Free England Made Me by Graham Greene Page A

come back to London with you tomorrow if he won’t give you a job.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t want you,’ he said. ‘You’d quarrel with the land-ladies. What happens through that door? His study?’
    â€˜No,’ Kate said, ‘that’s my bedroom.’
    Anthony put out his hand quickly and set the coats swinging. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘that red stripe. It hits you in the eye. Those ties. How anyone can wear such things! If I were a shareholder, I’d never trust a man like that.’
    â€˜And what about Erik,’ she said, her anger struck like a match to flare and go out and burn her own fingers, ‘do you expect him to trust a man in a fake tie who’s been sacked from more jobs than I can count?’
    â€˜Stop it,’ Anthony said, ‘stop it.’ He came close to her. ‘If I’d wanted to I could have made plenty of money in your way.’
    She struck at his face quickly with her clenched hand, and he caught her wrist with a readiness which came from long practice, but with pain he wondered: how often has this happened before, how often, damn it all, and with whom?
    â€˜You are quite right,’ he said gently, releasing her hand, ‘there’s Maud.’ He admitted himself wrong according to the formula he had always ready. ‘I was jealous of the blighter. I must love you, Kate, it’s the only explanation.’
    â€˜Family affection,’ she said sadly. He let it pass. Life was too short for quarrels, and now he directed at her his whole technique of appeasement. He forgot Krogh; he even forgot Kate, she was a blurred, composite figure, she was Maud, Annette, the barmaid at the ‘Crown and Anchor’, the American girl in the City of Nagpur , his landlady’s daughter that year in Edgware Road. ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘I like your lipstick. It’s a new shade, isn’t it?’ and immediately he remembered that she was wearing none; he should have mentioned her clothes or her scent.
    But ‘Yes,’ Kate said, ‘yes. It’s a new shade. I’m glad you like it,’ and he slipped back through the years to find the appropriate slang. ‘Kate, you’re a stunner.’
    Then at the sound of a key turning in the hall door he momentarily lost his confidence. This was the price he had paid for his freshness, his schoolboy air of knowing a thing or two; he lived in the moment and was never prepared for the sudden crisis, the stranger’s face, the new job. Before he followed Kate into the drawing-room he looked hopelessly round, plumbing the possibilities of the bed, the wardrobe and the door beyond.
    Composure came back with his first sight of Erik Krogh; even his jealousy wavered. The man was only a poor bloody foreigner after all. He wore a suit with a mauve stripe which was much too prominent, his check shirt was crude, his tie didn’t tone. And there was nothing in his physical appearance to rival Anthony’s. He was tall and might have had a good figure once, but he had put on flesh badly; he hadn’t worn well. He was the kind of man who looked better in public than in private. Anthony began to bubble with bonhomie behind Kate’s back. Here was someone to touch for tin, someone who didn’t know too much and had lots of the ready. It was astonishing, almost unbelievable, that this was Erik Krogh, and again the thought came to him, as it had come after every failure, before every possibility of success: the whole damned thing is luck. What a laugh. Look after number one.
    â€˜I’m glad you’re back, Kate,’ Krogh said. He retreated back into the hall, he didn’t even take off his hat, he watched Anthony with apprehension, he was too tired to be polite. His tiredness welled from him like an ectoplasm in the darkness of the hall. Little noises came from the passage through the chink of the door, feet moving away, the closing of the lift