The Basement Room - Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene
- Birth - 2 October 1904
- Death 3 April 1991
- An English writer and journalist
- Shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966 and 1967
- Famous Works The Ministry of Fear, The Heart of the Matter, Our Man in Havana
The Basement Room
- Published in his collection Twenty-One Stories in 1954
A brief summary of "The Basement Room".
The basement room -Graham Greene
The basement room is a story about a child named Philip.
His parents had gone for a fortnight
So right now Philip was alone in his Belgravia house with Mr. and Mrs. Briner.
One of his nurses was dismissed and the other was yet to come.
He stood in front of his nursery door when his parents left.
So now he was free to roam about in his large house.
At the same time, he felt strange as he could not go as all the rooms were empty.
There was only the rack of pipes, elephant tusks, pink hanging, and pale performance, some jars of cream, the piano, the china clock, and many more.
Mrs. Baines was busy cleaning, pulling down the curtains, and covering the chairs in dust sheets.
“Be out of here master Philip” she told him.
She was getting everything in order, meticulous and loveless doing her duty.
Philip Lane went downstairs. He pushed at the baize door. Mrs. Baines was not there.
For the first time, he set his foot on the basement stairs.
He had the sense - ‘this is life’
His seven nursery years vibrated with new experiences.
His crowded busy brain was like a city, which feels the earth tremble at a distant earthquake shock.
Everything was more important than before.
He met Baines. Baines was reading a newspaper. He called him, come in Philip, makes yourself at home!
Philip asked if he should call Mrs Baines.
Mrs Baines told him not to call her as she liked to be busy, so as not to interfere.
Philip was glad when Mr. Bainer said not to call her.
They had a glass of gingerbeer, old coasters and some paw-paw.
Philip looked out of the basement window, he asked if it was hot, out there.
‘Not a nice heat’ said Mr Baines. He looked at the clean cupboard. There was a sense of bareness of nowhere to hide a man’s secret.
Philip asked why his father lived there.
Mr Baines told him that it was his job.
Mr Baines told him that it was his job also. That he used to also work with the forty niggers.
But he had to leave the job after he married Mrs Baines.
Philip munched his Dundee cake.
Baines was talking to him as man to man.
Mrs. Baines called him ‘Master Philip’. She was servile when she was not authoritative.
Baines had seen the world, the Pimlico Parade to Victoria.
He had chosen his fate and his fate was Mrs Baines. It was his own choice.
But today he allowed himself a little acidity.
Philip asked if he ever shooted a nigger.
Mrs. Baines told him he had no cause to shoot them. He carried guns but never treated them badly. He loved the niggers.
Mrs. Baines came up and reprimanded them for eating, in between meals.
She came down with pots of cream and salve.
She told Baines not to encourage the boy and asked Philip to go to the nursery.
Philip climbed the stairs to the Baize door, The voice of Mrs. Baines was like a nightmare, louder than people ought to speak, exposed.
She was telling Baines not to spoil the boy, and that he should do some work.
Philip comes up like a small earth animal in his grey flannel shorts.
The gleam of the mirror dusted and polished and beautiful by Mrs. Baines.
Something broke, and Philip pitied Baines.
It occurred to him, that he and Mrs Baines would live happily, had Mrs Baines not been in the house.
He did not want to play with the Meccano sets, the train or the soldiers.
And suddenly he felt responsible for Mrs. Baines. That he was the master of the house and Mrs. Baines the ageing servant who deserved to be cared for.
He decided at least to be good.
But at the table Mrs. Baines was agreeable.
She offered him pudding with perfect meringue.
But he wouldn’t eat. He knew Mrs. Baines would take it as a victory. She was the kind of woman who thought that any injustice could be counterbalanced by something good to eat.
She was sour but she liked making good things. She ate well herself and the strawberry jam.
Baines crouched over his plate saying nothing again Philip felt the responsibility towards Baines. Everything was getting spoiled.
The sensation of disappointment was one that Philip could share.
He knew nothing of love or jealousy or passion.
So he could understand better this grief, something promised, not fulfilled, something exciting turning dull.
He asked Baines to take him for a walk.
But Mrs Baines interrupted, saying he had the silver to clean.
