John LeCarre - A New Collection of Three Novels Part 9

"What men?" says Mary.

But her skin is p.r.i.c.king on her nape, her body is clammy with panic. How much has Tom heard? Seen?

"The ones who are mending their motorbike by the river. They've got special army sleeping-bags and a torch and a special tent."

"There are campers all over the island," says Mary. "Go back to bed."

"They were on our ship too," says Tom. "Behind the lifeboat, playing cards. Watching us. Speaking German."

"Lots of people were on the ship," says Mary. Why don't you say something, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d? she screams at Magnus in her head. Why do you lie dead instead of helping me when I'm still wet from you?

With Tom on one side of her, Magnus on the other, Mary listens to the bells of Plomari tolling out the hours. Four more days, she tells herself. On Sunday, Tom flies back to London for the new school term. And on Monday I'll do it and be d.a.m.ned.

Brotherhood was shaking her. Nigel had said something to him: ask her about the beginning--pin her down.

"We want you to come back a stage, Mary. Can you do that? You're running ahead of yourself."

She heard murmuring, then the sound of Georgie changing a reel on her tape-recorder. The murmuring was her own.

"Tell us how you came to be taking the holiday in the first place, will you, dear? Who proposed it?... Oh Magnus, did he? I see. And was that here in} this house?... It was.... Now what time of day would that have been? Sit up, will you?"

So Mary sat up and began again where Jack had told her: on a sweet, early summer evening in Vienna when everything was still absolutely fine and neither Lesbos nor all the islands that came before it were a glint in clever Magnus's eye. Mary was in the bas.e.m.e.nt in her overalls, binding a first edition of Die letzten Tage der Menschheit, by Karl Kraus which Magnus had found in Leoben while meeting a Joe there and Mary-- "That a regular one--Leoben?"

"Yes, Jack, Leoben was regular."

"How often did he go there?"

"Twice a month. Three times. It was an old Hungarian he had, no one special."

"He told you that, did he? I thought he kept his Joes to himself."

"An old Hungarian wine dealer from way back, with offices in Leoben and Budapest. Mostly Magnus kept his secrets to himself. Sometimes he told me. Now can I go on?"

Tom was at school, Frau Bauer was out praying, said Mary. It was some kind of Catholic bean feast, a.s.sumption, Ascension, Prayer and Repentance, Mary had lost count. Magnus was supposed to be at the American Emba.s.sy. The new committee had just started meeting and she wasn't expecting him back till late. She was bang in the middle of glueing when suddenly, without hearing a sound, she saw him standing in the doorway--G.o.d knows how long he'd been there--looking very pleased with himself and watching her the way he liked to.

"How was that, dear? Watched you how?" Brotherhood cut in.

Mary had surprised herself. She faltered. "Superior, somehow. Pained superiority. Jack, don't make me hate him, please."

"All right, he's watching you," said Brotherhood.

He is watching her and when she catches sight of him he bursts out laughing and shuts her mouth with pa.s.sionate kisses doing his Fred 'Astaire number, then it's upstairs for a full and frank exchange of views, as he calls it. They make love, he hauls her to the bath, washes her, hauls her out and dries her, and twenty minutes later Mary and Magnus are bounding across the little park on the top of Dobling like the happy couple they nearly are, past the sandpits and the climbing-frame that Tom is too big for, past the elephant cage where Tom kicks his football, down the hill towards the Restaurant Teheran which is their improbable pub because Magnus so adores the black-and-white videos of Arab romances they play for you with the sound down while you eat your couscous and drink your Kalterer. At the table he holds her arm fiercely and she can feel his excitement racing through her like a charge, as if having her has made him want her more.

"Let's get away, Mabs. Let's really get away. Let's live life for a change instead of acting it. Let's take Tom and all our mid-tour leave and b.u.g.g.e.r off for the whole of the summer. You paint, I'll write my book, and we'll make love until we fall apart."

