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导演：罗伯特?帕里什 /
主演： / 安东尼?奎因 / 詹姆斯?梅森 / 莫里斯?罗奈特 / 亚历山德拉?斯图尔特 /
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上映日期：日The&Destructors
The Destructors
&by Graham
Greene; published January 27, 2004
Front Note by Sachi Sri Kantha
Graham Greene () was one of the 20th century’s most
versatile story tellers in English literature. This year marks the
centenary of his birth, as well as the 50th anniversary of his
short story ‘The Destructors.’ When I read this short story
for the first time, I was rather surprised and tickled by its
haunting, allegorical sweep with the decline of the
post-independent Sri Lankan state in a miniaturized version.
In this short story, Greene profiles the activity of a street
gang named the ‘Wormsley Common Gang.’ It has a leader called
Blackie. Then, Greene presents another member of the gang, Trevor
(abbreviated as T in the story), who presents a fresh approach to
criminal looting. The target of T’s vandalism is Mr.Thomas’s
dilapidated house. ‘Old Misery’ is the nickname given by the gang
to Mr.Thomas.
Graham Greene
The allegorical equivalents of the main characters in Greene’s
short story to Sri Lankan scene are as follows:
Members of the Wormsley Common Gang
1. Leader Blackie = UNP of Senanayakes, Jayewardene and
Wickremasinghe (all belonging to the same extended family)
2. T (Trevor) = SLFP of Bandaranaikes (Father, Mother, Daughter
and Son & a nuclear family)
3. Mike = military
4. Summers = greedy business moguls linked with UNP or SLFP
5. a fat boy called Joe = Buddhist priests
The gang’s victims
1. Mr.Thomas (alias, Old Misery) = Sinhalese voters
2. Old Misery’s House = Sri Lankan state
A character as an observer
Lorry driver = International community (Americans, Norwegians
and Japanese)
The political events in post-independent Sri Lanka from 1948, as
influenced by the UNP and the SLFP, have been aptly miniaturized in
this allegorical story written in 1954. The original story has four
sections. Metaphorically, the end of section 1 brings the SLFP to
power in 1956 with padre Bandaranaike at the helm, with his new
destruction design of ‘Sinhala Only.’ By the end of section 2, one
can sense that the story has advanced to 1977, with the SLFP being
defeated and the UNP coming to power again and subtly bringing the
military into the forefront. The end of section 3 can be equated to
the defeat of the UNP in 1994, and the emergence of daughter
Chandrika Bandaranaike's SLFP. When the story ends with section 4,
it seems one can visualize the current plight of Sinhalese voters
in the garb of lamenting Mr.Thomas (funnily named ‘Old Misery’ in
the story) and a demolished Sri Lanka (the house of ‘Old Misery’).
Here is the story to enjoy.
The text of ‘The Destructors’
[from, Graham Greene: Twenty-One Stories, Penguin Books,
1973 reprint, pp.181-197.]
It was on the eve of August Bank holiday that the latest recruit
became the leader of the Wormsley Common Gang. No one was surprised
except Mike, but Mike at the age of nine was surprised by
everything. ‘If you don’t shut your mouth,’ somebody once said to
him, ‘you’ll get a frog down it.’ After that Mike had kept his
teeth clamped except when the surprise was too great.
The new recruit had been with the gang since the beginning of
the summer holidays, and there were possibilities about his
brooding silence that all recognized. He never wasted a word even
to tell his name until that was required of him by the rules. When
he said ‘Trevor’ it was a statement of fact, not as it would have
been with the others a statement of shame or defiance. The gang met
every morning in an impromptu car park, the site of the last bomb
of the first blitz. The leader, who was known as Blackie, claimed
to have heard it fall, and no one was precise enough in his dates
to point out he would have been one year old and fast asleep on the
down platform of Wormsley Common Underground station. On one side
of the car park leant the first occupied house, No.3. T, whose
words were almost confined to voting ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the plan of
operations proposed each day by Blackie, once startled the whole
gang by saying broodingly,
‘Wren built that house, father says.’
‘Who’s Wren?’
‘The man who built St.Paul’s.’
‘Who cares?’ Blackie said. ‘It’s only Old Misery’s.’
Old Misery & whose real name was Thomas & had once been a
builder and decorator. He lived alone in the crippled house, doing
for himself.
