TWENTY-ONE STORIES
Graham Greene was born in 1904. On coming down from Balliol College, Oxford, he worked for four years as sub-editor on The Times. He established his reputation with his fourth novel, Stamboul Train. In 1935 he made a journey across Liberia, described in Journey Without Maps. and on his return was appointed film critic of the Spectator. In 1926 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church and visited Mexico in 1938 to report on the religious persecution there. As a result he wrote The Lawless Roads and, later, his famous novel The Power and the Glory. Brighton Rock was published in 1938 and in 1940 he became literary editor of the Spectator. The next year he undertook work for the Foreign Office and was stationed in Sierra Leone from 1941 to 1943. This later produced the novel, The Heart of the Matter, set in West Africa.
As well as his many novels, Graham Greene wrote several collections of short stories, four travel books, six plays, three books of autobiography – A Sort of Life, Ways of Escape and A World of My Own (published posthumously) – two of biography and four books for children. He also contributed hundreds of essays, and film and book reviews, some of which appear in the collections Reflections and Mornings in the Dark. Many of his novels and short stories have been filmed and The Third Man was written as a film treatment. Graham Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour. He died in April 1991.
ALSO BY GRAHAM GREENE
Novels
The Man Within
It’s a Battlefield
A Gun for Sale
The Confidential Agent
The Ministry of Fear
The Third Man
The End of the Affair
Loser Takes All
The Quiet American
A Burnt-out Case
Travels with my Aunt
Dr Fischer of Geneva or
The Bomb Party
The Human Factor
The Tenth Man
Stamboul Train
England Made Me
Brighton Rock
The Power and the Glory
The Heart of the Matter
The Fallen Idol
Our Man in Havana
The Comedians
The Honorary Consul
Monsignor Quixote
The Captain and the Enemy
Short Stories
Collected Stories
The Last Word and Other Stories
May We Borrow Your Husband?
Travel
Journey Without Maps
The Lawless Roads
In Search of a Character
Getting to Know the General
Essays
Yours etc.
Reflections
Mornings in the Dark
Collected Essays
Plays
Collected Plays
Autobiography
A Sort of Life
Ways of Escape
Fragments of an Autobiography
A World of my Own
Biography
Lord Rochester’s Monkey
An Impossible Woman
Children’s Books
The Little Train
The Little Horse-Bus
The Little Steamroller
The Little Fire Engine
GRAHAM GREENE
Twenty-One Stories
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CONTENTS
About the Author
Also by the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
The Destructors
The Destructors
Special Duties
The Blue Film
The Hint of an Explanation
When Greek Meets Greek
Men at Work
Alas, Poor Maling
The Case for the Defence
A Little Place off the Edgware Road
Across the Bridge
A Drive in the Country
The Innocent
The Basement Room
A Chance for Mr Lever
Brother
Jubilee
A Day Saved
I Spy
Proof Positive
The Second Death
The End of the Party
THE DESTRUCTORS
1
IT was on the eve of August Bank Holiday that the latest recruit became the leader of the Wormsley Common Gang. No one was surprised except Mike, but Mike at the age of nine was surprised by everything. ‘If you don’t shut your mouth,’ somebody once said to him, ‘you’ll get a frog down it.’ After that Mike kept his teeth tightly clamped except when the surprise was too great.
The new recruit had been with the gang since the beginning of the summer holidays, and there were possibilities about his brooding silence that all recognized. He never wasted a word even to tell his name until that was required of him by the rules. When he said ‘Trevor’ it was a statement of fact, not as it would have been with the others a statement of shame or defiance. Nor did anyone laugh except Mike, who finding himself without support and meeting the dark gaze of the newcomer opened his mouth and was quiet again. There was every reason why T., as he was afterwards referred to, should have been an object of mockery – there was his name (and they substituted the initial because otherwise they had no excuse not to laugh at it), the fact that his father, a former architect and present clerk, had ‘come down in the world’ and that his mother considered herself better than the neighbours. What but an odd quality of danger, of the unpredictable, established him in the gang without any ignoble ceremony of initiation?
The gang met every morning in an impromptu car-park, the site of the last bomb of the first blitz. The leader, who was known as Blackie, claimed to have heard it fall, and no one was precise enough in his dates to point out that he would have been one year old and fast asleep on the down platform of Wormsley Common Underground Station. On one side of the car-park leant the first occupied house, No. 3, of the shattered Northwood Terrace – literally leant, for it had suff
ered from the blast of the bomb and the side walls were supported on wooden struts. A smaller bomb and incendiaries had fallen beyond, so that the house stuck up like a jagged tooth and carried on the further wall relics of its neighbour, a dado, the remains of a fireplace. T., whose words were almost confined to voting ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the plan of operations proposed each day by Blackie, once startled the whole gang by saying broodingly, ‘Wren built that house, father says.’
