Surviving

by Henry Green

  The fascination in words is that by themselves they can mean almost anything; dictionaries get longer every day. It is the context in which they lie that alone gives them life. They should be used as painters use colour, to give tone. For it is the tone in dialogue which carries the meaning as, in life, it is what is left unsaid which gives us food for thought. How to communicate all this to the reader then? Let us return to the example of a man going over to the pub of an evening. If you agree that the telegraphese usual between husband and wife is too obscure – something like the example already given, ‘Well, I think I will go over now’, ‘Oh?’, she says, ‘Yes,’ he finishes – then how should it be put in narrative? How about this?

  He: I think I’ll go across the way now for a drink.

  She: Will you be long?

  He: Why don’t you come too?

  She: I don’t think I will. Not tonight, I’m not sure, I may.

  He: Well, which is it to be?

  She: I needn’t say now, need I? If I feel like it I’ll come over later.

  Notice that very often one question is answered by another, that the whole passage can be read in various ways, that the man is exasperated or bored, also that she is in one of several moods, or even in three or more moods at the same time. It is, of course, necessary to establish whether the man is a drunkard or not, but this is necessarily done by the action in the novel, in other words the man is previously shown to the reader drinking heavily, moderately, or hardly at all. – These three alternatives will colour that bit of dialogue quite sufficiently to bring it alive and, as already shown, there are enough different ways of saying ‘Will you be long?’ to cover any general inference required by the writer in the reader, while leaving enough latitude for the reader to bring the passage alive in himself. How then does this bit of dialogue come out in finished narrative? It cannot be left as it is; there must be some description of the movements made; the reader must at least be told who is speaking. Perhaps it would go something as follows:

  At last he looked at the clock, laid the newspaper aside, and getting out of his armchair, wandered to the door. ‘I think I’ll go over the way now for a drink,’ he said, his finger on the handle.

  ‘Will you be long?’ she asked, and put her book down.

  He seemed to hesitate.

  ‘Why don’t you come too?’ he suggested.

  ‘I don’t think I will. Not tonight. I’m not sure. I may,’ and she gave him a small smile.

  ‘Well, which is it to be?’ he insisted, and did not smile back.

  ‘I needn’t say now, need I? If I feel like it I’ll come over later,’ she replied, picking her book up again.

  Note the ‘seemed to hesitate’. If you have ‘he hesitated’, this seems like a stage direction, and is a too direct communication from the author. Where then have we got? I have tried to show that the purpose of the novelist is to create, in the mind of the reader, life which is not, and which is non-representational. This has nothing to do with the theme of his work. We are all individuals and each writer has something of his own to communicate. It is with communication that I have been dealing here. We have inherited the greatest orchestra, the English language, to conduct. The means are there; things are going on in life all the time around us. What I have tried to do here is to show one means of creating life by communication in the hopes that this may be of interest to the reading public, rather as if a mechanic were to open the door of his workshop.

  A NOVELIST TO HIS READERS: II

  (Broadcast by the BBC. Published in The Listener, March 1951)

  One day this winter I was on the upper deck of a bus, in London, held up by traffic lights at Hyde Park Corner which, because I was going east, is, as most Londoners know, bounded to my far side, and to the right, by St George’s Hospital. Acoss the aisle, in front, there sat a middle-aged woman waving her handkerchief slightly behind and away from me, that is towards the hospital. At that moment, as she was again to do later, she gave up. She turned round upon her fellow-passengers, who, so far as I could judge, had paid no attention, and gave us all collectively a shy, warm smile. I did not let her catch my eye. She seemed to be encouraged by this lack of interest, for she then turned back, and once more began to wave. At this, I, in my turn, swivelled round to see if I could find what she was at. Up to a point, I did. By following the direction of this woman’s eyes, I discovered another handkerchief within a dark window half way up the hospital wall – another handkerchief being waved in return. I gazed again. I was just able to make out a second lady, presumably propped up in bed, but so much higher than what I took to be the level of her floor that she almost seemed to float in space above her ward, a woman waving, in her turn, to what may have been her daughter, a relative, or just a friend.

  What I have just told you is a good example of the sort of gift always being made to writers by people living their own lives round writers. Anyone with imagination should be able to make a lot out of it. I propose to give you later two complementary ways whereby this scene could be written up. But on the bus, at that moment, in the actual incident – in life that is – something further occurred. The bus was still held by the traffic lights, they stayed green for all the cars trying to get into Hyde Park from Victoria, the kerchief within its hospital window was still being agitated with a kind of sick, weary movement, minutes passed, and the lady inside our bus gave up a second time. She put her handkerchief down and again turned slowly round on the other passengers, but with what, on this occasion, seemed to me to be a guilty, please-excuse-me smile. It was obvious that she had had to wave too long. No one appeared to pay the slightest attention and I myself again took care not to show that I had seen. For, after glancing briefly over us, she gazed ahead, it seemed full into the red eye which had halted us. She had given over, she had had enough, one thought.

