Read Online England Made Me by Graham Greene - Free Book Online Page A

reported Andersson . . .’
    â€˜Was it a dismissal,’ Krogh asked, ‘or a mere matter of wages? This must be settled tonight.’
    â€˜The report from Nyköping – it is there, Herr Krogh, by the flowers – suggests that there’s American influence . . .’
    â€˜Of course,’ Krogh said, ‘that’s obvious. But what’s the excuse?’
    â€˜They have some story about the low wages you are offering in America; undercutting there, unemployment.’
    â€˜Why should they trouble about what happens in America?’
    â€˜This man Andersson passes as a Socialist . . .’
    â€˜You must get Herr Laurin here. Immediately. We can’t waste time. He knows how to speak to these people.’ It was the one thing Laurin was good for; he had promoted him to the Board for no other reason than this: there were times when one needed a man of no particular qualifications except amiability, the power of getting on with his fellow men.
    â€˜I tried to get Herr Laurin. But he’s not in Stockholm.’
    â€˜He must return.’
    â€˜I rang up his house. He’s ill in bed. Shall I ring up Herr Asplund, Herr Bergsten?’
    â€˜No,’ Krogh said, ‘they would be no good at all. If only Hall were here.’
    â€˜Should I send a car for Andersson? You could see him here yourself, Herr Krogh. It would only take ten minutes.’
    â€˜Your suggestions,’ Krogh said sharply, ‘are useless. I shall have to go to the man myself. Have the car ready in five minutes.’
    He turned his eye to the Wall Street prices and tried to read. He had no idea of what to say to Andersson. E.K. on the ash-tray; E.K. on the carpet; E.K. flashing on above the fountain while he watched, above the gateway; he was surrounded by himself. It seemed to him that he had always been so surrounded. What could he say to Andersson? He could offer him money, but if he did not want money . . . He had to be friendly, he must reassure him, he must speak to him as man to man. It seemed a cruel injustice that Laurin, whom yesterday he had forgotten so easily, Laurin whom he despised, should find no difficulty in talking to these men. How would Laurin start? He had watched him often at his game. He made a joke and put them at their ease.
    I too, Krogh thought, must make a joke. He tore a leaf off his memo pad and noted and underlined the word ‘joke’. What joke? ‘And when they came to the bawdy house . . .’ At the Minister’s the remembrance had made him smile. It had come out of a secret past and carried with it the pathos and beauty attached to something from an unhappy youth that had never been quite forgotten. He found that he could no longer smile; he was touched by a sense of shame and melancholy at the thought that he must use even that story for the sake of his career; he could remember no others.
    And then, he wondered, what next? What would Laurin have said next? Perhaps he should inquire after the man’s family. He rang for the secretary and presently noted on the same slip of paper, below the word ‘joke’, ‘a wife, two sons, one in the factory, a daughter aged ten’. He wrote the words carefully, he underlined them; then he tore the paper up and dropped the pieces on the floor. One couldn’t plan a human relationship like a graph of production. He tried to encourage himself: this is good for me, I have been too taken up by finance, I must enlarge my scope – the human side. He told himself: there must have been a time when I was at ease with other men, and tried to remember, but he could recall only the water dripping off the oars, his father silently waiting, the early light, the weary return.
    The riveters on the bridge, he thought; they were my friends. But eating the hot dog out of the wind’s way he had been alone, in the hammock bed alone (he couldn’t remember one