The Mission Song

by John le Carré

  Penelope, Saturday, 0950: It's me, darling. Sorry if I was catty last night. I was just so terribly worried for you. I can't say I'm not still furious, but when you tell me all about it, I'll probably understand. The dinner party was actually rather fun, as pompous parties go. Jelly was feeling no pain, but Fergus made sure he didn't disgrace himself. You'll laugh when I tell you what else happened, though. I couldn't get inside our flat. I'd switched handbags at the office and left my keys behind, rather assuming my ever loving would be on hand to take me home and give me a good seeing to. Paula was out gallivanting, which meant I couldn't use her key, so I was reduced to staying at Brown's Hotel for the night — I hope at the paper's expense! And today — which is a total chore, but I thought I'd better do it, seeing as how you've gone AWOL on me — I've agreed to be a good scout and go and hear Fergus address a flock of high-flying advertisers at a posh country house in Sussex. There's a knees-up afterwards apparently, with some big names in the industry, so I thought it might do me a bit of good. To meet them in an informal setting, I mean. Sir Matt is coming, so I'll be properly chaperoned. Anyway I'm on my way to the office now. To pick up my stuff. And do another quick-change act. So see you soon, darling. Tomorrow if not tonight. I'm still in a total rage with you, naturally. So you'll have to make the most marvellous amends. And please don't blame yourself about last night: I do understand really. Even if I pretend not to. Tschüss. Oh, and I'll be off the air while I'm there — no mobiles, apparently. So if there's a crisis, ring Paula. Bye-ee.

  Hannah, Saturday, 1014: SALVO? Salvo? (power loss already evident) Why haven't you . . . (power fading fast as she shifts from English into desperate Swahili) . . . you promised, Salvo! .. . oh God ... oh no! (power gone)

  If I were in the Chat Room or back in the boiler room I would say that either the mike was malfunctioning or that Subject was deliberately keeping her voice below the radar. But the line stays open. There's background noise, a bit of garble, passing footsteps, colliding voices in the corridor outside her room, but no foreground. I therefore conclude that Hannah has let the hand that is holding her cellphone flop to her side while she goes on sobbing her heart out for a further fifty-three seconds until she remembers to switch off. I dial her number and get her voicemail. I dial the hospital. An unfamiliar voice informs me that hospital staff are not permitted to take personal calls during night shift. The bus is filling up. Two women hikers look at me, then at the red nylon sports bag above me in the rack. They decide to sit up front where it's safer.

  14

  Out of consideration for my slumbering neighbours I ascended the communal staircase quietly, carrying the red nylon sports bag baby-style across my chest in order not to glance it against the bannisters in error. Midsummer Saturdays in Prince of Wales Drive, you never know. Some nights it's high-jinks till all hours, with Penelope, if she's in, bawling out the police on the telephone and threatening to run a story in her paper about too few coppers on the beat. Other nights, what with the schools on holiday and the bomb scares and everyone having second homes these days, all you hear as you approach the entrance to Norfolk Mansions is your own footfall on the pavement, plus the Apache-like hoot of owls in Battersea Park. For the moment, however, there was only the one sound that was of any concern to me, which was Hannah's heartbroken voice choking out its accusations.

  As usual the front door lock rejected me, which I tonight considered symbolic. As usual I had to pull the key back, fidget it and try again. Once inside the hall, I felt like my own ghost. Nothing had changed since I died. The lights were on, well, they would be. I had left them on when I dropped by to fling on my dinner jacket, and Penelope hadn't been back since. Pulling off the hated shoes, I was drawn to a blotched engraving of Tintagel Castle that for five years had hung unremarked in the gloomiest recess. Penelope's sister had given it to us for a wedding present. The sisters hated each other. Neither had any connection with Tintagel. They had never been there, didn't want to go. Some gifts say it all.

