A Small Town in Germany

by John le Carré

  ‘Never mind,’ said Cork kindly. ‘He’ll turn up.’

  ‘Oh sure. Like the investments and the Caribbean dream. Leo’s everybody’s darling. Everybody’s lost son, Leo is. We all love Leo, although he cut our throats.’

  ‘Mind you, he couldn’t half tell the tale.’ He was sitting on the truckle bed in his shirt-sleeves, pulling on his outdoor shoes. He wore metal springs above the elbows and his shirt was like an advertisement on the Underground. There was no sound from the corridor. ‘That’s what got you about him. Quiet, but a sod.’

  A machine stammered and Cork frowned at it reprovingly.

  ‘Blarney,’ he continued. ‘That’s what he had. The magic. He could tell you any bloody tale and you believed it.’

  He had put them into a paper waste-bag. The label on the outside said ‘SECRET. Only to be disposed of in the presence of two authorised witnesses.’

  ‘I want this sealed and sent to Lumley,’ he said, and Cork wrote out a receipt and signed it.

  ‘I remember the first time I met him,’ Cork said, in the cheerful voice which Turner associated with funeral breakfasts. ‘I was green. I was really green. I’d only been married six months. If I hadn’t twigged him I’d have –’

  ‘You’d have been taking his tips on investment. You’d have been lending him the code books for bedside reading.’ He stapled the mouth of the bag, folding it against itself.

  ‘Not the code books. Janet. He’d have been reading her in bed.’ Cork smiled happily. ‘Bloody neck! You wouldn’t credit it. Come on then. Lunch.’

  For the last time Turner savagely clamped together the two arms of the stapler. ‘Is de Lisle in?’

  ‘Doubt it. London’s sent a brief the size of your arm. All hands on deck. The dips are out in force.’ He laughed. ‘They ought to have a go with the old black flags. Lobby the deputies. Strenuous representations at all levels. Leave no stone unturned. And they’re going for another loan. I don’t know where the Krauts get the stuff from sometimes. Know what Leo said to me once? “I tell you what, Bill, we’ll score a big diplomatic victory. We’ll go down to the Bundestag and offer them a million quid. Just you and me. I reckon they’d fall down in a faint.” He was right, you know.’

  Turner dialled de Lisle’s number but there was no reply.

  ‘Tell him I rang to say goodbye,’ he said to Cork, and changed his mind. ‘Don’t worry.’

  He called Travel Section and enquired about his ticket. It was all in order, they assured him; Mr Bradfield had sent down personally and the ticket was waiting for him at the desk. They seemed impressed. Cork picked up his coat.

  ‘And you’d better cable Lumley and give him my time of arrival.’

  ‘I’m afraid H. of C.’s done that already,’ Cork said, with something quite near to a blush.

  ‘Well. Thanks.’ He was at the door, looking back into the room as if he would never see it again. ‘I hope it goes all right with the baby. I hope your dreams come true. I hope everyone’s dream comes true. I hope they all get what they’re looking for.’

  ‘Look: think of it this way,’ Cork said sympathetically. ‘There’s things you just don’t give up, isn’t there?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I mean you can’t pack everything up neat and tidy. Not in life, you can’t. That’s for girls, that is. That’s just romantic. You get like Leo otherwise: you can’t leave a thing alone. Now what are you going to do with yourself this afternoon? There’s a nice matinée at the American cinema … No. Wouldn’t be right for you: lot of screaming kids.’

  ‘What do you mean, he can’t leave a thing alone?’

  Cork was drifting round the room, checking the machines, the desks and the secret waste.

  ‘Vindictive. Vindictive wasn’t in it. He had a feud with Fred Anger once; Fred was Admin. They say it ran five years till Fred was posted.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He had picked a scrap of paper from the floor and was reading it. ‘Absolutely sweet Fanny Adams. Fred cut down a lime tree in Leo’s garden, said it was endangering the fence. Which it was. Fred told me: “Bill,” he said, “that tree would have fallen down in the autumn.” ’

  ‘He had a thing about land,’ Turner said. ‘He wanted his own patch. He didn’t like being in limbo.’

