A Burnt Out Case (22 page)

Parkinson raised a glass of pink gin and said, ‘Have one on me.’

‘I thought you had gone away.’

‘Only as far as Stanleyville for the riots. Now I’ve filed my story and I’m a free man again until something turns up. What’s yours?’

‘How long are you staying here?’

‘Until I get a cable from home. Your story has gone over well. They may want a third instalment.’

‘You didn’t use what I gave you.’

‘It wasn’t family reading.’

‘You can get no more from me.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Parkinson said, ‘what sometimes comes one’s way by pure good luck.’ He chinked the ice against the side of his glass. ‘Quite a success that first article had. Full syndication, even the Antipodes – except of course behind the curtain. The Americans are lapping it up. Religion and an anti-colonialist angle – you couldn’t have a better mixture for them. There’s just one thing I do rather regret – you never took that photograph of me carried ashore with fever. I had to make do with a photograph which Mme Rycker took. But now I’ve got a fine one of myself in Stanleyville, beside a burnt-out car. Wasn’t it you who contradicted me about Stanley? He must have been there or they wouldn’t have called the place after him. Where are you going?’

‘To my room.’

‘Oh yes, you are number six, aren’t you, in my corridor?’

‘Number seven.’

Parkinson stirred the ice round with his finger. ‘Oh, I see. Number seven. You aren’t vexed with me, are you? I assure you those angry words the other day, they didn’t mean a thing. It was just a way to get you talking. A man like me can’t afford to be angry. The darts the picador sticks into the bull are not the real thing.’

‘What is?’

‘The next instalment. Wait till you read it.’

‘I hardly expect to find the moment of truth.’

‘
Touché
,’ Parkinson said. ‘It’s a funny thing about metaphors – they never really follow through. Perhaps you won’t believe me, but there was a time when I was interested in style.’ He looked into his glass of gin as though into a well. ‘What the hell of a long life it is, isn’t it?’

‘The other day you seemed afraid to lose it.’

‘It’s all I’ve got,’ Parkinson said.

The door opened from the blinding street and Marie Rycker walked in. Parkinson said in a jovial voice, ‘Well, fancy, look who’s here.’

‘I gave Mme Rycker a lift from the plantation.’

‘Another gin,’ Parkinson said to the barman.

‘I do not drink gin,’ Marie Rycker told him in her stilted phrase-book English.

‘What
do
you drink? Now that I come to think of it, I don’t remember ever seeing you with a glass in your hand all the time I stayed with you. Have an
orange pressée
, my child?’

‘I am very fond of whisky,’ Marie Rycker said with pride.

‘Good for you. You are growing up fast.’ He went down the length of the bar to give the order and on his way he made a little jump, agile in so fat a man, and set the paper-chains rocking with the palm of his hand.

‘Any news?’ Querry asked.

‘He can’t tell me – not until the day after tomorrow. He thinks . . .’

‘Yes.’

‘He thinks I’m caught,’ she said gloomily and then Parkinson was back beside them holding the glass. He said, ‘I heard your old man had the fever.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t I know what it feels like!’ Parkinson said. ‘He’s lucky to have a young wife to look after him.’

‘He does not need me for a nurse.’

‘Are you staying here long?’

‘I do not know. Two days perhaps.’

‘Time for a meal with me then?’

‘Oh no. No time for that,’ she said without hesitation.

He grinned without mirth. ‘
Touché
again.’

When she had drained her whisky she said to Querry, ‘We’re lunching together, aren’t we, you and I? Give me just a minute for a wash. I’ll fetch my key.’

‘Allow
me
,’ Parkinson said, and before she had time to protest, he was already back at the bar, swinging her key on his little finger. ‘Number six,’ he said, ‘so we are all three on the same floor.’

Querry said, ‘I’ll come up with you.’

She looked into her room and came quickly back to his. She asked, ‘Can I come in? You can’t think how squalid it is in mine. I got up too late and they haven’t made the bed.’ She wiped her face with his towel, then looked ruefully at the marks which her powder had left. ‘I’m sorry. What a mess I’ve made. I didn’t mean to.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Women are disgusting, aren’t they?’

‘In a long life I haven’t found them so.’

‘See what I’ve landed you with now. Twenty-four more hours in a hole like this.’

