The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré

The gardenia wall has one last cameo for him.

Pendel and his host are standing on the doorstep of Mr Blüthner’s emporium, saying goodbye to one another several times.

‘You know something, Harry?’

‘What’s that, Mr B?’

‘That Jonah fellow is the biggest bullshit artist in the world. He knows nothing about orimulsion and even less about Japanese industry. Their dreams of expansion: well, yes, there I agree. The Japanese have always been irrational about the Panama Canal. The problem is, by the time they’re running it nobody will be using big ocean-going vessels any more, and nobody will be needing oil because we shall have better, cleaner, cheaper forms of energy. As to those minerals of his’ – he shook his head – ‘if they need them, they’ll find them closer to home.’

‘But Mr B, you were so happy in there!’

Mr Blüthner gave a rascally smile. ‘Harry, I’ll tell you. All the time I was listening to Jonah, I was hearing your Uncle Benny and thinking how he loved a con. Now then. How about you join our little Brotherhood?’

But Pendel for once cannot find it in him to say what Mr Blüthner wants to hear.

‘I’m not ready for it, Mr B,’ he replies earnestly. ‘I’ve got to grow. I’m working on it and it will come. And when it does, and I’m ready, I’ll be back to you like a hot cake.’

But he was ready now. His conspiracy was up and running, with or without the orimulsion. The black cat of anger was washing his paws for battle.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Days, Pendel had told Osnard. I’ll need some days. Days of mutual thoughtfulness and marital renewal in which Pendel the husband and lover rebuilds the fallen bridges to his spouse and, concealing nothing, takes her with him into his most private realms, appointing her his confidante, helpmeet and fellow spy in the service of his grand vision.

As Pendel remade himself for Louisa, so he now remakes Louisa for the world. There are no more secrets between them. All is known, all is shared, they are together at last, head joe and subsource, conscious to one another and to Osnard, frank and bonded partners in a great endeavour. They have so much in common. Delgado their common source of intelligence on the destiny of gallant little Panama. London their common and exacting taskmaster. Anglo-Saxon civilisation at stake, children to protect, a network of brilliant subsources to nourish, a dastardly Japanese conspiracy to thwart, a common Canal to save. What woman worth her salt, what mother, what inheritor of her parents’ wars, would not rally to the call, put on the cloak, take up the dagger, and spy the daylights out of the Canal’s usurpers? From now on, the grand vision shall rule their lives entirely. Everything will be subordinated to it, every chance word and casual incident will be woven into the celestial tapestry. Perceived by Jonah, restored by Pendel, but with Louisa henceforth as its vestal. It is Louisa, with Delgado to assist her, who shall stand before it, bravely holding up the lamp.

And if Louisa is not in as many words aware of her new status, at least she cannot fail to be impressed by the harvest of little considerations that attends it.

Cancelling non-essential engagements and closing down the clubroom in the evenings Pendel hastens home to nurture and observe his agent-in-waiting, study her behaviour patterns and assemble the minutiae of her everyday existence in the workplace, most notably her relations with her revered, high-minded, adored and – to Pendel’s jealous eye – grossly overvalued boss, Ernesto Delgado.

Till now, he fears, he has loved his wife as a concept only, as some standard of straightness that complemented his own complexity. Very well, from today he will put conceptual love aside and know her for herself. Till now when he was rattling at the bars of marriage he was trying to get out. Now he is trying to get in. No detail of her daily life is too slight for him: every comment about her peerless employer, his comings and goings, phone calls, engagements, conferences, fads and little ways. The smallest aberration in his daily routine, the name and standing of the most casual visitor to pass through Louisa’s office on his way to an audience with the great man – all the trivia which till now Pendel has listened to politely with one ear – become matters of such close concern to him that he has actually to damp down his curiosity for fear of arousing her concern. For the same reason, his constant note-making takes place under operational conditions: crouched in his den – a few bills to deal with, dear – or in the lavatory – I don’t know what I must have eaten, do you think it was the fish?

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