Our Man in Havana; The End of the Affair; It's a Battlefield; England Made Me; The Ministry of Fear; Brighton Rock by Greene Graham

Author:Greene, Graham [Greene, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780905712598
Amazon: 0905712595
Goodreads: 6335961
Publisher: Heinemann/Octopus
Published: 1981-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

4

‘MARGARET,’ Mr Surrogate said, and turned his hand palm upwards on the sheet, ‘Margaret.’ His voice fell, his words became inaudible, and Davis laid a towel across the hot-water can and hesitated by the window. Should he draw up the blind and let in the sunlight? In Woburn Square the children were yelping on the pavement and the man with the Sunday papers called to the taximen on the rank.

‘Good food,’ Mr Surrogate said suddenly, still with that explanatory and reasonable palm outspread. Davis decided: let him sleep, let the bastard sleep: and tiptoed respectfully out, a gentleman’s gentleman.

The sands were pink of an evening, the sea silver. At the rippled edge, far across the pink sands, the sea-birds sat, small and white and upright, like unlit candles. Margaret stood and stared and would not come in to dinner. ‘Good food wasted,’ Mr Surrogate said, pecking at her elbow like a hungry bird. ‘Oh, go to hell,’ and she was Kay leaning away from him towards the bed. Mr Surrogate woke and sat up and faced Margaret Surrogate’s cold appraisal from the wall. ‘I married the artist in her,’ he explained to the reporter at the funeral; he was prepared; had expected several journalists; hid his disappointment with difficulty from the single inexperienced boy from a news agency. ‘She was always, to me, more than a woman.’ The boy stared at him and blew his nose: he had a streaming cold.

It’s true, Mr Surrogate said, not aloud, for Davis was in the next room, you were more than a woman. I wasn’t worthy of you. He was daunted by the canvases which now decorated Caroline Bury’s wall, daunted by the brief uncomfortable sexual passion in which Margaret had been the leader, leaving him worn out, humiliated, with the knowledge of her dissatisfaction. More than a woman. Kay was a woman, leaning back towards the bed, calling out, ‘No, Mr Surrogate, no. Please not,’ afterwards on the pillows whispering into his ear how bad he was, how strong.

I’ve betrayed you again, Mr Surrogate said humbly to the face. Man is a beast, a lecherous beast. He may mate above him, but presently he finds his proper level. Nasty, brutish, short, that was how Hobbes described a man’s life. Mr Surrogate patted the grey hair above his ears, squinting sideways at the mirror. One ran through life quickly: the Fabian Society, hansoms at midnight, friendships with cultured plumbers, fighting for truth and justice, seeing violence prevail, lust prevail over the memory of love. Mr Surrogate’s thoughts withdrew from that unhappy honeymoon in Cornwall. One grew old.

But Mr Surrogate’s thoughts rose resiliently: one was not too old to conquer and satisfy a young and pretty woman. Things would have been different, he told himself, avoiding the photograph, if Margaret had been less artist, more woman, had been less cold; he stamped deep down the memory of that unsated passion. She never understood me.

‘Davis, Davis,’ he called, ‘what’s the time? My watch has stopped.’

‘Half past nine, sir,’ Davis called from the pantry.

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