The Man Within
Authors: Graham Greene
ContentsAbout the Book
The Man Within
tells the story of Andrews, a young man who has betrayed his fellow smugglers and fears their vengeance. Fleeing from them, with no hope of pity or salvation, he takes refuge in the house of a young woman, also alone in the world. She persuades him to give evidence against his accomplices in court, but neither she nor Andrews is aware that to both criminals and authority treachery is as great a crime as smuggling.
See also:
Stamboul Train
Graham Greene was born in 1904. On coming down from Balliol College, Oxford, he worked for four years as sub-editor on
The Times
. He established his reputation with his fourth novel,
Stamboul Train
. 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 visited Mexico in 1938 to report on the religious persecution there. As a result he wrote
The Lawless Roads
and, later, his famous novel
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 stationed in Sierra Leone from 1941 to 1943. This later produced the novel
The Heart of the Matter
, set in West Africa.
As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography –
A Sort of Life, Ways of Escape
and
A World of My Own
(published posthumously) – two of biography and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews, some of which appear in the collections
Reflections
and
Mornings in the Dark
. Many of his novels and short stories have been filmed and
The Third Man
was written as a film treatment. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.
ALSO BY GRAHAM GREENE
Novels
It’s a Battlefield
A Gun for Sale
The Confidential Agent
The Ministry of Fear
The End of the Affair
The Third Man
The Quiet American
A Burnt-Out Case
Travels With My Aunt
Dr Fischer of Geneva or
The Bomb Party
The Tenth Man
Stamboul Train
England Made Me
Brighton Rock
The Power and the Glory
The Heart of the Matter
The Fallen Idol
Loser Takes All
Our Man in Havana
The Comedians
The Human Factor
Monsignor Quixote
The Honorary Consul
The Captain and the Enemy
Short Stories
Collected Stories
The Last Word and Other Stories
May We Borrow Your Husband?
Twenty-One Stories
Travel
The Lawless Roads
Journey Without Maps
In Search of a Character
Getting to Know the General
Essays
Collected Essays
Yours etc
.
Reflections
Plays
Collected Plays
Autobiography
A Sort of Life
Ways of Escape
Fragments of an Autobiography
A World of my Own
Biography
Lord Rochester’s Monkey
An Impossible Woman
Children’s Books
The Little Train
The Little Horse-Bus
The Little Steamroller
The Little Fire Engine
FOR VIVIEN
GRAHAM GREENE
The Man Within
1
HE CAME OVER
the top of the down as the last light failed and could almost have cried with relief at sight of the wood below. He longed to fling himself down on the short stubbly grass and stare at it, the dark comforting shadow which he had hardly hoped to see. Thus only could he cure the stitch in his side, which grew and grew with the jolt, jolt of his stumble down hill. The absence of the cold wind from the sea that had buffeted him for the last half hour seemed like a puff of warm air on his face, as he dropped below the level of the sky. As though the wood were a door swinging on a great hinge, a shadow moved up towards him and the grass under his feet changed from gold to green, to purple and last to a dull grey. Then night came.
A hedge sprang up before his eyes at the distance of a dozen yards. His confused tired senses became aware of the smell of last year’s blackberry leaves wet with past rain. For a moment the scent swathed him in a beautiful content and left him with an ache for time in which to rest here. The grass grew longer before he reached the hedge, and a little later his feet were heavy with wet earth and he knew that he was on a path. It was his feet rather than his mind that knew it. They made a rambling progress, now in the muddy centre of the way, now in the grass at the right-hand edge, now scraping the outer fringe of the hedge on the other side. His mind was a confusion of scents and sounds, the far hush of the sea, a memory of rattling pebbles, the smell of the wet leaves and the trampled marl, the salt sweep of the wind that he had left behind on the top of the hill, voices, imaginary footsteps. They were jumbled together like the pieces of a puzzle, and they were half forgotten because of his fatigue and fear.