Mary says where to, Magnus says who cares, I'll go to the travel agent on the Ring tomorrow. Mary says what about the new committee. He is holding her hand inside his own, touching it with his fingertips into little peaks, and she is going mad for him again, which is what he likes.

"The new committee, Mary," Magnus p.r.o.nounces, "is the most stupid b.l.o.o.d.y charade I've been mixed up in, and believe me, I've seen a few. All it is, it's a talking-shop to goose up the Firm's ego and allow them to tell whoever will listen to them that we're hugger-mugger in bed with the Americans. Lederer can't possibly imagine we're going to unveil our networks to him, and as for Lederer, he wouldn't tell me the name of his tailor, let alone his agents--a.s.suming he's got either, which I doubt."

Brotherhood again: "Did he tell you why Lederer mightn't be inclined to talk to him?"

"No," said Mary.

Nigel for a change: "And no other reasons offered as to why or how the committee might be a charade?"

"It was a charade, it was a sham, it was makework. That's all he said. I asked about his Joes, he said the Joes could look after themselves and if Jack was bothered about them he could send a loc.u.m. I asked what Jack would think--"

"And what would Jack think?" said Nigel, all open curiosity.

"He said Jack's a sham too: 'I'm not married to Jack, I'm married to you. The Firm should have retired him ten years ago. Sod Jack. Sorry. That's what he said."

Hands shoved in his pockets, Brotherhood took a stroll round the little room, poking at Frau Bauer's photographs of her illegitimate daughter, poring over her shelf of paperback romances.

"Anything else about me?" he asked.

"Jack's had too many miles in the saddle. The Boy Scout era's over. It's a new scene and he's not up to it."

"Any more?" said Brotherhood.

Nigel had lowered his chin into his hand and was studying one small but perfectly formed shoe.

"No," said Mary.

"Did he go for a walk that night? Meet P?"

"He'd been the night before."

"I said that night. Answer the b.l.o.o.d.y question!"

"And I said the night before!"

"With a newspaper. The whole bit?"

"Yes."

His hands still in his pockets, his head high against his shoulders, Brotherhood turned stiffly to Nigel. "I'm going to tell her," he said. "You want to throw a fit?"

"Are you asking me formally?" Nigel asked.

"Not particularly."

"If you are, I'll have to pa.s.s it to Bo," said Nigel and looked respectfully at his gold watch as if he took orders from it.

"Lederer knows and we know. If Pym knows too, who's left?" Brotherhood insisted.

Nigel thought about this. "Up to you. Your man, your decision, your tail-end. Frankly."

Brotherhood leaned over Mary and put his head close to her ear. She remembered his smell: tweedy and paternal. "Listening?"

She shook her head. I'm not, I never will be, I wish I never had.

"The new committee that your Magnus derided was shaping up to be a very high-powered outfit. Maybe the best potential working relationship at field level that we've had with the Americans for years. The name of the game was mutual trust. Not as easy to establish these days as it used to be, but we managed it. Are you going to sleep?"

She nodded.

"Your Magnus was not only aware of this, he was one of the prime movers in getting the committee off the ground. If not the prime mover. He even went so far as to complain to me, when we were negotiating the deal, that London was being small-minded in its interpretation of the barter terms. He thought we should give the Americans more. In exchange for more. That's number one."

I have absolutely nothing else to say. You can have my home address, my next of kin and that's your lot. You taught me that yourself, Jack, in case they ever grabbed me.

"Number two is that for reasons which I regarded at the time as specious and insulting, the Americans objected to your husband's presence on that committee not three weeks after it met, and asked me to replace him with somebody more to their liking. Since Magnus was kingpin of the Czecho operation and of several other little shows in Eastern Europe besides, this was a totally unrealistic demand. They'd raised the same objections about him in Washington the year before and Bo had bowed to them, in my view mistakenly. I wasn't about to let them do it again. I happen not to care for American gentlemen or anybody else telling me how to run my shop. I said no and ordered Magnus to take himself off on mid-tour leave and stay clear of Vienna till I told him to come back. That's the truth, and I think it's time you heard some."

