Agent Running in the Field - John le Carre Page 0,1
glory. His name is Ed. Ed, say hullo to Nat.’
For a long moment in my memory Ed remains standing a couple of paces behind her, this six-foot-something, gawky, bespectacled young man with a sense of solitude about him and an embarrassed half-smile. I remember how two competing sources of light converged on him: the orange strip light from the bar, which endowed him with a celestial glow, and behind him the down lights from the swimming pool, which cast him in oversized silhouette.
He steps forward and becomes real. Two big, ungainly steps, left foot, right foot, halt. Alice bustles off. I wait for him to speak. I adjust my features into a patient smile. Six foot three at least, hair dark and tousled, large brown studious eyes given ethereal status by the spectacles, and the kind of knee-length white sports shorts more commonly found on yachties or sons of the Boston rich. Age around twenty-five, but with those eternal-student features could easily be less or more.
‘Sir?’ he demands finally, but not entirely respectfully.
‘Nat, if you don’t mind,’ I correct him with another smile.
He takes this in. Nat. Thinks about it. Wrinkles his beaky nose.
‘Well, I’m Ed,’ he volunteers, repeating Alice’s information for my benefit. In the England I have recently returned to, nobody has a surname.
‘Well, hullo, Ed,’ I reply jauntily. ‘What can I be doing for you?’
Another hiatus while he thinks about this. Then the blurt:
‘I want to play you, right? You’re the champion. Trouble is, I’ve only just joined the Club. Last week. Yeah. I’ve put my name on the ladder and all that, but the ladder takes absolutely bloody months’ – as the words break free of their confinement. Then a pause while he looks at each of us in turn, first my genial opponent, then back to me.
‘Look,’ he goes on, reasoning with me although I have offered no contest. ‘I don’t know Club protocol, right?’ – voice rising in indignation. ‘Which is not my fault. Only I asked Alice. And she said, ask him yourself, he won’t bite. So I’m asking.’ And in case further explanation was needed, ‘Only I’ve watched you play, right? And I’ve beaten a couple of people you’ve beaten. And one or two who’ve beaten you. I’m pretty sure I could give you a game. A good one. Yeah. Quite a good one, actually.’
And the voice itself, of which by now I have a fair sample? In the time-honoured British parlour game of placing our compatriots on the social ladder by virtue of their diction I am at best a poor contestant, having spent too much of my life in foreign parts. But to the ear of my daughter Stephanie, a sworn leveller, my guess is that Ed’s diction would pass as just about all right, meaning no direct evidence of a private education.
‘May I ask where you play, Ed?’ I enquire, a standard question among us.
‘All over. Wherever I can find a decent opponent. Yeah.’ And as an afterthought: ‘Then I heard you were a member at this place. Some clubs, they let you play and pay. Not here. This place, you’ve got to join first. It’s a scam in my opinion. So I did. Cost a fucking bomb, but still.’
‘Well, sorry you had to fork out, Ed,’ I reply as genially as I may, attributing the gratuitous ‘fucking’ to nervousness. ‘But if you want a game, that’s fine by me,’ I add, noting that the conversation around the bar is drying up and heads are starting to turn. ‘Let’s fix a date some time. I look forward to it.’
But this doesn’t do at all for Ed.
‘So when d’you reckon would be all right for you? Like in real terms. Not just some time,’ he insists, and gets himself a patter of laughter from the bar – which, judging by his scowl, irritates him.
‘Well, it can’t be for a week or two, Ed,’ I reply truthfully enough. ‘I have a rather serious bit of business to attend to. A long-overdue family holiday in fact,’ I add, hoping for a smile and receiving a wooden stare.
‘When d’you get back then?’
‘Saturday week, if we haven’t broken anything. We’re going skiing.’
‘Where?’
‘In France. Near Megève. Do you ski?’
‘Have done. In Bavaria, me. How about the Sunday after?’
‘I’m afraid it would have to be a weekday, Ed,’ I reply firmly, since family weekends, now that Prue and I can achieve them, are sacrosanct and today is a rare exception.