The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955)

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The Life of Graham Greene (1939-1955) Page 41

by Norman Sherry


  * * *

  fn1 The second stanza of the poem runs: ‘I prayed for love that should be all in all, / But in a fancy less substantial than a dream / Thought that my hands were nailed together to the wall.’

  fn2 Rex Warner, a novelist, had a good reputation both just prior to and after the war. Barbara Warner, née Rothschild, was a close personal friend of Catherine’s.

  22

  Wildly, Crazily, Hopelessly

  Who invented the human heart … show me the place where he was hanged.

  – LAWRENCE DURRELL

  GREENE LOVED CATHERINE ‘wildly, crazily, hopelessly’:1

  And the sense of a world that grew more dear

  Because of the feet that walked & the tongue that spoke

  And the breath how quiet in sleep,

  And my joy that woke

  In Rome, Ravello & Capri

  Siena, Venice every day

  Touching you where you lay

  And knowing you are here,

  My dear.2

  But by the summer of 1949 it appeared that some restriction had been placed on his visits by Harry, and Catherine’s letters became his lifeline increasingly: ‘I loved getting your letter. I still feel in a curious way knocked out by Thursday & the awful Friday when I believed an iron curtain had dropped & you had chosen the other side of it.’3 ‘You don’t know what letters do to me,’ Greene wrote. ‘From the depths of gin blues I was suddenly ready to kiss any beggar’s sores from sheer happiness when your letter arrived.’4 Melancholia often descended upon him: ‘I’m nervy with wanting you & feel scared at the time still ahead as I have no certainty of when I shall see you. And the depression comes down when I think of the years ahead, with scraps and bits of you, probably smaller scraps & bits.’5

  It was a particularly difficult time. In Catherine’s company Greene exhibited quick mood changes: he was desperate one minute and happy the next, his anchor being Catherine. Productive, volatile, potent sexually – he was not bored. With Catherine by his side in Italy, especially in Anacapri, Greene was elevated and expansive, working with great concentration and fluency of thought.

  Greene’s moods could swing swiftly. His exaltation could descend to morosity and sudden bouts of irritability and accusation that seemed to bring an end to love: ‘My dear, my dear, I’m so sorry. I failed you again. I always tell myself that it’s the last time & then it happens … I love you, but what does that mean when one is of no use to you? It’s the thing I want most & the sense of being useless of being able to do nothing for you grows & becomes an obsession … I know you’d be better off without me, but to be without you, would make all the years one had lived meaningless.’6

  Greene had been a depressive since his school years at Berkhamsted. Many times he dealt with his depressions and deep sense of ennui by drinking heavily, and he was not the first writer to do so. He also used benzedrine, especially when he had a strict deadline, to complete work on time. He mentioned his use of it in Ways of Escape, when he was working on The Confidential Agent in the morning and The Power and the Glory in the afternoon, but he continued using it during his attempts to turn The Heart of the Matter into a play and later still when in Malaya and Vietnam. Earlier he had used morphia. He used alcohol constantly, which provided relief from restlessness, irritability and extreme agitation; however, alcohol is itself a depressant.

  Greene realised his nature could be a trial for Catherine: ‘I love you more than all the world and I wish it could make me into a perpetual sunny Jim, but it can’t.’7 Although his mood swings were difficult for Catherine, she understood that they were as painful for him: ‘[He] is very shy, and cannot conceive of anyone wanting him. He is a strange tormented person but intelligent, kind, and I think, tremendously good. I love him very much and wish so much that he did not suffer so much with a very real melancholia.’8

  She could recognise when he was particularly disturbed:

  one suffers with and because of someone that you love, and Graham’s misery is as real as an illness … He has no work, no family, no friends whom he has any responsibility for, and every hour of every day he has nothing to plan for or no one to consider but himself, and for a melancholic by nature, this is a terrible breeding ground, and all I do, really, is to make things worse in the long run by my own fears of abandoning him.9

