...you know that feeling when you just have to go out and find someone new or the world will die on you? 273
And young Guillam needs a holiday, thought Mendel. He'd seen that happen before, too: the tough ones who crack at forty. They lock it away, pretend it isn't there, lean on grown-ups who turn out not to be so grown up after all; then one day it's all over them, and their heroes come tumbling down and they're sitting at their desks with the tears pouring onto the blotter. 344
...he wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion... 351 (Smiley while waiting for Hayden)
With a feeling of utter disbelief, Smiley listened to the familiar voice reading aloud the very telegram that Smiley himself had drafted for Tarr's use only forty-eight hours ago. Then, for a moment, one part of Smiley broke into open revolt against the other. The wave of angry doubt that had swept over him in Lacon's garden, and that ever since had pulled against his progress like a worrying tide, drove him now on to the rocks of despair, and then to mutiny: I refuse. Nothing is worth the destruction of another human being. Somewhere the path of pain and betrayal must end. Until that happened, there was no future; there was only a continued slide into still more terrifying versions of the present. This man was my friend and Ann's lover, Jim's friend and---for all I know---Jim's lover, too; it was the treason, not the man, that belonged to the public domain.
Haydon had betrayed. As a lover, a colleague, a friend; as a patriot; as a member of that inestimable body that Ann loosely called the Set: in every capacity, Haydon had overtly pursued one aim and secretly achieved its opposite. Smiley knew very well that even now he did not grasp the scope of that appalling duplicity; yet there was a part of him that rose already in Haydon's defence. Was not Bill also betrayed? Connie's lament rang in his ears: "Poor loves. Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves ... You're the last, George, you and Bill." He saw with painful clarity an ambitious man born to the big canvas, brought up to rule, divide and conquer, whose visions and vanities all were fixed, like Percy's, upon the world's game; for whom the reality was a poor island with scarcely a voice that would carry across the water. Thus Smiley felt not only disgust, but, despite all that the moment meant to him, a surge of resentment against the institutions he was supposed to be protecting: "The social contract cuts both ways, you know," said Lacon. The Minister's lolling mendacity, Lacon's tight-lipped moral complacency, the bludgeoning greed of Percy Alleline: such men invalidated any contract---why should anyone be loyal to them?
He knew, of course. He had always known it was Bill. Just as Control had known, and Lacon in Mendel's house. Just as Connie and Jim had known, and Alleline and Esterhase; all of them had tacitly shared that unexpressed half-knowledge which was like an illness they hoped would go away if it was never owned to, never diagnosed.
And Ann? Did Ann know? Was that the shadow that fell over them that day on the Cornish cliffs?
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. Then, gun still in hand, he tiptoed backward as far as the window, from which he signalled five short flashes in quick succession. Having waited long enough to read the acknowledgement, he returned to his listening post. 356
His butchered agents in Morocco, his exile to Brixton, the daily frustration of his efforts as daily he grew older and youth slipped through his fingers; the drabness that was closing round him; the truncation of his power to love, enjoy, and laugh; the constant erosion of the standards he wished to live by; the checks and stops he had imposed on himself in the name of tacit dedication-he could fling them all in Haydon's sneering face. Haydon, once his confessor; Haydon, always good for a laugh, a chat, and a cup of burnt coffee; Haydon, a model on which he built his life.
And more. Now that he saw, he knew. Haydon was more than his model, he was his inspiration, the torch-bearer of a certain kind of antiquated romanticism, a notion of English calling which---for the very reason that it was vague and understated and elusive---had made sense of Guillam's life till now. In that moment, Guillam felt not merely betrayed but orphaned. His suspicions, his resentments for so long turned outward on the real world---on his women, his attempted loves---now swung upon the Circus and the failed magic that had formed his faith. With all his force he shoved open the door and sprang inside, gun in hand. Haydon and a heavy man with black hair were seated either side of a small table. Polyakov---Guillam recognised him from the photographs--was smoking a very English pipe. He wore a grey cardigan With a zip down the front, like the top half of a track suit. He had not even taken the pipe from his mouth before Guillam had Haydon by the collar. With a single heave he lifted him straight out of his chair. He had thrown away his gun and was hurling Haydon from side to side, shaking him, and shouting. Then suddenly there seemed no point. After all, it was only Bill and they had done a lot together. Guillam had drawn back long before Mendel took his arm, and he heard Smiley, politely as ever, inviting "Bill and Colonel Viktorov," as he called them, to raise their hands and place them on their heads till Percy Alleline arrived.
"There was no one out there, was there, that you noticed?" Smiley asked of Guillam, while they waited.
"Quiet as the grave," said Mendel, answering for both of them. 358
There are moments that are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur. 360