  ‘Know what Leo did? He made a wreath out of its leaves. Brought it into the Embassy and nailed it on to Fred’s office door. With bloody great two-inch nails. Crucified it near enough. The German staff thought Fred had snuffed it. Leo didn’t laugh though. He wasn’t joking; he really meant it. He was violent, see. Now dips don’t notice that. All oil and how-d’-you-do, he was to them. And helpful, I’m not saying he wasn’t helpful. I’m just saying that when Leo had a grudge, I wouldn’t fancy being the other end of it. That’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘He went for your wife, did he?’

  ‘I put a stop to that,’ said Cork. ‘Just as well. Seeing what happened elsewhere. The Welfare Dance, that was. A couple of years back. He started coming it. Nothing nasty, mind. Wanted to give her a hair-dryer and that. Meet me up on the hill, that lark. I said to him, “You find your own hair to dry,” I said. “She’s mine.” You can’t blame him though, can you? Know what they say about refugees: they lose everything except their accents. Dead right, you know. Trouble with Leo was, he wanted it all back. So I suppose that’s it: take the pick of the files and run for it. Flog them to the highest bidder. It’s no more than what we owe him, I don’t suppose.’ Satisfied with his security check, Cork stacked together his brochures and came towards the door where Turner stood. ‘You’re from the North, aren’t you?’ he asked. ‘I can tell by your voice.’

  ‘How well did you know him?’

  ‘Leo? Oh, like all of us really. I’d buy this and that, give him a saucer of milk now and then; put an order in for the Dutchman.’

  ‘Dutchman?’

  ‘Firm of diplomatic exporters. From Amsterdam. Cheaper if you can be bothered; you know. Do you anything: butter, meat, radios, cars, the lot.’

  ‘Hair-dryers?’

  ‘Anything. There’s a rep. calls every Monday. Fill in your form one week, chuck it in to Leo and you get the order the next. I expect there was a bit in it for him; you know. Mind you, you could never catch him out. I mean you could check up till you were blue in the face: you’d never find out where he took his divi. Though I think it was those bloody cigars. They were really shocking, you know. I don’t think he enjoyed them; he just smoked them because they were free. And because we pulled his leg about them.’ He laughed simply. ‘He conned the lot of us, that’s the truth of it. You too, I suppose. Well, I’ll be slipping on then. So long.’

  ‘You were saying about that first time you met him.’

  ‘Was I? Oh well, yes.’ He laughed again. ‘I mean you couldn’t believe anything. My first day: Mickie Crabbe took me down there. We done the rounds by then. “Here,” says Mickie, “just one more port of call,” and takes me downstairs to see Leo. “This is Cork,” he says. “Just joined us in Cyphers.” So then Leo moves in.’ Cork sat down on the swivel chair beside the door and leaned back like the rich executive he longed to be. ‘ “Glass of sherry,” he says. We’re supposed to be dry here, but that never bothered Leo; not that he drank himself, mind. “We must celebrate the new arrival. You don’t sing by any chance, do you, Cork?” “Only in the bath,” I says and we all have a nice laugh. Recruiting for the choir, see: that always impressed them. Very pious gentleman, Mr Harting, I thought. Not half. “Have a cigar, Cork?” No thanks. “A fag then?” Don’t mind if I do, Mr Harting. So then we sit there like a lot of dips, sipping our sherry, and I’m thinking, “Well, I must say you’re quite the little king around here.” Furniture, maps, carpet … all the trappings. Fred Anger cleared a lot of it out, mind, before he left. Nicked, half of it was. Liberated, you know. Like in the old Occupation days. “So how are things in London, Cork?” he asks. “Everything much the same I suppose?” Putting me at m
y ease, cheeky sod. “That old porter at the main door: still saucy with the visiting Ambassadors, is he, Cork?” He really came it. “And the coal fires: still lighting the coal fires every morning, are they, Cork?” “Well,” I says, “they’re not doing too bad, but it’s like everything else, it takes its time.” Some crap like that. “Oh, ah, really,” he says, “because I had a letter from Ewan Waldebere only a few months back telling me they were putting in the central heating. And that old bloke who used to pray on the steps of Number Ten, still there is he, Cork, morning and night, saying his prayers? Doesn’t seem to have done us much good, does he?” I tell you: I was practically calling him sir. Ewan Waldebere was Head of Western Department by then, all set to be God. So then he comes on about the choir again and the Dutchman and a few other things besides, anything he can do to help, and when we get outside I look at Mickie Crabbe and Mickie’s pissing himself. Doubled up, Mickie is. “Leo?” he says. “Leo? He’s never been inside the Foreign Office in his life. He hasn’t even been back to England since forty-five.” ’ Cork broke off, shaking his head. ‘Still,’ he repeated, with an affectionate laugh, ‘you can’t blame him, can you?’ He got up. ‘And I mean, we all saw through him, but we still fell for it, didn’t we? I mean Arthur and … I mean everybody. It’s like my villa,’ he added simply, ‘I know I’ll never get there, but I believe in it all the same. I mean you have to really … you couldn’t live, not without illusions. Not here.’

