John LeCarre - A New Collection of Three Novels Part 37

A cha.s.seur showed her to a magnificent bedroom on the first floor. Room 121 that everybody asks for, she thought; the very room I brought him to on his birthday for dinner and a night of love. The memory did not move her in the least. She phoned down to the same receptionist and asked him to book her on tomorrow morning's flight to London: "Of course, Frau Pym." Smoke, she remembered. Smoke was what we called deception. She sat on the bed listening to the footsteps go quiet in the corridor as the dinner hour drew nearer. Double doors, twelve foot high. Painting called Evening on the Bosphorus by Eckenbrecher. "I'll love you till we're both too old," he'd said, with his head on that very pillow. "Then I'll go on loving you." The phone rang. It was the concierge to say only club cla.s.s was available. Mary said, then take club. She kicked her shoes off and held them in her hand while she softly opened the door and peered out. If I think I'm being watched I'll put my shoes out to be cleaned. Burble and canned music from the bar. A whiff of dill sauce from the dining-room. Fish. They have such good fish. She stepped onto the landing, waited but still no one came. Marble statues. Portrait of bewhiskered n.o.bleman. She pulled her shoes on, climbed one staircase, called the lift and descended to the ground floor, emerging in a side corridor out of sight of the reception area. A darkened pa.s.sage led towards the rear of the hotel. She followed it, heading for a service door at the far end. The door was ajar. She pushed it, already smiling apologetically. An elderly waiter was adding the finishing touches to a private dinner table. Another door stood open behind him, leading to a side street. With a jolly "Guten Abend" to the waiter, Mary stepped quickly into the fresh air and hailed a cab. "Wienerwald," she told the driver and heard him announce it over the intercom: "Wienerwald." Nothing was following. Approaching the Ring she gave him a hundred schillings, hopped out at a pedestrian crossing and took a second cab to the airport where she sat reading in the ladies' loo for an hour until the last flight to Frankfurt.

It was earlier on the same evening.

The house was semi-detached and backed on to a railway embankment exactly as Tom had described. Once again Brotherhood reconnoitred it before making his approach. The road was as straight as the railway and seemingly as long. Nothing but the setting autumn sun disturbed the skyline. There was the road, there was the embankment with its telegraph lines and water tower, and there was the huge sky of Brotherhood's raggedy-a.r.s.ed childhood which was always filled with white cloud left by the stop-go trains as they trundled across the fens to Norwich. The houses were all of the same design, and as he studied them their symmetry became beautiful to him without his understanding why. This was the order of life, he thought. This line of little English coffins is what I thought I was preserving. Decent white men in ordered rows. Number 75 had replaced his wooden gate with a wrought-iron one, with "Eldorado" done in curly handwriting. Number 77 had laid himself a concrete path with seash.e.l.ls bedded in it. Number 81 had faced himself in rustic teak. And number 79, upon which Brotherhood now advanced, was resplendent with a Union Jack fluttering from a fine white flagpole planted just inside his territory. The tyre marks of a heavy vehicle were cut into the little gravel drive. An electric speaker was set beside the polished doorbell. Brotherhood pressed and waited. A gasp of atmospherics greeted him, followed by a wheezing male voice.

"Who the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l's that?"

"Are you Mr. Lemon?" Brotherhood said into the microphone.

"What if I am?" said the voice.

"My name is Marlow. I wondered whether I might have a quiet word with you on a private matter."

"I've got two of them and they both work. p.i.s.s off."

In the window bay the net curtain parted far enough for Brotherhood to glimpse a bronzed, shiny little face, very wrinkled, observing him from the darkness.

"Let me put it this way," said Brotherhood more softly, still into the microphone. "I'm a friend of Magnus Pym."

A further crackling while the voice the other end seemed to regather strength. "Well why the h.e.l.l didn't you say so in the first place? Come in and have a wet."

Syd Lemon was a tiny, thickset old man these days, dressed all in brown like a rabbit. His brown hair, without a fleck of grey, was parted down the centre of his skull. His brown tie had horses' heads looking doubtfully at his heart. He wore a trim brown cardigan and pressed brown trousers and his brown toecaps shone like conkers. From amid a maze of sun-baked wrinkles two bright animal eyes shone merrily, though his breath came hard to him. He carried a blackthorn stick with a rubber ferrule, and when he walked he swung his little hips like a skirt to get himself along.

