The Life of Graham Greene (1955-1991) by Norman Sherry

Author:Norman Sherry
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473547018
Publisher: Random House

34

Warming Up to the Cold Scots

‘A Serbonian bog of politics’

– PROFESSOR BLACK

IN ANOTHER MONTH, near the end of August 1965, Greene has a letter from Catherine, who is flying back to England to go into hospital. He writes to Yvonne: ‘Gall bladder again, & a fourth major operation in two years. All this & the Roe business will make a summer to remember. My God.’1 By November, Catherine has had yet more surgery. During this time Greene visits his childhood home, Berkhamsted, which makes him very unhappy.

To Catherine from Paris he writes of planning a trip to the capital of Georgia, on 17 January 1966: a journey he did not make. In the same month he read a good book on Paraguay – ‘which I’ve always wanted to visit’ – The People and the River by Gordon Meyer. It was Paraguay (and the adjoining Argentina as well as Chile, Panama and Nicaragua) that he later did visit, and there he found his destined creativity.

By 3 April, Greene hears from his French literary agent that Catherine has been in the London Clinic again, and this time (one suspects) she’s to be ‘dried out’. He writes to Catherine, genuinely distressed. His feelings for Yvonne are a few rungs lower on the ladder of love:

I feel so out of touch. If only you could realise how much you are loved – not only by me. There has never been anyone in my life whom I have loved as I love you – & I hate not knowing when things are bad for you. (OK, We are not lovers now in the technical sense – but like it or not I’m your lover as long as I’m alive & I want to know about you & share bad things with you.)

He then gives her his phone number in Paris. He comments that Catherine writes only when she has good news (and that is rare) and tells her: ‘You are the bravest woman I’ve ever known … but thank God you can be cured at the end of all this appalling pain, disappointment … For God’s sake I don’t want you only cheerful.’ Then he refers to the mysterious marriage: ‘For better for worse applied at Tunbridge Wells & applies now.’2

By April, Greene was working hard on the film script for The Comedians. To Catherine: ‘I get up each day at 7 & begin work before 8. I’ve done about 60 pages now (out of 180) of the first rough draft. Every three days or so I go over to Cap Ferrat & spend a night to go over the stuff with [Peter Glenville].’ Dinner with the Freres was so ‘delectable’ that it put him out of action for twenty-four hours with a ‘crise de foie’.3

*

Sometimes we get the impression that Greene would not have married again even if he had divorced Vivien. He didn’t seem to have the temperament. In his sixty-second year, he is easily irritated and grouchy when his personal space is encroached upon.

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