The Unquiet Englishman

by Richard Greene

  Further medical tests at the beginning of February showed that his haemoglobin count had plunged again, and confirmed that he was suffering from aplastic anaemia, a condition in which the bone marrow fails to produce enough red blood cells. Transfusions could not get to the root of the problem, and, given his age and frailty, Greene was not a candidate for a bone marrow transplant.11 He received frequent vitamin B12 injections and was ordered to reduce his drinking, even though the doctor thought a little vodka necessary for ‘morale’.12

  On top of his illness, Greene was outraged by news from Central America. Before dawn on 16 November 1989, thirty uniformed soldiers, carrying arms Washington had paid for, raided a Jesuit residence at the San Salvador campus of the University of Central America, torturing and killing six priests, a cook, and her daughter.13 On 20 December 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause, an invasion of Panama and its largest military venture since Vietnam. There was hard fighting, and Noriega initially avoided capture by taking refuge in the Vatican embassy, which the Americans famously bombarded with rock music and the noise of helicopter blades. He surrendered on 3 January 1989 and was arraigned in Florida the next day on charges of drug trafficking, conspiracy, and racketeering.14

  At first, there was no word about Chuchu. A rumour reached Greene that he had been shot and killed, but then, unexpectedly, Chuchu called him.15 He had not been involved in the fighting and was now moving from one refuge to another. He then took to calling Greene late at night; since the novelist could not easily get to the telephone, Yvonne had one installed by his bed.16 Bernard Diederich recalls that a reporter tracked Chuchu down; he was composing in his head a book for Panamanian children of the future, so that they could understand what terrible things had happened. Although feeling betrayed by Noriega, he had not surrendered to the Americans. He told the reporter, ‘We haven’t lost very much because we didn’t have anything . . . Nothing remains of Torrijos. There is nothing to defend. I’m more pessimistic than ever.’17 A year earlier, Greene might have boarded a plane and headed straight to Panama; now it was a challenge to leave his flat. Even so, he outlived his friend. Chuchu died of a heart attack at his home after a jog on 27 January 1991; he was sixty-one.18

  Unsurprisingly, Greene abhorred the invasion and maintained that American dominance of the region was worse than Noriega’s involvement in the drug trade. Another disappointment was in the works: in an election on 25 February 1990, Daniel Ortega lost the presidency of Nicaragua to a former ally, the publisher Violeta Chamorra, who had broken with him over the Sandinistas’ insistence on hard-left orthodoxy.19

  Greene understood his own situation. He wrote to Francis on 12 February 1990: ‘I have just escaped death, but am still not far from it. I shall not write any more books’. His memory was failing, so he turned to his son to handle the transfer of his business to a new agent, Bruce Hunter of David Higham Associates, and to deal with publishers.20

  His treatments were tedious: blood transfusions every two weeks and vitamin injections every three days.21 It seems Yvonne and those closest to Graham said little about his condition: they wanted to avoid a press frenzy, and also did not want to worry his sister Elisabeth, who had had a debilitating stroke in 1989, or Rodney, who suffered one at the end of 1990.22 Elisabeth was much on Graham’s mind, and in order to ensure that she was fully provided for he made a gift to her of his archives, which were later sold to Boston College. Yvonne believed that grief over Elisabeth’s condition shortened Graham’s own life.23

  In spring 1990, Yvonne convinced Graham that they must move to Switzerland. Antibes was very noisy in summer, and getting away would be a relief. By early May he had sold the much-loved house in Anacapri; the journey there was now too difficult and he needed to be near a good hospital. They took a two-bedroom flat on Chemin du Châno in Corseaux, which was then part of Vevey.24 It had a beautiful view of Lake Geneva, and both Graham and Yvonne had daughters and grandchildren living near by. He had arranged for his books from the flat in Paris, now occupied by the ailing Marie Biche, to be brought to Corseaux so he could enjoy having them around him.25 He made his last visit to Antibes in September.26

  He did some work in his last months, but it was hard to sustain. He pored over a selection from his dream diaries, a large and enigmatic body of writing which he wisely chose to organize according to theme. Knowing time was short, he entrusted the completion of this work to Yvonne, who collaborated with Louise Dennys on the short volume A World of My Own, which appeared in June 1992.

  He lost a good deal of weight that summer and by the end of September was less than 140 pounds;27 in the past he had weighed as much as 180 pounds. He did his best to keep his legs working: even in the days before his death he was still forcing himself to do a hundred paces a day.28

  A low point came around Christmas 1990, when he was again hospitalized. The first time Yvonne had seen Graham cry had been upon hearing the news of Dorothy Glover’s death. On this occasion, he turned his head away and said, ‘I love you; you know how much I love you’, and wept. For Yvonne, this was the most desolating moment, and she left the hospital near despair. Her spirits were revived, a little, by a long conversation with Caroline and two glasses of whisky.29

  The exactness of his thinking made him hard to comfort. When Yvonne’s daughter reminded him of all the fine books he had written, he answered: ‘A few, yes, are good books. Perhaps people will think of me from time to time as they think of Flaubert.’30 He spoke a good deal about whether there might be an eternal life, coming down, cautiously, in favour of the idea, but he could not accept an eternity without time, change, and movement.