‘Been to the loo’, one of the boys said, for it was common
knowledge that since the bombs fell something had gone wrong with
the pipes of the house and Old Misery was too mean to spend money
on the property. The loo was a wooden shed at the bottom of the
narrow garden with a star-shaped hole in the door: it had escaped
the blast which had smashed the house next door and sucked out the
window-frames of No.3.
The next time the gang became aware of Mr.Thomas was more
surprising. Blackie, Mike and a thin yellow boy, who for some
reason was called by his surname Summers, met him on the common
coming back from the market. Mr.Thomas stopped them. He said
glumly, ‘You belong to the lot that play in the car park?’
Mike was about the answer when Blackie stopped him. As the
leader had responsilities, ‘Suppose we are?’ he said
ambiguously.
‘I got some chocolates,’ Mr. Thomas said. ‘Don’t like ‘em
myself. Here you are. Not enough to go round, I don’t suppose,
There never is,’ he added with sombre conviction. He handed over
three packets of Smarties.
The gang were puzzled and perturbed by this action and tried to
explain it away. ‘Bet someone dropped them and he picked ‘em up,’
somebody suggested.
‘Pinched ‘em and then got in a bleeding funk,’ another thought
‘It’s a bribe,’ Summers said. ‘He wants us to stop bouncing
balls on his wall.’
‘We’ll show him we don’t take bribes,’ Blackie said, and they
sacrificed the whole morning to the game of bouncing that only Mike
was young enough to enjoy. There was no sign from Mr Thomas.
Next day T astonished them all. He was late at the rendezvous,
and the voting for that day’s exploit took place without him. At
Blackie’s suggestion the gang was to disperse in pairs, take buses
at random and see how many free rides could be snatched from unwary
conductors (the operation was to be carried out in pairs to avoid
cheating). They were drawing lots for their companions when T
‘Where you been, T?’ Blackie asked.
‘I’ve been there’ T said.
‘Where?’
‘At Old Misery’s.’
‘At Old Misery’s?’ Blackie said. He had a sensation that T was
treading on dangerous ground. He asked hopefully, ‘Did you break
‘No. I rang the bell.’
‘And what did he do?’
‘He showed it me.’
‘Pinch anything?’
‘What did you do it for then?’
T said, ‘It’s a beautiful house.’
‘What do you mean, a beautiful house?’ Blackie asked with
‘It’s got a staircase two hundred years old like a corkscrew.
Nothing holds it up.’
‘What do you mean, nothing holds it up. Does it float?’
‘It’s to do with opposite forces, Old Misery said.’
‘What else?’
‘There’s panelling.’
‘Like in the Blue Boar?’
‘Two hundred years old.’
‘Is Old Misery two hundred years old?’
Mike laughed suddenly and then was quiet again. The meeting was
in a serious mood. For the first time since T. had strolled into
the car park on the first day of the holidays his position was in
danger. It only needed a single use of his real name and the gang
would be at his heels.
‘What did you do it for?’ Blackie asked. He was just, he had no
jealousy, he was anxious to retain T in the gang if he could. It
was the word ‘beautiful’ that worried him & that belonged to a
class world that you culd still see parodied at the Wormsley Common
Empire by a man wearing a top hat and a monocle, with a haw-haw
accent He was tempted to say, ‘My dear Trevor, old chap,’ and
unleash his hell bounds. ‘If you’d broken in,’ he said sadly & that
indeed would have been an exploit worthy of the gang.
‘This was better,’ T said. ‘I found out things.’
‘What things?’
‘Old Misery’s going to be away all tomorrow and Bank
Holiday.’
Blackie said with relief, ‘You mean we could break in?’
‘And pinch things?’ somebody asked.
‘I don’t want to pinch anything,’ T said. ‘I’ve got a better
‘What is it?’
T ‘We’ll pull it down.’ & ‘We’ll destroy it.’
Blackie gave a single hoot of laughter and then, like Mike, fell
quiet, daunted by the serious implacable gaze. ‘What’d the police
be doing all the time?’ he said.
‘They’d never know. We’d do it from inside. I’ve found a way in.
We’d be like worms, don’t you see, in an apple. When we came out
again there’d be nothing there & nothing but just walls, and then
we’d make the walls fall down & somehow.’
‘We’d go to jug,’ Blackie said.
‘Who’s to prove? And anyway we wouldn’t have pinched anything.’
He added without the smallest flicker of glee, ‘There wouldn’t be
anything to pinch after we’d finished.’
