Single & Single

by John le Carré

  “Mine was bang on time.” He sat at the table in his usual place. She remained standing, doting on him, trembling and worrying, working her lips like a baby before a feed. “Anyone staying?” he asked.

  “Just me and the pussycats, darling. Why should there be?”

  “I just wondered.”

  “I don’t keep a dog anymore. Not after Samantha pined away.”

  “I know.”

  “She just sat in the hall at the end, waiting for the sound of the Rolls. She wouldn’t budge, not at the end, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t hear me.”

  “You told me.”

  “She’d decided she was a one-man dog. Tiger said bury her next to the pheasantry, so we did. Me and Mrs. Henderson.”

  “And Gasson,” he reminded her.

  “Gasson dug the hole, Mrs. Henderson said the words. We weren’t a very jolly party, I’m afraid.”

  “Where is he, Mother?”

  “Gasson, darling?”

  “Tiger.”

  She’s forgotten her lines, he thought, watching her eyes begin to flood. She’s trying to remember what she’s supposed to say.

  “Oh Ollie, darling.”

  “What is it, Mother?”

  “I thought you’d come for me.”

  “I have. I wondered where Tiger was. He’s been here. Gupta told me.”

  It wasn’t fair. Nothing was. She was calling up a whole storm of self-pity to shelter her. “Everyone asks me,” she wailed. “Massingham. Mirsky. Gupta. That creepy Hoban man from Vienna. Bernard. That ghastly Hawsley hag with her pugs. Now you. I tell them all. I don’t know. You’d think with fax machines and cell phones and God knows what, they’d know where everyone was all the time. They don’t. Information isn’t knowledge, your father always says. He’s right.”

  “Who’s Bernard?”

  “Bernard, darling. You know Bernard. The big bald policeman from Liverpool that Tiger helped. Bernard Porlock. You once called him Curly and he nearly killed you.”

  “I think that must have been Jeffrey,” Oliver said. “And Mirsky, he’s the lawyer.”

  “Of course he is, darling. Alix’s lovely bubbly Polish friend from Istanbul. Tiger only needs a bit of privacy,” she protested. “It’s perfectly reasonable, living in the limelight the way he does, to want to be someone little for a while. We all do sometimes. You did. You even changed your name so that you could. Darling, didn’t you?”

  “And you’ve heard the news, I take it. Well, you must have done.”

  “What news?”—sharply. “I’m not to talk to the newspapers, Ollie. You’re not either. I’m to put the phone down on them.”

  “The news about Alfred Winser. Our legal eagle.”

  “That dreadful little man? Whatever’s he done?”

  “I’m afraid he’s died, Mother. Been shot. Out in Turkey. Person or persons unknown. He was doing a job for Single’s and someone shot him.”

  “Oh, how horrible, darling. How perfectly disgusting. I’m so, so sorry. That poor woman. She’ll have to take a job. It’s too cruel. Oh darling.”

  You knew, he thought. You had the words ready before I finished telling you. They stood hand in hand at the center of her snug, which she called the morning room. It was the smallest of a run of living rooms that skirted the south side of the house. Jacko the Siamese lay in an upholstered basket under the television set. Tell me what’s changed since you were here last, darling, she was saying. Let’s play Kim’s Game, come on! He played, looking for clues. Tiger’s engraved whisky glass, the imprint of his neat backside in his favorite chair, a pink newspaper, handmade chocolates from Richoux round the corner in South Audley Street, he never showed up at Nightingales without them.

  “That watercolor’s new,” he said.

  “Ollie darling, how terribly clever of you!”—clapping her hands but making no sound. “It’s at least a hundred years old, but it’s new here, so well done you. Auntie Bee left it to me. It was done by the lady who painted birds for Queen Victoria. I never expect anything when people die.”

  “So when did you last see him, Mother, actually?”

  But instead of answering him, she embarked on an impassioned description of Mrs. Henderson’s hip operation, how the local hospital had been absolutely marvelous, just when the government was planning to close it down, which was typical: “And our darling Dr. Bill, who’s been looking after all of us for eons—he just—well, he was, well, yes”—she had lost the thread.

