Our Man In Havana (28 page)

‘And yet they are giving me the
O.B.E.
?’

‘Yes.’

‘And a job?’

‘I doubt whether you’ll keep it long.’

‘I don’t mean to. Beatrice, when did you begin to imagine that you were …?’

She put her hand on his shoulder and forced him into a shuffle, among the dreary chairs. Then she began to sing, a little out of tune, as though she had been running a long way in order to catch him up.

‘Sane men surround

You, old family friends.

They say the earth is round –

My madness offends.

An orange has pips, they say,

And an apple has rind …’

‘What are we going to live on?’ Wormold asked.

‘You and I can find a way.’

‘There are three of us,’ Wormold said, and she realized the chief problem of their future – that he would never be quite mad enough.

THE HISTORY OF VINTAGE

The famous American publisher Alfred A. Knopf (1892–1984) founded Vintage Books in the United States in 1954 as a paperback home for the authors published by his company. Vintage was launched in the United Kingdom in 1990 and works independently from the American imprint although both are part of the international publishing group, Random House.

Vintage in the United Kingdom was initially created to publish paperback editions of books acquired by the prestigious hardback imprints in the Random House Group such as Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus, Hutchinson and later William Heinemann, Secker & Warburg and The Harvill Press. There are many Booker and Nobel Prize-winning authors on the Vintage list and the imprint publishes a huge variety of fiction and non-fiction. Over the years Vintage has expanded and the list now includes great authors of the past – who are published under the Vintage Classics imprint – as well as many of the most influential authors of the present.

For a full list of the books Vintage publishes, please visit our website
www.vintage-books.co.uk

For book details and other information about the classic authors we publish, please visit the Vintage Classics website
www.vintage-classics.info

www.vintage-classics.info

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Version 1.0

Epub ISBN 9781407086699

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Vintage 2004

10

Copyright © Graham Greene 1958
Introduction copyright © Christopher Hitchens 2006

First published in Great Britain in 1958 by William Heinemann

First published by Vintage in 2001

Vintage
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

www.vintage-classics.info

Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library