  In mid-March he went to the Hôpital de la Providence, where he had been receiving his treatments, and learned that his body was rejecting the transfusions. There was little more that could be done. This news had an odd effect, jolting him out of his depression. According to Caroline, he was very curious about what was now to happen. He said to Yvonne, ‘at last I shall know what lies on the other side of the fence’.31 He was anxious to be on his way.

  Clutching a volume of the letters of Ezra Pound, he went into hospital for the last time on 30 March 1991. Among those now in attendance was Elisabeth’s daughter Amanda Saunders, who had taken over as his secretary. He had a longstanding arrangement for Father Durán to give him the last rites. When Yvonne asked if they should send for him, he had no strong opinion and allowed her to decide. He received the sacraments on 2 April 1991, and died the next morning, at 11:40 a.m.32 He had, perhaps, imagined the moment at the end of The Captain and the Enemy, when Jim Baxter says: ‘I write a line under all this scroll before I throw the whole thing into the same waste-paper basket, where anyone who chooses can find it. The line means Finis. I’m on my own now and I am following my own mules to find my own future.’33

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  Illustrations Insert

  The young Graham Greene, an outsider at school and a manic depressive, attempted suicide, spent six months undergoing psychoanalysis, then tried a form of Russian roulette.

  Charles Greene, father of Graham and headmaster of Berkhamsted School. Young Graham was torn between his loyalty to his father and loyalty to the boys in his dormitory, and was traumatized.

  Intellectual, elegant and remote, Marion Greene encouraged her son through a life he once described to her as ‘Useless and sometimes miserable, but bizarre and on the whole not boring.’

  The Greene siblings c. 1916 Graham, Raymond, Herbert (in uniform), Hugh, Molly and Elisabeth.

  Graham and his brother Hugh, c. 1912.

  Graham, at about twelve, in the greenhouses where his father grew rare orchids.

  Berkhamsted School: Graham sits in the centre of the front row; Charles Greene sits in the centre of the second row, with Marion to his left.

  Photograph by Stewart Mark, Camera Press London

  Graham in a Balliol College blazer. He went up to Oxford at the age of eighteen and spent much of his ti
me there ‘in a general haze of drink’.

  Graham’s younger brother and closest friend, Hugh Carleton Greene, knighted in 1964, was a reforming Director-General of the BBC.

  ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images

  A physician and mountaineer, Graham’s elder brother Raymond was part of a nearly successful attempt on Mount Everest in 1933.

  Royal Geographical Society/Getty Images

  Graham Greene, on the far right, with colleagues at The Times during the General Strike of 1926. When it was over, he lamented the end of free beer at the office.

  Graham and his cousin Barbara Greene on their way to investigate slavery in Liberia in 1935. As a nurse, she was largely responsible for his surviving the jungle trek.

  With money scarce in 1931, Graham and his wife Vivien rented Little Orchard Cottage in Chipping Campden, a house with no electricity and rats in the thatch.

  Adrian Sherratt/Alamy Stock Photo

  In 1935, the Greenes moved to this Queen Anne house at 14 Clapham Common North Side. It was bombed during the Blitz.

  Lambeth Archives

  Vivien Dayrell-Browning married Graham Greene on 15 October 1927. The marriage failed, largely owing to his repeated infidelities.

  Graham and Vivien’s daughter Lucy Caroline at her ranch in Alberta during the 1950s.

  Graham and Vivien’s son Francis at play, c. 1940.

  Graham Greene and his lover Catherine Walston visiting the dressing room of Noël Coward at the Theatre Royal, Brighton, in May 1953. Coward was starring in Shaw’s The Apple Cart.

  Daniel Farson/Stringer/Getty Images

  Pouring drinks for John Hayward, Jocelyn Rickards and a friend

  Anita Björk starred with Gregory Peck in the thriller Night People (1954) but then abandoned Hollywood and returned to Sweden, where she and Graham Greene had a three-year relationship.

  Keystone Press/Alamy Stock Photo

  Carol Reed was Graham Greene’s favourite director. They worked together on three films, including The Third Man.

  Larry Burrows/Getty Images

  Le roi Jean: Commander of French forces in Indochina, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny at first befriended Graham Greene, then decided that he was a spy.

  CPA Media Pte Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

  Graham Greene often sailed the Mediterranean and Adriatic with his friend Alexander Korda, on the film producer’s 120-foot yacht Elsewhere.

