The Little Drummer Girl

by John le Carré

  ‘Vivid.’

  Mistrusting her levity, he threw a questioning glance at her, but apparently could find nothing to object to. It was early evening. The dusk was falling fast, but Joseph’s concentration had the immediacy of sunlight. This is his element, she thought; this is what he does best in his life; this remorseless momentum is the explanation that was missing till now.

  ‘Minutes before curtain-up, a sprig of gold-brown orchids is delivered for you at the stage door with a note addressed to Joan. “Joan, I love you infinitely.”’

  ‘No stage door.’

  ‘There is a back entrance for stage deliveries. Your admirer, whoever he was, rang the bell and put the orchids into the arms of the janitor, a Mr Lemon, together with a five-pound note. Mr Lemon was suitably impressed by the large tip and promised to take them to you instantly – did he?’

  ‘Barging into ladies’ dressing-rooms unannounced is Lemon’s best thing.’

  ‘So then. Tell me what you did when you received the orchids.’

  She hesitated. ‘The signature was “M”.’

  ‘M is correct. What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  She was stung: ‘What was I supposed to do? I had about ten seconds before I was on.’

  A dust-laden lorry was careering towards them on the wrong side of the road. With majestic unconcern Joseph guided the Mercedes on to the soft shoulder and accelerated out of the slide. ‘So you threw thirty pounds’ worth of orchids into your waste-paper basket, shrugged your shoulders, and went on stage. Perfect. I congratulate you.’

  ‘I put them in water.’

  ‘And what did you put the water in?’

  The unexpected question sharpened her recollection. ‘A paint jar. The Barrie doubles as an art school in the mornings.’

  ‘You found a jar, you filled it with water, you put the orchids in the water. So. And what were your feelings while you did this? You were impressed? Excited?’

  His question somehow caught her on the wrong foot. ‘I just got on with the show,’ she said, and giggled without meaning to. ‘Waited to see who turned up.’

  They had stopped for traffic lights. The stillness made a new intimacy.

  ‘And the “I love you”?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s theatre, isn’t it? Everybody loves everybody, some of the time. I liked the “infinitely”, though. That was class.’

  The lights changed and they were driving again.

  ‘You did not consider looking at the audience in case you saw anyone you recognised?’

  ‘There wasn’t time.’

  ‘And in the interval?’

  ‘In the interval, I peeked, but I didn’t see anyone I knew.’

  ‘And after the show, what did you do?’

  ‘Returned to my dressing-room, changed, hung around a bit. Thought, sod it; went home.’

  ‘Home being the Astral Commercial Hotel, near the railway station.’

  She had long ago lost her capacity to be surprised by him. ‘The Astral Commercial and Private Hotel,’ she agreed. ‘Near the railway station.’

  ‘And the orchids?’

  ‘Went with me to the hotel.’

  ‘You did not, however, ask Mr Lemon the caretaker for a description of the person who had brought them?’

  ‘Next day I did. Not the same night, no.’

  ‘And what answer did you obtain from Lemon when you did ask him?’

  ‘He said a foreign gent but respectable. I asked what age; he leered and said just right. I tried to think of a foreign M but couldn’t.’

  ‘Not in your whole private menagerie, one single foreign M? You disappoint me.’

  ‘Not a one.’

  Briefly, they both smiled, though not at each other.

  ‘So, Charlie. We now have day two, a Saturday matinée followed by the evening performance, as usual –’

  ‘And you were there, weren’t you, bless you? Out there in the middle of the front row in your nice red blazer, surrounded by sticky school kids all coughing and wanting the loo.’

  Irritated by her levity, he devoted his attention to the road for a while, and when he resumed his line of questioning, it had a pointed earnestness that made his eyebrows come together in a schoolmasterly frown. ‘I wish you please to describe to me your feelings exactly, Charlie. It is mid-afternoon, the hall is in a half-daylight owing to the poor curtains; we are sitting less in a theatre, I would say, than in a large classroom. I am in the front row; I have a decidedly foreign look, a foreign manner somehow, foreign clothes; I am extremely conspicuous among the children. You have Lemon’s description of me and, furthermore, I do not take my eyes off you. Do you not suspect at any point that I am the giver of the orchids, the strange man signed M who claims to love you infinitely?’

