Грэм Грин - The Comedians

'Why? What has happened?'

'He's disappeared.'

'For once,' Petit Pierre said, 'you are ahead of me with the news. Who told you?'

'I guard my sources.'

'He went too often to the foreign embassies. It wasn't wise.'

Suddenly the lights came on, and for the first time I caught Petit Pierre off guard, brooding, disquieted, before he reacted to the light and said with his habitual gaiety, 'I shall have to wait for my discs then.'

'I have some records in the office I can lend you. I used to keep them for the guests.'

'I was at the airport tonight,' Petit Pierre said.

'Did anyone get off?'

'As a matter of fact, yes. I didn't expect to see him. People sometimes stay longer than they have planned in Miami and he has been away a long time, and what with all the trouble …'

'Who was it?'

'Captain Concasseur.'

I thought I knew now why Petit Pierre had made his friendly call — it was not just to tell me about the purchase of his Hi-Fi-Stereo. He had a warning to convey.

'Has he been in trouble?'

'Anyone who touches Major Jones is in trouble,' Petit Pierre said. 'The captain is very angry. He was much insulted in Miami — they say he spent two nights in a police station. Think of it! Captain Concasseur! He wants to rehabilitate himself.'

'How?'

'By getting Major Jones somehow.'

'Jones is safe in the embassy.'

'He should stay there as long as he can. He had better not trust any safe-conduct. But who knows what attitude a new ambassador might take?'

'What new ambassador?'

'There is a rumour that the President has told Seсor Pineda's government that he is no longer persona grata. Of course there may be no truth in it. May I see your discs please? The rain is over and I must be going.'

'Where have you left your car?'

'At the side of the road below the block.'

'I will drive you home,' I said. I fetched my car from the garage. When I turned on the headlights I could see Doctor Magiot sitting patiently in his car. We didn't speak.

3

After I had left Petit Pierre at the shack which he called his home I drove to the embassy. The guard at the gate stopped my car and peered inside before he let me through the gates. When I rang the bell I could hear the dog barking in the hall and Jones's voice saying with the tone of an owner, 'Quiet, Midge, quiet.'

They were alone that night, the ambassador, Martha and Jones, and I had the impression of a family party. Pineda and Jones were playing gin-rummy — needless to say Jones was well ahead, while Martha sat in an armchair sewing. I had never before seen her with a needle in her fingers; it was as though Jones had brought into the house with him a kind of domesticity. Midge sat down at his feet as though he were the master, and Pineda raised his wounded unwelcoming eyes and said, 'You will excuse us if we finish this party.'

'Come and see Angel,' Martha said; we went up the stairs together, and half-way up I heard Jones say, 'I stop at two.' On the landing we turned left, into the room of our quarrel, and she kissed me freely and happily. I told her of Petit Pierre's rumour. 'Oh no,' she said, 'no. It can't be true,' and then she added, 'Luis has been worried about something the last few days.'

'But if it should be true …'

Martha said, 'The new ambassador would have to keep Jones just the same. He couldn't turn him out.'

'I wasn't thinking of Jones. I was thinking of ourselves.' Could a woman continue to call a man by his surname, I wondered, if she were sleeping with him?

She sat down on the bed and stared at the wall with a look of amazement as though the wall had suddenly come closer. 'I don't believe it's true,' she said. 'I won't believe it.'

'It was bound to happen one day.'

'I always thought … when Angel was old enough to understand …'

'How old would I be by then?'

'You've thought about it too,' she accused me.

'Yes, I've thought a lot about it. It was one of the reasons why I tried to sell the hotel in New York. I wanted money to go after you wherever you were sent. But nobody will ever buy the hotel now.'

She said, 'Darling, we'll manage somehow, but Jones — it's life or death for him.'

'I suppose if we were still young we'd think it was life or death for us too. But now — "men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love".'

Jones called out from below, 'The game's finished'; his voice came into the room like a tactless stranger. 'We'd better go,' Martha said. 'Don't say anything, not until we know.'

Pineda sat with the awful dog on his knees, stroking it; it accepted his caresses listlessly as though it wanted to be elsewhere, and it watched Jones with bleary devotion where he sat adding up the score. 'I'm 1200 up,' he said. 'I'll send to Hamit's in the morning and buy bourbon biscuits for Angel.'

'You spoil him,' Martha said. 'Buy something for yourself. To remember us by.'

'As if I could ever forget,' Jones said, and he looked at her, just as the dog on Pineda's knees looked at Jones, with an expression mournful, dewy and a bit false at the same time.

'Your information seems to be bad,' I said. 'Hamit has disappeared.'

'I hadn't heard,' Pineda said. 'Why …?'

'Petit Pierre thinks he has too many foreign friends.'

'You must do something,' Martha said. 'Hamit helped us in so many ways.' I remembered one of them, the small room with the brass bedstead and the mauve silk coverlet and the hard eastern chairs ranged against the wall. Those afternoons belonged to our easiest days.

'What can I do?' Pineda said. 'The Secretary of the Interior will accept two of my cigars and tell me politely that Hamit is a citizen of Haiti.'

'Give me my old company back,' Jones said, 'and I'd go through the police station like a dose of salts till I found him.'

I couldn't have asked for a quicker or better response: Magiot had said, 'You can trap a man who boasts.' When Jones spoke he looked at Martha with the expression of a young man seeking approval, and I could imagine all those domestic evenings when he had amused them with his stories of Burma. It was true he wasn't young, but there was nearly ten years between us all the same.

'There are a lot of police,' I said.

'If I had fifty of my own men I could take over the country. The Japs outnumbered us, and they knew how to fight …'

Martha moved towards the door, but I stopped her. 'Please don't go.' I needed her as a witness. She stayed, and Jones went on, suspecting nothing at all. 'Of course they had us on the run at first in Malaya. We didn't know a thing about guerrilla war then, but we learnt.'

'Wingate,' I said encouragingly, for fear he wouldn't go far enough.

'He was one of the best, but there are others I could name. I was proud enough of some of my own tricks.'

'You could smell water,' I reminded him.

'That was something I hadn't got to learn,' he said. 'It was born in me. Why, as a child …'

'What a tragedy it is you are shut up here,' I interrupted him. His childhood was too distant for my purpose. 'There are men in the mountains now who only need to learn. Of course they've got Philipot.'

It was like a duet between the two of us. 'Philipot,' he exclaimed, 'he hasn't a clue, old man. Do you know he came to see me? He wanted my help in training … He offered …'

'Weren't you tempted?' I said.

'I certainly was. One misses the old Burmese days. You can understand that. But, old man, I was in the government service. I hadn't seen through them then. Perhaps I'm innocent, but a man's only got to be straight with me … I trusted them … If I'd known what I know now …'

I wondered what explanation he had given to Martha and Pineda for his flight. He had obviously elaborated a good deal on the story he had told me the night of his escape.