‘I haven’t any choice. I tried to stay in the pool.’
‘Did you want the pool?’
‘We could have met at the Corner House sometimes and gone to a movie.’
‘A ghastly life – you said it.’
‘You would have been part of it.’
‘Beatrice, I’m fourteen years older than you.’
‘What the hell does that matter? I know what really worries you. It’s not age, it’s Milly.’
‘She has to learn her father’s human too.’
‘She told me once it wouldn’t do my loving you.’
‘It’s got to do. I can’t love you as a one-way traffic.’
‘It won’t be easy telling her.’
‘It may not be very easy to stay with me after a few years.’
She said, ‘My darling, don’t worry about that any longer. You won’t be left twice.’
As they kissed, Milly came in carrying a large sewing basket for an old lady. She looked particularly virtuous; she had probably started a spell of doing good deeds. The old lady saw them first and clutched at Milly’s arm. ‘Come away, dear,’ she said. ‘The idea, where anyone can see them!’
‘It’s all right,’ Milly said, ‘it’s only my father.’
The sound of her voice separated them.
The old lady said, ‘Is that your mother?’
‘No. His secretary.’
‘Give me my basket,’ the old lady said with indignation.
‘Well,’ Beatrice said, ‘that’s that.’
Wormold said, ‘I’m sorry, Milly.’
‘Oh,’ Milly said, ‘it’s time she learnt a little about life.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of her. I know this won’t seem to you like a real marriage …’
‘I’m glad you are being married. In Havana I thought you were just having an affair. Of course it comes to the same thing, doesn’t it, as you are both married already, but somehow it will be more dignified. Father, do you know where Tattersall’s is?’
‘Knightsbridge, I think, but it will be closed.’
‘I just wanted to explore the route.’
‘And you don’t mind, Milly?’
‘Oh, pagans can do almost anything, and you are pagans. Lucky you. I’ll be back for dinner.’
‘So you see,’ Beatrice said, ‘it was all right after all.’
‘Yes. I managed her rather well, don’t you think? I can do some things properly. By the way, the report about the enemy agents – surely that must have pleased them.’
‘Not exactly. You see, darling, it took the laboratory an hour and a half floating each stamp in water to try to find your dot. I think it was on the four hundred and eighty-second stamp, and then when they tried to enlarge it – well, there wasn’t anything there. You’d either over-exposed the film or used the wrong end of the microscope.’
‘And yet they are giving me the O.B.E.?’
‘Yes.’
‘And a job?’
‘I doubt whether you’ll keep it long.’
‘I don’t mean to. Beatrice, when did you begin to imagine that you were …?’
She put her hand on his shoulder and forced him into a shuffle, among the dreary chairs. Then she began to sing, a little out of tune, as though she had been running a long way in order to catch him up.
‘Sane men surround
You, old family friends.
They say the earth is round –
My madness offends.
An orange has pips, they say,
And an apple has rind …’
‘What are we going to live on?’ Wormold asked.
‘You and I can find a way.’
‘There are three of us,’ Wormold said, and she realized the chief problem of their future – that he would never be quite mad enough.
THE HISTORY OF VINTAGE
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Copyright © Graham Greene 1958
Introduction copyright © Christopher Hitchens 2006
First published in Great Britain in 1958 by William Heinemann
First published by Vintage in 2001
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Our Man in Havana Page 23