Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

by John Le Carré

The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn’t dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood’s at all.

Great first line!

He was a floating bachelor with a grey mane and that nimbleness which only fat men have.

Great description!

His sharp tongue explored the moist edges of his little mouth, then, like a snake, vanished between its folds.

Smiley had bored him: he looked sulky and cheated; distressing downward folds had formed on the lower contours of his cheeks.

The door opened part way, held on a chain; a body swelled into the opening.

She was a big woman, bigger than Smiley by a head. A tangle of white hair framed her sprawling face. She wore a brown jacket like a blazer and trousers with elastic at the waist and she had a low belly like an old man’s. A coke fire smouldered in the grate. Cats lay before it and a mangy grey spaniel, too fat to move, lounged on the divan. On a trolley were the tins she ate from and the bottles she drank from. From the same adaptor she drew the power for her radio, her electric ring and her curling tongs. A boy with shoulder-length hair lay on the floor, making toast. Seeing Smiley he put down his brass trident.

His posture was finite and irreducible, his little jagged body was like a promontory of rock; he could have sat that way all day, without stirring a muscle.

But he does say that the place is leaking at the joints, and that slovenliness at the top is leading to failures lower down. All balm to Percy’s ear.

For a space, that was how Smiley stood: a fat, barefooted spy, as Ann would say, deceived in love and impotent in hate, clutching a gun in one hand, a bit of string in the other, as he waited in the darkness.