Honourable Schoolboy (15 page)

‘Super,’ he muttered, loud enough for a couple of girls to turn and stare at him as they passed. ‘Excellent. Marvellous. Splendid. Perfect.’ With that, he dived into the nearest watering-hole, where a bunch of old hands were propping up the bar, mainly the industrial and political caucus, boasting about how they nearly had a page-five lead.

‘Westerby! It’s the Earl himself! It’s the suit! The same suit! And the Early-bird’s inside it, for Christ’s sake!’

Jerry stayed till ‘time’ was called. He drank frugally, nevertheless, for he liked to keep a clear head for his walks in the park with George Smiley.

To every closed society there is an inside and an outside, and Jerry was on the outside. To walk in the park with George Smiley, in those days, or - free of the professional jargon, to make a clandestine rendezvous with him; or as Jerry himself might have expressed it, if he ever, which God forbid, put a name to the larger issues of his destiny, ‘to take a dive into his other, better life’ - required him to saunter from a given point of departure, usually some rather under-populated area like the recently extinguished Covent Garden, and arrive still on foot at a given destination at a little before six, by which time, he assumed, the Circus’s depleted team of pavement-artists had taken a look at his back and declared it clean. On the first evening his destination was the embankment side of Charing Cross underground station, as it was still called that year, a busy, scrappy spot where something awkward always seems to be happening to the traffic. On the last evening it was a multiple bus stop on the southern pavement of Piccadilly where it borders Green Park. There were, in all, four occasions, two in London and two at the Nursery. The Sarratt stuff was operational - the obligatory re-bore in tradecraft, to which all fieldmen must periodically submit - and included much to be memorised, such as phone numbers, word codes and contact procedures; such as open-code phrases for insertion into plain language telex messages to the comic; such as fallbacks and emergency action in certain, it was hoped, remote contingencies. Like many sportsmen Jerry had a clear, easy memory for facts and when the inquisitors tested him they were pleased. Also they rehearsed him in the strong-arm stuff, with the result that his back bled from hitting the worn matting once too often.

The sessions in London consisted of one very simple briefing and one very short farewell.

The pickups were variously contrived. At Green Park, by way of a recognition signal, he carried a Fortnum Mason carrier-bag and managed, however long the bus queue became, by a series of grins and shuffles, to remain neatly at the back of it. Hovering at the embankment, on the other hand, he clutched an out-of-date copy of Time magazine, bearing by coincidence the nourished features of Chairman Mao on the cover, of which the red lettering and border on a white field stood out strongly in the slanting sunlight. Big Ben struck six and Jerry counted the chimes, but the ethic of such meetings requires they do not happen on the hour nor on the quarter, but in the vaguer spaces in-between, which are held to be less conspicuous. Six o’clock was the autumn witching hour, when the smells of every wet and leaf-blown country cricket field in England were wafted up-river with the damp shreds of dusk, and Jerry passed the time in a pleasurable half-trance, scenting them thoughtlessly and keeping his left eye, for some reason, wedged tight shut. The van, when it lumbered up to him, was a battered green Bedford with a ladder on the roof and ‘Harris Builder’ painted out, but still legible on the side: an old surveillance-horse put out to grass, with steel flaps over the windows. Seeing it pull up, Jerry started forward at the same moment as the driver, a sour boy with a hare lip, shoved his spiky head through the open window.

‘Where’s Wilf then?’ the boy demanded rudely. ‘They said you got Wilf with you.’

‘You’ll have to make do with me,’ Jerry retorted with spirit. ‘Wilf’s on a job.’ And opening the back door he clambered straight in and slammed it; for the passenger seat in the front cab was deliberately crammed with lengths of plywood so that there was no room for him to sit there.

That was the only conversation they had, ever.

In the old days, when the Circus had a natural non-commissioned class, Jerry would have counted on some amiable small talk. No longer. When he went to Sarratt, the procedure was little different except that they bounced along for fifteen miles or so, and if he was lucky, the boy remembered to throw in a cushion to prevent the total rupture of Jerry’s backside. The driver’s cab was blocked off from the belly of the van where Jerry crouched, and all he had to look through, as he slid up and down the wooden bench and clutched the grab handles, were the cracks at the edges of the steel window screens, which gave at best a perforated view of the world outside, though Jerry was quick enough to read the landmarks.

