Read Online The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré - Free Book Online Page B

which was one of the things about me that commended me to Mr. Braithwaite’s attention.”
    â€œYear?”
    â€œWell, yes, my goodness, the year.” Rallying, he shook his head and tried to smile. “Oh dear me. A whole generation ago. Still, you can’t sweep back the tide, can you? King Canute tried it, and look where he ended up,” he added, not at all sure where Canute did end up, if anywhere.
    All the same, he was feeling the artistry coming back to him, what Uncle Benny called his fluence.
    â€œHe was standing in the doorway,” he resumed, striking a lyrical note. “I must have been absorbed in a pair of trousers I’d been entrusted with, which is what happens to me when I’m cutting, because it gave me a start. I looked up and there he was, watching me, not saying anything. He was a big man. People forget that about him. The big bald head, big eyebrows—he was imposing. A force. A fact of life—”
    â€œYou’ve forgotten his moustache,” Osnard objected.
    â€œMoustache?”
    â€œBloody great big bushy job, soup all over it. Must’ve shaved it off by the time they took that picture of him downstairs. Frightened the daylights out o’ me. Only five at the time.”
    â€œThere was no moustache in my day, Mr. Osnard.”
    â€œCourse there was. I can see it as if it was yesterday.”
    But either stubbornness or instinct told Pendel to give no ground.
    â€œI think your memory is playing tricks on you there, Mr. Osnard. You’re remembering a different gentleman and awarding his moustache to Arthur Braithwaite.”
    â€œBravo,” said Osnard softly.
    But Pendel refused to believe that he had heard this, or that Osnard had tipped him the shadow of a wink. He ploughed on:
    â€œ ‘Pendel,’ he says to me, ‘I want you to be my son. As soon as you’ve got the Queen’s English, I propose to call you Harry, promote you to the front of shop and appoint you my heir and partner—’ ”
    â€œYou said it took him nine years.”
    â€œWhat did?”
    â€œTo call you Harry.”
    â€œI started as an apprentice, didn’t I?”
    â€œMy mistake. On you go.”
    â€œ ‘—and that’s all I’ve got to say to you, so now get back to your trousers and sign yourself into night school for the elocution.’ ”
    He had stopped. Dried up. His throat was sore, his eyes hurt, and there was a singing in his ears. But somewhere in him there was also a sense of accomplishment. I did it. My leg was broken, I had a temperature of a hundred and five, but the show went on.
    â€œFabulous,” Osnard breathed.
    â€œThank you, sir.”
    â€œMost beautiful bullshit I’ve ever listened to in my life, and you socked it to me like a hero.”
    Pendel was hearing Osnard from a long way off, among a lot of other voices. The Sisters of Charity at his North London orphanage telling him Jesus would be angry with him. The laughter of his children in the four-track. Ramón’s voice telling him that a London merchant bank had been enquiring about his status and offering inducements for the information. Louisa’s voice telling him that one good man was all it took. After that he heard the rushhour traffic heading out of town and dreamed of being stuck in it and free.
    â€œThing is, old boy, I know who you are, you see.” But Pendel saw nothing at all, not even Osnard’s black gaze boring into him. He had put up a screen in his mind, and Osnard was on the other side of it. “Put more accurately, I know who you aren’t. No cause for panic or alarm. I love it. Every bit of it. Wouldn’t be without it for the world.”
    â€œI’m not anybody,” Pendel heard himself whisper from his side of the screen and, after that, the sound of the fitting room curtain being swept aside.
    And he saw with deliberately fogged eyes that Osnard was peering through