The Honorable Schoolboy

by John le Carré

  “I saw Ricardo,” he said. “We had a full and frank exchange of views.”

  He needed very much to hear whether they had told her. He needed to absolve her from Luke. He listened, then went on:

  “Charlie Marshall gave me his address, so I popped up and had a chat with him.”

  “Great. So now you’re family.”

  “They told me about Mellon. Said you carried dope for him.” She didn’t speak so he turned to look at her, and she was sitting on the bed with her head in her hands. In the jeans and pullover she looked about fifteen years old, and half a foot shorter.

  “What the hell do you want?” she whispered at last, so quietly she might have been putting the question to herself.

  “You,” he said. “For keeps.”

  He didn’t know whether she heard because all she did was let out a long breath and whisper “Oh, Jesus” at the end of it.

  “Mellon a friend of yours?” she asked finally.

  “No.”

  “Pity. He needs a friend like you.”

  “Does Arpego know where Ko is?”

  She shrugged.

  “When did you last hear from him?”

  “A week.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He had things to arrange.”

  “What things?”

  “For Christ’s sake, stop asking questions! The whole sodding world is asking questions, so just don’t join the queue, right?”

  He stared at her and her eyes were alight with anger and despair. He opened the balcony door and stepped outside.

  I need a brief, he thought bitterly. Sarratt bearleaders, where are you now I need you? It hadn’t dawned on him till now that when he cut the cable, he was also dropping the pilot.

  The balcony ran along three sides. The fog had temporarily cleared. Behind him hung the Peak, its shoulders festooned in gold lights. Banks of running cloud made changing caverns round the moon. The harbour had dug out all its finery. At its centre an American aircraft carrier, floodlit and dressed overall, basked like a pampered woman amid a cluster of attendant launches. On her deck, a line of helicopters and small fighters reminded him of the air base in Northern Thailand. A column of ocean-going junks drifted past her, headed for Canton.

  “Jerry,” she called.

  She was standing in the open doorway, watching him down a line of tub trees.

  “Come on in. I’m hungry,” she said.

  It was a kitchen where nobody cooked or ate, but it had a Bavarian corner, with pine settles, Chinese-style alpine pictures, and ashtrays saying “Carlsberg.” She gave him coffee from an ever-ready percolator, and he noticed how when she was on guard she kept her shoulders forward and her forearms across her body, the way the orphan used to. She was shivering. He thought she had been shivering ever since he laid the gun on her and he wished he hadn’t done that, because it was beginning to dawn on him that she was in as bad a state as he was, and perhaps a damn sight worse, and that the mood between them was like two people after a disaster, each in a separate hell. He made her a brandy and soda and the same for himself and sat her in the drawingroom where it was warmer, and he watched her while she hugged herself and drank the brandy, staring at the carpet.

  “Music?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I represent myself,” he said. “No connection with any other firm.”

  She might not have heard.

  “I’m free and willing,” he said. “It’s just that a friend of mine died.”

  He saw her nod, but only in sympathy; he was sure it rang no bell with her at all.

  “The Ko thing is getting very grubby,” he said. “It’s not going to work out well. They’re very rough boys you’re mixed up with. I thought maybe you’d like a leg out of it all. That’s why I came back. My Galahad act. It’s just I don’t quite know what’s gathering round you. Mellon—all that. Maybe we should unbutton it together and see what’s there.”

  After which not very articulate explanation, the telephone rang. It had one of those throttled croaks designed to spare the nerves.

  The telephone was across the room on a gilded trolley. A pinlight winked on it with each dull note, and the rippled glass shelves picked up the reflection. She glanced at it, then at Jerry, and her face was at once alert with hope. Jumping to his feet, he pushed the trolley over to her and its wheels stammered in the deep pile. The wire uncoiled behind him as he walked, till it was like a child’s scribble across the room. She lifted the receiver quickly and said “Worth” in the slightly rude tone women learn when they live alone. He thought of telling her the line was bugged but he didn’t know what he was warning her against; he had no position any more, this side or that side. He didn’t know what the sides were, but his head was suddenly full of Luke again and the hunter in him was wide awake.

