'Let me try it differently,' she proposed when they had walked a distance. 'If Bywater Street had been in bounds, would you have suggested that I did go there? Or are you telling me it's out of bounds for good?'
She stopped and gazed at him, and held him away from her, trying to read his answer. She whispered, 'For goodness' sake,' and he could see the doubt, the pride, and the hope in her face all at once, and wondered what she saw in his, because he himself had no knowledge of what he felt, except that he belonged nowhere near her, nowhere near this place; she was like a girl on a floating island that was swiftly moving away from him with the shadows of all her lovers gathered round her. He loved her, he was indifferent to her, he observed her with the curse of detachment, but she was leaving him. If I do not know myself, he thought, how can I tell who you are? He saw the lines of age and pain and striving that their life together had put there. She was all he wanted, she was nothing, she reminded him of someone he had once known a long time ago; she was remote to him, he knew her entirely. He saw the gravity in her face and one minute wondered that he could ever have taken it for profundity; the next, he despised her dependence on him, and wanted only to be free of her. He wanted to call out 'Come back' but he didn't do it; he didn't even put out a hand to stop her from slipping away.
'You used to tell me never to stop looking,' he said. The statement began like the preface to a question, but no question followed.
She waited, then offered a statement of her own. 'I'm a comedian, George,' she said. 'I need a straight man. I need you.'
But he saw her from a long way off.
'It's the job,' he said.
'I can't live with them. I can't live without them.' He supposed she was talking about her lovers again. 'There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo. I hate the choice. I love you. Do you understand?' There was a gap while he must have said something. She was not relying on him, but she was leaning on him while she wept, because the weeping had taken away her strength. 'You never knew how free you were, George,' he heard her say. 'I had to be free for both of us.'
She seemed to realize her own absurdity and laughed.
She let go his arm and they walked again while she tried to right the ship by asking plain questions. He said weeks, perhaps longer. He said, 'In a hotel,' but didn't say which city or country. She faced him again, and the tears were suddenly running anywhere, worse than before, but they still didn't move him as he wished they would.
'George, this is all there is, I promise you,' she said, halting to make her entreaty. 'The whistle's gone, in your world and in mine. We're landed with each other. There isn't any more. According to the averages, we're the most contented people on earth.'
He nodded, seeming to take the point that she had been somewhere he had not, but not regarding it as conclusive. They walked a little more, and he noticed that when she didn't speak he was able to relate to her, but only in the sense that she was another living creature moving along the same path as himself.
'It's to do with the people who ruined Bill Haydon,' he said to her, either as a consolation, or an excuse for his retreat. But he thought : 'Who ruined you.'
He had missed his train and there were two hours to kill. The tide was out so he walked along the shore near Marazion, scared by his own indifference. The day was grey, the seabirds were very white against the slate sea. A couple of brave children were splashing in the surf. I am a thief of the spirit, he thought despondently. Faithless, I am pursuing another man's convictions; I am trying to warm myself against other people's fires. He watched the children, and recalled some scrap of poetry from the days when he read it :
To turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary.
Yes, he thought glumly. That's me.
'Now, George,' Lacon demanded. 'Do you think we set our women up too high, is that where we English middle-class chaps go wrong? Do you think - I'll put it this way - that we English, with our traditions and our schools, expect our womenfolk to stand for far too much, then blame them for not standing up at all - if you follow me? We see them as concepts, rather than flesh and blood. Is that our hang-up?'
Smiley said it might be.
'Well if it isn't, why does Val always fall for shits?' Lacon snapped aggressively, to the surprise of the couple sitting at the next-door table.
Smiley did not know the answer to that either.
They had dined, appallingly, in the steak-house Lacon had suggested. They had drunk Spanish burgundy out of a carafe, and Lacon had raged wildly over the British political dilemma. Now they were drinking coffee and a suspect brandy. The anti-Communist phobia was overdone : Lacon had declared himself sure of it. Communists were only people, after all. They weren't red-toothed monsters, not any more. Communists wanted what everyone wanted : prosperity and a bit of peace and quiet. A chance to take a breather from all this damned hostility. And if they didn't - well, what could we do about it anyway? he had asked. Some problems - take Ireland - were insoluble, but you would never get the Americans to admit anything was insoluble. Britain was ungovernable; so would everywhere else be in a couple of years. Our future was with the collective, but our survival was with the individual, and the paradox was killing us every day.
'Now, George, how do you see it? You're out of harness after all. You have the objective view, the overall perspective.'
Smiley heard himself mutttering something inane about a spectrum.
And now the topic that Smiley had dreaded all evening was finally upon them : their seminar on marriage had begun.
'We were always taught that women had to be cherished,' Lacon declared resentfully. 'If one didn't make 'em feel loved every minute of the day, they'd go off the rails. But this chap Val's with - well if she annoys him, or speaks out of turn, he'll like as not give her a black eye. You and I never do that, do we?'
'I'm sure we don't,' said Smiley.
'Look here. Do you reckon if I went and saw her - bearded her in his house - took a really tough line - threatened legal action and so forth - it might tip the scales? I mean I'm bigger than he is, God knows. I'm not without clout, whichever way you read me!'
They stood on the pavement under the stars, waiting for Smiley's cab.
'Well have a good holiday anyway. You've deserved it,' Lacon said. 'Going somewhere warm?'
'Well, I thought I might just take off and wander.'
'Lucky you. My God, I envy you your freedom! Well, you've been jolly useful, anyway. I shall follow your advice to the letter.'
'But, Oliver, I didn't give you any advice,' Smiley protested, slightly alarmed.
Lacon ignored him. 'And that other thing is all squared away, I hear,' he said serenely. 'No loose ends, no messiness. Good of you, that, George. Loyal. I'm going to see if we can get you a bit of recognition for it. What have you got already, I forget? Some chap the other day in the Athenaeum was saying you deserve a K.'
The cab came, and to Smiley's embarrassment Lacon insisted on shaking hands. 'George. Bless you. You've been a brick. We're birds of a feather, George. Both patriots, givers, not takers. Trained to our services. Our country. We must pay the price. If Ann had been your agent instead of your wife, you'd probably have run her pretty well.'
The next afternoon, following a telephone call from Toby to say that 'the deal was just about ready for completion', George Smiley quietly left for Switzerland, using the workname Barraclough. From Zurich airport he took the Swissair bus to Berne and made straight for the Bellevue Palace Hotel, an enormous, sumptuous place of mellowed Edwardian quiet, which on clear days looks across the foothills to the glistening Alps, but that evening was shrouded in a cloying winter fog. He had considered smaller places; he had considered using one of Toby's safe flats. But Toby had persuaded him that the Bellevue was best. It had several exits, it was central, and it was the first place in Berne where anyone would think to find him, and therefore the last where Karla, if he was looking out for him, would expect him to be. Entering the enormous hall, Smiley had the feeling of stepping onto an empty liner far out at sea.