The fear in his mind told him that paths were dangerous. He whispered it out loud to himself ‘Dangerous, dangerous’, and then because he thought that the low voice must belong to another on the path beside him, he scrambled panic-stricken through the hedge. The blackberry twigs plucked at him and tried to hold him with small endearments, twisted small thorns into his clothes with a restraint like a caress, as though they were the fingers of a harlot in a crowded bar. He took no notice and plunged on. The fingers grew angry, slashed at his face with sharp, pointed nails. ‘Who are you anyhow? Who are you anyhow? Think yourself mighty fine.’ He heard the voice, shrill and scolding. She had a pretty face and a white skin. ‘Another day,’ he said, because he could not wait. He had to leave the town. The last twigs broke and the night became darker under trees. Through the latticing of the leaves half a dozen stars came suddenly to view.
He stumbled against a tree and leant for a moment against it, allowing his legs to relax. Freed from some of the weight of his body, they seemed to ache more than ever. He tried to pull himself together and remember exactly where he was – no longer in Shoreham but in a wood. Had he been followed? He listened, hungry for silence, and was rewarded. Had he ever been followed? He had seen Carlyon in the bar of the Sussex Pad, but only in the mirror behind the harlot’s head. Carlyon had been standing sideways to him and was ordering a drink. Unless Carlyon saw him leave, he was safe. What a fool he had been to leave so suddenly. He should have gone quietly out and taken the girl with him. Fool, fool, fool, fool, the word droned on in his mind, a sleepy and mechanical reiteration. His eyes closed, then opened with a start, as a twig broke under his own foot. He might have been asleep now in a comfortable bed, all the more comfortable for being shared. She was pretty and had a good skin. He didn’t suppose he would
have
been asleep … He woke again two minutes later feeling cold. He had dreamed that he was again in the bar, looking in the mirror at Carlyon’s face, and in the dream the face had begun to turn. But was it only in the dream? He could not stay here and again he began to run, very stumblingly because of the roots of the trees.
Oh, but he was tired, tired, tired. His wrist was hurting and felt damp and weak, slashed by the thorns in the hedge. If Carlyon had suddenly appeared now in front of him, he would have thrown himself down on his knees and cried. Carlyon wouldn’t do anything. Carlyon was a gentleman like himself. And one could always appeal to Carlyon’s sense of humour. ‘Hello, Carlyon, old man, it’s ages since I’ve seen you. Have you heard this one, Carlyon, old chap? Carlyon, Carlyon, Carlyon.’ ‘And there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ‘How dare you teach my boy that stuff?’ and then he’d beaten her. His father had always talked of him as ‘my boy’, as though his mother had not borne the pain. The damned old hypocritical bully. ‘Please God, give me a bear.’ He hadn’t wanted a live puppy, which needed looking after. Am I going to faint, he asked himself? What’s this wood doing? Why a wood? Hansel and Gretel. There should be a cottage soon with a witch in it, and the cottage should be made of sugar. ‘I am so hungry,’ he said aloud. ‘I can’t wait for Gretel.’ But inside himself he knew only too certainly that there was no Gretel. He and Gretel had kissed under the holly tree on the common one spring day. Across a faintly coloured sky a few plump clouds had tumbled recklessly. And then time and again he was walking up narrow stairs to small rooms and untidy beds, and walking down again feeling dissatisfied, because he had never found Gretel there. How curious everything was. And now this wood … He saw a light glimmering in front at what seemed an infinite distance, and he began to run, remembering that Carlyon might be somewhere behind
him
in the dark. He had to get on, get on, get on. His feet stumbled, stumbled, and every stumble sent a shoot of pain up his arm to the shoulder, starting from his torn wrist, but not a stumble brought the light nearer. It shone mockingly ahead, very small and sharp and immeasurably knowing. It was as though the world had heaved upward, like a ship in a rough sea, and brought a star to its own lamp’s level. But as distant and as inaccessible as the star was the light.
He was almost on top of the light before he realized that its smallness was due to size and not to distance. The grey stones of a cottage suddenly hunched themselves up between the trees. To the man raising his head to see the ramshackle bulk, it was as though the uneven, knobbled shoulders of the place had shrugged themselves from the earth. The cottage had but one floor above the ground, and the window with which it faced the wood was of thick glass, slightly tinted, like the glass of liquor bottles. The stones of the place gave the impression of having been too hastily and formlessly piled upon one another, so that now with old age they had slipped, some this way, some that way, a little out of the perpendicular. An excrescence built clumsily upon one end might have been anything from some primitive sanitary arrangement to a pigsty or even a small stable.