The Seeds of Fiction (31 page)

I said it was a good idea and suggested we travel by train. The train ride across Panama's Canal Zone from ocean to ocean would be via the world's oldest transcontinental railway which had opened in 1855, fourteen years before the last spike was driven on the first rail line to span the continental United States. British author David Howarth in his book
Panama
had noted that before the Atlantic—Pacific isthmus rail link came about, gold-seekers in the California gold rush were paying $100 each to cross by canoe and mule. The railway, constructed by a group led by New York financier William Henry Aspinwall, a grand-uncle of Franklin D. Roosevelt, charged them $25. It became a highly profitable enterprise. Thousands were said to have died in its construction, mostly from yellow fever.

Graham and I paid $1.50 each for the ninety-minute trip from Balboa on the Pacific side to Cristóbal on the Atlantic (and literally across the street from Colon), which covered not quite forty-eight miles. Although it broke no speed records, the train ran on time.

We settled down in a first-class car where we were the only passengers except for two Panamanian boys using the aisle as a playground while their parents travelled in the second-class section. The yellow-and-blue diesel-powered train clattered along with open windows and a view of the Panama Canal on one side and tangled rainforests on the other.

We had a date to meet the General's aide, Sergeant ‘Chuchu' Martínez , at the George Washington Hotel in Colon and were to return by automobile with him on the Trans-Isthmian Highway.

Graham did not share my enthusiasm for the old railway. As we were clickety-clacking through a section of jungle I could sense that he wanted to tell me something important. ‘There is this writer, a professor of English literature named Norman Sherry,' Graham said rather sheepishly, ‘who wants to write a book on my work.'

I could see that accepting the biographer's offer had not been an easy decision for him.

‘I liked what he did on Conrad … and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind talking to him. He also wants to retrace my steps in Mexico, do
The Lawless Roads, The Power and the Glory
…' Graham left the sentence hang without an ending and seemed to be deep in thought. Then he added, ‘You can tell him anything you wish, but don't mention my personal life.'
*
By personal, he said, he meant private. Graham was very protective of his family and friends.

The boys playing in the aisle had left our car momentarily and rejoined their parents in the second-class section. The American conductor (the railroad was operated by the US Canal Zone administration) came by and punched
our tickets. Then we were alone and I could see that the subject of a possible biographer bothered Graham. I admitted I had not read Sherry's book or books on Conrad.

Graham explained that he had selected Sherry's book on Conrad as the British Book of the Year in 1971. Sherry had been pleased, and his correspondence with Graham had led to a request to undertake a critical biography of Graham and his work, similar to the book he had done on Conrad. Among the considerations that had persuaded him, Graham said, was the fact that Sherry was neither a Catholic nor a friend. It was an odd conversation, and I felt as if Graham were reassuring himself that he had made the right decision. He commented that some of his friends had suffered from their biographers, and he mentioned Evelyn Waugh as a victim.

I knew little of Graham's personal life. I had only seen him with one woman, Catherine, who had accompanied him to Haiti in 1956. I remembered her as a very pleasant person, but he had never mentioned her again. In fact, except for Yvonne, his lady friend back in the south of France whom he did talk about, he had rarely discussed his relationships with women. He had mentioned his wife Vivien, from whom he had been separated since the end of the Second World War, telling me on one occasion that she was living in Oxford and had written a book on doll's houses. He spoke of her in the most respectful manner. He talked about Francis, his only son, and his daughter Caroline. But he was very private about his family. His life seemed to be carefully compartmentalized and organized, much as he described his dreams. As foreign correspondents often do, he would talk at times about visiting brothels — he mentioned Havana and Hanoi — but he gave the distinct impression that he went there more as an observer than a participant.

‘He [Sherry] may soon look you up in Mexico. He may need help in travelling over my old trail,' Graham said.

‘It will not be a problem,' I said. ‘I'll certainly talk to him.'

I gazed out at the jungle rolling by and wondered whether it may have been my puzzled look or inner embarrassment over the term ‘personal life' that had set him talking about his past romances. Then, even more out of character, he began discussing a Swedish actress with whom he said he had been romantically involved after his 1956 trip to Haiti. He referred to her as Anita.

We were crossing the Continental Divide. The boys had returned to play in our train car, and I interrupted Graham's romantic ruminations by snapping his picture. He didn't protest.

