The Comedians (38 page)

‘Shanks's pony,' Jones said. He began to haul his kitbag out of the car. I put the car-keys in my pocket, I didn't know why – I doubted whether there was a garage in Haiti capable of mending the car, and anyway who would trouble to come down this road to fetch it? The roads round Port-au-Prince were littered with abandoned cars and overturned buses; once I had seen a breakdown van with its crane lying sideways in a ditch – it was like a lifeboat, broken on the rocks, a contradiction of nature.

We began to walk. I had brought a torch, but it was very rough going and Jones's gumboots slithered on the wet laterite. It was after two, and the rain had stopped. ‘If they are following us,' Jones said, ‘they won't have much difficulty now. We're a bloody advertisement for human existence.'

‘There's no reason why they should be following us.'

‘I was thinking of that jeep we passed,' he said.

‘There was nobody in it.'

‘We don't know who was in the hut watching us go by.'

‘Anyway, we have no choice. We couldn't walk two yards without a light. On this road we'd hear a car coming a couple of miles away.'

When I flashed the torch towards either side of the road there was only rock and earth and low wet scrub. I said, ‘We mustn't miss the cemetery and walk bang into Aquin. There's a military post in Aquin.' I could hear Jones breathing heavily, and I offered to take his kitbag for a spell, but he would have none of it. ‘I'm a bit out of condition,' he said, ‘that's all,' and a little further on he said, ‘I talked a lot of nonsense in the car. I'm not always exactly trustworthy.'

It seemed to me an understatement, but I wondered why he made it.

At last my torch picked out what I was looking for: a cemetery on my right, stretching uphill into the dark. It was like a city built by dwarfs, street after street of tiny houses, some nearly big enough to hold ourselves, some too small for a new-born child, all of the same grey stone, from which the plaster had long flaked. I turned my torch to the other side where I had been told there would be a ruined hut, but mistakes are always made in the plan of a rendezvous. The hut should have been opposite the first corner of the cemetery we came to, standing alone, but there was nothing except a slope of earth.

‘The wrong cemetery?' Jones asked.

‘It can't be. We must be near Aquin now.' We went on down the track and opposite the further corner we did find a hut, but it didn't seem ruined so far as I could tell in the torchlight. There was nothing we could do but try it. If anyone lived there, he would be at least as scared as we were.

‘I wish I had a gun,' Jones said.

‘I'm glad you haven't, but what about your unarmed combat?' He muttered something that sounded like ‘rusty'.

But there was nobody inside when the door opened to my push. A patch of paling night-sky showed through a hole in the roof. ‘We are two hours late,' I said. ‘He's probably come and gone.'

Jones sat on his kitbag and panted. ‘We should have started earlier.'

‘How could we? We were timed by the storm.'

‘What do we do now?'

‘When it's light I'll go back to the car. There's nothing compromising in a wrecked car on this road. Some time during the day I know there's a local bus between Petit Goave and Aquin, and perhaps I can hitch a ride on from there, or there may be another bus as far as Aux Cayes.'

‘It sounds simple,' Jones said with envy. ‘But what do I do?'

‘Hold out until tomorrow night.' I added viciously, ‘You're in your familiar jungle now.' I looked out of the doorway: there was nothing to be seen or heard, not even a barking dog I said, ‘I don't like staying here. Suppose we fell asleep – someone might come. The soldiers must sometimes patrol these roads – or a peasant going to work. He'd inform on us. Why shouldn't he? We are white.'

Jones said, ‘We can keep watch in turn.'

‘There's a better way. We'll sleep in the cemetery. No one will come there except Baron Samedi.'

We crossed the so-called road and clambered over a low stone-wall and found ourselves in the street of the miniature town, where the houses were only shoulder-high. We climbed the hillside slowly because of Jones's kitbag. I felt safer in the very middle of the cemetery, and there we found a house higher than ourselves. We put the bottle of whisky in one of the window embrasures and sat down with our backs to a wall. ‘Oh well,' Jones said mechanically, ‘I've been in worse places.' I wondered how bad a place would have to be before he forgot his signature tune.

