The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955)

by Norman Sherry

  Bonte’s recollection differed only slightly: ‘I only knew Harry one weekend. We went on a skiing weekend to New Hampshire and Bobs hurt her ankle and Harry stayed back with her and the rest of us went skiing. We came back at the end of the weekend and on Monday morning Harry Walston telephoned and proposed to Bobs over the phone. So it just took him three days.’12

  Catherine announced her engagement shortly after the skiing trip. Her father interviewed Harry to find out whether he could support Bobs, and Harry (very wealthy even then) said he thought he could.13 Harry was Jewish, but he had never attended Hebrew school or gone to synagogue. He was brought up as a Protestant at Eton. His father, who died when Harry was young, was a noted archaeologist, Sir Charles Walston (originally Walstein).

  When Catherine and Harry arrived in England, Harry’s mother, Florence, Lady Walston, decided to give a garden party to introduce her son’s fiancée: ‘The garden party was replete with women wearing flowered chiffon dresses and floppy hats and looking very staid, Bobs appeared in a bathing suit and did handstands and cartwheels on the lawn – this absolutely shocked Lady Walston and a number of other people and horrified my mother.’14 Bonte Durán added: ‘My sister didn’t care a damn for Lords and Ladies and Earls … she simply turned cartwheels. She was a very daring young lady.’15

  Perhaps Catherine was making a point to the formidable Lady Walston, who had been very upset by the engagement because she thought Catherine might be a fortune-hunter who had entrapped Harry. When she contacted a cousin of the Cromptons, Sir George Booth (head of the Cunard Line), his answer to her query ‘Can you tell me something about the Crompton family?’ was ‘Can you tell me something about the Walston family?’16

  The couple were married in Wilton, New Hampshire at the Unitarian church. The young men who had originally come to ski were the ushers and, the celebrations over, Catherine and Harry sailed for England.

  Bonte realised that her sister was not in love with Harry Walston. On the day of her marriage, Catherine went for a walk with Bonte and said: ‘“I am not in love with Harry.” And I said, “But, Bobs, you cannot marry a man that you’re not in love with.” She said, “I like Harry; he’s very nice, and I can’t stand life here.”’17 Years later Catherine wrote to Belinda that she felt that her marriage with Harry was ‘NEVER a marriage. At the time I married him I decided that I would give it a try, and if I found anyone I liked better, I would leave Harry and marry X.’18

  Lady Melchett was puzzled by the couple: ‘It was really weird because one never saw them intimate with each other. They sat next to each other and that was the only sort of outward sign that there was a deep bond between them. Certainly Harry must have felt that he did have this beautiful jewel of a wife. There was a sort of mystery about their relationship. I couldn’t think of why this great beauty … could have married him. I mean, Harry was very nice, but he was a man’s man …’19

  Harry was long-suffering, almost masochistic, perhaps without realising it: ‘I think being basically rather dull, she did bring a lot of excitement and drama into his life, and maybe he thought it was worth it … But there was a mystery about Harry. He was everyone’s idea of an Englishman – you know, you can’t show emotion, you hide all your feelings. Whether there was a lot of emotion underneath I don’t know.’20 Elizabeth Walston (Harry’s second wife) described her husband as ‘an enigma’ and a ‘most uncommon man’ who had difficulty expressing his love.21 His son William said, ‘My father thought my mother was a wonderful person. Since that was the case, whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, he would support. Even in his happy second marriage he continued to think of the deceased Catherine and was waiting to be with her. Harry was agnostic (I don’t know whether he thought there was an afterlife), but if there was the slightest chance of one he wanted to be united with her.’22 Although Harry often gave no public display of his devotion to Catherine, he adored her and his will directed that his ashes be spread upon her grave.

  When Catherine met Greene, she and Harry had been married for twelve years and he was not a man to censure his wife’s love affairs. He felt that Catherine was an individual and had every right to do what she wanted.23 As Catherine wrote to Belinda: ‘Our sex life broke down before it hardly got started. We have never decided whose fault it was, and of course, it doesn’t matter … we have become very loving friends, almost twins – brother & sister … Certainly I could not live with him without his compassion, his fondness, justice, humour, willingness.’24 Although she no longer had sex with her husband, there would be many times when Greene became angry and jealous over Walston, for it was Harry, not Greene, she went home to.

