Smiley ordered a Bloody Mary.
‘It isn’t complete coincidence, Jerry,’ Smiley confessed. There was a slight pause between them which Jerry was suddenly concerned to fill.
‘Listen, how’s the demon wife? All well? That’s the stuff. One of the great marriages that one, always said so.’
Jerry Westerby himself had made several marriages but few that had given him pleasure.
‘Do a deal with you, George,’ he proposed, rolling one great shoulder towards him. ‘I’ll shack up with Ann and spit at the ceiling, you take my job and write up the women’s ping-pong. How’s that? God bless.’
‘Cheers,’ said Smiley good-humouredly.
‘Haven’t seen many of the boys and girls for a while, matter of fact,’ Jerry confessed awkwardly with another unaccountable blush. ‘Christmas card from old Toby last year, that’s about my lot. Guess they’ve put me on the shelf as well. Can’t blame them.’ He flicked the rim of his glass. ‘Too much of this stuff, that’s what it is. They think I’ll blab. Crack up.’
‘I’m sure they don’t,’ said Smiley, and the silence reclaimed them both.
‘Too much wampum not good for braves,’ Jerry intoned solemnly. For years they had had this Red Indian joke running, Smiley remembered with a sinking heart.
‘How,’ said Smiley.
‘How,’ said Jerry, and they drank.
‘I burnt your letter as soon as I’d read it,’ Smiley went on in a quiet, unbothered voice. ‘In case you wondered. I didn’t tell anyone about it at all. It came too late anyway. It was all over.’
At this, Jerry’s lively complexion turned a deep scarlet.
‘So it wasn’t the letter you wrote me that put them off you,’ Smiley continued in the same very gentle voice, ‘if that’s what you were thinking. And after all, you did drop it in to me by hand.’
‘Very decent of you,’ Jerry muttered. ‘Thanks. Shouldn’t have written it. Talking out of school.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Smiley as he ordered two more. ‘You did it for the good of the Service.’
To himself, saying this, Smiley sounded like Lacon. But the only way to talk to Jerry was to talk like Jerry’s newspaper: short sentences; facile opinions.
Jerry expelled some breath and a lot of cigarette smoke. ‘Last job, oh, year ago,’ he recalled with a new airiness. ‘More. Dumping some little packet in Budapest. Nothing to it really. Phone box. Ledge at the top. Put my hand up. Left it there. Kid’s play. Don’t think I muffed it or anything. Did my sums first, all that. Safety signals. “Box ready for emptying. Help yourself.” The way they taught us, you know. Still, you lads know best, don’t you? You’re the owls. Do one’s bit, that’s the thing. Can’t do more. All part of a pattern. Design.’
‘They’ll be beating the doors down for you soon,’ said Smiley consolingly. ‘I expect they’re resting you up for a season. They do that, you know.’
‘Hope so,’ said Jerry with a loyal, very diffident smile. His glass shook slightly as he drank.
‘Was that the trip you made just before you wrote to me?’ Smiley asked.
‘Sure. Same trip actually, Budapest, then Prague.’
‘And it was in Prague that you heard this story? The story you referred to in your letter to me?’
At the bar a florid man in a black suit was predicting the imminent collapse of the nation. He gave us three months, he said, then curtains.
‘Rum chap, Toby Esterhase,’ said Jerry.
‘But good,’ said Smiley.
‘Oh my God, old boy, first rate. Brilliant, my view. But rum, you know. How.’ They drank again, and Jerry Westerby loosely poked a finger behind his head, in imitation of an Apache feather.
‘Trouble is,’ the florid man at the bar was saying, over the top of his drink, ‘we won’t even know it’s happened.’
They decided to lunch straight away, because Jerry had this story to file for tomorrow’s edition: the West Brom striker had flipped his lid. They went to a curry house where the management was content to serve beer at tea time and they agreed that if anyone bumped into them Jerry would introduce George as his bank manager, a notion which tickled him repeatedly throughout his hearty meal. There was background music which Jerry called the connubial flight of the mosquito, and at times it threatened to drown the fainter notes of his husky voice; which was probably just as well. For while Smiley made a brave show of enthusiasm for the curry, Jerry was launched, after his initial reluctance, upon quite a different story, concerning one Jim Ellis: the story which dear old Toby Esterhase had refused to let him print.