John LeCarre - A New Collection of Three Novels Part 4

"Be a good girl and see if you can get her to stay away a couple more days."

She went to the kitchen and phoned Frau Bauer's mother in Salzburg. Sorry about the outrageous hour but with a death that's how it goes, she said. Herr Pym is remaining in London for a few days, she said. Why don't you take advantage of Herr Pym's absence and have a nice rest? she said. When she came back it was Lumsden's turn to say his piece. She got his drift immediately and after that she deliberately stopped hearing him. "Just to fill in any awkward blanks, Mary... So that we're all speaking the same language, Mary... While Nigel is still closeted with Amba.s.s... In case, which G.o.d forbid, the odious press gets on to it before it's all cleared up, Mary..." Lumsden had a cliche for every occasion and a reputation for being nimble-minded. "Anyway, that's the route Amba.s.s would like us all to go," he ended, using the very latest in daring jargon. "Not unless we're asked, naturally. But if we are. And Mary he sends terrific love. He's with you all the way. And with Magnus too naturally. Terrific condolences, all that."

"Just nothing to Lederer's crowd," said Brotherhood. "Nothing to anyone but for G.o.d's sake nothing to Lederer. There's no disappearance, nothing abnormal. He's gone back to London to bury his father, he's staying on for talks at Head Office. End of message."

"It's the same route I've been going already," Mary said, appealing to Brotherhood as if Lumsden didn't exist. "It's just that Magnus didn't apply for compa.s.sionate leave before taking it."

"Yes, well now I think that's the part Amba.s.s wants us not to say, if you don't mind," said Lumsden, showing the steel. "So I think we won't, please."

Brotherhood squared to him. Mary was family. n.o.body messed her around in front of Brotherhood, least of all some overeducated flunkey from the Foreign Office.

"You've done your job," said Brotherhood. "Fade away, will you? Now."

Lumsden left the way he had come, but faster.

Brotherhood turned back to Mary. They were alone.. He was as broad as an old blockhouse and, when he wanted to be, as rough. His white forelock had fallen across his brow. He put his hands on her hips the way he used to, and drew her into him. "G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Mary," he said as he held her. "Magnus is my best boy. What the devil have you done with him?"

From upstairs she heard the squeak of castors and another loud thud. It's the bow-fronted chest of drawers. No, it's our bed. Georgie and Fergus are taking a look round.

The desk was in the old servants' room next to the kitchen, a sprawling, spidery half-cellar to which no servant had been consigned for forty years. Near the window among Mary's plant pots stood her easel and water-colours. Against the wall, the old black-and-white television and the agonising sofa for watching it. "There's nothing like a little discomfort,"

Magnus liked to say primly, "for deciding whether a programme is worth its salt." In an alcove under lanes of piping stood the ping-pong table where Mary did her bookbinding and on it lay her hides and buckram and glues and clamps and threads and marbled end-papers and powering knives, and the bricks in Magnus's old socks that she used instead of lead weights, and the wrecked volumes she had bought for a few schillings at the flea market. Beside it, next to the defunct boiler, stood the desk, the great, crazy Hapsburg desk bought for a song at a sale in Graz, sawn up to get it through the door and glued together again all by clever Magnus. Brotherhood pulled at the drawers.

"Key?"

"Magnus must have taken it."

Brotherhood lifted his head. "Harry!"

Harry kept his lock picks on a chain the way other men keep keys, and held his breath to help him listen while he probed.

"Does he do all his homework here or is there somewhere else?"

"Daddy left him his old campaign table. Sometimes he uses that."

"Where is it?"

"Upstairs."

"Where upstairs?"

"Tom's room."

"Keep his doc.u.ments there too, does he?. . . Firm's papers?"

"I don't think so. I don't know where."

Harry walked out smiling with his head down. Brotherhood pulled open a drawer.

"That's for the book he was writing," she said as he extracted a meagre file. Magnus keeps everything inside something. Everything must wear a disguise in order to be real.

"Is it though?" He was pulling on his gla.s.ses, one red ear at a time. He knows about the novel too, she thought, watching him. He's not even pretending to be surprised.

"Yes." And you can put his b.l.o.o.d.y papers back where you got them from, she thought. She did not like how cold he had become, how hard.

"Gave up his sketching, did he? I thought you two were in that together."

"It didn't satisfy him. He decided he preferred the written word."

"Doesn't seem to have written much here. When did he switch?"

"On Lesbos. On holiday. He's not writing it yet. He's preparing."

"Oh." He began another page.

"He calls it a matrix."

"Does he though ?"--still reading--"I must show some of this to Bo. He's a literary man."

"And when we retire--when he does--if he takes early retirement, he'll write, I'll paint and bookbind. That's the plan."

Brotherhood turned a page. "In Dorset?"

"At Plush. Yes."

"Well, he's taken early retirement all right," he remarked not very nicely as he resumed his reading. "Wasn't there sculpture, too, at some point?"

"It wasn't practical."

"I shouldn't think it was."

"You encourage those things, Jack. The Firm does. You're always saying we should have hobbies and recreations."

