Surviving

by Henry Green

  ‘D’you think my hair’s too long?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ he replied, ‘it’s lovely. That was Verlaine wasn’t it?’

  She thought, of course he’s the one who likes my nose.

  ‘You know you’re the worst-read man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Worse than Archie Small?’

  ‘No, not quite. I like Archie because he’s not read anything at all. That’s probably why he dances so well.’

  What lay behind the remark was that this man Henry could not dance. Before he had time to take it up she began again, lying back in the chair, looking at him with half-closed eyes, almost in a sing-song,

  ‘Ses cheveux, noirs tas sauvage où

  Scintille un barbare bijou,

  La font reine et la font fantoche.’

  She was worried about whether her hair was right.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. He stretched. She was wearing an olive-green bow of velvet in it.

  She shut her eyes, gated them with eyelashes. It was very hot. After a pause she went on, thinking of his youngest sister, her friend.

  ‘La femme pense à quelque ancienne compagne,

  Laquelle a tout, voiture et maison de campagne,

  Tandis que les enfants, leurs poings dans leurs yeux clos,

  Ronflant sur leur assiette, imitent des sanglots.’

  ‘Me, with you, I suppose,’ he remarked. ‘Go on,’ he said. He shut his eyes. ‘I’m enjoying this.’

  She wondered that he could see himself as a child with her, when he was old enough to be her father.

  Both were sleepy from a good lunch. After a while she added slowly, in a low voice:

  ‘Bien que parfois nous sentions

  Battre nos coeurs sous nos mantes

  A des pensers clandestins,

  En nous sachant les amantes

  Futures des libertins.’

  ‘Henry,’ she said, when there had been another silence. ‘You don’t know where that comes from, do you?’

  He did not open his eyes. ‘Verlaine,’ he said. He was smiling.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, and shut her eyes. ‘It’s called “La chanson des Ingénues”.

  Nous sommes les Ingénues

  Aux bandeaux plats, à l’oeil bleu,

  Qui vivons, presque inconnues,

  Dans les romans qu’on lit peu.’

  ‘How sweet,’ he said, rather dry. At that moment the syrens sounded. Everyone looked up. It was cloudlessly bare and blue.

  ‘Goodness,’ she remarked, without conviction and not moving. ‘How worried Mummy will be about me.’ They sat on. They did not close their eyes again. It was awkward.

  Then he suggested they might go to a film, saying it was waste to spend a leave day in the Park. She jumped at it. They hurried off, arm in arm, to the USA.

  6

  The ninth fireman said: ‘A ’ornet? No, I can’t recollect that I ever met with a ’ornet. But crows now. I remember the first time I seen a crow, to really notice, like. Yus. I was out on the allotment. On the previous leave day I’d put me beansticks in just lovely. But this mornin’ when I comes to see how the beans was shapin’ there’s not a bloody beanstick stood in the bloody soil. They was by far too ’eavy for ’em. I couldn’t make it out at first. But just as I’m bendin’ to ’ave a look, there’s a bloody great bloody black think that comes swoop at me out of the sky. I thought it was the blitz all over again for a minute. So then I puts me ’ands up and ’as a peep. There was seven of the buggers in the oak tree there at the bottom, where the road goes along by our allotments. An’ can’t they ’alf ’oiler. Kraa, kraa. A chap come with a gun and killed three. Bloody great things they was. The rest never came back. No, we never seen them no more.’

  7

  Two firemen were walking back to the station from the factory in which they made shell caps for the two hours during which they were allowed short leave, every second day.

  The tenth man said to the eleventh: ‘I’m browned off Wal, completely.’

  The eleventh answered: ‘You’re not the only one.’

  ‘Wal, d’you think there’ll ever be another blitz?’

  ‘Well, mate, if he doesn’t put one on soon we shall all be crackers.’

  ‘You’re telling me.’

  ‘And they are going insane, in every station, every day. Have you heard about the patrol man over at 18Y?’

  ‘What was that, Wal?’

