Grace is by nature a temporary phenomenon, but Jim Prideaux's lasts over a year. It's early spring when the coupe pulls up the drive to park, the driver's door opens, and with a rocking motion like an old man leaving in a deep armchair, George Smiley emerges into the pale sunlight of the Dip.
It takes Smiley a while to get his overcoat sorted and much longer to navigate the wet grass of the bank. By the time he's managed it and stumped down into the shallow muddy garden beside the caravan, Prideaux's had time to arrange his face, still flaming but now mindfully neutral. He's closed the caravan door shut behind him and stands, hands behind his back. Smiley picks his way over, carefully, eyes on the mud. Prideaux's wide shadow falls over him and Smiley's hand disappears into his fierce grip. In the morning chill Smiley's glasses fog where they rest against his warm cheeks and the blur turns Prideaux into a hazy reddish tower.
"Hullo, Jim."
"Smiley. Who do I have to thank?" Jim's rough voice, familiar, now a little hoarse with controlled rage.
"Oh, I'm under my own steam," Smiley answers, vaguely. "I was around, and thought I'd drop by. I haven't any agenda." All but the first sentence is a lie and Smiley waits blinking behind the smoke of his glasses as Jim digests it. He continues. "Have you time for a talk? Shouldn't have dropped in, but I did want to see you."
The eyes on his lift slowly, travel over his hat and up to make a long sweep across the ridgeline.
Smiley raises a hand in protest. "No, no, nothing like that. It's only myself, Jim, and only personal. Truly, now. I recall, last time we spoke, you said you'd drawn a line. I believe you've accomplished that, haven't you?" He ignores the stilling of breath, the sudden darkness in the eyes. Smiley lowers his voice. "I didn't come to cross it. They've pulled me back in to the mess, you see, just to have a look round and pick up the bits, but I've decided that some lines must stay where they were laid."
"Oh?" Jim is looking away, and there's a hollow note in his voice that Smiley can do nothing but pity.
"Yes."
It was true. To the Circus the particulars of Haydon's death remained censored, a source of disgrace all the way up. The unspoken sentiment, that the way it had happened was in fact better for everyone- especially, it could be argued, Bill Haydon- was also a disgrace on its own. This visit to the Dip was partly an inclination of Smiley's, which he could not extinguish in himself, of seeing a thing through no matter how mangled he found it in the end. Also, perhaps, a concession to his sense of loyalty, which he'd never had much luck in brushing off.
And more pressing, a matter of what his fastidiousness had wrought: the results of the casual surveillance he'd kept over Prideaux. It was one of Smiley's tics, this habit of shutting barn doors after long-forgotten horses. But three months ago, during his routine call-in, a visitor had been brought to Smiley's attention, a handyman of some sort. Welsh, dark, of a height with Prideaux but not so broad. In the underlit grainy photographs he could be anyone. His habits, the car he drove, the tiny one-room flat he kept, all hinted to a deliberate inconspicuousness. Smiley dug a bit but unearthed nothing. Yet two or three evenings a week Prideaux left the caravan, walked up through the dark fields to meet the visitor out on the road where his car waited, lights out; in the past months the visitor had taken to leaving the car parked there in the lane and coming down to the caravan himself. Those who should've known professed no information on any Welshman, no knowledge of anything, in fact, to the point where appearances indicated that Ellis was being actively ignored, and that in itself interested Smiley.
He'd already been blind enough. Who else was keeping an eye on Jim, and why? What buried information was still there to be found? And whose company did Jim find so compelling that he had to meet in secret? It had occurred to Smiley that the best man to ask, unfortunately, was Jim himself.
"At least, I hope so. Has anyone come round, Jim?"
There is a pause.
"Besides yourself, and whoever you're having read my mail for me," he answers, "no." The no has a faint emphatic stress behind it that perks Smiley's ears.
"That's good to hear," says Smiley, absently, as though it didn't much matter. "You're certain?"
Prideaux's red face deepens. "Goddammit, George. Come in, then."
.
He doesn't need to duck, as Jim does, to enter the rounded aluminum doorway. The caravan is small inside, extremely neat, smells comfortably of cooking spice and coffee. Smiley reaches to accept a lukewarm cup, blows on it from habit, wedges himself into the narrow booth seat.
"I'm surprised to find you still here," he says, meaning the caravan, and only after the words have left his mouth does he realize that he's voiced, unwittingly, a lingering concern. He'd half expected to hear of a second death after Haydon's. In the fierceness of the face that turns to him, he understands that with this expectation he's done Prideaux a disservice.
"It suits me," Jim replies shortly.
Smiley nods. Behind half-lowered lids he takes in the view. A year ago this caravan looked to him nothing more than a bunker, mobile and ready to flee, and he supposes that his impression wasn't far off. It's changed. Surrounded by vegetable beds, sunk into the earth, a swept mat before the door for the mud; Smiley's reminded of the campground hosts' huts of his youth. And Prideaux himself looks less frozen than he did the last time, his earlier grim, scraped look somewhat softened.
"Rurality's treating you well, it seems," he says. "Peaceful, out here all alone." He looks up in time to catch a momentary blankness glazing Prideaux's eyes. Anyone else might've missed it, but Smiley has built his career on hitting nerves. He gives his neutral smile, drops the blankness into the vast tidy file of his attention, and lets it alone to simmer.