  They moved to the boys’ dayroom and contemplated wooden toys he didn’t remember playing with and the rocking horse he didn’t remember riding, though she swore he’d nearly rocked it off its stand, so he supposed she was thinking of Jeffrey again.

  “And you’re all right, aren’t you, darling? The three of you? I know I shouldn’t ask but I’m only a mother, I’m not stone. You’re all healthy and happy and free, the way you wanted it, darling? No more bad things?”

  And kept her smile on him, flickering like a home movie, and her plucked eyebrows arching while he handed her a photograph of Carmen and watched her quiz it with the folding spectacles she kept on a garnet necklace, at arm’s length, the photo swaying with her arm and her head swaying with the photo.

  “She’s bigger than that now, and we’ve cut her hair,” Oliver said. “She says new things every day.”

  “Absolutely adorable, darling. Bliss”—shoving the photo back at him—“jolly well done, both of you. What a lovely, scrummy, happy little girl. And Helen’s well, is she? Happy and things?”

  “Heather’s great.”

  “I am glad.”

  “I need to know, Mother. I have to know when you last saw Tiger and what happened. Everybody’s searching for him. It’s important that I find him first.” It’s better when we don’t look at each other, he remembered, keeping his eyes on the rocking horse.

  “Don’t bully me, Ollie darling. You know how I am about dates. I hate clocks, I hate night, I hate bullies. I hate everything that isn’t yummy and moreish and sunny.”

  “But you love Tiger. You don’t wish him ill. And you love me.”

  Her voice went little girl. “You know your father, darling. He sweeps in, he sweeps out, you wiggle all about and when he’s gone you wonder whether he was here at all. If you’re poor Nadia you do.”

  He was sick and tired of her, which was why he had tried to run away when he was seven. He wished she was dead like Jeffrey. “He came here and told you Winser had been shot,” he said.

  Her hand flew across her body and clutched her upper arm. She was wearing a long-sleeved blouse of tulle, with frilly cuffs to hide the veins. “Your father’s been very good to us, Oliver. Stop it. Do you hear me?”

  “Where is he, Mother?”

  “You’re to respect him. Respect is what separates us from animals. He didn’t compare you with Jeffrey. He didn’t turn his back on you when you failed your exams and had to leave your schools. Other fathers would have done. He didn’t mind you writing poetry or whatever else you did, even though there wasn’t any money in it. He sent you to tutors and gave you Jeffrey’s place in the business. That’s hard for a man who believes in merit and pulled himself up by his bootlaces. You were spared Liverpool, I wasn’t. If you’d known Liverpool, you’d have Jeffrey’s spirit. No two marriages are the same, they can’t be. He’s always loved Nightingales. He’s always kept me as I should be kept. It was disloyal of you, Oliver. Whatever you did to him, he didn’t deserve it. You’ve got your own family now. Go and attend to them. And stop pretending you’re in Singapore when I know perfectly well you’re in Devon.”

  He was dead cold, her executioner. “You told him, didn’t you?” he said flatly. “Tiger wormed it out of you. He came and saw you, he told you about Winser, and you told him about me. Where I was. What my new name was. Where you wrote to me, care of Toogood at the bank. He must have been very grateful.” He had to hold her up because she was drooping and biting her forefinger and moaning pathetically at him from under h
er Princess Diana fringe. “So what I’d like to know, please, Nadia, is what Tiger told you,” he went on brutally. “Because if you don’t tell me, I’ve a good notion he’s going to finish up like Alfie Winser.”

  She needed another different place, so he led her along the corridor to the dining room, with its carved white marble fireplace from Mallet’s with statues of naked women possibly by Canova set into pillared alcoves. All through his puberty they had been the beloved sirens of his fantasy. One stolen peek through the half-open doorway at their celestial smiles and flawless bottoms had been enough to fire him. Above them hung a family conversation piece done by a forgotten painter of the day, with golden clouds rising over Nightingales and Tiger mounted on a prancing polo pony and Oliver in Eton jacket reaching for the bridle, and Tiger’s beautiful young wife, Nadia, wasp waisted in a flowing housecoat, restraining the child’s overeager hand. And behind Tiger, and looking like a blond Italian prince, pranced the ghost of Jeffrey, brought alive from photographs, with flowing gold hair and a dashing smile as he jumps his gray pony, Admiral, through a sunbeam, while family retainers wave their caps.

