The Tailor of Panama by John le Carré Page A

do it?”
    â€œI beg your pardon, sir?”
    â€œHe come here, you go there?”
    Pendel adopted a slightly superior manner. “The summons is always to the palace, Mr. Osnard. People go to the President. He doesn’t go to them.”
    â€œKnow your way around up there, do you?”
    â€œWell, sir, he’s my third president. Bonds are formed.”
    â€œWith his flunkeys?”
    â€œYes. Them too.”
    â€œHow about Himself? Pres?”
    Pendel again paused, as he had done before when rules of professional confidence came under strain.
    â€œYour great statesman of today, sir, he’s under stress, he’s a lonely man, cut off from what I call the common pleasures that make our lives worth living. A few minutes alone with his tailor can be a blessed truce amid the fray.”
    â€œSo you chat away?”
    â€œI would prefer the term ‘soothing interlude.’ He’ll ask me what my customers are saying about him. I respond—not naming names, naturally. Occasionally, if he has something on his chest, he may favour me with a small confidence in return. I do have a certain reputation for discretion, as I have no doubt his highly vigilant advisors have informed him. Now, sir. If you please.”
    â€œWhat does he call you?”
    â€œOne-to-one or in the presence of others?”
    â€œHarry, then,” said Osnard.
    â€œCorrect.”
    â€œAnd you?”
    â€œI never presume, Mr. Osnard. I’ve had the chance, I’ve been invited. But it’s Mr. President, and it always will be.”
    â€œHow about Fidel?”
    Pendel laughed gaily. He had been wanting a laugh for some time. “Well, sir, the Comandante does like a suit these days, and so he should, given the advance of corpulence. There’s not a tailor in the region wouldn’t give his eye-teeth to dress him, whatever those Yanquis think of him. But he will adhere to his Cuban tailor, as I dare say you have noticed to your embarrassment on the television. Oh dear. I’ll say no more. We’re here, we’re standing by. If the call comes, P & B will answer it.”
    â€œQuite an intelligence service you run, then.”
    â€œIt’s a cut-throat world, Mr. Osnard. There’s a lot of competition out there. I’d be a fool if I didn’t keep an ear to the ground, wouldn’t I?”
    â€œSure would. Don’t want to go old Braithwaite’s route, do we?”
    Pendel had climbed a stepladder. He was balanced on the folding platform that he normally stopped short of, and he was busying himself with a bolt of best grey alpaca that he had coaxed from the top shelf, brandishing it aloft for Osnard’s inspection. How he had got up there, what had impelled him, were mysteries he was no more disposed to contemplate than a cat that finds itself at the top of a tree. What mattered was escape.
    â€œThe important thing, sir, I always say, is hang them while they’re still warm and never fail to rotate them,” he announced in a loud voice to a shelf of midnight-blue worsteds six inches from his nose. “Now here’s the one we thought might be to our liking, Mr. Osnard. An excellent choice if I may say so, and your grey suit in Panama is practically de rigger. I’ll bring you down the bolt and you can have a look and a feel. Marta! Shop, please, dear.”
    â€œHell’s rotate?” asked Osnard from below, where he was standing with his hands in his pockets, examining ties.
    â€œNo suit should be worn two days running, least of all your lightweight, Mr. Osnard. As I’m sure your good father will have told you many a time and oft.”
    â€œLearned it from Arthur, did ’e?”
    â€œIt’s your chemical dry cleaner that kills the real suit, I always say. Once you’ve got the grime and sweat embedded in it, which is what happens if you overwork it, you’re on your way to the chemical cleaner, and that’s the