Picture Palace Read Free Page A

the doorman at the Ritz in his footman’s get-up. I almost laughed. I never hear a foreign accent without thinking,
Come off it!
They’re doing it on purpose. They could talk like me if they really wanted to.
    Inside, I signed the register and the desk clerk handed me an envelope. Spidery handwriting, flimsy notepaper, almost oriental script, very tiny brushstrokes saying,
I shall be in the downstairs bar at
6
. Please join me for a drink if you’re free. Graham Greene
.

5
Greene
    T HE R ITZ BAR was empty, quiet, but crazed with decoration. I tried to get a fix on it. It was white, with a Bischof gleam, gold-trimmed mirrors that repeated its Edwardian flourishes of filigree and cigar-wrappers, frosty statuettes, velvet, and the illusion of crystal in etched glass. The chocolate box of a whore’s boudoir. I guessed I would have to lie on my belly to get the shot I wanted, but then I noticed in all that tedious gilt a man behind the bar polishing a goblet. He wore a white dinner jacket and was bald; his head shone. I saw at once how the crown of his skull gathered the whole room and miniaturized it, and he wore it like a map pasted to his dome. Shoot him nodding and you’ve got a vintage Weegee.
    â€œA very good evening to you, madam.”
    I thought: You’re kidding! I said, “A large gin and tonic.”
    â€œKew,” he said, and handed it over.
    â€œYou’re welcome,” I said. I expected him to take a swing at me, but he only picked up another goblet and continued his polishing. What a head! It made the wide-angle lens obsolete. But I didn’t have the heart to do him. In fact, since arriving in London I had begun to feel winded and wheezy, a shortness of breath and a sort of tingling in my fingers and toes I put down to heartburn and jet-lag.
    Greene entered the bar at six sharp, a tall man in a dark blue suit, slightly crumpled, with an impressive head and a rather large brooding jaw. I almost fainted: it was my brother Orlando, a dead ringer. Ollie had grown old in my mind like this. Greene’s face, made handsome by fatigue, had a sagging summer redness. He could have passed for a clergyman—he had that same assured carriage, the bored pitying lips, the gentle look of someone who has just stopped praying. And yet there was about his look of piety an aspect of raffishness; about his distinguished bearing an air of anonymity; and whether it was caution or breeding, a slight unease in his hands. Like someone out of uniform, I thought, a general without his medals, a bishop who’s left his robes upstairs, a happy man not quite succeeding at a scowling disguise. His hair was white, suggesting baldness at a distance, and while none of his features was remarkable, together they created an extraordinary effect of unshakable dignity, the courtly ferocity you see in very old lions.
    And something else, the metaphysical doohickey fame had printed lightly on his face—a mastery of form. One look told me he had no boss, no rivals, no enemies, no deadlines, no hates; not a grumbler, not a taker of orders. He was free: murder to photograph.
    He said, “Miss Pratt?”
    A neutral accent, hardly English, with a slight gargle, a glottal stop that turned my name into
Pgatt
.
    Mister Greene,” I said.
    â€œSo glad you could make it.”
    We went to a corner table and talked inconsequentially, and it was there, while I was yattering, that I noticed his eyes. They were pale blue and depthless, with a curious icy light that made me think of a creature who can see in the dark—the more so because they were also the intimidating eyes of a blind man, with a hypnotist’s unblinking blue. His magic was in his eyes, but coldly blazing they gave away nothing but this warning of indestructible certainty. When he stared at me I felt as if it were no use confessing—he knew my secrets. This inspired in me a sense of overwhelming hopelessness. Nothing I could tell