November 29, 2022

Cocktail Talk: The Heart of the Matter

graham-greene-heart-of-the-matterOur recent Graham Greene Cocktail Talking (don’t miss The Comedians Cocktail Talk and This Gun for Hire Cocktail Talk, plus more Graham Greene’s from the past) continues, this time with The Heart of the Matter, which I recently re-read, and in which they drink a lot of Pink Gins, and sweat a lot, too. It’s a classic in the more serious Greene vein, steeped in immaculate, elegant, prose, alongside delving into the interactions and motivations of the main character, including a deep look in his Catholic beliefs and how they cause in a way part of the action to unfurl. Not for the faint of reading heart, neccessarily. But for those who like gin!

“What about you, darling?” He turned quickly away from her and began to fix two more Pink Gins. There was a tacit understanding between them that ‘liquor helped;’ growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.

“You don’t really want to know about me.”

“Of course I do, darling. What sort of a day have you had?”

“Ticki, why are you such a coward? Why don’t you tell me it’s all off?”

“All off?”

“You know what I mean – the passage. You’ve been talking and talking since you came in about the Esperanca. There’s a Portuguese ship in once a fortnight. You don’t talk that way every time. I’m not a child, Ticki. Why don’t you say straight out – you can’t go?”

He grinned miserably at his glass, twisting it round and round to let the Angostura cling along the curve.

 

–Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

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