  *

  Vivien knew that her husband was living with Dorothy in London (though Greene tried to keep this from her), and that he had many other women: ‘I knew there were many, very many. Once a woman called Annette [a prostitute] phoned him and I answered. It was just a voice, an anonymous message for Graham. I knew he went with that sort of woman. I knew about it before the war. I never said a word.’25 She had her reasons for keeping silent: ‘How would you approach somebody? I had two small children and a house and everything, and perhaps it would go away. Nor did he speak about it.’26 However, the full extent of Greene’s unfaithfulness was not known to Vivien for some years: ‘After he left me, Graham told me he had had thirty-two women.fn2 I don’t know whether it was meant to be wounding or just unimaginative. I mean I knew that he was unfaithful, but I didn’t really want to know. As long as one didn’t know, the family was kept together – that was more important.’27

  Vivien told me she felt a remarkable equanimity about Dorothy, but that Mrs Walston disturbed her deeply. Catherine was young, beautiful, slim, and had lovely clothes of the sort that Vivien could neither afford nor obtain. It was a painful embarrassment for Vivien to be in Catherine’s company:

  I remember her coming to Beaumont Street in the most marvellous coat – apricot, Paris mohair. Very good looking, beautiful features and this marvellous coat – in those hard times, because she went back and forth to America and she was very rich, and of course when one was counting the coupons in ration books to get another pair of gloves, to see this staggering sight, and a huge topaz brooch on it – perfectly plain coat – gorgeously cut, gorgeous material, wonderful apricot colour.28

  Vivien’s first remembered humiliation occurred early in Greene’s affair with Catherine or even before it started. The war had just ended, and the house in Beaumont Street was, Vivien told me, comparatively unfurnished. Catherine’s visit to Greene must have been late in 1946, and its effect on Vivien was quite startling:

  She was with Barbara Rothschild, a great friend of hers. Graham and I were coming down Beaumont Street – I can almost remember the piece of paving stone – it was outside where the new extension of the Randolph Hotel is, and they came up and, quite ignoring me, said: ‘Oh you’ll be coming to the party’ – Barbara speaking to Graham, and Mrs Walston with her. And Barbara said to Mrs. Walston ‘Are you going to wear your rocks?’ (This was a new expression to me.) And Mrs Walston said, ‘Oh yes. I think it’s that sort of occasion’, and, ‘What time will you be coming, Graham?’ and so forth. They were simply talking about this with me standing there, not a word to me. I stood and I was looking at this paving stone where we were standing, and there was really nothing else for me to do, while they were talking about things they all shared.29

  ‘Until he met Mrs Walston he was always very sweet,’ Vivien recalled, ‘but I consider that was a turning point. He turned into a different person. She was a very bad influence on him – he became indifferent to the children and had furious and terrible tempers.’ Greene’s brother, Hugh, agreed with Vivien. Accounting for the fact that he had few letters from Greene during the late 1940s and 1950s, he put the blame squarely on Catherine: ‘She didn’t take to me nor I to her,’ and he added, ‘Graham became harder then and less friendly. It was all Catherine Walston’s fault.’30 In another interview Vivien returned to the
charge: ‘I think the change was entirely and purely Mrs Walston. A very powerful woman, with very strong sexual drive, and I’m not deficient myself, but she had a great number of men and as I say with her money …’31

  But what Vivien never forgot, and what truly vexed her, was that she had brought about their meeting:

  Mrs Walston wrote to Graham to say that his books had so influenced her that she was going to become a Catholic and she rang me up because he hadn’t met her and she hadn’t met him. But this was a way of meeting him I think. And would he come to her reception – she was being received into the Church. When I reported to Graham that Mrs Walston had telephoned to me asking him to be her godfather because he had brought her into the Church, he said, quite laughingly, ‘Oh yes, do go [and Vivien did] and say all the right things and could you send some flowers or something from me.’32

  Father Vincent provided a group photograph, taken immediately after Catherine had been received into the Catholic Church. She is wearing a checked dress and looks serene. What is remarkable about this photograph is that whilst Catherine is sitting on a chair and looking carefree, behind her and standing to her left is Vivien. She is wearing a rather old-fashioned hat and is not looking directly into the camera. Her head is turned to one side as she gazes at Catherine; her expression is puzzled and not friendly. Could it be that she had a premonition of what was to happen or was she simply suspicious of the happy, unsuspecting girl in front of her?