  ‘Of course I did. I knew.’

  ‘How? Did you check with Lemon?’

  ‘I didn’t need to. I just knew. I saw you there, mooning at me, and I thought, hullo, it’s you. Whoever you are. Then when the curtain went down for the end of the matinée, and you stayed put in your seat and produced your ticket for the next performance –’

  ‘How did you know I did that? Who told you?’

  And you’re that sort too, she thought, adding one more hard-earned recognition of him to her album: when you get what you want, you turn all male and suspicious.

  ‘You said it yourself. It’s a small company in a one-horse theatre. We don’t get many orchids – about one bunch per decade is average – and we don’t get many punters staying to see the show round a second time.’ She could not resist the question: ‘Was it a bore, Jose? The show – actually? Twice running like that? Or did you quite enjoy it now and then?’

  ‘It was the most monotonous day of my life,’ he replied without a second’s hesitation. Then his rigid face broke and re-formed itself into the best smile ever, so that for a moment he really did look as if he had slipped through the bars of whatever confined him. ‘As a matter of fact, I thought you quite excellent,’ he said.

  This time she did not object to his choice of adjective. ‘Will you crash the car now, please, Jose? This will do me fine. I’ll die here.’

  And before he could stop her, she had grabbed his hand and kissed him hard on the knuckle of his thumb.

  The road was straight but pot-holed; hills and trees to either side were powdered with moondust from a cement works. They were in their own capsule, where the nearness of other moving things only made their world more private. She was coming to him all over again, in her mind and in his story. She was a soldier’s girl, learning to be a soldier.

  ‘So tell me, please. Apart from the orchids, did you receive any other gifts while you were playing at the Barrie Theatre?’

  ‘The box,’ she said with a shudder, before she had even made a show of pondering.

  ‘What box, please?’

  She had expected the question and already she was acting out her distaste for him, believing it was what he wanted. ‘It was some kind of trick. Some creep sent me a box to the theatre. Registered, special delivery.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Saturday. The same day you came to the matinée and stayed.’

  ‘And what was in the box?’

  ‘Nothing. It was an empty jeweller’s box. Registered and empty.’

  ‘How very strange. And the label – the label on the parcel? Did you examine it?’

  ‘It was written in blue ballpoint. Capitals.’

  ‘But if it was registered, there must have been a sender also.’

  ‘Illegible. Looked like Marden. Could have been Hordern. Some local hotel.’

  ‘Where did you open it?’

  ‘In my dressing-room between performances.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what did you make of it?’

  ‘I thought it was someone having a go at me because of my politics. It’s happened before. Filthy letters. Nigger-lover. Co
mmie pacifist. A stink-bomb through my dressing-room window. I thought it was them.’

  ‘Did you not associate the empty box with the orchids in some way?’

  ‘Jose, I liked the orchids! I liked you.’

  He had stopped the car. Some layby in the middle of an industrial estate. Lorries were thundering past. For a moment she thought he might turn the world upside down and grab her, so paradoxical and erratic was the tension in her. But he didn’t. Instead, reaching into the door pocket beside him, he handed her a reinforced registered envelope, with sealing wax on the flap and a hard square shape inside it, a replica of the one she had received that day. Postmark Nottingham, the twenty-fifth of June. On the front, her name and the address of the Barrie Theatre done in blue ballpoint. On the back, the sender’s scrawl as before.

  ‘Now we make the fiction,’ Joseph announced quietly while she slowly turned the envelope over. ‘On the old reality we impose the new fiction.’

  Too close to him to trust herself, she did not answer.

  ‘The day has been hectic, as the day was. You are in your dressing-room, between performances. The parcel, still unopened, is awaiting you. You have how long before you are due on stage again?’