  In the marital bedroom as was, I threw off my prisoner's garb and with sensations of distaste and liberation consigned it to the laundry basket. For good measure I tossed my rolled-up dinner jacket after it. Perhaps Thorne the Horn would think it worth going on a diet for. Fetching my shaving kit from the bathroom, I confirmed with perverse satisfaction that the blue sponge-bag with the teddy-bear in which Penelope kept what she archly called her Press Kit was still missing from its shelf: just what every girl needs for a weekend with a flock of high-flying advertisers in Sussex.

  Back in the bedroom I emptied my stolen goods onto the bed, by which I mean the tapes and notepads and, obsessively tidy as I am, worried how best to dispose of Mr Anderson's plastic night-bag until I remembered the wastebin in the kitchen. I was about to chuck Brian Sinclair's visiting cards after it, but decided for no reason I remember to keep them for what Aunt Imelda called a rainy day. I then put on the clothes of a free man: jeans, trainers, and a pre-Penelope leather jacket I had bought for myself on my first graduation. As a crowning glory, I added my navy-blue, woollen bobble hat which she had banned as too Afro.

  I recount these actions in linear detail because as I performed them I was conscious of ceremony. Each movement I made was another step towards Hannah in the rash hope that she would have me, which I considered open to doubt. Each item hand-selected from my chest of drawers was part of the going-away wardrobe that would accompany me into my new life. From the hall I fetched my Antler Tronic Medium Roller-Case with integrated combination lock and adjustable towing handle, once a treasured possession to adorn a meaningless existence. First into it went the tapes and notepads which I wrapped in an old shirt before stowing them in an interior compartment. Moving methodically round the flat, and cutting off at source all nostalgic tugs, I swept up my laptop and attachments, but no printer on account of space, my two tape recorders, the one pocket-sized, the other desk-sized, both in robust carrying cases, plus two sets of earphones and my little transistor radio. To these I added my father's life-stained missal, Brother Michael's hortatory letters from his deathbed, a gold locket containing a spray of Aunt Imelda's untameable mop of white hair, a folder of personal correspondence including Lord Brinkley's letter to me and his Christmas cards, and the sturdy cloth shoulder-bag that had carried home the ingredients for my coq au vin.

  From the desk in the bay window I extracted a wax-sealed envelope marked BRUNO'S COPY containing the pre-nuptial agreement drafted by Penelope's far-sighted father to cover precisely this moment. I had always recognised that he had a more realistic view of our marriage than I did. As solemnly as if I was laying a wreath at the Cenotaph, I set the twice-signed agreement on Penelope's pillow, removed the wedding ring from the third finger of my left hand and positioned it plumb centre. With this ring I thee unwed. If I felt anything, it was neither bitterness nor anger but completion. An awakening that had begun long before the little gentleman's outburst in the trattoria had reached its only possible conclusion. I had married Penelope for the person she didn't want to be: a fearless champion of our great British press, my faithful and enduring lover forsaking all others, my lifestyle instructor and the mother of my future children and, in my lowest moments, my own white mother-substitute. Penelope for her part had married the exotic in me, only to discover the conformist, which must have been a major disappointment to her. In that regard she had my heartfelt sympathy. I left no note.

  Snapping my Roller-Case shut and refusing to take a last look round, I set course down the passage towards the front door and freedom. As I did so I heard the lock turning without its usual impediment, and a pair of lightweight feet enter the hall. My immediate reaction was fear. Not of Penelope personally, because that was over. Fear of having to put into words what I had already put into action. Fear of delay, of loss of impetus, of precious time wasted in argument. Fear that Penelope's fling with Thorne had come to grief and she would be returning home in search of consolation, instead of which she was going to suffer another humiliat
ing rejection, and from a quarter she regarded as incapable of credible resistance: me. I was therefore relieved to encounter not Penelope standing in front of me with her hand on her hip but our neighbour and psychological consultant Paula, wearing a raincoat and, as far as I could determine, nothing else.

  “Hannibal heard you, Salvo,” she said. Paula's voice is mid-Atlantic monotone, a kind of permanent mope. Hannibal is her rescue greyhound.

  “When pretty boys go sneaking around trying to be quiet, Hannibal hears them,” she continued gloomily. “Where are you going, for fuck's sake? You look wild.”