  On occasion she would press him to see his psychiatrist, Dr Eric Strauss. She tried hard to be gentle with him. ‘When I get irritable & crass,’ Greene wrote, ‘you are so sweet & patient & good to me. You never say the nasty things I say to you. That is not the difference between a man & a woman; it is the difference between you & me. You give me back all the peace that other people take away.’10

  Often she felt she was the cause of these near breakdowns: ‘I am a coward and cannot bear to watch him suffer because of things that I do … Were I really nice and good and brave, I would walk out, as I am convinced for HIM that’s the best thing. But then, how seldom do I ever behave in the way that I know is best? He is very sweet to me and tries very hard, and occasionally when he fails he is overcome with remorse. But anyway, it’s hard to know, and even when you know, it’s hard to act.’11

  *

  Having separated from Vivien and moved out of Dorothy’s flat, Greene, intermittently but with real determination, attempted to persuade Catherine to leave her husband and marry him. He was unremitting, always planning ahead, trying to see how he could find his way through the labyrinth to win her over.

  Yet the responsibility and pity Greene still felt for Dorothy troubled Catherine and were difficult for her to understand, although he expressed his feelings precisely: ‘When one says to someone, “I can’t live without you,” what we really mean is, “I can’t live feeling you may be in pain, unhappy, in want.”’12 With respect to Dorothy, Greene felt an automatic pity that goes out to any human need; any victim demands allegiance, especially the victim you have created. It is also possible that Greene was unable to let go of any woman he had cared for.

  A year after Marrakech, in the early summer of 1949, he offered Dorothy a new holiday. She chose Italy, which she knew to be Catherine and Greene’s personal preserve. So, for once, it was Catherine’s turn to be upset. ‘My dear,’ Greene wrote, ‘I hated hearing your voice going dead & discouraged on the phone.’13 He promised that though the trip might be Hell, it ‘won’t go wrong in the wrong way. If she has any hope in her mind of that (I don’t think she has) this will dispel it for ever.’ Once in Rome he felt ‘very strained. I try to keep away from the places we went to, but your footsteps are everywhere & at every street corner.’14

  Catherine’s reaction was not to write to him while he was on holiday with Dorothy: ‘Your silence weighs on one all the time & makes me nervy … The trouble is you have such power to make one miserable as you have to make one happy. I miss you so much … I got very drunk last night to try to forget your silences & nearly got very stupidly involved. Every day the post comes there’s nothing from you.’15 That Catherine should punish Greene for taking his ex-girlfriend on holiday is unusual, for she was the least jealous of people.

  Throughout 1949 and especially after July Greene pleaded with Catherine to marry him. On every possible occasion he returned to the Sisyphean task: ‘If we were married we could have both the yacht & the house here [this was in Lymington where Greene anchored a small yacht, the Nausikaa, which he’d bought to avoid tax payment] & the cottage in Ireland & the flat in London & we could let Anacapri & take our holidays in Torcello.’16 Telling her that his books would soon overrun his small flat in St James’s, he wrote: ‘I don’t know what I shall do then … I think you’d better come and live with me and we’d take a bigger flat with room for all our books, and we’d send more to Capri … and more to Achill. I think two houses and a flat would be enough for us.’17

  Given the matrimonial bent of his thoughts, Greene could not get too upset about the gossip their friend John Hayward was spreading: ‘Well, as far as I’m concer
ned, I no longer care. I only wish I could shout you from the housetops. I like you, I admire you, I’m proud of you, and I love you. You are not only the best lover a man could have in his wildest dreams, but you’ve got the best brain of any woman I know … I wish I didn’t have to do without the body and the brain for such a hell of a time.’18

