`I'M AN ANGRY OLD MAN, YOU SEE'

which has led him to split the royalties of one novel between a Trappist monastery and the guerrillas of El Salvador

`DO YOU still dream stories?' A number of plots, I knew, had wandered, unbidden, into Graham Greene's unconscious mind and been trapped with a pencil at his bedside in the moment of waking.

`I have an enormous index of dreams. I put down the names of all the people in them. Khrushchev, for instance.'

`Tell me.'

`Well, I dreamt I was having dinner with Khrushchev, at some official banquet, and he looked down at my plate with horror and said, "You're eating meat, on a Friday?"' It was a dream, I thought, which told a lot about Graham Greene's favourite meeting place, the point at which doubting Catholics and sceptical communists, no longer totally con- vinced by the faiths to which they feel bound by loyalty, join hands in some kind of mutual understanding. I might have pursued the thought but there were more vital matters to discuss.

`The most important thing is, what will you have to drink? A vodka and tonic? I think, yes, I think perhaps I'll have a dry martini. This is the little cocktail shaker I had made at Asprey's to take to the Vietnam war.' The silver shaker, large enough, perhaps, to carry two drinks to a battle- field, is the only real sign of luxury in Mr Greene's small home in an Antibes apart- ment block. It is true that his windows look out over the boats in the sunlit port, but the overflowing books are piled on the floor, the bamboo furniture is extremely simple and the cover on his smallish double bed is a patterned, revolutionary towel, presented to him by the guerrillas in El Salvador. It must be about 40 years since he owned a motor car.

`I've always had girlfriends that could drive and had cars. Three of them in succession. That's very useful. You know, I've been with my present girlfriend 26 years, for longer than most marriages. Shall we get this over and then we can walk down to the port for lunch? I told Felix you were coming. I showed him your picture on the front of the Spectator.'

`I suppose I ought to ask you about the state of the world. I mean, is this the worst time you can remember?' He has lived for 81 years to be undoubtedly the best novel- ist now living, and probably among the greatest of this century. He has made the Nobel Prize look foolish by not having been awarded it. He has seen more wars and revolutions than most of us can re- member having read about and he has flown thousands of miles and spent hours in the company of presidents and prime ministers in pursuit of a life-long love affair with Spanish America. He is tall, thin, stooping, energetic and talks endlessly, a man with grey, curiously transparent eyes, small dark pupils and what look to be arthritic fingers. This year he plans to visit Russia in search of experiences and Capri in search of another novel. It is impossible to think of him as old.

`The worst time? You mean the horrible state that Reagan's got us into? Well, it's `Have you heard from Kim Philby lately?' I knew that the Great De- fector had occasionally supplied Mr Greene `Not for years. And then he was com- plaining that it was difficult to read Henry James.'

`Why was that?'

`I think he started at the wrong end, with The Golden Bowl, and, of course, Philby's an old man now.'

`We were talking about Nicaragua. You've been there lately?'

`Three times in the last few years. You know, it's really not communist. The Presi- dent's a doubtful Marxist and the ministers of foreign affairs and education are both priests. Can you imagine communists leav- ing education in the hands of a Jesuit priest? I went down to Leon, the second city, with the minister of the interior who is a Marxist, but an agreeable friend, and we walked through the crowds at the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The minister had no guards and all the houses were lit up with statues of the Virgin and people were calling out, `To whom do we owe our happiness? Maria Immaculata!' and hand- ing out bon-bons. The conservative and liberal posters were all still up on the walls. Do you know that 75 per cent of the people voted in the Nicaraguan election? That's 25 per cent more than vote for an American president. Well, if that's communism all I can say is that communism is improving enormously and we all ought to encourage the improvement.'

`So why's Reagan so afraid of the Nicaraguan government?'

`You know what my brother was in danger of after an operation for a cataract? Channel vision! Isn't that what they call it? You can only see in an extremely narrow line. You can't see round the sides of any problem. Reagan's got channel vision.'

`And you think Contra terrorism in Nicaragua is worse than Libyan terrorism?'

'I heard from an American Sister, a Californian, and she described the body of a young Nicaraguan churchman murdered by the Contras. His eyes had been gouged out and the skin taken off his legs and he'd been castrated. I wrote to the Times and told them the story and I said that I hoped that the leaders of the West meeting in Tokyo wouldn't only condemn selective terrorism. They wrote back that they found my letter interesting and distressing but they couldn't print it! Well, if they found it interesting and distressing why didn't they print it?'

Mr Greene lay back against the printed banana leaves on his armchair cushions. He was laughing at the absurdity of the Times's reply and his eyes were wide open in surprise at the callousness of the world. When he talks, his 'r's make a slightly gutteral click at the back of his throat. 'They used to talk about angry young men,' he was still smiling, 'but I'm an angry old man, you see.'

`You seem to be more sympathetic to South American Marxists than to the British Labour Party.