"What's the book about, then? Anything special?"

"He's still finding the line. He likes to keep it to himself."

"Listen to this: 'When- the most horrible gloom was over the household; when Edward himself was in agony and behaving as prettily as he knew how.' Not even a main verb, far as I can make out."

"He didn't write that."

"It's in his handwriting, Mary."

"It's from something he read. When he reads a book he underlines things in pencil. Then when he's finished it he writes out his favourite bits."

From upstairs she heard a sharp snap like the cracking of timber or the firing of a pistol back in the days when she had been taught.

"That's Tom's room," she said. "They don't need to go in there."

"Get me a bag, dear," Brotherhood said. "A bin bag will do. Will you find me one?"

She went to the kitchen. Why do I let him do this to me? Why do I let him march into my house, my marriage and my mind and help himself to everything he doesn't like? Mary was not usually compliant. Tradesmen did not rob her twice. In the English school, the English church, in the Diplomatic Wives a.s.sociation, she was regarded as quite the little shrew. Yet one hard stare of Jack Brotherhood's pale eyes, one growl of his rich, careless voice, was enough to send her running to him.

It's because he's so like Daddy, she decided. He loves our kind of England and the rest can go hang.

It's because I worked for Jack in Berlin when I was an empty-headed schoolgirl with one small talent. Jack was my older lover at a time when I thought I needed one.

It's because he steered Magnus through his divorce for me when he was dithering and gave him to me "for afters" as he called it.

It's because he loves Magnus too.

Brotherhood was flipping the pages of her desk diary.

"Who's P?" he demanded, tapping a page. "'Twenty-fifth September, six-thirty p.m. P.' There's a P on the sixteenth too, Mary. That's not 'P' for Pym, is it, or am I being stupid again? Who's this P he's meeting?"

She began to hear the scream inside herself and had no whisky left to quell it. Of all the entries, the dozens and dozens, and he has to pick that one. "I don't know. A Joe. I don't know."

"You wrote it, didn't you?"

"Magnus asked me to. 'Put down I'm meeting P.' He didn't keep a diary of his own. He said it was insecure."

"And he made you write the entries for him."

"He said if anybody looked, they wouldn't know which were his dates and which were mine. It was part of sharing." She felt Brotherhood's stare. He's making me speak, she thought. He wants to hear the quaver in my voice.

"Sharing what?"

"His work."

"Explain."

"He couldn't tell me what he was doing, but he could show me that he was doing it and when."

"Did he say that?"

"I could feel it."

"What could you feel?"

"That he was proud! He wanted me to know!"

"Know what?"

Brotherhood could drive her mad even when she knew he meant to. "Know that he had another life! An important one. That he was being used."

"By us?"

"By you, Jack. By the Firm! Who do you think--the Americans?"

"Why do you say that--the Americans? Did he have a thing about them?"

"Why should he? He served in Was.h.i.+ngton."

"Needn't stop him. Might even encourage him. Did you know the Lederers in Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"Of course we did."

"But better here, eh? I hear she's quite an armful."

He was turning forward to the days yet to be endured. Tomorrow and the day after. To the weekend, which was already gaping at her like a hole in her shattered universe.

"Mind if I keep this?" he asked.

Mary d.a.m.n well did mind. She possessed no spare diary and no spare life either. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it back and let him wait while she copied out her future on a sheet of paper: Drinks Lederer... dinner d.i.n.kels... Tom's school term ends.... She came to "meet P" and left it out.

"Why's this drawer empty?" he asked.

"I didn't know it was."

"So what was it full of?"

"Old photographs. Mementoes. Nothing."

"How long's it been empty?"

"I don't know, Jack. I don't know! Get off my back, will you?"

"Did he put papers in his suitcase?"

"I didn't watch him pack."

"Did you hear him down here while he was packing?"

"Yes."

The telephone rang. Mary's hand shot out to take it, but Brotherhood was already grasping her wrist. Still holding her, he leaned towards the door and yelled for Harry while the phone went on ringing. It was rising four a.m. already. Who the h.e.l.l calls at four in the morning except Magnus? Inside herself Mary was praying so loud she hardly heard Brotherhood's shout. The phone kept calling her, and she knew now that nothing mattered except Magnus and her family.

"It might be Tom!" she shouted while she struggled. "Let go, d.a.m.n you!"

"It might be Lederer, too."

Harry must have flown downstairs. She counted two more rings before he was standing in the doorway.

"Trig this call," Brotherhood ordered, loud and slow. Harry vanished. Brotherhood released Mary's hand. "Make it very, very long, Mary. Spread it right out. You know how to play those games. Do it."

She lifted the phone and said, "Pym residence."

n.o.body answered. Brotherhood was conducting her with his powerful hands, willing her, pressing her to talk. She heard a metallic ping and crammed her hand over the mouthpiece. "It could be a call code," she breathed. She held up one finger for one ping. Then a second. Then a third. It was a call code. They had used them in Berlin: two for this, three for that. Private and prearranged between the Joe and base. She opened her eyes to Brotherhood to say what shall I do? He shook his head to say I don't know either.