‘You’re the new accountant at the U

‘You’re the new accountant at the U.A.C.?’
‘That’s me. Have a drink?’
‘I’ll have a lemon squash if you don’t mind. Can’t drink in the middle of the day.’
The Indian rose from his table and approached with deference, ‘You remember me, Mr Harris. Perhaps you would tell your friend, Mr Harris, of my talents. Perhaps he would like to read my letters of recommendation ...’ The grubby sheaf of envelopes was always in his hand. ‘The leaders of society.’
‘Be off. Beat it, you old scoundrel,’ Harris said.
‘How did you know my name?’ Wilson asked.
‘Saw it on a cable. I’m a cable censor,’ Harris said. ‘What a job! What a place!’
‘I can see from here, Mr Harris, that your fortune has chan-ged considerably. If you would step with me for a moment into the bathroom...’
‘Beat it, Gunga Din.’
‘Why the bathroom?’ Wilson asked.
‘He always tells fortunes there. I suppose it’s the only pri-vate room available. I never thought of asking why.’
‘Been here long?’
‘Eighteen bloody months.’
‘Going home soon?’
Harris stared over the tin roofs towards the harbour. He said, ‘The ships all go the wrong way. But when I do get home you’ll never see me here again.’ He lowered his voice and said with venom over his lemon squash, ‘I hate the place. I hate the people. I hate the bloody niggers. Mustn’t call ‘em that you know.’
‘My boy seems all right’
‘A man’s boy’s always all right. He’s a real nigger - but these, look at ‘em, look at that one with a feather boa down there. They aren’t even real niggers. Just West Indians and they rule the coast Clerks in the stores, city council, magistrates, law-yers - my God. It’s all right up in the Protectorate. I haven’t anything to say against a real nigger. God made our colours. But these - my God! The Government’s afraid of them. The police are afraid of them. Look down there,’ Harris said, ‘look at Scobie.’
A vulture flapped and shifted on the iron roof and Wilson looked at Scobie. He looked without interest in obedience to a stranger’s direction, and it seemed to him that no particular interest attached to the squat grey-haired man walking alone up Bond Street. He couldn’t tell that this was one of those oc-casions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch.
‘He loves ‘em so much,’ Harris said, ‘he sleeps with ‘em.’
‘Is that the police uniform?’
‘It is. Our great police force. A lost thing will they never find - you know the poem.’
‘I don’t read poetry,’ Wilson said. His eyes followed Scobie up the sun-drowned street. Scobie stopped and had a word with a black man in a white panama: a black policeman passed by, saluting smartly. Scobie went on.
‘Probably in the pay of the Syrians too if the truth were known.’
‘The Syrians?’
‘This is the original Tower of Babel,’ Harris said. ‘West In-dians, Africans, real Indians, Syrians, Englishmen, Scotsmen in the Office of Works, Irish priests, French priests, Alsatian priests.