  “Work,” I said. “Late call. It's urgent. Sorry, Paula. Got to go.”

  “In those clothes? Tell me another. You need a drink. Got a bottle?”

  “Well, not on me, if you know what I mean” — joke.

  “Maybe I have for once. Got a bed too, if that's what you're looking for. You never thought I fucked, did you? You thought I warmed my ass at your fires. Penelope doesn't live here any more, Salvo. The person who lives here is token Penelope.”

  “Paula, please. I've got to go.”

  “The real Penelope is an insecure, overcompensating bitch who does action for doubt. She's also psychopathic and delusional and my dearest friend. Why don't you attend my Inner Body Experience group? We talk a lot about women like Penelope. You could aspire to a higher level of thought. What's the job?”

  “Hospital.”

  “With that suitcase? Where's the hospital — Hong Kong?”

  “Paula, please. I'm in a hurry.”

  “How about fuck first, then go to hospital?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Hospital then fuck?” — still hopeful. “Penelope says you do a great job.”

  “Thanks but no.”

  She stepped aside, and I slipped gratefully past her down the communal staircase. At any other time I would have marvelled that our in-house supplier of life's verities and recipient of countless bottles of my Rioja should so effortlessly have crossed the line from guru to nymphomaniac, but not tonight.

  I took up my position on a park bench opposite the main doors of the hospital at approximately 0700 hours by Aunt Imelda's watch, aware though I was from my discreet enquiries of Reception that night staff did not stand down till 0830 earliest. A brutalist modern sculpture lay in my line of sight, enabling me to observe without being observed. To either side of the glass entrance stood a uniformed representative of one of Britain's ever-multiplying private militias. Zulus and Ovambos, I hear Maxie say proudly. Best fighters in the world. At a basement-level carport, a procession of white ambulances unloaded their wounded. Beside me on the bench lay the cloth bag to which I had transferred my tapes and notepads. Conscious of my fragile grasp on life, I had looped the shoulder strap round my wrist.

  I was super-awake and half asleep. Finding a bed at midnight in the bombing season when you are a zebra and lugging a large suitcase is no easy task. I therefore considered myself fortunate indeed when a friendly police officer, having pulled alongside to take a closer look at me, directed me to a floodlit mock-Tudor boarding house off Kilburn High Road that in the words of its cricket-loving owner Mr Hakim was open to all skins at all hours provided they played the game. For cash up front — Maxie's dollars, converted into sterling — I had become the instant tenant of the Executive Suite, a commodious double bedroom at the rear of the house plus kitchenette and bay window overlooking a pocket-sized vegetable garden.

  It was by now past three in the morning but sleep does not come naturally to a man determined to reconnect with the woman of his life. Mr Hakim's ample wife had scarcely closed the door on me than I was prowling the room with earphones on, tape recorder in hand. And S did indeed stand for satellite. And Philip had made copious use of it. He had talked to the voice that was empowered to say yes. And the voice that said yes, to my chagrin, belonged to none other than my long-time hero and scourge of Penelope's great newspaper, Lord Brinkley of the Sands, although his tone of righteous indignation gave me grounds for hope. At first he was incredulous:

  “Philip, I am simply not hearing you. If I didn't know you better I'd say you were pulling one of Tabby's tricks.” And when Philip advises him that the deal will otherwise be scuppered:

  “It's the most immoral thing I've heard in my life. What's a handshake for, for God's sake? And you say he won't even settle for part now, the rest afterwards? Well he must. Reason with him.”

  And when Philip insists they have done all the reasoning they can think of, Brinkley's tone is, to my relief, the very model of injured innocence:

  “The boy's off his head. I shall speak to his father. Very well, give him what he asks. It will be strictly on account of future earnings and we shall be actively seeking ways to recover it from day one. Tell him that, Philip, please. I'm disappointed in you, frankly. And in him. If I didn't know you better, I'd be wondering who's doing what to whom.”

