'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.
'In that sense, I think we may legitimately congratulate ourselves on being a trifle old-fashioned -'
Jerry had had enough.
'Sport,' he expostulated, with a clumsy laugh, as the colour rose to his face. 'For Heaven's sake. You point me and I'll march. Okay? You're the owl, not me. Tell me the shots, I'll play them. World's chock-a-block with milk-and-water intellectuals armed with fifteen conflicting arguments against blowing their blasted noses. We don't need another. Okay? I mean, Christ.'
A sharp knock at the door announced the reappearance of Guillam.
'Peace pipes all lit, Chief.'
To his surprise, over the clatter of this interruption, Jerry thought he caught the term 'ladies' man', but whether it was a reference to himself or the poet Heine he could not say, nor did he particularly care. Smiley hesitated, frowned, then seemed to wake again to his surroundings. He glanced at Guillam, then once more at Jerry, then his eyes settled on that middle distance which is the special preserve of English academics.
'Well, then, yes, let's start winding the clock,' he said in a withdrawn voice.
As they trooped out, Jerry paused to admire the photograph on the wall, hands in pockets, grinning at it, hoping Guillam would hang back too, which he did.
'Looks as though he's swallowed his last sixpence,' said Jerry. 'Who is he?'
'Karla,' said Guillam. 'Recruited Bill Haydon. Russian hood.'
'Sounds more like a girl's name. How you keeping?'
'It's the codename of his first network. There's a school of thought that says it's also the name of his one love.'
'Bully for him,' said Jerry carelessly and, still grinning, drifted beside him toward the rumpus room. Perhaps deliberately, Smiley had gone ahead, out of earshot of their conversation. 'Still with that loony girl, the flute-player, are you?' Jerry asked.
'She got less loony,' said Guillam. They took a few more paces.
'Bolted?' Jerry enquired sympathetically.
'Something like that.'
'And he's all right, is he?' Jerry asked dead casually, nodding at the solitary figure ahead of them. 'Eating well, good coat, all that stuff?'
'Never been better. Why?'
'Just asked,' said Jerry, very pleased.
From the airport Jerry rang his daughter, Cat, a thing he rarely did, but this time he had to. He knew it was a mistake before he put the money in, but he still persisted, and not even the terribly familiar voice of the early wife could put him off.
'Gosh, hullo! It's me actually. Super. Listen: how's Phillie?'
Phillie was her husband, a civil servant nearly eligible for a pension, though younger than Jerry by about thirty muddled lives.
'Perfectly well, thank you,' she retorted in the frosty tone with which old wives defend new mates. 'Is that why you rang?'
'Well I did just think I might chat up old Cat, actually. Going out East for a bit, back in harness,' he said. He felt he should apologise. 'It's just the comic needs a hack out there,' he said, and heard a clatter as the receiver hit the hall chest. Oak, he remembered. Barley-twist legs.