John LeCarre - A New Collection of Three Novels Part 13

"I suppose he does, sir."

"Suppose?"

"He does, sir."

"Do you disapprove of his life-style?"

"I do a bit, I suppose."

"Does it occur to you that you may one day be obliged to choose between G.o.d and Mammon?"

"Yes, sir."

"Have you discussed this with Father Murgo?"

"No, sir."

"Do so."

"Yes, sir."

"Have you ever thought of entering the Church?"

"Often, sir," said Pym, putting on his soulful face.

"We have a fund here, Pym, for impecunious boys wishing to enter the Church. It occurs to the Bursar that you might be eligible to benefit from this fund."

"Yes, sir."

Father Murgo was a toothy, driven little soul whose unlikely task, considering his proletarian origins, was to act as G.o.d's itinerant talent-spotter to the public schools. Where Willow was thunderous and craggy, a sort of Makepeace Watermaster without a secret, Murgo writhed inside his habit like a ferret roped into a bag. Where Willow's fearless gaze was unruffled by knowledge, Murgo's signalled the lonely anguish of the cell.

"He's nuts," Sefton Boyd declared. "Look at the scabs on his ankles. The swine picks them while he's praying."

"He's mortifying himself," said Pym.

"Magnus?" Murgo echoed in his sharp northern tw.a.n.g. "Whoever called you that? G.o.d's Magnus. You're Parvus." His quick red smile glinted like a stripe that would not heal. "Come this evening," he urged. "Allenby staircase. Staff guest-room. Knock."

"You mad b.u.g.g.e.r, he'll touch you up!" Sefton Boyd shouted, beside himself with jealousy. But Murgo never touched anyone as Pym had guessed. His lonely hands remained lashed inside his sleeves by invisible thongs, emerging only to eat or pray. For the rest of that summer term Pym floated on clouds of undreamed freedom. Not a week earlier Willow had sworn to flog a boy who had dared to describe cricket as a recreation. Now Pym had only to mention that he proposed to take a stroll with Murgo to be excused what games he wished. Neglected essays were mysteriously waived, beatings vaguely due to him deferred. On breathless walks, on bicycle rides, in little teahouses in the country, or at night crammed into a corner of Murgo's miserable bedroom, Pym eagerly offered versions of himself that alternately shocked and thrilled them both. The shiftless materialism of his home life. His quest for faith and love. His fight against the demons of self-abuse and such tempters as Kenneth Sefton Boyd. His brother-and-sister relationship with the girl Belinda.

"And the holidays?" Murgo proposed one evening as they loped down a bridlepath past lovers fondling in the gra.s.s. "Fun, are they? High living?"

"The holidays are a desert," said Pym loyally. "So are Belinda's. Her father's a stockbroker."

The description acted on Murgo like a goad.

"Oh, a desert, are they? A wilderness? All right. I'll go along with that. Christ was in the wilderness too, Parvus. For a b.l.o.o.d.y long time. So was Saint Anthony. Twenty years he served, in a filthy little fort on the Nile. Perhaps you've forgotten."

"No I hadn't at all."

"Well he did. And it didn't stop him talking to G.o.d or G.o.d talking to him. Anthony didn't have privilege. He didn't have money or property or fine cars or stockbrokers' daughters. He prayed."

"I know," said Pym.

"Come to Lyme. Answer the call. Be like Anthony."

"What the f.u.c.k have you done to the front of your hair?" Sefton Boyd screamed at him the same evening.

"I've cut it off."

Sefton Boyd stopped laughing. "You're going to be a monkey Murgo," he said softly. "You've fallen for him, you mad tart."

Sefton Boyd's days were numbered. Acting on information received--even now I blush to contemplate the source of it--Mr. Willow had decided that young Kenneth was getting a little too old for the school.