  Taking his hands out of his mackintosh pockets, Turner stared first at Cork and then at the gunmetal key in his big palm, and he seemed to be torn and undecided.

  ‘What’s Mickie Crabbe’s number?’

  Cork watched with apprehension as he lifted the receiver, dialled and began talking.

  ‘They don’t expect you to go on looking for him,’ Cork said anxiously. ‘I don’t really think they do.’

  ‘I’m not bloody well looking for him, I’m having lunch with Crabbe and I’m catching the evening flight and nothing on God’s earth would keep me in this dream box for an hour longer than I need.’ He slammed down the receiver and stalked out of the room.

  De Lisle’s door was wide open but his desk was empty. He wrote a note: ‘Called in to say goodbye. Goodbye. Alan Turner,’ and his hand was shaking with anger and humiliation. In the lobby, small groups were sauntering into the sunlight to eat their sandwiches or lunch in the canteen. The Ambassador’s Rolls-Royce stood at the door; the escort of police outriders waited patiently. Gaunt was whispering to Meadowes at the front desk and he fell suddenly quiet as Turner approached.

  ‘Here,’ he said, handing him the envelope. ‘Here’s your ticket.’ His expression said, ‘Now go back to where you belong.’

  ‘Ready when you are, old son,’ Crabbe whispered from his habitual patch of darkness. ‘You see.’

  The waiters were quiet and awfully discreet. Crabbe had asked for snails which he said were very good. The framed print in their little alcove showed shepherds dancing with nymphs, and there was just a suggestion of expensive sin.

  ‘You were with him that night in Cologne. The night he got into the fight.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ said Crabbe. ‘Really. Do you like water?’ he asked, and added a little to each of their glasses, but it was no more than a tear shed for the sober. ‘Don’t know what came over him.’

  ‘Did you often go out with him?’

  He grinned unsuccessfully and they drank.

  ‘That was five years ago, you see. Mary’s mother was ill; kept on flogging back to England. I was a grass widower, so to speak.’

  ‘So you’d push off with Leo occasionally; have a drink and chase a few pussycats.’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘In Cologne?’

  ‘Steady, old boy,’ said Crabbe. ‘You’re like a bloody lawyer.’ He drank again and as the drink went into him he shook like a poor comedian reacting late. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘What a day. Christ.’

  ‘Night clubs are best in Cologne, are they?’

  ‘You can’t do it here, old boy,’ Crabbe said with a nervous start. ‘Not unless you want to screw half the Government. You’ve got to be bloody careful in Bonn.’ He added needlessly, ‘Bloody careful.’ He jerked his head in wild confirmation. ‘Cologne’s the better bet.’

  ‘Better girls?’

  ‘Can’t make it, old boy. Not for years.’

  ‘But Leo went for them, did he?’

  ‘He liked the girls,’ said Crabbe.

  ‘So you went to Cologne that night. Your wife was in England, and you went on the razzle with Leo.’

  ‘We were just sitting at a table. Drinking, you see.’ He suited the gesture to the word. ‘Leo was talking about the Army: remember old so-and-so. That game. Loved the Army, Leo did, loved it. Should have stayed in, that’s my feeling. Not that they’d have had him, not as a regular. He needed the discipline, in my opinion. Urchin really. Like me. It’s all right when you’re young, you don’t mind. It’s later. They knocked hell out of me at Sherborne. Hell. Used to hold the taps, head in the basin, while the bloody prefects hit me. I didn’t care then. Thought it was life.’ He put a hand on Turner’s arm. ‘Old boy,’ he whispered. ‘I hate them now. Didn’t know I had it in me. It’s all come to the surface. For two pins I’d go back there and shoot the buggers. Truth.’

  ‘Did you know him in the Army?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then who were you remembering?’

  ‘I ran across him in the CCG a bit. Moenchengladbach. Four Group.’

  ‘When he was on Claims?’

