1

WILSON stood gloomily by his bed in the Bedford Hotel and contemplated his cummerbund, which lay ruffled like an angry snake; the small room was hot with the conflict between them. Through the wall he could hear Harris cleaning his teeth for the fifth time that day. Harris believed in dental hygiene. ‘It’s cleaning my teeth before and after every meal that’s kept me so well in this bloody climate,’ he would say, raising his pale exhausted face over an orange squash. Now he was gargling: it sounded like a noise in the pipes.

       Wilson sat down on the edge of his bed and rested. He had left his door open for coolness, and across the passage he could see into the bathroom. The Indian with the turban was sitting on the side of the bath fully dressed. He stared inscrutably back at Wilson and bowed. ‘Just a moment, sir,’ he called. ‘If you would care to step in here ...’ Wilson angrily shut the door. Then he had another try with the cummerbund.

       He had once seen a film - was it Bengal Lancer? - in which the cummerbund was superbly disciplined. A native held the coil and an immaculate officer spun like a top, so that the cummerbund encircled him smoothly, tightly. Another servant stood by with iced drinks, and a punkah swayed in the background. Apparently these things were better managed in India. However, with one more effort, Wilson did get the wretched thing wrapped around him. It was too tight and it was badly creased, and the tuck-in came too near the front, so that it was not hidden by the jacket. He contemplated his image with melancholy in what was left of the mirror. Somebody tapped on the door.

       ‘Who is it?’ Wilson shouted, imagining for a moment that the Indian had had the cool impertinence to pursue ... but when the door opened, it was only Harris: the Indian was still sitting on the bath across the passage shuffling his testimonials.

       ‘Going out, old man?’ Harris asked, with disappointment.

       ‘Yes.’

       ‘Everybody seems to be going out this evening. I shall have the table all to myself.’ He added with gloom, ‘It’s the curry evening too.’

       ‘So it is. I’m sorry to miss it.’

       ‘You haven’t been having it for two years, old man, every Thursday night’ He looked at the cummerbund. ‘That’s not right, old man.’

       ‘I know it isn’t. It’s the best I can do.’

       ‘I never wear one. It stands to reason that it’s bad for the stomach. They tell you it absorbs sweat, but that’s not where I sweat, old man. I’d rather wear braces, only the elastic perishes, so a leather belt’s good enough for me. I’m no snob. Where are you dining, old man?’

       ‘At Tallit’s’

       ‘How did you meet him?’

       ‘He came into the office yesterday to pay his account and asked me to dinner.’

       ‘You don’t have to dress for a Syrian, old man. Take it all off again.’

       ‘Are you sure?’

       ‘Of course I am. It wouldn’t do at all. Quite wrong.’ He added, ‘You’ll get a good dinner, but be careful of the sweets. The price of life is eternal vigilance. I wonder what he wants out of you.’ Wilson began to undress again while Harris talked. He was a good listener. His brain was like a sieve through which the rubbish fell all day long. Sitting on the bed in his pants he heard Harris - ‘you have to be careful of the fish: I never touch it’ - but the words left no impression. Drawing up his white drill trousers over his hairless knees he said to himself:

                  the poor sprite is

              Imprisoned for some fault of his

              In a body like a grave.

His belly rumbled and tumbled as it always did a little before the hour of dinner.

              From you he only dares to crave,

              For his service and his sorrow,

              A smile to-day, a song to-morrow,

       Wilson stared into the mirror and passed his fingers over the smooth, too smooth skin. The face looked back at him, pink and healthy, plump and hopeless. Harris went happily on, ‘I said once to Scobie,’ and immediately the clot of words lodged in Wilson’s sieve. He pondered aloud, ‘I wonder how he ever came to marry her.’

       ‘It’s what we all wonder, old man. Scobie’s not a bad sort’

       ‘She’s too good for him.’

       ‘Louise?’ Harris exclaimed.

       ‘Of course. Who else?

       ‘There’s no accounting for tastes. Go in and win, old man.’

       ‘I must be off.’

       ‘Be careful of the sweets.’ Harris went on with a small spurt of energy, ‘God knows I wouldn’t mind something to be careful of instead of Thursday’s curry. It is Thursday, isn’t it?’

       ‘Yes.’

       They came out into the passage and into the focus of the Indian eyes. ‘You’ll have to be done sooner or later, old man,’ Harris said. ‘He does everybody once. You’ll never have peace till he does you.’

       ‘I don’t believe in fortune-telling,’ Wilson lied.

       ‘Nor do I, but he’s pretty good. He did me the first week I was here. Told me I’d stay here for more than two and a half years. I thought then I was going to have leave after eighteen months. I know better now.’ The Indian watched triumphantly from the bath. He said, ‘I have a letter from the Director of Agriculture. And one from D. C. Parkes.’

