Twenty-One Stories

by Graham Greene

  ‘We’ll find our way,’ he said. ‘Somehow. Don’t worry.’ At the hedge end they came to the trees. He pulled a twig down and felt the sticky buds. ‘What is it? Beech?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He said, ‘If it had been warmer, we could have slept out here. You’d think we might have had that much luck, tonight of all nights. But it’s cold and it’s going to rain.’

  ‘Let’s come in the summer,’ but he didn’t answer. Some other wind had blown, she could tell it, and already he had lost interest in her. There was something hard in his pocket; it hurt her side; she put her hand in. The metal chamber had absorbed all the cold there had been in the windy ride. She whispered fearfully, ‘Why are you carrying that?’ She had always before drawn a line round his recklessness. When her father had said he was crazy she had secretly and possessively smiled because she thought she knew the extent of his craziness. Now, while she waited for him to answer her, she could feel his craziness go on and on, out of her reach, out of her sight; she couldn’t see where it ended; it had no end, she couldn’t possess it any more than she could possess a darkness or a desert.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean you to find that tonight.’ He suddenly became more tender than he had ever been; he put his hand on her breast; it came from his fingers, a great soft meaningless flood of tenderness. He said, ‘Don’t you see? Life’s hell. There’s nothing we can do.’ He spoke very gently, but she had never been more aware of his recklessness: he was open to every wind, but the wind now seemed to have set from the east: it blew like sleet through his words. ‘I haven’t a penny,’ he said. ‘We can’t live on nothing. It’s no good hoping that I’ll get a job.’ He repeated, ‘There aren’t any more jobs any more. And every year, you know, there’s less chance, because there are more people younger than I am.’

  ‘But why,’ she said, ‘have we come –?’

  He became softly and tenderly lucid. ‘We do love each other, don’t we? We can’t live without each other. It’s no good hanging around, is it, waiting for our luck to change. We don’t even get a fine night,’ he said, feeling for rain with his hand. ‘We can have a good time tonight – in the car – and then in the morning –’

  ‘No, no,’ she said. She tried to get away from him. ‘I couldn’t. It’s horrible. I never said –’

  ‘You wouldn’t know anything,’ he said gently and inexorably. Her words, she could realize now, had never made any real impression; he was swayed by them but no more than he was swayed by anything: now that the wind had set, it was like throwing scraps of paper towards the sky to speak at all, or to argue. He said, ‘Of course we neither of us believe in God, but there may be a chance, and it’s company, going together like that.’ He added with pleasure, ‘It’s a gamble,’ and she remembered more occasions than she could count when their last coppers had gone ringing down in fruit machines.

  He pulled her closer and said with complete assurance, ‘We love each other. It’s the only way, you know. You can trust me.’ He was like a skilled logician; he knew all the stages of the argument. She despaired of catching him out on any point but the premise: we love each other. That she doubted for the first time, faced by the mercilessness of his egotism. He repeated, ‘It will be company.’

  She said, ‘There must be some way . . .’

  ‘Why must?’

  ‘Otherwise, people would be doing it all the time – everywhere!’

  ‘They are,’ he said triumphantly, as if it were more important for him to find his argument flawless than to find – well, a way, a way to go on living. ‘You’ve only got to read the papers,’ he said. He whispered gently, endearingly, as if he thought the very sound of the words tender enough to dispel all fear. ‘They call it a suicide pact. It’s happening all the time.’

  ‘I couldn’t. I haven’t the nerve.’

  ‘You needn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it all.’

  His calmness horrified her. ‘You mean – you’d kill me?’

  He said, ‘I love you enough for that, I promise it won’t hurt you.’ He might have been persuading her to play some trivial and uncongenial game. ‘We shall be together always.’ He added rationally, ‘Of course, if there is an always,’ and suddenly she saw his love as a mere flicker of gas flame playing on the marshy depth of his irresponsibility, but now she realized that it was without any limit at all; it closed over the head. She pleaded, ‘There are things we can sell. That suitcase.’

