How Little We Know- With The Film Adaptation Of Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have And Have Not” In Mind

How Little We Know- With The Film Adaptation Of Ernest Hemingway’s “To Have And Have Not” In Mind

By Henri “Frenchie” Gerard As Told Jasper Jackson

[Henri “Frenchie” Gerard had owned the well-known pre-World War II Gerard’s Café in Fort-de-France, Martinique, the French colony in the Caribbean first under the Third Republic and then when France felt to the Germans in 1940 to collaborationist Vichy-control. Frenchie ran the place all through the Occupation at some cost to himself as a local Resistance leader and after the war until 1960 when he retired to his native Nantes in France. That same year he had found out through some old Resistance contacts that his old American friend Captain Harry Morgan, a fishing boat owner whom he had given work to, had had more than his fair share of drinks with in the old times, had passed away in New York City after a long bout with cancer. According to his obituary Harry left a wife, Marie, nee Browning and three children, all teenagers.          

I had heard through a different source that Captain Morgan had although an American been active in the French Resistance in Martinique and eventually other places in the Caribbean. I had also heard that Monsieur Gerard was the last link to knowledge about Captain Morgan’s exploits and more importantly about how Harry and Marie Browning known affectionately as “Slim” in those days met and got out of Fort-de-France by the skin of their teeth. I contacted Gerard in Nantes and he agreed to tell me what he knew about the affair, about the skin of their teeth and about anything else he might know around that initial meeting since “Slim” had gone on to be an editor of a high-end fashion magazine after she married Harry. Harry had become an agent-ambassador for Cunard out of New York. Below is in his own words the way Frenchie described the meeting and match-up between Harry and Slim. He did stipulate that I was only to use most of the information after Slim passed on. She did a few months ago and so here for the first time is Frenchie’s long ago take that torrid war-time romance which seemed the stuff of legends. Jasper Jackson]

“I had seen Marie first, had seen her as she came off the plane from I think that day Cuba, don’t quote me on stuff before the match-up between Harry and Slim, with a sort of threadbare tailored suit a little out of fashion that year and a small bag which told me she was on, how you Americans say her “uppers.” By the way that Slim and she called him Steve thing was some intimate bed-time talk thing that I don’t know how it started since I wasn’t there when they messed up the silky sheets that first time. She was sure slim no question so maybe that is where Harry got his pet name from. I was an agent for Air Martinique then so I grabbed her bag and offered to put her up at my hotel. She accepted. My idea was after she settled in and I had bought her few drinks I could coax her into helping me out as an exotic flower bar girl for the American tourists who were flooding Fort-de-France looking for women, kicks, dope, gambling, and some fine deep-sea fishing. I had her all lined up, had my own ideas about jumping under the satin sheets with her although I was married at the time. Yeah, she was that kind of looker, that kind of dame who guys would take great risks for, would go to the mat for if it went like that.       

    

“Then Harry entered the scene and my day dreams were over. He had been out on a fishing expedient with a client named Johnson, one of those Americans looking for women, dope and some deep sea fishing, some kind of deep sea fishing if you get my drift. This Johnson guy had had a shot at grabbing a big swordfish according to Harry but all he did was lose Harry’s fishing tackle in the bargain. So Harry wasn’t in a good mood when I asked to go to his room to inquire about using his boat for some Resistance work that was coming up-bringing in some agents to get the great freedom-fighter Renoir off of Devil’s Island where he was being held by the Vichy bastards. He turned me down cold. Wouldn’t touch the thing then, didn’t give a damn who was fighting who but wanted to keep clear of any controversy, keep his boat, his livelihood for one thing. So whatever he did for us later which was a lot didn’t get a leg up until Marie came in view.

“While we, Harry and I, were talking a rap came on the door and when Harry opened up the door there was Marie all dolled up and showered asking if anybody had a match. Harry flipped her his box of matches. Then she asked if anybody had a cigarette and said it in such a come hither way in Harry’s direction that I knew I was sunk. Harry threw her his pack of Luckies (unfiltered in those days) which I got for him on the black market since they were hard to come by after Vichy took over the black market trade. She left and after Harry asked me who the hell she was I left knowing that I was out of luck making a play for Slim. The only benefit I got was that she did do some very good work for a few days as a bar girl and I got many dollars as my cut of her action. I swear I could have been a millionaire if she had stayed on the island. As a cover I also had her singing at night with Cricket my junkie piano player whose habit was getting him off-track once I found out in passing Cricket and her that afternoon that she could sing and look good doing it. That Cricket was a story in himself since he was on the run from some dope-dealers in the States and laying low in cheap dope Martinique for a while. He wrote that song that was a hit after the war when all the G.I.s headed back to America, How Little We Know.

