John le Carré - The Honourable Schoolboy

'No licence plates,' Keller breathed. 'Holy Christ.'

'Don't hurry,' Jerry warned the driver. 'Toujours lentement. Don't put on your lights.' He was watching in the mirror.

'And those were the black pyjamas?' the girl said excitedly. 'And you wouldn't even let me take a picture?'

No one spoke.

'What did they want? Who are they trying to ambush?' she insisted.

'Somebody else,' said Jerry. 'Not us.'

'Some bum following us,' said Keller. 'Who cares?'

'Shouldn't we warn someone?'

'There isn't the apparatus,' said Keller. They heard shooting behind them but they kept going. 'Fucking rain,' Keller breathed, half to himself. 'Why the hell do we get rain suddenly?'

It had all but stopped.

'But Christ, Max,' the girl protested, 'if they've got us pinned out on the floor like this why don't they just finish us off.'

Before Keller could reply, the driver did it for him in French, softly and politely, though only Jerry understood.

'When they want to come, they will come,' he said, smiling at her in the mirror. 'In the bad weather. While the Americans are adding another five metres of concrete to their Embassy roof, and the soldiers are crouching in capes under their trees and the journalists are drinking whisky, and the generals are at the fumerie, the Khmer Rouge will come out of the jungle and cut our throats.'

'What did he say?' Keller demanded. 'Translate that, Westerby.'

'Yeah, what was all that?' said the girl. 'It sounded really great. Like a proposition or something.'

'Didn't quite get it actually, sport. Sort of outgunned me.'

They all broke out laughing, too loud, the driver as well.

And all through it, Jerry realised, he had thought of nobody but Lizzie. Not to the exclusion of danger — quite the contrary. Like the new glorious sunshine which now engulfed them, she was the prize of his survival.

At the Phnom, the same sun was beating gaily on the poolside. There had been no rain in the town, but a bad rocket near the girls' school had killed eight or nine children. The Southern stringer had that moment returned from counting them.

'So how did Maxie make out at the bang-bangs?' he asked Jerry as they met in the hall. 'Seems to me like his nerve is creaking at the joints a little these days.'

'Take your grinning little face out of my sight,' Jerry advised. 'Otherwise actually I'll smack it.'

Still grinning, the Southerner departed.

'We could meet tomorrow,' the girl said to Jerry. 'Tomorrow's free all day.'

Behind her, Keller was making his way slowly up the stairs, a hunched figure in a one-sleeved shirt, pulling himself by the banister rail.

'We could even meet tonight if you wanted,' Lorraine said.

For a while, Jerry sat alone in his room writing postcards for Cat. Then he set course for Max's bureau. He had a few more questions about Charlie Marshall. Besides, he had a notion old Max would appreciate his company. His duty done, he took a cyclo and rode up to Charlie Marshall's house again, but though he pummelled on the door and yelled, all he could see was the same bare brown legs motionless at the bottom of the stairs, this time by candlelight. But the page torn from his notebook had disappeared. He returned to the town and, still with an hour to kill, settled at a pavement café, in one of a hundred empty chairs, and drank a long Pernod, remembering how once the girls of the town had ticked past him here on their little wicker carriages, whispering clichés of love in sing-song French. Tonight, the darkness trembled to nothing more lovely than the occasional thud of gunfire, while the town huddled, waiting for the blow.

Yet it was not the shelling but the silence that held the greatest fear. Like the jungle itself this silence, not gunfire, was the natural element of the approaching enemy.

When a diplomat wants to talk, the first thing he thinks of is food, and in diplomatic circles one dined early because of the curfew. Not that diplomats were subject to such rigours, but it is a charming arrogance of diplomats the world over to suppose they set an example — to whom, or of what, the devil himself will never know. The Counsellor's house was in a flat, leafy enclave bordering Lon Nol's palace. In the driveway, as Jerry arrived, an official limousine was emptying its occupants, watched over by a jeep stiff with militia. It's either royalty or religion, Jerry thought as he got out; but it was nothing more than an American diplomat and his wife arriving for a meal.

'Ah. You must be Mr Westerby,' said his hostess.

She was tall and Harrods and amused by the idea of a journalist, as she was amused by anyone who was not a diplomat, and of counsellor rank at that. 'John has been dying to meet you,' she declared brightly, and Jerry supposed she was putting him at his ease. He followed the trail upstairs. His host stood at the top, a wiry man with a moustache and a stoop and a boyishness which Jerry more usually associated with the clergy.

'Oh well done! Smashing. You're the cricketer. Well done. Mutual friends, right? We're not allowed to use the balcony tonight, I'm afraid,' he said with a naughty glance toward the American corner. 'Good men are too scarce, apparently. Got to stay under cover. Seen where you are?' He stabbed a commanding finger at a leather-framed placement chart showing the seating arrangement. 'Come and meet some people. Just a minute.' He drew him slightly aside, but only slightly. 'It all goes through me, right? I've made that absolutely clear. Don't let them get you into a corner, right? Quite a little squall running, if you follow me. Local thing. Not your problem.'

The senior American appeared at first sight small, being dark and tidy, but when he stood to shake Jerry's hand, he was nearly Jerry's height. He wore a tartan jacket of raw silk and in his other hand he held a walkie-talkie radio in a black plastic case. His brown eyes were intelligent but over-respectful, and as they shook hands, a voice inside Jerry said 'Cousin'.

'Glad to know you, Mr Westerby. I understand you're from Hong Kong. Your Governor there is a very good friend of mine. Beckie, this is Mr Westerby, a friend of the Governor of Hong Kong, and a good friend of John, our host.'

He indicated a large woman bridled in dull, handbeaten silver from the market. Her bright clothes flowed in an Asian medley.

'Oh, Mr Westerby,' she said. 'From Hong Kong. Hullo.' The remaining guests were a mixed bag of local traders. Their womenfolk were Eurasian, French and Corsican. A houseboy hit a silver gong. The dining-room ceiling was concrete, but as they trooped in Jerry saw several eyes lift to make sure. A silver cardholder told him he was 'The Honourable G. Westerby', a silver menu holder promised him le roast beef à l'anglaise, silver candlesticks held long candles of a devotional kind, Cambodian boys flitted and backed at the half-crouch with trays of food cooked this morning while the electricity was on. A much travelled French beauty sat to Jerry's right with a lace handkerchief between her breasts. She held another in her hand, and each time she ate or drank she dusted her little mouth. Her name card called her Countess Sylvia.

'Je suis très, très diplomée,' she whispered to Jerry, as she pecked and dabbed. 'J'ai fait la science politique, mécanique et l'éléctricité générale. In January I have a bad heart. Now I recover.'

'Ah well, now me, I'm not qualified at anything,' Jerry insisted, making far too much of a joke of it. 'Jack of all trades, master of none, that's us.' To put this into French took him quite some while and he was still labouring at it when from somewhere fairly close, a burst of machine-gun fire sounded, far too long for the health of the gun. There were no answering shots. The conversation hung. 'Some bloody idiot shooting at the geckos I should think,' said the Counsellor, and his wife laughed at him fondly down the table, as if the war were a little sideshow they had laid on between them for their guests. The silence returned, deeper and more pregnant than before. The little Countess put her fork on her plate and it clanged like a tram in the night.