“And a razor?”
“No.”
“Only a Gillette. I can’t do much harm with a Gillette.”
It was the measure which counted all right. Everything seemed possible to him now. For instance, even with a pair of scissors-he could moisten the baked earth of the wall first.
“A pair of scissors then just for a trim?”
“I would have to ask Léon first, Charley.” A pointed stick?—he searched for a suitable euphemism. He felt sure, now he had drunk the right measure and he had his wits about him, that it was possible to escape. He said, “I want to write to Clara-she’s my wife. The girl in the photo. You can keep the letter until it’s all over and you are safe. I just want her to know that I thought of her at the end. A pencil-a sharp pencil,” he added incautiously, taking a look at the wall and wondering whether after all he was a bit overoptimistic. There was one point where the wall had crumbled a little: he could see wisps of straw which had been mixed with the mud.
“I have a ballpoint,” Aquino said, “but I had better ask Léon, Charley.” He took it out of his pocket and looked at it carefully.
“What harm can there be, Aquino? I would ask your friend myself, but you know how it is, I never feel at ease with priests.”
Aquino said, “You must give us anything you write. And we shall have to read it.”
“Of course. Shall we open the other bottle?”
“You are not trying to make me drunk? I can drink any man under the table.”
“No, no. It’s only I haven’t had the proper measure myself yet. It’s one over the half that counts with me, and you’ve drunk half my measure yourself.”
“It may be a long time before we can buy you more.”
“Let tomorrow look after tomorrow. That sounds like something from the Bible. I’m getting the literary touch too. The whisky helps. You see I’m not much used to letter-writing. This is the first time I’ve been separated from Clara-since we were really together.”
“You will need some paper, Charley.”
“Yes, I’d forgotten that.”
Aquino brought him five sheets of paper pulled off a pad. “I have counted them,” he said. “You must return all the sheets to me, used or not.”
“And some water to wash in. I don’t want to leave dirty marks all over my letter.”
Aquino obeyed, but he grumbled a little this time. “This is not a hotel, Charley,” he said, planking the basin down and splashing the water on the earth floor.
“If it was, I would be able to hang a notice ‘Not to be disturbed’ on the door. Take a little more whisky with you, Aquino.”
“No. I have drunk enough.”
“Be a friend and shut the door. I can’t bear that Indian staring at me.”
When he was alone Charley Fortnum chose the worn spot on the wall, rubbed water in and attacked it with the ballpoint. After a quarter of an hour there was a little worm cast of dirt on the floor, and a tiny indentation in the wall. If it had not been for the whisky he would have despaired. He propped himself on the floor to hide the mark, washed the ballpoint, and began a letter. He had to justify the time he had spent. “My dear little Clara,” he began and hesitated a long while. For his official reports he used a typewriter which always seemed to find the right bureaucratic phrase, “In reply to your letter of August 10,”
“I have received yours of December 22.”
“How I miss you,” he wrote now. It was the only important thing he had to write; anything he added would be only a repetition or a paraphrase of that. “It seems years since I drove away from the camp. You had a headache that morning. Is it better now? Please do not take too many aspirins. They are bad for the stomach and they must be bad for the baby too. You will see, won’t you, that a tarpaulin is kept over Fortnum’s Pride in case the rains come.”
The letter, he thought, would not be delivered until he was home again or until he was dead, and the sense of an immense distance grew up between the mud hut and the camp, between the coffin and the jeep waiting under the avocados, Clara lying late in the double bed, the dumbwaiter standing idle on the verandah. Tears pricked at his eyes, and he remembered how his father would rebuke him: “Be a man, Charley, not a coward. You cry too easily. I can’t bear self-pity. You should be ashamed. Ashamed. Ashamed.” The word rang like the knell for all hope. Sometimes, but not often, he would defend himself. “But I’m not crying for me. I squashed a lizard this morning in the shutters. I didn’t mean to. I was trying to let it out. I’m crying for the lizard, not for me.” He was not crying now for himself. The tears were for Clara and a few of them for Fortnum’s Pride, both left alone and defenceless. All he was suffering was a little fear and a little discomfort. Loneliness, as he knew from experience, was a worse thing to suffer.
He abandoned the letter, took another swallow of whisky, and started to dig again with the ballpoint pen. The wall absorbed the water and was soon as dry again as a bone. After hah5 an hour he gave up. He had made a hole as large as a mouse-hole, but not an inch deep. He took up his letter again and wrote defiantly, “I can tell you Charley Fortnum’s on his mettle. I’m not the poor chap they think I am. I’m your husband, and I love you far too much to let any bastards like these stand between you and me. I’m going to think up something and I’m going to put this letter in your hands myself, and we’ll laugh at it together and we’ll drink some of that good French champagne I’ve been saving for a special occasion. Champagne never did a baby any harm, or so I’m told.” He stopped writing and laid the letter aside because an idea was really beginning to form in however hazy a way. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and for a moment he had the impression that he was wiping away the whisky too, leaving his mind clear.
“Aquino,” he called, “Aquino.” Aquino came reluctantly and suspiciously in. “No more whisky,” he said.
“I want to use the lavatory, Aquino.”
“I will tell Miguel to go with you.”
“No, please, Aquino… I’ll never get a proper shit with that Indian sitting outside waving his gun at me. He’s longing to use it, Aquino.”
“Miguel means no harm. He is interested in the gun-that’s all. He has never had one before.”
“He frightens me just the same. Why not take the gun yourself and guard me, Aquino? I know you wouldn’t shoot unless you had to.”
“He would not like anyone else to hold his gun.”
“Then I’ll damn well shit in here.”
“I will speak to him,” Aquino said. It’s difficult for most men to shoot a friendly man in cold blood-Charley Fortnum’s plan was as simple as that.
When Aquino returned he was holding the submachine gun. “All right,” he said, “go ahead. I know I have only my left hand, but remember no one needs to be a marksman with one of these. One bullet will always go home.”
“Even a poet’s bullet,” Charley Fortnum said, raking up a smile. “I wish you would give me a copy of that poem. I’d like to keep it as a souvenir.”
“Which poem?”
“You know the one I mean. The one about death.”
He walked through the outer room. The Indian did not look at him. He was watching the gun with anxiety as though something very dear had been put in untrustworthy hands.
Charley Fortnum talked all the way to the shed among the avocados. His watch had stopped during his coma and he had no idea of the time, but he could see how long the shadows were. Under the trees heavy with dark-brown fruit it was already night. He said, “I’ve nearly finished that letter. It’s a damned difficult one to write.” When he got to the door of the shed he turned and tried a smile out on Aquino. If Aquino smiled back it would be a good sign, but Aquino didn’t smile. Perhaps he was only preoccupied. Perhaps he had drunk the wrong measure.
Charley Fortnum waited in the hut for a reasonable time, screwing his courage up. Then he came quickly out and turned sharp right to put the hut between them. It was only a matter of yards and under the trees the darkness waited. He heard a short burst of fire, a shout, an answering shout, he felt nothing. He cried out, “Don’t shoot, Aquino.” At the second burst he fell on the very edge of the dark.