"It's also very secret," said Nigel.

She waited in vain to be amazed. No surge of protest, no flash of the celebrated family temper. Brotherhood had taken himself to the window and was staring out. Morning had come early because of the snow. He looked old and beaten. His white hair was fluffed against the light and she could see the pink skin of his scalp.

"You defended him," she said. "You were loyal."

"Seems as if I was a b.l.o.o.d.y fool as well."

The house had turned itself upside down. The thump of shifting furniture came from below them in the drawing-room. The safest place to be was here. Upstairs with Jack.

"Oh don't be so hard on yourself, Jack," Nigel said.

Brotherhood had sat Mary in the chair and handed her a whisky. You get one only, he had said; make it last. Nigel had taken over the bed and was lounging on it with one suited little leg stuck out in front of him as if he'd sprained it trying to get up the steps of his club. Brotherhood had turned his back on both of them. He preferred the view from the window.

"So first you go to Corfu. Your auntie has a house there. You borrowed it from her. Tell that bit. Carefully."

"Aunt Tab," said Mary.

"In full, I think," said Nigel.

"Lady Tabitha Grey. Daddy's sister."

"Sometime member of the Firm," Brotherhood murmured to Nigel. "There's hardly a member of her family hasn't been on our books at one time or another, come to think of it."

She had telephoned Aunt Tab as soon as they got back from their drink that evening, and by a miracle there'd been a cancellation and her house was free. They took it, phoned Tom's school and arranged for him to fly there direct when term ended. As soon as the Lederers heard, they wanted to come too of course. Grant said he would drop everything but Magnus wouldn't hear of it. The Lederers are exactly the kind of social prop I need to kick away, he had said. Why the h.e.l.l should I take my work with me on holiday? Five days later they were settled into Tab's house and everything was absolutely fine. Tom took tennis lessons at the hotel up the road, swam, fed the landlady's goats and pottered around the boat with Costas who looked after it and watered the garden. But his best thing was the crazy cricket matches on the edge of town that Magnus took him to in the evenings. Magnus said the Brits had brought the game to the island when they were defending it against Napoleon. Magnus knew those things. Or pretended to.

At the cricket in Corfu Magnus was closer to Tom than he had ever been. They lay on the gra.s.s, munched ice creams, rooted for their favourite players and had those mannish chats that were so crucial to Tom's happiness: for Tom loved Magnus to distraction; he was a man's boy, always had been. As to Mary, she had taken up pastels because Corfu in summer was really too hot for her style of water-colours, the paint just dried on the page before she could get near it. But she was drawing well, getting nice likenesses and shapes, and playing hostess to half the dogs on the island because the Greeks don't feed them or look after them or anything. So everyone was happy, everyone absolutely fine and Magnus had a cool conservatory to write in, and inland walks for his restlessness, which came to him first thing in the morning and again in late evening after he had held it off all day. They lunched late, usually in a taverna--and often rather a liquid affair, to be honest, but why not, they were on holiday. Then long s.e.xy siestas while Mary and Magnus made love on the balcony and Tom lay on the beach studying the nudies across the bay with Magnus's binoculars, so as Magnus put it everybody was getting his pound of flesh. Until one day the clock stopped dead and Magnus came back from a late walk and confessed he had hit a bit of a block with his writing. He just strode in, poured himself a stiff ouzo, flung himself into a chair and said it straight out: "Sorry, Mabs. Sorry, Tom, old chap. But this place is too d.a.m.ned idyllic. I need roughing up a bit. I need people, for Christ's sake. Smoke and dirt and a bit of suffering around us. It's like being on the moon here, Mabs. Worse than Vienna. Truly."

He was sweet about it but he was adamant. He'd been drinking, obviously, but that was because he was upset. "I'm going bonkers, Mabs. It's really getting to me. I told Tom. Didn't I, Tom? I said I really can't take much more of this and I feel a s.h.i.t because you two are having such a good time."