So there's yet another Pym for you, Jack, and you had better add him to my file even if he is neither admirable nor, I suspect, comprehensible to you, though Poppy knew him inside out from the first day. He's the Pym who can't rest till he's touched the love in people, then can't rest till he's hacked his way out of it, the more drastically the better. The Pym who does nothing cynically, nothing without conviction. Who sets events in motion in order to become their victim, which he calls decision, and ties himself into pointless relationships, which he calls loyalty. Then waits for the next event to get him out of the last one, which he calls destiny. It's the Pym who pa.s.ses up a two-week invitation to stay with the Sefton Boyds in Scotland, all found including Jemima, because he is pledged to hurl himself over the Dorset hills in the wake of a tortured Mancunian zealot, preparing for a life he has not the smallest intention of leading, among people who chill him to the root. It's the Pym who writes daily to Belinda because Jemima has cast doubts on his divinity. It's Pym the Sat.u.r.day night juggler bounding round the table and spinning one stupid plate after another because he can't bear to let anyone down for one second and so lose their esteem. So off he goes and half chokes himself on incense and sleeps in a cell that stinks like a wet dog and nearly dies of nettle stew in order to become pious and pay his school fees and be adored by Murgo. Meanwhile he heaps fresh promises on old and convinces himself that he is on the path to Heaven while he digs himself deeper into his own mess. By the end of a week he is promised to a boys' camp in Hereford, a pan-denominational retreat in Shropshire, a Trade Unionists' pilgrimage in Wakefield and a Celebration of Witness in Derby. By the end of two weeks there isn't a county in England where he hasn't pledged his holiness six different ways--which is not to deny that intermittently he has visions of himself as a haggard apostle of the life renounced, converting beautiful women and millionaires to Christian poverty.

It was a full month before G.o.d provided the escape that Pym was waiting for.YOUR IMMEDIATE PRESENCE CHESTER STREET ESSENTIAL IN MATTER OF VITAL NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE RICHARD T. PYM MANAGING DIRECTOR PYMCORP.

"You must go," said Murgo with tears of misery rolling down his hollowed cheeks as he handed him the fatal telegram after Terce.

"I don't think I can face it," said Pym, no less affected. "It's just money, money all the time."

They walked past the print shop and the basket shop, through the kitchen gardens to the little wicker gate that kept Rick's world at bay.

"You didn't send it to yourself, did you, Parvus?" Murgo asked.

Pym swore he had not, which was the truth.

"You don't understand what a force you are," Murgo said. "I don't think I'll be the same again."

It had never occurred to Pym until now that Murgo was capable of change.

"Well," said Murgo with a last sad writhe.

"Goodbye," said Pym. "And thanks."

But there is cheer in sight for both of them. Pym has promised to be back for Christmas, when the tramps come.

Mad swings, Tom. Mad leaps and loves, madder round the corner. I wrote to Dorothy too somewhere in that time. Care of Sir Makepeace Watermaster at the House of Commons, though I knew he was dead. I waited a week then forgot until one day out of the blue my ploy was rewarded with a tatty little letter, blotchy with tears or drink, on ruled paper torn from a notepad, no address but postmark East London, a country I had never visited. It is before me now."Yours was a voice down many Coridors of Years, my dear, I put it in the kitchen cuboard with my Tableware to view at leasure. I will be at Euston Station the up platform 3 p.m. Thursday without my Herbie and I will be carrying a posy of lavender which you always loved."Already greatly regretting his decision, Pym arrived at the station late and placed himself in the gunman's corner beneath an iron arch close to some mail bags. Quite a bevy of mothers was milling about, some eligible, some less so, but there was none he wanted and several who were drunk. And one of them seemed to be clutching a posy of flowers wrapped in newspaper but by then he had decided he had the wrong platform. It was his darling Dorothy that Pym had wanted, not some lolloping old biddy in a pantomime hat.

A weekday evening, Tom. The traffic in Chester Street burps and crackles in the rain, but inside the Reichskanzlei it is a Green Hill Sunday. Still pious from his monastery Pym presses the bell but hears no answering chime. He drives the great bra.s.s door knocker against its stud. A lace curtain parts and closes. The door opens, but not far.

"Cunningham's the name, squire," says a heavy man in a thick expatriate c.o.c.kney, as he shuts the door fast after him as if scared of letting in germs. "Half cunning, half ham. You'll be the son and heir. Greetings, squire, Salaams."

"How do you do," says Pym.

"I'm optimistic, squire, thank you," Mr. Cunningham replies with a Middle-European literalness. "I think we're on a road to understanding. Some resistance at first is to be expected. But I believe I see a light begin to shine."

It is more than Pym does for the pa.s.sage down which Mr. Cunningham leads him with such a.s.surance is pitch black and the only light comes from the pale patches on the wall left by the departed law books.

