Surviving

by Henry Green

  MAGGIE

  Charles do remember there are ladies in the room.

  (But while a gale had been blowing into the room, a moist hot wind, this now changes into a draught going the other way and if Edward, Humphrey, MVY and Tiny had not seized hold of Charles he would no doubt have disappeared into the lake.)

  EDWARD

  (Closing window behind him with difficulty.)

  Suction.

  TINY

  My dear Charles we must act.

  CHARLES

  (In a scream.)

  God damn.

  MVY

  Charlie do take care of yourself.

  HUMPHREY

  How very extraordinary. Now Charles, were you drawn away from the house or were you blown away? I myself favour the latter, it seems to me a very good hypothesis. And was no resistance possible?

  TINY

  It would seem that he is very strong.

  EDWARD

  Yes Charles, this is very interesting. Was it suction as I said at first or an unseen agency? I myself felt a very strong inclination to go in that direction but fortunately I caught hold of the window frame and thus prevented myself from following you.

  CHARLES

  No one must now leave the house. If necessary we can retire to the beer cellar.

  VIOLET

  But Charles, Wickham had the key.

  CHARLES

  It is impossible now to find a servant who will not keep his keys on him instead of putting them on a hook where you can get them. I have told Wickham dozens of times.

  TINY

  Charles we must act.

  MVY

  Tiny I am completely with you.

  (Meanwhile Humphrey has produced a pair of race glasses.)

  HUMPHREY

  I observe a man talking to him. Why, it is Lambert.

  (They all see the giant hold his breath and put a hand to his ear. Then his huge voice comes to them while he puts his hand carefully over Lambert so that he may not be blown away.)

  GIANT

  I can’t understand you my good fellow. Why do you talk like that? Be quiet, I want to listen to the people in the house.

  MVY

  This is hardly decent.

  HUMPHREY

  It is very interesting, how can he hear us?

  EDWARD

  They are credited with having a very acute auditory apparatus.

  CHARLES

  (In a scream shouts.)

  God . . .

  (And is then cut short by the giant’s huge voice saying:)

  GIANT

  I have come and now I see that my breathing has put you to some inconvenience so that I shall now leave you not wishing to impose myself unduly upon your magnificent leisure. But you must understand that mine, being a comparatively modern race – for we date only from 2000 BC – is singularly lacking in the dignity of everyday conversation and having heard that at Petworth was to be found the phrasing of a golden age I came and have learnt much to my own profit even in so short a space of time. I hope these words of mine testify to it. So I am departing and would only remind you that good manners have occasionally to yield to some pressing need and while I return all the deer and the one man that my breathing drew into the pond I fear that this will be a poor return for my lack of savoir faire. I see a deer is hurt, but there, do you see, it is well again.

  (And it was, and he was gone.)

  MONSTA MONSTROUS

  (Unpublished, c. 1923)

  Giant fell from sky into the sea and made great splash and great wave went out on all sides from where he had fallen and damaged many towns where land met the sea. But he first swam then waded, and soon came to coast of Wales though he had fallen in the middle of the ocean. Mountains are in Wales but he strode over these and often knocked over the tops of them, till he came to where they fell before plains and sat down on the last mountain and let his feet rest in the plain, resting the toes in a river to cool them (and they were hot with knocking) and sat there looking at the smallness before him. Toes made floods immediately.

  He was naked. Hair grew over body and out of his nose came hairs and swallows came fearlessly to perch on these and birds of all kinds came to rest among hairs thick about his body, for they were not frightened at him. But men were frightened.

  Men hid when they saw him and village was by heel under where he sat and all were hidden in the village except an idiot and he poked at the heel where it came out of floodwater. He was whistling. Giant bent head down towards him. The idiot whistled and he was known in the next village for his whistling and in the next after that and I was told when later I went there he whistled so well that if he was by the mountain rocks came down from the top that they might be near him and tracts of earth came down the slopes such was his whistling. Rocks fell this time down the giant’s legs and bounded off them but did them no harm and only disturbed birds that sheltered among the hairs about his legs and these circled round then went back again; the rocks buried themselves near the idiot. But their fall down the mountain past his legs might have been from the giant’s breathing, which was like storm, or he had moved perhaps. Yet the idiot whistled. And giant bent head lower and smile came on his face and his mouth opened. This time, I think it was the giant’s moving, many more rocks came down and cloud of birds was circling round his legs from it, and they rose, circling, then settled about his belly so those who saw it told me, and some rocks went on into the village and made great damage there. Then idiot stopped whistling.

  But giant sat very quiet and his eyes looked about by heel for the whistler. Then he bent down and those who watched said he did it carefully so that there was no landslide and he reached down and put nails of the fingers of one hand into the ground and took up all the earth round the idiot to a great depth with all that was on it and on that handful were six oak trees, twenty feet high each one and many bushes, and made pit and I have seen it there, a monstrous hole he made. He raised handful close to his eyes and peered at it for some time then rose up, and in doing this moved so much earth and rock that it was a happy thing he did not bury whole village by it, and threw plot of land away carelessly then and it came down twenty miles off and made hole where it fell and I have seen it, a monstrous pit. No one knows what happened to the idiot, whether he was dead when first he stopped whistling or whether he fell from the ground when it was in air or was killed when it fell twenty miles away, no one knows, but somewhere he lies dead.