On the Sarratt run he passed depressing segments of out-of-date factories resembling poorly whitewashed cinemas in the twenties, and a brick road-house with ‘wedding receptions catered for’ in red neon. But his feelings were at their most intense on the first evening, and on the last, when he visited the Circus. On the first evening, as he approached the fabled and familiar turrets - the moment never failed him - a sort of muddled saintliness came over him: ‘This is what service is all about.’ A smear of red brick was followed by the blackened stems of plane trees, a salad of coloured lights came up, a gateway flung past him and the van thudded to a stop. The van doors were slammed open from outside, at the same time as he heard the gates close and a male, sergeant-major voice shout: ‘Come on, man, move it for Christ’s sake,’ and that was Guillam, having a bit of fun.

‘Hullo, Peter boy, how’s trade? Jesus, it’s cold!’

Not bothering to reply, Peter Guillam slapped Jerry on the shoulder briskly, as if starting him on a race, closed the door fast, locked it top and bottom, pocketed the keys and led him off at a trot down a corridor which the ferrets must have ripped apart in fury. Plaster was hacked away in clumps, exposing the lath beneath; doors had been torn from their hinges; joists and lintels were dangling; dust sheets, ladders, rubble lay everywhere.

‘Had the Irish in, have you?’ Jerry yelled. ‘Or just an all-ranks dance?’

His questions were lost in the clatter. The two men climbed fast and competitively, Guillam bounding ahead and Jerry on his heels, laughing breathlessly, their feet thundering and scraping on the bare wood steps. A door delayed them and Jerry waited while Guillam fiddled with other side while he reset them.

‘Welcome aboard,’ said Guillam more quietly.

They had reached the fifth floor. They trod quietly now, no more romping, English subalterns called to order. The corridor turned left, then right again, then rose by a few narrow steps. A cracked fisheye mirror, steps again, two up, three down, till they came to a janitors desk, unmanned. To their left lay the rumpus room, empty, with smoking chairs pulled into a rough ring and a good fire burning in the grate. Thus to a long, brown-carpeted room marked ‘Secretariat’ but in fact the anteroom, where three mothers in pearls and twinsets quietly typed by the glow of reading lamps. At the far end of this room, one more door, shut, unpainted and very grubby round the handle. No fingerplate, no escutcheon for the lock. Just the screwholes, he noticed, and the halo where one had been. Pushing it open without knocking, Guillam shoved his head through the gap and announced something quietly into the room. Then backed away and quickly ushered Jerry past him: Jerry Westerby, into the presence.

‘Gosh, super, George, hullo.’

‘And don’t ask him about his wife,’ Guillam warned in a fast, soft murmur that hummed in Jerry’s ear for a good spell afterwards.

Father and son? That kind of relationship? Brawn to brain? More exact, perhaps, would be a son to his adopted father, which in the trade is to be held the strongest tie of all.

‘Sport,’ Jerry muttered, and gave a husky laugh.

English friends have no real way of greeting each other, least of all across a glum civil service office with nothing more lovely to inspire them than a deal desk. For a fraction of a second Jerry laid his cricketer’s fist alongside Smiley’s soft hesitant palm, then lumbered after him at a distance to the fireside, where two armchairs awaited them: old leather, cracked, and much sat in. Once again, in this erratic season, a fire burned in the Victorian grate, but very small by comparison with the fire in the rumpus room.

‘And how was Lucca?’ Smiley enquired, filling two glasses from a decanter.

‘Lucca was great.’

‘Oh dear. Then I expect it was a wrench to leave.’

‘Gosh, no. Super. Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’

They sat down.

‘Now why super, Jerry?’ Smiley enquired, as if super were not a word he was familiar with. There were no papers on the desk and the room was bare, more like a spare room than his own.

‘I thought I was done for,’ Jerry explained. ‘On the shelf for good. Telegram took the wind right out of my sails. I thought, well, Bill’s blown me sky high. Blew everyone else, so why not me?’

‘Yes,’ Smiley agreed, as if sharing Jerry’s doubts, and peered at him a moment in frank speculation. ‘Yes, yes, quite. However, on balance it seems he never got around to blowing the Occasionals. We’ve traced him to pretty well every other corner of the archive, but the Occasionals were filed under friendly contacts in the Territorials’ cut, in a separate archive altogether, one to which he had no natural access. It’s not that he didn’t think you important enough,’ he added hastily, ‘it’s simply that other claims on him took priority.’