He watches as Jim rises to light the stove, gives him time to collect himself. The man's back is still curved but his movements aren't as jerky; Smiley wonders how the pain is now. He frowns at the back of the sandy head.
"If you-" Smiley pauses, uncertain how to begin. "You got the bad end of it, Jim. If you want closure, or... information, I may have some."
Jim turns. A slow, rather wretched smile, not the blast of anger Smiley had expected.
"I thought you hadn't any agenda."
Smiley spreads his hands.
Jim drops the match into a dish, sits down heavily across from him and exhales, breath lifting the edges of the papers on the table. "No, I don't need any more closure, George. Go on and say whatever you've come for."
To rectify old errors by not allowing them to repeat, that's what for. I've learned a lesson by not paying enough attention to your part in things the first time.
Smiley remembers, through the upstairs window, the humped blur moving quickly out on the sidewalk while the others dealt with Bill below, and how he'd guessed, miserably, what was coming. All the things he'd realized too late. It was fairly easy to allow a devotion, however unrequited, to devour you, as Smiley himself well knew. Bill had seen Jim clearly; saw his absolute, unfaltering love and exploited it for its utility. Then threw him to the wolves. Smiley wondered, not for the first time, how much of this Control had guessed at beforehand. It was a fix from the start, Bill had said. Did Jim know? And, worse- had Jim known? The man was no fool. Here came Ann's voice, whipped by the coastal wind: Think less of him now, George. He'd mistaken her warning, of how quickly it becomes too late to let someone go. To change your mind. Is it even possible, really? Throw him into the sea, Ann had told him, but Smiley had the notion that even then Haydon's dark shape would remain bobbing on the horizon. He wonders now at the view beneath the surface of Jim's rough waters, and, discomfited, fidgets in his chair.
He looks up and Jim is staring at him. Smiley clears his throat and starts in on what he's come for.
"You had your strings pulled, and then we cut them loose and left you to the elements. Control had his fever dream and he dragged you into it, didn't he? You went ahead with the mission anyhow. And you knew, didn't you?"
Silence.
"I think you did. It doesn't matter. Or- rather- it does, but it doesn't bear thinking on now. You were his cat's-paw, Jim, and I'm sorry for that."
"Control's?" One ragged eyebrow lifts. Jim is not used to Smiley speaking out of school.
"Bill's," Smiley corrects gently, looking away. "I believe I was Control's."
Jim says nothing.
"Well." Smiley wraps both pudgy hands around his cup and inspects it, eyes down. "They're both gone, and here we are."
"All right, George," Jim says softly, as if to quiet him, and they both turn to the yellowed oval window. For a while they are quiet, looking out, and then Smiley sips his cold coffee and brings them up from the past.
"Yes. My agenda." The words are waiting in his mouth- someone's been round, Jim, and you've not reported it, in fact you've lied about it- and as he hesitates, calibrating, gauging his tone, his eyes wander and take in the sparse interior of the caravan. Spare and scrubbed but not desolate. Books on the ledge, a copper pot with utensils. On the counter a deck of cards held together with a rubber band. The wrinkled stack of school papers on the table between them, a chunk of agate pinning them down. Running shoes beside the door, toes turned up from being set at the stove to dry. Above the shoes Prideaux's vast coat hanging on its peg, a frayed spot where he must need to pinch the sleeve to pull it over his bad shoulder.
And Smiley's focus sharpens. How did he miss it? Hanging beside the coat is a man's chore jacket, darned at the elbows, faded, a size or two too small for Prideaux. It is hung carefully by the tab, the collar turned out. Smiley looks at the jacket and the entire explanation falls over him and he coughs, lightly, to cover his startle. In his own hand the confirmation, his mug of coffee; two cups, two chairs, two coats, here in the home of an extraordinarily vigilant and solitary man, a man who keeps close only what is absolutely necessary. Of course.
At the corner of his eye, inside the dim slice he can see past the drawn canvas curtain, is the cot Jim sleeps on. A flannel quilt covers it, tucked in at the edges. For a moment, staring at the extra quilt rolled neatly at the foot of the cot, he sees Jim's life in its entirety, spartan and self-regulated. Held together by his astonishing equanimity. And- then what? Hidden at the core of it, an ache like anyone else's.
Smiley, himself a past master at living with the ache, needs no other proof. The explanation fills him with a combined sense of relief and ruefulness. George Smiley, master spy, blind to the simplest answer. He runs his thumb along the inner curve of the cup's handle. What is this vocation we have built for ourselves? What has it made of me? Of all of us? Fearful of our own loves, believing them weaknesses to be used against us. Covering up our basic humanity, our most honest wants. Who does all of this loneliness serve, in the end?
He understands then that Jim has allowed him into the caravan, shown him the evidence of his most private life, as a form of plea. A calculated request for protection. He also understands that no other communication of it will be tolerated.
Once again, Smiley thinks, we've underestimated Prideaux. He looks over at his friend and chooses his next words carefully.
"My agenda. Of course." There is a long pause. "My agenda was to see about anything I could do for you, if you'll name it."
"Since you ask, yes." Jim looks out the window, giving Smiley his wolfish profile. His blunt fingers tap on the small table; Smiley's coffee shivers in its cup. "You can forget about me." His voice is calm, eyes on the field. Smiley nods. For some moments there is another, deeper silence between them. Then as Jim turns back, his face relaxes, and with a breath of his old smile he adds, "At least, for another few years."