  She knew that he was watching her with amusement, that he had rehearsed all her arguments and had an answer; he was only pretending to take her seriously. ‘We might get fifteen shillings,’ he said. ‘We could live a day on that – but we shouldn’t have much fun.’

  ‘The things inside it?’

  ‘Ah, that’s another gamble. They might be worth thirty shillings. Three days, that would give us – with economy.’

  ‘We might get a job.’

  ‘I’ve been trying for a good many years now.’

  ‘Isn’t there the dole?’

  ‘I’m not an insured worker. I’m one of the ruling class.’

  ‘Your people, they’d give us something.’

  ‘But we’ve got our pride, haven’t we?’ he said with remorseless conceit.

  ‘The man who lent you the car?’

  He said, ‘You remember Cortez, the fellow who burnt his boats? I’ve burned mine. I’ve got to kill myself. You see, I stole that car. We’d be stopped in the next town. It’s too late even to go back.’ He laughed; he had reached the climax of his argument and there was nothing more to dispute about. She could tell that he was perfectly satisfied and perfectly happy. It infuriated her. ‘You’ve got to, maybe. But I haven’t. Why should I kill myself? What right have you –?’ She dragged herself away from him and felt against her back the rough massive trunk of the living tree.

  ‘Oh,’ he said in an irritated tone, ‘of course if you like to go on without me.’ She had admired his conceit; he had always carried his unemployment with a manner. Now you could no longer call it conceit: it was a complete lack of any values. ‘You can go home,’ he said, ‘though I don’t quite know how – I can’t drive you back because I’m staying here. You’ll be able to go to the hop tomorrow night. And there’s a whist-drive, isn’t there, in the church hall? My dear, I wish you joy of home.’

  There was a savagery in his manner. He took security, peace, order in his teeth and worried them so that she couldn’t help feeling a little pity for what they had joined in despising: a hammer tapped at her heart, driving in a nail here and a nail there. She tried to think of a bitter retort, for after all there was something to be said for the negative virtues of doing no injury, of simply going on, as her father was going on for another fifteen years. But the next moment she felt no anger. They had trapped each other. He had always wanted this: the dark field, the weapon in his pocket, the escape and the gamble; but she less honestly had wanted a little of both worlds: irresponsibility and a safe love, danger and a secure heart.

  He said, ‘I’m going now. Are you coming?’

  ‘No,’ she said. He hesitated; the recklessness for a moment wavered; a sense of something lost and bewildered came to her through the dark. She wanted to say: Don’t be a fool. Leave the car where it is. Walk back with me, and we’ll get a lift home, but she knew any thought of hers had occurred to him and been answered already: ten shillings a week, no job, getting older. Endurance was a virtue of one’s fathers.

  He suddenly began to walk fast down the hedge; he couldn’t see where he was going; he stumbled on a root and she heard him swear. ‘Damnation’ – the little commonplace sound in the darkness overwhelmed her with pain and horror. She cried out, ‘Fred. Fred. Don’t do it,’ and began to run in the opposite direction. She couldn’t stop him and she wanted to be out of hearing. A twig broke under her foot like a shot, and the owl screamed across the ploughed field beyond the hedge. It was like a rehearsal with sound effects. But when the re
al shot came, it was quite different: a thud like a gloved hand striking a door and no cry at all. She didn’t notice it at first and afterwards she thought that she had never been conscious of the exact moment when her lover ceased to exist.

  She bruised herself against the car, running blindly; a blue-spotted Woolworth handkerchief lay on the seat in the light of the switchboard bulb. She nearly took it, but no, she thought, no one must know that I have been here. She turned out the light and picked her way as quietly as she could across the clover. She could begin to be sorry when she was safe. She wanted to close a door behind her, thrust a bolt down, hear the catch grip.