‘Can’t the doctor write to you about the result?’

‘I can’t go back until I know. Don’t you see how impossible that would be? If the answer’s yes, I’ve got to tell him right away. It was my only excuse for coming anyway.’

‘And if the answer’s no?’

‘I’ll be so happy then I won’t care about anything. Perhaps I won’t even go back.’ She asked him, ‘What
is
a rabbit test?’

‘I don’t know exactly. I believe they take your urine, and cut the rabbit open . . .’

‘Do they do
that
?’ she asked with horror.

‘They sew the rabbit up again. I think it survives for another test.’

‘I wonder why we all have to know the worst so quickly. At a poor beast’s expense.’

‘Haven’t you any wish at all for a child?’

‘For a young Rycker? No.’ She took the comb out of his brush and without examining it pushed it through her hair. ‘I didn’t trap you into lunch, did I? You weren’t eating with anyone else?’

‘No.’

‘It’s just that I can’t stand that man out there.’

But it was impossible to get far away from him in Luc. There were only two restaurants in the town and they chose the same one. The three of them were the only people there; he watched them between bites from his table by the door. He had slung his Rolleiflex on the chair-back beside him much as civilians slung their revolvers in those uncertain days. At least you could say of him that he went hunting with a camera only.

Marie Rycker gave herself a second helping of potatoes. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said, ‘that I’m eating enough for two.’

‘I won’t.’

‘It’s the stock
colon
joke, you know, for someone with worms.’

‘How is your stomach-ache?’

‘Alas, it’s gone. The doctor seemed to think that it had no connection.’

‘Hadn’t you better telephone to your husband? Surely he’ll be anxious if you don’t come back today.’

‘The lines are probably down. They usually are.’

‘There hasn’t been a storm.’

‘The Africans are always stealing the wire.’

She finished off a horrible mauve dessert before she spoke again. ‘I expect you are right. I’ll telephone,’ and she left him alone with his coffee. His cup and Parkinson’s clinked in unison over the empty tables.

Parkinson called across, ‘The mail’s not in. I’ve been expecting a copy of my second article. I’ll drop it in your room if it comes. Let me see. Is it six or seven? It wouldn’t do to get the wrong room, would it?’

‘You needn’t bother.’

‘You owe me a photograph. Perhaps you and Mme Rycker would oblige.’

‘You’ll get no photograph from me, Parkinson.’

Querry paid the bill and went to find the telephone. It stood on a desk where a woman with blue hair and blue spectacles was writing her accounts with an orange pen. ‘It’s ringing,’ Marie Rycker said, ‘but he doesn’t answer.’

‘I hope his fever’s not worse.’

‘He’s probably gone across to the factory.’ She put the telephone down and said, ‘I’ve done my best, haven’t I?’

‘You could try again this evening before we have dinner.’

‘You
are
stuck with me, aren’t you?’

‘No more than you with me.’

‘Have you any more stories to tell?’

‘No. I only know the one.’

She said, ‘It’s an awful time till tomorrow. I don’t know what to do until I know.’

‘Lie down awhile.’

‘I can’t. Would it be very stupid if I went to the cathedral and prayed?’

‘Nothing is stupid that makes the time pass.’

‘But if the thing is here,’ she said, ‘inside me, it couldn’t suddenly disappear, could it, if I prayed?’

‘I wouldn’t think so.’ He said reluctantly, ‘Even the priests don’t ask you to believe that. They would tell you, I suppose, to pray that God’s will be done. But don’t expect me to talk to you about prayer.’

‘I’d want to know what his will was before I prayed anything like that,’ she said. ‘All the same, I think I’ll go and pray. I could pray to be happy, couldn’t I?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘That would cover almost everything.’

II

Querry too found the hours hanging heavily. Again he walked down to the river. Work had stopped upon the Bishop’s boat, and there was no one on board. In the little square the shops were shuttered. It seemed as though all the world were asleep except himself and the girl who, he supposed, was still praying. But when he returned to the hotel he found that Parkinson at least was awake. He stood under the mauve-and-pink paper streamers, with his eyes upon the door. After Querry had crossed the threshold, he came tip-toeing forward and said with sly urgent importance, ‘I must have a word with you quietly before you go to your room.’

