Chapter thirty-three

Smiley sat in the Minister’s Rolls, with Lacon beside hi m. In Ann’s family the car was called the black bed-pan, and hated for its flashiness. The chauffeur had been sent to find himself breakfast. The Minister sat in the front and everyone looked forward down the long bonnet, across the river to the foggy towe rs of Battersea Power Station. The Minister’s hair was full at the back, and licked into small black horns around the ears.

‘If you’re right,’ the Minister declared, after a funereal silence, ‘I’m not saying you’re not, but if you are, how much porcelain will he break at the end of the day?’

Smiley did not quite understand.

‘I’m talking about scandal. Gerald gets to Moscow. Right, so then what happens? Does he leap on a soapbox and laugh his head off in public about all the people he’s made fools of over here? I mean Christ, we’re all in this together, aren’t we? I don’t see why we should let him go just so’s he can pull the bloody roof down over our heads and the competition sweep the bloody pool.’

He tried a different tack. ‘I mean to say, just because the Russians know our secrets doesn’t mean everyone else has to. We got plenty of other fish to fry apart from them, don’t we? What about all the black men: are they going to be reading the gory details in the Wallah-Wallah News in a week’s time?’

Or his constituents, Smiley thought.

‘I think that’s always been a point the Russians accept,’ said Lacon.

‘After all, if you make your enemy look a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him.’ He added: They’ve never made use of their opportunities so far, have they?’

‘Well, make sure they toe the line. Get it in writing. No, don’t. But you tell them what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. We don’t go round publishing the batting order at Moscow Centre, so they can bloody well play ball too, for once.’

Declining a lift, Smiley said the walk would do him good.

It was Thursgood’s day for duty and he felt it badly. Headmasters, in his opinion, should be above the menial tasks, they should keep their minds clear for policy and leadership. The flourish of his Cambridge gown did not console him, and as he stood in the gymnasium watching the boys file in for morning line -up, his eye fixed on them balefully, if not with downright hostility. It was Marjoribanks, though, who dealt the deathblow.

‘He said it was his mother,’ he explained, in a low murmur to Thursgood’s left ear. ‘He’d had a telegram and proposed to leave at once. He wouldn’t even stay for a cup of tea. I promised to pass on the message.’

‘It’s monstrous, absolutely monstrous,’ said Thursgood.

‘I’ll take his French if you like. We can double up Five and Six.’

‘I’m furious,’ said Thursgood. ‘I can’t think, I’m so furious.’

‘And Irving says he’ll take the rugger final.’

‘Reports to be written, exams, rugger finals to play off. What’s supposed to be the matter with the woman? Just a flu, I suppose, a seasonal flu. Well we’ve all got that, so have our mothers. Where does she live?’

‘I rather gathered from what he said to Sue that she was dying.’

‘Well that’s one excuse he won’t be able to use again,’ said Thursgood, quite unmollified, and with a sharp bark quelled the noise and read the roll.

‘Roach?’

‘Sick, sir.’

That was all he needed to fill his cup. The school’s richest boy having a nervous breakdown about his wretched parents, and the father threatening to remove him.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14