The Heart of the Matter Read Online Free Page A

experience, and he was always aware of his own responsibility. He had led the way: the experience that had come to her was the experience selected by himself. He had formed her face.
    He sat down at his bare table and almost immediately his Mende sergeant clicked his heels in the doorway. ‘Sah?’
    ‘Anything to report?’
    ‘The Commissioner want to see you, sah.’
    ‘Anything on the charge sheet?’
    ‘Two black men fight in the market, sah.’
    ‘Mammy trouble?’
    ‘Yes, sah.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘Miss Wilberforce want to see you, sah. I tell her you was at church and she got to come back by-and-by, but she stick. She say she no budge.’
    ‘Which Miss Wilberforce is that, sergeant?’
    ‘I don’t know, sah. She come from Sharp Town, sah.’
    ‘Well, I’ll see her after the Commissioner. But no one else, mind.’
    ‘Very good, sah.’
    Scobie, passing down the passage to the Commissioner’s room, saw the girl sitting alone on a bench against the wall: he didn’t look twice: he caught only the vague impression of a young black African face, a bright cotton frock, and then she was already out of his mind, and he was wondering what he should say to the Commissioner. It had been on his mind all that week.
    ‘Sit down, Scobie.’ The Commissioner was an old man of fifty-three—one counted age by the years a man had served in the colony. The Commissioner with twenty-two years’ service was the oldest man there, just as the Governor was a stripling of sixty compared with any district officer who had five years’ knowledge behind him.
    ‘I’m retiring, Scobie,’ the Commissioner said, ‘after this tour.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘I suppose everyone knows.’
    ‘I’ve heard the men talking about it.’
    ‘And yet you are the second man I’ve told. Do they say who’s taking my place?’
    Scobie said, ‘They know who isn’t.’
    ‘It’s damned unfair,’ the Commissioner said. ‘I can do nothing more than I have done, Scobie. You are a wonderful man for picking up enemies. Like Aristides the Just.’
    ‘I don’t think I’m as just as all that.’
    ‘The question is what do you want to do? They are sending a man called Baker from Gambia. He’s younger than you are. Do you want to resign, retire, transfer, Scobie?’
    ‘I want to stay,’ Scobie said.
    ‘Your wife won’t like it.’
    ‘I’ve been here too long to go.’ He thought to himself, poor Louise, if I had left it to her, where should we be now? and he admitted straight away that they wouldn’t be here—somewhere far better, better climate, better pay, better position. She would have taken every opening for improvement: she would have steered agilely up the ladders and left the snakes alone. I’ve landed her here he thought, with the odd premonitory sense of guilt he always felt as though he were responsible for something in the future he couldn’t even foresee. He said aloud, ‘You know I like the place.’
    ‘I believe you do. I wonder why.’
    ‘It’s pretty in the evening,’ Scobie said vaguely.
    ‘Do you know the latest story they are using against you at the Secretariat?’
    ‘I suppose I’m in the Syrians’ pay?’
    ‘They haven’t got that far yet. That’s the next stage. No, you sleep with black girls. You know what it is, Scobie, you ought to have flirted with one of their wives. They feel insulted.’
    ‘Perhaps I ought to sleep with a black girl. Then they won’t have to think up anything else.’
    ‘The man before you slept with dozens,’ the Commissioner said, ‘but it never bothered anyone. They thought up something different for him. They said he drank secretly. It made them feel better drinking publicly. What a lot of swine they are, Scobie.’
    ‘The Chief Assistant Colonial Secretary’s not a bad chap.’
    ‘No, the Chief Assistant Colonial Secretary’s all right.’ The Commissioner laughed. ‘You’re a terrible fellow, Scobie. Scobie the Just.’
    Scobie returned down the passage; the