CLIVE: I wouldn’t have called myself a special friend.
VICTOR: I think perhaps it would be better if you did. We shall see a great deal of each other from now on, and that is the best explanation, isn’t it? Apart from the bookshop. Are dental first editions worth acquiring? Like Zane Greys?
CLIVE: I haven’t heard of any.
VICTOR: Speaking as a special friend, I wouldn’t see too much of Ann. An impulsive child and too young for you.
CLIVE: Is that—quite—your business?
VICTOR: It worries Mary and anything that touches Mary is my business. It was very good of you, by the way, to give her those ear-rings. She looks beautiful in them.
CLIVE: Yes.
VICTOR: I liked you a lot better when I heard that you’d risked a black-market currency deal to get them for her.
CLIVE: Did she give you any details?
VICTOR: She said something about a currency specialist in Knightsbridge.
CLIVE: She oughtn’t to have told you that.
VICTOR: Why? A man and wife don’t have many secrets from each other. Except the unimportant ones.
CLIVE: It puts me in your hands.
VICTOR: How?
CLIVE: You could tell the police. I believe I might be put away for two years.
VICTOR: What a strange idea you have of me. It would be a very shabby return for two nice diamonds which I suspect you can’t afford. I’m sorry she told the Howards that I had given them to her. She was only trying to protect me. Poor Mary.
CLIVE: Why poor?
VICTOR: You’ll know her better in time. Then you’ll realize the amount of protection she needs. You and I both have our work. She has no work except the family round. Children, servants, meals—it’s not a real vocation. And so to make up she has to have—well, I’d call them illusions.
CLIVE: What illusions?
VICTOR: That she’ll love someone for the rest of her life. Physically. In spite of that filling of the upper canine. I’m sorry. That’s unfair. I don’t suppose my filling would have been any better.
CLIVE: What did you do with the letter?
VICTOR: I tore it up. In time I shall even forget what it said.
CLIVE: I can give you all the evidence for a divorce you want.
VICTOR: I don’t want a divorce. The only thing I ask you is to carry on your affair at a distance. You see, there are the children to be considered. May I make a suggestion?
CLIVE: Of course.
VICTOR: Mary’s mother is dead. Nobody around here knows that. She can be critically ill three or four times a year. If you require it. She lived in Pontefract, not in Amsterdam. There’s a very good Trust House in Pontefract.
CLIVE: Do you really expect us to live like that, not seeing each other except three or four times a year? In Pontefract?
VICTOR: My dear Clive—I’d better get accustomed to calling you Clive—I hope you’ll dine with us almost every week.
CLIVE: No. I’m damned if I will. You can be a complaisant husband if you like, I’m not going to be a complaisant lover.
VICTOR: The two are inseparable.
CLIVE: Then I’m walking out. You won’t be bothered with me any more.
VICTOR: If you walk out, I think she’ll walk out with you.
CLIVE: But that’s the best solution for all of us. Can’t you see that?
VICTOR: For you and me perhaps. But we’ve only one object, you and I, to make it a degree less hard for her. I’ll make the effort. Can’t you do the same?
CLIVE: What makes you think she’d be happier—with the two of us?
VICTOR: The four of us. There’s Robin and Sally. She told me herself she doesn’t want to choose.
CLIVE: She wants to have her cake and eat it.
VICTOR: That’s exactly what she said. Don’t you love her enough to try to give her that kind of cake? A child’s cake with silver balls and mauve icing and a layer of marzipan.
CLIVE: Bad for the teeth, my nurse used to say.
VICTOR: Not for children’s teeth.
CLIVE: You do really love her, don’t you?
VICTOR: Yes, I do.
Pause.
CLIVE: Me too. Is Pontefract a bracing climate? (Robin’s voice begins to call: “Mother, Mother, Mother.”) I suppose you can supply me with the dates of the children’s holidays and your dental dinners. I’m sorry. I’m trying to work my sourness off on you. I don’t want her to feel it.
Mary comes in from the garden.
MARY: Robin’s shouting from the bathroom. I suppose he’s lost his soap.
VICTOR: I’ll go and see.
Victor leaves by the dining room. Neither speaks till he is gone.
MARY: He’s talked to you?
CLIVE: Yes.
MARY: What have you decided?
CLIVE: He seems to have done the deciding for me.
MARY: A divorce?
CLIVE: No.
MARY: I suppose that means you are going to leave me.
CLIVE: No. I stay. Under his conditions.
MARY: Thank God.
CLIVE: Are you so pleased?
MARY: Yes.
CLIVE: You certainly must love him.
MARY: I love you, too. Clive, can you blame me if I don’t want to lose the past or the future? The past is sixteen years of myself and him, the future is even longer of you.
CLIVE: Longer than sixteen years? I doubt that.
MARY: (with complete conviction): It’s until death, Clive. (Clive shakes his head.) Don’t you believe me?
CLIVE: You haven’t been to my school. You don’t know the lessons I learnt a long time ago.
MARY: What do you know that I don’t know?
CLIVE: The future. I’m not being sour, Mary. This is the sad truth, even though I’ve never loved anyone as much as you. I know that one day I shall get tired of going away at night and leaving you two together. I shall get tired of arranging our holidays to suit his convenience. I shall get tired of all the times when we have to cancel things at the last moment. And I shall get tired of waiting outside the shops in Paris or Brussels while you buy the children’s shoes.
Victor comes back into the dining room and, hearing their voices, hesitates.
MARY: And then you’ll leave me?
CLIVE: No. Then, when you see how tired I am, you will leave me. That’s what I dread.
MARY (with fear): I don’t believe it’s true. I won’t believe it’s true. (With confidence and returning gaiety:) It needn’t be true.
Victor comes into the drawing room and joins them. He stands beside his wife. They are a pair. Clive is the odd man out.
VICTOR: If you’d like to stay for dinner, Clive—there are some cold left-overs.
CLIVE: No thank you. I must get back.
VICTOR (it isn’t easy for him to say it): Come on Thursday. No party. Just the three of us.
MARY: Yes, please come. (In gratitude to her husband she puts her arm round him.)
VICTOR: We’ll open a bottle of good wine.
MARY: I’ll buy it myself at the Army and Navy. What shall I get, Victor?
VICTOR: The Cheval Blanc ’53 if he’ll come. You will come?
Clive looks at the married pair and sadly accepts his fate.
CLIVE: Oh, yes, I’ll come. (Pause.) I expect I’ll come.
He is turning to go as the curtain falls.
About the Author
Graham Greene (1904–1991) is recognized as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, achieving both literary acclaim and popular success. His best known works include Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American, and The Power and the Glory. After leaving Oxford, Greene first pursued a career in journalism before dedicating himself full-time to writing with his first big success, Stamboul Train. He became involved in screenwriting and wrote adaptations for the cinema as well as original screenplays, the most successful being The Third Man. Religious, moral, and political themes are at the root of much of his work, and th
roughout his life he traveled to some of the wildest and most volatile parts of the world, which provided settings for his fiction. Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1959 by Graham Greene Estate
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5425-6
This edition published in 2018 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
GRAHAM GREENE
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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The Complaisant Lover Page 7