Ways of Escape by Graham Greene
‘Nothing serious, I hope?’
‘He will not be back at work for some days,’ I was told guardedly, but an hour later his secretary rang me at the hotel and I was told that Sir Robert would like me to go to dinner. A car would be sent for me.
The house – I’m not sure that it was not called Abbotsford – was certainly Scotch baronial, singularly out of place in Africa, though not perhaps in Nairobi. My voice when I called ‘Boy!’ was hushed and lost in a great stony hall and nobody came. It was like the opening of a Hammer film. At last I heard Robert’s voice faintly calling to me from above to come up. A door stood open and I went in. Robert lay in bed propped on two pillows. He fingered his pipe nervously.
‘What’s wrong, Robert?’
‘I’ve had an accident.’
Again there was that apprehensive look as though he expected me to laugh.
‘What happened?’
‘I slipped in my bath.’
‘You haven’t broken your hip?’
‘I sat down on the soap dish,’ he said.
I wish I could convey that slow Scottish accent which could make putting bananas into a grand piano seem reasonable, even banal. He said, ‘The soap dish broke. I was badly cut and I called for my boy. He came in, and when he saw the blood he thought it was a Mau Mau outrage so he ran away.’
He paused, perhaps waiting for the laugh which now I suppressed easily because I was no longer young.
‘I got to a telephone,’ he said, ‘and asked for a doctor. But when he came there was a power cut – or it may have been the Mau Mau. He had to put in twelve stitches by the light of an electric torch.’ He finished his story and looked at me with relief – I hadn’t laughed.
‘Poor Robert,’ I said, but I was thinking of young Robert bending over the banisters and pouring water on Nefertiti’s head, praying with the rector’s wife in Wallingford – life that begins absurdly will go on absurdly to the end. The lines don’t alter on the palm.
It was the last time I spent with him. A few years later I had a Christmas card from Mauritius where he had been appointed Governor and lived in a beautiful old colonial house with, I imagined, eighteenth-century cannon on the lawn. He invited me to stay, but I never went, and I regret it now, for who knows what bizarre event might have occurred there?
Sir Robert Scott died years ago. I have reached the age when one outlives friends more easily than memories of them and, as I write, another incident returns to mind – that occasion outside Berkhamsted Town Hall when he wore a heavy false moustache and appeared as Rudyard Kipling making an appeal for the Boy Scout movement and a retired admiral called Loder-Symonds took the chair until he noticed that something seemed somehow to be wrong … I don’t think the Colonial Office ever realised how strange a servant they had enlisted.
1 A connoisseur would say ‘The No. 1 Xieng Khouang opium of Laos’ when referring to the best opium from this country. (As, for instance, rubber from Malaya is described as No. 1 R.S.S.) Xieng Khouang is a province to the north-east of Vientiane where the best opium is grown.
Chapter Seven
1
It was, I think, in 1954 that I was deported from Puerto Rico, an occasion I shall always remember with pleasure. Life is not rich in comedy; one has to cherish what there is of it and savour it during the bad days.
Under the McCarran Act I had become a prohibited immigrant to the United States. At the age of nineteen for the fun of the thing I had joined the Communist Party in Oxford as a probationary member and during my short stay with them contributed four sixpenny stamps monthly to the Party’s funds. These facts had not, as one might have imagined, been cleverly unearthed by the CIA. I had disclosed them rather naively myself, for I trusted the First Secretary of the American Embassy in Brussels, where I happened to be for a debate with François Mauriac, and he had told me that the State Department were anxious for cases which would expose the absurdity of the Act. So I mentioned my past to a Time correspondent.
The plastic curtain fell immediately and was not lifted again until John Kennedy was President. If I wished to visit the United States I had to get special permission from the Attorney General in Washington – this took as a rule about three weeks and my stay was limited to four. I had to inform the authorities on which planes I would arrive and leave, and mysterious letters and numbers were inscribed on my temporary visa which always ensured a long delay at Immigration. I rather enjoyed the game – it provided an admirable excuse when I wanted to refuse invitations from my publisher. The first time I found it a little inconvenient was in 1954.
I had been staying in Haiti (then a relatively happy country) with my friends Peter Brook and Truman Capote and I wanted to return to England by the quickest possible route. This was by Delta Airlines to San Juan in Puerto Rico, on to New York by a connecting Pan American plane and thence by BOAC to London. I went to see the American Ambassador in Port-au-Prince and explained my problem. Could he grant me a transit visa without all the delay of applying to the Attorney General? He was sympathetic, but he told me no. What I could do, however – and he assured me it was quite legal – was transit without a visa if I had no objection to being locked in a room at the airports in San Juan and New York.
I had no objections, but I had a strong instinct his plan wouldn’t work as easily as all that.
My plane arrived in San Juan about nine thirty in the evening and my connection left two hours later. A large flushed man in a khaki uniform with a surly manner took one look at my passport and the mysterious figures.
‘Ever been a member of the Communist Party?’
‘Yes. For four weeks at the age of nineteen.’ It was my blithe formula.
