by Henry Green
Back is the perfect title for this self-reflexive, to-ing and fro-ing novel. The word is loaded with different meanings on which the narrative ruminates almost as naggingly as Charley dwells on the name Rose: “he followed a strange girl … back to what may have been her home”; “‘we all of us came back to what we didn’t expect’”; “he knew it was all right at last, was as it had been six years back”; “‘Life has a funny way of getting back at us, sometimes.’” The most important of these repetitions comes in the call of Rose’s mother, Mrs Grant, as she realizes that her husband has died:
“Gerald.” “Gerald.” And much more urgent, “D’you hear me?”.… After which the most frightful sobbing. “Gerald darling, Father, where are you?”; then, in a sort of torn bellow, “Father,” then, finally, “Come back .…”
Both Charley and Nancy are in the house at this moment and it crystallizes something about each of them: the implications of the fact that Gerald is Nancy’s father, as well as Rose’s; and an easing of Charley’s obsession with the past: “He clapped hands down tight over his ears. He concentrated on not ever remembering …. he won free. He mastered it. And, when he took his streaming hands away, everything was dead quiet.” This passage, more than the book’s closing episode, seems to represent a victory for Charley; but such apparent climaxes are never to be trusted in Green’s work. What saves Charley, as the critic John Russell has pointed out,19 is not only – as in a conventional romance – the love of a good woman, but his diligence in the routine life of the office and the sympathy of those with whom he works.
Evelyn Waugh was the first to praise the success of Back in delineating this world – which, again, was also Green’s own, in his role as managing director of the family’s engineering firm, Pontifex & Sons.20 The office anchors the story and provides an environment in which Charley’s cure unsensationally progresses. It also supplies one of the many moments of bathos. Immediately after the high romance of Septimanie, the next piece of prose which Charley, like the book’s reader, has to deal with is a business letter, full of bureaucratic jargon: “When last autumn at the instance of the Ministry, Section S.E.C.O., we accepted your esteemed order no. 1526/2/5812 for 60 (sixty) size N.V. Rotary Extraction Pumps and 60 (sixty) size O.U. Centrifugal Feed Pumps, we pointed out both to your goodselves and to Mr Turner of S.E.C.O that we could only undertake this contract on the clear understanding that you would be in a position to urge through sufficient quantities of the pump body .…” Even here, what might seem straightforward to interpret – an easy joke at the expense of modern commercial life – has more complex resonances. Like Pontifex & Sons, Charley Summers’s firm incorporates a metal foundry, but the fictional factory “was burned to a cinder in the blitz”, so this essential part of its business has been “made out” to other companies such as the one from which the complaining letter comes. There is a faint but crucial echo, in all this, of the war’s effects on Charley – of a sexuality which has been temporarily quenched, and then misdirected and thwarted. The symbolic link is made explicit after he and Nancy have climbed through a bombsite to the rose garden where they kiss.
[In] the position she held, half in, half out of his arms, and so close that the one eye in his line of vision was in the outer corner of its socket to watch him, he saw it catch the dying sunset light around, and glow, as if she had opened the eye hole to a furnace [my italics].
Like the book’s other seeming climaxes, this one is both full of ambiguity – is it romantic or apocalyptic? – and unresolved: “He made another clutch at her, but she broke away completely. He was left, so that his arms hung at his sides, and he could not speak, paralysed …. So they walked home in silence.” Green never lets his readers settle and in this pendulum swing between an emotional furnace and a clumsy silence lies the essence of his strange, sad, unforgettable novel.
August 1997
J.T.
A country bus drew up below the church and a young man got out. This he had to do carefully because he had a peg leg.
The roadway was asphalted blue.
It was a summer day in England. Rain clouds were amassed back of a church tower which stood on rising ground. As he looked up he noted well those slits, built for defence, in the blood coloured brick. Then he ran his eye with caution over cypresses and between gravestones. He might have been watching for a trap, who had lost his leg in France for not noticing the gun beneath a rose.
For, climbing around and up these trees of mourning, was rose after rose after rose, while, here and there, the spray overburdened by the mass of flower, a live wreath lay fallen on a wreath of stone, or on a box in marble colder than this day, or onto frosted paper blooms which, under glass, marked each bed of earth wherein the dear departed encouraged life above in the green grass, the cypresses and in those roses gay and bright which, as still as this dark afternoon, stared at whosoever looked, or hung their heads to droop, to grow stained, to die when their turn came.
It was a time of war. The young man in pink tweeds had been repatriated from a prisoners’ camp on the other side. Now, at the first opportunity, he was back.
He had known the village this church stood over, but not well. He had learned the walks before he turned soldier, though he had met few of those who lived by. The graveyard he had never entered. But he came now to visit because someone he loved, a woman, who, above all at night, had been in his feelings when he was behind barbed wire, had been put here while he was away, and her name, of all names, was Rose.