`I liked Gaitskell. I can't say I cared for Wilson or Callaghan. I've got nothing against Mr Kinnock.'

`And Mrs Thatcher?'

'At least she's got courage, and that's quite rare in a Prime Minister.'

'But you've always had a special feeling for Latin America.'

'Oh, always. And then I was attracted by the way people suffered there for their beliefs. First in Mexico at the time of the religious persecution, then in Salvador. You know when Romero was murdered by men armed by Reagan when he was celebrating Mass? He was the first bishop to be murdered while celebrating Mass since Thomas a Becket.'

If I could just ask you about God . .

`Oh yes. I suppose so.' I knew his dislike of being thought of as a 'Catholic novelist'.

`Is He responsible for the mess we're in? I mean did He invent the nuclear bomb?'

'Or Reagan? No. I wouldn't hold God guilty for either. I think we've been re- sponsible for ourselves, ever since the apple got eaten. Mind you, I'm not entirely sure what God is. I suppose you could describe me as a Catholic agnostic.'

`What's God like? Is he a judge?'

`I've no idea.'

'Do you go to Mass?'

`Oh yes; but I hate the new Mass. I always stand at the back and try to miss the sermon.'

`What are you thinking, when you're in church?'

`I look at that beggar kneeling there and I pray that I could have as much faith as that. But on the whole I think there's a sporting chance that God exists.' He was preparted to take the great gamble.

'Why?'

'I'm sure Christ was historically true. And the Resurrection is so vividly de- scribed in the Gospels. It's such a wonder- ful piece of reporting that I'm inclined to believe it. And if it happened God must 'It looks like some kind of peace convoy.' exist. And then I remember going to the south of Italy to see Padre Pio, a little stocky peasant priest who'd received the stigmata. Some monsignor at the Vatican said, 'You're going to see our Holy Fraud?' But when I got there I saw Pio forever pulling down his sleeves to hide the marks on his hands; they were about the size of two-shilling pieces. You're not allowed to wear gloves when you're celebrating, you see, so he just pulled down his sleeves. He said a very long Mass, but to me it seemed to pass in about five minutes. Padre Pio took over the pain of a young man who was dying of cancer of the testicles. This boy died without pain, but the priest was sometimes racked with it at the altar. It was thought to be a miracle, but when he was given money Padre Pio wanted it spent on a modern hospital.'

`But you have doubts?' 'Of course. When you're received into the Catholic Church they give you another name, just in case your Anglican baptism didn't work. So I chose the name Thomas. I liked two things about Thomas, one was that he was the doubter and the other was that, at the end, he said, "Let's go up to Jerusalem and die with Him." ' `Do you go to confession?'

`Once a year. My friend the priest from Madrid comes to say Mass in this room and then I confess. It usually takes about three minutes.'

`You've written about your infidelities and various love affairs during your mar- riage. Are those sins that you confess and feel guilt about?' `I feel guilt, of course, if I have hurt other people. . . `But they're not sins in relation to God?' 'I don't feel that.'

'Why a Catholic agnostic?' `I suppose because, if there is a God, the Catholics probably come nearest to getting Him right.'

`But what about this pope?' `Wrong about all sorts of things. When one of the ministers in Nicaragua knelt in front of him he wagged his finger disappro- vingly and wouldn't stop. But I think he may be changing his views on liberation theology.'

`Who was the best pope?' `Undoubtedly John. You know Khrush- chev sent him a telegram on his 80th birthday?' `You've written a lot in The Lost Child- hood about Henry James's awareness of the power of evil. There are the wicked servants, for instance, in The Turn of the Screw. What does evil mean to you?' 'I suppose Hitler was evil. I can't feel that Reagan's intelligent enough to be evil Are there evil characters in my books? I'm not sure. Perhaps there's always a question mark over them.'

`Do you believe in the Devil?' `I'm an agnostic about him too. But I can't believe there's a Devil and not a God.' `Your Catholicism's always been on the side of the poor and the oppressed . .

`Well, I hope so. But. . . .' Mr Greene looked doubtfully at the bamboo furniture, and, perhaps, even more doubtfully at the small cocktail-shaker made for Vietnam. `Here I am in a very nice apartment.'

There was a time when Graham Greene was regarded as a somewhat secre- tive writer, and he has said that any sort of portrait of himself must be left to his friends or his enemies. In his Antibes flat, however, he was talking without reserva- tion, jumping up to look at William James on Varieties of Religious Experience or to find a poem he'd written to the hall porter in the Ritz complaining about the slowness of breakfast and the vagaries of the central heating, or to find me a bundle of photo- graphs showing President Duarte's daugh- ter apparently having an enjoyable time with the Salvador guerrillas by whom she was said to have been kidnapped. We talked about Panama — 'I don't go there since Omar Torrijos died' — and Fidel Castro. 'He's not against religion, in fact he was brought up by the Jesuits. But I was there when a bishop put his biretta on the leader's head and I think Fidel thought that was going a little far.' We discussed Cher- nobyl. It obviously means that if the Americans dropped two bombs on Mos- cow they'd wipe out Europe. So nuclear weapons are now quite meaningless.' Finally I asked him to look back to the days when his first novels weren't selling and he was struggling to support a family. 'What would you have done if you hadn't become a famous writer?' `I'd've kept a second-hand bookshop.' Graham Greene looked round at his boy- hood treasures, the great adventure stories in their gilt bindings, tales of Rupert of Hentzau and Alan Quartermain and Eric Brighteyes. 'I think I'd've been quite hap- py doing that. Is that enough questions? Good! Now we can go down to the restaurant.'

