'Goody. Let's have lots. How's the demon Ann?'
On the draining-board, amid a permanent pile of wasbing-up, he found two glasses, and half filled them.
'Flourishing, I gather,' he replied.
Reciprocating, by his own kindly smile, her evident pleasure at his visit, he held out a glass to her and she grappled it between her mittened hands.
'You gather,' she echoed. 'Wish you would gather. Gather her up for good is what you should do. Or else put powdered glass in her coffee. All right, what are you after?' she demanded, all in the same breath. 'I never knew you yet do anything without a reason. Mud in your eye.'
'And in yours, Con,' said Smiley.
To drink, she had to lean her whole trunk towards the glass. And as her huge head lurched into the glare of the lamplight, he saw - he knew from too much experience - that she was telling no less than the truth, and her flesh had the leprous whiteness of death.
'Come on. Out with it,' she ordered, in her sternest tone, 'I'm not sure I'll help you, mind. I've discovered love since we parted. Addles the hormones. Softens the teeth.'
He had wanted time to know her again. He was unsure of her.
'It's one of our old cases, Con, that's all,' he began apologetically. 'It's come alive again, the way they do.' He tried to raise the pitch of his voice to make it sound casual. 'We need more details. You know how you used to be about keeping records,' he added, teasingly.
Her eyes did not stir from his face.
'Kirov,' he went on, pronouncing the name very slowly. 'Kirov, first name Oleg. Ring a bell? Soviet Embassy, Paris, three or four years ago, Second Secretary? We thought he was some sort of Moscow Centre man.'
'He was,' she said, and sat back a little, still watching him.
She motioned for a cigarette. A packet of ten lay on the table. He wedged one between her lips and lit it, but still her eyes would not leave his face.
'Saul Enderby threw that case out of the window,' she said and, forming her lips as if to playa flute, blew a lot of smoke straight downward in order to avoid his face.
'He ruled it should be dropped,' Smiley corrected her.
'What's the difference?'
Smiley had not expected to find himself defending Saul Enderby.
'It ran awhile, then in the transition time between my tenure and his, he ruled, quite understandably, that it was unproductive,' Smiley said, picking his words with measured care
'And now he's changed his mind,' she said.
'I've got bits, Con. I want it all.'
'You always did,' she said. 'George,' she muttered. 'George Smiley. Lord alive. Lord bless us and preserve us. George.' Her gaze was half possessive, half disapproving, as if he were an erring son she loved. It held him a while longer, then switched to the French windows and the darkening sky outside.
'Kirov,' he said again, reminding her, and waited, wondering seriously whether it was all up with her; whether her mind was dying with her body, and this was all there was.
'Kirov, Oleg,' she repeated, in a musing tone. 'Born Leningrad October, 1929, according to his passport, which doesn't mean a damn thing except that he probably never went near Leningrad in his life.' She smiled, as if that were the way of the wicked world. 'Arrived Paris June 1, 1974, in the rank and quality of Second Secretary, Commercial. Three to four years ago, you say? Dear Lord, it could be twenty. That's right, darling, he was a hood. 'Course he was. Identified by the Paris lodge of the poor old Riga Group, which didn't help us any, specially not on the fifth floor. What was his real name? Kursky. Of course it was. Yes, I think I remember Oleg Kirov, n Kursky all right.' Her smile returned, and was once more very pretty. 'Must have been Vladimir's last case, near enough. How is the old stoat?' she asked, and her moist clever eyes waited for his answer.
'Oh, fighting fit,' said Smiley.
'Still terrifying the virgins of Paddington?'
'I'm sure he is.'
'Bless you, darling,' said Connie, and turned her head till it was in profile to him, very dark except for the one fine line from the oil lamp, while she again stared out of the French windows.
'Go and see how the mad bitch is, will you, heart?' she asked fondly. 'Make sure the idiot hasn't thrown herself into the mill-race or drunk the universal weed-killer.'
Stepping outside, Smiley stood on the veranda, and in the thickening gloom made out the figure of Hilary loping awkwardly among the coops. Her heard the clanking of her spoon on the bucket, and shreds of her well-bred voice on the night air as she called out childish names : Come on Whitey, Flopsy, Bo.
'She's fine,' said Smiley, coming back. 'Feeding the checkens.'
'I should tell her to bugger off, shouldn't I, George?' she remarked, ignoring his information entirely. ' "Go forth into the world, Hils my dear." That's what I should say. "Don't tie yourself to a rotting old hulk like Con. Marry a chinless fool, spawn brats, fulfil your foul womanhood." ' She had voices for everybody, he remembered : even for herself. She had them still. 'I'll be damned if I will, George. I want her. Every gorgeous bit of her. I'd take her with me if I'd half a chance. You want to try it some time.' A break. 'How are all the boys and girls?'
For a second, he didn't understand her question; his thoughts were with Hilary still, and Ann.
'His Grace Saul Enderby is still top of the heap, I take it? Eating well, I trust? Not moulting?'
'Oh, Saul goes from strength to strength, thanks.'
'That toad Sam Collins still Head of Operations?'
There was an edge to her questions, but he had no choice except to answer.
'Sam's fine too,' he said.
'Toby Esterhase still oiling round the corridors?'
'It's all pretty much as usual.'
Her face was now so dark to him that he could not tell whether she was proposing to speak again. He heard her breathing and the rasp of her chest. But he knew he was still the object of her scrutiny.
'You'd never work for that bunch, George,' she remarked at last, as if it were the most self-evident of platitudes. 'Not you. Give me another drink.'
Glad of the movement, Smiley went down the room again.
'Kirov, you said?' Connie called to him.
'That's right,' said Smiley cheerfully, and returned with her glass replenished.
'That little ferret Otto Leipzig was the first hurdle,' she rebuked with relish, when she had taken a deep draught. 'The fifth floor wouldn't believe him, would they? Not our little Otto - oh no! Otto was a fabricator, and that was that!'
'But I don't think Leipzig ever lied to us about the Moscow target,' Smiley said, taking up her tone of reminiscence.
'No, darling, he did not,' she said with approval. 'He had his weaknesses, I'll grant you. But when it came to the big stuff he always played a straight bat. And you understood that, alone of all your tribe, I'll say that for you. But you didn't get much support from the other barons, did you?'
'He never lied to Vladimir, either,' Smiley said. 'It was Vladimir's escape lines that got him out of Russia in the first place.'
'Well, well,' said Connie, after another long silence. 'Kirov n Kursky, the Ginger Pig.'
She said it again - 'Kirov, n Kursky' - a rallying call spoken to her own mountainous memory. As she did so, Smiley saw in his mind's eye the airport hotel room again, and the two strange conspirators seated before him in their black overcoats : the one so huge, the other tiny; the old General using all his bulk to enforce his passionate imploring; little Leipzig with his burning eyes, watching like an angry leash-dog at his side.