John Le Carré: Three Complete Novels

by John le Carré

  “Hence our Jim’s wide familiarity with parts foreign, and his rather parentless look, which I find irresistible. By the way: though he is made up of all different bits of Europe, make no mistake: the completed version is devoutly our own. At present, he is a bit of a striver and a puzzler, for he has just noticed that there is a World Beyond the Touchline and that world is me.

  “But you must first hear how I met him.

  “As you know, it is my habit (and your command) now and then to put on Arab costume and go down to the bazaars, there to sit among the great unwashed and give ear to the word of their prophets, that I may in due course better confound them. The juju man en vogue that evening came from the bosom of Mother Russia herself: one Academician Khlebnikov, presently attached to the Soviet Embassy in London, a jolly, rather infectious little fellow, who managed some quite witty things among the usual nonsense. The bazaar in question was a debating club called the Populars—our rival, dear Fan, and well known to you from other forays I have occasionally made. After the sermon a wildly proletarian coffee was served, to the accompaniment of a dreadfully democratic bun, and I noticed this large fellow sitting alone at the back of the room, apparently too shy to mingle. His face was familiar from the cricket field; it turns out we both played in some silly scratch team without exchanging a word. I don’t quite know how to describe him. He has it, Fan. I am serious now.”

  Here the handwriting, till now ill-at-ease, spread out as the writer got into his stride:

  “He has that heavy quiet that commands. Hard-headed, quite literally. One of those shrewd quiet ones that lead the team without anyone noticing. Fan, you know how hard it is for me to act. You have to remind me all the time, intellectually remind me, that unless I sample life’s dangers I shall never know its mysteries. But Jim acts from instinct . . . he is functional . . . He’s my other half; between us we’d make one marvellous man, except that neither of us can sing. And, Fan, you know that feeling when you just have to go out and find someone new or the world will die on you?”

  The writing steadied again.

  “ ‘Yavas Lagloo,’ says I, which I understand is Russian for meet me in the woodshed or something similar, and he says ‘Oh, hullo,’ which I think he would have said to the Archangel Gabriel if he’d happened to be passing.

  “ ‘What is your dilemma?’ says I.

  “ ‘I haven’t got one,’ says he, after about an hour’s thought.

  “ ‘Then what are you doing here? If you haven’t a dilemma, how did you get in?’

  “So he gives a big placid grin and we saunter over to the great Khlebnikov, shake his tiny paw for a while, then toddle back to my rooms. Where we drink. And drink. And, Fan, he drank everything in sight. Or perhaps I did, I forget. And come the dawn, do you know what we did? I will tell you, Fan. We walked solemnly down to the Parks, I sit on a bench with a stop-watch, and big Jim gets into his running kit and lopes twenty circuits. Twenty. I was quite exhausted.

  “We can come to you any time; he asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends. In short, he has appointed me his Mephistopheles and I am vastly tickled by the compliment. By the by, he is virgin, about eight feet tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge. Do not be alarmed.”

  The file died again. Sitting up, Smiley turned the yellowed pages impatiently, looking for stronger meat. The tutors of both men aver (twenty years later) that it is inconceivable that the relationship between the two was “more than purely friendly” . . . Haydon’s evidence was never called . . . Jim’s tutor speaks of him as “intellectually omnivorous after long starvation”—dismisses any suggestion that he was “pink.” The confrontation, which takes place at Sarratt, begins with long apologies, particularly in view of Jim’s superb war record. Jim’s answers breathe a pleasing straightforwardness after the extravagance of Haydon’s letter. One representative of the competition present, but his voice is seldom heard. No, Jim never again met Khlebnikov or anyone representing himself as his emissary . . . No, he never spoke to him but on that one occasion. No, he had no other contact with Communists or Russians at that time; he could not remember the name of a single member of the Populars . . .

  Q: (Alleline) Shouldn’t think that keeps you awake, does it?