  ‘Ten minutes. Maybe less.’

  ‘Very well. Now open the parcel.’

  She stole a glance at him but he was staring hard ahead at the enemy horizon. She looked down at the envelope, glanced at him again, shoved a finger into the flap, and wrenched it open. The same red jeweller’s box, but heavier. Small white envelope, unsealed, plain white card within. To Joan, spirit of my freedom, she read. You are fantastic. I love you! The handwriting unmistakable. But instead of ‘M’, the signature ‘Michel’, written large, with the final ‘l’ turned backward in a tail to underline the importance of the name. She shook the box and felt a soft, exhilarating thud from inside.

  ‘My teeth,’ she said facetiously, but she did not succeed in destroying the tension inside herself, or him. ‘Do I open it? What is it?’

  ‘How should I know? Do as you would do.’

  She lifted the lid. A thick gold bracelet, mounted with blue stones, nestled in the satin lining.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said softly, and closed the box with a snap. ‘What do I have to do to earn that?’

  ‘Very well, that is your first reaction,’ said Joseph immediately. ‘You take a look, you mutter a blasphemy, you shut the lid. Remember that. Exactly that. That was your response, from now on, always.’

  Opening the box again, she cautiously took out the bracelet and weighed it in her palm. But she had no experience of jewellery apart from the paste she sometimes wore on stage.

  ‘Is it real?’ she asked.

  ‘Unfortunately you do not have experts present who can advise you. Make your own decisions.’

  ‘It’s old,’ she pronounced finally.

  ‘Very well, you decide it is old.’

  ‘And heavy.’

  ‘Old and heavy. Not out of a Christmas cracker, not some piece of child’s nonsense, but a serious item of jewellery. What do you do?’

  His impatience distanced them from one another: she so thoughtful and disturbed, he so practical. She studied the fittings, the hallmarks, but she understood nothing of hallmarks either. She scratched at the metal lightly with her fingernail. It felt oily and soft.

  ‘You have very little time, Charlie. You are due on stage in one minute and thirty seconds. What do you do? Do you leave it in your dressing-room?’

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘They are calling you. You must move, Charlie. You must decide.’

  ‘Stop pressuring me! I give it to Millie to look after for me. Millie’s my understudy. She prompts.’

  The suggestion did not suit him at all.

  ‘You do not trust her.’

  She was nearly in despair. ‘I put it in the loo,’ she said. ‘Behind the cistern –’

  ‘Too obvious.’

  ‘In the waste-paper basket. Cover it over.’

  ‘Someone could walk in and empty it. Think.’

  ‘Jose, get off my – I put it behind the paint stuff ! That’s right. Up on one of the shelves. Nobody’s dusted there for years.’

  ‘Excellent. You put it at the back of the shelf, you hurry to take up your position. Late. Charlie, Charlie, where have you been? The curtain rises. Yes?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, and puffed out about a gallon of air.

  ‘What are your feelings? Now. About the bracelet – about its giver?’

  ‘Well, I’m – I’m appalled – aren’t I?’

  ‘Why should you be appalled?’

  ‘Well, I can’t accept it – I mean it’s money – it’s valuable.’

  ‘But you have accepted it. You’ve signed for it and now you’ve hidden it.’

  ‘Only till after the show.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well, I’ll give it back. Won’t I?’

  Relaxing a little, he too gave a sigh of relief, as if she had at long last proved his thesis. ‘And in the meantime, how do you feel?’

  ‘Amazed. Shattered. What do you want me to feel?’

  ‘He is a few feet away from you, Charlie. His eyes are fixed on you passionately. He is attending his third consecutive performance of your play. He has sent you orchids and jewellery and he has told you twice that he loves you. Once normally, once infinitely. He is beautiful. Much more beautiful than I am.’

  In her irritation, she ignored, for the time being, the steady intensification of his authority as he described her suitor.

  ‘So I act my heart out then,’ she said, feeling trapped as well as foolish. ‘And that doesn’t mean he’s won set and match, either,’ she snapped.