He told me to get out of the queue and wait till he had time to deal with me. His tone was not friendly, and I felt sure now that my journey was going to be an unconventional one. With a sense of exhilaration I sat down to read an adventure of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. How dull a flight can be when the only delays are occasioned by ‘mechanical faults’ or ‘late arrival of incoming plane’. Here, at long last, was something different.
Nearly an hour passed and then the Immigration man summoned me abruptly to follow him into a small office. Closing the door he leaned his heavy weight against it as though he expected me to make a bolt for freedom. On the other side of the table sat his senior officer, a man in his forties with a charming and intelligent manner, who offered me a seat. He said, ‘I’m afraid we can’t let you go on.’
I told him what the American Ambassador had said, but ambassadors cut no ice at all with Immigration.
‘We’ll put you on a plane back to Haiti in the morning.’
I said, ‘If you’d lock me in the bar I could have a drink. I’m rather thirsty.’
The surly man resented the politeness of his superior. He wanted to put me back in my proper place. ‘This’ll be a dry airport for you, buddy,’ he said.
All the same it was not to be a dry city. His officer was more accommodating. ‘If you give us your word of honour not to escape you can spend the night at a hotel in San Juan.’
‘I have no dollars,’ I said, though that was not strictly true.
‘Uncle Sam will pay,’ he said.
He summoned two plainclothes men to take me to a hotel, and as we drove into the city they explained they would sleep in the next room to mine and would wake me at six thirty to take me to the airport. I smiled to myself at my recent knowledge that I had no visa to return to Haiti. American citizens did not require a visa, so no one had thought of that, but I wasn’t going to enlighten them yet.
We became friendly on the drive and I invited the two officers to drink whisky with me in the bar of the hotel. We had one round and then a second – I could be as generous as I liked at Uncle Sam’s expense. Presently one of the officers said, ‘Seems a pity he shouldn’t see anything of San Juan.’
‘Let’s drive him around a bit,’ the other said.
I didn’t see very much of the city, the street
In the morning we hardly talked on the way to the airport – one of the detectives was suffering from a bad hangover. We advanced in an official group towards the desk of Delta Airlines, and the more sober showed his badge. ‘You are to put this gentleman on the flight to Haiti.’
It was then I played my joker. ‘I have no visa for Haiti,’ I said. I couldn’t have timed it better.
‘We can’t take him without a visa,’ the Delta official said.
‘What time does the Haitian Embassy open?’
‘Ten thirty.’
‘We’ll take him downtown to get his visa and you’ll have to put him on the next plane.’
‘I’m on my way to England,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to go to Haiti and I’m not going to ask for a visa.’
The confusion was complete and leaving them to sort it out I strolled to the telegraph office in the airport hall where I sent a telegram to Reuter’s in London: ‘Am being deported to Haiti by American authorities in Puerto Rico. For background ring my secretary at such and such a number.’ It was one of the rare occasions when I welcomed a little publicity. On my return to the Delta desk I found they had sorted matters out – or so they believed. The Delta official would telegraph to his manager in Port-au-Prince to get permission from the Haitians to let me land. I thought it as well to make no more trouble for the moment, and I was escorted between the two detectives like a VIP to the boarding steps. We took off a little late.
I had only just undone my belt when the captain settled down beside me. ‘Been in a bit of trouble?’ he asked with sympathy.
I told him what had happened.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I was a Communist myself once.’
He told me his story. He had been an actor in Hollywood and had been blacklisted. So he had become a pilot for Delta. I wondered how all the blue-haired women on the plane would have reacted to the knowledge that their pilot had been a Communist.
I said, ‘You go on to Havana, don’t you?’
‘Yes, and then to Miami.’
‘Do you mind if I stay with you as far as Havana?’
‘I’ll be glad to have you,’ he said.
When we came in to land at Port-au-Prince I could see the Delta manager pacing the tarmac. During my two weeks in Haiti I had met him several times and had taken an irrational dislike to him. Now when I came down the ladder he stormed towards me.
‘You’ve caused the hell of a lot of trouble,’ he said. ‘I’ve had to go to the Foreign Ministry here and persuade them to let you spend the night. Then we shall send you to Jamaica.’
For the first time I was irritated – after all I had passed a very short night. I said, ‘I’m not a bloody parcel and you are not sending me anywhere.’
‘Huh?’
‘I’m going on in this plane to Havana.’
‘You aren’t going anywhere in my plane.’
The captain had joined us. He said, ‘I’m taking this gentleman to Havana in my plane.’
It was fine socialist theatre: the good Communist confronted the bad capitalist, and in the socialist theatre the issue is never in doubt. The manager turned disagreeably away.
After we had taken off for Havana the air hostess began to distribute coloured cards. ‘What are they?’ I asked.
‘Transit cards for passengers to Miami.’
‘Can I have one?’
She gave me a card. I thought that it might in some way prove useful, even though as a British subject I could land in Havana in those days without a visa.
After we landed at Havana the blue-haired women who were bound for Miami streamed through Immigration showing their transit cards. It seemed quicker to get through Immigration that way, so I showed the transit card too. Then I took a taxi to a hotel I knew in the old town and after a hot bath went to bed. It had been a tiring trip and I was soon asleep.
