Graham Greene

by Richard Greene

  I left Lagos last Saturday (today’s Thursday) and flew to Accra. What I saw of it I didn’t like – except the superbly beautiful old Danish fort in which the Governor lives – like a stage set of Elsinore in dazzling white with the surf beating below on two sides. I stayed in an American transit camp for the night: a wind blowing up the red dust all the time, bad food and morose or drunk tough Americans belonging to the airline. Then on the Sunday I flew on here coming down in Liberia at a new aerodrome the Americans have made, for lunch – an overcooked steak literally a foot long. The planes are uncomfortable – freight planes in which the passengers sit upright facing each other the whole length on little metal seats like lavatory seats. The heat until you get well up is appalling and then of course the metal turns cold.

  I arrived in Freetown with no accommodation in the evening but the Governor2 – a very kind and intelligent man – put me up a couple of nights until I’d got a couple of boys and a cook, and then I moved into my dingy little Creole villa about two miles out of town in the flats. It’s terribly difficult to get anywhere to live alone in these days, so one can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. All the same I wish I was not just across the road from a transport camp in process of erection with two steam shovels going all day. And there’s no water although there are taps. Freetown has 147 inches a year, but distribution is so bad that there won’t be any water in my part till the rains six weeks hence. Drinking water I have to fetch in empty bottles from Freetown and then of course boil it, and bath water is fetched from a water hole. One tries not to think of germs and what the blacks do there and one pours in sanitas … I’m hoping that the police are getting me an oil-drum of water out in a few days. Sanitation of course is nonexistent.3 I shouldn’t mind this a bit if I was in the bush, but it’s depressing trying to keep clean to entertain and be entertained. This sounds a depressed letter, but I’m not really depressed. Just a bit badgered with housekeeping worries: it’s a little difficult at present to find time to work.

  […]

  I’m afraid letters from me will be rather few and far between. I have no assistant or secretary, and God knows how I shall get through the work. I’m turning my minute dining room here into an office as soon as I can get any desk or other furniture but practically everything is unobtainable here. For instance even ink can’t be bought for love or money, no soda water – a trial in a country where you have to boil and filter every drop – if you can get a drop. Even in the town taps stop running about 11 in the morning. People keep the two inches of their morning bath to serve again at night – this isn’t so good when you’ve sweated all day, but when the rains come it will be better.

  Well this has been a moan. I hadn’t meant it to be. In many ways we are better off than at home. Tomorrow’s Good Friday … Good Friday four years ago I went to a secret illegal Mass in Chiapas. I’ve had an odd life when I come to think of it. Useless and sometimes miserable, but bizarre and on the whole not boring.

  My love to all of you,

  Graham

  I’ve sent on the letter to Lagos and asked them to forward by air mail. It should get to Elisabeth in about a week to ten days. If a bag is going it will get there earlier. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t told you that it would probably have to go through the Egyptian censorship4 so I took the necessary liberty of reading it first. Now that I’ve told you I shan’t have to again. Sorry. C’est la guerre! I’m so glad you’ve got airgraph letters now.

  Much love.

  TO MARION GREENE

  C/O Bank of B. W. A. | Freetown,| Sierra Leone, |

  May 4 [1942]

  Dearest Mumma,

  […]

  I’m reading North and South by Mrs Gaskell at the moment. Some of it is very good – and the acid humour is most pleasant. Only people in Victorian novels do seem to behave so oddly whenever sex rears its ugly head! Tremors and horrors and indignations. Would they think we behaved oddly? perhaps they’d think just disgustingly. I’m leaving The Eustace Diamonds till my railway journey. I ration myself to one Trollope a month which will take me through November. Last night I had my first film for a long time. I went on board one of the naval ships and saw the full length Disney The Reluctant Dragon. It’s the one which takes one [on] a tour of the studios and throws in two or three films. I liked it more than any Disney for a long time. One sat on deckchairs on deck, and though the sound was a bit off, it was quite delightful with the lights of Freetown over the water.

  Freetown always looks its best from the water. On shore after the rain the plague of house flies has come back to my part. And at night there are far too many objects flying and crawling for my liking. Wherever one wants to put one’s hand suddenly, to turn on a switch or what not, there always seems to be a gigantic spider. Whenever one kills something which has flopped on the floor the ants come out and get to work, stripping the corpse and then heaving and pushing the skeleton towards the door. Last night I counted a slow procession of four black hearselike corpses: you couldn’t see the ants underneath. And I never get quite used to seeing a vulture sitting complacently on my roof as I come home. Their walk is peculiarly ugly. Putting up their wings like an umbrella they make a quick tottering reel forward.

  However I’m really comfortable now, and very lucky to have a house all to myself, a good cook, a fairly good steward … my small boy has gone off to join the army. Work at present is uneven. Days of extreme rush when I long for a secretary to take off the donkey work of typing etc., and then days of almost inertia which I dislike intensely. I’ve converted my dining room into my office, and eat and live in one large room.

