Maybe, he thought. Everything is maybe. Maybe Vladimir was shot by a jealous husband after all, he thought, as the front doorbell screamed at him like a vulture, two rings.
She’s forgotten her key as usual, he thought. He was in the hall before he knew it, fumbling with the lock. Her key would do no good, he realized; like Ostrakova, he had chained the door. He fished at the chain, calling ‘Ann. Hang on!’ and feeling nothing in his fingers. He slammed a bolt along its runner and heard the whole house tingle to the echo. ‘Just coming!’ he shouted. ‘Wait! Don’t go!’
He heaved the door wide open, swaying on the threshold, offering his plump face as a sacrifice to the midnight air, to the shimmering black leather figure, crash helmet under his arm, standing before him like death’s sentinel.
‘I didn’t mean to alarm you, sir, I’m sure,’ the stranger said. Clutching the doorway, Smiley could only stare at his intruder. He was tall and close cropped, and his eyes reflected unrequited loyalty.
‘Ferguson, sir. You remember me, sir, Ferguson? I used to manage the transport pool for Mr Esterhase’s lamplighters.’
His black motor-cycle with its side-car was parked on the kerb behind him, its lovingly polished surfaces glinting under the street lamp.
‘I thought lamplighter section had been disbanded,’ Smiley said, still staring at him.
‘So they have, sir. Scattered to the four winds, I regret to say. The camaraderies, the spirit, gone for ever.’
‘So who employs you?’
‘Well, no one, sir. Not officially, as you might say. But still on the side of the angels, all the same.’
‘I didn’t know we had any angels.’
‘No, well that’s true, sir. All men are fallible, I do say. Specially these days.’ He was holding a brown envelope for Smiley to take. ‘From certain friends of yours, sir, put it that way. I understand it relates to a telephone account you were enquiring about. We get a good response from the Post Office generally, I will say. Good night, sir. Sorry to bother you. Time you had some shut-eye, isn’t it? Good men are scarce, I always say.’
‘Good night,’ said Smiley.
But still his visitor lingered, like someone asking for a tip. ‘You did remember me really, didn’t you, sir? It was just a lapse, wasn’t it?’
‘Of course.’
There were stars, he noticed as he closed the door. Clear stars swollen by the dew. Shivering, he took out one of Ann’s many photograph albums and opened it at the centre. It was her habit, when she liked a snap, to wedge the negative behind it. Selecting a picture of the two of them in Cap Ferrat – Ann in a bathing-dress, Smiley prudently covered – he removed the negative and put Vladimir’s behind it. He tidied up his chemicals and equipment and slipped the print into the tenth volume of his 1961 Oxford English Dictionary, under Y for Yesterday. He opened Ferguson’s envelope, glanced wearily at the contents, registered a couple of entries and the word ‘Hamburg’, and tossed the whole lot into a drawer of the desk. Tomorrow, he thought; tomorrow is another riddle. He climbed into bed, never sure, as usual, which side to sleep on. He closed his eyes and at once the questions bombarded him, as he knew they would, in crazy uncoordinated salvoes.
Why didn’t Vladimir ask for Hector? he wondered for the hundredth time. Why did the old man liken Esterhase, alias Hector, to the City banks who took your umbrella away when it rained?
Tell Max it concerns the Sandman.
To ring her? To throw on his clothes and hurry round there, to be received as her secret lover, creeping away with the dawn? Too late. She was already suited.
Suddenly, he wanted her dreadfully. He could not bear the spaces round him that did not contain her, he longed for her laughing trembling body as she cried to him, calling him her only true, her best lover, she wanted none other, ever. ‘Women are lawless, George,’ she had told him once, when they lay in rare peace. ‘So what am I?’ he had asked, and she said, ‘My law.’ ‘So what was Haydon?’ he had asked. And she laughed and said, ‘My anarchy.’