  How different Christmas 1949 was to be compared to the first Christmas Greene spent after his separation from Vivien. In 1947 Greene celebrated Christmas at Thriplow, and then Harry was ‘one of the nicest people who ever lived’.19 Greene was given the freedom of the house and on 29 December 1947, after a night of love, he wrote to Catherine: ‘Darling, I have loved this Christmas. [Though not without having to apologise for being nervous and high-strung] … Don’t think of my irritable outbursts – mere symptoms of night starvation … My dear, I love you & miss you so much before I leave even. It seems so natural to hear you around in the next room upstairs, talking in the kitchen. I am in love with you. I wish I could turn my ring & make time move.’ But by 1949 everything was different. He could only see Catherine if her husband was engaged: ‘I do hope Harry has a lot of work in town on his return & that I can keep you company … I’ll be your saviour in all senses of the word. And sex-starved too.’20

  As Christmas approached Greene was in Paris, extremely busy – dinner with the Comtesse Beaumont, book signing, press reception – and in despair:

  I found myself crying. I don’t know what to do. It was all right yesterday when I spoke to you, but one can’t telephone all the time. Then I hold you at bay till 3 in the morning drinking with Marie [Biche, his French literary agent] but one can’t go on doing that … You captured Rome & Dublin, and now at the second assault you’ve captured Paris. I talked to Marie last night about the house and she’s going to set about finding one, but what’s the good? My dear, my dear. I used to like being alone, but now it’s a horror. One thinks of times when we were happy & one tries to shut off thought. It’s horrible that one can’t be happy thinking of happy times like one can in an ordinary relationship. I don’t know what to do about next year. One wishes over & over again that one of these planes will crash & they never do … I so long for your company – I don’t at this moment, want to make love. I want to sit on the floor with my head resting between your legs like at the Ritz & be at peace … I never knew love was like this – a pain that only stops when I’m with people, drinking. Thank God, from tomorrow there are lots of engagements … You can always cure this pain by coming in at a door.21

  *

  What brought about this separation in 1949? If we were to rely solely on the surviving Walston-Greene correspondence – apart from a small number of undated letters, there is a gap from October 1948 until January 1949 and no letters for the month of June – we would be no closer to the truth. This was deliberate, as Greene wrote on 21 July 1949: ‘if anybody ever tries to write a biography of me, how complicated they are going to find it and how misled they are going to be’.

  Lady Selina Hastings, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon, who were close friends of Greene and Catherine, told me that her father had heard a rumour that Catherine had had an illegitimate child by Greene. This story was repeated a number of times by different sources. Sylvia Luling (the pseudonym of Sylvia Thompson, the novelist) described seeing a child in the Walston nursery whom she spoke of as Greene’s. Lady Melchett said casually: ‘I think Catherine was very much in love with Graham. I was always led to believe that one of the Walston children was theirs.’22

  Although a conspicuous number of letters have gone astray, there is no evidence in the remaining letters to suggest that Catherine had a child during this period, except perhaps the following: ‘If when Twinkle [nanny to the Walston children and a friend of Catherine’s] leaves you want a companion in your hotel to sally out after dark, telegraph me here or the Authors’ Club.’ In the same letter Greene added: ‘I feel more than ever it was foolish not to tell her the truth – she must be extraordinarily dense not to guess it.’23 These intriguing remarks were sent to 39 Percy Place in Dublin, the place of birth, as indicated in Dublin’s Registry of Births and Deaths, of James Patrick Francis Walston, who was born on 18 July 1949. His mother is recorded as Catherine Macdonald Walston (formerly Crompton) and his father as Henry David Walston of Thriplow Farm. On 21 July 1949 Greene wrote to Catherine: ‘Trouble may possibly start at Vivien’s end with the news.’

