John LeCarre - A New Collection of Three Novels Part 15

"When will I see you?" she says.

Brotherhood has gone deaf as well.

The responsibilities that rested on the shoulders of Tom Pym that morning were as heavy as any he had been obliged to face during his first month as a school prefect and captain of Pandas. Today was the first of Pandas' duty week. Today, and for the six awesome days to follow, Tom must ring the morning bell, a.s.sist Matron to supervise showers and call the roll before breakfast. Today being Sunday he must keep charge of letter-writing in the day room, read the Lesson in chapel and inspect the changing rooms for untidiness and impropriety. When evening came at last he must preside over the boys' committee that receives suggestions about the management of school life and, after editing, submit them to the agonised consideration of Mr. Caird the Headmaster, for Mr. Caird could do nothing lightly and saw all sides of every argument. And when he had somehow got through all this and rung the bell for lights out, there was Monday to wake up to. Last week it had been Lions' turn for duty and Lions had done well. Lions, Mr. Caird had p.r.o.nounced in a rare show of conviction, had displayed a democratic approach to power, holding votes and forming committees on every contentious issue. In chapel, waiting for the last lines of the hymn to die, Tom prayed earnestly for his dead grandfather's soul, for Mr. Caird and for victory in Wednesday's squash match against St. Saviour's, Newbury, away, though he feared it would be another humiliating defeat, for Mr. Caird was divided on the merits of athletic compet.i.tion. But most fervently he prayed that come next Sat.u.r.day--if Sat.u.r.day ever did come--Pandas too would earn Mr. Caird's favour, because Mr. Caird's disappointment was actually more than Tom could bear.

Tom was a very tall boy and affected already the British administrator's bobbing walk that characterised his father. His receding hairline gave him an air of maturity that may have accounted for his advancement to high position in the school. To watch him, hands linked behind his back, detach himself from the prefect's pew, step into the aisle, duck his head at the altar and mount the two steps to the lectern, you could have been forgiven for wondering whether this was a pupil at all and not a member of Mr. Caird's impressively youthful staff. Only his froggy voice as he barked the day's text betrayed the changeling inside the senatorial exterior. Tom heard little of what he was reading. The Lesson was the first he had read and he had practised it till he knew it by heart. Yet now that he came to perform it, the red and black print before him had neither sound nor meaning. Only the sight of his chewed thumbs stuck either side of him on the lectern, and the white head floating above them in the back row of the congregation, held him to the world at all. Without them, he decided, he could have taken off, smack through the chapel ceiling and into the sky, and thereafter levitated, like his gas balloon on Commemoration Day, which flew all the way to Maidenhead and landed with his name on it in an old lady's back garden, earning him five pounds in book tokens and a letter from her saying she too had a son called Tom, who worked at Lloyd's.

"I have trodden the winepress alone," he bellowed to his surprise. "And of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger and trample them in my fury." The threat alarmed him and he wondered why he had uttered it and to whom. "And their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment."

Still reading, feeling the backs of his knees batting against his trousers, Tom considered a number of other matters that turned out to be weighing on his mind, some of which were new to him until this moment. He had no expectation any more that his mind would be ruled by what was going on around it, even in work. In Friday's gym cla.s.s he had found himself thinking out a problem of Latin grammar. In yesterday's Latin he had worried about his mother's drinking. And in the middle of French construe he had discovered that he was no longer in love with Becky Lederer, despite their ardent correspondence, but preferred instead one of the Bursar's daughters. Under the pressures of high office his mind had become a slice of undersea cable like the one in the science lab. First there was this bunch of wires, all carrying their proper messages and doing their appointed jobs; and then, swimming around them like a shoal of invisible fish, ran a whole lot more messages which for some reason did not need wires at all. And that was how his mind felt now, while he honked out the sacred words in his deepest possible voice only to hear them tinkling like cracked bells in a distant room.

"For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come," he said.