Later, when we arrived at Cristóbal, Graham paused to take a photograph of a Zonian policemen in his wide-brimmed hat which he believed dated from the US Civil War. ‘Awful thing. It won't work,' he complained and fussed with his camera.

We crossed the street from the US town of Cristóbal to Colon, Panama's second city. We admired Colon's dilapidated French architecture of two-storey balconied houses, and Graham mentioned how they reminded him of Haiti and Hanoi. We headed for a camera shop, but the Panamanian attendant at the shop had no idea how to fix Graham's camera. (The camera was eventually stolen in Panama, but Graham was not at all upset.) We asked for directions to the George Washington Hotel from the camera shop attendant. It was only eight blocks and it wasn't yet lunchtime, so we decided to walk. The street was empty except for a Guardia Nacional police van.

As we passed the van two Guardia policemen barred our way. ‘Where are you going?'

I was about to reply, ‘What the hell business is it of yours?' but Omar was their commander and I didn't want to make trouble. ‘To the Hotel Washington,' I answered.

‘Get in, please,' the policeman ordered, and waved to the back of the van. We got in and sat looking at each other, perturbed. I thought: What a great photograph: Graham Greene in a paddy wagon! The two policemen took places on each side of us and tapped the hood of the van to signal the driver. We drove off down Front Street.

‘Are we headed for jail?' Graham asked.

‘This is a very bad street, lots of
ladrones,
plenty of thieves,' one of the Guardia policemen said in English. ‘They have sharp knives and they like cameras like yours.' Then he made a gesture with his finger running across his throat. We could have had our throats slit.

Graham looked at me. ‘Why didn't they tell us at the camera shop that it was dangerous when we asked directions to the hotel?'

‘Maybe the shop buys the stolen cameras,' the policeman replied. He was very serious-looking and added that only recently they had terminated the career of two thieves. He didn't elaborate on how the early retirement had occurred. We thanked the stony-faced policemen for the ride and clambered down from the van at the entrance of the Hotel Washington, with curious staff and guests staring at our inglorious arrival.

We went to the bar and sat. Over our first planter's punch, which Graham pronounced ‘excellent', we discussed Colon. The city had become a sad, seedy and neglected place.

Graham said he had read a French novel many years earlier set in Colon. It described the rip-roaring Colon of the Second World War. It was the fleshpot that provided countless servicemen with their last tryst before heading out to the Pacific. None the less Graham found the elegant old George Washington Hotel, built in 1913, delightful. At one time it ranked with the Raffles of Singapore and other celebrated hotels around the world. Will Rogers
slept there, and the exiled Argentine dictator Juan Peron met and wooed his future wife Maríneza Estela Martínez Cartas (better known as Isabel) there.

Later in the afternoon Sergeant José Jesús Martínez, General Torrijos's aide and our driver that first day, arrived. He insisted we call him Chuchu (the Latin American nickname for Jesus). Chuchu proved himself a formidable conversationalist and a chatterbox. He talked virtually non-stop over lunch in the old hotel's high-ceilinged dining-room and throughout our fifty-mile drive back to Panama City. Graham and I listened to Chuchu expounding on his Marxist ideology and life as Omar's aide. That evening over a nightcap, after Martínez had left us, Graham wondered aloud, ‘How sincere a Marxist is Chuchu? He certainly talks well.'

I had heard that Chuchu, politically, was Omar's left-hand man, but I had no clue as to how influential he might be. Torrijos had both capitalists and Marxists in his camp and personally embraced neither extreme. In fact he prided himself on being a pragmatist and knowing how to balance both groups. He had the ability to take advice from both sides, reflect on it and then make a final decision. He was the first to admit it was not always the right decision, but his intuition was rather good. He trusted Chuchu. That was apparent. But Graham and I agreed that Chuchu, for a man of so many eclectic interests and loyalties, must find it hard to be a dogmatic Marxist.

The next day we were invited to a town meeting over which Omar was presiding in a hall across the street from the Comandancia, the National Guard headquarters, in El Chorrillo, a damp, decrepit
barrio
in downtown Panama City. The sagging wooden tenements always seemed to have drying laundry hanging out their windows: flags of poverty. We stood among the crowd and watched. Omar sat among several of his top Guardia officers. He twisted his unlit cigar, listening to the complaints and suggestions of the poor people of El Chorrillo. Speakers were introduced by a bongo drum-roll.