The bus, with its watching passengers, departed. In the silence which followed he began to climb the path leading to those graves, when came a sudden upthrusting cackle of geese in panic, the sound of which brought home to him a stack of faggots he had seen blown high by a grenade, each stick separately stabbing the air in a frieze, and which he had watched fall back, as an opened fan closes. So, while the geese quietened, he felt what he had seen until the silence which followed, when he at once forgot.
But there was left him an idea that he had been warned.
Propping himself on his stick, he moved slowly up that path to the wicket gate between two larger cypresses. He felt more than ever that he did not wish to be observed. So he no longer watched the roses. As if to do his best to become unseen, he kept his eyes on the gravel over which he was dragging the peg leg.
For there was a bicycle bell, ringing closer and closer by the church, clustering spray upon spray of sound which wreathed the air much as those roses grew around the headstones, whence, so he felt, they narrowly regarded him.
Which caused him to stop dead when a boy of about six came, over the hill on a tricycle, past the porch; then, as the machine got up speed, he stood to one side, in spite of the gate still closed between the two of them. He sharply stared but, as he took in the child’s fair head, he saw nothing, nothing was brought back. He did not even feel a pang, as well he might if only he had known.
Charley was irritated when the boy, after getting off to open the gate and climbing onto his machine again, shrilly rang the bell as he dashed past. Then the young man started slow on his way once more. And he forgot the boy who was gone, who spelled nothing to him.
For Rose had died while he was in France, he said over and over under his breath. She was dead, and he did not hear until he was a prisoner. She had died, and this sort of sad garden was where they had put her without him, and, as he looked about while he leaned on the gate, he felt she must surely have come as a stranger when her time came, that if a person’s nature is at all alive after he or she has gone, then she could never have imagined herself here nailed into a box, in total darkness, briar roots pushing down to the red hair of which she had been so proud and fond. He could not even remember her ever saying that she had been in this churchyard, which was now the one place one could pay a call on Rose, whom he could call to mind, though never all over at one time, or at all clearly, crying, dear Rose, laughing, mad Rose, holding her baby, or, oh Rose, best of all in bed, her glorious locks abo
unding.
Oh well this would never do, he thought, and asked himself where she could be. For there was a large choice. While the church was small, this graveyard gaped deep and wide, densely stacked throughout its rising ground with mounds of turf and mottled, moss grown headstones. And, as he was forever asking himself things he could seldom answer, and which, amassing in his mind, left a great weight of detail undecided, the next question he put was, what he could say if a woman came while he searched, if she were to observe that he was lame who was of an age to have lost a leg, in fact what he should do if seen by a village gossip, who might even recognize him, but who, in any case, would have her sense of scandal whetted, so he felt, by a young man with a wooden leg that did not fit, searching for a tomb.
He thought how Rose would have laughed to see him in his usual state of not knowing, lost as he always was, and had been when the sniper got him in the sights.
Indeed, if he had not come such a distance, from one country at war to another, then home again, he might well at this minute have turned back. But as it was he went in the gate, had his cheek brushed by a rose, and began awkwardly to search for Rose, through roses, in what seemed to him should be the sunniest places on a fine day, the warmest when the sun came out at twelve o’clock for she had been so warm, and amongst the newer memorials in local stone because she had died in time of war, when, or so he imagined, James could never have found marble for her, of whom, at no time before this moment, had he ever thought as cold beneath a slab, food for worms, her great red hair, still growing, a sort of moist bower for worms.
Well the old days were gone for good, he supposed while standing by a cypress, holding a briar off his face. The rose, rocking from it, sprinkled held raindrops on his eyes as, with the other hand, he poked his stick at two dwarf box trees which had obscured what he now saw to be a marble pillow. He had time to read the one word, “Sophie,” cut with no name or date, when his glance was held by a nest the walking stick uncovered, and which had been hidden by thick enamelled leaves that were as dark as the cypress, as his brown eyes under that great ivory pink rose. Changing hands with the stick so the rose softly thumped his forehead, he pushed past to lean, to feel with a hand. But the eggs were addled, blue cold as moonlight.
He wiped his fingers. Paper crackled in a pocket, to remind him of the wire, “Report to Officers Rehabilitation Centre Gateacres Ammanford by 20 hours June 12th.” It was now the thirteenth. He supposed they would not shoot a chap because he had not gone, nor, out of spite, make him pay for the new limb waiting there numb and numbered in a box. “E.N.Y.S.” it was signed. More letters standing he did not know what for.
The prisoners’ camp had flowered with initials, each inmate decorated his bunk with them out there, to let it be known what he taught. Such as “I.T.” which stood for Inner Temple, at which Marples, this very afternoon perhaps, was still teaching Roman Law. The idea had been to make the clock’s hands go round. And now that he’d come, he told himself, all he was after was to turn them back, the fool, only to find roses grown between the minutes and the hours, and so entwined that the hands were stuck.