‘If you see a top-hat among the tombs,' I said, ‘it will be the Baron.'

‘Do you believe in zombies?' Jones asked.

‘I don't know. Do you believe in ghosts?'

‘Let's not talk about ghosts, old man, let's have another whisky.'

I thought I heard a movement and switched on the torch. It shone the whole length of a street of graves into a cat's eyes which reflected like Franco studs. It leapt upon a roof and was gone.

‘Ought we to show a light, old man?'

‘If there was anyone about to see it, he would be too scared to come. You couldn't do better than to dig in here tomorrow' – it was not a happily chosen phrase to use in a cemetery. ‘I doubt if anyone comes here except to bury the dead.' Jones sucked in more whisky, and I warned him, ‘There's only a quarter of a bottle left. You've got all tomorrow before you.'

‘Martha filled the shaker for me,' he said. ‘I've never known a girl so thoughtful.'

‘Or such a good lay?' I asked.

There was a spell of silence – I thought perhaps he was remembering with pleasure the occasions. Then Jones said, ‘Old man, the game's turned serious now.'

‘What game?'

‘Playing at soldiers. I can understand why people want to confess. Death's a bloody serious affair. A man doesn't feel quite worthy of it. Like a decoration.'

‘Have you such a lot to confess?'

‘We all have. I don't mean to a priest or God.'

‘To whom?'

‘To anyone at all. If I had a dog here tonight instead of you, I'd confess to the dog.'

I didn't want his confessions, I didn't want to hear how many times he had slept with Martha. I said, ‘Did you confess to Midge?'

‘There wasn't any occasion. The game hadn't turned serious then.'

‘A dog at least has to keep your secrets.'

‘I don't care a damn who tells what, but I don't fancy a lot of lies after I'm dead. I've lied enough before.'

I heard the cat come scrambling back over the roofs, and again I turned on my torch and lit the eyes. This time it flattened itself upon a stone and began to scrape its nails. Jones opened his kitbag and pulled out a sandwich. He broke it in half and tossed one half towards the cat which fled, as though the bread were a stone.

‘You'd better be careful,' I said. ‘You're on short rations now.'

‘The poor devil's hungry.' He put the half-sandwich back, and we and the cat were silent a long while. It was Jones who broke the silence with his obstinate obsession. ‘I'm an awful liar, old man.'

‘I've always assumed that,' I said.

‘What I said about Martha – there wasn't a word of truth in it. She's only one of fifty women I haven't had the courage to touch.'

I wondered if he was telling the truth now or graduating to a more honourable sort of lie. Perhaps he had detected something in my manner which told him all. Perhaps he pitied me. One could hardly sink lower, I thought, than that – to be pitied by Jones. He said, ‘I've always lied about women.' He gave an uneasy laugh. ‘The moment I had Tin Tin, she became a leading member of the Haitian aristocracy. If there had been anyone around to tell about it. Do you know, old man, I haven't had a single woman in my life I haven't paid – or at least promised to pay. Sometimes I've had to welsh when things were bad.'

‘Martha told me she's slept with you.'

‘She can't have told you that. I don't believe you.'

‘Oh yes. It was almost the last words she said to me.'

‘I never realized,' he said gloomily.

‘Realized what?'

‘That she was your girl. Another of my lies has found me out. You mustn't believe her. She was angry because you were going away with me.'

‘Or angry because I was taking you away.'

There was a scrabble in the dark where the cat had found the bit of sandwich. I said, ‘There's quite a jungle atmosphere here. You'll feel at home,'

I heard him take a pull at the whisky and then he said, ‘Old man, I've never been in a jungle in my life – unless you count the Calcutta Zoo.'

‘Were you never in Burma?'

