"You've done your tie all wrong, George."
Bill's thin fingers makes short work of Smiley's sad excuse for a proper knot, lingering slightly where the head of the tie touches a rare sliver of bare skin. "All it needs is a gentle touch, not being jammed through the horn like you've done."
So Smiley thanks Haydon in that soft, sincere voice of his and it takes more effort than imaginable not to break eye contact, not to look away from Smiley's honest face. What a terrible trait for a spy, he thinks, an honest face and letting someone get so close to boot.
If you knew what I knew, you would hate me. You would despise me with every fibre of your being, George Smiley.
They've a meeting with Control and the rest of the Circus heads in an hour, but they're still stuck in the front room of Smiley's flat, waiting for Guillam to come round with his car and join them. They move better as a phalanx of suits and scarves against the English winter chill and the unblinking gaze of Alleline and his boys. Guillam, in a way, completes them. He is their moral compass; George is too much of Control's soldier to be unbiased while Haydon carries too many shades of gray to be biased for either side. Also, Peter's car has the best heater system, so there's that.
So they wait for Guillam and talk lightly about football and drinking and the weather, anything other than Circus business. Anything but the fact that Ricki Tarr still hasn't come in from his mission in Hong Kong. Anything but the fact that Ann hasn't been home in days. It's easy for Bill - "painter, polemicist, socialite" as the housekeepers liked to say - to keep it up. It's easy until he's noticed that Smiley's gone and mucked up his tie work again.
Bill shoots the other man one of his classic smiles, the one that makes young women swim in between his bed sheets and causes squirmy targets to cough up their secrets without thinking. Compared to those reactions, Smiley is relatively unfazed. "That's why I'm here. To make sure you don't come into Control's office looking like you've just come off an all-night bender."
"Well then, thank goodness you're here then to keep my ties straight." Something like a grin graces Smiley's features. "God knows I need a gentle touch round here."
Despite his best, Bill winces. He can't even bring himself to say her name, but it's obvious who the other man's thinking of. Still, Smiley isn't looking for apologetics. He's just making a statement, one that's depressingly true. "Christ, George. Sorry." Haydon's glance flits briefly away from George.
"Don't be, Bill. You didn't do anything wrong." Haydon looks back to see Smiley looking at him, examining him, his face amazingly passive. Maybe he was projecting onto poor Smiley - or maybe Smiley knows. Maybe he knows everything.
Haydon laughs, a little too short for his liking. "I'm sure you can ask one of our lovely Circus mothers to come over and keep you out of filth and undone neckties."
"Yes, I'll just ask Millie to pop round and clean the furniture, then?" Smiley laughs softly, a sound Haydon strains gratefully to hear on a regular basis. He seems melancholy, distant, and Haydon wonders if his mind is still back a few steps. He wonders if Smiley blames himself for his current situation. It's only natural, after all, to assume the problem is with one's self and not the other person. Or the person currently standing in their very front room, tugging at the curve of his scarf like it needs adjusting.
"Bill?" George's voice brings Haydon out of his self-deprecating ruminations. He can see over the older man's shoulder the familiar lights of Guillam's car cutting through the snow-tinted fog. "I believe that's Peter's car in the driveway." Damn. Nothing escapes the beggar-man's attention. Control's nickname for Smiley slips into Haydon's mental stream with all the grace of an anvil dropping. To him, Smiley does not have to beg for much these days. If anyone, it will be Haydon doing the begging before this sordid affair is over.
You think you know how wrong I've done you – but, oh George, you haven't a clue how far down these lies of mine go. How deeply I've sinned.
"I'll suppose we should join him then." Haydon lightly raps his knuckles against the hard knot of Smiley's tie, now expertly done. "Before he starts on the horn, that is."
Haydon opens the front door for Smiley, indicating in silence who's the senior in this relationship. Smiley passes through the doorway ahead of him; his slightly oversized coat and scarf trailing behind him with the graceful drift of a bridal train in the wind. It takes self-control, almost too much, to keep Bill from reaching out and pulling on the coat-tails of George Smiley, from putting him against the front door with his hands and doing things he'd normally do to Ann (and some that would be physically impossible with a woman like her).
Instead, Haydon closes the door behind them with an audibly soft click. The full blast of the winter wind hits him, but not as much as the accusing half-glance he gets from Guillam when he slides into the back seat, Smiley riding shotgun. It's the kind of glance that spies give a mole right before they're about to reveal that their grand cover's been blown. It lasts for a mere couple of seconds, but it remains in Haydon's mind long after they pulled away from the curb and onto the road.
The fact that Haydon cannot parse if it was about his business in Moscow – that Guillam has somehow gotten keen to his partnership with Karla – or the fact that he is sleeping with Mrs Smiley when he'd rather be sleeping with the Mr will end up keeping him wide awake for many nights on end. It does not really matter which one it was, truthfully. In the end, the exposure of either one will certainly ensured the same end for Haydon: lying with eyes closed in a zipped-up body bag, nameless and cold.