"The next time you press that bell, just say you're an Englishman," he advised as he led the way down the tiny, spotless hall. On the walls Brotherhood saw photographs of racehorses, and a younger Syd Lemon wearing Ascot rig. "After that you state your business clearly and I'll tell you to p.i.s.s off again," he ended with a gush of laughter and pivoted awkwardly on his stick so that he could wink at Brotherhood and show him it was just his joke.

"How is the young tyke then?" said Syd.

"In excellent shape, thank you," said Brotherhood.

Without warning Syd sat himself abruptly on a high-backed chair, then leaned cautiously forward on his stick like a tiny dowager until he had the angle that cost him least discomfort. Brotherhood saw dark shadows under his eyes and a film of sweat on his forehead.

"You'll have to do the honours for us today, squire, I'm not myself," he said. "It's in the corner. Lift the lid. I'll take a drop of the scotch one for my health and you'll please yourself."

A thick maroon carpet ran wall to wall. A lurid painting of a Swiss scene hung above the tiled fireplace, to one side of which stood a fine burr-walnut c.o.c.ktail cabinet. As Brotherhood lifted the lid, a music box began playing a tune, which was what Syd had been waiting for it to do.

"Know that one, do you?" said Syd. "Listen to it. Put the lid down again--that's right--now pull it up. There we go."

"It's 'Underneath the Arches,'" Brotherhood said with a smile.

"Course it is. His dad give it me. 'Syd,' he says, 'I can't afford a gold watch just now, and I'm afraid there's a temporary problem of liquidity about your pension. But there's an article of furniture I possess which has given us a lot of fun down the corridor of years which is worth a bob or two and I'd like you to have it as a small token.' So we run the van up, me and Meg, before the repossession artists got their hands on it. Five years ago that was. He'd bought six of them from Harrods to see his contacts right. There was this one left. He never asked for it back, not once. 'Still playing, is she, Syd?' he'd say. 'Many a good tune played on an old fiddle, you know. I can still surprise them myself.' He could too. The b.l.o.o.d.y keyholes wasn't safe when he was around. Right till the end. I couldn't get to the funeral. I was indisposed. How was it?"

"I'm told it was beautiful," said Brotherhood.

"Well it would be. He'd made his mark. They weren't burying just anybody, you know. That man had shaken hands with some of the Highest in the Land. He called the Duke of Edinburgh 'Philip.' Did they write about him when he died? I looked in a few papers but I didn't see a lot. Then I thought, Well they're probably saving it up for the Sundays. Of course you can never tell with Fleet Street. I'd have slipped up there if I'd been well, offered them a few bob to make sure. Are you a bogey, sir?"

Brotherhood laughed.

"You look like a bogey. I did time for him, you know. A lot of us did as a matter of fact. 'Lemon,' he says--always called me by my surname when he wanted something very badly, I never knew why--'Lemon, they'll get me on my signature on those doc.u.ments. Now if I was to deny it was my signature, and you was to say you'd forged it, n.o.body would be the wiser, would they?' 'Well,' I said, 7 would. I'd do a lot of time for it,' I said to him. 'If doing time makes you wise, I'm going to be as wise as Methuselah,' I said. I still did it, mind. I don't know why. He said I'd have fifty grand when I come out. I knew I wouldn't. I suppose you could call it friendship really. A c.o.c.ktail cabinet like that, you couldn't get one to save your life these days. Here's to him. Mud in your eye."

"Cheers," said Brotherhood and drank while Syd looked on approvingly.

"So what are you if you're not a bogey? Are you one of his airy-fairy Foreign Office friends? You don't look like an airy-fairy. More like a boxer to me, if you're not a bogey. Ever do that at all, did you, the fight game? Ringside seats we used to have, every time. We was there the night Joe Baksi said goodbye to poor old Bruce Woodc.o.c.k. We had to have a bath afterwards, get the blood off. Then round to the Albany Club and there was Joe standing at the bar without a mark on him, a couple of Lovelies beside him there, and Rickie says to him, 'Why didn't you finish him off, Joe? Why did you spin it out like that, round after round?' Wonderful way with words he had. 'Rickie,' says Joe, 'I couldn't do it. I hadn't got the heart and that's a fact. Every time I hit him he was going "oooh--oooh"--like that--I couldn't put the finisher in and that's a fact."'

While he continued to listen, Brotherhood allowed his eye to fall idly upon the imprint of an absent piece of furniture in a corner of the room. The shape of it was square, perhaps two foot by two, and it had cut through the carpet pile to the canvas backing underneath. "Did Magnus come along that night as well?" he enquired jovially, turning the conversation delicately back upon the purpose of his visit.