‘Oh yes, I was. Or nearly. Anyway I was only fifty miles from the border. I was at Imphal, in charge of entertaining the troops. Well, not exactly in charge. We had Noel Coward once,' he added with pride and a sense of relief – it was something true that he could boast about.

‘How did the two of you get on?'

‘I didn't actually speak to him,' Jones said.

‘But you were in the army?'

‘No. I was rejected. Flat feet. They found I'd managed a cinema in Shillong, so they gave me this job. I had a uniform of a kind but without badges of rank. I was in liaison,' he added with that note of odd pride, ‘with
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I flashed my torch around the acre of grey tombs. I said, ‘Why the hell are we here then?'

‘I boasted a bit too much, didn't I?'

‘You've let yourself into a nasty situation. Aren't you frightened?'

‘I'm like a fireman at his first fire,' he said.

‘Your flat feet won't enjoy these mountain tracks.'

‘I can manage with supports,' Jones said. ‘You won't tell them, old man? It was a confession.'

‘They'll soon find out without my telling them. So you can't even use a Bren?'

‘They haven't got a Bren.'

‘You've spoken too late. I can't smuggle you back.'

‘I don't want to go back. Old man, you don't know what it was like in Imphal. I used to make friends sometimes – I could introduce them to girls, and then they'd go away and never come back. Or they'd come back once or twice for a yarn. There was a man called Charters who could smell water . . .' He broke off abruptly, remembering.

‘Another lie,' I said, as though I myself were a man of scrupulous rectitude.

‘Not exactly a lie,' he said. ‘You see, when he told me that, it was like someone calling me by my real name.'

‘Which wasn't Jones?'

‘Jones was on my birth certificate,' he said. ‘I've seen it there myself,' and brushed the question aside. ‘When he told me that, I knew I could do the same with a bit of practice. I knew I had it in me. I made my clerk hide glasses of water in the office and then I'd wait till I had a big thirst and sniff. It didn't work very often, but then tap-water is not the same.' He added, ‘I think I'll ease my feet a bit,' and I could tell from his movements that he was pulling off his gumboots.

‘How did you come to be in Shillong?' I asked.

‘I was born in Assam. My father planted tea – or so my mother said.'

‘You had to take it on trust?'

‘Well, he went home before I was born.'

‘Your mother was Indian?'

‘Half-Indian, old man,' he said as though he attributed importance to fractions. It was like meeting an unknown brother – Jones and Brown, the names were almost interchangeable, and so was our status. For all we knew we were both bastards, although of course there might have been a ceremony – my mother had always given me that impression. We had both been thrown into the water to sink or swim, and swim we had – we had swum from very far apart to come together in a cemetery in Haiti. ‘I like you, Jones,' I said. ‘If you don't want that half a sandwich, I could do with it.'

‘Of course, old man.' He fingered in his kitbag and felt for my hand in the dark.

‘Tell me more, Jones,' I said.

‘I came to Europe,' he said, ‘after the war. I got into a lot of scrapes. Somehow I couldn't find what I was intended to do. You know, there had been times in Imphal when I almost wished the Japs would reach us. The authorities would have armed even the camp-followers then, like me and the clerks in
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. and the cooks. After all I had a uniform. A lot of unprofessionals do well in war, don't they? I've learnt a lot, listening, studying maps, watching . . . You can feel a vocation, can't you, even if you can't practise it? And there I was, checking transport and travel-vouchers for third-class entertainers – Mr Coward was one of the exceptions, and I had to keep an eye on the girls. I called them girls. Old troupers more like. My office smelt like a stage dressing-room.'

‘The grease-paint drowned the smell of water?' I said.

‘You are right. It wasn't a fair test. I only wanted my chance,' he added, and I wondered whether perhaps in all his devious life he had been engaged on a secret and hopeless love-affair with virtue, watching virtue from a distance, hoping to be noticed, perhaps, like a child doing wrong in order to attract the attention of virtue.

‘And now you have the chance,' I said.

‘Thanks to you, old man.'