  “I’m so bad, Oliver,” Nadia complained, taking the painting as a reproach of some kind. “Tiger should never have married me. I should never have had you both.”

  “Don’t worry, Mother. Somebody would have had us even if you hadn’t,” he said with false cheerfulness. He was wondering whether Jeffrey was Tiger’s child. In her cups, she had once spoken of a fellow barrister of Tiger’s in Liverpool, a real rough diamond with gorgeous fair hair.

  They were in the billiards room. He was pressing her again: I’ve got to know, Mother, I have to hear what passed between the two of you. She was hiccuping and shaking her head and denying everything while she confessed herself, but her tears had ceased to come. I’m too young, too frail, too sensitive, darling, Tiger wheedled it out of me, and now you’re doing the same. It was because I never went to university, my father didn’t think girls should, thank God I never had a daughter. She switched pronouns and talked about herself as someone else: “She only ever told Tiger little bits, darling. Never all of it, she wouldn’t. If Ollie hadn’t peached to poor Nadia in the first place, she could never have peached to Tiger, could she?” You’re bloody right, he thought. It was never any use to tell you anything. I should have left you to drink and fret yourself into the grave. “He was so sad, darling,” she explained through her sobs. “Sad about Winser. Saddest about you. That Kat woman of his had been acting up, I expect. I’d rather have Jacko any day. All I wanted was for him to look at me, call me darling, put his arms round me and tell me I’m still pretty.”

  “Where is he, Mother? What name’s he sailing under?” He was clasping her and she was leaning all her weight on his arms. “He must have told you where he was going. He tells you everything. He wouldn’t leave his Nadia in the dark.”

  “I’m not to trust you. Not any of you. Not Mirsky or Hoban or Massingham or anybody. And Oliver started it. Let me go.”

  Leather chairs, books about horses, a headmaster’s desk. They had reached the study. A questionable Stubbs thoroughbred above the fireplace. Oliver strode to the window seat and ran his hand along the top of the pelmet till he came on a dusty brass key. He lifted the questionable Stubbs from its hook and set it on the floor. Behind it, a wall safe was positioned at Tiger height. He unlocked it and peered inside, just as he had done as a child in the days when he believed the safe was a magic hen box where a great secret would be laid.

  “There’s nothing there, Ollie darling, there never was. Just boring wills and deeds and bits of foreign money from his pockets.”

  Nothing now, nothing then. He locked it, replaced the key and turned his attention to the desk drawers. A polo glove. A box of twelve-bore cartridges. Receipted tradesmen’s bills. Stationery. A black notebook, nothing printed on the cover. I want notebooks, Brock had said. I want jottings, memo pads, diaries, scribbled addresses, I want names written inside book matches, screwed-up balls of paper, anything he meant to throw away and didn’t. Oliver flipped open the notebook: The After-Dinner Speaker’s Guide. Jokes, Aphorisms, Words of Wisdom, Quotations. He tossed the notebook back in the drawer. “Any parcels arrived for him, Mother? Packages, large envelopes, registered stuff, couriers? Nothing you were keeping for him? Nothing that’s arrived since he left?” Collateral is forwarded to you under separate cover to your private residence. Signed Y. I. Orlov.

  “Of course not, darling. Nobody writes to him here unless it’s bills.” He took her back to the kitchen and made a pot of tea while she watched. “At least you’re not ugly anymore, darling.” She meant it as a consolation they could share. “He cried. I haven’t seen him cry since Jeffrey. He borrowed my Polaroid. You didn’t know I was a photographer, did you?”

  “What on earth did he want with a Polaroid?”—thinking passports, visa applications.

  “He wanted a picture of everything he loved. Me. The painting of us all, the walled garden, everything that made him happy before you made it all go wrong.”

  She wanted another cuddle, so he provided it.

  “Old Yevgeny been down recently?”

  “Last winter, darling. For the pheasants.”

  “But Tiger hasn’t shot a bear yet?”—joke.

  “No, darling. I don’t think bears are him. They’re too like humans.”