  ‘Well it seems that the officer in charge finds something to take him out of his office, and as he comes out he sees no one on guard on the gate. So he looks around, and still he can’t spot the patrol man. Till something tells him to look up. And there is the chap that should have been on the gate, sitting across the peak of the roof, hauling on a long line (120 feet of rope) he has between his hands. So he calls to ’im, sarcastic, “ ’Ow are you gettin’ on up there?” And this is the answer he gets: “I’ve saved five.” ’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s as true as I’m here. So this officer in charge he climbs as far as he can get inside the building, till he comes to a window across from where his patrol man is sitting. He’s one of those fat bastards, and he’s a bit out of breath with the climb, you understand. He doesn’t know what to make of it. So he calls out: “You’ve saved five, ’ave you?”

  “ ‘Yessir. And I’m about done up.”

  ‘ “ ’Ang on there, then, and I’ll be with yer,” the officer in charge sings out to him.

  ‘ “You can’t,” is the answer he gets. “I’m surrounded.” Surrounded by fire he meant. In the finish they had to call out the turntable ladders to bring him down. To anyone not acquainted with this job it seems hardly possible, do it?’

  ‘They’ll be bringing the plain van any day for me,’ the tenth man replied. They walked on, silent.

  The passers-by despised them in this uniform that, two years ago, was good in any pub for a drink from a stranger.

  THE OLD LADY

  (Unpublished, 1943)

  ⎯

  This story was shown only to John Lehmann, who did not like it. Some of the images in this story recur in Caught, published in 1943.

  ⎯

  I had been reading The Arabian Nights at the fire station. At the turn of a peg in his side, no, with no more than a cut with a golden chain over the neck this marvellous black horse would rise to take his rider into the skies. His manger was filled with well-winnowed sesame and barley, his trough held fresh water perfumed with roses. As I read these words I heard two heavy explosions close by. It is hard sometimes, as hard as it is easy in the Tales on my lap, to tell between friend and enemy, between the old lady who brings trouble and the one who is to lead the storyteller to unimaginable delights, between high explosive and the concussion of a heavy gun. On this occasion it was impossible to mistake the way we were shaken in our shelter, as though, by incurring displeasure, we had been changed to walnuts from Damascus rattled in an iron box.

  A fireman remarked ironically that the bombs must have been two of ours.

  Three minutes later we had the call. As inevitably as any young man is wafted away from delights to trials which he is able, later, to recount between sobs in those fables, I was carried not long after, in charge of a pump and tender, as near as we could get to where the bombs had fallen.

  I found we were next a statue which stands in the centre of a London square. Two great streets came in ahead, they converged so that we could see up both, and were like twin approaches to the Sultan’s palace. As though at the word of an angered ifrit a gas main had been set alight up each street, one hundred and twenty yards away. The two forty-foot high flames were out of sight up side turnings, but on the face of ornate, tall blocks at the corners, we could pick out details of brickwork and stone facings more easily, in colours more natural, than would have been likely through full spring daylight.

  Now, against a livid light, an incandescence of white hot lemon, this old pitch-black warhorse stood, his bronze rider up, both, as alwa
ys, facing south to Mecca.

  I knew the officer in charge. His orders were that, for the time being, my crew was to be in reserve. We stood aside by a surface shelter, waiting.

  Then we helped another crew lay out a line of hose to one of these fires. As we came along over small debris, which lay like a vast slumped-down load of coal, I could see wreckage burning up the side street, black hacked-out house fronts flickering above mounds of broken wood and stone, all of which looked much as usual except that the damage was on a larger scale, and also, because of the lighted gas main, easier to seize, that is to apprehend. But, most deadly, the glare was wide enough to attract more bombers, as though summoned, such was the expanse of light, by a secret word to which they answered, the ‘creatures of King Nasr’.

  Having laid out the hose there was no more we could do. We went back to stand by the surface shelter, among the pumps. One after the other they were started up. They made a shattering, roaring noise. And there we waited.

  Having nothing to do was awkward. We had time to feel afraid. The row was too great to hear them, but there must have been a couple overhead. Two groups of searchlights moved steadily along two invisible paths converging at a point above, towards the glare of the gas mains. The guns near were not firing.