  It wasn’t ten minutes walk down the deserted lane to the road-house. Tipsy voices spoke a foreign language, though it was the language Fred had spoken. She could hear the clink of coins in fruit machines, the hiss of soda; she listened to these sounds like an enemy, planning her escape. They frightened her like something mindless: there was no appeal one could make to that egotism. It was simply a Want to be satisfied; it gaped at her like a mouth. A man was trying to wind up his car; the self-starter wouldn’t work. He said, ‘I’m a Bolshie. Of course I’m a Bolshie. I believe –’

  A thin girl with red hair sat on the step and watched him. ‘You’re all wrong,’ she said.

  ‘I’m a Liberal Conservative.’

  ‘You can’t be a liberal Conservative.’

  ‘Do you love me?’

  ‘I love Joe.’

  ‘You can’t love Joe.’

  ‘Let’s go home, Mike.’

  The man tried to wind up the car again, and she came up to them as if she’d come out of the club and said, ‘Give me a lift?’

  ‘Course. Delighted. Get in.’

  ‘Won’t the car go?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you flooded – ?’

  ‘That’s an idea.’ He lifted the bonnet and she pressed the self-starter. It began to rain slowly and heavily and drenchingly, the kind of rain you always expect to fall on graves, and her thoughts went down the lane towards the field, the hedge, the trees – oak, beech, elm? She imagined the rain on his face, the pool collecting in each eye-socket and streaming down on either side the nose. But she could feel nothing but gladness because she had escaped from him.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she said.

  ‘Devizes.’

  ‘I thought you might be going to London.’

  ‘Where do you want to go to?’

  ‘Golding’s Park.’

  ‘Let’s go to Golding’s Park.’

  The red-haired girl said, ‘I am going in, Mike. It’s raining.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘I’m going to find Joe.’

  ‘All right.’ He smashed his way out of the little car-park, bending his mudguard on a wooden post, scraping the paint of another car.

  ‘That’s the wrong way,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll turn.’ He backed the car into a ditch and out again. ‘Was a good party,’ he said. The rain came down harder; it blinded the windscreen and the electric wiper wouldn’t work, but her companion didn’t care. He drove straight on at forty miles an hour; it was an old car, it wouldn’t do any more; the rain leaked through the hood. He said, ’Twis’ that knob. Have a tune,’ and when she turned it and the dance music came through, he said, ‘That’s Harry Roy. Know him anywhere,’ driving into the thick wet night carrying the hot music with them. Presently he said, ‘A friend of mine, one of the best, you’d know him, Peter Weatherall. You know him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You must know Peter. Haven’t seen him about lately. Goes off on the drink for weeks. They sent out an SOS for Peter once in the middle of the dance music. “Missing from Home”. We were in the car. We had a laugh about that.’

  She said, ‘Is that what people do – when people are missing?’

  ‘Know this tune,’ he said. ‘This isn’t Harry Roy. This is Alf Cohen.’

  She said suddenly, ‘You’re Mike, aren’t you? Wouldn’t you lend –’

  He sobered up. ‘Stony broke,’ he said. ‘Comrades in misfortune. Try Peter. Why do you want to go to Golding’s Park?’

  ‘My home.’

  ‘You mean you live there?’

  ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘Be careful. There’s a speed limit here.’ He was perfectly obedient. He raised his foot and let the car crawl at fifteen miles an hour. The lamp standards marched unsteadily to meet them and lit his face: he was quite old, forty if a day, ten years older than Fred. He wore a striped tie and she could see his sleeve was frayed. He had more than ten shillings a week, but perhaps not so very much more. His hair was going thin.

  ‘You can drop me here,’ she said. He stopped the car and she got out and the rain went on. He followed her on to the road. ‘Let me come in?’ he asked. She shook her head; the rain wetted them through; behind her was the pillar-box, the Belisha beacon, the road through the housing estate. ‘Hell of a life,’ he said politely, holding her hand, while the rain drummed on the hood of the cheap car and ran down his face, across his collar and the school tie. But she felt no pity, no attraction, only a faint horror and repulsion. A kind of dim recklessness gleamed in his wet eye, as the hot music of Alf Cohen’s band streamed from the car, a faded irresponsibility. ‘Le’s go back,’ he said, ‘le’s go somewhere. Le’s go for a ride in the country. Le’s go to Maidenhead,’ holding her hand limply.

