Lydgate sat lit by a lone candle. Terrible shadows moved around him as he ate sardines in olive oil with a tea-spoon. He had more or less dressed for dinner, having blindly found slacks and a shirt in a suit-case. It was too hot for a tie. Besides, he did not know whether Carruthers Chung would expect a tie. He would soon know when Carruthers Chung came to call for him. He had never played bridge at Carruthers Chung's house before.
The beds had dried up again. Electric fire and water had paid his house a brief shy visit at nightfall. Then he had been able to plug his bachelor's refrigerator into the light and been rewarded with a gnat's high buzz and the hope of a drink of cold water. He had also, during the half-hour wet season, been able to fill the square brick container called a pang. Unpacking his sheets and unrolling his mattress, fitting up his mosquito-net on the wire-hung wooden frame, he looked forward to lowering himself into that pang and washing his bad temper out. But, coming down from the one small bedroom, he found the pang less adequately plugged than he had thought, and the water singing into the drains in happy freedom. He had turned on the tap again to hear only a sort of empty-stomach rumble. So he had had to wash in one of his bottles of drinking water. And, during his washing, the light went out and the towel hid in the dark.
Lydgate finished his sardines but still felt hungry. He crawled to the soap-box of provisions and found a round tin. Squinting at it from various angles of deep shadow, he saw that its name was Mrs. Hobson's Tip-top Cherry Cake, Made in India. He felt a sort of poor man's elation on remembering that he had remembered to pack the can-opener in an accessible place. It was, he knew, lying snugly in an angle of the provision-box, wedged in by a jar of salt. Unless that blasted ape had been rummaging round, looking for something destructive. But no, it was there. In his state of nerves, Lydgate whimpered softly with relief. Something had not let him down. Yet.
The tin was unbelievably difficult to open. Sweat glistened in candlelight on the tough metal top. A quarter open, he gave up. His right arm ached as if it had been rowing. He sat down on the termite colony which was a standard-pattern chair and slowly ate the cake with the still oily tea-spoon, digging it further and further in as Mrs. Hobson's creature waned. While he ate he listened to his right-hand neighbours. The walls were thin, and at picture-rail level they became a fret-work through which air and sound were free to leave or enter. The neighbours spoke Italian.
Lydgate could not remember ever having heard or heard of an Italian opera duet for two baritone voices. Wagner, of course, was different. But this, he thought, despite the obvious aesthetic drawback of lack of aggregate range, had a certain charm. There was dynamic differentiation, rhythmic counterpoint, and – that the medium might be exploited to the full – the frequent shuttling of theme from one to another of three languages.
"Io – uh? Iki – uh? Me – uh?" came the angry voice of the son. "Lavoro – uh? Work – uh? Ogni giorno – uh? Every day – uh? poro-pora – uh? And what you do? Che fa? Aaaaaah!” There followed a percussion of earthy Tuscan which Lydgate, whose Spanish helped him only with very slow Italian, could make nothing of, except for porco sporco, which he took to mean "dirty pig".
"You speak a English," went the voice of the father. "It a good a practice."
"Aaaaaah! I speak you go to ell."
"You cannot a say that. You not a say 'speak'. You say a 'say'. You say, 'I say you go a to ell'."
"I say you go to ell."
"That a better. I say a you go a to ell. Now I say a you a this. It a right you a work all a day. You a young man. I a your father. Very old a man. I bring a you up. Send you a school a. Now it a right you pay a your father back. You a understand?"
“Non capito."
"Why a you not understand? I speak a very slow. Very clear. I say a you this. If you a want a go out a drink, it a not right. It right you a be a tired. You not a tired, you not a work a ard. And if a you say a want go out a drink, where you get a money? I not give a you a money. Maybe you steal a money. I not a know. I say you a stay in ere a slip. You ave a good a rest work a ard tomorrow."
“Non ancora mangiato."
“All right, you not yet a eat. I not yet a eat too. But you ave breakfast. Big a breakfast. I not ave a breakfast."
"You sleep till arf day."
"You mean a mid day. Mid day. Mezzo giorno. I slip till a mid day. That because I an old a man. I come a ome late must a slip late. You understand?"