  Michael Korda

  Nausikaa, a 32-foot cutter Graham Greene purchased in the late 1940s.

  Nic Compton

  ‘All I know about the story is a man “who turns up” . . . the place where he emerges into my semi-consciousness is a leper station, many hundred miles up the Congo.’ Researching A Burnt-Out Case, Greene travelled on a paddle-steamer to visit church-run leproseries.

  Archives of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC), Borgerhout, Belgium

  ‘What an extraordinary thing it was that a tiny country like Panama produced one of the great men of our time’: Graham Greene and the country’s leader Omar Torrijos, who renegotiated the Canal Treaty.

  Bernard Diederich

  A former schoolteacher, Fred Baptiste led a tiny rebel band against the forces of the Haitian dictator ‘Papa Doc’. Greene modelled a fighting force on them in The Comedians.

  Bernard Diederich

  ‘¡Viva Cristo Rey!’: Padre Miguel Pro, executed in 1927, was regarded as a martyr by the persecuted Mexican church, and was part of the inspiration for Lawless Roads and The Power and the Glory.

  Historic Images/Alamy Stock Photo

  Travelling along the border of the Dominican Republic and Haiti in 1965, Greene, a known enemy of the Haitian regime, daringly stepped a few feet across the border while soldiers had weapons trained on him.

  Bernard Diederich

  ‘President for Life’ Franc¸ois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier kept a copy of The Comedians on his desk along with a Bible and a revolver. He was tempted to have Graham Greene assassinated for portraying repression in Haiti.

  Bernard Diederich

  In 1956, in the peaceful days before Papa Doc took power, Graham Greene and Catherine Walston visited Haiti and spent time with some of the country’s leading artists, finding their works extraordinary.

  Bernard Diederich

  Greene and his Panamanian friend Chuchu Martínez in the cockpit of a single-engine Cessna, which Chuchu used to run arms to Nicaraguan rebels. Greene describes such a plane in his last novel, The Captain and the Enemy.

  Bernard Diederich

  Planter’s punch on the island of Contadora: the Panamanian power-broker Rory Gonzalez, Graham Greene, and the journalist Bernard Diederich who guided the novelist through Haiti and Central America.

  Bernard Diederich

  Father Robert Willichs, a Belgian missionary to Vietnam, heard Graham Greene’s confession in a bell-tower during a battle at Phat Diem in 1951.

  Whitworth University/Société des Auxiliaires des Missions

  A leading figure in South American letters, Victoria Ocampo was Graham Greene’s publisher in Argentina and one of his closest friends. She was briefly imprisoned for her opposition to Juan Perón.

  Bettmann/Getty Images

  The penetration agent Kim Philby and his fourth wife, Rufina. Greene had been his subordinate at MI6 and defended him staunchly after his defection in 1963.

  ANL/Shutterstock

  Graham Greene and Bernard Diederich at their last meeting in Antibes in 1989.

  Bernard Diederich

  Greene’s lover for thirty-two years, Yvonne Cloetta, stands beside his grave in Corseaux, Switzerland.

  Bernard Diederich

  In 1966, Greene purchased a small flat in Antibes overlooking the harbour, and it remained his home until the last months of his life.

  Sipa/Shutterstock

  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS

  Persons

  AB

  Anita Björk

  BD

  Bernard Diederich

  CB

  Lucy Caroline Bourget (née Greene)

  CW

  Catherine Walston

  ED

  Elisabeth Dennys

  EL

  Etienne Leroux

  EW

  Evelyn Waugh

  FG

  Francis Greene

  GG

  Graham Greene

  GS

  Gillian Sutro

  JR

  Josephine Reid

  KP

  Kim Philby

  LD

  Father Leopoldo Durán

  LP

  Laurence Pollinger

  MB

  Marie Biche

  MG

  Marion Greene

  MK

  Michael Korda

  ML

  Michel Lechat

  MR

  Max Reinhardt

  RD

  Rodney Dennys

  RG

  Richard Greene

  VG

  Vivien Greene (née Dayrell-Browning)

  YC

  Yvonne Cloetta

  Institutions

  Balliol

  Balliol College Archives, Oxford

  BC

  Burns Library, Boston College

  BL

  British Library

  Bod

  Bodleian Library

  GU

  Lauinger Library, Georgetown University

  HRC

  Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

  TNA

  The National Archives, Kew

  Frequently cited works by Graham Greene

  (note: the works of Graham Greene are cited in this book in the common Penguin edition, except as otherwise indicated):

  Articles

  Articles of Faith: The Collected Tablet Journalism of Graham Greene, ed. Ian Thomson (Oxford: Signal Books, 2006)

  BOC

  A Burnt-Out Case

  BR

  Brighton Rock
<
br />   CE

  Collected Essays

  CP

  The Collected Plays of Graham Greene