The Honorary Consul

by Graham Greene

  "I don't want to bear only bad news," Crichton said. "There was something the Ambassador asked me to tell you—hi strictest confidence. Have I your promise?"

  "Of course. Who would I tell?" There isn't even Plarr, he thought.

  "The Ambassador proposes to recommend you for an honor in the List next New Year."

  "An honor," Charley Fortnum repeated incredulously.

  "An O. B. E."

  "Why, that's really kind of him, Crichton," Charley Fortnum said. "I never thought he liked me..."

  "You won't tell anyone, will you? In theory you know all these things have to be approved by the Queen."

  "The Queen? Yes. I understand. I hope it won't make me too proud," Charley Fortnum said. "You know I guided some members of the Royal family once—round the ruins. They were a very nice couple. We had a picnic like I had with the American Ambassador, but they didn't expect me to drink Coca-Cola. I like that family. They do a wonderful job."

  "And you'll tell no one—except your wife, of course. You can trust her."

  "I don't think she'd understand anyway," Charley Fortnum said.

  ***

  During the night he dreamt he was walking up a very long straight road with Doctor Plarr. On either side the 'lagunas' lay like pewter plates which grew more gray every moment in the evening light. Fortnum's Pride had broken down and they had to reach the camp before it was dark. He was anxious. He wanted to run, but he had hurt his leg. He said, "I don't want to keep the Queen waiting."

  "What's the Queen doing at the camp?" Doctor Plarr asked.

  "She's going to give me the O. B. E."

  Doctor Plarr laughed. "Order of the Bad Egg," he said.

  Charley Fortnum woke with a sense of desolation, and the images wound themselves quickly up like a strip of Scotch tape, so that all he could remember was the long road and Plarr laughing.

  He lay on his back in the narrow guest-room bed, and he felt his age weigh heavily on his body like a blanket. He wondered how many more years he would have to lie alone like that—it seemed a waste of time. A lamp passed the window. He knew it was carried by the 'capataz' going to work; in that case it must be nearly dawn. The lamplight moved along the wall and lit his crutch which looked like a big carved initial letter against the wall, and then dimmed and passed away. He knew exactly what the lamp would be lighting now—first the avocados, then the sheds and afterward the irrigation ditches; from here and there the men would be gathering for work in the gunmetal light.

  He swung his good leg out of the bed and reached for the crutch. After Crichton had gone he had told Clara the bad news of his retirement. He could see it meant nothing to her. In the eyes of a girl from Mother Sanchez' house he would seem always to be a rich man. He had said nothing about the O. B. E. As he had told Crichton, she wouldn't understand, and he feared that her indifference might make it seem less important even to himself. And yet he wished he could have told her. He wanted to break the wall of silence which was growing up between them. "The Queen is going to give me an honor," he could hear himself saying to her, for the words "the Queen" would surely mean something even to her. He had often told her about his picnic with royalty among the rums.

  He moved on his crutch diagonally like a crab down the passage between the sporting prints, then put his hand out in the dark to open the door of the bedroom, but the door wasn't there and he moved forward into what he felt certain was an empty room. There wasn't even the faintest sound of breathing to break the silence. He might have been walking alone through another ruin. To make sure he passed his hand back and forth over the pillow, and he felt the coldness and cleanness of a bed which had not been slept in. He sat down on the edge of the bed and thought: she's gone away. Right away. Who with? The 'capataz' perhaps?—or one of the workmen? why not? They were more her own kind than he was. She could talk to them as she couldn't talk to him. He had been alone a great many years before he found her and there was no reason to be afraid of the few years likely to be left. He had managed then, he assured himself, and he could manage again. Perhaps Humphries would no longer cut him in the street after his name had appeared among the New Year Honors. They would eat goulash again at the Italian Club and he would invite Humphries to the camp; they would sit together by the dumbwaiter, but Humphries was not a drinking man. He felt a pang of pain because Plarr was dead. By her absence she seemed to be betraying Plarr as well as himself. He felt a little angry with her for Plarr's sake. Surely she could have been faithful for a short while to a dead man—it would have been like wearing something black for a week or two.

  He didn't hear her come in, and he was startled when she spoke. She said, "Charley, what are you doing here?"

  He said, "It's my room, isn't it? Where have you been?"

  "I was afraid of being alone. I went to sleep with María." (María was the maid.)

  "What were you afraid of? Ghosts?"

  "I was afraid for the child. I dreamed I was strangling the child."

  So she cares for something, he thought. It was like a glimmer of light at the end of his darkness. If she is capable of that... If she isn't all deception...

  She said, "I had a friend at Señora Sanchez' house who strangled her baby."

  "Sit here, Clara." He took her hand and pulled her gently down beside him.

