The Ministry of Fear

by Graham Greene

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said with strange ferocity. ‘Never be sorry again.’

  ‘I just meant – this silly brain of mine.’

  She said, ‘My name’s Anna.’ She watched him carefully, ‘Hilfe.’

  ‘That sounds foreign.’

  ‘I am Austrian.’

  He said, ‘All this is so new to me. We are at war with Germany. Isn’t Austria . . . ?’

  ‘I’m a refugee.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve read about them.’

  ‘You have even forgotten the war?’ she asked.

  ‘I have a terrible lot to learn,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, terrible. But need they teach it you?’ She repeated, ‘You look so much happier . . .’

  ‘One wouldn’t be happy, not knowing anything.’ He hesitated and again said, ‘You must excuse me. There are so many questions. Were we simply friends?’

  ‘Just friends. Why?’

  ‘You are very pretty. I couldn’t tell . . .’

  ‘You saved my life.’

  ‘How did I do that?’

  ‘When the bomb went off – just before it went off – you knocked me down and fell on me. I wasn’t hurt.’

  ‘I’m very glad. I mean,’ he laughed nervously, ‘there might be all sorts of discreditable things to learn. I’m glad there’s one good one.’

  ‘It seems so strange,’ she said. ‘All these terrible years since 1933 – you’ve just read about them, that’s all. They are history to you. You’re fresh. You aren’t tired like all the rest of us everywhere.’

  ‘1933,’ he said. ‘1933. Now 1066, I can give you that easily. And all the kings of England – at least – I’m not sure . . . perhaps not all.’

  ‘1933 was when Hitler came to power.’

  ‘Of course. I remember now. I’ve read it all over and over again, but the dates don’t stick.’

  ‘And I suppose the hate doesn’t either.’

  ‘I haven’t any right to talk about these things,’ he said. ‘I haven’t lived them. They taught me at school that William Rufus was a wicked king with red hair – but you couldn’t expect us to hate him. People like yourself have a right to hate. I haven’t. You see I’m untouched.’

  ‘Your poor face,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, the scar. That might have been anything – a motor-car accident. And after all they were not meaning to kill me.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’m not important.’ He had been talking foolishly, at random. He had assumed something, and after all there was nothing he could safely assume. He said anxiously, ‘I’m not important, am I? I can’t be, or it would have been in the papers.’

  ‘They let you see the papers?’

  ‘Oh yes, this isn’t a prison, you know.’ He repeated, ‘I’m not important?’

  She said evasively, ‘You are not famous.’

  ‘I suppose the doctor won’t let you tell me anything. He says he wants it all to come through my memory, slowly and gently. But I wish you’d break the rule about just one thing. It’s the only thing that worries me. I’m not married, am I?’

  She said slowly, as if she wanted to be very accurate and not to tell him more than was necessary, ‘No, you are not married.’

  ‘It was an awful idea that I might suddenly have to take up an old relationship which would mean a lot to someone else and nothing to me. Just something I had been told about, like Hitler. Of course, a new one’s different.’ He added with a shyness that looked awkward with grey hair, ‘You are a new one.’

  ‘And now there’s nothing left to worry you?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Or only one thing – that you might go out of that door and not come back.’ He was always making advances and then hurriedly retreating like a boy who hasn’t learned the technique. He said, ‘You see, I’ve suddenly lost all my friends except you.’

  She said rather sadly, ‘Did you have a great many?’

  ‘I suppose – by my age – one would have collected a good many.’ He said cheerfully, ‘Or was I such a monster?’

  She wouldn’t be cheered up. She said, ‘Oh, I’ll come back. They want me to come back. They want to know, you see, as soon as you begin to remember . . .’

  ‘Of course they do. And you are the only clue they can give me. But have I got to stay here till I remember?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be much good, would you, without a memory – outside?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. There’s plenty of work for me. If the army won’t have me, there’s munitions . . .’

  ‘Do you want to be in it all again?’

