Graham Greene (23 page)

(3) I am very pleased at the way in which Rattigan has tried to keep the central theme of the book: that is to say, the difference between Ida who lives in a natural world where morality is based on Right and Wrong, and the boy and Rose who move in a supernatural world concerned with good and evil, but I feel this is sometimes a little over-emphasised (a small example is the play on the name of the horse Satan Colt), and in a more important place under-emphasised – that is to say I think somehow we ought to insert in the film after Pinkie’s death the notion expressed in the book by the anonymous priest in the confessional of ‘the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God’.

(4) I like Rattigan’s idea of the murder in the Fun Fair train, but it does make the coroner’s verdict rather inexplicable.

(5) I like his idea of making Corkery into a bookmaker. This certainly tightens up the story.

(6) A last and really not very major point is that one has lost any point to the title. The title of the book had two significances: first, the murder of Hale took place in one of the small booths underneath the pier where Brighton Rock is sold, and secondly, a point we can easily introduce into the later treatment, the passage where the boy speaks of himself as knowing nothing but Brighton and the comparison with Brighton Rock which, wherever you bite it, still leaves the name of the place showing.

[…]

Catherine Walston (née Crompton) was the American wife of the wealthy Labour MP Harry Walston (later Lord Walston). Although a stranger, she asked Graham to serve as her godfaher, since his books had influenced her decision to become a Catholic. Wihin a few months they had embarked on a serious affair that continued, with interruptions, for more than a decade. It is commonly said that she is the ‘original’ of the saintly and promiscuous Sarah in
The End of the Affair
. This is largely true, but not
entirely so. Greene chose to set the novel in the war years and so, to some degree, was drawing on his relationship with Dorothy Glover, conducted at times under the bombardment. Sarah is much more passive than either Glover or Walston. In any event, the difference between the novel and the lives that inspired it is considerable
.

Eyre & Spottiswoode [25 September 1946]

Dear Mrs. Walston,

This is a shockingly belated note of congratulation & best wishes. I gave my secretary a telegram to send, but in the rush of work (I had been away on the Continent for a fortnight) she never sent it! I feel I am a most neglectful god-father! I haven’t even sent you a silver mug or a spoon to bite.

I heard all about the breakfast from Vivien. I wish I’d been there. Again all my wishes for the future.

Yours,
     Graham Greene

Eyre & Spottiswoode [
c
. October 1946]

Dear Catherine, I wrote off the other day – to a wrong address apparently, in Ireland – explaining my apparent chilling silence on the day of your reception, & now my sense of guilt is increased by your letter! However what would a novelist do without a sense of guilt?

I think the whole business of your becoming a Catholic was extraordinarily courageous – I became one before I had any ties.

How lovely the West of Ireland sounds. Do come & tell us about it in Oxford when you get back.

Yours,
     Graham Greene

Eyre & Spottiswoode | 14, 15, 16 Bedford Street| Strand,
London, W.C.2 [1947]

Dear Evelyn,

I was delighted & flattered by your letter. The sweetest form of praise comes from those one admires.

Who on earth told you I was going to Kenya? It was probably a half-hearted melancholy joke. I shall stay & be atomised [?] quietly with all home comforts. I should like to compromise & go to Ireland because I like the Irish & approve so strongly of their recent neutrality, but Vivien has an anti-Irish phobia, so I can never do that. We
are
looking for a Regency house – or Georgian, with a walled garden & a paddock to keep a pony in, & costing not more than £5000 – but that seems hardly likely to come our way.

Do let us see you before you go to Ireland.

Yours ever,
     Graham

[Amsterdam | 3 March 1947]

I love onion sandwiches.

G.

Bendrix writes in
The End of the Affair (44
): ‘Is it possible to fall in love over a dish of onions? It seems improbable and yet I could swear it was just then that I fell in love. It wasn’t, of course, simply the onions – it was that sudden sense of an individual woman, of a frankness that was so often later to make me happy and miserable. I put my hand under the cloth and laid it on her knee, and her hand came down and held mine in place.’

Monday [5 May 1947]

You won’t be able to read this so I can put what I like!