  So I looked once more at that ward window and saw the other kerchief still being waved, not so vigorously, rather less now, it is true, and to the back of my lady’s rather rigid head. Upon which, all at once, all was changed, our lights turned green! The waving became urgent two floors up, and, as we moved forward, I looked in front, the way we were going, and there was my lady waving back once more, but with violence now. Yet once we were past the lights she finally gave up. Nor did she ever look round on us again. Her face was reflected in the bus window. It was grim. And that was that. That is all there was to it, nothing more.

  A trivial affair, you say? Perhaps, but I maintain, first, that this thing seen holds in it the essence of all communication between a writer and his readers, and, second, that his possible treatment of it, the way the writer describes this incident, as I have just done once, and will do twice more before I am finished, is, in itself, what may be the whole essence of how a reader can be brought by the description, by the treatment, to a deeper realisation of what is being described.

  If this scene then may be a double ‘gift’, the first is, here was I, a novelist, seated on the top deck of a bus and handed a situation you might almost say ‘on a plate’ which was not only suggestive of a story in itself, but which also had in it the essence of all reading, that is to say of communication between two people without the spoken word. Before we can proceed to the second, we must pause here briefly to analyse the first gift. In a talk I broadcast some time ago on the subject of communication between a writer and his reader I made the point that words, out of their context, had no precise meaning; that it was the context in which he placed them that was the first deliberate act by the writer in communicating with his reader; and that the arrangement of the context of the words was to the writer what the tones of his colours are to the painter as he lays these down on a white canvas.

  Similarly the point I am trying to make, here and now, is that where and how he places his characters in fiction is for the writer the context of his story. In other words, just as the composition of a painting gives it meaning, so the way in which the writer places his characters in the shifting scenes of his boo
k will give the work significance. Now if it cannot be the purpose of the novelist to create in his books a life which isn’t and which is non-representational, that is to say to create life in the reader which cannot eat, drink or procreate, but which can die; and if the arrangement of words and the ‘placing’ of his characters are the only means whereby he can do this, then the superimposing of one scene on another, or the telescoping of two scenes into one, are methods which the novelist is bound to adopt in order to obtain substance and depth. This may seem obscure at first, but at the end of this talk I am giving two examples of dialogue which will, I hope, make the point clear.

  The difficulty before the novelist is to determine how much to describe directly to his readers, that is how much description to give which does not come out of the mouth of his characters. Now since conversation in these days is the principal means of communication between people in everyday life, I for one maintain that dialogue will be the mainstay of novels for quite a while. But obviously even in a script there must be stage directions, yet, as we are dealing here with narrative which is not on the stage and so is not subject to the disadvantage of the actor’s or the producer’s interpretation, the novelist has in unspoken dialogue at least to make plain who is speaking, and then so to order what he is putting down that, by evocation, by memory, by the mysterious things we all share, which is another set of words for the lone word ‘life’, he may create life in the mind of the reader.

  And what, after all, is alive in a book? Surely something in which we, as readers, can all share. Though again, as in life, we must be able to share it in different ways, in opposites perhaps. Because we are all different. Thus we can all share the idea of a hospital. Yet it may mean death to some, healing to others; it must, I imagine, include to all the notion of pain and of the people inside not being able to get out, to leave, because they cannot walk; some may like nurses with their starched cuffs, others may be frightened of these angels; you may regard doctors as saviours or you may consider that they take the credit when, in spite of their treatment, your wonderful constitution pulled you through. All this and much more can be what the word ‘hospital’ means to any one of us. Yet, beyond everything, there is the sense we all have that anyone detained inside may be badly up against it.

  It is this fact which begins to make the scene I witnessed significant. And it was to increase the significance that, on purpose, I did not describe how the two ladies looked. It is, of course, implicit in the scene, and one of the innate advantages of what I saw, that the figure inside the hospital could be too dimly observed to be seen. Nevertheless it is a lucky chance in a talk like this, not to have to give the age of these two ladies, as one would be forced to in a novel. If I have told the incident right, and I would prefer to be judged by the two examples I am just going to give, then each generation could claim this lady in the bus for their own, from teenagers to grannies. And yet again, to begin without dialogue, to start on a coloured description so often leads to an attempt to write down the shape of a nose, or those wonderful rosy lips, which, while almost impossible of accomplishment in any case, only leads back once more to the variations in individual reader’s tastes. For how can one, as a novelist, cater for those estimable men who only admire girls with black hair and pale blue eyes? The answer is, of course, by not describing them.

  I want to give you now the first of my two examples, a way of putting the scene I have already described, but in dialogue. If you have followed my argument you will appreciate that it was entirely against my principles, as these are at present, that I gave this example direct from me to you. No, I prefer the oblique approach which follows. Then in my final and second example, I hope to show you why the first is not good enough, and why one of the young men, in the coming dialogue, must telescope into the scene I witnessed on the bus a part of his own history.