  He said, ‘This is lovely and peaceful. But it’s only a holiday after all. One’s got to be of use.’ He went on, ‘Of course, it would be much easier if I knew what I’d been, what I could do best. I can’t have been a man of leisure. There wasn’t enough money in my family.’ He watched her face carefully while he guessed. ‘There aren’t so many professions. Army, Navy, Church . . . I wasn’t wearing the right clothes . . . if these are my clothes.’ There was so much room for doubt. ‘Law? Was it law, Anna? I don’t believe it. I can’t see myself in a wig getting some poor devil hanged.’

  Anna said, ‘No.’

  ‘It doesn’t connect. After all, the child does make the man. I never wanted to be a lawyer. I did want to be an explorer – but that’s unlikely. Even with this beard. They tell me the beard really does belong. I wouldn’t know. Oh,’ he went on, ‘I had enormous dreams of discovering unknown tribes in Central Africa. Medicine? No, I never liked doctoring. Too much pain. I hated pain.’ He was troubled by a slight dizziness. He said, ‘It made me feel ill, sick, hearing of pain. I remember – something about a rat.’

  ‘Don’t strain,’ she said. ‘It’s not good to try too hard. There’s no hurry.’

  ‘Oh, that was neither here nor there. I was a child then. Where did I get to? Medicine . . . Trade. I wouldn’t like to remember suddenly that I was the general manager of a chain store. That wouldn’t connect either. I never particularly wanted to be rich. I suppose in a way I wanted to lead – a good life.’

  Any prolonged effort made his head ache. But there were things he had to remember. He could let old friendships and enmities remain in oblivion, but if he were to make something of what was left of life he had to know of what he was capable. He looked at his hand and flexed the fingers: they didn’t feel useful.

  ‘People don’t always become what they want to be,’ Anna said.

  ‘Of course not; a boy always wants to be a hero. A great explorer. A great writer . . . But there’s usually a thin disappointing connection. The boy who wants to be rich goes into a bank. The explorer becomes – oh, well, some underpaid colonial officer marking minutes in the heat. The writer joins the staff of a penny paper . . .’ He said, ‘I’m sorry. ‘I’m not as strong as I thought. I’ve gone a bit giddy. I’ll have to stop – work – for the day.’

  Again she asked with odd anxiety, ‘They are good to you here?’

  ‘I’m a prize patient,’ he said. ‘An interesting case.’

  ‘And Dr Forester – you like Dr Forester?’

  ‘He fills one with awe,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve changed so much.’ She made a remark he couldn’t understand. ‘This is how you should have been.’ They shook hands like strangers. He said, ‘And you’ll come back often?’

  ‘It’s my job,’ she said, ‘Arthur.’ It was only after she had gone that he wondered at the name.

  4

  In the mornings a servant brought him breakfast in bed: coffee, toast, a boiled egg. The Home was nearly self-supporting; it had its own hens and pigs and a good many acres of rough shooting. The doctor did not shoot himself; he did not approve, Johns said, of taking animal life, but he was not a doctrinaire. His patients needed meat, and therefore shoots were held, though the doctor took no personal part. ‘It’s really the idea of making it a sport,’ Johns explained, ‘which is against the grain. I think he’d really rather trap . . .�
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  On the tray lay always the morning paper. Digby had not been allowed this privilege for some weeks, until the war had been gently broken to him. Now he could lie late in bed, propped comfortably on three pillows, take a look at the news: ‘Air Raid Casualties this Week are Down to 255’, sip his coffee and tap the shell of his boiled egg: then back to the paper – ‘The Battle of the Atlantic’. The eggs were always done exactly right: the white set and the yolk liquid and thick. Back to the paper: ‘The Admiralty regret to announce . . . lost with all hands.’ There was always enough butter to put a little in the egg, for the doctor kept his own cows.

  This morning as he was reading Johns came in for a chat, and Digby looking up from the paper asked, ‘What’s a Fifth Column?’

  There was nothing Johns liked better than giving information. He talked for quite a while, bringing in Napoleon.

  ‘In other words people in enemy pay?’ Digby said. ‘That’s nothing new.’