"You're a German scholar, I understand, squire," says Mr. Cunningham more thickly, as if the exertion has affected his adenoids. "A fine language. The people, I'm not sure. But a lovely tongue in the right hands, you can quote me."

"Why are we going upstairs?" says Pym, who has by now recognised several familiar omens of impending pogrom.

"Trouble with the lift, squire," Mr. Cunningham replies. "I understand an engineer has been sent for and is at this moment hastening on his way."

"But Rick's office is on the ground floor."

"But upstairs has the privacy, squire," Mr. Cunningham explains, pushing open a double door. They enter a gutted State Apartment lit by the glow of street lamps. "Your son, sir, fresh from his worship," Mr. Cunningham announces, and bows Pym ahead of him.

At first Pym sees only Rick's brow glinting in the candlelight. Then the great head forms round it, followed by the broad bulk of the body as it advances swiftly to envelop him in a damp and fervent bear-hug.

"How are you, old son?" he asks urgently. "How was the train?"

"Fine," says Pym who has. .h.i.tchhiked owing to a temporary problem of liquidity.

"Did they give you a bit to eat then? What did they give you?"

"Just a sandwich and a gla.s.s of beer," says Pym who has had to make do on a piece of rocklike bread from Murgo's refectory.

"My own boy, as you see me!" Mr. Cunningham exclaims with zest. "Never satisfied unless he's eating."

"Son, you want to watch that drinking of yours," says Rick in an almost unconscious reflex, as he clutches Pym under the armpit and marches him over bare floorboards towards an imperial-sized bed. "There's five thousand pounds for you in cash if you don't smoke or take liquor until you're twenty-one. All right, my dear, what do you think of this boy of mine?"

A darkly dressed figure has risen like a shade from the bed.

It's Dorothy, thinks Pym. It's Lippsie. It's Jemima's mother lodging a complaint. But as the darkness lifts, the aspiring monk observes that the figure before him is wearing neither Lippsie's headscarf nor Dorothy's cloche hat, nor has she the daunting authority of Lady Sefton Boyd. Like Lippsie she sports the antiquarian uniform of pre-war Europe but there the comparison ends. Her flared skirt has a nipped waist. She wears a blouse with a lace ruff and a feathery bit of hat that makes the whole outfit jaunty. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are in the best tradition of Amor and Rococo Woman, and the dim light flatters their roundness.

"Son, I want you to meet a n.o.ble and heroic lady who has known great advantages and misfortunes and fought great battles and suffered cruelly at the hands of fate. And who has paid me the greatest compliment a woman can pay a man by coming to see me in her hour of need."

"Rot-schilt, darling," the lady says softly, lifting her limp hand to a level where Pym may kiss or shake it.

"Heard that name anywhere, have you, son, with your fine education? Baron Rothschild? Lord Rothschild? Count Rothschild? Rothschild's Bank? Or are you going to tell me you're not conversant with the name of a certain great Jewish family with all the wealth of Solomon at its fingertips?"

"Well yes, of course I've heard of it."

"Well then. Just you sit yourself here and listen to what she has to say because this is the baroness. Sit down, my dear. Come here between us. What do you think of him, Elena?"

"Beautiful, darling," says the baroness.

He's selling me to her, thinks Pym, not at all unwilling. I'm his last desperate deal.

So there we all are, Tom. Everyone on the go and madness here to stay. Your father and grandfather seated b.u.t.tock to b.u.t.tock with a Jewish baroness in the half-furnished director's knocking-shop of a West End palace without electricity, and Mr. Cunningham, as I gradually realise, keeping guard at the door. An air of daft conspiracy comparable only with later daft conspiracies mounted by the Firm, as her soft voice embarks on one of those patient refugee monologues that your Uncle Jack and I have listened to more times than either of us can remember, except that tonight Pym is a virgin in these matters, and the baroness's thigh is pressed cosily against that of the aspiring monk.