  A good shot will take a phoenix always at the same angle. I had come to know the point at which I must expect a bomb from a plane, the fatal angle, within about ten degrees. The minute or so the bomber takes to cover that distance is unpleasant, and it was worse this night because the pumps were so close that I knew I should not be able to hear the tearing silk in time to take shelter comfortably. It would have looked silly to lie flat before anything had come down. To go into the shelter would have been cowardly. So we stood it out, and waited.

  All of a sudden there was a tremendous burst of fire, every battery kept it up, the venom was almost inspiring, the belch hate, and I looked up and I saw three jewels that swayed down, white diamonds that barely dropped, offerings brilliant but aloof, perfect (pink rocketing shell bursts all about), three drops of a necklet on the cloth of velvet, three more than gems the ifrit in a roll of drums was letting a breeze carry us, three that now outshone Zubeidah’s eyes, three ‘whose fires eclipsed noon in the springs at Shereef’, three stars the djinn had plucked down from heaven, three flares.

  This was more than unpleasant and I went in to the surface shelter. As I did so I made an excuse that I wanted to see how many firemen were already hiding. The place seemed to shake, the one light to flicker with the concussion, as that great building had with flame. And in the near corner a girl stood between a soldier’s legs. He had been kissing her mouth, which was now a blotch of red. He held on to her hips and had leant his head back and closed his eyes. They were motionless, forgotten, and as though they had forgot. They were alone.

  I went out, abashed. Also I resented their being inside. I saw one of our officers I knew. I went up. Cupping my hands to his ear I shouted ‘Have you looked in there?’ An expression of distaste came over his flat face because he thought I was telling on some fireman who was too frightened to stay outside. But he went in. He stayed longer than I had. When he came out he had a soft, serious look on him. He cupped his hands to my ear. He shouted ‘More power to his elbow, mate, more power to it.’ He might have come from seeing the Princess Fatimah and the poet Murrakish.

  He moved away. The police brought past a looter, two of them holding this man spreadeagled, his clothes mostly torn off him. He might have been the Tripe Cleaner, he who has no name in The Arabian Nights.

  I moved a few paces to the left. A man was dying in his blood by the corner of the statue, attended by two more policemen.

  Alarmed, I remembered and looked up. The flares were gone, the firing was less, perhaps they had been shot out.

  Then, alone, carrying a music case, holding a handkerchief to her mouth, an old lady came by, walking past everything, never looking up. She went straight on until she was out of sight.

  And then the soldier came out. He proved to be drunk. He shouted in my ear, ‘Would you boys like to have a whip round to raise me a shilling to have another go?’ I pushed him away and to comfort myself began to repeat the story which, in the French edition, begins ‘It was holiday time in Damascus’. It is the story of King Nasr’s beautiful daughters. In the guise of doves they fly to a pool where, taking off their feathers as three women might discard their clothes, they bathe naked before the eyes of Janshah who ruled over the Banu Shahlan and was King of Afghanistan.

  THE WATERS OF NANTERRE

  (Published in Horizon No. 60, 1944. From the Souvenirs, published 1834, of Madame de Créquy (1710–1800) to her grandson Tancrède Raoul de Créquy, Prince de Montlaur. Translated from the French by Henry Green.)

  ⎯

  Green translated two passages from this particular work, seven volumes of which can be found in the library at Forthampton Court; the other passage was used in Back, the novel in progress at that time.

  ⎯

  Madame de Marsan, Princess of Lorraine, with whom I often went on little pilgrimages, proposed that we should take the waters at Nanterre, at her patron saint’s well. So we set out one day in the gilded coach, part of the time saying paternosters and the rest of it amusing ourselves with what was before us. Because, so she said, you must not wipe the lip of the cup which is chained to the parapet and which you have to drink from; and above all you must not leave a drop although it holds at least half a pint. I cried out at this but the good Princess underlined the duty we owed not to scandalise simple people and in the end I agreed to do as she asked.

