The rivals of Sherlock Holmes : early detective stories (25 page)

“And it was awfully good to see you,” said Silvano, the mimicry of Munday’s phrase intending politeness but sounding like deliberate sarcasm. “You are just the same as ever, Doctor.”

“We muddle along, Emma and I,” said Munday.

Silvano stammered, then said, “But she does look different.”

“Emma? In what way?”

“Thinner, I think,” said Silvano.

“She might have lost a few pounds,” said Munday. “Change of climate—it’s to be expected.”

“Not only that,” said Silvano. “Also the face is tired and the hands are shaking.”

“What you’re saying is that you think she’s sick.”

“I think,” said Silvano uncertainly.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Munday, and he drove faster in annoyance. “She’s never felt better in her life. She’s home. It’s meant a lot to her—to us both— coming back to England. Our life is here. I admit I had some reservations about coming back—it’s not easy after so long. But now I see it was what we had to do. I was wrong about Africa, I was wrong about England.” He rambled on, as if talking to himself. “You can’t stay overseas, miles and miles away in some godforsaken place, and go on denying you have a country and always trying to accommodate yourself, pretending you have a life and friends. Yes, it’s depressing. I lost ten years that way. I was a young man when I went out to Africa—I’m not young any more.” He gunned the engine and smiled. “But we’re back now, and we’re jolly glad of it. You can’t blame us for that, can you?”

“No,” said Silvano.

“And you’ll go home, of course?”

“I like London.”

“You like London,” said Munday. “You have money and a flat—you’re luckier than most English people. But what happens when your scholarship runs out and they raise your rent? Have you thought of that?”    “

“I can teach,” said Silvano.

“Rubbish!” said Munday. *7 can’t even get a university job just now, so what chance is there for you?” “Even bus conductors earn high salaries in England,” said Silvano.

“High? What does that mean? Higher than what? Herdboys in Bwamba, coffee-pickers in Toro, Uganda poets? You tell me—you’re an economist,” said Munday. He grumbled, “Bus conductors don’t live in Earl’s Court.”

“I would like to stay,” said Silvano in an obstinate whisper.

“Go home,” said Munday.

“It’s primitive. People starve. You know that.”

“No one starves in Bwamba,” said Munday. “You put your women to work in the fields. Your wife, Silvano, remember? The system works—inherited land, a little magic, and a bunch of bananas a day.”

“I never liked it.”

“It’s all you have,” said Munday. “Read my book.” “I will read it,” said Silvano. “Where can I buy it?” Munday didn’t reply. He changed gears on a hill and then said, “You have no business here.”

“I have friends here,” said Silvano, insulted but controlling his anger. “You had friends in Africa.”

“I had subjects,” said Munday. “Friendship is only possible between equals.”

Silvano turned to the side window. He was slumped in the seat, clutching his knees, looking at the fields whipping by. Munday was irritated anew by his hair, its absurd shape parodying mourning, and by his clothes, which Munday saw as pure folly.

Munday parked at the station. He jerked the hand brake. He said, “Don’t you dare hurt that girl.”

When Silvano boarded the train, the small frivolously dressed black man, pulling his cardboard suitcase through the high metal door of the carriage, Munday felt a pang of sorrow for him, he looked so sad. Munday regretted the conversation in the car—not his ferocity, but his candor. Silvano was behind the window, alone in the compartment, wagging his yellow palm at Munday. Munday waved back, and the train hooted and pulled away. He had said too much— worse, he had simplified. How could he explain that his England was a black house whose rooms and shadows he understood, and a woman—ghostlier than any African—who had bewitched him with passion? He had returned to a house and a woman. But he knew that, as with Alec—that last glimpse of him disappearing into a crowd of London shoppers— Silvano would sink, and nothing that Munday might say could matter, neither consolation nor blame. The truth was simple: he never wanted to see him again.

He had watched Silvano go, and it was as if he had rid himself of the continent. He drove home from the station under a sky lighted as subtly as skin, a swell of mild light with a tincture of blood, and raw gold sinews breaking from a sun pulped by clouds. This evening light was too complicated for him to see any drama in it—like the African sunset which altered too fast for him to assign it any metaphor but murder —but the light itself at this hour was his triumph. It was nearly six o’clock, and yet the light continued, thickening and changing, becoming more physical as it dimmed.