‘I can live with it,’ said Jerry with a grin.

‘I’m glad,’ said Smiley, missing the joke. Rising he refilled their glasses, then went to the fire and, taking up a brass poker, began stabbing thoughtfully at the coals. ‘Lucca. Yes. Ann and I went there. Oh, eleven, twelve years ago it must have been. It rained.’ He gave a little laugh. In a cramped bay at the further end of the room, Jerry glimpsed a narrow, bony-looking camp bed with a row of telephones at the head. ‘We visited the bagno, I remember,’ Smiley went on. ‘It was the fashionable cure. Lord alone knows what we were curing.’ He attacked the fire again and this time the flames flew alive, daubing the rounded contours of his face with strokes of orange, and making gold pools of his thick spectacles. ‘Did you know the poet Heine had a great adventure there? A romance? I rather think it must be why we went, come to think of it. We thought some of it would rub off.’

Jerry grunted something, not too certain, at that moment, who Heine was.

‘He went to the bagno, he took the waters, and while doing so he met a lady whose name alone so impressed him that he made his wife use it from then on.’ The flames held him for a moment longer. ‘And you had an adventure there too, didn’t you?’

‘Just a flutter. Nothing to write home about.’

Beth Sanders, Jerry thought automatically, as his world rocked, then righted itself. A natural, Beth was. Father a retired General, High Sheriff of the County. Old Beth must have an aunt in every secret office in Whitehall.

Stooping again, Smiley propped the poker in a corner, laboriously, as if he were laying a wreath. ‘We’re not necessarily in competition with affection. We simply like to know where it lies.’ Jerry said nothing. Over his shoulder, Smiley glanced at Jerry, and Jerry pulled a grin to please him. ‘The name of Heine’s lady-love, I may tell you, was Irwin Mathilde,’ Smiley resumed and Jerry’s grin became an awkward laugh. ‘Yes, well it does sound better in German, I confess. And the novel, how will that fare? I’d hate to think we’d scared away your muse. I don’t think I’d forgive myself, I’m sure.’

‘No problem,’ said Jerry.

‘Finished?’

‘Well, you know.’

For a moment there was no sound but the mothers’ typing and the rumble of traffic from the street below.

‘Then we shall make it up to you when this is over,’ Smiley said, ‘I insist. How did the Stubbs scene play?

‘No problem,’ said Jerry again.

‘Nothing more we need do for you to smooth your path?’

‘Don’t think so.’

From beyond the anteroom they heard the shuffle of footsteps all in one direction. It’s a war party, Jerry thought, a gathering of the clans:

‘And you’re game and so on?’ Smiley asked. ‘You’re, well, prepared? You have the will?’

‘No problem.’ Why can’t I say something different? he asked himself. Bloody needle’s stuck.

‘A lot of people haven’t these days. The will. Specially in England. A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they’re nowhere. No battle was ever won by spectators, was it? We understand that in this service. We’re lucky. Our present war began in 1917, with the Bolshevik Revolution. It hasn’t changed yet.’

Smiley had taken up a new position, across the room from him, not far from the bed. Behind him, an old and grainy photograph glittered in the new firelight. Jerry had noticed it as he came in. Now, in the strain of the moment, he felt himself to be the object of a double scrutiny: by Smiley, and by the blurred eyes of the portrait dancing in the firelight behind the glass. The sounds of preparation multiplied. They heard voices and snatches of laughter, the squeak of chairs.

‘I read somewhere,’ Smiley said, ‘an historian, I suppose he was - an American, anyway - he wrote of generations that are born into debtors’ prisons and spend their lives buying their way to freedom. I think ours is such a generation. Don’t you? I still feel strongly that I owe. Don’t you? I’ve always been grateful to this service, that it gave me a chance to pay. Is that how you feel? I don’t think we should be afraid of… devoting ourselves. Is that old-fashioned of me?’

Jerry’s face clamped tight shut. He always forgot this part of Smiley when he was away from him, and remembered it too late when he was with him. There was a bit of the failed priest in old George, and the older he grew, the more prominent it became. He seemed to assume that the whole blasted western world shared his worries and had to be talked round to a proper way of thinking.