Mystery tour
AUBERON WAUGH
ravels with my Aunt Graham Greene Bodley Head 30s) Ir Greene's latest novel is a puzzling book review. If its intention is primarily amorous, then one can only say that it th:ceeds. At the age of sixty-five, when other niters are beginning to worry about God, r about all this permissiveness, or to feel
the great progressive movements of the 00s have rather let them down, Mr Greene
chosen to give us an extremely comic o■el. The clown has finally crept out from hind the tragic mask: Thank you very Lich, Sir. I always like a good laugh, myself. between times.
Mr Greene's hero is a retired bank mana- er of appropriate seediness, Mr Pulling, ho grows dahlias in a dim sort of way nd has no interest in women or pleasure of 'A sort. We first meet him at the funeral his mother, and already he shows a ;htly higher degree of quizzical awareness an we would expect from the type: 'A bank anager is expected to pay his last respects every old client who is not as we say "in red", and in any case, I have a weakness funerals. People are generally seen at kir hest on these occasions, serious and per. and optimistic on the subject of per- nal immortality.' At the funeral, he meets Aunt Augusta for the first time. She is .enty-five, introduces him to her black ‘er. called Wordsworth, and takes him on a imp around Europe involving chance meet- gs with a young American hippie girl called ooley. a Turkish chief of police, various nigglers and war criminals, ending in uth America with Tooley's father (who )rks for the cu of course—a most gloomy aloe from Greeneland), a war criminal, aunt and supporting cast of chiefs of ice, seedy businessmen etc, all involved a smuggling racket. Aunt Augusta, of course, has no place in Greene parody. She merely serves as a nicle for short story telling. Every time ()Pens her mouth she tells a short story r Greene must have been intending to rite for some time. She worked in a brothel her youth, of course, and is constant only her love for the war criminal, a totally 'rthless rogue, who serves as a vehicle for e parody of a Greene `message'—that no tler how beastly people are we can still 'e them if we are that way inclined. So far the development of Mr Pulling's character der the influence of his aunt is con- rned. it is rather less than that of Gussie k-Nottle under the influence of drink for first time at a school prizegiving. He !rigs his gloom even to the smuggling ket, and never quite catches his aunt's e-de-vivre. But there is a deliciously orate portrait of sweet, hopeless info- e in the young American hippie, and
Wordsworth, the negro lover, develops in the most satisfactory way until his murder.
If one had enjoyed the book less, one might have been tempted to describe vari- ous qualities of the short story which it exhibits as weaknesses in a novel. For instance, I guessed the crowning dinoue- ment, revealed on the last two pages, on page sixteen. Perhaps we were intended to, but I rather doubt it. And I simply refuse to believe, outside the conventions of short story writing, that the an would employ a man full-time for twenty years (with expenses) to track down a stolen Old Master drawing and restore it to the Italiati,govem- ment. We all know how the CIA does patron- ise the arts, but there must be limits. Both these dénouements (and the revelation that the drawing is in fact a fake) are sheer panto- mime. But the book is above all a spanking good collection of short stories, portrait- sketches and funny happenings.
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