‘Who’s Wren?’
‘The man who built St Paul’s.’
‘Who cares?’ Blackie said. ‘It’s only Old Misery’s.’
Old Misery – whose real name was Thomas – had once been a builder and decorator. He lived alone in the crippled house, doing for himself: once a week you could see him coming back across the common with bread and vegetables, and once as the boys played in the car-park he put his head over the smashed wall of his garden and looked at them.
‘Been to the lav,’ one of the boys said, for it was common knowledge that since the bombs fell something had gone wrong with the pipes of the house and Old Misery was too mean to spend money on the property. He could do the redecorating himself at cost price, but he had never learnt plumbing. The lav was a wooden shed at the bottom of the narrow garden with a star-shaped hole in the door: it had escaped the blast which had smashed the house next door and sucked out the window-frames of No. 3.
The next time the gang became aware of Mr Thomas was more surprising. Blackie, Mike and a thin yellow boy, who for some reason was called by his surname Summers, met him on the common coming back from the market. Mr Thomas stopped them. He said glumly, ‘You belong to the lot that play in the car-park?’
Mike was about to answer when Blackie stopped him. As the leader he had responsibilities. ‘Suppose we are?’ he said ambiguously.
‘I got some chocolates,’ Mr Thomas said. ‘Don’t like ’em myself. Here you are. Not enough to go round, I don’t suppose. There never is,’ he added with sombre conviction. He handed over three packets of Smarties.
The gang was puzzled and perturbed by this action and tried to explain it away. ‘Bet someone dropped them and he picked ’em up,’ somebody suggested.
‘Pinched ’em and then got in a bleeding funk,’ another thought aloud.
‘It’s a bribe,’ Summers said. ‘He wants us to stop bouncing balls on his wall.’
‘We’ll show him we don’t take bribes,’ Blackie said, and they sacrificed the whole morning to the game of bouncing that only Mike was young enough to enjoy. There was no sign from Mr Thomas.
Next day T. astonished them all. He was late at the rendezvous, and the voting for that day’s exploit took place without him. At Blackie’s suggestion the gang was to disperse in pairs, take buses at random and see how many free rides could be snatched from unwary conductors (the operation was to be carried out in pairs to avoid cheating). They were drawing lots for their companions when T. arrived.
‘Where you been, T.?’ Blackie asked. ‘You can’t vote now. You know the rules.’
‘I’ve been there.’ T. said. He looked at the ground, as though he had thoughts to hide.
‘Where?’
‘At Old Misery’s.’ Mike’s mouth opened and then hurriedly closed again with a click. He had remembered the frog.
‘At Old Misery’s?’ Blackie said. There was nothing in the rules against it, but he had a sensation that T. was treading on dangerous ground. He asked hopefully, ‘Did you break in?’
‘No. I rang the bell.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said I wanted to see his house.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He showed it me.’
‘Pinch anything?’
‘No.’
‘What did you do it for then?’
The gang had gathered round: it was as though an impromptu court were about to form and try some case of deviation. T. said, ‘It’s a beautiful house,’ and still watching the ground, meeting no one’s eyes, he licked his lips first one way, then the other.
‘What do you mean, a beautiful house?’ Blackie asked with scorn.
‘It’s got a staircase two hundred years old like a corkscrew. Nothing holds it up.’
‘What do you mean, nothing holds it up. Does it float?’
‘It’s to do with opposite forces, Old Misery said.’
‘What else?’
‘There’s panelling.’
‘Like in the Blue Boar?’
‘Two hundred years old.’
‘Is Old Misery two hundred years old?’
Mike laughed suddenly and then was quiet again. The meeting was in a serious mood. For the first time since T. had strolled into the car-park on the first day of the holidays his position was in danger. It only needed a single use of his real name and the gang would be at his heels.
‘What did you do it for?’ Blackie asked. He was just, he had no jealousy, he was anxious to retain T. in the gang if he could. It was the word ‘beautiful’ that worried him – that belonged to a class world that you could still see parodied at the Wormsley Common Empire by a man wearing a top hat and a monocle, with a haw-haw accent. He was tempted to say, ‘My dear Trevor, old chap,’ and unleash his hell hounds. ‘If you’d broken in,’ he said sadly – that indeed would have been an exploit worthy of the gang.
‘This was better,’ T. said. ‘I found out things.’ He continued to stare at his feet, not meeting anybody’s eye, as though he were absorbed in some dream he was unwilling – or ashamed – to share.
‘What things?’
‘Old Misery’s going to be away all tomorrow and Bank Holiday.’
Blackie said with relief, ‘You mean we could break in?’
‘And pinch things?’ somebody asked.
