A Delicate Truth A Novel - By John Le Carre Page 0,51

it:

‘I am not free, thank you, Jack Painter! I am extremely expensive. And so is my dear wife,’ he retorts and, happy man that he is, slaps down a ten-pound note and drops the two pounds change into the animal-welfare box.

A hay cart awaits them. A beribboned ladder is lashed against it. Suzanna grips it with one hand, her riding skirts in the other, and with Kit’s help ascends. Willing arms reach out to receive her. She waits for her breathing to calm down. It does. She smiles. Harry Tregenza, The Builder You Can Trust and celebrated rogue, wears an executioner’s mask and brandishes a silver-painted wooden scythe. He is flanked by his wife wearing bunny ears. Next to them stands this year’s Bailey Queen, bursting out of her corsage. Tipping his boater, Kit plants chivalrous kisses on the cheeks of both women and inhales from each the same waft of jasmine scent.

An ancient hurdy-gurdy is playing ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do’. Smiling energetically, he waits for the din to subside. It doesn’t. He flaps an arm for silence, smiles harder. In vain. From an inside pocket of his blazer he extracts the speech notes that Suzanna has nobly typed for him, and waves them. A steam engine emits a truculent shriek. He mimes a theatrical sigh, appeals to the heavens for sympathy, then to the crowd beneath him, but the din refuses to let up.

He goes for it.

First he must bawl out what he amusingly calls the Church Notices, though they concern such non-ecclesiastical matters as toilets, parking and baby-changing. Does anyone hear him? Judging by the faces of the listeners hanging around the foot of the hay cart, they don’t. He names our selfless volunteers who have laboured night and day to make the miracle happen, and invites them to identify themselves. He might as well be reading out the names of the Glorious Dead. The hurdy-gurdy has gone back to the beginning. You’re Master of Misrule too. They’ll expect you to be funny. A quick check of Suki: no bad signs. And Emily, his beloved Em: tall and watchful, standing, as ever, a little apart from the pack.

‘And lastly, my friends, before I step down – though I’d better be jolly careful when I do!’ – zero response – ‘it’s my pleasure, and my very happy duty, to urge you to spend your hard-earned money unwisely, flirt recklessly with one another’s wives’ – wished he hadn’t said that – ‘drink, eat and revel the day away. So hip hip’ – tearing off his boater and thrusting it in the air – ‘hip hip!’

Suzanna raises her topper to join his boater. The Builder You Wouldn’t Trust Further Than You Could Throw Him can’t raise his executioner’s mask, so punches the air with his clenched fist in an unintended communist salute. A long-delayed Hooray! tears through the loudspeakers like an electrical fault. To murmurs of ‘Good on you, my handsome!’ and ‘Proper job, my robin!’, Kit clambers gratefully down the ladder, lets his walking stick fall to the ground and reaches up to take hold of Suzanna by the hips.

‘Bloody wonderful, Dad!’ Emily declares, appearing at Kit’s side with the walking stick. ‘Want a sit-down, Mum, or flog on?’ – using a family expression.

Suzanna, as ever, wants to flog on.

*

The royal tour of Our Opener and His Lady Wife begins. First, inspect shire horses. Suzanna the born country girl chats to them, strokes and pats their rumps without inhibition. Kit makes a show of admiring their brasses. Home-grown vegetables in their Sunday best. Cauliflowers that the locals call broccoli: bigger than footballs, washed clean as a pin. Home-made breads, cheeses and honey.

Sample piccalilli: tasteless but keep grinning. Smoked salmon pâté excellent. Urge Suki to buy some. She does. Linger over Gardening Club’s floral celebration. Suzanna knows every flower by its first name. Bump into MacIntyres, two of life’s dissatisfied customers. Ex-tea-planter George keeps a loaded rifle at his bedside for the day the masses assemble at his gates. His wife, Lydia, bores for the village. Advance on them with outstretched arms:

‘George! Lydia! Darlings! Marvellous! Super dinner at your house the other night, really one of those evenings. Our turn next time!’

Move gratefully to our bygone threshing machines and steam engines. Suzanna undaunted by stampede of children dressed as anything from Batman to Osama. Kit yells at Gerry Pertwee, village Romeo, squatting up on his tractor in Red Indian headdress:

‘For the umpteenth time, Gerry, when are you going