John le Carre: Our kind of traitor

'I asked the elder girl her name. I whispered, because everybody was being so quiet. She said, "Katya," and I said, "What's your sister's name?" and she said, "Irina." And Irina turned and stared at me as if I was – well, intruding really – I just couldn't understand the hostility. I said, "Are your mummy and daddy here?" To both of them. Katya gave a really vehement shake of her head. Irina didn't say anything at all. We sat still for a while. A long while, for children. And I was thinking: maybe they've been told they mustn't speak at tennis matches. Or they mustn't talk to strangers. Or maybe that's all the English they know, or maybe they're autistic, or handicapped in some way.'

She pauses, hoping for encouragement or a question, but sees only four waiting eyes and Perry at her side with his head tipped towards the brick walls that smell of her late father's drinking habits. She takes a mental deep breath and plunges:

'There was a game change. So I tried again: where do you go to school, Katya? Katya shakes her head, Irina shakes hers. No school? Or just none at the moment? None at the moment, apparently. They'd been going to a British International School in Rome, but they don't go there any more. No reason given, none asked for. I didn't want to be pushy, but I had a bad feeling I couldn't pin down. So do they live in Rome? Not any more. Katya again. So Rome's where you learned your excellent English? Yes. At International School they could choose English or Italian. English was better. I point to Dima's two boys. Are those your brothers? More shakes. Cousins? Yes, sort of cousins. Only sort of? Yes. Do they go to International School too? Yes, but in Switzerland, not Rome. And the beautiful girl who lives inside a book, I say, is she a cousin? Answer from Katya, squeezed out of her like a confession: Natasha is our cousin but only sort of – again. And still no smile from either of them. But Katya is stroking my silk outfit. As if she's never felt silk before.'

Gail takes a breath. This is nothing, she is telling herself. This is the hors d'oeuvre. Wait till next day for the full five-course horror story. Wait till I'm allowed to be wise after the event.

'And when she's stroked the silk enough, she puts her head against my arm and leaves it there and shuts her eyes. And that's the end of our social exchange for maybe five minutes, except that Irina on the other side of me has taken her cue from Katya and commandeered my hand. She's got these sharp, crabby little claws, and she's really fastening on to me. Then she presses my hand against her forehead and rolls her face round it as if she wants me to know she's got a temperature, except that her cheeks are wet and I realize she's been crying. Then she gives me my hand back, and Katya says, "She cries sometimes. It is normal." Which is when the game ends and Elspeth comes scuttling up the steps to fetch them, by which time I want to wrap Irina up in my sarong and take her home with me, preferably with her sister as well, but since I can't do any of that, and have no idea why she's upset, and don't know either of them from Adam – well, Eve – end of story.'

*

But it isn't the end of the story. Not in Antigua. The story is running beautifully. Perry Makepiece and Gail Perkins are still having the happiest holiday of their lifetimes, just as they had promised themselves back in November. To remind herself of their happiness, Gail plays the uncensored version to herself:

Ten a.m. approx., tennis over, return to cabin for Perry to shower.

Make love, beautifully as ever, we can still do that. Perry can never do anything by halves. All his powers of concentration must be focused on one thing at a time.

Midday or later. Miss breakfast buffet for operational reasons (above), swim in sea, lunch by pool, return to beach because Perry needs to beat me at shuffle-board.

Four p.m. approx. Return to cabin with Perry victorious – why doesn't he let a girl win even once? – doze, read, more love, doze again, lose sense of time. Polish off Chardonnay from minibar while reclining on balcony in bathrobes.

Eight p.m. approx. Decide we're too lazy to dress, order supper in cabin.

Still on our once-in-a-lifetime holiday. Still in Eden, munching the bloody apple.

Nine p.m. approx. Supper arrives, wheeled in not by any old room-service waiter but the venerable Ambrose himself who, in addition to the bottle of Californian plonk we have ordered, brings us a frosted bottle of vintage Krug champagne in a silver ice bucket, priced on the wine list at $380 plus tax, which he proceeds to set out for us, together with two frosted glasses, a plate of very yummy-looking canapes, two damask napkins and a prepared speech, which he intones at full volume with his chest out and his hands pressed to his sides like a court copper.

'This very fine bottle of champagne comes to you folk courtesy of the one and only Mr Dima himself. Mr Dima, he says to thank you for' – plucking a note from his shirt pocket together with a pair of reading spectacles – 'he says, and I quote: "Professor, I thanks you very heartily for a fine lesson in the great art of fair-play tennis and being an English gentleman. I also thanks you for saving me five thousand dollars of gamble." Plus his compliments to the highly beautiful Miss Gail, and that's his message.'

We drink a couple of glasses of the Krug and agree to finish the rest in bed.

*

'What's Kobe beef?' Perry asks me, sometime during an eventful night.

'Ever rubbed a girl's tummy?' I ask him.

'Wouldn't dream of it,' Perry says, doing just that.

'Virgin cows,' I tell him. 'Reared on sake and best beer. Kobe cattle have their tummies massaged every night till they're ready for the chop. Plus they're prime intellectual property,' I add, which is also true, but I'm not sure he's listening any more. 'Our Chambers fought a lawsuit for them and won hooves down.'

Falling asleep, I have a prophetic dream that I am in Russia, and bad things are happening to small children in wartime black and white.

Gail's sky is darkening, and so also is the basement room. With the dying of the light, the wan ceiling lamp seems to burn more glumly over the table, and the brick walls have turned to black. Above them in the street the rumble of traffic has become sporadic. So have the shadowed feet trotting past the frosted half-moon windows. Big, genial Ollie with his one earring but without his beret has bustled in with four cups of tea and a plate of digestive biscuits and disappeared.

Although this is the same Ollie who picked them up from Gail's flat in a black cab earlier this evening, it is by now acknowledged that he is not a real cab driver, despite the licence badge he sports on his ample chest. Ollie, according to Luke, 'keeps us all on the straight and narrow', but Gail doesn't buy this. A blue-stocking Scottish Calvinist is not in need of moral guidance, and for a gentleman jockey with a wandering eye and an armoury of upper-class charm, it's way too late.

Besides, Ollie has too much behind the eyes for his menial role, in Gail's opinion. She's also puzzled about his earring, whether it's a sex-signal or just a lark. She's also puzzled about his voice. When she first heard it over the house entryphone in Primrose Hill, it was straight cockney. As he chatted to them through the partition about the dismal weather we were having for May – after that lovely April, and dear me how was the blossom ever going to recover from last night's deluge? – she detected foreign underlays and his syntax began to break up. So what was his home tongue? Greek? Turkish? Hebrew? Or is the voice, like the single earring, an act he puts on to bamboozle us punters?

She wishes she'd never signed that bloody Declaration. She wishes Perry hadn't. Perry wasn't signing when he signed that form, he was joining.