Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré

Connie was having a hangover. She was sitting again, slumped over her glass. Her eyes had closed and her head kept falling to one side.

‘Oh God,’ she whispered, waking up again. ‘Oh my Lordy be.’

‘Did Polyakov have a legman?’ Smiley asked.

‘Why should he? He’s a culture vulture. Culture vultures don’t need legmen.’

‘Komarov had one in Tokyo. You said so.’

‘Komarov was military,’ she said sullenly.

‘So was Polyakov. You saw his medals.’

He held her hand, waiting. Lapin the rabbit, she said, clerk driver at the Embassy, twerp. At first she couldn’t work him out. She suspected him of being one Ivlov alias Brod but she couldn’t prove it and no one would help her anyway. Lapin the rabbit spent most of his day padding round London looking at girls and not daring to talk to them. But gradually she began to pick up the connection. Polyakov gave a reception, Lapin helped pour the drinks. Polyakov was called in late at night, and half an hour later Lapin turned up presumably to unbutton a telegram. And when Polyakov flew to Moscow Lapin the rabbit actually moved into the Embassy and slept there till he came back: ‘He was doubling up,’ said Connie firmly. ‘Stuck out a mile.’

‘So you reported that too?’

“Course I did.’

‘And what happened?’

‘Connie was sacked and Lapin went hippety-lippety home,’ Connie said with a giggle. She yawned. ‘Hey ho,’ she said. ‘Halcyon days. Did I start the landslide, George?’

The fire was quite dead. From somewhere above them came a thud, perhaps it was Janet and her lover. Gradually, Connie began humming, then swaying to her own music.

He stayed, trying to cheer her up. He gave her more drink and finally it brightened her.

‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I’ll show you my bloody medals.’

Dormitory feasts again. She had them in a scuffed attaché case which Smiley had to pull out from under the bed. First a real medal in a box and a typed citation calling her by her workname Constance Salinger and putting her on the Prime Minister’s list.

”Cos Connie was a good girl,’ she explained, her cheek against his. ‘And loved all her gorgeous boys.’

Then the photographs of past members of the Circus: Connie in Wren’s uniform in the war, standing between Jebedee and old Bill Magnus the wrangler, taken somewhere in England; Connie with Bill Haydon one side and Jim Prideaux the other, the men in cricket gear and all three looking very-nicely-thank-you, as Connie put it, on a summer course at Sarratt, the grounds stretching out behind them, mown and sunlit and the sight screens glistening. Next an enormous magnifying glass with signatures engraved on the lens: from Roy, from Percy, from Toby and lots of others, ‘To Connie with love and never say goodbye!’

Lastly Bill’s own special contribution: a caricature of Connie lying across the whole expanse of Kensington Palace Gardens while she peered at the Soviet Embassy through a telescope: ‘With love and fond memories, dear, dear Connie.’

‘They still remember him here, you know. The golden boy. Christ Church common room has a couple of his paintings. They take them out quite often. Giles Langley stopped me in the High only the other day: did I ever hear from Haydon? Don’t know what I said: Yes. No. Does Giles’s sister still do safe houses, do you know?’ Smiley did not. ‘”We miss his flair,” says Giles, “they don’t breed them like Bill Haydon any more.” Giles must be a hundred and eight in the shade. Says he taught Bill modern history in the days before Empire became a dirty word. Asked after Jim, too. “His alter ego we might say, hem hem, hem hem.” You never liked Bill, did you?’ Connie ran on vaguely, as she packed it all away again in plastic bags and bits of cloth. ‘I never knew whether you were jealous of him or he was jealous of you. Too glamorous, I suppose. You always distrusted looks. Only in men, mind.’

‘My dear Connie, don’t be absurd,’ Smiley retorted, off guard for once. ‘Bill and I were perfectly good friends. What on earth makes you say that?’

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