A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene Page B

alone.’
    ‘I had company as far as the Perrins’. I spent the night there. My husband asked me to bring you two drums of oil.’
    ‘How very kind of him.’
    ‘I am afraid we do too little for the leproserie.’
    It occurred to the Superior that he might ask the Ryckers to supply a few of the novel foot-baths, but he was uncertain how many they could afford. To a man without possessions any man with money appears rich – should he ask for one foot-bath or the whole three dozen? He began to turn the photographs towards Marie Rycker, cautiously, so that it might look as though he were only fiddling with his papers. It would be so much easier for him to speak if she were to exclaim, ‘What an interesting new foot-bath,’ so that he could follow up by saying –
    Instead of that she confused him by changing the subject. ‘How are the plans for the new church, father?’
    ‘New church?’
    ‘My husband told me you were building a wonderful new church as big as a cathedral, in an African style.’
    ‘What an extraordinary idea. If I had the money for that’ – not with all his scraps of paper could he calculate the cost of a ‘church like a cathedral’ – ‘why, we could build a hundred houses, each with a foot-bath.’ He turned the catalogue a little more towards her. ‘Doctor Colin would never forgive me for wasting money on a church.’
    ‘I wonder why my husband . . . ?’
    Was it possibly a hint, the Superior wondered, that the Ryckers were prepared to finance . . . He could hardly believe that the manager of a palm-oil factory had made himself sufficiently rich, but Mme Rycker of course might have been left a fortune. Her inheritance would certainly be the talk of Luc, but he only made the journey to the town once a year. He said, ‘The old church, you know, will serve us a long time yet. Only half our people are Catholics. Anyway it’s no use having a great church if the people still live in mud huts. Now our friend Querry sees a way of cutting the cost of a cottage by a quarter. We were such amateurs here until he came.’
    ‘My husband has told everyone that M. Querry is building a church.’
    ‘Oh no, we have better uses for him than that. The new hospital too is a long way from being finished. Any money we can beg or steal must go to equipping it. I’ve just been looking at these catalogues . . .’
    ‘Where is M. Querry now?’
    ‘Oh, I expect he’s working in his room, unless he’s with the doctor.’
    ‘Everybody was talking about him at the Governor’s two weeks ago.’
    ‘Poor M. Querry.’
    A small black child hardly more than two feet high walked into the room without knocking, coming in like a scrap of shadow from the noonday glare outside. He was quite naked and his little tassel hung like a bean-pod below the pot-belly. He opened a drawer in the Superior’s desk and pulled out a sweet. Then he walked out again.
    ‘They were being quite complimentary,’ Mme Rycker said. ‘Is it true – about his boy getting lost . . . ?’
    ‘Something of the sort happened. I don’t know what they are saying.’
    ‘That he stayed all night and prayed . . .’
    ‘M. Querry is hardly a praying man.’
    ‘My husband thinks a lot of him. There are so few people my husband can talk to. He asked me to come here and invite . . .’
    ‘We are very grateful for the two drums of oil. What you have saved with those, we can spend . . .’ He turned the photograph of the bidet a little farther towards Mme Rycker.
    ‘Do you think I could speak to him?’
    ‘The trouble is, Mme Rycker, this is his hour for work.’
    She said imploringly, ‘I only want to be able to tell my husband that I’ve asked him,’ but her small toneless voice contained no obvious appeal and the Superior was looking elsewhere, at a feature of the foot-bath which he did not fully understand. ‘What do you think of that?’ he asked.
    ‘What?’
    ‘This foot-bath. I want to get three dozen for the