‘I’ve never heard of going to prison for breaking things,’
Summers said.
‘There wouldn’t be time,’ Blackie said. I’ve seen housebreakers
at work.’
‘There are twelve of us,’ T said. ‘We’d organize.’
‘None of us know how…’
‘I know,’ T said. He looked across at Blackie. ‘Have you got a
better plan?’
‘Today,’ Mike said tactlessly, ‘we’re pinching free rides…’
‘Free rides,’ T said. ‘You can stand down, Blackie, if you’d
rather…’
‘The gang’s got to vote.’
‘Put it up then.’
Blackie said uneasily. ‘It’s proposed that tomorrow and Monday
we destroy Old Misery’s house.’
‘Here, here,’ said a fat boy called Joe.
‘Who’s in favour?’
T said, ‘It’s carried.’
‘How do we start?’ Summers asked.
‘He’ll tell you.’ Blackie said. It was the end of his
leadership. He went away to the back of the car park and began to
kick a stone, dribbling it this way and that. There was only one
old Morris in the park, for few cars were left there except
without an attendant there was no safety. He took a flying
kick at the car and scaraped a little paint off the rear mudguard.
Beyond, paying no more attention to him than to a stranger, the
gang had gathered round T; Blackie was dimly aware of the
fickleness of favour. He thought of going home, of never returning,
of letting them all discover the hollowness of T’s leadership, but
suppose after all what T proposed was possible & nothing like it
had ever been done before. The fame of the Wormsley Common car park
gang would surely reach around London. There would be headlines in
the papers. Even the grown-up gangs who ran the betting at the
all-in wrestling and the barrow-boys would hear with respect of how
Old Misery’s house had been destroyed. Driven by the pure, simple
and altruistic ambition of fame for the gang, Blackie came back to
where T stood in the shadow of Misery’s wall.
T was giving his
it was as though this
plan had been with him all his life, pondered through the seasons
now in his fifteenth year crystallized with the pain of puberty.
‘You,’ he said to Mike, ‘bring some big nails, the biggest you can
find, and a hammer. Anyone else who can better bring a hammer and a
screwdriver. We’ll need plenty of them. Chisels too. We can’t have
too many chisels. Can anybody bring a saw?’
‘I can,’ Mike said.
‘Not a child’s saw,’ T said. ‘A real saw.’
Blackie realized he had raised his hand like any ordinary member
of the gang.
‘Right, you bring one, Blackie. But now there’s a difficulty. We
want a hacksaw.’
‘What’s a hacksaw?’ someone asked.
‘You can get’em at Woolworth’s.’ Summers said.
The fat boy called Joe said gloomily, ‘I knew it would end in a
collection.’
‘I’ll get one myself,’ T said. ‘I don’t want your money. But I
can’t buy a sledge-hammer.’
Blackie said, ‘They are working on No.15. I know where they’ll
leave their stuff for Bank Holiday.’
‘Then that’s all,’ T said. ‘We meet here at nine sharp.’
‘I’ve got to go to church,’ Mike said.
‘Come over the wall and whistle. We’ll let you in.’
On Sunday morning all were punctual except Blackie, even Mike.
Mike had had a stroke of luck. His mother felt ill, his father was
tired after Saturday night, and he was told to go to church alone
with many warnings of what would happen if he strayed. Blackie had
had difficulty in smuggling out the saw, and then in finding the
sledge-hammer at the back of No.15. He approached the house from a
lane at the rear of the garden, for fear of the policeman’s beat
along the main road. The tired evergreens k
another wet Bank Holiday was being prepared over the Atlantic,
beginning in swirls of dust under the trees. Blackie climbed the
wall into Misery’s garden.
There was no sign of anybody anywhere. The loo stood like a tomb
in a neglected graveyard. The curtains were drawn. The house slept.
Blackie lumbered nearer the saw and the sledge-hammer. Perhaps
the plan had b
they had woken wiser. But when he came close to the back door he
could hear a confusion of sound hardly louder
a clickety-clack, a bang bang nbag, a scraping, a creaking, a
sudden painful crack. H it’s true, and whistled.
They opened the backdoor to him and he came in. He had at once
the impression of organization, very different from the old
happy-go-lucky ways under his leadership. For a while he wandered
up and down stairs looking for T. N he had a
sense of great urgency, and already he could begin to see the plan.