  “Who else came along?”

  “That poor Mikhail. He shoots everything. He’d have shot Jacko if he’d had a chance. It’s so sweet of Yevgeny to include him in things. And Mirsky, of course.”

  “What did Mirsky do?”

  “Played chess with Randy in the conservatory. Randy and Mirsky were very close. I wondered whether they’d got a thing going.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “Well, Randy’s hardly a lady’s man, is he? And darling Dr. Mirsky would get up to anything. I caught him flirting with Mrs. Henderson in the kitchen, if you can believe it, asking her to come and make shepherd’s pie for him in Gdansk.”

  He handed her a cup. Piece of lemon, never milk. He kept his voice breezy. “So how did Tiger get here—this time—when he came and saw you? Did Gasson bring him?”

  “A taxi did, darling. From the station. He came by train like you, except it wasn’t Sunday. He didn’t want to be conspicuous.”

  “So what did you do? Hide him in the woodshed?”

  She was standing, clutching the back of a chair for support. “We beat the bounds, just like we always do, looking at everything he loves and photographing it,” she replied defiantly. “He was wearing the brown Raglan I gave him for his fortieth. We call it his love coat. I said, don’t go, stay here. I said I’d look after him. He wouldn’t listen. He had to save the ship, he said. There was still time. Yevgeny had to know the truth, then everything would be all right. ‘I fought them off at Christmas and I’ll do it again now.’ I was proud of him.”

  “What happened at Christmas?”

  “Switzerland, darling. I thought he was going to take me, like in the old days. But it was work, work, all the way. Back and forth like a yo-yo. He never did eat his Christmas pud, although he loves it. Mrs. Henderson nearly wept. But he won. He fought them off. All of them. ‘I’ve bloodied their noses,’ he said. ‘Yevgeny stood by me at the end. They won’t try that one again in a hurry.’”

  “Who won’t?”

  “Whoever they were. Hoban. Mirsky. How should I know? All the people who tried to do him down. The traitors. You’re one of them. He said he had to send you something. If he never had sight or sound of you again, there was something he owed you as your father although you’d done the dirty on him. Something he’d promised you. It was what his life’s about. So’s mine. We always taught you to keep your promises.”

  “Which was when you told him about Carmen.”

  “He’d decided I knew where you were. He’s clever. He always was. He’d noticed I wasn’t worrying about you the way I do, and why wasn’t I? He’s a lawyer, so
you can’t argue with him. I said nonsense and he shook me. Not hard, like the old days, but hard enough. I tried to go on lying for you, but then I didn’t see why I should bother. You were our only son. We owned you equally. I told him he was a grandfather and he wept again. Children always think their parents are cold until they cry, then they think they’re ridiculous. He said he needed you.”

  “Needed me? What the hell for?”

  “He’s your father, Ollie! He’s your partner! They’re ganging up on him. Who’s he supposed to turn to, if not his own son? You owe him. It’s time you stood by him.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “Yes! His words. Tell him he owes me!”

  “Tell him?”

  “Yes!”

  “Did he have a suitcase?”

  “A brown bag to match his love coat. A carry-on.”

  “Where was he flying to?”

  “I didn’t say he was flying!”

  “You said a carry-on.”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t!”

  “Nadia. Mother. Listen to me. The police have combed every flight list and passenger list there is. There’s not a trace of him. How did he fly without them noticing?”

  She flung round at him, breaking herself free. “He said you were! He’s right! You’re in league with the police!”

  “I have to help him, Mother. He needs me. He said so. If I don’t find him and you know where he is, it’ll be on our heads.”

  “I don’t know where he is! He’s not like you, he doesn’t tell me things I can’t keep in. Stop squeezing me like that!”

  Scared of himself, Oliver stepped quickly back from her. She was whimpering, “What’s the good? Tell me what you want to know and leave me in peace.” Then choking on her own words. He returned to her and took her in his arms. He put his cheek against hers and felt it stick against her tears. She was submitting to him the way she had submitted to his father and there was a side of him that triumphed and a side that hated her for her frailty. “He hasn’t been seen since, Mother. Nobody’s seen him but you. How did he leave?”