“But enough of Cricket. Slim went to work after that meeting with Harry. Like I said she was good, grabbed eight hundred bucks off of that stupid fisherman Johnson, and gave me my four hundred without a murmur. Harry saw her in action and was sore from what he told me the next day. Was very sore when that night Marie grabbed some Vichy naval officer for half the liquor on the island. Called her a tramp, a young pretty smart tramp but a tramp nevertheless. Here’s how you can never figure dames though see she was, having seen him for about two minutes asking for that match and cigarette foreplay, trying to make him jealous. And he was trying to pretend to be sore. That interchange was if you can understand this psychology solidified their relationship. That night without so much as a by your leave they snuck under Harry’s sheets (or was it Slim’s, no, it must have been Slim’s because I had left a set of silk sheets for her bed when I had my own ideas about what I would do with her.)               

     

“Of course that affair business played directly into Harry coming over to work with us. That Vichy naval officer bitched to Renard, a bastard who was an official in the Third Republic colonial administration on the island and the day Vichy took over without missing a beat went to work for them as their hatchet man, and he had me, Harry and Slim down at police headquarters for a few hours. Took my money, my four hundred from the Johnson con, Slim’s cut and for good measure Harry’s who had nothing to do with it. That pissed Harry off. Also helped me rope in Harry to the deal for his boat since he had no other dough.     

“That job should have been a piece of cake. Meet the agents who were going to get Renoir off of Devil’s Island in a quiet spot about twenty miles from Fort-de-France, bring them to town and then transfer them to other agents who would work out the details of the tough Devil’s Island caper. Of course in those days you took whoever was not a secret Vichy agent, anybody who had the guts to stick their necks out for the glory of France but it turned out the guys, or rather guy and his fucking wife, this Dubois, what was he thinking, that they recruited for the job had feet of clay, had too much trouble worrying about his fretful wife. So Harry had run into a Vichy patrol out in the harbor. That patrol shot up Harry’s boat, shot up this Dubois guy and made things tough for all of us. Harry, no doctor, had to patch up the guy while holding off his wife from jumping on his bones. And holding Slim back from scratching Madame’s eyes out.  

“Made Harry something like persona non grata with Vichy, with Renard too once he figured the previously don’t give a damn had part in the caper. Renard , the bastard, figured out a way to prove that Harry was involved in the Dubois caper. Harry had this old rummy, Eddie, whom must have been his father or something the way he protected him. Renard had picked Eddie up and was holding him in the drunk tank until he crumbled and told what Harry’s role in the caper had been. Harry flipped out at this once Renard told him about where the missing Eddie was. With Slim’s aid he took on Renard and a couple of his henchmen, shot one dead as a doornail and made Renard after pistol-whipping him order Eddie back to my hotel. That is when Harry handed over Renard to me and decided that since Martinique was too hot for him and Slim, and Eddie that he would take Dubois and his wife to Devils’ Island to get Renoir out. I’ll never forget, have never forgotten how Slim shimmied her way out the door with Harry and Eddie carrying their bags behind them after Slim said good-bye to Cricket (and got little stash of opium for the road).     

“You know that Harry did get Dubois to Devil’s Island and that he eventually got Renoir to Europe to work with Victor Lazlo coordinating the Resistance when it counted. Did lots of other jobs too with the resourceful Slim in tow before heading to New York after the war. 

“Here’s something Harry told me before he and Slim left town. That first night they hit the sheets Slim, with a few drinks in her, was being very sexually provocative, had mentioned that all Harry had to do to keep her in line was whistle. Then she said in a unmistakably salacious way that “he knew how to whistle, didn’t he. Just put lips together and blow.” Harry assumed that she was using a sexual double entendre. He found out that night just what he meant as she took him around the world. Damn, Harry.