A telephone woke me.
‘Who’s there?’
‘Is that Mr Greene?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is the New York Times. We’ve received a Reuter’s message about your being deported from Puerto Rico.’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘The message said to Haiti, but we found you’d gone on to Havana.’
‘Yes. I like it better here.’
‘We’ve been trying all the big hotels and I never thought of this one.’
‘I like this one the best.’
After his call I tried to sleep again, but the telephone rang and rang and I found myself having to make the same conversation. This time it was with the local correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. He got my confirmation of the Reuter’s message. Then he said, ‘Perhaps I ought to warn you.’
‘What about?’
‘I spoke to the Immigration authorities here when I was trying to trace you. They were quite surprised. They say you never passed Immigration. They are looking for you everywhere.’
They never found me. The police were not very efficient in the days of Batista.
2
The End of the Affair had appeared in 1951 – now it was 1955 and I had just finished The Quiet American. The mood of escape was still there, but this time it took me no further than to Monte Carlo, to live luxuriously for a few weeks in the Hôtel de Paris (chargeable as an expense to my income tax), to work long hours at the Casino tables (my losses I considered might be fairly chargeable too), and to write what I hoped would prove an amusing, agreeably sentimental novella – something which neither my friends nor my enemies would expect. It was to be called Loser Takes All. A reputation is like a death mask. I wanted to smash the mask.
I followed a strict routine – breakfast in bed, work till eleven, an hour in the cuisine of the Casino before lunch, a siesta, two more hours in the cuisine, dinner, and then a period of sustained work in the Salle Privée from nine till midnight. I never discovered a system, but I didn’t lose. At the end of my stay I had made a profit of four pounds – an ignoble figure which I hastened to lose en plein before catching my plane. They had been happy days.
For the first time – and I think the last – I drew a principal character from the life. Dreuther, the business tycoon in Loser Takes All, is undeniably Alexander Korda, and the story remains important to me because it is soaked in memories of Alex, a man whom I loved. I have even used scraps of his dialogue. I can still remember him saying to me, in that hesitant Hungarian accent, which lent a sense of considered wisdom to his lightest words, what Dreuther said in my book to Bertram, the accountant who is going to marry and whom he promises a honeymoon on his yacht at Monte Carlo, ‘My dear boy, it is not easy to lose a good woman. If one must marry it is better to marry a bad woman.’
He even provided me with the plot of Loser Takes All. I was on holiday in Anacapri with a very dear friend when we received a telegram inviting us both to join him in Athens for a cruise in his yacht, the Elsewhere. The Elsewhere, so romantically named, was his way of escape, from film scripts and directors and the Prudential Insurance Company. At first she had been a rather incomplete escape – the Elsewhere was kept in the old port of Antibes, which I can see now from my window as I write; she was on a sort of tether there that allowed him to go ashore daily to telephone his office – from Monte Carlo, from Portofino, from Calvi, but as the years passed she was allowed to wander loose – in one small Greek island where we were weather-bound on the way to Istanbul (which we never reached) there was not even a post office. He was really at last elsewhere, happy and carefree. He could talk about pictures, the poetry of Baudelaire, the theatre – anything but films. We had an unspoken pact to change the subject quickly if anybody on board spoke of films.
This trip in Greek waters to which we had been invited was
Those were still the days of strict currency regulations and we had very little money with us and the Grande Bretagne was a very expensive hotel. The first day we were alone we were extravagant, but waking a second morning with no news of the boat, we had to be careful … which meant being more extravagant: all our meals in the hotel rather than in a cheap café; in place of a taxi an expensive hotel car which could be put on the bill. I still remember the severe price for a picnic lunch provided by the hotel – we ate it above the Corinth Canal in hope of seeing the Elsewhere below us making her way to Athens.
Well, Alex like Dreuther did eventually turn up in time to pay our ‘honeymoon’ bill, and the story of Loser Takes All had been born over the retsina wine of the anxious picnic lunch. I even sold the film rights, and the film proved a disaster of miscasting, with a middle-aged actress as the twenty-year-old heroine, a romantic Italian star as the unromantic English accountant, and Robert Morley playing Robert Morley. Over the casting Alex had his little revenge (he must certainly have recognised himself as Dreuther) by refusing permission for Alec Guinness, who was under contract to him, to play the part. All the same I don’t think he was offended by the portrait, which was drawn with some of the deep affection I felt for him.
In spite of the Hungarian accent it mustn’t be thought that Alex was monotonously wise. He had strange and endearing lapses. Only a foreigner could have plunged so deeply into that disastrous costume drama – was it even shown? – Bonnie Prince Charlie. It was often better not to take his advice when it came to films. I remember the only script conference Carol Reed and I had with him before starting work on our film, The Fallen Idol, the adaptation of my short story about a child and a butler called ‘The Basement Room’. Alex wanted me to change the butler into a chauffeur ‘because children are so interested in mechanics, Graham. And then, you see, you open the film at London airport and the parents are going away by plane and the little boy is very interested in the engine of the car …’ I objected. ‘How many films begin with a plane leaving an airport or arriving at one?’ He wasn’t convinced, but he let us have our way.