Graham was enthralled. He commented how the black Panamanian drummers sounded Haitian. He asked me to identify each member of the high command, who they were and their alliances. He gave Chief of Staff Colonel Flores low marks because he sat chewing gum. Omar later told us Flores was one of his most trustworthy officers. The General didn't say whom among his military staff he didn't trust. Later, the television commentator Jorge Carrasco caught up with us, and Graham went back into his shell. He wasn't happy about the intrusion. He distrusted the newsman-translator.

Graham played his own game, quietly assessing who were the good guys whom he believed the General could trust and the potential bad guys who could be secret backers of El Hombre, ex-President Arnulfo Arias. After having heard stories of Arias's early days in Europe and his infatuation with Mussolini and Hitler, Graham had concluded that the former president had an evil streak.

Later he asked me to take him to the British Embassy. I was at a loss. In all my travels I had never bothered to check in with the British or US embassy to sign their respective visitors' books. However, if he wasn't staying at the British Embassy in whatever foreign land he was visiting Graham was a stickler for registering with the Embassy to make his presence known. When we got to Her Majesty's Embassy in Panama City it was closed. We later returned when it was open, and he duly signed their book. ‘Let's see if the old fart [the British ambassador] invites us to tea,' Graham chuckled.

No invitation came.

The next evening we listened to the other side of the Canal issue. Virtually across the fence from El Chorrillo, the baseball diamond in the Canal Zone was lit up as if for a night game, but instead it was for a Zonian rally. Politically at bat was the policeman Drummond himself. He addressed the crowd of barely a hundred American Zonians about the legal actions he had taken to block the Canal Treaty. Graham thought it was interesting how the Americans called Secretary of State Kissinger and President Ford by their first names and accused ‘Henry' and ‘Gerry' of being ‘traitors'. We both felt a little sorry for the Zonians; they were bound to lose the game. They believed in American hegemony over the Canal and honestly felt they were the only ones who could run it properly. Graham recorded in his book
Getting to Know the General,
‘The protesters looked lost and lonely in the vast stadium and the hot and humid night, and one felt a little sorry for them. God and Country would almost certainly let them down just as surely as Gerry and Henry had done.'

I regretted having to leave Graham in Panama, but before departing I mentioned to Rory Gonzales that Graham needed a better driver, that he couldn't communicate with the first one assigned to him. Rory reported to the General and the General assigned his aide to be both driver and guide to Graham. As we parted, Graham said he wasn't sure he would remain for the entire planned three weeks. ‘Must get back to Yvonne,' he said. It was obvious that Yvonne was very special to him. Indeed, upon his arrival I had attributed his new tropical wardrobe to her. He was wearing slightly more stylish tropical clothes and shoes than in his earlier days.
Time
had noted in a 1951 cover story on Graham that ‘he dresses like a careless Oxford undergraduate'. Yvonne told me years later that when she met Graham in the early 1960s he owned just three suits, each of them grey pinstriped. Clearly he was not fashion-conscious. I left Panama to cover general elections in Jamaica and then join my family on a prearranged holiday.

*
It was after attending Graham's memorial service at Westminster Cathedral on 6 June 1991 that I understood what he had meant in cautioning me about his ‘personal life' on that train in Panama. The
Sunday Times
published a photograph of the ‘Catherine' who had accompanied Graham on their visit to Haiti in 1956, identifying her as Catherine Walston. ‘At precisely the same hour as the Westminster memorial service, Lord Walston, a socialist millionaire whose life had been closely bound up with Greene's, was being buried. Only with his death has the long-kept secret emerged of Greene's love for Catherine Walston (Lord Walston's beautiful American wife),' stated the report by Geordie Greig. ‘Even though Lady Walston died in 1978, aged 62, Greene always insisted that matters of the heart should remain private.' It was said that their affair, begun in 1949, had ended in 1960. Yet it was hardly the secret the
Sunday Times
suggested. The literary world knew about it, and Evelyn Waugh's letters mention Catherine. Waugh appeared to have approved of the liaison and wrote admiringly of both Catherine and Graham.