  Treating the scene in dialogue, therefore, it could go something like this:

  ‘Look at that,’ a young man said to his companion on top of the bus.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Waving out of the bus window!’ the first youth exclaimed, it seemed in disgust.

  ‘Well, why not, Peter? Or d’you mean she ought to be doing it up at us from the ground. As if we were riding in a liberation army?’ He paused. ‘No, I’ve seen people wave before from vehicles,’ he ended.

  They spoke together in low tones as men do in public transport.

  ‘Traffic doesn’t get any better, Harry,’ the first young man said.

  ‘We seem to have been stuck here for hours,’ his companion agreed.

  ‘Always like this at Hyde Park Corner. I say! D’you know who she’s still waving at?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Why right up inside the hospital. There’s somebody there signalling back. And now ours has stopped and is turning round. Pretty ghastly sort of smile she’s got on too, Harry.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that, Peter?’

  ‘I don’t know. Wait, she’s back at her waving again.’

  ‘Well, why shouldn’t she?’ Harry demanded in what appeared to be a bored voice.

  ‘D’you suppose they do this every day on the way to work, Harry?’

  ‘Well, of course,’ this young man said. ‘They must have met before, or how would they have found each other now?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose she couldn’t see into that hospital window without she knew who was inside. It’s too dark,’ Peter agreed. ‘Now our one has stopped again. And the other is still waving.’

  ‘I still don’t see why not.’

  ‘And ours is looking round again, look out, with a particularly ingratiating beastly sort of smile this time.’

  ‘Well, I wish we could get on. I’m going to be late,’ Harry complained. ‘All clear,’ his companion announced. ‘Only our dame has given over waving and is keeping her eyes strictly to her front.’

  ‘Can you see what’s holding us, Peter?’

  ‘Lights have stuck, I suppose. But the other one’s still waving, getting a bit weak at the last though. Hullo, we’re off. And now they’re both at it, like mad. Now ours has stopped and we’re past and it’s over. Now, what d’you make of that, Harry?’

  ‘That I’m going to be late,’ this young man replied and then he added, ‘Oh, she was only telling the other in here with us that she could go now.’

  The treatment I have given you is flat to my mind – at the most it is two-dimensional. To make the scene, just described in dialogue, live, we must make it three-dimensional, that is to say, and avoiding the use of pompous words, I think the two young men who have been talking on the bus are dead from the neck down. So I propose in my second example to bring Peter to life by putting him in love and telescoping his story into the scene, that is, into the example already given. I have no time left to deal in kind with Harry, so I am going to bring him to life by means of an outrageous trick much used by short-story writers.

  I shall do this in just three words, and, so that you can look out for them, these will be the last I shall use here.

  This revised example therefore will go something like this:

  ‘What were you going to tell me about you and Pam?’ a young man called Harry asked his companion on top of a bus, halted by traffic lights at Hyde Park Corner, the top deck of which was crowded with men and women on the way to work.

  ‘Oh, nothing really,’ Peter answered.

  ‘Come on, get it off your chest.’

  ‘But look at that,’ Peter said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why, Harry, waving like it, out of the bus window – our bus,’ the second youth exclaimed, it might be in disgust.

  ‘Well, why not, Peter? Or d’you mean she ought to be doing that up at us from ground level. As if we were riding in a liberation army? No, I’ve seen people wave before from vehicles,’ he said. There was a pause. ‘Tell me about Pam,’ he insisted.

  ‘As you know,’ his companion at last explained, ‘three days ago we had what practically amounted to a
break. Well, you must admit, from all I’ve told you, she’s almost impossible.’ Peter was speaking in low tones, as men do in public transport. ‘We were going to this party together tonight you see. And, of course, naturally when she said she never wanted to see me again, ever, I thought I might take someone else. So I asked someone.’ He broke off here. ‘I say,’ he said in a new voice, ‘d’you know that woman, in here with us, is still waving?’

  ‘Well, it’s a free country (isn’t it?) and we seem to have been stuck in the same place for hours.’

  ‘Always like this at Hyde Park Corner,’ Peter countered. ‘But d’you know who she’s still waving at?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Why, right up inside the hospital; and there’s somebody there signalling back. And now the one here with us has stopped and is turning round. Pretty ghastly sort of smile she’s got on as well, Harry.’

  ‘Go on about Pam, Peter.’

  ‘And now she’s back at her waving again. About Pam? Oh I don’t know, it was really pretty awful. I say, d’you suppose these two do this every day, wave to each other from the bus and the hospital, I mean?’

  ‘Well, of course,’ Harry said. ‘They must have met before or else how would they have found each other now?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose she couldn’t see into that hospital window without she knew who was inside. It’s too dark,’ Peter agreed. ‘Now our woman has stopped, looks like she’s had enough, but the other’s still waving from within.’