CHRISTIANNA BRAND: GREEN FOR DANGER

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Big-Picture Questions About Green for Danger by Christianna Brand

“You women are all arrant cowards, said Cockie contemptuously.”

“Woods looked about her at the bomb-scarred landscape and the blast-pitted buildings where she and a hundred other women were voluntarily spending the days of their service to their country, at the fields pitted with craters, at the gaunt white limbs of the trees broken down by a bomb the night before; … at the patches of dry grass all round her, blackened and scorched by innumerable incendiary bombs; at the jagged fragments of bomb-casing littering the ground at her feet. For a moment she felt the earth shudder and rock beneath her, for a moment the guns thundered in her ears, and the drone of the bombers was torn by the shriek of a falling bomb. … Six months of it, day and night, almost incessantly–and in all that time she had not known the meaning of fear; had not seen in the faces about her, the faces of middle-aged women or young girls, a shadow of panic or failure or endurance-at-an-end. … They were all much too busy and tired to be afraid. She smiled outright this time, and said with a lift of her strong, black eyebrow: ‘Oh, yes, we’re terrible cowards, there’s no doubt about that.’”

1. Let’s start by talking about these “arrant cowards.” Do the female characters in Green for Danger by Christianna Brand feel constrained by their era—or more modern and self-aware than we might expect?
2. The characters hate going to the moldy underground shelter and would much prefer staying above ground: “The whole place rocked with the deafening roar of the guns, but the bombs seemed fewer and the flares were dying down. They sat very comfortably with their feet on the fender, drinking cups of cocoa, in defiance of all orders that nobody was to remain in their quarters after black-out during a raid.”)
   
   “Criticism has been made of the cool reaction of my characters towards the air-raids,” wrote Christianna Brand. “I write only of what I know; and I know that during the whole of the blitz upon London which I spent in a heavily bombed area, largely among V.A.D.s, I, too, saw “not a shadow of panic or failure or endurance-at-an-end.”
   
   Did you feel comforted by routine amid chaos—or unsettled by how everyone goes about their business and how normal everything feels while bombs fall?
3. Let’s talk about the vibe for a second: did the wartime setting make everyone’s behavior feel more intense and believable—or did it make the romantic drama feel like it was turned up to eleven? Is the setting doing the heavy lifting here? Could this story work anywhere else, or is the hospital during wartime essential to its power?

Characters & Relationships in Green for Danger by Christianna Brand

1. The characters are intensely intertwined—romantically, professionally, emotionally. Did that closeness heighten the tension for you, or did the story veer into melodrama?
2. Several characters fall hard and fast in love. Marion loves Gervase, who toys with her affections. Barney loves less-than-steady Freddi, who has a thing for Gervase. Barney tells Freddi, “I’d rather have cruelty than dishonesty. I’d rather be hurt than deceived.” If given the choice, which would you prefer? And is this type of emotional intensity convincing given the historical moment—or did it feel exaggerated?
3. Gervase “looked at his ugly face and greying hair, at his thin, angular body and restless hands—and wondered what on earth women saw in him, and wished they wouldn’t” (2). He’s also married: “Once, long ago, one of the lovely ladies had been importunate, and he had not then acquired his skill in evading desperate situations. He had not seen her for several years, but she formed a shield against similar assaults upon his liberty” (32). Esther is the “only female in the hospital who can see Gervase Eden without swooning at his feet” (35). What exactly do the female characters see in “Don Juan” Gervase?
4. Some characters are haunted by loss. Esther left her mother behind to volunteer. After her mother’s building was hit, and “For two days and two nights she had waited in anguish while men toiled unceasingly at the mountain of rubble” (20). Major Moon mourns his dead son. Did you feel more for some characters than others?

Detective & Detection

1. Major Moon is the first to suggest calling Inspector Cockrill, the “high ding-a-ding” at Torrington” (in Kent) who solved some highly publicized murder a year earlier (57). Frederica says Cockrill “looked rather a sweet little man.” But he “was anything but a sweet little man” (63). “He knew how to be charming when he would, and now shamelessly exploited this gift” (66). Cockrill is sharp but imperfect. At first he thinks Higgins was “Just another anaesthetic death” (57). Does his irritation, impatience, and condescension make him more effective—or more troubling? When he claims to know who the murderer is (and why the murder was committed) but won’t tell because he lacks proof (169), did you believe him? Did you trust him?

    

2. Woody makes references to Sherlock Holmes: “Utterly elementary, my dear Watson … I’m brilliant S. Holmes in person” (124-125). How do you feel about Inspector Cockrill’s investigative methods–is he a Holmesian detective? Does he use ingenious pressure tactics? Ethically questionable manipulation?

    

3. After the second murder, Inspector Cockrill says to Woody, “You women are all arrant cowards.” In the very next paragraph, the narrator counters his condescending statement in no uncertain terms. Does the narrator’s (and Woody’s) response undermine the reader’s perception of Cockrill’s competency and authority?

Plot, Clues & Fair Play in Green for Danger by Christianna Brand

1. Higgins’ delivery of letters introduces us to the seven main suspects in the opening pages. The narrator and various characters tell us that one of their closed circle at the military hospital must be responsible. Is the book a locked-room mystery of sorts?
   