  • • •

  At seventeen minutes past eight a young man in a white overall came fluttering down the hospital steps. He was followed by two grey-habited nuns. At twenty past came a posse of nurses, male and female, mostly black. But somehow I knew that Hannah, though gregarious, wasn't going to be part of a group today. At eight-thirty-three another batch came galloping out. They were a happy crowd and Hannah would have fitted well among them. But not today. At eight-forty she came out alone, walking the crippled walk that afflicts people listening to cellphones. She was in uniform but without her nurse's cap. Hitherto I had only ever seen her in uniform or naked. She was frowning in the studious way she frowned when she was taking Jean-Pierre's pulse, or making love to me. Reaching the bottom step, she stopped dead, ignoring those who were obliged to walk round her on their way up or down, which for a woman so considerate of others might have been surprising, but not to me.

  She stood still, glowering in reproof at her cellphone. I half expected her to shake it or throw it away in disgust. Eventually she jammed it back to her ear, tilting her long neck to meet it, and I knew she was listening to the last of my eight messages transmitted through the small hours of today. As her head lifted, the hand holding the cellphone flopped to her side and I guessed that she had once again forgotten to switch it off. By the time I reached her she was starting to laugh, but as I grabbed hold of her the laughter turned to tears. And in the cab she did a bit more crying, then a bit of laughing, which was what I was doing too, all the way to Mr Hakim's boarding house. But there, as is the way of serious lovers, a mutual reserve overtook us, obliging us to release each other, and walk separately across the gravel forecourt. We both knew that explanations were owed, and that our journey into one another's arms should be a considered one. With due formality therefore, I drew back the door to the bedroom and stepped aside, inviting her to enter of her own free will rather than at my behest, which after a fractional hesitation she elected to do. I followed her in and dropped the latch, but seeing that her arms remained firmly at her side I resisted the impulse to embrace her.

  I will however add that her eyes had not for one second left mine. There was nothing of accusation or hostility in them. It was more a prolonged study-visit they were paying, which made me wonder how much she saw of the turmoil buried in them, because this was a woman who spent her days tending men in dire straits, and therefore knew her way round our faces. Her inspection of me complete, she took my hand and led me on a tour of the room, the apparent purpose of which was to link me to my possessions: Aunt Imelda's locket, my father's missal, et cetera and — because a degree nurse doesn't miss a trick where her patient is concerned — the vacant nearly-white mark on the third finger of my left hand. After which, by osmosis as it seemed to me, she picked up one of my four notepads — number three, as it happened, devoted to Maxie's war plan — and, much as Philip had done only sixteen hours earlier, demanded explanations which I was hesitant to supply, given that my strategy for her indoctrination required sophisticated preparation, in accordance with the best principles of tra
decraft.

  “And this!” she insisted, pointing unerringly at one of my more intricate hieroglyphics.

  “Kivu.”

  “You have been talking about Kivu?”

  “All weekend. Well, my clients have, put it that way.”

  “Positively?”

  “Well, creatively, put it that way.”

  I had planted the seeds, if ineptly. After a silence, she gave a sad smile. “Who can be creative about Kivu these days? Maybe nobody. But according to Baptiste, wounds are beginning to heal. If we can keep going that way, perhaps Congo will one day have children who don't know war. Kinshasa is even talking seriously about holding elections, at last.”

  “Baptiste?”

  She seemed at first not to hear me, so absorbed was she in my cuneiform. “Baptiste is the Mwangaza's unofficial representative in London,” she replied, handing me back my notepad.

  I was still pondering the existence of a Baptiste in her life when she let out a cry of alarm, the first and last I ever heard from her. She was holding up Maxie's envelope containing the six thousand dollars in bills that I had not yet changed into sterling, and the accusation in her face was clear to read.

  “Hannah, it's not stolen. It's earned. By me. Honestly.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Well, legally, anyway. It's money given me by” — I was about to say “the British Government” but for the sake of Mr Anderson changed my mind — “the clients I've been working for over the weekend.” If I had allayed her suspicions, they were reignited by the sight of Brian Sinclair's visiting cards which I had left lying on the mantelpiece. “Brian's a friend of mine,” I assured her with mistaken guile. “Somebody we both know, actually. I'll tell you all about him later.”