“Non capita."
"All right. Now I a go a out. You slip a now like a good a boy."
At this moment there was the noise of a car approaching, and the silver of headlights shone on Lydgate. Silver oil in a silver sardine-tin. Silver crumbs of Mrs. Hobson. The car stopped, brakes ground dryly, and Carruthers Chung knocked at the door, revealing himself at once as the door swung inward. He wore a tie. Suddenly, as if Carruthers Chung were a thaumaturge, there was a glory of yellow light. Carruthers Chung was wearing a Chinese brocade tie, willow-patterned. Lydgate began to search in his still unpacked suit-case. Carruthers Chung said, "Not velly adequate accommodation. Plobably it is better in the dark." Lydgate found a creased and spotty blue tie and wound it swiftly round his neck like a noose. "We are going to play," said Carruthers Chung. Then for some reason he chuckled.
As they went out they saw a fat squat form hovering round the car. "Ah," it said. "Who is a that ? You a going to a town? You give a me a lift, eh?"
"We are going to my house," said Carruthers Chung.
"To play," he chuckled. "To make a blidge."
"I go a to Dunia Hotel."
"I can dlop you there."
"Braoo ragazzo." The fat squat man got in at the back. Lydgate sat next to Carruthers Chung.
Lydgate tried to take his mind off things, tried to talk bridge. He was a skilled player, lucky in cards. He wondered what the standard of play was like in Carruthers Chung's circle. He talked of a freak in Juan-les-Pina, of the proper defence to North's bid of seven hearts, of the ruffing by West of the conventional club lead. Carruthers Chung listened with great attention and said:
"West should not luff in case he is over-luffed and lose his dump tlick."
Lydgate sighed with something like happiness. Tonight might be a good night. Brandy and ginger ale and a little intelligent bridge. There had been such parties in Shurga. His spirits fell as he remembered Lydia, the sweetly pretty smiling face, the plump slim-waisted body like a barrack-room dream. Lydia, too, had been good at bridge. And now the words of Mudd hit him out of the context of insult and cheap sneers. Lydia was coming back to Africa. Lydia Lydgate. What a silly name. Let her come back. They would never meet, even though the town was so small. Her world would be a club by, partyish, swimming-pooly one. That was over for him. He had an African mistress and two half-breed children and a house appropriate to the status which this menage conferred. But he felt disquiet, wondering why Lydia had chosen, in her nostalgia for palms and sweat and hot sauces, this particular territory: there were Shurga, Naraka, Kenya, Northern Rhodesia, Uganda crying out for shorthand- machine operatives and touch-typists. She had visited them all; they had been together. Did she honestly think Dunia could offer anything vastly different? They were all the same; all the African territories were the same – lazy villages and Syrian shop-houses and dry open drains and the fatiguing life of club and bar, a shortage of fresh vegetables and mascara and smart cotton frocks and conversation. With appalling clarity Lydgate saw that she wanted him. Either that (but after all he was grey and fifty; she thirty-six and with a clean chin-line still, unless the Australian years had started dragging her down, like Lawrence's kangaroo, towards the earth's centre); either that or she was to be used by Mudd as an instrument to torture and humiliate. Mudd still wanted to be a jockey. The horse's name was to be Lydgate – very long odds, no favourite. And, paradoxically, Mudd would pass the post when Lydgate had been well and truly nobbled.
"You a drop a me ere," said the garlic voice from behind. They were at the public clock where the two main streets crossed. The clock, electrically run, the best that money could buy, had thrown up its hands in despair at the many cuts. It was now always midday or midnight, and that seemed somehow right for a state where there were no half-measures. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten; high noon or the hour of ghosts and robbers. "From a ere I can a walk." The Dunia Hotel was a hundred yards away. Nando Tasca climbed out, panting. In the street lights he could be seen, in shorts and striped Manila shirt, as a one-time masher of village girls – sharp blue eyes, grey hair that waved, stubborn nose-now run to dancing bouncing blubber, a pregnant belly and woman's breasts, for men at length take on properties of the thing they prey on, and a chin of melting terraces. He waved now and, purposefully walking towards the beer that the British had taught him to relish above wine, presented to the two his broad stripe-clad moving back.
