he reaches me: some incredible interposition ... But with open mouth (the time had come) he made one last attempt at prayer, 'O G.o.d, I offer up my d.a.m.nation to you. Take it. Use it for them,' and was aware of the pale papery taste of an eternal sentence on the tongue.

Chapter Three.