He thought of gas balloons and of the Tom who worked in Lloyd's, and of the forthcoming apocalypse when he failed his common entrance examination, and of the Bursar's daughter when she rode her bicycle with her blouse flattened against her chest by the wind. And he fretted about whether Carter Major, who was Pandas' vice-captain, had the qualities of democratic leadership to handle afternoon kickabout. But there was one thought he refused to have at all because really all these other thoughts were surrogates for it. There was one thought he could not put in words or even pictures, because it was so bad that even thinking it could turn it into truth.

"How's your beef, son?" Jack Brotherhood asked, what seemed about twenty seconds later, over lunch in the Digby Hotel where they always went.

"Super, Uncle Jack, thank you," said Tom.

Otherwise they ate in the silence that they mostly observed till lunch was past. Brotherhood had his Sunday Telegraph, Tom a fantasy novel he was reading over and over again, because it was a book in which everything came right and other books could be dangerous. n.o.body understands better than Uncle Jack how you take people out from school, Tom decided, while he read and ate and thought of his mother. Not even his father had such a clear idea of how everything should be the same each time yet exquisitely different in tiny ways. How you had to be completely calm and unfussed yet draw out the day by doing ma.s.ses of different things until the last moment. How school was a place that for most of the day must not exist, so that there was never any question of going back there. Only during the last countdown must it be sufficiently reconstructed to make return a possibility.

"Want a second?"

"No, thank you."

"More Yorkshire?"

"Yes, please. A bit."

Brotherhood lifted his eyebrows to the waiter and the waiter came at once, which was what waiters did for Uncle Jack.

"Heard from your father?"

Tom did not answer at once because his eyes suddenly hurt and he couldn't breathe.

"Here, now," said Brotherhood softly, putting down his newspaper. "What's this, then?"

"It's just the Lesson," said Tom, fighting away his tears. "It's all right now."

"You made a d.a.m.n good job of reading that Lesson. Anyone tells you different, knock him down."

"It was the wrong day's," Tom explained, still fighting to get back above water. "I should have turned to the next bookmark and I forgot."

"b.u.g.g.e.r the wrong day's," Brotherhood growled, so emphatically that the old couple at the next table swung their heads round at him. "If yesterday's Lesson was any good, it won't do anyone an ounce of harm to hear it twice. Have another ginger beer."

Tom nodded and Brotherhood ordered it before once more taking up his Sunday Telegraph. "Probably didn't even understand it the first time anyway," he said with contempt.

But the real trouble was Tom had not read the wrong Lesson; he had read the right one. He knew very well he had, and he had a suspicion Uncle Jack knew it too. He just needed something easier to cry about than the fish that were swimming round the cable in his head and the thought he refused to have.

They agreed to do without pudding so as not to waste the fine weather.

Sugarloaf Hill was a chalky hump in the Berkshire Downs with Ministry of Defence barbed wire round it and a warning to the public to keep out, and probably in all Tom's life there was nowhere better in the world to be, except at home in Plush at lambing time. Not Lech and skiing with his father, not Vienna and riding with his mother: nowhere he had ever been or dreamed of was as private, as amazingly privileged, as this secret hilltop compound with barbed wire to keep out enemies, where Jack Brotherhood and Tom Pym, G.o.dfather and G.o.dson and the best friends ever, could take turns to loose off clay pigeons from the launcher, and shoot them down or miss them with Tom's 20-bore. The first time they had come here, Tom hadn't believed it. "It's all locked, Uncle Jack," he had objected as Uncle Jack stopped the car. It had been a good day till then. Now suddenly it had gone all wrong. They had driven ten miles by the map and to his chagrin ended at a pair of high white gates that were locked and forbidden by order. The day was over. He had wished he could be back at school again, doing his voluntary-punishment Prep.