  A: As a matter of fact, no. (Laughter)

  Yes, he had been a member of the Populars just as he had been a member of his college drama club, the philatelic society, the modern language society, the Union and the historical society, the ethical society and the Rudolf Steiner study group . . . It was a way of getting to hear interesting lectures, and of meeting people, particularly the second. No, he had never distributed left-wing literature, though he did for a while take Soviet Weekly . . . No, he had never paid dues to any political party, at Oxford or later; as a matter of fact, he had never even used his vote . . . One reason why he joined so many clubs at Oxford was that after a messy education abroad he had no natural English contemporaries from school . . .

  By now the inquisitors are one and all on Jim’s side; everyone is on the same side against the competition and its bureaucratic meddling.

  Q: (Alleline) As a matter of interest, since you were overseas so much, do you mind telling us where you learned your off-drive? (Laughter)

  A: Oh, I had an uncle, actually, with a place outside Paris. He was cricket mad. Had a net and all the equipment. When I went there for holidays, he bowled at me non-stop.

  [Inquisitors’ note: Comte Henri de Sainte-Yvonne, dec. 1942, P.F. AF64-7.] End of interview. Competition representative would like to call Haydon as a witness but Haydon is abroad and not available. Fixture postponed sine die . . .

  Smiley was nearly asleep as he read the last entry on the file, tossed in haphazard long after Jim’s formal clearance had come through from the competition. It was a cutting from an Oxford newspaper of the day giving a review of Haydon’s one-man exhibition in June, 1938, headed “Real or Surreal? An Oxford Eye.”

  Having torn the exhibition to shreds, the critic ended on this gleeful note: “We understand that the distinguished Mr. James Prideaux took time off from his cricket in order to help hang the canvases. He would have done better, in our opinion, to remain in the Banbury Road. However, since his role of Dobbin to the arts was the only heartfelt thing about the whole occasion, perhaps we had better not sneer too loud . . .”

  He dozed, his mind a controlled clutter of doubts, suspicions, and certainties. He thought of Ann, and in his tiredness cherished her profoundly, longing to protect her frailty with his own. Like a young man, he whispered her name aloud and imagined her beautiful face bowing over him in the half-light, while Mrs. Pope Graham yelled prohibition through the keyhole. He thought of Tarr and Irina, and pondered uselessly on love and loyalty; he thought of Jim Prideaux and what tomorrow held. He was aware of a modest sense of approaching conquest. He had been driven a long way; he had sailed backwards and forwards. Tomorrow, if he was lucky, he might spot land: a peaceful little desert island, for instance. Somewhere Karla had never heard of. Just for himself and Ann. He fell asleep.

  PART III

  30

  In Jim Prideaux’s world, Thursday had gone along like any other, except that some time in the small hours of the morning the wounds in his shoulder-bone started leaking, he supposed because of the inter-house run on Wednesday afternoon. He was woken by the pain, and by the draught on the wet of his back where the discharge flowed. The other time this happened he had driven himself to Taunton General, but the nurses took one look at him and slapped him into emergency to wait for doctor somebody and an X-ray, so he filched his clothes and left. He’d done with hospitals and he’d done with medicos. English hospitals, other hospitals—Jim had done with them. They called the discharge a “track.”

  He couldn’t reach the wound to treat it, but after last time he had hacked himself triangles of lint and stitched strings to the corners. Having put these handy on the draining board and prepared the hibitane, he heated hot w
ater, added half a packet of salt, and gave himself an improvised shower, crouching to get his back under the jet. He soaked the lint in the hibitane, flung it across his back, strapped it from the front, and lay face down on the bunk with a vodka handy. The pain eased and a drowsiness came over him, but he knew if he gave way to it he would sleep all day, so he took the vodka bottle to the window and sat at the table correcting Five B French while Thursday’s dawn slipped into the Dip and the rooks started their clatter in the elms.

  Sometimes he thought of the wound as a memory he couldn’t keep down. He tried his damnedest to patch it over and forget, but even his damnedest wasn’t always enough.