  This was late afternoon. And sun down shining shone on water of Severn river which was in flood and was bright. And giant squatted down where he stood over it and turned his face to it, licking lips. The floods went off again but as his feet sank into earth from his weight water filled in round them from river and as he squatted his shadow fell over town fifty miles away. Women with child brought forth dogs when they saw him. He was over the water and looked into it. He put down finger and finger was so big it hardly fitted into the river, though that is twelve yards across where he was, and splashed the water and laughed at it. Panes of glass broke in windows. He laughed and two hundred miles away they said it was like thunder. (What for did he come and ravage the land?) He played and scooped up with finger sheet of water and in a curve sparkling it rose into the air and fell on cottage not far away and crushed this, and six died there that day. Perhaps it was in anger he scooped it for soon he plucked an ash tree full grown and chewing it in his mouth rose up and went away. They were glad, the people there, when he was gone.

  He went southwards along hill range, striding great distances, and train had then come across the weald and was near to the hills when he saw it and evening sun caught in train windows and flashed red at him. He squatted down near the line. When driver saw him he first put on brakes but went on again immediately for he said after he had not believed in what he had seen. And no one in that train believed in giant, only children cried to look at him and their fathers and mothers said it couldn’t be and not to look and said the police would not let
it be about, nor the government. So the train went on. And giant scratched his head and smiled at sight of it. Children then had no more fear and waved to him and fathers and mothers said not to be silly, though they told me after they were not then so sure, but children said he had a nice smile and was nice man and waved to him and train went on and into tunnel. Driver said after, he had been glad to get into the tunnel. They stopped inside, thinking it safer, for the driver thought now it was a real giant and guard thought so too (all knew it very soon) and one old man had pulled the cord which is in carriages to stop train. Giant outside watched hole of tunnel and shepherd that was hidden in a bush on hillside said he looked disappointed then. But he lay down and put his head on the rails and sniffed at the opening and then blew down it and so pushed the train out the other side. But he did not know this and it was a happy thing he did not or no one knows what would have taken place. Driver then made train go faster than it ever went before, and engineers are very proud of this, till it came to another tunnel where they stayed for a long time.

  Giant rose up and went on and in his walking came to a house on fire and fire engine was playing water onto the flames. But all these ran away when they saw giant coming and one jet of water was left playing straight up into air like a fountain, a stem of water, and giant squatted down and put finger into it and broke up stem of water which scattered while finger was in it and it was fanned by his breathing. Then he blew on it and the flames leaped up and he laughed at them and the house fell in and clouds of smoke went up from it, no more flame. Soon after, he went away.

  And it was night for black clouds had come over the sky (they say this was from his laughing which troubled the air) and he came to port by the sea, a great town. The streets in it were lighted, there were many miles of them, and liner was coming in, all lighted up over the dark sea, and cone from searchlight circled across round edge of the sky from a tower on shore. Men and women in that port said they first thought giant was thundercloud, he was so big against the sky. But when he saw the liner coming with bright shining inside it he stepped forward into the sea and knocked over warehouse in doing this and those who saw it thought he was going to the liner when he was picked out by cone from searchlight and stood there, and the light seemed to daze him they said. When they saw him then all cried out and moan went up from the town for many holiday makers were on the beach. Indeed he was vast, I saw him then, as I live in that town and my wife had called me to the window. He stood and gradually all the birds that sheltered among hairs thick on his body were drawn out by the light and circled round him, rising in spirals round him, and circled round his head, high high up, and then went off towards the light, drawn towards it which was like a lane through the dark. And he went too and in one stride he was before it and the waves his walking made in the sea came near to swamp the liner and when he was by the lighthouse tower he bent down, he took it in his hands and swayed it this way and that and snapped it off and the electric cable burst and he took the full force of this and was killed there. Those birds which had not been killed or stunned by its bursting circled round above for some time and then went away, and giant was in the sea and the shock had burnt him up and what had been so great was then cinders washed out to the ocean then back to our island by the tides. When they went to look afterwards they could find only foundations of the lighthouse.

  •

  What had been so great was then cinders washed out to the ocean then back to our island by the tides. What had taken many lives was then dead itself. And what had seemed to be full of a love of bright things had ended in darkness and what had appeared in the guise of a giant the Insurance Companies held to be an act of god.*

  * This ending was later deleted by Green. [Ed.]

  ARCADY OR A NIGHT OUT

  (Unpublished, 1925)

  ⎯

  The text was sent to Nevili Coghill, and is described as ‘a lyrical titbit for N.C. from Henry’, At that period Green was finishing his novel Blindness.