  Give my love to Da.5 I’m glad he’s got over his cold. I believe you are having good weather at last or were four weeks ago. Good news today about Madagascar6 on the wireless, I gather. I haven’t been able to get a radio myself.

  Much love,

  Graham

  TO MARION GREENE

  Graham learned by telegraph that The Power and the Glory had been awarded the Hawthornden Prize.

  C/O Bank of B.W.A. | Freetown. | June 11 [1942]

  Dearest Mumma,

  I’m afraid it’s a long time since I’ve written, but I’ve been pretty busy this last month. It’s funny how things always seem to go well when I’m away; I’ve just heard about winning the Hawthornden prize and the film of A Gun for Sale. Vivien tells me it’s an extremely good film. I wonder whether you would be able to get up to London and have a look at it. But I expect it’s off again by this time: maybe it will come to Crowborough. Rather sad that one can’t have the presentation and speeches and so on of the Hawthornden, though the prizewinner always looks a little silly. And it’s odd that one feels pleased – apart from the hundred pounds which is always useful. There’s no real distinction in the prize: a few good books have won it, and a great many very bad ones – like Charles Morgan’s.7 I suppose at the bottom of every human mind is the rather degraded love of success – any kind of success. One feels ashamed of one’s own pleasure.

  I had a very nice week away from this loathly town in the Protectorate, visiting old haunts and seeing a few ghosts of the past. I went up to Kailahun and found the D. C. there was the man who had been headmaster of Bo School with whom I had had a good party when I was here before. Of course the result of being away a week was an awful accumulation of stuff here, which it took me a long time to clear. And travel now is appallingly tiring.

  The house is looking reasonably human now and as the rains are beginning there’s plenty of water, thank God. But none of my stuff has yet arrived from Lagos. It’s been waiting shipment twelve weeks. I feel that it could have been managed if anybody at the other end had taken trouble. Half my clothes are mouldering in a wooden case there, all my china and cutlery, and of course my car.

  Some friends of Vivien passed through the other day going out to Elisabeth’s part of the world, so I was able to send a letter. I’m extremely well, though I humbugged my knee a bit the other day. Humbug is the local expression. A
thief got into my living room and stole a loaf of bread, a table cloth, two bottles of beer, an unopened bottle of sherry, the fountain pen which I’ve had since 1926, and my sole remaining pair of glasses. (I cabled for more). So I got wire put up over all the windows which gives the impression that one is either living in a prison, a nursery, or a loony bin. The wretched carpenter left a coil of this rusty criss cross wire on the path, the same colour as the stones, and running out in the rain to a taxi I caught my foot in it, twisted my knee and cut it. I could hardly walk for 24 hours, but now it’s only a little stiff. The cut of course festered in a small way – you can’t scratch yourself here without festering, even if you swab on iodine at once, but I think the pus has all come out now and it should heal in a day or two.

  Last week was rather frantically social with dull people in every night for dinner or drinks, but this week, thank God, looks like being a little quieter. I see my cook approaching in the distance proudly escorting two carriers: the lord knows what he’s been buying: one has a pail on his head and the other a large box. I suppose I shall know soon. Things are a bit short here as we haven’t had any ships in for a good while. Milk (tinned of course) has been unobtainable, and butter too. (I see now it’s logs for the stove and not a box). But of course we are really very well off compared with England – though not quite so disgustingly so as Lagos.

  There’s a chance of sending this letter off by a quick route, so I must close. I hope Da’s keeping well. It really looks as if the war may be over next year. Don’t you feel so? Much love to you all from

  Graham

  TO RAYMOND GREENE

  C/O Bank of B. W. A. | Freetown,| Sierra Leone |

  July 23 [1942]

  Dear Raymond,

  It was extremely pleasant hearing from you. No, this isn’t an ideal spot, but in some ways it’s a good deal better than Lagos, and I have a house of a kind to myself and can close the door when I want to and be as morose as I like. The water difficulty of course is solved now by nature. So far I’ve rather liked the rains except on the occasions when it rains continually for three days and nights.

  Life was helped at the beginning by an excellent cook, but he’s gone off his head and my steward who is acting as cook has a rather horrifying range of dull dishes not too well done.

  I suppose one never enjoys what one is doing at the moment – even writing books, and I rather envy you the sense of a useful job. I’m not in the least convinced that I would not be far more useful in a munitions factory, and certainly one would prefer any factory town to this colonial slum. I shall probably rebel eventually and find myself at home again.

  […]

  I heard of your commando activity.8 It must have been fun. I wish they would take me on as a kind of war historian-observer. With honorary rank and no dull regimental duties. These are the idle dreams of an exile.

  I get away from this place up-country when I can and have revisited a few old spots and met ghosts of the past, but it’s difficult to get away and when I do I pay for it by several 12 hour days getting through the arrears of dull routine stuff that has stacked up for me.

  Well you know the S.P. has quite a function even in the tropics – security.9 Of which there is never very much when more than three Englishmen are together. The ideal of security I suppose is one man in an igloo surrounded by 500 miles of snow.