  He took the correcting slowly because he liked it, and because correcting kept his mind in the right places. At six-thirty, seven, he was done so he put on some old flannel bags and a sports coat and walked quietly down to the church, which was never locked. There he knelt a moment in the centre aisle of the Curtois antechapel, which was a family monument to the dead from two wars, and seldom visited by anyone. The cross on the little altar had been carved by sappers at Verdun. Still kneeling, Jim groped cautiously under the pew until his fingertips discovered the line of several pieces of adhesive tape, and following these, a casing of cold metal. His devotions over, he bashed up Combe Lane to the hilltop, jogging a bit to get a sweat running, because the warm did him wonders while it lasted, and rhythm soothed his vigilance.

  After his sleepless night and the early-morning vodka, he was feeling a bit light-headed, so when he saw the ponies down the combe, gawping at him with their fool faces, he yelled at them in bad Somerset—“Git ’an there! Damned old fools, take your silly eyes off me! ”—before pounding down the lane again for coffee, and a change of bandage.

  First lesson after prayers was Five B French, and there Jim all but lost his temper: doled out a silly punishment to damn-fool Clements, draper’s son; had to take it back at the end of class. In the common-room he went through another routine, of the sort he had followed in the church: quickly, mindlessly, no fumble and out. It was a simple enough notion, the mail check, but it worked. He’d never heard of anyone else who used it, among the pros, but then pros don’t talk about their game. “See it this way,” he would have said. “If the opposition is watching you, it’s certain to be watching your mail, because mail’s the easiest watch in the game—easier still if the opposition is the home side and has the co-operation of the postal service. So what do you do? Every week, from the same post-box, at the same time, at the same rate, you post one envelope to yourself and a second to an innocent party at the same address. Shove in a bit of trash—charity Christmas-card literature, come-on from local supermarket—be sure to seal envelope, stand back and compare times of arrival. If your letter turns up later than the other feller’s, you’ve just felt someone’s hot breath on you—in this case, Toby’s.”

  Jim called it, in his odd, chipped vocabulary, water-testing, and once again the temperature was unobjectionable. The two letters clocked in together, but Jim arrived too late to pinch back the one addressed to Marjoribanks, whose turn it was to act as unwitting running mate. So, having pocketed his own, Jim snorted at the Daily Telegraph while Marjoribanks, with an irritable “Oh, to hell,” tore up a printed invitation to join the Bible Reading Fellowship. From there, school routine carried him again till junior rugger versus St. Ermin’s, which he was billed to referee. It was a fast game and when it was over his back acted up again, so he drank vodka till first bell, which he’d promised to take for young Elwes. He couldn’t remember why he’d promised, but the younger staff and specially the married ones relied on him a lot for odd jobs and he let it happen. The bell was an old ship’s tocsin, something Thursgood’s father had dug up and now part of the tradition. As Jim rang it, he was aware of little Bill Roach standing right beside him, peering up at him with a white smile, wanting his attention, as he wanted it half a dozen times each day.

  “Hullo, there, Jumbo, what’s your headache this time?”

  “Sir, please, sir.”

  “Come on, Jumbo, out with it.”

  “Sir, there’s someone asking where you live, sir,” said Roach.

  Jim put down the bell.

  “What sort of someone, Jumbo? Come on, I won’t bite you, come on, hey . . . hey! What sort of someone? Man someone? Woman? Juju man? Hey! Come on, old feller,” he said softly, crouching to Roach’s height. “No need to cry. What’s the matter, then? Got a temperature?” He pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve. “What sort of someone?” he repeated in the same low voice.

  “He asked at Mrs. McCullum’s. He said he was a friend. Then he got back into his car; it’s parked in the churchyard, sir.” A fresh gust of tears. “He’s just sitting in it.”

  “Get the hell away, damn you!” Jim called to a bunch of seniors grinning in a doorway. “Get the hell!” He went back to Roach. “Tall friend?” he asked softly. “Sloppy tall kind of fellow, Jumbo? Eyebrows and a stoop? Thin feller? Bradbury, come here and stop gawping! Stand by to take Jumbo up to Matron! Thin feller?” he asked again, very steady.