"He was too young, sir," Syd replied stoutly. "Too tender he was. Rickie would have took him but Meg she said no. 'You leave him with me,' she said. 'You boys can go out, you can have your fun. But t.i.tch stays here with me and we'll go to a flick and have a nice evening and that's it.' Well, you didn't quarrel with Meg when she said a thing like that, not twice you didn't. I'd be broke today without her. I'd have given him every penny I had. But Meg, she put a bit away. She knew her Syd. Knew her Rickie too--a bit too well, I thought sometimes. Still you can't blame her. He was bent, you see. We was all bent, but t.i.tch's dad was very bent indeed. Took me a long time to realise that. Still, if he came back, I suppose we'd all do the same." He laughed though it hurt him to do so. "We'd do the same and more, I'll bet we would. Is t.i.tch in trouble, then?"

"Why should he be?" said Brotherhood, lifting his gaze away from the corner of the room.

"You tell me. You're the bogey, not me. You could run a prison with a face like that. I shouldn't be talking to you. I can feel it. I'd walk into the office one day. Audley Street. Mount Street. Chester Street. Old Burlington. Conduit. Park Lane. Always the best addresses. Nothing altered. Everything nice and tidy. Receptionist there, sitting at her desk like the Mona Lisa. 'Morning, Mr. Lemon.' 'Morning, sweetheart.' But I'd know. I'd see it in her face. I'd hear the quiet. Hullo, I'd say to myself. It's the bogies. They've been having a word with Rickie. Off you go, Syd, it's out the back door last. I was never wrong. Not once. Even if it was another twelve months without the option when they nicked me, I always had the nose for when the trouble started."

"When did you last see him then?"

"Couple of years ago. Maybe more. He stayed away after Meg went, I don't know why. I'd have thought he'd come more but he didn't like it. Didn't like people dying on him, I suppose. Didn't like people being poor, or no-hopers. He stood for Parliament once, you know. He'd have got in too if we'd started a week earlier. Same as his horses. Always leaving it too late at the finish. He'd ring up of course. Loved the telephone, always did. Never happy if the blower wasn't ringing."

"I was meaning Magnus," said Brotherhood patiently. "t.i.tch."

"I thought you might be," said Syd. He began coughing. His whisky stood on the table in front of him but he hadn't touched it although it was in reach. He doesn't drink any more, thought Brotherhood. It's there for the decorum. The coughing ended and left him breathless.

"Magnus came and saw you," said Brotherhood.

"Did he? I didn't notice. When was that?"

"On his way to see Tom. After the funeral."

"How did he do that then?"

"Drove out here. Sat with you. Chatted about old times. He was pleased he came. He told young Tom afterwards. 'I had a lovely talk with Syd,' he said. 'It was just like old times.' He wanted everyone to know."

"Did he tell you that?"

"He told Tom."

"Didn't tell you though. Or you wouldn't need to come here. I always reasoned that. I was never wrong. 'If the bogies ask, it's because they don't know. So don't tell them. If they ask and they do know, they're trying to catch you out. So don't tell 'em either.' I used to say the same to Rickie but he wouldn't listen. It was being a Mason partly. It made him feel immune if he talked enough. That's how they got him, nine times out of ten. He talked himself into it." He barely paused. "Listen, squire. I'll do a deal with you. You tell me what you want and I'll tell you to p.i.s.s off. How's that?"

A long silence followed but Brotherhood's patient smile did not tire. "Tell me something. What's that Union Jack doing out there?" he suggested. "Does it have a meaning at all, or is it just a big flower for the garden?"

"It's a scarecrow for keeping off foreigners and bogies."

As if he were producing a photograph of his family, Brotherhood drew out his green card, the one he had shown to Sefton Boyd. Syd drew a pair of spectacles from his pocket to read it back and front. A train thundered past but he appeared not to hear it.

"Is this a con?" he asked.

"I'm in the same business as that flag," Brotherhood said. "If that's a con."

"Could be. Everything could be."

"You were Eighth Army, weren't you? I understand you picked up a small medal at Alamein as well. Was that a con, too?"

"Could have been."

"Magnus Pym is in a little bit of trouble," said Brotherhood. "To be perfectly honest with you, which I always am with people, he seems to have temporarily disappeared."

Syd's small face had tightened. His breathing became harsh and quick. "Who's disappeared him, then? You? He hasn't been messing with Muspole's boys, has he?"

"Who's Muspole?"

"Friend of Rickie's. He knew people."

"He may have been lifted, he may have gone into hiding. He was playing a dangerous game with some very bad foreigners."

"Foreigners eh? Well he had the parley-voo, didn't he?"

