It was in January 1975 that I read in a newspaper that I had been appointed Archbishop of Westminster. I was astonished and my feelings were somewhat ambiguous. I knew that I was quite unsuitable, but all the same I was rather attracted by the idea of taking part in some royal occasion a few days later, with the Archbishop of Canterbury. I found that all the members of my family had been given two seats each for the ceremony.

I had been planning to leave London, but I told my mistress that I thought I should stay behind to get the robes and mitre and to learn, as it were, my part. I would have to be ordained as a priest first and for that I would have to consult my predecessor, Cardinal Heenan. Then whom should I run into but the cardinal himself?

He looked at me very sourly when I said that my appointment had come as a complete surprise. 'When it was announced,' he told me, 'it was a bombshell. I must talk things over with you.'

I went home with him. It seemed that he had asked a private detective to prepare a report on me. The report contained photographs, including shots in which the rather shabby and illiterate detective appeared with his witnesses.

'Who is Mrs Burton?' the cardinal asked. I replied that I didn't know the name. Perhaps the detective was referring to a woman who had been my mistress many years ago and was dead. 'He might at least have dug up someone more recent,' I said.

The cardinal had interviewed the Inland Revenue, who claimed that I had cheated on income tax by transferring money abroad. This did make me uneasy. Might they intend to reopen the case?

His dossier also included a rather mysterious story of my trespassing in a field. After a lot of thought I remembered that I had once had the idea of moving into the country and had gone with my publisher to inspect a field in which it might be possible to build a house. The dossier became more and more absurd and farther and farther from the truth.

By this time the cardinal and I were both laughing. He was relieved to feel that there was no longer any danger of my going ahead with the comedy of my ordination.

SOURCE: A World of My Own: a Dream Diary by Graham Greene, p.61-2

EDITOR'S NOTE

A comedy because Greene's unqualified both in training and, he feels, as a human being; but also a comedy because, of course (and this is a constant in Greene's stories, dreamt or not) someone can always dig up stuff on you, but the diggers are just as sleazy and incompetent as the, er, dug.

--Chris Wayan

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