  She had the telephone to her ear but she hadn’t spoken. Once she said “Yes,” as if she were acknowledging instructions, and once she said “No” strongly. Her expression had turned blank, her voice told him nothing. But he sensed obedience and he sensed concealment, and as he did so, the anger lit in him completely and nothing else mattered.

  “No,” she said to the phone. “I left the party early.”

  He knelt beside her, trying to listen, but she kept the receiver pressed hard against her.

  Why didn’t she ask him where he was? Why didn’t she ask when she would see him? Whether he was all right? Why he hadn’t phoned? Why did she look at Jerry like this, show no relief?

  His hand on her cheek, he forced her head round and whispered to the other ear.

  “Tell him you must see him! You’ll come to him. Anywhere.”

  “Yes,” she said again into the phone. “All right. Yes.”

  “Tell him! Tell him you must see him!”

  “I must see you,” she said finally. “I’ll come to you wherever you are.”

  The receiver was still in her hand. She made a shrug, asking for instruction, and her eyes were still turned to Jerry—not as her Sir Galahad but as just another part of a hostile world that encircled her.

  “I love you!” he whispered. “Say what you say!”

  “I love you,” she said shortly, with her eyes closed, and rang off before he could stop her.

  “He’s coming here,” she said. “And damn you.”

  Jerry was still kneeling beside her. She stood up in order to get clear of him.

  “Does he know?” Jerry asked.

  “Know what?”

  “That I’m here?”

  “Perhaps.” She lit a cigarette.

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When will he be here?”

  “He said soon.”

  “Is he alone?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Does he carry a gun?”

  She was across the room from him. Her strained grey eyes still held him in their furious, frightened glare. But Jerry was indifferent to her mood. A feverish urge for action had overcome all other feelings.

  “Drake Ko. The nice man who set you up here. Does he carry a gun? Is he going to shoot me? Is Tiu with him? Just questions, that’s all.”

  “He doesn’t wear it in bed, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I thought you two men would prefer to be left alone.”

  Leading her back to the sofa, he sat her facing the double doors at the far end of the room. They were panelled with frosted glass, and on the other side of them lay the hall and the front entrance. He opened them, clearing her line of view to anybody coming in.

  “Do you have rules about letting people in, you two?” She didn’t follow his question. “There’s a peep-hole here. Does he insist you check every time before you open?”

  “He’ll ring on the house phone from downstairs. Then he’ll use his door key.”

  The front door was laminated hardboard, not solid, but solid enough. Sarratt folklore said, �
��If you are taking a lone intruder unawares, don’t get behind the door or you’ll never get out again.” For once Jerry was inclined to agree. Yet to keep to the open side was to be a sitting duck for anyone aggressively inclined, and Jerry was by no means sure that Ko was either unaware or alone. He considered going behind the sofa, but if there was to be shooting he didn’t want the girl to be in the line of it; he definitely didn’t. Her passivity, her lethargic stare did nothing to reassure him. His brandy glass was beside hers on the table, and he put it quietly out of sight behind a vase of plastic orchids. He emptied the ashtray and set an open copy of Vogue in front of her on the table.

  “You play music when you’re alone?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He chose Ellington.

  “Too loud?”

  “Louder,” she said. Suspicious, he turned down the sound, watching her. As he did so, the house phone whistled twice from the hall.

  “Take care,” he warned and, gun in hand, moved to the open side of the front door, the sitting-duck position, three feet from the arc, close enough to spring forward, far enough to shoot and throw himself, which was what he had in mind as he dropped into a halfcrouch. He held the gun in his left hand and nothing in his right, because at that distance he couldn’t miss with either hand, whereas if he had to strike he wanted his right hand free. He remembered the way Tiu carried his hands curled, and he warned himself not to get in close. Whatever he did, to do it from a distance. A groin kick but don’t follow it in; stay outside those hands.

  “You say ‘Come on up,’ ” he told her.