"He was working under cover. For his country. And for me."

"Well he's a silly little b.u.g.g.e.r then," said Syd angrily and, hauling a perfectly ironed handkerchief from his pocket, dusted his shiny face. "I've no patience with him. Meg saw it. 'He'll go to the bad,' she said. 'There's a copper in that boy, you mark my words. He's a natural gra.s.s. Born to it.'"

"This wasn't gra.s.sing, this was risking his neck," said Brotherhood.

"That's what you say. That's what you think perhaps. Well you're wrong. Never satisfied, that boy wasn't. G.o.d wasn't half good enough for him. Ask Meg. You can't. She's gone. She was a wise one, Meg was. She was a woman, but she had more sense in one eye than you and me and half the world together. He's been playing both ends against the middle, I know. Meg always said he would."

"How did he look when he came and saw you?"

"Healthy. Everyone does. Roses in his nasty little cheeks. I always know when he wants something. He's charming, like his dad. I said, 'A bit more mourning would become you by the look of you.' He wouldn't hear of it. 'It was a beautiful service, Syd,' he says. 'You'd have loved it.' Well that was smoke up my a.r.s.e for a start. 'They was packed together like sardines and there still wasn't room for them in the church.' 'Moonshine,' I said. 'They was in the square outside, they were queuing down the street, Syd. There must have been a thousand people there. If the Irish had let a bomb off, they'd have deprived this country of its finest brains.' 'Was Philip there?' I said. 'Course he was.' Well, I mean he couldn't have been, could he, or they'd have had it in the papers and the telly. Well, I suppose he could have gone incognito. I'm told they do that a lot these days, thanks to the Irish. He had a friend once. Kenny Boyd. His mum was a lady. Rick had a how d'you do with his aunt. Maybe he went to young Kenny. He might."

Brotherhood shook his head.

"Belinda? She was. straight, always, although he bilked her. He could go to Belinda any time."

Brotherhood shook it again.

"I mean, a thousand mourners," Syd objected. "Creditors, if you like. Not mourners. You don't mourn Rick. Not really. You heave a bit of a sigh of relief, to be frank. Then you look in your wallet and thank old Meg there's still a bit left over for yourself. I didn't tell t.i.tch that. It wouldn't have been appropriate.... Did Philip go? Did you hear anything about Philip going?"

"It was a lie," said Brotherhood.

Syd was shocked. "Ah now, that's a bit hard, that is.

That's copper's talk. Magnus was conning me, put it that way, same as his dad did."

"Why?" said Brotherhood.

Syd didn't hear.

"What did he want?" said Brotherhood. "Why would he take so much trouble to con you?"

Syd was overacting. He frowned. He pursed his lips. He dusted the tip of his brown nose. "Wanted to see me right, didn't he?" he said too brightly. "Flannel me along. 'I'll go and chat up old Syd. Make him feel nice.' Oh we was always friends. Great friends. A father to him I was, quite often. And Meg was a truly incredible mother." Perhaps with old age he had lost the liar's art. Or perhaps he had never quite had it in the first place. "He just wanted a social, that's all. Comfort, that's what it comes down to. I'll comfort you, you Comfort me. He was always fond of Meg, you see. Even when she saw through him. Loyal. I'll say that."

"Who's Wentworth?" Brotherhood said.

Syd's face had slammed tight as a prison door. "Who's who, old boy?"

"Wentworth?"

"No. No, I don't think so. I don't think I know a Wentworth. More a place. Why, is a Wentworth giving him trouble then?"

"Sabina. Did he ever mention a Sabina?"

"That's a racehorse, isn't it? Wasn't there a Princess Sabina who was fancied for the Gold Cup last year?"

"Who's Poppy?"

"Here. Is Magnus playing the Lovelies again? Mind you, he wouldn't be his dad's son if he didn't."

"What did he come here for?"

"I told you. Comfort." Then, by a kind of cruel magnetism, Syd's gaze slid to the spot where a piece of furniture had stood, before returning, too brazenly, to Brotherhood.

"Well then," said Syd.

"Tell us something, do you mind?" said Brotherhood. "What was in that corner there?"

"Where?"

"There."

"Nothing."

"Furniture? Keepsakes?"

"Nothing."

"Something of your wife's you've sold?"

"Meg's? I wouldn't sell anything of Meg's if I was starving."

"What made those lines then?"

"What lines?"

"Where I'm pointing. In the carpet. What made them?"

"Fairies. What's it to do with you?"

"What's it to do with Magnus?"

"Nothing. I told you. Don't repeat things. It annoys me."

"Where is it?"