  "I thought you did not want me to be near you." She said the sad truth like a fact of no importance, as another woman might say, "I thought you preferred me in red."

  "I have no one else, Clara."

  "Shall I put on the light?"

  "No. It will be daylight soon. Just now I saw the 'capataz' going by to work. How is the baby, Clara?" He knew he had hardly mentioned the baby since he came home. He felt as though he were relearning a language he hadn't spoken since a childhood in another country.

  "I think he is all right. But sometimes he is so quiet I feel afraid."

  "We shall have to find you a good doctor," he said, speaking mechanically without thought. She made a sound like a dog does when you tread on its paw, an exclamation of shock—or was it pain?

  "I am sorry... I didn't mean..." It was still too dark to see her. He raised his hand and found her face. She was crying. "Clara..."

  "I am sorry, Charley. I am tired."

  "Did you love him, Clara?"

  "No... no... I love you, Charley."

  "There's nothing wrong in love, Clara. It happens. It doesn't much matter who with. We get caught up," he told her, and remembering what he had said to young Crichton, he added, "we get kidnapped," attempting a feeble joke to reassure her, "by mistake."

  "He never loved me," she said. "To him I was only a girl from Señora Sanchez'. "

  "You are wrong." It was like pleading a cause; he might have been attempting to bring two young people to a closer understanding.

  "He wanted me to kill the baby."

  "You mean in your dream?"

  "No. No. He wanted it killed. He really wanted it. I knew then he could never love me."

  "Perhaps he'd begun, Clara. Some of us... we are a bit slow... it's not so easy to love... we make a lot of mistakes." He went on for the sake of saying something, "I hated my father... I did not much like my wife... But they were not really bad people... that was only one of my mistakes. Some of us learn to read quicker than others... Ted and I were both bad at the alphabet. I am not so good at it even now. When I think of all the mistakes there must be on those files in London," he rambled on, making a little human noise in the darkness in the hope that it might reassure her.

  "I had a brother I loved, Charley. One day he wasn't there any more. He got up to go cane-cutting, but no one in the fields saw him. He went away just like that. Sometimes at Señora Sanchez' house I used to think, Perhaps he will come here looking for a girl and then he will find me and we will go away together."

  There seemed at last to be a sort of communication between them and he tried hard to keep the thin thread intact. "What shall we call the child, Clara?"

  "I
f he is a boy—would you like Charley?"

  "One Charley's enough in the family. I think we will call him Eduardo. You see I loved Eduardo in a way. He was young enough to be my son."

  He put his hand tentatively on her shoulder and he felt her body shaken with tears. He wanted to comfort her, but he had no idea how to do it. He said, "He really loved you in his way, Clara. I don't mean anything wrong..."

  "It is not true, Charley."

  "Once I heard him say he was jealous of me."

  "I never loved him, Charley."

  Her lie meant nothing to him now at all. It was contradicted too plainly by her tears. In an affair of this kind it was the right thing to lie. He felt a sense of immense relief. It was as though, after what seemed an interminable time of anxious waiting in the anteroom of death, someone came to him with the good news that he had never expected to hear. Someone he loved would survive. He realized that never before had she been so close to him as she was now.

  The End

  About the Author

  Graham Greene was born in 1904 and educated at Berkhamsted School, where his father was the headmaster. On coming down from Balliol College, Oxford, where he published a book of verse, he worked for four years as a subeditor on 'The Times'. He established his reputation with his fourth novel, 'Stamboul Train', which he classed as an "entertainment" in order to distinguish it from more serious work. In 1935 he made a journey across Liberia, described in 'Journey Without Maps', and on his return was appointed film critic of the 'Spectator'. In 1926 he had been received into the Roman Catholic Church and was commissioned to visit Mexico in 1938 and report on the religious persecution there. As a result he wrote 'The Lawless Roads' and, later, 'The Power and the Glory'.

  'Brighton Rock' was published in 1938 and in 1940 he became literary editor of the 'Spectator'. The next year he undertook work for the Foreign Office and was sent out to Sierra Léone in 1941-43. One of his major postwar novels, 'The Heart of the Matter', is set in West Africa and is considered by many to be his finest book. This was followed by 'The End of the Affair', 'The Quiet American', a story set in Vietnam, 'Our Man in Havana', and 'A Burnt-Out Case'. His most recent novels are 'The Comedians', 'Travels with My Aunt', and 'The Honorary Consul'. In 1967 he published a collection of short stories under the title: 'May We Borrow Your Husband'? His autobiography, 'A Sort of Life', was published in 1971.

  In all, Graham Greene has written some thirty novels, "entertainments," plays, children's books, travel books, and collections of essays and short stories. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1966.