       ‘All right,’ Wilson said. ‘Do me, but be quick about it.’

       ‘I’d better push off, old man, before the revelations begin.’

       ‘I’m not afraid,’ Wilson said.

       ‘Will you sit on the bath, sir?’ the Indian invited him courteously. He took Wilson’s hand in his. ‘It is a very interesting hand, sir,’ he said unconvincingly, weighing it up and down.

       ‘What are your charges?’

       ‘According to rank, sir. One like yourself, sir, I should charge ten shillings.’

       ‘That’s a bit steep.’

       ‘Junior officers are five shillings.’

       ‘I’m in the five-shilling class,’ Wilson said.

       ‘Oh no, sir. The Director of Agriculture gave me a pound.’

       ‘I’m only an accountant.’

       ‘That’s as you say, sir. A.D.C. and Major Scobie gave me ten shillings.’

       ‘Oh well,’ Wilson said. ‘Here’s ten bob. Go ahead.’

       ‘You have been here one, two weeks,’ the Indian said. ‘You are sometimes at night an impatient man. You think you do not make enough progress.’

       ‘Who with?’ Harris asked, lolling in the doorway.

       ‘You are very ambitious. You are a dreamer. You read much poetry.’

       Harris giggled and Wilson, raising his eyes from the finger which traced the lines upon his palm, watched the fortuneteller with apprehension.

       The Indian went inflexibly on. His turban was bowed under Wilson’s nose and bore the smell of stale food - he probably secreted stray pieces from the larder in its folds. He said, ‘You are a secret man. You do not tell your friends about your poetry - except one. One,’ he repeated. ‘You are very shy. You should take courage. You have a great line of success.’

       ‘Go in and win, old man,’ Harris repeated.

       Of course the whole thing was Couéism: if one believed in it enough, it would come true. Diffidence would be conquered. The mistake in a reading would be covered up.

       ‘You haven’t told me ten bob’s worth,’ Wilson said. ‘This is a five-bob fortune. Tell me something definite, something that’s going to happen.’ He shifted his seat uncomfortably on the sharp edge of the bath and watched a cockroach like a large blood blister flattened on the wall. The Indian bent forward over the two hands. He said, ‘I see great success. The Government will be very pleased with you.’

       Harris said, ‘Il pense that you are un bureaucrat.’

       ‘Why will the Government be pleased with me?’ Wilson asked.

       ‘You will capture your man.’

       ‘Why,’ Harris said, ‘I believe he thinks you are a new policeman.’

       ‘It looks like it,’ Wilson said. ‘Not much use wasting more time.’

       ‘And your private life, that will be a great success too. You will win the lady of your heart. You will sail away. Everything is going to be fine. For you,’ he added.

       ‘A real ten-bob fortune.’

       ‘Good night,’ Wilson said. ‘I won’t write you a recommendation on that.’ He got up from the bath, and the cockroach flashed into hiding. ‘I can’t bear those things,’ Wilson said, sidling through ‘the door. He turned in the passage and repeated, ‘Good night.’

       ‘I couldn’t when I first came, old man. But I evolved a system. Just step into my room and I’ll show you.’

       ‘I ought to be off.’

       ‘Nobody will be punctual at Tallit’s.’ Harris opened his door and Wilson turned his eyes with a kind of shame from the first sight of its disorder. In his own room he would never have exposed himself quite like this - the dirty tooth-glass, the towel on the bed.

       ‘Look here, old man.’

       With relief he fixed his eyes on some symbols pencilled on the wall inside: the letter H, and under it a row of figures lined against dates as in a cash-book. Then the letters D.D., and under them more figures. ‘It’s my score in cockroaches, old man. Yesterday was an average day - four. My record’s nine. It makes you welcome the little brutes.’

       ‘What does D.D. stand for?’

       ‘Down the drain, old man. That’s when I knock them into the wash-basin and they go down the waste-pipe. It wouldn’t be fair to count them as dead, would it?’

       ‘No.’

       ‘And it wouldn’t do to cheat yourself either. You’d lose interest at once. The only thing is, it gets dull sometimes, playing against yourself. Why shouldn’t we make a match of it, old man? It needs skill, you know. They positively hear you coming, and they move like greased lightning. I do a stalk every evening with a torch.’

       ‘I wouldn’t mind having a try, but I’ve got to be off now.’

       ‘I tell you what - I won’t start hunting till you come back from Tallit’s. Well have five minutes before bed. Just five minutes.’

       ‘If you like.’

       ‘I’ll come down with you, old man. I can smell the curry. You know I could have laughed when the old fool mixed you up with the new police officer.’

       ‘He got most of it wrong, didn’t he?’ Wilson said. ‘I mean the poetry.’