The Heart of the Matter By Graham Greene (1948)RELENTLESS HUMIDITY, suspicion, malaria, religious doubt, despair, cultural tensions and multiple betrayals, particularly of self - no one grasps the post colonial legacy and the tragedy of the human condition as well as Graham Greene. His fiction, which makes such brilliant use of the combined elements of social class, melodrama and political thriller invariably spins upon one defining element - belief.
Acknowledged as a master psychologist, he is a storyteller who never forgot the importance of characterisation, which explains why his novels are unique. This confirmed leftist who was drawn to danger and whose ambivalent relationship with his adopted Catholicism came to dominate his taut narratives, created his own universe, an instantly recognisable and unsettling place.
Greene favours the displaced outsider, the burnt-out case, man in a supreme mess invariably of his own making. In Scobie, the laconic, battered hero of The Heart of the Matter which is set in wartime Sierra Leone, Greene offers a heartbreaking portrait of a good man in torment.
Already past 50, Scobie has served as deputy to the police commissioner who is about to retire, and has been passed over for promotion. He possesses sufficient irony to absorb the humiliation. His wife, Louise, does not. Brittle, depressed and unpopular within their small colonial set, she is desperate to leave but realises Scobie is intent on staying.
Scobie may not like Louise, but he pities her, even loves her as one would a wounded stranger. Their only child is dead. He approaches the local bank manager; Robinson, who spends his working day counting his steps as he walks across his office floor, can't help. When not marching about, Robinson consults his collection of medical dictionaries.
Daily life consistently pits the hot, sweaty Englishmen against the natives but also against each other.
Throughout his work and particularly in this atmospheric narrative, Greene shows not only the extent to which he is influenced by Conrad, but also the way in which he developed the Conradian vision , bringing it further on from early 20th century colonialism to that of wartime and post- war corrupt, native dictatorships sustained by international political self-interest.
As Scobie goes about his daily tasks of searches and questionings, he not only has to contend with a cunning Syrian trader, Yusef, who wants his friendship; he is also being watched by a new colleague , Wilson, a furtive poet who somehow manages to fall in love with Louise. Wilson's resentment of Scobie becomes increasingly relevant.
Throughout the action Greene allows the reader to see Louise through Scobie's eyes. For Scobie, love has become something closely bound with pity and guilt. The dialogue is often witty, many of the characters are brisk, exasperated. Greene is so deliberate; the reader "hears" the exchanges and feels the draining heat, the clammy darkness, the menace.
The same empathy that binds Scobie to Louise attracts him to Helen, a young widow, one of the few survivors from a stricken ship. Their romance proves impossible. Its discovery makes Scobie more vulnerable and costs the life of his devoted servant.
Scobie's moral dilemma compounded by his burden of pity, love, guilt and belief is resolved by an ungodly act of all too human daring. This is why The Heart of the Matter is not only one of Greene's finest achievements, but among the most compelling of 20th century morality plays.
• This is a weekly series in which Eileen Battersby revisits titles from the literary canon