The interior of the house was being carefully demolished without
touching the outer walls. Summers with hammer and chisel was
ripping out the skirting-boards in the grou he
had already smashed the panels of the door. In the same room Joe
was heaving up the parquet blocks, exposing the soft wood
floor-boards over the cellar. Coils of wire came out of the damage
skirting and Mike sat happily on the floor clipping the wires.
On the curved stairs two of the gang were working hard with an
inadequate child’s saw on the banisters & when they saw Blackie’s
big saw they signalled for it wordlessly. When he next saw them a
quarter of the banisters had been dropped into the hall. He found T
at last in the bathroom & he sat moodily in the least cared-for
room in the house, listening to the sounds coming up from
‘You’ve really done it.’ Blackie said with awe. ‘What’s going to
‘We’ve only just begun.’ T said. He looked at the sledge-hammer
and gave his instructions. ‘You stay here and break the bath and
the wash-basin. Don’t bother about the pipes. They come later.’
Mike appeared at the door. ‘I’ve finished the wire, T,’ he
‘Good. You’ve just got to go wandering round now. The kitchen’s
in the basement. Smash all the china and glass and bottles you can
lay hold of. Don’t turn on the taps & we don’t want a flood & yet.
Then go into all the rooms and turn out drawers. If they are locked
get one of the others to break them open. Tear up any papers you
find and smash all the ornaments. Better take a carving-knife with
you from the kitchen. The bedroom’s opposite here. Open the pillows
and tear up the sheets. That’s enough for the moment. And you,
Blackie, when you’ve finished in here crack the plaster in the
passage up with your sledge-hammer.
‘What are you going to do?’ Blackie asked.
‘I’m looking for something special.’ T said.
It was nearly lunch time before Blackie had finished and went in
search of T. Chaos had advanced. The kitchen was a shambles of
broken glass and china. The dining room was stripped of parquet,
the skirting was up, the door had been taken off its hinges, and
the destroyers had moved up a floor. Streaks of light came in
through the closed shuters where they worked with the seriousness
of creators & and destruction after all is a form of creation. A
kind of imagination had seen this house as it had now become.
Mike said, ‘I’ve got to go home for dinner.’
‘Who else?’ T asked, but all the others on one excuse or another
had brought provisions with them.
They squatted in the ruins of the room and swapped unwanted
sandwiches. Half an hour for lunch and they were at work again. By
the time Mike returned, they were on the top floor, and by six the
superficial damage was completed. The doors were all off, all the
skirtings raised, the furniture pillaged and ripped and smashed &
no one could have slept in the house except on a bed of broken
plaster. T gave his orders & eight o’clock next morning, and to
escape notice they climbed singly over the garden wall, into the
car park. Only Blackie and T the light had nearly gone,
and when they touched a switch, nothing worked & Mike had done his
job thoroughly.
‘Did you find anything special?’ Blackie asked.
T nodded. ‘Come over here.’ He said, ‘and look’. Out of both
pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. ‘Old Misery’s savings.’ He
‘What are you going to do? Share them?’
‘We aren’t thieves.’ T said ‘Nobody’s going to steal anything
from this house. I keep these for you and me & a celebration.’ He
knelt down on the floor and counted them out & there were seventy
in all. ‘We’ll burn them,’ he said, ‘one by one,’ and taking it in
turns they held a note upwards and lit the top corner, so that the
flame burnt slowly towards their fingers. The grey ash floated
above them and fell on their heads like age. ‘I’d like to see Old
Misery’s face when we are through,’ T said.
‘You hate him a lot?’ Blackie asked.
‘Of course I don’t hate him,’ T said. ‘There’d be no fun if I
hated him.’ The last burning note illuminated his brooding face.
‘All this hate and love,’ he said, ‘it’s soft, it’s hooey. There’s
only things, Blackie,’ and he looked round the room crowded with
the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former
things. ‘I’ll race you home, Blackie,’ he said.
Next morning the serious destruction started. Two were missing &
Mike and another boy whose parents were off to Southend and
Brighton in spite of the slow warm drops that had begun to fall and
the rumble of thunder in the estuary like the first guns of the old
blitz. ‘We’ve got to hurry’ T said.
Summers was restive. ‘Haven’t we done enough?’ he said. ‘I’ve
been given a bob for slot machines. This is like work.’
‘We’ve hardly started,’ T said. ‘Why, there’s all the floors
left and the stairs. We haven’t taken out a single window. You
voted like the others. We are going to destroy this house. There
won’t be anything left when we’ve finished.’