Baines said there was a fortnight time left to clean them. Mrs Baines objected, ‘work first, pleasure afterwards.”
Baines got annoyed. He pushed his plate.
Mrs. Baines warned him not to show his.
Philip also got stubborn. He said he wanted to go for a walk. Mrs Baines got up and gently. Squeezed his arm, telling him he should do as he is being told.
She was looking menacing, and dusty in the basement room.
Philip dared to ask why he should not go. He was scared but was ashamed to be scared also.
This was life, a strange passion he could not understand.
He looked at Baines for help, and only intercepted hate, the sad hopeless states of something behind the bars.
Philip got more obstinate. He would go and why should he not go?
He even told Mrs. Baines that he hated her and ran to the door. Mrs Baines was quicker. She asked him to say ‘sorry’ for his misbehaviour. But before she could catch him, he put the table in between him and her.
To the surprise of Philip, Mrs Baines stood smiling. She knew it would be a tough time to handle Philip, till his parents returned.
She did not prevent him as she had a lot of work to finish. Now for Philip, the upper house also becomes unbearable, as Mrs Baines would be there to do the cleaning.
So he did not go upstairs. He walked out to the streets.
The pink sugar cakes, the ham, and the slap of mouse sausage caught Philip's attention.
He was walking only on one side of the pavement. He was afraid to cross the road.
At one shop, he smudged his nose on the pane of the sweet shop. He was surprised to find Baines there, he could not recognize him. He was with a girl.
He was not known. She belonged to a different world. He knew Sir Herbert reed, the secretary, Mrs Wencee Dudly, who visited this place once a year. He knew the servant working upstairs. She either belonged to the mermaids and undine. She did not belong to the adventures of Emil, nor to the base tables.
She was looking at an iced pink cake in the detachment and mystery of the completely disinherited.
Baines was urging, hoping, entreating, commanding.
But the girl kept crying. Baines passed the handkerchief. She did not wipe her tears, she screwed the handkerchief in her palms and let the tears run down.
Graham Greene said, “ the two brains battled over the teacups loving each other.
To Philip, all this was a confused indication of the struggle.
He was inquisitive. He did not understand he wanted to know and see better.
Other people’s life for the first time touched and pressed and moulded him. He could never escape that scene. In a week he forgot everything. But it conditioned his career, the long austerity of life, when he was dying he said, “who was she?”
Baines won. He was rocky. The girl was happy.
It occurred to Philip to imitate Mrs. Baines' voice and call ‘Baines’.
It shriveled then. It made them smaller. They were not happy anymore. They weren’t bold.
The sawdust was spilt out of the afternoon, nothing you did could mean it.
Philip was scared. He did not mean to trouble them.
He just wanted to laugh at Mrs. Baines.
She was not like Sir Hubert Reed, who used to steal nibs or pen wipes.
She wasn't Mrs. Wince- Dudley.
She was in darkness when the light went out in a drought.
She was the frozen block of earth that needed an electric drill.
She was the flower gone bad and smelling in the little closet room at pensternley. There was nothing to laugh about.
The essayists say that ‘you had to endure her, when she was there and forget about her quickly when she was away, suppress the thought of her, ram it down deep.”
Baines consoled the girl that, ‘it's only Phil.’ he invited her to have the pink cake.
But for the girl, everything was spoiled. She left.
Philip asked Braines who the girl was, and if was she her niece’ Baines told him that she was her niece.
Philip was sorry that he had spoiled their meeting but Baines told him, ‘I could believe it wasn't you at all. ‘And that she creeps everything’.
Baines paid the bill. They left on the way, and Baines asked Philip not to tell anything to Mrs. Baines.
Philip promised that he would not tell. And that, he understands. But he did not understand a thing, he was caught up in other people’s darkness.
Baines was explained to clear himself. That she was so near home, but he could not meet her. That he had to see her.
Baines told Philip to be careful because ‘Mrs Baines will get it out of you.’
Philip promised again saying, ‘you can trust me, Baines’.
Mrs Baines was looking at them through the window, between the curtains.
Philip was afraid to go in but Baines was.
Baines went down to the basement to meet Mrs Baines.
Philip ran in. He saw all things were neatly arranged, the draped chairs, and China Clock all were neatly covered.