  Crabbe’s reaction to harassment was unnerving. Like his namesake he seemed in some mysterious way to draw the extremities of his presence under a protective shell, and to lie passive until the danger had passed. Ducking his head into his glass he kept it there, shoulders hunched, while he peered at Turner with pink, hooded eyes.

  ‘So you were drinking and talking.’

  ‘Just quietly. Waiting for the cabaret. I like a good cabaret.’ He drifted away into a wholly incredible account of an attempt he had made upon a girl in Frankfurt on the occasion of the last Free Democrats’ Conference: ‘Fiasco,’ he declared proudly. ‘Climbing over me like a bloody monkey and I couldn’t do a thing.’

  ‘So the fight came after the cabaret?’

  ‘Before. There was a bunch of Huns at the bar kicking up a din; singing. Leo took offence. Started glaring at them. Pawing the earth a bit. Suddenly he’d called for the bill. “Zahlen!” Just like that. Bloody loud too. I said “Hoi! old boy, what’s up?” Ignored me. “I don’t want to go,” I said. “Want to see the tit show.” Blind bit of notice. The waiter brings the bill, Leo tots it up, shoves his hand in his pocket and puts a button on the plate.’

  ‘What kind of button?’

  ‘Just a button. Like the one the dolly found down at the Bahnhof. Bloody wooden button with holes in it.’ He was still indignant. ‘You can’t pay bloody bills with a button. Can you? Thought it was a joke at first. Had a bit of a laugh. “What happened to the rest of her?” I said. Thought he was joking, see. He wasn’t.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘ “Here you are,” he said. “Keep the change,” and gets up cool as anything. “Come on, Mickie, this place stinks.” Then they go for him. Jesus. Fantastic. Never thought he had it in him. Three down and one to go and then somebody cracks him with a bottle. All the blows; East End stuff. He could really mix it. Then they got him. They bent him over the bar backwards and just worked him over. Never seen anything like it. No one said a word. No how-d’you-do, nothing. System. Next thing we knew was, we were out in the street. Leo was on his hands and knees and they came out and gave him a few more for luck, and I was coughing my guts out on the pavement.’

  ‘Pissed?’

  ‘Sober as a bloody judge, old boy. They’d kicked me in the stomach, you see.’

  ‘You?’

  His head shook dreadfully as it sank to meet the glass: ‘Tried to bail him out,’ he muttered. �
�Tried to mix it with the other chaps while he got away. Trouble is,’ he explained, taking a deep draught of whisky, ‘I’m not the fellow I used to be. Praschko had hoofed it by then.’ He giggled. ‘He was half-way out of the door by the time the button hit the plate. He seemed to know the form. Don’t blame him.’

  Turner might have been asking after an old friend. ‘Praschko came often, did he? Back in those days?’

  ‘First time I met him, old boy. And the last. Parted brass rags after that. Don’t blame him. MP and all that. Bad for business.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Jesus. Trod gently, old boy.’ He shuddered. ‘Home posting loomed large. Bloody flea pit in Bushey or somewhere. With Mary. No thanks.’

  ‘How did it end?’

  ‘I reckon Praschko got on to Siebkron. Coppers dumped us at the Embassy. Guard got us a cab and we sloped off to my place and called a doctor. Then Ewan Waldebere turned up, he was Minister Political. Then Ludwig Siebkron in a dirty great Mercedes. Christ knows what didn’t happen. Siebkron grilled him. Sat in my drawing-room and grilled him no end. Didn’t care for it, I must say. All the same, pretty serious when you think of it. Bloody diplomat tearing the arse off night clubs, assaulting citizenry. Lot of fences to mend.’

  The waiter brought some kidneys cooked in vinegar and wine.

  ‘God,’ said Crabbe. ‘Look at that. Delicious. Lovely after snails.’

  ‘What did Leo tell Siebkron?’

  ‘Nix. Nothing. You don’t know Leo. Close isn’t the word. Waldebere, me, Siebkron: not a syllable to any of us. Mind you, they’d really gone for him. Waldebere faked him some leave; new teeth, stitches, Christ knows what. Told everybody he’d done it swimming in Yugoslavia. Diving into shallow water. Bashed his face in. Some water: Christ.’

  ‘Why do you think it happened?’

  ‘No idea, old boy. Wouldn’t go out with him after that. Not safe.’

  ‘No opinions?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Crabbe. His face sank beneath the surface, misted with meaningless wrinkles.