The Honourable Schoolboy (George Smiley, #6; Karla Trilogy #2)

by John Le Carré

As to Hong Kong—is that all history too? Even as I write, Mrs. Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary is in the Colony, bravely explaining why Britain can do nothing for a people she has dined off for a hundred and fifty years. Only betrayal, it seems, is timeless.

the row was so deafening that even an Italian would have heard it.

In the spring, the orphan came and the postmistress hated her too. A redhead, which was half-way to whoredom for a start. Not enough breast to nurse a rabbit, and worst of all a fierce eye for arithmetic.

“Wives?” she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, “None active,” as if wives were volcanoes, which in Jerry’s world they had been.

“They’re talking about Hong Kong,” Mrs. Lacon explained to Guillam. “My uncle was Political Secretary. On Daddy’s side,” she added. “Mummy’s brothers never did anything brainy at all.” She said Hong Kong was nice but smelly.

“Like a latter-day Jay Gatsby, my dear!” Connie Sachs cried in delight as they all pored over it. “Mooning at the blasted light at the end of the pier, or whatever the ninny did!”