"Then go over and yell 'Open sesame!' at it," Uncle Jack had advised, handing Tom a key from his pocket. And the next thing was, the white gates of authority had closed again behind them and they were special people with a special pa.s.s to be up here on the hilltop with the boot open, pulling out the rusted launcher that Uncle Jack had kept secret all through lunch. And the next thing after that was that Tom scored nine clays out of twenty, and Uncle Jack nineteen, because Uncle Jack was the best shot ever, the best at everything, although he was so old, and he wouldn't give away a match to please anybody, not even Tom. If Tom ever beat Uncle Jack, he would beat him fair, which was what they both wanted without needing to say it. And it was what Tom wanted more than anything today: a normal exchange, a normal compet.i.tion, with normal conversation, the kind that Uncle Jack was brilliant at. He wanted to hide his worst thoughts in a deep hole and not have to show them to anybody ever until he died for England.

It was the outdoors that set Tom free. Uncle Jack had nothing to do with it. He didn't like too much talk and certainly not about things that were private. It was the sense of daytime that was like a resurrection. It was the din of gunfire, the clatter of the October wind that buffeted his cheeks and slid inside his school pullover. Suddenly these things got him talking like a man instead of whimpering under the bedclothes with the stuffed animals which progressive Mr. Caird encouraged. Down in the river valley there had been no wind at all, just a tired autumn sun and brown leaves along the towpath. But up here on the bare chalk hilltop the wind was going like a train through a tunnel, taking Tom with it. It was clanking and laughing in the new Ministry of Defence pylon that had gone up since they had last come here.

"If we shoot the pylon down we'll let the b.l.o.o.d.y Russians in!" Uncle Jack yelled at him through cupped hands, "Don't want to do that, do we?"

"No!"

"All right, then. What do we do?"

"Pitch the launcher right next to the pylon and shoot away from it!" Tom had shouted back joyfully, and as he shouted he felt the last bits of worry go out of his chest, and his shoulders settle on his back, and he knew that with a wind like this whipping over the hilltop he could tell anything he wanted to anybody. Uncle Jack launched ten clays for him and he brought down eight with eleven cartridges, which was his absolute best yet considering the wind. And when it was Tom's turn to launch, Uncle Jack had a fight on his hands just to match him. But match him he did and Tom loved him for it. He didn't want to beat Uncle Jack. His father maybe, but not Uncle Jack; there would be nothing left. In his second ten Tom did less well but he didn't mind because his arms were aching, which wasn't his fault. But Uncle Jack stayed steady as a castle. Even when he was reloading, the white head stayed forward to meet the rising b.u.t.t.

"Fourteen eighteen to you," Tom shouted as he galloped about collecting empty cartridges. "Well shot!" And then, just as loud and cheerful: "And Dad's all right, is he?"

"Why wouldn't he be?" Brotherhood shouted back.

"He seemed a bit down when he came to see me after Granddad's funeral, that's all."

"I should think he b.l.o.o.d.y well was down. How would you feel if you had just buried your old man?"

Still shouting in the wind, both of them. Small talk while they loaded the 20-bore and cranked back the launcher for another go.

"He talked about freedom all the time!" Tom yelled. "He said n.o.body could ever give it to us, we've got to grab it for ourselves. I got rather bored with it, actually."

Uncle Jack was so busy reloading that Tom even wondered whether he had heard. Or if he had, whether he was interested.

"He's dead right," said Brotherhood snapping the gun shut. "Patriotism's a dirty word these days."

Tom released the clay and watched it curl and burst to powder under Uncle Jack's perfect aim.

"He wasn't talking about patriotism exactly," Tom explained, delving for another couple of cartridges.

"Oh?"

"I think he was telling me that if I was unhappy I should run away. He said it in his letter too. It's sort--"

"Well?"

"It's as if he wanted me to do something he hadn't done himself when he was at the school. It's a bit weird actually."

"I shouldn't think it's weird at all. He's testing you, that's all. Saying the door's open if you want to bolt. More like a gesture of trust by the sound of it. No boy had a better father, Tom."