   Martin Edwards writes that Christianna Brand “came on the scene as a crime writer just as the Golden Age was drawing to a close. Nevertheless, her work in the genre always adhered to the classic traditions, with a strong emphasis on twisty plotting and ‘playing fair’ with the reader.”
   
   Seven possible murderers, a closed setting, twists, turns, fair play–did these Golden Age tropes feel bold or commonplace in this wartime setting?

    

2. At the end, Cockrill gathers his “victims” in the operating theatre–a Golden Age stylistic turn. He lays handcuffs on the operating table but makes no reference to them. Esther goes into the anaesthetic room to get some air. Major Moon looks troubled, and Cockrill tells him, “It’s all right. She won’t run away. It’s barred” (235). Talk turns to Higgins’ “red bicycle. A postman’s bicycle. At that moment, Moon sprang” (238). Moon locks himself in with Esther and is seen with a hypodermic needle. He sobs as Cockrill rushes in through the second door and puts handcuffs on Esther. Were you taken by surprise? Did you expect her suicide? Were you surprised that Cockrill didn’t anticipate her suicide and that he, in fact, knocked the antidote to morphia out of Moon’s hands?

    

3. Let’s talk about the significance of the “green for danger” warning. Gas cylinders used by anaesthetists were color-coded: black (nitrous oxide); oxygen (black and white); and green (carbon dioxide). Higgins and Tib and Fib (William) are given carbon dioxide from a can that has been painted black and white.
4. Looking back, did the clues feel invisible, obvious, or hiding in plain sight? (Chapter IX arguably provides clues as to Cockrill’s line of thinking–and how he gambles with a man’s life.) Did you figure out that William and Higgins were both part of the rescue squad at Esther’s mother’s building? Or why Sister Bates was stabbed?

    

5. What were the most effective red herrings, and which ones did you fall for?
   
   For example, Esther is repeatedly referred to as selfless, angelic, and madonna-like. She promises Higgins need not be frightened and is in no danger (51-53). In what ways did the narration influence your understanding of what was actually happening and of what the characters were actually capable of doing?
   
   Everyone seemed to have a reason to kill Higgins. Was he the man on a bicycle who hit Moon’s son? Was he going to spread rumors about Barney’s dead patient? Did Woody’s voice remind him of her brother, who broadcast Goebbel’s lies on the radio?

Tone, Style & Lasting Impact

1. Did you find the book to be funny? Dickensian funny?

    

   Examples:

    

   Esther’s mother derides the nursing profession, but since “Esther had tenderly nursed her mother through several years of perfect health, there was not very much that she could learn from her on that subject” (6).

    

   “Since a blowsy trollop of fifty cannot be expected to care for competition from an exquisite, self-possessed creature of twenty-two, the ex-widow was not sorry to see [Frederica] go” (10).

    

   Frederica says, “I think [your new wife] too frightful, Daddy […] but it’s you that’s got to sleep with her, not me.”
   
   More typical Christianna Brand humor: “Mrs. Higgins gave a perfectly dreadful sniff. ‘Hard! Hard it is indeed, Inspector, and worse than hard! Here’s my pore old Joe, took in this ‘orrible way, and me a widder and my fatherless orphans cast upon the world and what is the Gover’ment going to do about that I should like to know?’

    

   “As Mrs. Higgins would have a pension from the Post Office where her husband had worked for many years, and as her fatherless orphans were grown men and women, making a nice little thing out of various aspects of the war effort, it was not likely that the Government was going to do very much” (59).

   “‘Nurses and sisters and all–flirting away with them doctors in a way I wouldn’t like to describe,’ cried Mrs. Higgins, describing it in detail all over again” (60).

2. Did the dialogue-heavy style pull you into the story or feel too theatrical? If you felt the dialogue was heavy-handed, did it still hit home at times? For example:

Gervase says, “‘Oh, Woody–I do like you!’
“Woody’s heart melted within her. ‘Do you, Gervase?’
“‘Yes, I do. You’re such a good friend, Woody. You don’t get sentimental and silly and take things too seriously … if a man kisses you, you don’t go off the handle and run round screaming that you’ve been robbed of something above rubies. … And above all, you don’t let your emotions get tangled up with just having fun” (163-164).

She hides her face so he doesn’t see the tears in her eyes.

3. Some readers may find the book emotionally distant; others may find it devastating or at least melancholy by the end.

Esther, with her idée fixe, has avenged her mother’s death and died. Major Moon has died in an air raid. [“He loved Esther too much to ever be happy again” (253).] Frederica is pregnant. Gervase tells Woody she’d make a nice wife and mother. For a moment, she feels light and hopeful until he tells her, “I think the man that finally marries you is going to be a very lucky fellow.” She makes a joke, “and nobody knew there was anything wrong at all” (262).

Where did you land—and why?

4. What character or characters have stuck with you? Of all the characters, who did you like the most? Dislike the most? Trust the most?

Adaptation & Legacy of Green for Danger by Christianna Brand

If you’ve seen the film: what does cinema clarify—or obscure—that the novel handles differently?

Do you think the book’s reputation is driven more by its ingenuity, its atmosphere, or its afterlife in adaptation?