  But Roach had run out of words. He had no memory any more, no sense of size or perspective; his faculty of selection in the adult world had gone. Big men, small men, old, young, crooked, straight—they were a single army of indistinguishable dangers. To say no to Jim was more than he could bear; to say yes was to shoulder the whole awful responsibility of disappointing him. He saw Jim’s eyes on him; he saw the smile go out and he felt the merciful touch of a big hand upon his arm.

  “Attaboy, Jumbo. Nobody ever watched like you, did they?”

  Laying his head hopelessly against Bradbury’s shoulder, Bill Roach closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw through his tears that Jim was already halfway up the staircase.

  Jim felt calm; almost easy. For days he had known there was someone. That also was part of his routine: to watch the places where the watchers asked. The church, where the ebb and flow of the local population is a ready topic; county hall, register of electors; tradesmen, if they kept customer accounts; pubs, if the quarry didn’t use them. In England, he knew these were the natural traps that watchers automatically patrolled before they closed on you. And, sure enough, in Taunton two days ago, chatting pleasantly with the assistant librarian, Jim had come across the footprint he was looking for. A stranger, apparently down from London, had been interested in village wards; yes, a political gentleman—well, more in the line of political research, he was—professional, you could tell—and one of the things he had wanted—fancy that, now—was the up-to-date record of Jim’s very village—yes, the voters’ list—as they were thinking of making a door-to-door survey of a really out-of-the-way community, specially new immigrants . . . Yes, fancy that, Jim agreed, and, from then on, made his dispositions. He bought railway tickets to places—Taunton to Exeter, Taunton to London, Taunton to Swindon, valid one month—because he knew that if he were on the run again, tickets would be hard to come by. He had uncached his old identities and his gun, and hid them handily above ground; he dumped a suitcase full of clothes in the boot of the Alvis, and kept the tank full. These precautions eased his fears a little, made sleep a possibility; or would have done, before his back.

  “Sir, who won, sir?”

  Prebble, a new boy, in dressing gown and toothpaste, on his way to surgery. Sometimes boys spoke to Jim for no reason; his size and crookedness were a challenge.

  “Sir, the match, sir, versus Saint Ermin’s.”

  “Saint Vermin’s,” another boy piped. “Yes, sir, who won, actually?”

  “Sir, they did, sir,” Jim barked. “As you’d have known, sir, if you’d been watching, sir,” and swinging an enormous fist at them in a slow feinted punch, he propelled both boys across the corridor to Matron’s dispensary.

  “Night, sir.”

  “Night, you toads,” Jim sang, and stepped the other way into the sick-bay for a view of the church and the cemetery. The sick-bay was unlit; it had a look and a stink he ha
ted. Twelve boys lay in the gloom, dozing between supper and temperatures.

  “Who’s that?” asked a hoarse voice.

  “Rhino,” said another. “Hey, Rhino, who won against Saint Vermin’s?”

  To call Jim by his nickname was insubordinate, but boys in sick-bay feel free from discipline.

  “Rhino? Who the hell’s Rhino? Don’t know him. Not a name to me,” Jim snorted, squeezing between two beds. “Put that torch away—not allowed. Damn walk-over, that’s who won. Eighteen to nothing for Vermin’s.” That window went down almost to the floor. An old fireguard protected it from boys. “Too much damn fumble in the three-quarter line,” he muttered, peering down.

  “I hate rugger,” said a boy called Stephen.

  The blue Ford was parked in the shadow of the church, close in under the elms. From the ground floor it would have been out of sight but it didn’t look hidden. Jim stood very still, a little back from the window, studying it for telltale signs. The light was fading fast, but his eyesight was good and he knew what to look for: discreet aerial, second inside mirror for the legman, burn marks under the exhaust. Sensing the tension in him, the boys became facetious.

  “Sir, is it a bird, sir? Is she any good, sir?”

  “Sir, are we on fire?”

  “Sir, what are her legs like?”

  “Gosh, sir, don’t say it’s Miss Aaronson?” At this everyone started giggling, because Miss Aaronson was old and ugly.

  “Shut up,” Jim snapped, quite angry. “Rude pigs, shut up.” Downstairs in assembly, Thursgood was calling senior roll before prep.