"A Loman Catholic," said Carruthers Chung, "and a velly flivolous man. For that leason I did not invite him to come and play with us."
Lydgate smiled. "You seem to take your bridge very seriously."
"Oh, yes. My blidge parties are a big thing in my life."
Carruthers Chung had an Educational Department house, for he taught in the English school, specialising in what he called 'inductive glamour'. Lydgate was surprised to see the house overspilling with guests. There were Syrians, Creoles, a few Potoks. Lydgate recognised Sebastian Hup on the veranda, talking in great agony to an exquisite young Chinese woman in swathed dragons and gold that flashed from the living-room lights behind. Lydgate had not known that Sebastian Hup was a bridge- player. Lydgate was led in, blinked in the brightness, saw candles ready for the next cut, massed tea-cups, no cards, no tables. Carruthers Chung introduced him to no one. Lydgate was puzzled. But almost at once the guests – some lovely girls among them – began to draw together, taking chairs all round the walls of the bare living-room, smiling at Lydgate encouragingly as they passed him. Lydgate smiled uneasily back. And then Carruthers Chung spoke He stood by the living-room door, his glasses filled with light, hands clasped easily before him, his voice amicable but strangely formal.
"We are all velly pleased to see a new fiiend, a new comlade with us this evening. I lefer to Mr. Lydgate, who will be easily lecognised by evelybody plesent, for he is the only Eulopean." There were more smiles of encouragement for Lydgate, and some smiles of sweet pity as well, as for the only leper present. "Mr. Lydgate has been blought here tonight on false pletences. There was laughter, but it was obviously the laughter appropriate to an old joke. Lydgate looked furtively behind him but saw that the door on to the veranda was closed, was apparently guarded, moreover, by two seraphically happy negro youths. "He is a blidge player – " Very large laughter came now. " – and, as a blidge player, he will appleciate a velly blief lésumé of the oligin of our movement. It oliginated, as evelybody will lemember, in leal – or what Mr. Lydgate will, in his plesent stage of development, call leal – blidge parties. When I was a younger man I was addicted to blidge. Blidge was my opium. And, as some willlemember, I was for a long time blidge collespondent to a syndicate of African newspapers. But, one night, after a bid of five no tlumps, I thought I heard a voice saying: 'Play, not play. If you want a blidge, let it be a blidge flom earth to heaven. Let your blidge parties build leal blidges flom the tempolal to the eternal.' And that velly night I made a start. And, ever since that night, many of our new lecluits have come flom the blidge-players of this town, the thlowers-away of plecious time. Now they are ledeeming the time, now they are pontiffs or blidge-builders, and the blidge they help to build gets nealer and nealer to the Thlone of Glace." Lydgate began to sweat heavily.
"We believe not only in playing, but in pulification by confession. Mr. Lydgate must be assured that he is among fliends, not stlangers. Blothers and sisters in God, as we all are, cannot be stlangers. We will give Mr. Lydgate five minutes in which to think about his tlansglessions, and then we shall all give him a sympathetic healing. He will shed his sins in the plesence of his fliends and, by God's glace, be pulified. We will sing one hymn while our fliend and blother thinks about his sins." Everybody stood up, all except Lydgate to sing, Lydgate to cry out:
"No! This isn't fair! I've been brought here under false pretences." Everybody laughed in a friendly way. Carruthers Chung smiled and said:
"That is what I said. You have been blought here under false pletences." .
"But I didn't come here to confess my sins. I came here for a night's bridge. It's not fair."
"Knightsbridge," whispered a charming girl near to him. "That is on the Piccadilly Line. I went to the London School of Economics."
"You accepted my invitation to come and play," said Carruthers Chung.
"Play, not pray," said Lydgate. "They're two different words."
Carruthers Chung made a delicate shrugging movement.
"To me they sound velly much alike. They are almost the same word."
"Anyway, I'm going," said Lydgate, shaking. "This is not my idea of a jolly evening."