They began again on the first floor picking up the top
floor-boards next the outer wall, leaving the joists exposed. Then
they sawed through the joists and retreated into the hall, as what
was left of the floor healed and sank. They had learnt with
practice, and the second floor collapsed more easily. By the
evening an odd exhilaration seized them as they looked down the
great hollow of the house. They ran ris when
they thought of the windows it was too late to reach them. ‘Cor,’
Joe said, and dropped a penny down into the dry rubble-filled well.
It cracked and span amongst the broken glass.
‘Why did we start this?’ Summers ask T was
already on the ground, digging at the rubble, clearing a space
along the outer wall. ‘Turn on the taps,’ he said. ‘It’s too dark
for anyone to see now, and in the morning it won’t matter.’ The
water overtook them on the stairs and fell through the floorless
It was then they heard Mike’s whistle at the back. ‘Something’s
wrong.’ Blackie said. They could hear his urgent breathing as they
unlocked the door.
‘The bogies?’ Summers asked.
‘Old Misery,’ Mike said. ‘He’s on his way.’He put his head
between his knees and retched. ‘Ran all the way,’ he said with
‘But why?’ T said. ‘He told me…’ He protested with the fury of
the child he had never been. ‘It isn’t fair.’
T stood with his back to the rubble like a boxer knocked groggy
against the ropes. He had no words as his dreams shook and slid.
Then Blackie acted before the gang had time to laugh.
‘He was down at Southend.’ Mike said, ‘and he was on the train
coming back. Said it was too cold and wet.’ He paused and gazed at
the water. ‘My, you’ve had a storm here. Is the roof leaking?’
‘How long will he be?’
‘Five minutes. I gave Ma the slip and ran.’
‘We better clear,’ Summers said. ‘We’ve done enough,
‘Oh no, we haven’t. Anybody could do this’ & ‘this’ was the
shattered hollowed house with nothing left but the walls. Yet walls
could be preserved. Facades were valuable. They could build inside
again more beautifully than before. This could again be a home. He
said angrily, ‘We’ve got to finish. Don’t move. Let me think.’
‘There’s no time,’ a boy said.
‘There’s got to be a way,’ T said. ‘We couldn’t have got thus
‘We’ve done a lot,’ Blackie said.
‘No. No, we haven’t. Somebody watch the front.’
‘We can’t do any more.’
‘He may come in at the back.’
‘Watch the back too.’ T began to plead. ‘Just give me a minute
and I’ll fix it. I swear I’ll fix it.’ But his authority had gone
with his ambiguity. He was the only one of the gang. ‘Please,’ he
‘Please,’ Summers mimicked him, and then suddenly struck home
with the fatal name. ‘Run along home, Trevor.’
T stood with his back to the rubble like a boxer knocked groggy
against the ropes. He had no words as his dreams shook and slid.
Then Blackie acted before the gang had time to laugh, pushing
Summers backward. ‘I’ll watch the front, T’ he said, and cautiously
he opened the shutters of the hall. The grey wet common stretched
ahead, and the lamps gleamed in the puddles. ‘Someone’s coming, T.
No, it’s not him. What’s your plan, T?’
‘Tell Mike to go out to the loo and hide close beside it. When
he hears me whistle he’s got to count ten and start to shout.’
‘Shout what?’
‘Oh, Help, anything.’
‘You hear, Mike’ Blackie said. He was the leader again. He took
a quick look between the shutters. ‘He’s coming, T.’
‘Quick, Mike. The loo. Stay here, Blackie, all of you till I
‘Where are you going, T?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll see to this, I said, I would, didn’t I?’
Old Misery came limping off the common. He had mud on his shoes
and he stopped to scrape them on the pavement’s edge. He didn’t
want to soil his house which stood jagged and dark between the bomb
sites, saved so narrowly, as he believed, from destruction. Even
the fan light had been left unbroken by the bomb’s blast. Somewhere
somebody whistled. Old Misery looked sharply round. He didn’t trust
whistles. A child was shouting: it seemed to come from his own
garden. Then a boy ran into the road from the car park.
‘Mr.Thomas,’ he called ‘Mr.Thomas.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr.Thomas. One of us got taken short, and
we thought you wouldn’t mind, and now he can’t get out.’
‘What do you mean, boy?’
‘He’s got stuck in your loo.’
‘He’d no business…Haven’t I seen you before?’
‘You showed me your house.’