Tom fired and missed.

"What do you mean letter, anyway?" said Brotherhood. "I thought he came and saw you."

"He did. But he wrote to me as well. A great long letter. I just thought it was weird," he said again, unable to get away from a favourite new adjective.

"All right, he was cut up. What's wrong with that? His old man dies, he sits down and writes to his son. You should feel honoured--good shot, boy. Good shot."

"Thanks," said Tom and looked on proudly while Uncle Jack marked a hit on his scorecard. Uncle Jack always kept the score.

"That's not what he said, though," Tom added awkwardly. "He wasn't cut up. He was pleased."

"He wrote that, did he?"

"He said Granddad had gobbled up the natural humanity in him and he didn't want to gobble it up in me."

"That's just another way of being cut up," said Brotherhood, unbothered. "Your dad ever talk about a secret place, by the by? Somewhere he could find his well-earned peace and quiet, ever?"

"Not really."

"He had one though, didn't he?"

"Not really."

"Where is it?"

"He said I was never to tell anyone."

"Then don't," said Uncle Jack firmly.

Suddenly, after that, talking about one's father became the necessary function of a democratic prefect. Mr. Caird had said it was the duty of people of privilege to sacrifice what they held most dear in life, and Tom loved his father beyond bearing. He felt Brotherhood's gaze on him and was pleased to have aroused his interest even though it did not seem to be particularly approving.

"You've known him a very long time, haven't you, Uncle Jack?" said Tom, getting into the car.

"If thirty-five years is a long time."

"It is," said Tom, for whom a week was still an age. Inside the car there was suddenly no wind at all. "So if Dad's all right," he said with false boldness as he buckled on his seat belt, "why are the police looking for him? That's what I want to know."

"Going to tell our fortunes today, Mary Lou?" Uncle Jack asked.

"Not today, darling, I'm not in the mood."

"You're always in the mood," said Uncle Jack, and the two of them had a huge laugh while Tom blushed.

Mary Lou was a gypsy, Uncle Jack said, though Tom thought her more like a pirate. She was fat-bottomed and black-haired and had false lips drawn over her mouth like Frau Bauer in Vienna. She cooked cakes and served cream teas in a wooden cafe at the edge of the Common. Tom asked for poached eggs on toast and the eggs were creamy and fresh like the eggs at Plush. Uncle Jack had a pot of tea and a piece of her best fruitcake. He seemed to have forgotten everything Tom had been talking about, which Tom was grateful for, because he was feeling headachey from the fresh air and embarra.s.sed by his own thoughts. It was two hours and eight minutes till he had to ring the bell for evensong. He was thinking he might take his father's advice and run away.

"So what was all this about the police again?" said Brotherhood a little vaguely, long after Tom had decided he had forgotten or not heard.

"They came and saw Caird. Then Caird sent for me."

"Mr. Caird, son," Brotherhood corrected him perfectly kindly and took a grateful pull of tea. "When?"

"On Friday. After house rugger. Mr. Caird sent for me and there was this man in a raincoat sitting in Mr. Caird's armchair, and he said he was from Scotland Yard about Dad, and did I by any chance have his leave address because in his absent-mindedness after Granddad's funeral Dad had taken leave and not told anyone where he was."

"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," Brotherhood said after a long time.

"It's true, sir. It really is."

"You said they."

"I meant he."

"Height?"

"Five foot ten."

"Age?"

"Forty."

"Colour of hair?"

"Like mine."

"Clean-shaven?"

"Yes."

"Eyes?"

"Brown."

It was a game they had played often in the past.

"Car?"

"He took a taxi from the station."

"How do you know?"

"Mr. Mellor brought him. He takes me to cello and works from the station cab-rank."

"Be accurate, boy. He came in Mr. Mellor's car. Did he tell you he'd come by train?"

"No."

"Did Mellor?"

"No."

"So who says he was a policeman?"

"Mr. Caird, sir. When he introduced me."