Everybody laughed again, and Lydgate began to feel a fool. Obviously, the jolliest evening imaginable was one devoted to sin in action, and, if action were not possible, reminiscence could be a good second-best. But not reminiscence in public. Although, thought Lydgate, by God, I could make them sit up, I could tell them a few things. Yet he was angry, his fingers disappointed of the feel of cards, his palate of the taste of accompanying cigarettes and brandy. The charming girl from the London School of Economics (Euro-African, guessed Lydgate) whispered:
"Don't go. Please don't go. You will spoil the evening." "Oh, but look here," began Lydgate. Then all the lights went out.
"Oh," said the girl. "It's dark, I'm frightened of the dark."
"Where are you?" said Lydgate, the excitement of a fifty-year-old stirring in his arteries. But his groping hands encountered only the well-filled jacket of an aromatic male. The man giggled. Then candles were lighted and the room was full of shadows, huge, moving, like a procession of sins.
"Now," said Carruthers Chung, "let us laise our voices in a blief hymn."
"No, no!" called Lydgate. "I refuse to think about my sins. I haven't got any sins. It's the others who've sinned against me, not me against them. It's not fair, I tell you."
"More sinned against than sinning," nodded an intellectual-looking Potok.
"As a man sows," said Carruthers Chung, "so shall he leap. Now a hymn."
The congregation sang, in thin and thick voices:
"We will build a bridge to heaven, Build in earnest, not in play;
Night and morning, noon and even,
We will watch and we will pray."
Carruthers Chung's voice, louder than the rest, insisted on the homophonic nature of the even rhyming words. Lydgate said, "I'm going. Thank you, thank you, everybody. It's been very pleasant. I hope we'll meet again." He made for the veranda door. He felt, as he moved, that there was a certain devotional quality about his valediction; it was even apt for a death-bed. He began to shake again and he felt tears come into his eyes.
But already the hymn was over. Bright eyes in candle-shine were expectant. "Sit down, please," said Carruthers Chung. "Come forward, blother Lydgate. Come forward, the Plompter." Lydgate stood impotent, blocked by the two youths who, on examination, seemed to have sizeable muscles inside their shirts. Sebastian Hup came forward with Lydgate's confidential file.
"Look here," said Lydgate. "I'll say this. I don't want to seem boorish. I think you're probably doing something quite valuable in having these religious meetings. I'm not a religious man myself, but I do believe in sin. I mean, you can't live very long in a place like Africa without coming to the conclusion that sin really exists. But I don't think I've really anything to say about my own sins. I've done my best all the way along, and I don't think I've really let anybody down. It's always other people who've let me down. I've been let down in my work, and I've been let down in my private life. I've worked hard, but I've never made any money – "
"That," said Carruthers Chung, "is the sulest sign of sin."
“I’ve been let down by two wives. On after the other,” he added. “And I never did them any harm.”
How do you know?” asked Carruthers Chung.
“In Nairobi,” said Sebastian Hup, “you were married to a Miss Featherstone. She left you after six months. There must have been a good reason for that.” He frowned in pain.
"Mind your own blasted business," said Lydgate. He began to shout. "What have my private affairs to do with any of you? I want to live my own life, that's all. People won't leave me alone. I want to be left alone. I want to be left to do what I want to do."
There was silence. Carruthers Chung said, "I think Mr. Lydgate has been velly flank. One of the flankest confessions we have ever heard. The question is, does he lepent? Does he see the light?"
At that moment, of course, the electric light should have flashed back to life. But it did not. The romantic sinful shadows still jostled hugely.
"I've nothing to repent of," said Lydgate. "Nothing at all. And now I'm going."
After the good-byes, which were cordial and sympathetic, Lydgate went out, standing on the veranda for an instant while he cooled down. He heard Carruthers Chung introduce the night's speaker – a Mr. Alfred, who was to talk about the Book of Revelations, the mark of the beast – 666 – and the curious fact that that was the number of the U.N. Adviser's car. Lydgate began to walk to the Kool Kaffi, angrily thirsty. Everybody and everything let him down.
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