‘So I did. So I did. That doesn’t give you the right to…’
‘Do hurry, Mr.Thomas. He’ll suffocate.’
‘Nonsense. He can’t suffocate. Wait till I put my bag in.’
‘I’ll carry your bag.’
‘Oh no, you don’t. I carry my own.’
‘This way, Mr.Thomas.’
‘I can’t get in the garden that way. I’ve got to go through the
‘But you can get in the garden this way, Mr Thomas. We
often do.’
‘You often do?’ He followed the boy with a scandalized
fascination. ‘When? What right?…’
‘Do you see…? The wall’s low.
‘I’m not going to climb walls into my own garden. It’s
‘This is how we do it. One foot here, one foot there, and over.’
The boy’s face peered down, an arm shot out, and Mr Thomas found
his bag taken and deposited on the other side of the wall.
‘Give me back my bag,’ Mr Thomas said. From the loo a boy yelled
and yelled. ‘I’ll call the police.’
‘Your bag’s all right, Mr Thomas. Look. One foot there. On your
right. Now just above. To your left.’ Mr Thomas climbed over his
own garden wall. ‘Here’s your bag, Mr Thomas.’
‘I’ll have the wall built up,’ Mr Thomas said, ‘I’ll not have
you boys coming over here, using my loo,’ He stumbled on the path,
but the boy caught his elbow and supported him. ‘Thank you, thank
you, my boy,’ he murmured automatically. Somebody shouted again
through the dark. ‘I’m coming. I’m coming,’ Mr.Thomas called. He
said to the boy beside him, ‘I’m not unreasonable. Been a boy
myself. As long as things are done regular.’ I don’t mind you
playing round the place Saturday mornings. Sometimes I like
company. Only it’s got to be regular. One of you asks leave and I
say Yes. Sometimes I’ll say No. Won’t feel like it. And you come in
at the front door and out at the back. No garden walls.
‘Do get him out, Mr.Thomas.’
‘He won’t come to any harm in my loo,’ Mr.Thomas said, stumbling
slowly down the garden. ‘Oh, my rheumatics,’ he said. ‘Always
get’em on Bank Holiday. I’ve got to go careful. There’s loose
stones here. Give me your hand. Do you know what my horoscope said
yesterday? ‘Abstain from any dealings in first half of week. Danger
of serious crash.’ That might be on this path,’ Mr Thomas said.
‘They speak in parables and double meanings.’ He paused at the door
or the loo. ‘What’s the matter in there?’ he called. There was no
‘Perhaps he’s fainted.’ The boy said.
‘Not in my loo. Here, you, come out.’ Mr.Thomas said, and giving
a great jerk at the door he nearly fell on his back when it swung
easily open. A hand first supported him and then pushed him hard.
His head hit the opposite wall and he sat heavily down. His bag hit
his feet. A hand whipped the key out of the lock and the door
slammed. ‘Let me out,’ he called, and heard the key turn in the
lock. ‘A serious crash,’ he thought, and felt dithery and confused
A voice spoke to him softly through the star-shaped hole in the
door. ‘Don’t worry, Mr.Thomas’ it said, ‘We won’t hurt you, not if
you stay quiet.’
Mr.Thomas put his head between his hands and pondered. He had
noticed that there was only onle lorry in the car park and he felt
certain that the driver would not come for it before the morning.
Nobody could hear him from the road in front, and the lane at the
back was seldom used. Anyone who passed there would be hurrying
home and would not pause for what they would certainly take to be
drunken cries. And if he did call ‘Help’, who, on a lonely Bank
Holiday evening, would have the courage to investigate? Mr Thomas
sat on the loo and pondered with the wisdom of age.
After a while it seemed to him that there were sounds in the
silence & they were faint and came from the direction of his house.
He stood up and peered through the ventilation hole & between the
cracks in one of the shutters he saw a light, not the light of a
lamp, but the wavering light that a candle might give. Then he
thought he heard the sound of hammering and scaraping and chipping.
He thought of burglars & perhaps they had employed the boy as a
scout, but why should burglars engage in what sounded more and more
like a stealthy form of carpentry? Mr.Thomas let out an
experimental yell, but nobody answered. The noise could not even
have reached his enemies.
Mike had gone home to bed, but the rest stayed. The question of
leadership no longer concerned the gang. With nails, chisels,
screwdrivers, anything that was sharp and penetrating they moved
around the inner walls worrying at the mortar between the bricks.
