The Looking Glass War

Avery watched the lamps come up the street. He was quite young, belonging to that intermediate class of contemporary Englishman which must reconcile an Arts degree with an uncertain provenance.

There was nothing in Smiley’s face but compassion, nothing in his voice but that dreadful patience with which we speak to the insane.

He was terribly tired; the tiredness was like a physical despair, like the moment of guilt before making love.

He looked at the finished message, conscious that it was too long, and that if he were better at that kind of thing, if his mind were quicker, he could reduce it, but just now he couldn’t think of a way, and he knew, he had been taught, better put in a word or two too many than make it ambiguous the other end. There were forty-two groups.

and he remembered that nothing ever bridged the gulf between the man who went and the man who stayed behind, between the living and the dying

Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray. We ourselves live without it in our profession. We don’t force people to do things for us. We let them discover love. And, of course, Leiser did, didn’t he? He married us for money, so to speak, and left us for love. He took his second vow. I wonder when.

his own mission had unfolded as comedy, Leiser was to play the same part as tragedy; that he was witnessing an insane relay race in which each contestant ran faster and longer than the last, arriving nowhere but at his own destruction.

he had heard that dreadful footfall in the hotel, and returned from a nightmare journey to see his own experiences remade into the images of Leclerc’s world.

Following upon Hyde’s visit, Leiser now received daily briefings about his cover. Stage by stage he, Avery and Haldane constructed in tireless detail the background of the man Hartbeck, establishing him in his work, his tastes and recreations, in his love life and choice of friends.

Leiser’s courtesy had something of the servant, his quarrels with Johnson something of the backstairs.