  But the child born in Dublin was not Catherine’s, though he may have been Harry’s. The weeding out of correspondence would still have been necessary since the circumstances surrounding the birth would have to be kept secret whether the child was Catherine’s and Greene’s or Harry’s and an unknown woman’s. The situation becomes more curious. Greene sent a telegram of congratulations to Harry at Thriplow and not to Catherine in Dublin, which surely was odd if the child was not Harry’s or if Catherine had actually been pregnant. After the birth of the child, Greene mentioned in a letter that Ernie O’Malley had called: ‘I suppose he’ll be looking you up, though curiously he never said a word about you or the recent event.’24

  The story from impeccable sources is that during this period Catherine wore pillows under her clothes and then larger pillows as the ‘pregnancy’ developed. A friend of Catherine’s, who was sleeping with Harry, became pregnant and therefore he could well have been the father. However, she was also sleeping with another man at the same time.

  There is no physical resemblance between James and Harry Walston: Harry and two of his sons, apart from James, are short, squat, broad shouldered – fleshy and with broad noses. James is tall, thin, willowy and with a fine bone structure and brown eyes. Catherine, Greene and Harry had blue eyes. Physical resemblance is not conclusive, but suggests that Harry might not have been the father either.

  The solution to the difficult problem of what to do about her friend suddenly came to Catherine. She took matters into her own hands so her friend wouldn’t have to contend with the shame of being a single mother, and persuaded Harry to agree to her extraordinary solution of faking pregnancy and taking on responsibility for the child. Presumably the biological mother was staying at 39 Percy Place and at birth the baby was moved secretly to Catherine’s room and the pillows dispensed with. Catherine enjoyed the nine months of ‘pregnancy’ with the pillow game, which appealed to her sense of the extravagant. She was cocking a snook at the conventional world and in the process enjoying herself immensely.

  The incident of a pregnant unmarried woman who was rescued by a friend found its way into Greene’s 1969 novel, Travels with My Aunt:

  The girl … refused to marry your father, who was anxious … to do the right thing. So my sister covered up for her by marrying him … she padded herself for months with progressive cushions. No one ever suspected. She even wore the cushions in bed, and she was so deeply shocked when your father tried once to make love to her – after the marriage but before your birth – that, even when you had been safely delivered, she refused him what the Church calls his rights. He was never a man in any case to stand on them.25

  In the last year of his life Greene and his niece, Louise Dennys, were discussing the difference in moral temper between the 1950s and the present day. Greene recalled how Catherine would visit him with pillows stuffed up her dress. She would fling herself down on the sofa and pull the pillows out with great relief and they would both be laughing.

  *

  The intensity of Catherine’s passion for Greene must have disturbed Harry Walston. Although he was capable of ‘profound forgiveness’,26 at one point he admonished Catherine for being too public about her affair with Greene and told her that she was causing her children embarrassment at school.27 By the end of January 1950 the Walstons’ marriage was strained. Harry and Catherine were seriously considering separation, for she was totally consumed by Greene.28 Greene immediately took advantage of the difficulties and offered her marriage, arguing brilliantly for victory:

  I’m so sorry that all
the trouble has started again. Please remember that I love you entirely, with my brain, my heart & my body, & that I’m always there when you want me. I don’t like or approve of Harry’s judgements. When a man marries, he is like a Prime Minister – he has to accept responsibility for the acts of a colleague. My marriage failed (only God can sift all the causes), but the responsibility for the failure is mine. One can’t lay the blame on one’s wife. Your marriage, intrinsically, had failed before I knew you, & the man must accept responsibility – which doesn’t mean guilt. It had failed because marriage isn’t maintaining a friend, a housekeeper or even a mother. The Catholic service says ‘with my body I thee worship’ & if that fails the heart has gone out of it.29

  Greene was certain that he could make Catherine happy and that any plan he would lay out for their living together would not exclude the Church. Although Catherine would be unhappy, it would only be for a short time. He reassured her that Harry could not deny her rights to her children: ‘Harry could not divorce you without your consent, & therefore he could not shut down the doors between you & the children. You could insist on sharing them in any separation, just as if I chose I could insist on mine. He is not legally in a position to lay down terms or order a way of life for you.’30

 

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