  Greene telegraphed Catherine on 25 September 1946 and it is clear he did not initially expect the correspondence to continue: ‘Dear Mrs Walston. This is a shockingly belated wire of congratulations and 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 godfather!’ There was also some forced humour: ‘I haven’t even sent you a silver mug or a spoon to bite.’ His wire made a casual reference to her reception into the Church, wishing he’d been there, and he ended, ‘Again all my wishes for the future, Yours, Graham Greene.’ It seems the telegram went astray because we know Catherine wrote to Greene and he quickly sent her an apology explaining his ‘chilling silence’ on her special day.

  Little correspondence from Catherine to Greene has come to light, but in one letter Greene wrote of finding in a drawer an early letter from Catherine. It started, he tells her, ‘“Dear Godfather” and ended, “Yours sincerely, Catherine Walston.” Why did I keep it? These are mysteries.’33

  Years later, Vivien bitterly recalled that it was ‘so ironic that C.W. asked ME to ask Graham to be her godfather … so I was instrumental’.34 She was very blunt about what Catherine was up to: ‘I think she was out to get him and got him. I think it was a quite straightforward grab. I remember writing to Father Vincent Turner and saying that it was just as if you got into a railway carriage with somebody you knew very well and they got the tickets and sat down to read and presently they got up and simply opened the door of the carriage and heaved you out. It was as sudden as that in a way.’35 In looking back to those tempestuous days, Vivien may have felt that the affair began suddenly. However, it did not.

  Greene’s brisk recounting of the start of their affair did not mention Vivien’s role in bringing them together or his being Catherine’s godfather. He recalled that Robert Speaight had arranged for them to meet:

  I suspect it may have been through Bobby Speaight and she said to Bobby Speaight oh I’d like to meet him and so I went along and had a drink one evening. I described the Windmill Theatre to her [nudes were allowed to pose there but not move] and how I used to go and get free tickets when I was on Night and Day. We got on very well and then she invited me to see her place in the country and it was getting late after lunch and she said ‘Oh I’ll fly you back.’ … And that was the beginning of the affair.36

  In an undated letter to Catherine, Vivien, perhaps still unsuspecting (or at least not willing to countenance her fears), wrote: ‘We were THRILLED by the flight – it was a marvellous “present”. Graham arrived before 5!’ Greene referred to the trip in a letter to his mother and spoke of Catherine (though he spelled her name Katherine, for he was not yet closely acquainted with her): ‘I had lunch with her at the farm & the question of how to get to Oxford cropped up. It was five minutes to three & it would have taken by train till after 8. A bright idea struck her & she said “Why not fly? I’ll come over with you & fly back.” She rang up an aerodrome, we leapt into a car: out again into a little tiny plane, & I was at Kidlington outside Oxford in 45 minutes. Lovely flight over the snowy country.’ Greene’s frugality is apparent: ‘The ride was simply put down to her account.’37

  It was on the plane that they knew they would become close friends. Greene was impressed by her beauty, but also by the ease and freedom wealth gave her, a freedom he had never known. He was, as usual, preternaturally alert (the novelist never slept) and very curious about people he’d met for the first time: ‘He listened with the intense interest one feels in a stranger’s life.’38 He always needed ‘the green light’ before responding even to friendship, and it was Catherine’s simple ‘I like you so much’ to which he reacted. From her words he had an immediate sense of truth and their conversation gave them both a feeling of security.

