Shelden’s view, however, that Greene was a bogus Catholic who ‘did a fine job of betraying’ his religion finds support in Yvonne Cloetta’s reminiscences. Cloetta describes Greene, at the time she met him, as a ‘burnt-out case’ — ‘As a man, he no longer believed in anything’ — and how his interests subsequently shifted from religion to politics. He supported revolutionary causes, particular in South America, and in 1987, on a visit to the Soviet Union, he told Gorbachev that ‘my dream before I died was to see a Soviet ambassador posted to the Vatican, so he could provide the Pope with some pieces of good advice’.

Here he was no doubt playing the role he enjoyed of agent provocateur: Allain suggests that Greene was ‘still an adolescent at heart’ and Cloetta concedes that ‘like all men he had a slightly puerile side’. Yet one still wonders, as does Allain, how Greene could ‘reconcile his Catholic faith with visiting brothels in Havana’ and sleeping with another man’s wife. ‘He did not see how the fact of making love to a woman,’ Cloetta tells her, ‘with her consent, of course, and thereby making her happy, could be an offence towards God, which is how sin is actually defined ... A love like this can only be a Gift from God and he could not disagree with it without disavowing himself.’ A Mills & Boon theology matched Yvonne Cloetta’s Mills & Boon style.

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