They started too high, and it was Blackie who hit on the damp
course and realized the work could be halved if they weakened the
joints immediately above. It was a long, tiring, unamusing job, but
at last it was finished. The gutted house stood there balanced on a
few inches of mortar between the damp course and the bricks.
There remained the most dangerous task of all, out in the open
at the edge of the bomb site. Summers was sent to watch the road
for passers-by, and Mr Thomas sitting on the loo, heard closely now
the sound of sawing. It no longer came from his house, and that a
little reassured him. He felt less concerned. Perhaps the other
noises too had no significance.
A voice spoke to him through the hole. ‘Mr.Thomas.’
‘Let me out,’ Mr.Thomas said sternly.
‘Here’s a blanket,’ the voice said, and the long grey sausage
was worked through the hole and fell in swathes over Mr.Thomas’s
‘There’s nothing personal,’ the voice said. ‘We want you to be
comfortable tonight.’
‘Tonight,’ Mr.Thomas repeated incredulously.
‘Catch’ the voice said. ‘Penny buns & we’ve buttered them, and
sausage balls. We don’t want you to starve, Mr.Thomas.’
Mr.Thomas pleaded desperately. ‘A joke’s a joke, boy. Let me out
and I won’t say a thing. I’ve got rheumatics. I got to sleep
comfortable.’
‘You wouldn’t be comfortable, not in your house, you wouldn’t.
Not now.’
‘What do you mean, boy?’But the footsteps receded. There was
no sound of sawing. Mr.Thomas tried one
more yell, but he was daunted and rebuked by the silence & a long
way off an owl hooted and made away again on its muffled flight
through the soundless world.
At seven next morning the driver came to fetch his lorry. He
climbed into the seat and tried to start the engine. He was vaguely
aware of a voice shouting, but it didn’t concern him. At last the
engine responded and he backed the lorry until it touched the great
wooden shore that supported Mr.Thomas’s house. That way he could
drive right out and down the street without reversing. The lorry
moved forward, was momentarily checked as though something were
pulling it from behind, and then went on to the sound of a long
rumbling crash. The driver was astonished to see bricks bouncing
ahead of him, while stones hit the roof of his cab. He put on his
brakes. When he climbed out the whole landscape had suddenly
altered. There was no house beside the car park, only a hill of
rubble. He went round and examined the back of his car for damage,
and found a rope tied there that was still twisted at the other end
round part of a wooden strut.
The driver again became aware of somebody shouting. It came from
the wooden erection which was the nearest thing to a house in that
desolation of broken brick. The driver climbed the smashed wall and
unlocked the door. Mr.Thomas came out of the loo. He was wearing a
grey blanket to which flakes of pastry adhered. He gave a sobbing
cry. ‘My house,’ he said. ‘Where’s my house?’
‘Search me,’ the driver said. His eye lit on the remains of a
bath and what had once been a dresser and he began to laugh. There
wasn’t anything left anywhere.
‘How dare you laugh?’ Mr. Thomas said. ‘It was my house. My
‘I’m sorry,’ the driver said, making heroic efforts, but when he
remembered the sudden check to his lorry, the crash of bricks
falling, he became convulsed again. One moment the house had stood
there with such dignity between the bomb sites like a man in a top
hat, and then, bang, crash, there wasn’t anything left & not
anything. He said, ‘I’m sorry.
I can’t help it, Mr.Thomas. There’s nothing personal, but you
got to admit it’s funny.’
[End of Story]
End Note by Sachi Sri Kantha
Now, let me annotate on the allegorical links of this Graham
Greene story to the post-independent Sri Lankan history.
The story begins with the characterization of Mike, whom I see
as the equivalent of military in Ceylon. Greene portrays him as the
‘youngest’ of the gang, aged nine. This was true to the island’s
history as well. Then Greene caricatures Mike’s role with a
put-down “‘If you don’t shut your mouth’, somebody once said to
him, ‘You’ll get a frog down it.’ After that Mike had kept his
teeth tightly clamped except when the surprise was too great.” A
prompt reflection of military’s role in the blessed isle since
1962, when they tried to grasp power to themselves amateurishly and
The leader of the Wormsley Common Gang in section 1 is named
Blackie. He can be equated to D.S.Senanayake, the first prime
minister of Ceylon, who is honored as the ‘father’ of the
contemporary Sri Lankan nation. He was not academically literate,
though he was endowed with a politician’s street smart guile. The
character T can be equated to padre Bandaranaike, the academically
literate schemer with a sharp tongue. That Blackie is less literate
than T is shown in Greene’s dialogue through the description that
Blackie doesn’t know who Wren is, and when T replies Wren is ‘the
man who built St.Paul’s,’ Blackie retorts, ‘who cares.’
