4
One can go back to one's own home after a year's absence and immediately the door closes it is as if one has never been away. Or one can go back after a few hours and everything is so changed that one is a stranger.
This, of course, he knew now, was not his home. Guilford Street was his home. He had hoped that wherever Anna was there would be peace; coming up the stairs a second time he knew that there would never be peace again while they lived.
To walk from Paddington to Battersea gives time for thought. He knew what he had to do long before he began to climb the stairs. A phrase of Johns' came back to mind about a Ministry of Fear. He felt now that he had joined its permanent staff. But it wasn't the small Ministry to which Johns had referred, with limited aims like winning a war or changing a constitution. It was a Ministry as large as life to which all who loved belonged. If one loved one feared. That was something Digby had forgotten, full of hope among the flowers and
Tatlers
.
The door was open as he had left it, and it occurred to him almost as a hope that perhaps she had run out into the raid and been lost for ever. If one loved a woman one couldn't hope that she would be tied to a murderer for the rest of her days.
But she was there â not where he had left her, but in the bedroom where they had watched Hilfe sleeping. She lay on the bed face downwards with her fists clenched. He said âAnna.'
She turned her head on the pillow; she had been crying, and her face looked as despairing as a child's. He felt an enormous love for her, enormous tenderness, the need to protect her at any cost. She had wanted him innocent and happy . . . she had loved Digby . . . He had got to give her what she wanted . . . He said gently, âYour brother's dead. He shot himself,' but her face didn't alter. It was as if none of that meant anything at all â all that violence and gracelessness and youth had gone without her thinking it worth attention. She asked with terrible anxiety, âWhat did he say to you?'
Rowe said, âHe was dead before I could reach him. Directly he saw me he knew it was all up.'
The anxiety left her face: all that remained was that tense air he had observed before â the air of someone perpetually on guard to shield him . . . He sat down on the bed and put his hand on her shoulder. âMy dear,' he said, âmy dear. How much I love you.' He was pledging both of them to a lifetime of lies, but only he knew that.
âMe too,' she said. âMe too.'
They sat for a long while without moving and without speaking; they were on the edge of their ordeal, like two explorers who see at last from the summit of the range the enormous dangerous plain. They had to tread carefully for a lifetime, never speak without thinking twice; they must watch each other like enemies because they loved each other so much. They would never know what it was not to be afraid of being found out. It occurred to him that perhaps after all one could atone even to the dead if one suffered for the living enough.
He tried tentatively a phrase, âMy dear, my dear, I am so happy,' and heard with infinite tenderness her prompt and guarded reply, âI am too.' It seemed to him that after all one could exaggerate the value of happiness . . .
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Copyright © Graham Greene 1943, 1973
Graham Greene has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in Great Britain in 1943 by William Heinemann
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
