How le Carré the Honourable Schoolboy had to fight off ‘the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen’
REVEALED: Ambassador and wife’s bizarre bid to seduce spy novelist into threesome – at just 16
BESTSELLING spy novelist John le Carré has revealed how, as a naive 16-year-old in post-war Paris, he narrowly escaped seduction by a Panamanian diplomat and his utterly beguiling wife.
In an extraordinary encounter, having been plied with alcohol, the ‘most desirable’ woman he had ever seen ‘kicked off a shoe and caressed my leg with a stockinged toe’ before her husband ‘decided that we were ready for bed’.
By a ‘squeeze of my hand’, the motion was seconded by the man’s thirtysomething wife, but having made his excuses, le Carré left alone and found himself sleeping on a park bench.
The ‘sensuous, unfulfilled’ night would later inspire works such as The Night Manager and The Tailor Of Panama, both featuring the country.
The latter was turned into a hit BBC series starring Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Debicki.
The author, now 84, recalls the seduction attempt by a man he names as Count Mario de Bernaschina in his autobiography, The Pigeon Tunnel.
It was 1947 and the teenager, who was born David Cornwell but took the pen name John le Carré, had been dispatched to Paris by his roguish father Ronnie, ostensibly to collect a £500 debt from the Panamanian ambassador to France.
Arriving at their elegant home in his grey school suit, he was greeted by the diplomat’s attractive young wife – ‘the most desirable woman I have ever seen’. ‘I must have been standing one step beneath her,’ he writes, ‘because in my memory she is smiling down on me like my angel redeemer. She was bare-shouldered, black-haired and wore a flimsy dress in layer after layer of chiffon that failed to disguise her shape.’
The countess looked him up and down, scrutinising him ‘playfully’ until she ‘seemed to find everything to her satisfaction’, whereupon she muttered: ‘And you are still a boy.’ Le Carré was invited into the drawing room where he was given a glass of rum daiquiri and peppered with questions, including whether he had a girlfriend.
When he plucked up the courage to ask about the money, the man claimed he was the one out of pocket as he had invested in one of Ronnie’s business enterprises and received no returns.
However, the matter was quickly forgotten and the couple invited the schoolboy to a nearby Russian restaurant. The wife looked ‘particularly pleased’ when he accepted.
Le Carré recalls: ‘Over dinner, while the count talked about something more pleasant, the countess kicked off a shoe and caressed my leg with her stockinged toe.
‘On the tiny dance floor she sang Dark Eyes to me, holding the length of me against her and nibbling my earlobe while she flirted with the balalaika man and the count looked indulgently on.
‘On our return to the table, the count decided that we were ready for bed. The countess, by a squeeze of my hand, seconded the motion.’
Rather than accept their advances, le Carré, who also penned The Honourable Schoolboy, offered his excuses and left. ‘Somehow I found myself a bench in a park, and somehow I contrived to remain the boy she had declared me to be.’
In Paris decades later he tried to find the house and restaurant but could not. Intriguingly, half a century later while visiting Panama to research The Night Manager, he made enquiries about his erstwhile host: nobody could recall a count from Panama.
In the memoir, serialised by The Guardian, he writes: ‘Bernaschina? Nobody had heard of the fellow. A count? From Panama? It seemed most improbable. Maybe I had dreamed the whole thing? I hadn’t.’
The Pigeon Tunnel, by John le Carré, is published by Viking this week.