In the story, the character T proposes a new style of looting to
the gang, with the words, “We’d be like worms, don’t you see, in an
apple. When we came out again there’d be nothing here & nothing but
just walls, and then we’d make the walls fall down & somehow.’ Apt
this is akin to padre Bandaranaike’s scheme of ‘Sinhala
Only in 24 hours.’ Before that time marker in 1956, the Wormsley
Common Gang of Ceylon was just engaged in petty crime. Greene’s
lines for that early 1950s period of Ceylonese history is
revealing: “At Blackie’s suggestion the gang was to disperse in
pairs, take buses at random and see how many free rides could be
snatched from unwary conductors.”
Towards the end of section 1, Blackie & the leader of the gang &
feels that he had lost out to T. In Greene’s words, “It was the end
of his leadership. He went away to the back of the car park and
began to kick stone, dribbling it this way and that. He thought of
going home, of never returning, of letting them all discover the
hollowness of T’s leadership, but suppose afterall what T proposed
was possible…” In the real history of Ceylon, padre Senanayake had
died in 1952, not before secretly anointing his son Dudley
Senanayake to lea the sulking padre
Bandaranaike, realizing the inner motives of the first prime
minister and thirsting for power himself, had split to form his own
party in late 1951 and rode to victory in 1956 with his new style
of looting. The son Dudley Senanayake was literally brooding at the
‘end of his leadership…’ and quit as prime minister in 1953. The
UNP was salvaged by the ploys of the then de-facto leader
J.R.Jayewardene, after the ascendancy of padre Bandaranaike as the
prime minister.
UNP’s turn for looting was handed to them in 1977. This is
reflected at the beginning of section 3 of the story. At this
point, in the real history of the island, leadership of the
‘Wormsley Common Gang’ had passed onto the hands of de-jure leader
J.R.Jayewardene. Jayewardene was the guy who began to use military
frequently to entrench himself in power. Mike, in Greene’s story,
as I have already indicated, is a parallel to the military. At the
beginning of the story, Greene describes Mike as the ‘youngest
person in the gang.’ Then, in section 3 of the story, leader
Blackie gives an order to Mike. The two sentences of Greene,
“Tell Mike to go out to the loo and hid close beside it. When he
hears me whistle he’s got to count ten and start to shout.” are
pregnant with meaning [especially the second sentence, ‘When he
hears me whistle he’s got to count ten and start to shout’!] when
we reminisce on the use of the military by the wily
Jayewardene.
In section 4 of the story, while holding Mr.Thomas (the
Sinhalese voters in the island’s history) as hostage within the
loo, the Wormsley Common Gang feed him with buttered penny buns and
sausage rolls, telling “We don’t want you to starve,
Mr.Thomas.” This is a good allegory to wily Jayewardene’s ploy
of withholding general elections in early 1980s, until 1989. The
Sinhalese voters were held hostage while feeding them with ‘terror
stories’ and a ‘campaign against terrorism.’ Subsequently, general
elections were held in , 2000 and 2001 to placate the
locals and for international consumption & but all were
comparatively unclean at best and undemocratic at worst. The
serving of sausage unhygienically - in Greene’s story by pushing it
through the loo’s key hole - which ‘fell in swathes’ over the head
of the agonizing victim is also a funny allegory to the plight of
Sinhalese voters who have been served with unclean ‘elections’
since 1989.
What I enjoyed most of all was that the story climaxes on the
happenings in the loo. What a funny way to depict the ultimate
plight of Mr.Thomas [Sri Lankan voters] who trusted the words of
the Wormsley Common Gang [UNP and SLFP] and got busted in the loo,
of all places. The punch line delivered by the lorry driver
character, “I’m sorry I can’t help it, Mr.Thomas. There’s
nothing personal, but you got to admit it’s funny.” is vintage
Greene. In the real story of Ceylon’s post independence period, the
lorry driver is the allegory for the puzzled international
observers & call them Americans or Japanese or Norwegians & who
have learnt that the local breed of political worms have demolished
the ‘house’ of ‘Old Misery’ and nothing of the old version can be
retrieved.
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