Heart of the Matter, The by Greene Graham

Author:Greene, Graham [Greene, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel, Fiction, Modern Classics
ISBN: 9781407086620
Publisher: Random House / Vintage Classics
Published: 1948-01-30T03:00:00+00:00

3

I

‘I’VE BROUGHT YOU some stamps,’ Scobie said. ‘I’ve been collecting them for a week—from everybody. Even Mrs Carter has contributed a magnificent parakeet—look at it—from somewhere in South America. And here’s a complete set of Liberians surcharged for the American occupation. I got those from the Naval Observer.’

They were completely at ease: it seemed to both of them for that very reason they were safe.

‘Why do you collect stamps?’ he asked. ‘It’s an odd thing to do—after sixteen.’

‘I don’t know,’ Helen Rolt said. ‘I don’t really collect. I carry them round. I suppose it’s habit.’ She opened the album and said, ‘No, it’s not just habit. I do love the things. Do you see this green George V halfpenny stamp? It’s the first I ever collected. I was eight. I steamed it off an envelope and stuck it in a notebook. That’s why my father gave me an album. My mother had died, so he gave me a stamp-album.’

She tried to explain more exactly. ‘They are like snapshots. They are so portable. People who collect china—they can’t carry it around with them. Or books. But you don’t have to tear the pages out like you do with snapshots.

‘You’ve never told me about your husband,’ Scobie said.

‘No.’

‘It’s not really much good tearing out a page because you can see the place where it’s been torn?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s easier to get over a thing,’ Scobie said, ‘if you talk about it.’

‘That’s not the trouble,’ she said. ‘The trouble is—it’s so terribly easy to get over.’ She took him by surprise; he hadn’t believed she was old enough to have reached that stage in her lessons, that particular turn of the screw. She said, ‘He’s been dead—how long—is it eight weeks yet? and he’s so dead, so completely dead. What a little bitch I must be.’

Scobie said, ‘You needn’t feel that. It’s the same with everybody, I think. When we say to someone, “I can’t live without you,” what we really mean is, “I can’t live feeling you may be in pain, unhappy, in want.” That’s all it is. When they are dead our responsibility ends. There’s nothing more we can do about it. We can rest in peace.’

‘I didn’t know I was so tough,’ Helen said. ‘Horribly tough.’

‘I had a child,’ Scobie said, ‘who died. I was out here. My wife sent me two cables from Bexhill, one at five in the evening and one at six, but they mixed up the order. You see she meant to break the thing gently. I got one cable just after breakfast. It was eight o’clock in the morning—a dead time of day for any news.’ He had never mentioned this before to anyone, not even to Louise. Now he brought out the exact words of each cable, carefully. ‘The cable said, Catherine died this afternoon no pain God bless you. The second cable came at lunch-time. It said, Catherine seriously ill. Doctor has hope my diving. That was the one sent off at five. “Diving” was a mutilation—I suppose for “darling.

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