"I am a humble widow of simple but pious family, married happily but oh so briefly to the late Baron Luigi Svoboda-Rothschild, the last of the great Czech line. I was seventeen, he twenty-one, imagine our pleasure. My greatest regret is I bore him no child. Our country seat was the Palais of Nymphs at Brno, which first the Germans then the Russians rape worse than a woman literally. My Cousin Anna she marry to the head man from De Beers diamonds Cape Town, got houses like you not imagine, too much luxury I don't approve." Pym does not approve either, as he tries to tell her with a monkish smirk of sympathy. "With my Uncle Wolfram I never speak and thanks G.o.d I say. He collaborate with the n.a.z.is. The Jews hang him upside down." Pym sets his jaw in grim approval. "My Granduncle David give all his tapestries to the Prado. Now he is poor like a kulak, why don't the museum give him something so he can eat?" Pym rolls his head in despair at the baseness of the Spanish soul. "My Auntie Waldorf--" She breaks down beautifully while Pym wonders whether the agitation of his body is visible to her in the darkness.

"It's a d.a.m.n shame!" cries Rick, while the baroness composes herself. "My G.o.d, son, those Bolsheviks could swoop down on Ascot tomorrow without a by-your-leave and help themselves to a fortune. Go on, my dear. Son, tell her to go on. Call her Elena, she likes it. She's not a sn.o.b. She's one of us."

"Welter, bitte," says Pym.

"Weiter," the baroness echoes approvingly and pats her eyes with Rick's handkerchief. "Jawohl, darling. Sehr gut!"

"Oh but you should hear his accent," Mr. Cunningham calls from the door. "Not a wrinkle, you can quote me, same as my own boy."

"What does she say, son?"

"She can manage," says Pym. "She can handle it."

"She's a d.a.m.ned gem. I'm going to see her right, you mark my words."

So is Pym. He is going to marry her at least. But meanwhile, to his irritation, he must hear more praise for my dear late husband the baron. My Luigi was not only the proprietor of a great palace, he was a financial genius and until the outbreak of war the Chairman of the House of Rothschild in Prague.

"They were the richest of the lot," says Rick. "Weren't they, son? You've read your history. What's your verdict?"

"They couldn't even count it," Mr. Cunningham confirms from the door with the pride of an impresario. "Could they, Elena? Ask her. Don't be shy."

"We give such concerts, darling," the baroness confides to Pym. "Princes from all countries. We got house from marble. We got mirrors, culture. Like here," she adds graciously, indicating a priceless oil painting of Prince Magnus in his paddock, done from a photograph. "We lose everything."

"Not quite everything," says Rick under his breath.

"When the Germans come, my Luigi he refuse to flee. He face the n.a.z.i pigs from the balcony, got a pistol in his hand, don't never been heard of since."

Another necessary break follows in which the baroness allows herself a delicate sip of brandy from a row of crystal decanters on the floor, and Rick to Pym's fury takes over the story, partly because Rick is already tired of listening, but more particularly because a secret is approaching, and secrets in court etiquette are Rick's alone to divulge.

"That baron was a fine man and a fine husband, son, and he did what any fine husband would do, and believe me, if your mother was in a position to appreciate it, I'd do the same for her tomorrow--"

"I know you would," says Pym hastily.

"That baron got some of the best treasures out of that palace, he put them in a box and he gave that box to certain very good friends of his and friends of this fine lady here, and he gave orders that when the British won the war this same box should be handed over to his lovely young wife, with everything it contained, however much it may have risen in value in the meantime."

The baroness knows the menu from memory and again selects Pym as her audience, for which purpose it is necessary for her to arrest his attention with a delicate hand placed on his wrist.

"One Gutenberg Bible, nice condition, darling, one Renoir early, two Leonardo medical. One first edition Goya caprices, artist annotation, three hundred best gold American dollar, Rubens a couple cartoons."

"Cunningham says it's worth a bomb," says Rick when she seems to have finished.

"It's Hiroshima," says Mr. Cunningham from the door.

Pym contrives an ethereal smile intended to indicate that great art knows no price. The baroness intercepts it and understands.

It is an hour later. The baroness and her protector have departed, leaving father and son alone in the great unlighted room. The traffic below the window has subsided. Shoulder to shoulder on the bed they are eating fish and chips which Pym has been dispatched to buy with precious pound notes from Rick's back pocket. They wash it down with a bottle of Chateau d'Yquem from a Harrods crate.

"Are they still there, son?" says Rick. "Did they see you? Those men in the Riley. Heavy built."

"I'm afraid they are," says Pym.

"You believe in her, don't you, son? Don't spare my feelings. Do you believe in that fine woman or do you think she's a black-hearted liar and adventuress to boot?"

"She's fantastic," says Pym.