  Carefully, as if trying not to disturb her, Joseph restarted the car. The light had died, the traffic had thinned to an intermittent line of stragglers. They were skirting the Gulf of Corinth. Across the leaden water, a chain of shabby tankers pulled westward as if drawn magnetically by the glow of the vanished sun. Above them a ridge of hills was forming darkly in the twilight. The road forked, they began the long climb, turn after turn towards the emptying sky.

  ‘You remember how I clapped for you?’ said Joseph. ‘You remember I stood for you, curtain call after curtain call?’

  Yes, Jose, I remember. But she didn’t trust herself to say it out loud.

  ‘Well then – now remember the bracelet too.’

  She did. An act of imagination all for him – a gift in return to her unknown, beautiful benefactor. The Epilogue over, she took her curtain calls, and the moment she was free she hurried to her dressing-room, recovered the bracelet from its hiding place, cleaned off her make-up at record speed, and flung on her day clothes in order to go to him fast.

  But having connived at Joseph’s version of events this far, Charlie backed sharply away as a belated sense of the proprieties came to her protection. ‘Just a minute – hang on – hold it – why doesn’t he come to me? He’s making the running. Why don’t I just stay put in my dressing-room and wait for him to show up, instead of going out into the bushes to look for him?’

  ‘Perhaps he hasn’t the courage. He is too much in awe of you, why not? You have bowled him off his feet.’

  ‘Well, why don’t I sit tight and see? Just for a bit.’

  ‘Charlie, what is your intention? You are saying to him what, in your mind, please?’

  ‘I’m saying: “Take this back – I can’t accept it,”’ she replied virtuously.

  ‘Very well. Then will you seriously risk the chance he will slip away into the night – never to appear again – leaving you with this valuable gift which you so sincerely do not want to accept?’

  With an ill grace she agreed to go and seek him out.

  ‘But how – where will you find him? Where do you look first?’ said Joseph.

  The road was empty, but he was driving slowly in order that the present should intrude as little as possible upon the reconstructed past.

  ‘I�
�d run round the back,’ she said before she had seriously thought. ‘Out of the back entrance, into the street, round the corner to the theatre foyer. Catch him on the pavement coming out.’

  ‘Why not through the theatre?’

  ‘I’d have to fight my way through the milling throng, that’s why. He’d be gone long before I ever got to him.’

  He thought about this. ‘Then you will need your mackintosh,’ he said.

  Once again, he was right. She had forgotten the Nottingham rain that night, one cloudburst after another, all through the show. She began again. Having changed at lightning speed, she put on her new mackintosh – her long French one from the Liberty’s sale – knotted the belt, and charged out into the teeming rain, down the street, round the corner to the front of the theatre –

  ‘Only to find half the audience crammed under the canopy waiting for it to clear,’ Joseph interrupted. ‘Why are you smiling?’

  ‘I need my yellow foulard round my head. You remember – the Jaeger one I got from my television commercial.’

  ‘We note also, then, that even in your haste to be rid of him, you do not forget your yellow headscarf. So. Wearing her mackintosh and yellow headscarf, Charlie dashes through the rain in search of her over-ardent lover. She arrives at the crowded foyer – calling “Michel! Michel!” perhaps? Yes? Beautiful. Her cries are in vain, however. Michel is not there. So what do you do?’

  ‘Did you write this, Jose?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Go back to my dressing-room?’

  ‘Does it not occur to you to look in the auditorium?’

  ‘All right, damn it – yes, it does.’

  ‘You take which entrance?’

  ‘The stalls. That’s where you were sitting.’

  ‘Where Michel was. You take the stalls entrance, you push the bar to the door. Hooray, it yields. Mr Lemon has not yet locked up. You enter the empty auditorium, you walk slowly down the aisle.’

  ‘And there he is,’ she said softly. ‘Jesus, that’s corny.’

  ‘But it plays.’

  ‘Oh, it plays.’