  ‘There’s this difference,’ Johns said. ‘In the last war – except for Irishmen like Casement – the pay was always cash. Only a certain class was attracted. In this war there are all sorts of ideologies. The man who thinks gold is evil. . . . He’s naturally attracted to the German economic system. And the men who for years have talked against nationalism . . . well, they are seeing all the old national boundaries obliterated. Pan-Europe. Perhaps not quite in the way they meant. Napoleon too appealed to idealists.’ His glasses twinkled in the morning sun with the joys of instruction. ‘When you come to think of it, Napoleon was beaten by the little men, the materialists. Shop-keepers and peasants. People who couldn’t see beyond their counter or their field. They’d eaten their lunch under that hedge all their life and they meant to go on doing it. So Napoleon went to St Helena.’

  ‘You don’t sound a convinced patriot yourself,’ Digby said.

  ‘Oh, but I am,’ Johns said earnestly. ‘I’m a little man too. My father’s a chemist, and how he hates all these German medicines that were flooding the market. I’m like him. I’d rather stick to Burroughs and Wellcome than all the Bayers. . . .’ He went on, ‘All the same, the other does represent a mood. It’s we who are the materialists. The scrapping of all the old boundaries, the new economic ideas . . . the hugeness of the dream. It is attractive to men who are not tied – to a particular village or town they don’t want to see scrapped. People with unhappy childhoods, progressive people who learn Esperanto, vegetarians who don’t like shedding blood.’

  ‘But Hitler seems to be shedding plenty.’

  ‘Yes, but the idealists don’t see blood like you and I do. They aren’t materialists. It’s all statistics to them.’

  ‘What about Dr Forester?’ Digby asked. ‘He seems to fit the picture.’

  ‘Oh,’ Johns said enthusiastically, ‘he’s sound as a bell. He’s written a pamphlet for the Ministry of Information, “The Psycho-Analysis of Nazidom”. But there was a time,’ he added, ‘when there was – talk. You can’t avoid witch-hunting in wartime, and, of course, there were rivals to hollo on the pack. You see, Dr Forester – well, he’s so alive to everything. He likes to know. For instance, spiritualism – he’s very interested in spiritualism, as an investigator.’

  ‘I was just reading the questions in Parliament,’ Digby said. ‘They suggest there’s another kind of Fifth Column. People who are blackmailed.’

  ‘The Germans are wonderfully thorough,’ Johns said. ‘They did that in their own country. Card-indexed all the so-called leaders, Socialites, diplomats, politicians, labour leaders, priests – and then presented the ultimatum. Everything forgiven and forgotten, or the Public Prosecutor. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d done the same thing over here. They formed, you know, a kind of Ministry of Fear – with the most efficient under-secretaries. It isn’t only that they get a hold on certain people. It’s the general atmosphere they spread, so that you can’t depend on a soul.’

  ‘Apparently,’ Digby said, ‘this M.P. has got the idea that important plans were stolen from the Ministry of Home Security. They had been brought over from a Service Ministry for a consultation and lodged overnight. He claims that next morning they were found to be missing.’

  ‘There must be an explanation,’ Johns said.

  ‘There is. The Minister says that the honourable member was misinformed. The plans were not required for the morning conference, and at the afternoon conference they were produced, fully discussed and returned to the Service Ministry.’

  ‘These M.P.s get hold of odd stories,’ Johns said.

  ‘Do you think,’ Digby asked, ‘that by any chance I was a detective before this happened? That might fit the ambition to be an explorer, mightn’t it? Because there seem to me to be so many holes in the statement.’

  ‘It seems quite clear to me.’

  ‘The M.P. who asked the question must have been briefed by someone who knew about those plans. Somebody at the conference – or somebody who was concerned in sending or receiving the plans. Nobody else could have known about them. Their existence is admitted by the Minister.’

  ‘Yes, yes. That’s true.’

  ‘It’s strange that anyone in that position should spread a canard. And do you notice that in that smooth elusive way politicians have the Minister doesn’t, in fact, deny that the plans were missing? He says that they weren’t wanted, and that when they were wanted they were there.’

  ‘You mean there was time to photograph them?’ Johns said excitedly. ‘Would you mind if I smoked a cigarette? Here, let me take your tray.’ He spilt some coffee on the bed-sheet. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘there was a suggestion of that kind made nearly three months ago? It was just after your arrival. I’ll look it out for you. Dr Forester keeps a file of The Times. Some papers were missing then for several hours. They tried to hush that up – said it was just a case of carelessness and that the papers had never been out of the Ministry. An M.P. made a fuss – talked about photographs, and they came down on him like a sledge-hammer. Trying to undermine public confidence. The papers had never left the possession – I can’t remember whose possession. Somebody whose word you had to take or else one of you would go to Brixton, and you could feel sure that it wouldn’t be he. The papers shut down on it right away.’