Blackie said, ‘Nobody’s going to pinch things. Breaking in – that’s good enough, isn’t it? We don’t want any court stuff.’
‘I don’t want to pinch anything,’ T. said. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
‘What is it?’
T. raised eyes, as grey and disturbed as the drab August day. ‘We’ll pull it down,’ he said. ‘We’ll destroy it.’
Blackie gave a single hoot of laughter and then, like Mike, fell quiet, daunted by the serious implacable gaze. ‘What’d the police be doing all the time?’ he said.
‘They’d never know. We’d do it from inside. I’ve found a way in.’ He said with a sort of intensity, ‘We’d be like worms, don’t you see, in an apple. When we came out again there’d be nothing there, no staircase, no panels, nothing but just walls, and then we’d make the walls fall down – somehow.’
‘We’d go to jug,’ Blackie said.
‘Who’s to prove? and anyway we wouldn’t have pinched anything.’ He added without the smallest flicker of glee, ‘There wouldn’t be anything to pinch after we’d finished.’
‘I’ve never heard of going to prison for breaking things,’ Summers said.
‘There wouldn’t be time,’ Blackie said. ‘I’ve seen house-breakers at work.’
‘There are twelve of us,’ T. said. ‘We’d organize.’
‘None of us know how . . .’
‘I know,’ T. said. He looked across at Blackie. ‘Have you got a better plan?’
‘Today,’ Mike said tactlessly, ‘we’re pinching free rides . . .’
‘Free rides,’ T. said. ‘Kid stuff. You can stand down, Blackie, if you’d rather . . .’
‘The gang’s got to vote.’
‘Put it up then.’
Blackie said uneasily, ‘It’s proposed that tomorrow and Monday we destroy Old Misery’s house.’
‘Here, here,’ said a fat boy called Joe.
‘Who’s in favour?’
T. said, ‘It’s carried.’
‘How do we start?’ Summers asked.
‘He’ll tell you,’ Blackie said. It was the end of his leadership. He went away to the back of the car-park and began to kick a stone, dribbling it this way and that. There was onl
y one old Morris in the park, for few cars were left there except lorries: without an attendant there was no safety. He took a flying kick at the car and scraped a little paint off the rear mudguard. Beyond, paying no more attention to him than to a stranger, the gang had gathered round T.; Blackie was dimly aware of the fickleness of favour. He thought of going home, of never returning, of letting them all discover the hollowness of T.’s leadership, but suppose after all what T. proposed was possible – nothing like it had ever been done before. The fame of the Wormsley Common car-park gang would surely reach around London. There would be headlines in the papers. Even the grown-up gangs who ran the betting at the all-in wrestling and the barrow-boys would hear with respect of how Old Misery’s house had been destroyed. Driven by the pure, simple and altruistic ambition of fame for the gang, Blackie came back to where T. stood in the shadow of Old Misery’s wall.
T. was giving his orders with decision: it was as though this plan had been with him all his life, pondered through the seasons, now in his fifteenth year crystallized with the pain of puberty. ‘You,’ he said to Mike, ‘bring some big nails, the biggest you can find, and a hammer. Anybody who can, better bring a hammer and a screwdriver. We’ll need plenty of them. Chisels too. We can’t have too many chisels. Can anybody bring a saw?’
‘I can,’ Mike said.
‘Not a child’s saw,’ T. said. ‘A real saw.’
Blackie realized he had raised his hand like any ordinary member of the gang.
‘Right, you bring one, Blackie. But now there’s a difficulty. We want a hacksaw.’
‘What’s a hacksaw?’ someone asked.
‘You can get ’em at Woolworth’s,’ Summers said.
The fat boy called Joe said gloomily, ‘I knew it would end in a collection.’
‘I’ll get one myself,’ T. said. ‘I don’t want your money. But I can’t buy a sledge-hammer.’
Blackie said, ‘They are working on No. 15. I know where they’ll leave their stuff for Bank Holiday.’
‘Then that’s all,’ T. said. ‘We meet here at nine sharp.’
‘I’ve got to go to church,’ Mike said.
‘Come over the wall and whistle. We’ll let you in.’
2
On Sunday morning all were punctual except Blackie, even Mike. Mike had a stroke of luck. His mother felt ill, his father was tired after Saturday night, and he was told to go to church alone with many warnings of what would happen if he strayed. Blackie had difficulty in smuggling out the saw, and then in finding the sledge-hammer at the back of No. 15. He approached the house from a lane at the rear of the garden, for fear of the policeman’s beat along the main road. The tired evergreens kept off a stormy sun: another wet Bank Holiday was being prepared over the Atlantic, beginning in swirls of dust under the trees. Blackie climbed the wall into Misery’s garden.