As we walked past the boats and through the archway in the wall by the old port he said, 'You know what I did with my Spanish royalties on Monsignor Quixote? I gave half to the Trappist monastery at Osera and half to the Salvador guerrillas. I don't see why you shouldn't publish that.'

Felix Au Port, bereft of American tourists, was almost empty. To Mr Greene's delight a car drove by, having on its roof the statue of a naked lady lying on her stomach, to be used instead of a rack on which the passengers might load their skis. He lunches there every day when he's in France, reading if he's eating alone, anything from The Wings of the Dove to the Communist Manifesto. We had fish soup, whiting and tarte aux pommes, we drank white wine, with Graham Greene interrupting his stream of reminiscences only to shout at an intrusive dog baying in the next room.

`I like this restaurant. I've got two stories from listening to the conversation here. You wanted to know what I did at the Specator?'

`Weren't you literary editor, at the start of the war?'

`Oh yes. And the editor, Wilson Harris, disliked me very much. He objected to the poems I published, particularly Geoffrey Grigson. His wife drove an ambulance through the blitz but Wilson Harris slept out of London to avoid the air raids. He took books away from my office to read at the weekends and I noticed they were always called Married Love or some such title. I once sent him a French letter full of little sugary sweets because I thought he might not have seen one before. I don't think he realised that it was I who sent it.'

Poor old Wilson Harris, I thought, a man forgotten, far removed from the heroes, the lapsed communists or doubtful Catholics who could still conduct them- selves with a little courage when it came to war. I remembered the Graham Greene whose jokes could be merciless and the occasion when he reviewed a book by Beverley Nichols on the assumption that the author was a spinster lady, genuinely attached to her brother and the vicarage, fond of Galsworthy and gardening.

`So you're going to do another novel?' `I'm going to try. I started it ten years ago and stopped. Then I went on with it five years ago and stopped. Now I daren't even look at my notes until I get to Anacapri and start working. There's some sort of magic there, I don't know what it is.'

`You believe in supernatural influences?'

`I suppose I'm an agnostic about magic as well. But I always work far more quickly there.'

`What do you do, to get yourself started?'

`I always read a book by Henry James. That gets me in the mood and makes me feel it's worthwhile struggling.'

`Do you read Conrad still?'

`Not much. I'm not sure he wasn't a bad influence on me. But I'm very fond of Heart of Darkness.'

`And Robert Louis Stevenson.'

`Oh well, of course. I have a sort of family pride in him. He was my mother's first cousin. When I was a child I played on Stevenson's bagatelle board. I once knew a couple of pages of Stevenson almost by heart, it was so wonderfully written. It was a description of action, which is much harder to do than streams of conscious- ness. And do you know, he didn't use a single adverb! No one jumped quickly or- walked stealthily. Of course, if you get the verbs right you don't need adverbs at all.'

`You've never liked adverbs, have you?' `No.' He was no longer smiling and spoke with the chilling disapproval he had hitherto reserved for President Reagan. 'I think adverbs are absolutely bloody.'

We had walked back to the flat for a last calvados and now it was time for the taxi to Nice airport.

`What's been the happiest time of your life?'

`Impossible to tell. It's all been such a mixture.'

`You seem remarkably happy now.' `Old age is never a very happy period.' `At least you don't have to worry about whether you'll succeed as a novelist.'

`That's true.' He smiled, seeming a little tired now. 'You don't have to worry about success, or radiation. I'll come down in the lift with you,' he said when the taxi arrived. `It'll give us a little more time to talk.'

In the lift I said, 'I hope it goes well with the novel.'

`I thought of a name for a character the other day. "Quigley". I like that name very much. I shall cling to Quigley.'

I left him to have his siesta, a habit he had acquired in Africa, under the towelling coverlet given him by the Salvador guerril- las, perhaps dreaming another plot and having high hopes for Quigley. I thought of all the conversations I had ever had about religion, and Graham Greene, taking his sporting chance on God, came nearest to a faith I could understand. I left not entirely sure of the difference between a devout atheist and a Catholic agnostic and remem- bered the verse of Browning (perhaps his favourite poet) that Graham Greene had quoted during a friendly argument with a far more orthodox believer, Evelyn Waugh:

All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt. We called the chessboard white — we call it black.