  ⎯

  We were in the car swinging through the traffic, & the air inside drooped with folded wings at the shut windows & the scent she used, sweeping through the streets that swirled in eddies of changing light, talking nervously she & I of what was coming. Then down into the dirty brick of Swallow Road, & the chauffeur of her proud car incredulous at first, then anxious for her safety, yet not so anxious as she was. Up the stairs, & in through the glass door, & her involuntary cry of ‘Henry’, for she was nervous while the chauffeur thought dark things of me below, & my voice reassuring her. At our table, groping through the names of Spanish dishes, wrestling with the faulty English of our waiter. She saw someone she did not wish to see, & was that because my reputation had outdistanced me? Then our modest half bottle of some Spanish wine & her account of how she took Wingarnis [sic] as a tonic, & of how her daily dose inebriated her, of my fears that our waiter & myself should have to carry her downstairs to the proud car & the chauffeur’s face when he saw what had been done; of my trip to Africa to give Society leisure to forget.

  Perhaps we were substitutes for each other, so that her young man was not myself but someone else who in her imagination was toying with the Spanish omelette in my place, while I began to know that it was not her at any rate whom I would have sitting opposite me, but someone else perhaps.

  The bill paid, & in the car again with no mishap, thrusting on to the theatre. And my fears, for it was a Music Hall at her request, & the jokes there might prove difficult to face. The programme seller with a face of enamelled paint, a man & a woman on the stage singing of love in a back garden under a flowering tree. Hysterical laughter when the curtain came down to cover the emptiness that was left. She saw more people she knew, & they looked anxiously at me. Then a scene with a bed upon the stage with the tumult of my fears storming within me. More laughter when the curtain fell. Next the chorus dancing with gnarled legs, waving boneless arms in harsh mauve and carmine lights. And so on to the end.

  Then sentiment in a taxi, for the chauffeur had gone outraged to bed with his proud car, how we never met, how this must be repeated, what an adventure it was, what fun it had been.

  And adventure it was, for we had deputised for each other’s dream.

  MOOD

  (Unpublished, c. 1926)

  ⎯

  In 1959 (see ‘An Unfinished Novel’) Green was to describe ‘Mood’ as a second novel which could never be completed. Judging by its prose style it clearly predates Living, though correspondence with Coghill would suggest that Green was still working on ‘Mood’ in the early thirties. ‘Your new book Meretricity [the original title for ‘Mood’] is very ambitious,’ he wrote, ‘and if you succeed in it, as you have in Blindness and Living, it will have been worth all your depression about it.’

  ⎯

  I

  She walks down Oxford Street.

  When she heard that high, loud, educated voice she saw the Blue Train where it was so much in evidence, then the boat where was no sound of it throughout the crossing, and the English Pullman where again it triumphed, crying: My dear I went to sleep before the boat started and didn’t wake up till my maid told me we were in. My dear, that same voice said, what people want is to lie naked in the sun and that drives everyone further south to where it’s all unknown. There was that same kind of voice, here in Oxford Street, this time proclaiming: The most lovely sponge. She looked and there was that same kind of woman coming out of a shop. – A most lovely sponge which – and then several buses cut short its price and the story of how that sponge was bought. She wondered where that woman bought her sponges. One shouldn’t go just anywhere for one’s sponge. For what is a sponge, – and this she felt but did not think. Why it is picked from the sea, it is cleaned and dried, perhaps a lot of things are done to it perhaps nothing very much. Perhaps a little salt is still left in it. Here she sailed. For, when she heard that woman talk, so she remembered the clatter of knives and forks, the absolute roar of chasses and good living and she
remembered how, in the Pullman, she had longed to be in a restaurant again where it was famous and lots of people you knew. She said no I will never go abroad again unless I go with a thousand people, it’s really too squalid there being just three or four of you. The sea and everything, it just won’t do, she said, if there isn’t a whole crowd one knows. It’s like going when you’re by yourself and turning on the gramophone. Or like a sponge in the water in an empty bath.

  Where did that woman buy her sponges? When you saw her kind get into the Pullman with just the right sort of shabbiness in their clothes, then you thought of her lying in the sun, clean, clean, clean to the last little bit. Why had she herself never considered sponges? It was because you didn’t have to buy them often that you were rather haphazard about it. Everything else had the right shops and places but she’d never heard of there being one place for these. She looked at the stockings in the window. She accused herself. It was squalid, dirty in her not to have been more careful about her sponges. Absolutely filthy really.

  That was what older women did to you, they made you feel rather squalid. Except when you went in bathing dresses, the blue sea and you and they being cadaverous on the sand. Even in the hotel afterwards when you were all dressed up and when they could afford to be so much better dressed than you was still the echo of the sea and your bathing dress round you, like it might be you had nothing on at all. So merely from being young, and your body being more or less naturally thin and not just skinny, you felt you were better than all the older ones in the place you were. Till you got into the train and there were hundreds with those voices. You hadn’t seen them on their beaches nor had their men seen you coming out of the sea. And at once their experience put you at a disadvantage, made you feel dirty.