I missed you so much on Sunday. Mass wasn’t the same at all. We went to 12 o’clock at St. Patrick’s, Soho, & had a drink afterwards at the Salisbury in St. Martin’s Lane. I just missed you all the time & felt depressed & restless. A bit of a row blew up before I left – she said I had changed so much in Ireland,
²⁹
but she still believes that it’s simply that I’ve come under influence of a pious convert! Tried to ring you from Charing Cross.

Got to sleep by reading about 1 still depressed, but woke up blissfully happy. You had been with me very vividly saying, ‘I like your sexy smell’ – & of course I had a sexy smell! It had been one of those nights!

Then there was a line from you (how beautiful your handwriting is), & then I got you on the telephone. Result I feel cheerful & I’ve written 1000 words! And you love me – you do you know. And I see you on Thursday.

[…]

16th May, 1947 Dear Raymond,

Many thanks for your most useful letter. I begin to see how my character
³⁰
is going to commit suicide now. I should imagine that a man posing as having angina would have every reason to suffer from insomnia.

I should imagine, too, that as you have to bury somebody within a
few hours in Sierra Leone (there is always an awful scramble to get a coffin in time) they would not bother about a post mortem on somebody known to be suffering from angina.

I expect to be down at Oxford by Whitsun and I hope we shall meet some time after that.

Yours,
     Graham

15 Beaumont Street | Oxford [29 May 1947]

O hell! darling. Achill looks like being the only good thing in 1947. One feels like investigating one’s policies. Perhaps the ban on killing oneself is only during the first three years of a policy. Something whispers the idea to me anyway. At the moment I’m feeling rather like a cornered rat (rat is probably the right word). Something else happened this morning. I’ll tell you about it when I see you. One would laugh if it was a book. I ought to write funny books. Life is really too horribly funny, but unless one’s an outsider looking on, it’s all such a bore.

Now about Thriplow.
³¹
Vivien thoroughly fed up with the whole idea, & finally calmed & smoothed by having
part
of her own way – that is to say I can’t come till Friday & then have to be back Tuesday night. Any good? and how shall I get to you? Can you pick me up at Cambridge – or possibly Bletchley which is where one is delayed for hours? Or would you be in town & I pick
you
up? In return for these four days I have clamped the handcuffs on my wrists & said that in future I shall be spending all my weekends at Oxford (except for emergencies). ‘Am I happy?’ The answer is definitely negative.

I loved seeing you – on Tuesday especially, but what the hell is the use? I rather hoped that I wouldn’t love seeing you.

I can’t live permanently in handcuffs, so I suppose either the handcuffs will go again, or I shall.
³²

Love,
     Graham

Sir Alexander Korda produced
The Fallen Idol (1948),
based on Graham’s short story ‘The Basement Room’, and
The Third Man (1949),
and he introduced Graham to Carol Reed
(1906
–76), who directed both films. As a reviewer, Graham had praised Reed’s work lavishly, and despite annoyance over his handling of
Our Man in Havana (1960),
he always believed that Reed’s skills were nearly unrivalled
.

15 Beaumont Street | Oxford | Tuesday 7.45 [10 June 1947]

I’ve been in town all day seeing Korda & Carol Reed (‘Odd Man Out’): they are buying a short story of mine called ‘The Basement Room’ & want me to work on it.
³³
Once I suppose I’d have been excited & pleased by all this (it means about £3000), but I feel dreary. Thank you for the keys, darling, & for the letter. I think a lot of it is self-deception. (I think perhaps your love for me is too. I don’t know.) If I’m going to tell the whole truth to Vivien, what’s the good of keeping us back? Within 12 months a new line of deception would have developed. The whole subject must be a bore for you, & I think we’d better drop it – unless I take action when I’ll report what the end of the affair is for your interest. Well, my darling, you may as well have these letters. I think they are quite
sensible. I expect this is the end. If it is you’ve given me the best morphia I’ve ever had. Thank you.

Thank God, anyway that there’s somebody I can’t hurt.