His felt thoughts began to wander. Of course he was lucky to have a job, his seat kept warm. There were plenty still over on the other side would give the cool moon to stand in his shoes. And they would get on with it if they were here, not spend as he was doing a deal of money on travelling to old places. Then there was the coupon question. What should he do? All he had was this suit he stood up in, which he had bought, and which the tailor had not delivered, but had kept safe till he got back. The rest was looted. Oh, he was lost in this bloody graveyard. Where could she be? Rose that he’d loved, that he’d come so far for? Why did she die? Could anyone understand anything? Perhaps it would have been best if they had killed him, he felt, if instead of a sniper’s rifle in that rosebush they had pooped off something heavier at him. Rose would never have known, because she had died some time about that identical week. God bless her, he thought, his brown eyes dimmed suddenly with tears, and I hope she’s having a jolly good rest.
Then he found it was raining. He must have stood there so lost he had never taken in the first few drops. He started to drag as quick as he could for the path, to shelter in the church porch. But he had to go sideways, brushing against cypresses, getting his neck scratched once or twice, having roses spatter in his ears because he could not lift his leg properly, and did not wish to pull it over the green, turfed graves, to scar them with the long souvenir he had brought back from France.
Misery kept his mind blank until he turned the porch. Then he had a bad shock when he found who was sheltering before him. For of all people, of all imaginable men, and fat as those geese, was James. They stared at each other.
“Why good Lord,” James was saying, “why, Charley, my good lad,” he said. Speechless, Charley looked over a shoulder to find whether this widower had been in a position to see where he had been searching for the grave below. “Why, Charley, then they’ve sent you back. Good Lord, am I glad to see you, man.”
“Where’ve you been all this time?” James began once more, as Charley still found nothing. “In Germany?” he went on, not waiting for answers. “Why it must be all of five years. Now how are you?” and he pump-handled Charley who had said not a word. “They often tell us, ‘Wait till the boys come back.’ Well this is it, isn’t it?” James asked. “I mean you’re really home for keeps, for better or worse, richer or poorer, aren’t you? And what’s it like with the enemy? I suppose they put you in hospital, what? How’d they treat the boys, Charley? Pretty rotten I shouldn’t wonder, when all’s said and done. Well you haven’t come back to much I can tell you. My, but I’m glad to see you, man.”
“It’s my leg,” Charley explained. He drawled rather when he spoke.
“Yes, well there you are,” James said.
“There it is,” Charley agreed. One of those pauses followed in which the fat man’s upper lip trembled.
“Well I’d never have guessed if you hadn’t mentioned it, bless my soul I shouldn’t. Never in the world. But they do marvellous things in that line of country now, or so they tell me. Medical science comes on a lot in a war, you know. I often say it’s the one use there is in such things. Terrible price to pay, of course. But there you are.”
“You’re right there,” Charley said.
“But look, how on earth were you going to have a bite to eat? Bit difficult these days, you know, what with the B.R.N.Q., the V.B.S. and the P.M.V.O. Since the war started, no, I’m wrong, it was after the invasion of Holland and all that. Well now we haven’t even got a village bus. They still send the children in to school, of course the C.E.C. see to that, though the whole job is run very inefficiently in my opinion. But you’ll come down now and take pot luck with me, won’t you? As a matter of fact we’ve begun a pig club in the village. P.B.H.R. it’s known by, everything’s initials these days. Only time the people in these parts have got together within living memory. So there’s a piece of ham left over. Tell you the truth I haven’t started the ham, not yet. Oh and I expect we’ll find a little bit of something to go on with.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Don’t mention it, old man. Least one can do, if you know what I mean. No, but you’ll be really welcome, Charley. You got my letter, didn’t you? Must have been about the time you were taken prisoner. It’s made a big difference. But then there’s a lot of changes these days, and there’ll be many more I shouldn’t wonder. Lord yes. But this’ll be a damn good occasion to start that ham. Why on earth didn’t you let me know you were coming?”
Charley muttered something the other could not catch.
“I know,” James went on, “I realize how it is. I remember after the last war when I got home.” He described a visit he had paid, which meant nothing to Charley.
There was a pause.
“Now they’ve hit it with one of their damned bombs,” James continued. “But, look here, you didn’t happen to run across
my nipper on his bike, did you? He’ll get soaked through in this rain.” It was teeming down, with the sound of a man scything long grass. As James went on talking, and almost at random, for this had been a shock to him as well, Charley did not catch a word because of what had been revealed.
He was wondering if his face had gone white while his stomach melted, for there had been more than a question between Rose and himself, at the time the baby was on the way, as to whether it could be his own.
He was appalled that the first sight of the boy had meant nothing. Because one of the things he had always hung on to was that blood spoke, or called, to blood.
So the child he’d had to step aside for was Ridley; poor kid to be called by such a name.
Now he wanted to sit down. Then his guilt made him listen to what James was saying, in case the man had noticed. But James was going on just the same.
Finally Charles was altogether taken up by a need to see the child a second time, to search in the shape of the bones of its face for an echo of Rose, to drag this out from the line of its full cheeks to see if he could find a memory of Rose laughing there, and even to look deep in Ridley’s eyes as though into a mirror, and catch the small image of himself by which to detect, if he could, a likeness, a something, however false, to tell him he was a father, that Rose lived again, by his agency, in their son.