His supper was laid but he had no oppressive. He strained his ears for Mrs Baines coming.
The green baize door was shut, and it seemed the basement held all the secrets.
Philip drank the milk and ate the biscuits. He left the rest. He Heard Mrs Baines's footsteps.
Mrs Baines was a good servant and a determined woman. She walked precisely.
She was not angry, she was ingratiating; she asked him if he had a good walk.
She pulled down the blind and laid out his pajamas. She said it was good he met Mr. Baines because his mother wouldn't like him going alone.
She asked him to have the pudding, but he refused.
She sniffed around the room like a dog. She asked him if he had taken any pots out of the waste paper basket in the kitchen.
Mrs Baines said that she knew he hadn't. She only wanted to be sure, when Philip said, ‘no’.
Her finger flashed on his lapel. She picked up the small clump of pink cake.
She told him, he should not buy cakes with his pocket money.
He said he did not buy it. ‘They gave it to me, I mean Baines! But Mrs Baines pounced on the word, ‘they’.
Mrs Baines got what she wanted. Philip got angry with himself as to why he did not keep the secrets of Baines.
Let me tickle your palm and see if you can keep a secret, ‘said Mrs Baines, Philip putting his hand behind.
She told him that she knew about them. They were having tea, she speculated.
Philip took the side of Baines. He said, ‘why shouldn't he? She was nice to him!
He told her she was his niece.
Mrs Baines struck softly back at him, like the clock under the duster. She tried to be jocular.
She told him that Baines was a scoundrel.
“Promise you won't tell. I'll give you the Meccano set…”
Philip wouldn't promise, but he wouldn’t tell either. He had nothing to do with their secrets. He was only anxious to forget.
He never opened his Meccano set. (xx died, the old dilettante, sixty years later, with nothing to show rather than preserve the memories of Mrs. Baines's voice saying ‘good night,’ her soft determined footballs on the stairs to the basement, going down, going down xx)
The sun poured in between the curtains. Mr. Baines, beating a tattoo on the water can, said that Mrs Baines's mother was dying and that she will not be back till tomorrow.
He asked Baines why he woke him up so early. He learned his lessons. It wasn’t right for Baines to be merry at this age, that, ‘it made a grown person human in the same way, that you were human.
That, ‘if a grown-up man behaves so childish, you are liable too, to find yourself in their world.”
He loved Baines. He was glad Baines was happy.
Baines said he wanted to make this a long day, he liked someone shaking the mats and the cat sniffing around freely. It seemed to him as if he was still in Africa.
He asked Philip to go out and get mail.
Today he would be cooking sausage, they were to celebrate the day. This was to be a long, long day. He had been waiting for this day, for a long time.
The mail has dropped the read the pieces aloud but this was not his long day.
His long day was the park watching riders in rows seeing Arthur Stilling, the zoo, and the long bus ride.
Baines envied no one, he would not allow anyone to touch the blacks again.
Everyone on the top of the bus pricked their ears when he told Philip about it.
Philip asked if he had a revolver.
Baines replied that he had to keep, it because of the burglaries going on.
This was the Baines Philip loved. Baines the responsible, and Baines loves his life.
Baines was telling him that streamed out from Victoria like a convoy of airplanes to bring him home with honor.
He also said that forty blacks were under him.
And then Philip saw the girl, his niece. She was not happy she frightened him.
Philip wanted to tell him what Mrs. Baines had told him about his niece, but he did not say.
They pretend that they did not see her. But both wanted her to join their supper.
So they had a bottle of beer, ginger pop, and a flagon of harvest burgundy.
Then Baines asked him to get the post from upstairs.
He hurried and wanted to come back soon. He liked the company of Baines.
He did not like the empty house of dusk before the lights went on.
But it seemed the hall lay there in quiet, and shadow prepared to show him something he did not want to see.
Some letters rustled down. The tumbrils rolled. the postman's footsteps could be heard.
Philip gathered the letters
Then he remembered asking his nurse, that why was the policeman peering. and she said he was seeing if everything was alright.
Philip imagined if things went wrong.
He ran to the baize door down the stairs.
The girl had come. Baines was kissing her.
Baines told him that she was the enemy.