‘What about?’

‘The general situation,’ Parkinson said. ‘Storm over Luc. Do you know who’s up there?’

‘Up where?’

‘On the first floor.’

‘You seem very anxious to tell me. Go ahead.’

‘The husband,’ Parkinson said heavily.

‘What husband?’

‘Rycker. He’s looking for his wife.’

‘I think he’ll find her in the cathedral.’

‘It’s not as simple as all that. He knows you’re with her.’

‘Of course he does. I was at his house yesterday.’

‘All the same I don’t think he expected to find you here in adjoining rooms.’

‘You think like a gossip-writer,’ Querry said. ‘What difference does it make whether rooms adjoin? You can sleep together from opposite ends of a passage just as easily.’

‘Don’t underrate the gossip-writers. They write history. From Fair Rosamund to Eva Braun.’

‘I don’t think history will be much concerned with the Ryckers.’ He went to the desk and said, ‘My bill, please. I’m leaving now.’

‘Running away?’ Parkinson asked.

‘Why running away? I was only staying here to give her a lift back. Now I can leave her with her husband. She’s his responsibility.’

‘You
are
a cold-blooded devil,’ Parkinson said. ‘I begin to believe some of the things you told me.’

‘Print them instead of your pious rubbish. It might be interesting to tell the truth for once.’

‘But which truth? You aren’t as simple-minded as you make out, Querry, and there weren’t any lies of fact in what I wrote. Leaving out Stanley, of course.’

‘And your
pirogue
and your faithful servants.’

‘Anyway, what I wrote about
you
was true.’

‘No.’

‘You have buried yourself here, haven’t you? You are working for the lepers. You did pursue that man into the forest . . . It all adds up, you know, to what people like to call goodness.’

‘I know my own motives.’

‘Do you? And did the saints? What about “most miserable sinner” and all that crap?’

‘You talk – almost – as Father Thomas does. Not quite, of course.’

‘History’s just as likely to take my interpretation as your own. I told you I was going to build you up, Querry. Unless, of course, as now seems likely, I find it makes a better story if I pull you down.’

‘Do you really believe you have all that power?’

‘Montagu Parkinson has a very wide syndication.’

The woman with blue hair said, ‘Your bill, M. Querry,’ and he turned to pay. ‘Isn’t it worth your while,’ Parkinson said, ‘to ask me a favour?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’ve been threatened often in my time. I’ve had my camera smashed twice. I’ve spent a night in a police-cell. Three times in a restaurant somebody hit me.’ For a moment he sounded like St Paul: ‘Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned; I have been shipwrecked three times . . .’ He said, ‘The strange thing is that no one has ever appealed to my better nature. It might work. It’s probably there, you know, somewhere . . .’ It was like a genuine grief.

Querry said gently, ‘Perhaps I would, if I cared at all.’

Parkinson said, ‘I can’t bear that damned indifference of yours. Do you know what he found up there? But you wouldn’t ask a journalist for information, would you? There’s a towel in your room. I showed it him myself. And a comb with long hair in it.’ The misery of being Parkinson for a moment looked out of his wounded eyes. He said, ‘I’m disappointed in you, Querry. I’d begun to believe my own story about you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Querry said.

‘A man’s got to believe a bit or contract out altogether.’

Somebody stumbled at the turn of the stairs. It was Rycker coming down. He had a book of some kind in his hand in a pulpy scarlet cover. The fingers on the rail shook as he came, from the remains of fever or from nerves. He stopped and the fat-boy mask of the man in the moon grinned at him from a neighbouring light-bracket. He said, ‘Querry.’

‘Hello, Rycker, are you feeling better?’

‘I can’t understand it,’ Rycker said. ‘You of all men in the world . . .’ He seemed to be searching desperately for clichés, the clichés from the
Marie-Chantal
serials rather than the clichés he was accustomed to from his reading in theology. ‘I thought you were my friend, Querry.’

The orange pen was suspiciously busy behind the desk and the blue head was unconvincingly bent. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about, Rycker,’ Querry said. ‘You’d better come into the bar. We’ll be more alone there.’ Parkinson prepared to follow them, but Querry blocked the door. He said, ‘No, this isn’t a story for the
Post
.’