THE LOOKING GLASS WAR by John LeCarré

“You’re not to tell anyone,” said Avery. It was a way of keeping her from him. “You’re not even to say I’ve gone out in the middle of the night. Taylor was traveling under another name.” He added, “Someone will have to tell his wife.” He was looking for his glasses.

She got out of bed and put on a dressing gown. “For God’s sake stop talking like a cowboy. The secretaries know; why can’t the wives? Or are they only told when their husbands die?” She went to the door.

She was of medium height and wore her hair long, a style at odds with the discipline of her face. There was a tension in her expression, an anxiety, an incipient discontent, as if tomorrow would only be worse. They had met at Oxford; she had taken a better degree than Avery. But somehow marriage had made her childish; dependence had become an attitude, as if she had given him something irredeemable, and were always asking for it back. Her son was less her projection than her excuse; a wall against the world and not a channel to it.

“Where are you going?” Avery asked. She sometimes did things to spite him, like tearing up a ticket for the concert. She said, “We’ve got a child, remember?” He noticed Anthony crying. They must have wakened him.

“I’ll ring from the office.”

He went to the front door. As she reached the nursery she looked back and Avery knew she was thinking they hadn’t kissed.

“You should have stuck to publishing,” she said.

“You didn’t like that any better.”

“Why don’t they send a car?” she asked. “You said they had masses of cars.”

“It’s waiting at the corner.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“More secure,” he replied.

“Secure against what?”

“Have you got any money? I seem to have run out.”

“What for?”

“Just money, that’s all! I can’t run around without a penny in my pocket.” She gave him ten shillings from her bag. Closing the door quickly behind him he went down the stairs into Prince of Wales Drive.

He passed the ground-floor window and knew without looking that Mrs. Yates was watching him from behind her curtain, as she watched everybody night and day, holding her cat for comfort.

It was terribly cold. The wind seemed to come from the river, across the park. He looked up and down the road. It was empty. He should have telephoned at Clapham but he wanted to get out of the flat. Besides, he had told Sarah the car was coming. He walked a hundred yards or so toward the power station, changed his mind and turned back. He was sleepy. It was a curious illusion that even in the street he still heard the telephone ringing. There was a cab that hung around Albert Bridge at all hours; that was the best bet. So he passed the entrance to his part of the Mansions, glanced up at the nursery window, and there was Sarah looking out. She must have been wondering where the car was. She had Anthony in her arms and he knew she was crying because he hadn’t kissed her. He took half an hour to find a taxi to Blackfriars Road.

Avery watched the lamps come up the street. He was quite young, belonging to that intermediate class of contemporary Englishmen which must reconcile an Arts degree with an uncertain provenance. He was tall and bookish in appearance, slow-eyed behind his spectacles, with a gently self-effacing manner which endeared him to his elders. The motion of the taxi comforted him, as rocking consoles a child.

He reached St. George’s Circus, passed the Eye Hospital and entered Blackfriars Road. Suddenly he was upon the house, but told the driver to drop him at the next corner because Leclerc had said to be careful.

“Just here,” he called. “This will do fine.”

The Department was housed in a crabbed, sooty villa of a place with a fire extinguisher on the balcony. It was like a house eternally for sale. No one knew why the Ministry put a wall around it; perhaps to protect it from the gaze of the people, like a wall around a cemetery; or the people from the gaze of the dead. Certainly not for the garden’s sake, because nothing grew in it but grass which had worn away in patches like the coat of an old mongrel. The front door was painted dark green; it was never opened. By day anonymous vans of the same color occasionally passed down the shabby drive, but they transacted their business in the back yard. The neighbors, if they referred to the place at all, spoke of the Ministry House, which was not accurate, for the Department was a separate entity, and the Ministry its master. The building had that unmistakable air of controlled dilapidation which characterizes government hirings all over the world. For those who worked in it, its mystery was like the mystery of motherhood, its survival like the mystery of England. It shrouded and contained them, cradled them and, with sweet anachronism, gave them the illusion of nourishment.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *