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 tourist 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 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, the 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. 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’s 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.