  ‘It would be strange, wouldn’t it, if the same thing had happened again.’

  Johns said excitedly, ‘Nobody outside would know. And the others wouldn’t say.’

  ‘Perhaps the first time was a failure. Perhaps the photos didn’t come out properly. Someone bungled. And of course they couldn’t use the same man twice. They had to wait until they got their hands on a second man. Until they had him carded and filed in the Ministry of Fear.’ He thought aloud, ‘I suppose the only men they couldn’t blackmail for something shabby would be saints – or outcasts with nothing to lose.’

  ‘You weren’t a detective,’ Johns exclaimed, ‘you were a detective writer.’

  Digby said, ‘You know, I feel quite tired. The brain begins to tick and then suddenly I feel so tired I could lie down and sleep. Perhaps I will.’ He closed his eyes and then opened them again. ‘The thing to do,’ he said, ‘would be to follow up the first case . . . the bungle done, to find the point of failure.’ Then he slept.

  5

  It was a fine afternoon, and Digby went for a solitary walk in the garden. Several days had passed since Anna Hilfe’s visit, and he felt restless and moody like a boy in love. He wanted an opportunity to show that he was no invalid, that his mind could work as well as another man’s. There was no satisfaction in shining before Johns . . . He dreamed wildly between the box-hedges.

  The garden was of a rambling kind which should have belonged to childhood and only belonged to childish men. The apple trees were old apple trees and gave the effect of growing wild; they sprang unexpectedly up in the middle of a rose-bed, trespassed on a tennis-court, shaded the window of a little outside lavatory like a potting-shed which was used by the gardener – an old man who could always be
located from far away by the sound of a scythe or the trundle of a wheelbarrow. A high red brick wall divided the flower-garden from the kitchen-garden and the orchard, but flowers and fruit could not be imprisoned by a wall. Flowers broke among the artichokes and sprang up like flames under the trees. Beyond the orchard the garden faded gradually out into paddocks and a stream and a big untidy pond with an island the size of a billiard-table.

  It was by the pond that Digby found Major Stone. He heard him first: a succession of angry grunts like a dog dreaming. Digby scrambled down a bank to the black edge of the water and Major Stone turned his very clear blue military eyes on him and said, ‘The job’s got to be done.’ There was mud all over his tweed suit and mud on his hands; he had been throwing large stones into the water and now he was dragging a plank he must have found in the potting-shed along the edge of the water.

  ‘It’s sheer treachery,’ Major Stone said, ‘to leave a place like that unoccupied. You could command the whole house. . . .’ He slid the plank forward so that one end rested on a large stone. ‘Steady does it,’ he said. He advanced the plank inch by inch towards the next stone. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘you ease it along. I’ll take the other end.’

  ‘Surely you aren’t going in?’

  ‘No depth at this side,’ Major Stone said, and walked straight into the pond. The black mud closed over his shoes and the turn-ups of his trousers. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘push. Steady does it.’ Digby pushed, but pushed too hard: the plank toppled sideways into the mud. ‘Damnation,’ said Major Stone. He bent and heaved and brought the plank up: scattering mud up to his waist, he lugged it ashore.

  ‘Apologize,’ he said. ‘My temper’s damned short. You aren’t a trained man. Good of you to help.’

  ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t much good.’

  ‘Just give me half a dozen sappers,’ Major Stone said, ‘and you’d see . . .’ He stared wistfully across at the little bushy island. ‘But it’s no good asking for the impossible. We’ve just got to make do. We’d manage all right if it wasn’t for all this treachery.’ He looked Digby in the eyes as though he were sizing him up. ‘I’ve seen you about here a lot,’ he said. ‘Never spoke to you before. Liked the look of you, if you don’t mind my saying so. I suppose you’ve been sick like the rest of us. Thank God, I’ll be leaving here soon. Able to be of use again. What’s been your trouble?’