  I must tell you that the water in question is a sovereign remedy for the eyes, from which neither of us suffered. But when we got within sight of the place we found it surrounded by so many peasants and farm people that we could not get near. As a result we left the coach and with a charming modesty stood away to one side.

  We then saw, guess who, coming up to make their devotions? No less a person than Madame du Deffand, who was a rabid atheist, and for whom the Chevalier de Pont-de-Vesle, assisted by several servants, was forcing a way through. She was practically blind at that time, as was also her companion, and because of this the water, for them, was not merely a precaution as it was for us. But we had the satisfaction of watching them drink a full cup each. We did not flatter ourselves that these two old people, who had lived together in sin for years, would boast afterwards to their agnostic friends of what they had done, but we determined to say nothing of it ourselves. The last thing in the world we wished was to promote a story which might encourage jokes about such a subject.

  It was at this moment that Madame de Marsan’s servants, who were wearing the livery of Lorraine and of Jerusalem, became highly indignant at our humility. They suddenly discovered that they were shocked to see Madame du Deffand precede us. The Princess’s first coachman suggested that a way should be made for us through the rabble. We replied that we had no house work nor anything to do in the vineyards as had all these good people crowding round the well, and we ordered him and those under him to let us be.

  This very much upset the servants, so much so that at one moment I almost thought they were going to disobey the Princess, their mistress. And this is where I must tell you about Madame de Marsan’s first coachman.

  The fact is the man wholly disliked me, dating from the time some years previously when coming to me for a place, he had refused to join my household.

  ‘Who was your last employer?’ I asked him, naturally enough at this disastrous interview.

  ‘Madame, I was with the Abbot Duke de Biron, but he has gone to meet his Maker.’

  ‘If that man ever got before the Eternal Father he didn’t stay there long,’ I could not help remarking half under my breath. This seemed to annoy the coachman. He told me he was of gentle birth, as were most of the Duke’s servants. I replied that there was nothing beneath him in wearing the Créquy livery, and suggested he should go upstairs to settle his
wages with my secretary.

  ‘But, Madame,’ he said, ‘before engaging myself in your service I must know whom you give way to.’

  ‘To everyone! I give way to everyone except in the streets and the courtyards at Versailles.’

  ‘But surely Madame, you would never expect your first coachman to give way in Paris to the wives of Cabinet Ministers?’

  ‘Certainly. And all the more so because I dine every Thursday in the district where these people live.’

  ‘But really Madame is never going to give way to the wife of a Chancellor of the Exchequer? Why, if one of his servants had anything to say I’d sort him out with my whip.’

  ‘Oh, well, those people usually know whose livery it is they have to deal with, but in any case I do not for a moment intend to knock passers-by over or endanger my carriage just to keep up a position vis-à-vis the middle classes, nor even to injure my horses.’

  ‘It’s quite right that Madame has only twelve carriage horses in her stables, and besides I am not accustomed to make way except before the Royal Princes. As a result I’m afraid I shall not give you satisfaction, Madame,’ and he went off perfectly furious. Madame de Marsan had taken him on, and it was he who was now urging the coachmen to revolt, saying that we were dishonouring them. What particularly exasperated him it seemed was that de Pont-de-Vesle’s servants had taken up a position in front; and, so he said with scorn, the gentleman was only a bourgeois.

  Monsieur Girard was the name this proud coachman went by, and it is worth noting that thirty years later, at the time of the Revolution it was Citizen Girard, the same man, then known as one of the most enthusiastic revolutionaries as well as one of their best speakers, who was finally guillotined by his friends for being an Orleanist, or Federalist, I forget which.

  While he sat there, growing old without knowing it for a glorious destiny, and while he egged our servants on to disobey us as he held the reins high above the seven-windowed golden coach, we managed to make our way at last up to the well, and there I drank my draught of the water in peace of mind and in submission. Then we went to render thanks in the parish church in which lie the relics of the Saint for, as you will have guessed, this was the real object of our little pilgrimage. Accordingly we made our way to the church on foot with, on my part, that sentiment of confidence and tenderness which all my life I have felt for the Patroness of Paris.