  “Come on up,” Lizzie repeated into the phone. She rang off and unhooked the chain.

  “When he comes in, smile for the camera. Don’t shout.”

  “Go to hell,” she said.

  From the lift-well, to his sharpened ear, came the clump of a lift arriving and the monotonous “ping” of the bell. He heard footsteps approaching the door, one pair only, steady, and remembered Drake Ko’s comic, slightly ape-like gait at Happy Valley, how the knees tipped through the grey flannels. A key slid into the lock, one hand came round the door, and the rest with no apparent forethought followed. By then Jerry had sprung with all his weight, flattening the unresisting body against the wall. A picture of Venice fell, the glass smashed, he slammed the door, all in the same moment that he found a throat and jammed the barrel of the pistol straight into the deep flesh. Then the door was unlocked a second time from outside, very fast, the wind went out of his body, his feet flew upward, a crippling shock of pain spread from his kidneys and felled him on the thick carpet, a second blow caught him in the groin and made him gasp as he jerked his knees to his chin. Through his streaming eyes he saw the little, furious figure of Fawn the baby-sitter standing over him, shaping for a third strike, and the rigid grin of Sam Collins as he peered calmly over Fawn’s shoulder to see what the damage was. And still in the doorway, wearing an expression of grave apprehension as he straightened his collar after Jerry’s unprovoked assault on him, the flustered figure of his one-time guide and mentor, Mr. George Smiley, breathlessly calling his leash-dogs to order.

  Jerry was able to sit, but only if he leaned forward. He held both hands in front of him, his forearms jammed into his lap. The pain was all over his body, like poison spreading from a central source. The girl watched from the hall doorway. Fawn was lurking, hoping for another excuse to hit him. Sam Collins was at the other end of the room, sitting in a winged armchair with his legs crossed as if he were at home here and the chair his favourite. Smiley had poured Jerry a neat brandy and was stooping over him, poking the glass into his hand.

  “What are you doing here, Jerry?” Smiley said. “I don’t understand.”

  “Courting,” said Jerry and closed his eyes as a wave of black pain swept over him. “Developed an unscheduled affection for our hostess, here. Sorry about that.”

  “That was a very dangerous thing to do, Jerry,” Smiley objected. “You could have wrecked the entire operation. Suppose I had been Ko. The consequences would have been disastrous.”

  “I’ll say they would.” He drank some brandy. “Luke’s dead. Lying in my flat with his head shot off.”

  “Who’s Luke?” Smiley asked, forgetting their meeting at Craw’s house.

  “No one. Just a friend.” He drank again. “American journalist. A drunk. No loss to anyone.”

  Smiley glanced at Sam Collins, but Sam shrugged. “Nobody we know,” he said.

  “Ring them, all the same,” said Smiley.

  Sam picked up the mobile telephone and walked out of the room with it because he knew the layout.

  “Put the burn on her, have you?” Jerry said, with a nod of his head toward Lizzie. “About the only thing left in the book that hasn’t been done to her, I should think.” He called over to her. “How are you doing there, sport? Sorry about the tussle. Didn’t break anything, did we?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Put the bite on you about your wicked past, did they? Stick and carrot? Promised to wipe the slate clean? Silly girl, Lizzie. Not allowed a past in this game. Can’t have a future either. Verboten.”

  He turned back to Smiley. “That’s all it was, George. No philosophy to it. Old Lizzie got under my skin.”

  Tilting back his head, he studied Smiley’s face through halfclosed eyes. And with the clarity which pain sometimes brings, he felt somehow that by his action he had put Smiley’s own existence under threat.

  “Don’t worry,” he said gently. “Won’t happen to you, that’s for sure.”

  “Jerry,” said Smiley.

  “Yes, sir,” said Jerry and made a show of sitting to attention.

  “Jerry, you don’t understand what’s going on. How much you could upset things. Billions of dollars and thousands of men could not obtain a part of what we stand to gain from this one operation. A war general would laugh himself silly at the thought of such a tiny sacrifice for such an enormous dividend.”