He had seen his death in the early darkness of winter, the pale daylight had been for him like a brief waking from sickness. But the seasonal illness was passing; he measured his mood by these lengthening days with a pleasure he had not known in the unvarying equatorial light. The fear had left him: he had overcome it by enduring it, like his heart, which had not pained hifti for weeks. So he had got well, and he imagined the thick scar on his heart narrowed to a harmless lip of tissue. His health allowed him to ignore

his body, the intrusive wrapping of muscle he had felt failing him so keenly, weighing him with a kind of stupidity. Now he fed his mind on sleep, restored himself in the darkened room under the disc of Caroline’s face, a fixed image of sensation which, hovering in the room, amounted to a presence almost flesh. He felt her pressure so strongly on him in the Black House he didn’t need to ask where she lived, and at times in the living room with Emma, the air before the fire bore his lover’s odor so obviously it embarrassed him. It was a haunting that confronted his mind and aroused his body, but it inhibited his conversation with Emma, as Flack’s voice had, his mewing mutter against the wall, on their first day at The Yew Tree.

Munday had thought, recovering, that Emma had also recovered. She was, after all, his wife. It had not occurred to him that Emma could be ill if his heart improved, and it was only after Silvano commented on it that he had gone back to the house and seen her unwell. She looked tired, perhaps she was coming down with something; she had that lustreless inattention that precedes real sickness—not sick yet but, abstracted and falling silent, in decline. He was sorry; he was also cross, for what Silvano had said was disrespectful, not necessarily in English terms, but in Bwamba culture which forbade such intimate observations except within a family. Silvano was not part of the family. Munday didn’t like his presuming; he objected to an African tribesman telling him his wife had lost weight. He didn’t need a stranger to call attention to the hysteria that came over her when he was unresponsive. But he was ashamed that he had been too preoccupied to notice it earlier. He had his own diagnosis: she was taking refuge in illness—refuge from her dread. He laughed at the bitter irony: they had come to the country (she had chosen the place!) for his health, and now it was hers that was shaky.

He was not sure how to deal with it. He was circumspect, then bullying, and finally hearty, offering encouragement, usually at mealtimes, for he was in

his study the rest of the time, while she moped, watching Mrs. Branch dust, or sat before the garden window with a sketch pad in her lap.

One evening he said, “Emma, you're not eating.”

“I don't have any appetite.”

“A good walk would set you up.”

“I hate your walks,” she said. “You make them such an occasion.”

“Why don’t you invite Margaret down here one weekend?”

“It's a bother. And there's her job—she’s probably not free,” said Emma.

“But you never see anyone!”

“I see you,” she said. “Why do you talk to me as if I’m an invalid?”

“You haven't been looking well lately.”

“I'm perfectly all right,” she said. But her denial only confirmed that she was sick in a more critical way than if she had agreed with him. She didn’t know she was sick—that was worse. She went on, “But I do wish you'd finish your book. Then we could leave this place.”

“And go where?” said Munday. “Emma, this is England!”

“It’s not ” she said, and he thought she was going to cry. “It’s a miserable house, not like any house I've ever known. Even Silvano said it”

“What did he say?”

“ ‘Your house frightens me,' ” she said. “Those were his exact words.”

“Africans scare easily.”

“I know what he meant.”

“Africans in England seem so pitiful and comic,” he said. “Like country cousins.”

“You were offhand with him,” said Emma. “I’ve never seen you treat an African that way.”

“I couldn’t help it. He said he wants to settle in England and become a bus conductor. It’s a joke! He likes England, he says, but I took him for a walk around back and he was knocked for six—couldn’t take it. Wants to live in London.”

“I don’t blame him,” said Emma. “So do I. I admit it, Alfred, I’m not suited to the country.”

He snapped, “That’s what you used to say about Africa.”

“I can’t creep into a comer and thrive.”

“Who can?”

“You,” she said. “It’s in your nature.”

“Don’t be cryptic, Emma.”

“I’m not being cryptic,” she said. “I admire it in you. But I still get awfully scared sometimes in this house. We can’t all be so self-sufficient.”

“You don’t know me,” he said. “I can’t survive alone, and I’m not self-sufficient. Emma, I’m as weak as you!”

“You’re not weak at all.”