One letter was from Mrs. Baines he was uncomfortable that she may be back.
Baines presented himself as a grown-up man.
Letters could not lie. But Philip knew better, ‘letters could lie. He remembered how he gave thanks to aunt Alice, Who had given him a doll. And he was too old for the doll.
So letters could lie, they made the lie permanent they act as evidence against you. They make you meaner than the spoken word.
Baines again kissed Emmy. Mrs. Baines was not coming back till tomorrow. He was happy.
Emmy protected that he should not behave that way in front of Philip.
But Baines said he should learn.
So they had sausage and harvest burgundy.
All this was better than the biscuit and milk. Philip liked it.
But was afraid of what would Mrs. Baines say, if she knew about this meal.
Though Mrs. Baines was not there, her presence was felt in the basement.
But he wanted to be happy. He couldn’t keep his eyes from happiness.
Baines told Emmy, had it been she, this house would have looked like a home.
It was late. They sent Philip to bed. Philip changed his dress but they did not ask him to clean his teeth.
They went downstairs. He heard their friendly voices.
The voice didn’t dwindle. They simply went out. He was feeling sleepy after the long day.
This had been a new life for him. He just had time to sigh faintly with satisfaction.
But the inevitable terrors of sleep came around him
A man with a tricolor hat was beating at the door.
A bleeding head lay on the kitchen table.
The Siberian wolves came close.
Philip in his sleep seemed to open his eyes. Mrs. Baines was there she was untidy.
She whispered, ‘where are they?’
Philip was awake. He watched her in terror.
She told him that he could not deny it. She told him that he knew where they were.
She told him they were having secrets together and she would give him the Meccano set.
He couldn’t speak. Fear held him but he could move his mouth in terrific denial, wince away from her dusty image.
And then she said, she would find it herself.
She heard the creaking of the door. There also came the whispers of two people.
Mrs. Baines could see bitterly, her own reflection in the mirror. She could see the misery and cruelty wavering in the glass.
She sobbed without tears, with a breathless sound.
But her cruelty was a kind of pride, which kept her going.
This was her best quality she would have been merely pitiable without it.
She went down tip-toe.
Philip could move now. He sat up. He wanted to die.
This was not fair, he felt.
The walls were down again between his world and theirs.
But this time, it was something worse than merriment, that the grown-up people made him share.
He recognized but could not understand.
It wasn't fair but he owed Baines everything, the enjoyment, the merriment.
But he was frightened. He was touching something, he touched in his dreams.
Life fell on him with savagery.
He never faced it again in sixty years.
He got out of his head. Mrs. Baines had had her hand on the glass door knob and Philip screamed ‘Baines, Baines!
Cruelty drew at the sight of Philip she drove up in the madness.
The first cry of Philip brought Baines out of the room. He moved quicker than Mrs. Baines.
Baines caught her gloves on his face. He bit her hand. He fought like a stranger. She also fought back with knowledgeable hate.
She was determined to teach them a lesson. They had all deceived her.
But then the old image of her was in the glass by her side.
She had to be dignified. She could beat on his face. But must not bite, she could push but must not kick.
Age and dust, nothing to hope were her handicaps.
She went over the banisters and fell into the hall. She lay before the front door like a sack of coal.
Philip saw Emmy and Emmy saw.
Baines went slowly down the hall.
No one noticed Philip. It wasn't hard for him to escape. He went out the servant’s stairs. He could not go in the hall. Mrs. Baines lay there.
He did not understand, why she lay there
Things that he did not understand terrified him.
The whole house was turned over to the grown-up people.
He wasn’t safe in the night nursery. Their passion had flooded it.
The only thing he could do was to go away and never to come back.
He came up to him square but no one noticed him. He climbed over the iron railing into the little garden.
The plain tree spread their large palm trees between him and the sky.
It seemed an illimitable forest from which he had escaped.
A kind of embittered happiness and self-pity made him cry.
He was lost. There wouldn’t be any more secrets to keep.
He surrendered responsibility once and for all.
He now wanted to let the grown-up people keep their world, and he wanted his.
He felt safe in the small garden between the plain trees.
‘In the lost childhood of Judas Christ was betrayed,
There the writer says about Philip that you could almost see the small unformed face hardening into the dilettante selfishness of age.