  “Don’t ask me to get you off the hook, old boy,” Jerry said, looking up into his face again. “You’re the owl, remember? Not me.”

  Sam Collins returned. Smiley glanced at him in question.

  “He’s not one of theirs either,” said Sam.

  “They were aiming for me,” said Jerry. “They got Lukie instead. He’s a big bloke. Or was.”

  “And he’s in your flat?” Smiley asked. “Dead. Shot. And in your flat?”

  “Been there some while.”

  Smiley to Collins: “We shall have to brush over the traces, Sam. We can’t risk a scandal.”

  “I’ll get back to them now,” Collins said.

  “And find out about planes,” Smiley called after him. “Two first-class seats.”

  Collins nodded.

  “Don’t like that fellow one bit,” Jerry confessed. “Never did. Must be his moustache.” He shoved a thumb toward Lizzie. “What’s she got that’s so hot for you all, anyway, George? Ko doesn’t whisper his inmost secrets to her. She’s a round-eye.” He turned to Lizzie. “Does he?”

  She shook her head.

  “If he did, she wouldn’t remember,” he went on. “She’s thick as hell about those things. She’s probably never even heard of Nelson.” He called to her again. “You. Who’s Nelson? Come on, who is he? Ko’s little dead son, isn’t he? That’s right. Named his boat after him, didn’t he? And his gee-gee.” He turned back to Smiley. “See? Thick. Leave her out of it, that’s my advice.”

  Collins had returned with a note of flight times. Smiley read it, frowning through his spectacles. “We shall have to send you home at once, Jerry,” he said. “Guillam’s waiting downstairs with a car. Fawn will go along as well.”

  “I’d just like to be sick again if you don’t mind.”

  Reaching upward, Jerry took hold of Smiley’s arm for support, and at once Fawn sprang forward, but Jerry shot out a warning finger at him as Smiley ordered him back.

  “You keep your distance, you poisonous little leprechaun,”
Jerry advised. “You’re allowed one bite and that’s all. The next one won’t be so easy.”

  He moved in a crouch, trailing his feet slowly, hands latched over his groin. Reaching the girl, he stopped in front of her.

  “Did they have powwows up here, Ko and his lovelies? Ko bring his boy-friends up here for a natter, did he?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And you helped with the mikes, did you, like the good little housewife? Let the sound boys in, tended the lamp? I bet you did.”

  She nodded.

  “Still not enough,” he objected as he hobbled to the bathroom. “Still doesn’t answer my question. Must be more to it than that. Far more.”

  In the bathroom he held his face under cold water, drank some, and immediately vomited. On the way back, he looked for the girl again. She was in the drawing-room, and in the way that people under stress look for trivial things to do, she was sorting the gramophone records, putting each in its proper sleeve. In a distant corner, Smiley and Collins were quietly conferring. Closer at hand Fawn was waiting at the door.

  “Bye, sport,” he said to her. Putting his hand on her shoulder, he drew her round till her grey eyes looked straight at him.

  “Goodbye,” she said and kissed him, not in passion exactly, but at least with more deliberation than the waiters got.

  “I was a sort of accessory before the fact,” he explained. “I’m sorry about that. I’m not sorry about anything else. You’d better look after that sod Ko too. Because if they don’t manage to kill him, I may.”

  He touched the lines on her chin, then shuffled toward the door where Fawn stood, and turned round to take his leave of Smiley, who was alone again; Collins had been sent off to telephone. Smiley stood as Jerry remembered him best, his short arms slightly lifted from his sides, his head back a little, his expression at once apologetic and enquiring, as if he’d just left his umbrella on the underground. The girl had turned away from both of them and was still sorting the records.

  “Love to Ann, then,” Jerry said.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re wrong, sport. Don’t know how, don’t know why, but you’re wrong. Still, too late for that, I suppose.” He felt sick again and his head was shrieking from the pains in his body. “You come any nearer than that,” he said to Fawn, “and I will definitely break your bloody neck, you understand?” He turned back to Smiley, who stood in the same posture and gave no sign of having heard.