  We do not know whether Catherine was already thinking of an affair, but Greene felt they were safely divided: Catherine had a husband and five small children; Greene a wife and two children; she was his goddaughter and he her godfather. Yet in a letter to Catherine, one year after that plane ride to Oxford, he recalled how love came to him: ‘The act of creation is awfully odd and inexplicable like falling in love. A lock of hair touches one’s eyes in a plane with East Anglia under snow and one is in love.’39 When the plane descended at Kidlington, he walked alone in the darkness and rain to where Vivien and his children waited. Thinking of Catherine, he felt ‘an extraordinary happiness’.40 ‘The taste of the lipstick was like something he’d never tasted before and that he would always remember. It seemed to him that an act had been committed which altered the whole world.’41

  On 20 December 1946 he sent Catherine a telegram: ‘A MILLION THANKS FOR WONDERFUL PRESENT. ALL EXTREMELY GRATEFUL.’ The following day, 21 December 1946, Vivien added her comments: ‘We couldn’t BEGIN to say thank you “properly” (as children say) for the utterly magnificent object [Vivien appended a sketch of a huge turkey] which at present swings despondently in our larder! Many many most grateful acknowledgements. It is so very good of you and my breath was simply taken away … with the good news.’ Vivien then rambled, in a further expression of her nervousness and perhaps in an attempt to stress the importance of family life and Greene’s essential role in it: ‘The children broke up the next day & I have been as busy as you may imagine one to be who has a 5 storey house & no domestic! Our crib [of Jesus] was ready on Sunday and we decorate the tree this afternoon: I ice the cake tonight, for we have The Tea on the Eve & light the Tree then too …’42 But whatever Vivien wrote to Catherine, her real feelings remained pent up. In 1977 she admitted to having been ashamed and angry that Mrs Walston was dispensing charity in the shape of a bird.

  On Boxing Day Greene wrote: ‘What a lovely turkey. We gorged on Christmas Day until the children were limp. You really are a perfect god-daughter!’ But he seemed to have had an ulterior motive in writing, for he used the occasion to initiate a meeting between them: ‘Are you going to be in town in the New Year – won’t you ring me up and have lunch with me and tell me about Poland … I’ve always wanted to see the place where Conrad originated – Podolia wherever that is.’43

  Catherine’s involvement with the Greenes increased. Early in 1947 she found a house which she felt they would like, and invited Greene to visit her in Cambridgeshire to look it over. ‘I’ve had an exciting weekend as I think I’ve found a house – or rather my beautiful goddaughter, Katherine Walston, found it for me,’ Greene wrote to his mother. ‘It’s called The Queen’s House & it’s at Linton,
a village about ten miles from Cambridge: a most beautiful little Queen Anne house with an Elizabethan brick back part. In perfect order … two bathrooms, 1/2 an acre of garden with a chance of later buying an orchard next door. Newly painted & decorated. Loveliest staircase I have seen.’44

  Vivien also wrote warmly to Catherine: ‘the Linton house sounds delicious’, but then in her feline way went on to say: ‘The only difficulty is [that] it sounds rather “fenced in” … I am not at all mobile, for I can’t drive a car nor even ride a bicycle (through sheer incompetence, not because I don’t love to go up to London or go about). Therefore, wherever I am, I have to really settle in, if it’s in the country & that means room for rabbit hutches (for the children, of course) & somewhere to sit in a garden someone else works in.’45 The phrase ‘someone else works in’ suggests that she was very conscious of Catherine’s wealth and perhaps feared she might be taken for a poor church mouse. Subtly, she poured cold water on the advantage of moving to Linton. At the same time, she was defensive and protested too much: ‘It’s much, much nicer having a village of course – think of all the thrilling happenings that one wouldn’t miss for anything! I’d love to be in a village or market town or such, or enough in it to be part of it & dive into the Teeming Group of village life! I have to realise that Graham will have to spend a lot of time in London for quite a bit, so no Lady of Shalott existence for me … It’s extremely angelic of you to set things going.’46

  Then on St Valentine’s Day, Vivien wrote in the greatest haste telling Catherine (what Catherine must have already known) that Greene had bought The Queen’s House and made it over to her: ‘I’m longing to see it, but please don’t decide to go away to California or Ireland before WE move in!’47 There is a proprietary feeling to these letters – ‘love from both of us’, ‘before WE move in’ – which reads as an attempt on Vivien’s part to cope with someone wealthier, prettier and younger.