“But I am,” he said. “This move was a great strain for me. You seem to forget I have a heart condition.” “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Why are you looking at me that way?”

“I was thinking of Silvano. You used to be so fond of him in Africa. I can remember you talking to him for hours on end.”

“They weren’t social occasions,” he said. “I made notes on those conversations. And don’t worry, he’ll get his acknowledgment in the book.”

“That weekend opened my eyes. I saw you avoiding him and I thought how much you’d changed.” Emma sighed. “He left early, you know.- He distinctly said he was going to stay over until Monday. But he wasn’t happy here.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“You didn’t go out of your way for him.”

“Who went out of his way for me in Africa?” said Munday angrily. “Ten years, Emma, ten years!” “You’re not sorry you left Africa, are you?”

“I was at first. It was a blow—well, you know. You were in the room when Dowle told me.”

“You cried.” “That was exhaustion,” he said. “Not grief, not grief at all. But it seems so foolish now.”

“Why foolish?”

“Because we should have come home sooner. Ten years in Africa and I thought I’d be at the top of my profession. But these poaching students who flew out from England on their vacations to do research have already published their books. They have all the jobs, and I’m ten years behind the times.”

“You’re glad you came home, though?”

“It was the only thing to do.”

Emma said slowly, with mingled relief and fatigue, “I was wondering if you’d ever admit that.”

“And if my heart holds out I’ll finish the book properly.”

“Your heart will hold out,” she said.

“You seem so sure!”

“I am sure. There’s not a thing wrong with your heart.”

“Emma, you were there when Dowle told me I’d have to leave.”

“That dear, dear man,” she said.

“A scarred heart. That’s what he said. That’s why we had to leave.”

“That’s why we had to leave, Alfred, but the scar wasn’t on your heart—it was on mine. And it’s still there.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“He knew you’d be impossible if I was the reason for our leaving. You’d never forgive me, you’d always blame me for ruining your research. You can be a frightful bully.” She smiled, as if she had at a critical moment discovered a strength she could use for defense. “But now you admit you’re glad to be home. You said that, didn’t you? So I can tell you the truth.” “There are so many versions of the truth,” he said. “Let’s hear your smug one.”

“I’ve suffered,” she said.

“You deceived me, that’s why! He was protecting

you—you and that conniving priest made all this up so you could leave gracefully 1”

“As gracefully as a bad heart allows,” she said quietly. “You see, you’re fine. I'm the one with tha heart condition.”

“You should see a doctor.”

“I did, that day in London, after I had lunch with Margaret. There’s nothing to be done. I have pills, I have a diet. My heart—”

“Why did you keep it from me?”

“I was afraid.”

“And that time I fainted? You mean there was nothing wrong with me?”

“Indigestion.”

“That’s what that damned specialist said. Dowle must have told him to humor me.” Munday held Emma’s hand. He said, “You needn’t have been afraid to tell me. I would have understood.”

“It doesn’t matter now,” said Emma. Her voice had faded to a whisper.

Munday took her in his arms and said, “I’m sorry. Poor Emma.”

“Having a bad heart’s an awful nuisance,” she said. “I know,” he said, “I used to have one.”

“But I have you,” she said.

The trust in her words nearly broke him. It was more than the news of her heart. He found it incredible that possessed by Caroline as much as he was, she could not know it—amazing that after guiding him to that love she hadn’t the slightest inkling of it. He would have told her then how she was the ghost’s accomplice. But her hcarjt: he could not sacrifice it to the truth. Emma inhabited the small world of illness from which he had been released. If he told her, You’ve seen the ghost I love, she might die of it—or she might laugh and say he was mad. But he believed, and he concealed it because there was no one to tell.

He was sorry for her, but he hated her fretting, the irritating senility that tension produced in her. Shopping one Saturday for groceries in Yeovil, he and

Emma passed a shop window which had the plainness of a chemist’s. A sign caught his eye, Wonderful Way to Relax, and he thought of Emma. There were simple surgical goods in the window and medicines of various kinds, carrying doctors’ testimonies on placards, and soberly wrapped bottles of capsules with photographs demonstrating their effect—handsome men and women splashing vigorously in surf, reassured couples posed embracing. Munday was attracted by the unpretentious display, the clinical austerity of the pale colors. He walked on a bit further and when Emma was occupied he went back to the shop.