  Do write again and let me know more about your nurses’ constipation. I’ve been very well so far; the irritating thing about this climate is that you can’t scratch yourself without going septic.

  The rain is drenching down and I must back to work. My love to Eleanor.

  Yours,

  Graham

  TO HUGH GREENE

  In a letter of 28 June 1942, Hugh had told Graham that a ‘very nice piece and a good drinking companion’ would be taking up a government job in Freetown. He thought she might be a ‘comfort’ to him. He also said that he saw Dorothy Glover from time to time and that they were planning an illustrated book called ‘Sights of London’ to be published after the war.

  co Bank of B.W.A. | Freetown, | Sierra Leone. |

  August 1 [1942]

  Dear Hugh,

  Many thanks for your note. I’ll look out for the girl, but I don’t feel inclined really for a playmate. Life is quite complicated enough as it is, and I’m still in love! A drinking companion would be a boon if there was anywhere to drink and anything to drink. But there’s only one hotel, and nothing to get but bad bottled export beer of uncertain kinds, Scotch if you are lucky, gin which is a depressant, and South African wines that make you feel like hell next morning.

  I should certainly warn the poor thing off these parts: they really are not a catch, unless she likes being swarmed around by subalterns.

  Doll wrote me about the bawdy book she’s planning with you as evasively as you. I long to hear more. I wish you’d told me how she was looking, whether she seemed well, could down her pint and Irish as readily, etc. Give her my love. In the ordinary course of things I should have been most grateful for your tasteful and reliable pimping, but I’ve become terribly one-idead. This letter is not for circulation!

  O, I hear your two teeth have been taken out and put back, straight. I can’t help feeling you will lose some of your charm.

  This place will be most amusing to look back on, I daresay, but it’s extraordinary how dull and boring the bizarre can be at the time. I’m getting grey, more and more bad tempered, and rather a bully.

  Elisabeth’s engagement was pleasing. The man is very nice and intelligent. I was afraid that she was emotionally tied up with the middle-aged married sailor. God knows what size the children will be, as the man is a good bit taller than me.10 I envy you Sweden.11 I suddenly realise I’d better not send this off till you return. God bless.

  Graham

  TO ELISABETH GREENE (LATER DENNYS)

  c/o Police H.Q. | Freetown, | October 15 [1942]

  Dear Elisabeth,

  I’ve just got your letter of Sep. 19. I’m so sorry things have not gone too well. Things can be hell, I know. The peculiar form it’s taken with me the last four years has been in loving two people as equally as makes no difference, the awful struggle to have your cake and eat it, the inability to throw over one for the sake of the other…. This, of course, is confidential. Yours is different and I imagine just as hellish. I always used to laugh at emotional situations and feel they couldn’t any of them beat toothache. One lives and learns.

  You say you’d like any suggestions, though as you quite rightly say other people’s suggestions are no bloody good. My own feeling is that climate can play the absolute devil with things: the whole atmosphere of a place like this is artificial in the extreme and I imagine it’s a bit the same with you. A kind of feverish mental sexuality with much impaired vitalities. People talking the whole time and the doing not so hot. (Here comes a tornado – blast it: I’d much rather have a blitz than a bad thunder-storm). And that’s hellishly wearing on the nerves. I don’t personally suffer from it because my life is too complicated to want any further complications.

  What I’m circuitously getting at is that I’d humbly and probably impracticably suggest that you, as it were, break off officially with the mutual understanding that you’ve no objection to his making love to you again whether you are engaged or not if he wants to when you are both back in a reasonable climate – put it up to your respective parents that you’ve decided that it’s better to wait and see whether you like each other when circumstances are normal. Then make head office give you over-lapping leaves. Not leaves at the same time, that’s too purposeful like making a date to sleep with a new lech on a certain day.

  Of course, I don’t know what your relations with Rodney are, but remember that if you are just engaged, even in a temperate climate a man can lose about five of his skins … I remember ghastly headaches … I’m assuming for the sake of argument that you are just engaged. In which case, for God’s sake, remember that it’s a distinct p
ossibility to fall badly in love after sleeping with a man, and that’s the kind that goes on. A man improves enormously too under that treatment in the way of nerves, thin-skinnedness, sociability and the like. Only, of course, it mustn’t be done as an ‘experiment’, but because one’s feeling cheerful and a little drunk perhaps and in the mood…. I’m rambling on and teaching you to suck eggs. I’m sorry.

  I had about two months ago a violent quarrel with my local boss and resigned. I was supported on the point at issue and offered a new position for which I was totally unfitted by lack of languages, though it would have been most interesting. I’m not quite sure or not whether I’m now going home under a cloud. I think not as I am not being replaced. This is a quite useless spot. Anyway you’ll probably hear of me yet cleaning latrines on Salisbury Plain.

  […]

  Much love and I hope things improve one way or another.

  Graham

  Reading this over I feel it’s an awful flow of platitudes already familiar. I’m getting rapidly middle-aged in this climate. Forgive them.