Read Online The power and the glory by Graham Greene - Free Book Online

you could sit out of this heat-and for your mother, well, there was always something for her to do. If we had a theatre, anything at all instead, we shouldn't feel so-left."

"But this Juan," the boy said. "He sounds so silly."

"He was killed, wasn't he?"

"Oh, so were Villa, Obregon, Madero..."

"Who tells you about them?"

"We all of us play them. Yesterday I was Madero. They shot me in the plaza-the law of flight." Somewhere in the heavy night a drum beat: the sour river smell filled the room: it was familiar, like the taste of soot in cities. "We tossed up. I was Madero: Pedro had to be Huerta. He fled to Vera Cruz down by the river. Manuel chased him-he was Carranza." His father struck a beetle off his shirt, staring into the street: the sound of marching feet came nearer. He said: "I suppose your mother's angry."

"You aren't," the boy said.

"What's the good? It's not your fault. We have been deserted."

The soldiers went by, returning to barracks, up the hill near what had once been the cathedral: they marched out of step in spite of the drum beat, they looked undernourished, they hadn't yet made much of war. They passed lethargically by in the dark street and the boy watched them out of sight with excited and hopeful eyes.

Mrs. Fellows rocked backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. " 'And so Lord Palmerston said if the Greek Government didn't do right to Don Pacifico...' " She said: "My darling, I've got such a headache I think we must stop today."

"Of course. I have a little one too."

"I expect yours will be better soon. Would you mind putting the books away?" The little shabby books had come by post from a firm in Paternoster Row called Private Tutorials, Ltd.-a whole education which began with "Reading without Tears" and went methodically on to the Reform Bill and Lord Palmerston and the poems of Victor Hugo. Once every six months an examination paper was delivered, and Mrs. Fellows laboriously worked through the answers and awarded marks. These she sent back to Paternoster Row, and there, weeks later, they were filed: once she had forgotten her duty when there was shooting in Zapata, and had received a printed slip beginning: "Dear Parent, I regret to see..." The trouble was, they were years ahead of schedule by now-there were so few other books to read-and so the examination papers were years behind. Sometimes the firm sent embossed certificates for framing, announcing that Miss Coral Fellows had passed third with honours into the second grade, signed with a rubber stamp Henry Beckley, B.A., Director of Private Tutorials, Ltd., and sometimes there would be little personal letters typewritten, with the same blue smudgy signature, saying: "Dear Pupil, I think you should pay more attention this week to …" The letters were always six weeks out of date.

"My darling," Mrs. Fellows said, "will you see the cook and order lunch? Just yourself. I can't eat a thing, and your father's out on the plantation."

"Mother," the child said, "do you believe there's a God?" The question scared Mrs. Fellows. She rocked furiously up and down and said: "Of course."

"I mean the Virgin Birth-and everything."

"My dear, what a thing to ask. Whom have you been talking to?"

"Oh," she said, "I've been thinking, that's all." She didn't wait for any further answer: she knew quite well there would be none-it was always her job to make decisions. Henry Beckley, B.A., had put it all into an early lesson-it hadn't been any more difficult to accept then than the giant at the top of the beanstalk, and at the age of ten she had discarded both relentlessly. By that time she was starting algebra.

"Surely your father hasn't..."

"Oh, no."

She put on her sun-helmet and went out into the blazing ten o'clock heat to find the cook-she looked more fragile than ever and more indomitable. When she had given her orders she went to the warehouse to inspect the alligator skins tacked out on a wall, then to the stables to see that the mules were