With love,
     Graham

Eyre & Spottiswoode | Friday morning [27 June 1947]

You are in the air, Cafrin, & I’m – very much – on the earth. This is just a note to pursue you as quickly as possible to Achill & to remind you of three things – that I’m still terribly in love with you, that I miss you (your voice saying ‘good morning, Graham’ at tea time), & that I want you. I want to be filling the turf buckets for you & sitting next door working, hearing the clank of washing-up, & your whistle, & I want to help you make lunch. I am thirsty for orange juice at 3 in the morning. I want to see you in your pyjama top nursing the sod of the fire.

Now I pin a lot of hope on India. It might be a way of being with you for 3 months, & by God I’d get into your skin before that time was over.

I kiss you, my dear, here, here – & there.
     Graham

Have I written a love letter?

15 Beaumont Street, | Oxford | Sunday [29 June 1947]

Cafryn, dear, I’ve missed you like hell this week-end – back at the obsession level. Dreamed last night that you telephoned as usual & woke happy. Here my relations with Vivien seem to be slumping back to the old level. An individual can’t of course be heroic all the
time: last time she was heroic, now the heroism is worn out. I dragged with her on Saturday to a meeting of the Georgian Group at Badminton, the Duke of Beaufort’s house – four hours hot railway travel & a picnic lunch among flies – one needs to be in love to enjoy that kind of thing. I am beginning positively to hate beautiful houses & beautiful furniture. And a private house open to public inspection seems more dead than a museum. Suddenly on the way back I felt I’d
got
to get a few days happiness, & quite literally the only way I get any happiness now is either with you or with work. And work is for the time being over. So tomorrow unless wiser counsels prevail I shall set about pursuing you to Ireland. I think it can be arranged, though I can’t drop the film script while I’m there. Cafryn, dear, I want to kiss you, touch you, make love to you – & simply sit in a car & be driven by you. Tomorrow (unless I’m wise & only the very young can be wise) I shall telegraph proposing a date.

I nearly slept at Mass today. How dead it was – not dead in the amusing phosphorescent way of last Sunday, aware of your shoulder half an inch from mine, but just limp & meaningless & boring. I’m not even a Catholic properly away from you.

Love,
     Graham

Monday 25th [August 1947]

Now you’ll be able to read what I write.
³⁴
So I can’t say nearly as much. When I got to the office the first thing I saw was your letter. O, I am falling in love again. You are right – nothing is ever dull when we do it. If we get to India it will be odd – the exciting thing in exciting company. I have a feeling that even being in a massacre in the Punjab (I enclose a good account of one) won’t really be as exciting as sitting on a cliff watching for salmon. My dear, before you
cropped up, I used to have odd dreams of peace – that dream of the moon I gave to Scobie for instance,
³⁵
but now I dream of you instead, especially when I’m at Oxford. I also dreamed this last time that Vivien died. She was dying and I was walking up and down trying to pray. I found I simply couldn’t pray for her life, so I simply prayed that she wouldn’t have any pain. Then I woke up and thought that I was in bed with someone else. All very odd and confusing.

[…]

Addressed to Catherine in Wilton, New Hampshire, this letter indicates another layer of trouble in Graham’s dealings with women. He had failed to break off with Dorothy Glover (‘my girl’) and was hoping that a long sea voyage might help her accept the change in their relationship
.

15 Beaumont Street, | Oxford | Friday, Sep. 5 [1947]

Cafryn dear, at last the arrangements for my women are coming off & it will only remain with your assistance to make arrangements for myself! Vivien
is
coming to the States as the guest of my agent, & though I should have liked to have weekended (my grammar’s gone wrong) at Westbury, I shall feel much happier in mind in Ireland, especially if I can arrange for her to stay till mid-November with someone. I shall try.

Now for My Girl. Today I wangled her a passage on an Elder Dempster cargo ship down the West African coast & back, mid-September to mid-December – so she’ll be happy. I must say when I saw the list of stops my heart missed a beat. Las Palmas, Dakar, Bathurst, Freetown, Cotonou, Lagos – it’s like hearing Maynooth, Athlone, Galway, Westport, Newport, The Sound, Dooagh. I think this will be very good for her – getting away from me & new places & being made much of– as any white woman is there. Elder Dempster
too are treating her as a V.I.P.! She’s been very sweet this last week & much more ready to accept the fact that one can love two people!