  She pulled it away, he didn’t resist, and walked down the half-made road to No. 64. The crazy paving in the front garden seemed to hold her feet firmly up. She opened the door and heard through the dark and the rain a car grind into second gear and drone away – certainly not towards Maidenhead or Devizes or the country. Another wind must have blown.

  Her father called down from the first landing: ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s me,’ she said. She explained, ‘I had a feeling you’d left the door unbolted.’

  ‘And had I?’

  ‘No,’ she said gently, ‘it’s bolted all right,’ driving the bolt softly and firmly home. She waited till his door closed. She touched the radiator to warm her fingers – he had put it in himself, he had improved the property; in fifteen years, she thought, it will be ours. She was quite free from pain, listening to the rain on the roof; he had been over the whole roof that winter inch by inch, there was nowhere for the rain to enter. It was kept outside, drumming on the shabby hood, pitting the clover field. She stood by the door, feeling only the faint repulsion she always had for things weak and crippled, thinking, ‘It isn’t tragic at all,’ and looking down with an emotion like tenderness at the flimsy bolt from a sixpenny store any man could have broken, but which a Man had put in, the head clerk of Bergson’s.

  1937

  THE INNOCENT

  IT was a mistake to take Lola there. I knew it the moment we alighted from the train at the small country station. On an autumn evening one remembers more of childhood than at any other time of year, and her bright veneered face, the small bag which hardly pretended to contain our things for the night, simply didn’t go with the old grain warehouses across the small canal, the few lights up the hill, the posters of an ancient film. But she said, ‘Let’s go into the country,’ and Bishop’s Hendron was, of course, the first name which came into my head. Nobody would know me there now, and it hadn’t occurred to me that it would be I who remembered.

  Even the old porter touched a chord. I said, ‘There’ll be a four-wheeler at the entrance,’ and there was, though at first I didn’t notice it, seeing the two taxis and thinking, ‘The old place is coming on.’ It was very dark, and the thin autumn mist, the smell of wet leaves and canal water were deeply familiar.

  Lola said, ‘But why did you choose this place? It’s grim.’ It was no use explaining to her why it wasn’t grim to me, that that sand heap by the canal had always been there (when I was three I remember thinking it was what other people meant by the seaside). I took the bag (I’ve said it was light; it was simply a forged passport of respectab
ility) and said we’d walk. We came up over the little humpbacked bridge and passed the alms-houses. When I was five I saw a middle-aged man run into one to commit suicide; he carried a knife and all the neighbours pursued him up the stairs. She said, ‘I never thought the country was like this.’ They were ugly alms-houses, little grey stone boxes, but I knew them as I knew nothing else. It was like listening to music, all that walk.

  But I had to say something to Lola. It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t belong here. We passed the school, the church, and came round into the old wide High Street and the sense of the first twelve years of life. If I hadn’t come, I shouldn’t have known that sense would be so strong, because those years hadn’t been particularly happy or particularly miserable; they had been ordinary years, but now with the smell of wood fires, of the cold striking up from the dark damp paving stones, I thought I knew what it was that held me. It was the smell of innocence.

  I said to Lola, ‘It’s a good inn, and there’ll be nothing here, you’ll see, to keep us up. We’ll have dinner and drinks and go to bed.’ But the worst of it was that I couldn’t help wishing that I were alone. I hadn’t been back all these years; I hadn’t realized how well I remembered the place. Things I’d quite forgotten, like that sand heap, were coming back with an effect of pathos and nostalgia. I could have been very happy that night in a melancholy autumnal way, wandering about the little town, picking up clues to that time of life when, however miserable we are, we have expectations. It wouldn’t be the same if I came back again, for then there would be the memories of Lola, and Lola meant just nothing at all. We had happened to pick each other up at a bar the day before and liked each other. Lola was all right, there was no one I would rather spend the night with, but she didn’t fit in with these memories. We ought to have gone to Maidenhead. That’s country too.