"Yes, he did," said Tom.

"Several times. And today it's just hit me, Mabs. You've got to help me out. Both of you."

So of course they both said they would. Mary rang Tab at once, so that she could put the house back on the market, they all had a bear-hug and went to bed feeling resolved, and next day Mary packed while Magnus went off to town to do tickets and fix the next stage of their odyssey. But Tom, over washing-up which was always a talkative time for him, had a different version of why they were leaving Corfu. Daddy had met this mystery man at cricket. It was a really super match, Mum, the best two teams on the island, a real vendetta. We were watching it like mad and suddenly there was this wise, stringy man with a sad moustache like a conjuror's and a limp, and Dad got all uptight. He came up to Dad smiling, they talked a bit, they walked round and round the ground together with the thin man going slowly like an invalid, but he was terribly kind to Dad although Dad got so emanated.

"Animated," Mary corrected him automatically. "Don't talk too loud, Tom. I think Daddy's working somewhere."

And there was this really incredible batsman, said Tom. Called Phillippi. Just the absolute best batsman Tom had seen ever. "He scored eighteen in one over and the crowd went absolutely ape, but Dad didn't notice, he was so busy listening to the kind man."

"How do you know he was so kind?" said Mary with a strange irritation. "Keep your voice down." There was no light in the conservatory, but sometimes Magnus sat there in the dark.

"He was like a father with him, Mum. He's senior to him but sort of calm. He kept offering Dad a ride in his car. Dad kept saying no. But he didn't get angry or anything, he was too wise. He gentled him and smiled."

"What car? It's just a great big romance, Tom. You know it is."

"The Volvo. Mr. Kaloumenos's Volvo. One man was driving and another man in the back. They kept up with them on the other side of the fence when they went round and round talking. Honestly, Mum. The thin man never lost his temper or anything, and he really likes Dad, you can tell. It's not just holding arms. They're friends to each other. Much more than Uncle Grant. More like Uncle Jack."

Mary asked Magnus that night. They'd packed, she was excited to be moving, and really looking forward to the Athens museums.

"Tom says you were hara.s.sed by some tiresome man at the cricket match," said Mary while they enjoyed a rather stiff nightcap after their heavy day.

"Was I?"

"Some little man who chased you round and round the ground. Sounded like an angry husband to me. He had a moustache, unless Tom imagined it."

Then vaguely Magnus did remember. "Oh that's right. He was some boring ancient Brit who kept pressuring me to go and see his villa. Wanted to flog it. b.l.o.o.d.y little pest actually."

"He spoke German," said Tom, next day at breakfast while Magnus was out walking.

"Who did?"

"Dad's thin friend. The man who picked Dad up at the cricket. And Dad spoke German back to him too. Why did Dad say he was an ancient Brit?"

Mary flew at him. She hadn't been so angry with him for years. "If you want to listen to our conversations, you b.l.o.o.d.y well come in and listen to them and don't skulk outside the door like a spy."

Then she was ashamed of herself and played tennis with him till the boat left. On the boat Tom was sick as a dog and by the time they reached Piraeus he had a temperature of a hundred and three so her guilt was unconfined. At the Athens hospital a Greek doctor diagnosed shrimp rash which was absurd because Tom loathed shrimps and hadn't touched a single one; by now his face was swollen like a hamster's, so they took expensive rooms and put him to bed with an icepack and Mary read fantasy to him while Magnus listened or sat in Tom's room to write. But mainly he liked to listen because the best thing in his life, he always said, was watching her comfort their child. She believed him.

"Didn't he go out at all?" Brotherhood asked.

"Not to begin with. He didn't want to."

"Make any phone calls?" said Nigel.

"The Emba.s.sy. To check in. So that you'd know where he was."

"He tell you that?" said Brotherhood.

"Yes."

"You weren't there when he made them?" Nigel said.

"No."

"Hear him through the wall?" Nigel again.

"No."