Then the door of 48 opened, and Baines signaled to any to come. It seemed she was just in time for the train. She left Baines and returned to the hall.
The policeman walked round the square.
Philip explored the garden; it didn't take much time. Something stirred in the bushes. It seemed like a Siberian wolf.
He thought about what Mrs. Baines would think if she saw him here.
Then he would have no time to climb the railing. She would have seized him from behind.
He left the square. He passed the fish-and-ship shops, little stationers selling bagatelles to the dingy hotels.
A blowsy woman carrying a parcel called out to him.
On the fringe of the square, he was in danger of being stopped. As he went deeper, he lost the marks of his origine.
It was a warm night. Any child in those free-living parts might be expected to play truant from bed.
He found a kind of camaraderie even among the grown-up people.
He remembered how once he was caught in a knot of laughing children running away from something. He was whirled with them and abandoned. He was given a sticky fruit drop in his hand.
But today he was lost. He did not have the stamina to keep on. He feared someone would stop him. He was afraid of Mrs. Baines.
But now he wanted to be noticed, but no one noticed him. The air was full of voices, but he was cut off. All were strangers.
Now he wanted to go home. He sat down against a wall and cried.
It hadn’t occurred to him that that was the easiest way. This was to surrender yourself. This way you can show you were beaten and accept kindness.
A woman offered to take him home to Philip, but she was not a match for Mrs. Baines. He did not give her, his address.
The policeman took him to the station.
Justice waited behind a wooden counter on a high stool. He wasn’t really interested in Philip but he pretended he was.
The constable was interested in Philip. He asked him if there was a telephone at his home.
He asked another question but Philip winced away from the questions.
The sergeant asked Rose to take Philip.
The constable wanted to take Philip.
Philip also wanted to go with the constable.
And then the telephone rang. It was number 48. There was an accident where a woman slipped on the area stairs.
The constable didn’t mention death. You didn’t mention the word death before a child. So you need to make ‘noise in your throat’ or ‘you grimaced, a complicated shorthand for a word of only five letters anyway.’
So the constable had to go and make a report.
On the way back home, the constable asked Philip why he left his home, and “who’s at the house?”
Baines was at the doorway. He was daunted by the sudden appearance of Philip there.
Philip saw there was some message that Baines was trying to convey.
But he shut his mind to it.
He loved Baines, but Baines had involved him in secret and fears he did not understand.
The day was wonderful. The glowing morning thought, ‘This is life had become a repugnant memory under Baine’s tuition.
No, this is not the life Philip wanted.
“That was life”: the musty hair across the mouth, the tortured inquiry. “Where are they?”
Philip realised that was what happened when you loved, you got involved.
Philip extricates himself from life, from love, from Baines with a merciless egotism
There had been things between them, but he didn’t care, just like the army cutting the wires and destroying bridges.
It was like you had to abandon the country you loved.
The sausage, the morning pack did not excite him anymore.
It was like old people who implore to be taken on the tractors but you can’t risk the rage guard for their sake.
Now it was like a whole prolonged retreat from life, from care, from human relationships.
It seemed Baines was trying to convey some message to Philip. It seemed he was begging like a dog, something that Philip didn’t understand.
The doctor had come. Baines told the constable how Mrs. Baines took him upstairs on the way Baines kept begging with soft expressions.
But Philip resisted. He said he would not go to bed. He also said, he did not want to see Mrs. Baines.
Philip continued saying that he knew Mrs. Baines was in the hall, and she was dead.
The constable reprimanded Baines that he was lying.
Philip busted out that it was all Emmy's fault. He was determined not to keep any more secrets. He was not to keep any companionship with the grown-ups.
Philip had a long day and ‘he was tired, describes the writer.
Graham Greene further says, “you could see him dropping asleep, where he stood…”
The writer, Graham Greene says that perhaps, he would not remember anything the next morning.
The constable with professional ferocity asked Baines, “who is she?”
Graham Greene winds up the story, by saying sixty years later, the old man started his secretary, asking ‘who is she? Who is she?’
It seemed it was dropping lower and lower into death, passing on the way perhaps the image of Baines: “Baines hopeless, Baines lettering his head drop, Baines coming clean.
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