John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

VIP免费

2024-12-05 0 0 1.17MB 746 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Tinker Tailor

Soldier Spy

John le Carré

Published: 1974. ISBN 0-340-73961-4.

For James Bennett and Dusty Rhodes

in memory

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn't

dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would

never have come to Thursgood's at all. He

came in mid-term without an interview,

late May it was though no one would have

thought it from the weather, employed

file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/TEMP/LE%20CARRE...-%20Tinker%20Tailor%20Soldier%20Spy%20v1.htm (1 of 746) [22.03.2003 12:30:19]

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

through one of the shiftier agencies

specialising in supply teachers for prep

schools, to hold down old Dover's teaching

till someone suitable could be found. 'A

linguist,' Thursgood told the common room,

'a temporary measure,' and brushed away

his forelock in self-defence. Priddo.' He

gave the spelling P-R-I-D' - French was

not Thursgood's subject so he consulted

the slip of paper - 'E-A-U-X, first name

James. I think he'll do us very well till

July.' The staff had no difficulty in

reading the signals. Jim Prideaux was a

poor white of the teaching community. He

belonged to the same sad bunch as the late

Mrs Loveday who had a Persian lamb coat

and stood in for junior divinity until her

cheques bounced, or the late Mr Maltby,

the pianist who had been called from choir

practice to help the police with their

enquiries, and for all anyone knew was

helping them to this day, for Maltby's

trunk still lay in the cellar awaiting

instructions. Several of the staff, but

chiefly Marjoribanks, were in favour of

opening that trunk. They said it contained

file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/TEMP/LE%20CARRE...-%20Tinker%20Tailor%20Soldier%20Spy%20v1.htm (2 of 746) [22.03.2003 12:30:19]

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

notorious missing treasures: Aprahamian's

silver-framed picture of his Lebanese

mother, for instance; Best-Ingram's Swiss

army penknife and Matron's watch. But

Thursgood set his creaseless face

resolutely against their entreaties. Only

five years had passed since he had

inherited the school from his father, but

they had taught him already that some

things are best locked away.

Jim Prideaux arrived on a Friday in a

rainstorm. The rain rolled like gun-smoke

down the brown combes of the Quantocks,

then raced across the empty cricket fields

into the sandstone of the crumbling

facades. He arrived just after lunch,

driving an old red Alvis and towing a

second-hand caravan that had once been

blue. Early afternoons at Thursgood's are

a tranquil time, a brief truce in the

running fight of each school day. The boys

are sent to rest in their dormitories, the

staff sit in the common room over coffee

reading newspapers or correcting boys'

work. Thursgood reads a novel to his

file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/TEMP/LE%20CARRE...-%20Tinker%20Tailor%20Soldier%20Spy%20v1.htm (3 of 746) [22.03.2003 12:30:19]

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

mother. Of the whole school therefore only

little Bill Roach actually saw Jim arrive,

saw the steam belching from the Alvis'

bonnet as it wheezed its way down the

pitted drive, windscreen wipers going full

pelt and the caravan shuddering through

the puddles in pursuit.

Roach was a new boy in those days and

graded dull, if not actually deficient.

Thursgood's was his second prep school in

two terms. He was a fat round child with

asthma and he spent large parts of his

rest kneeling on the end of his bed,

gazing through the window. His mother

lived grandly in Bath; his father was

agreed to be the richest in the school, a

distinction which cost the son dear.

Coming from a broken home Roach was also a

natural watcher. In Roach's observation

Jim did not stop at the school buildings

but continued across the sweep to the

stable yard. He knew the layout of the

place already. Roach decided later that he

must have made a reconnaissance or studied

maps. Even when he reached the yard he

file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/TEMP/LE%20CARRE...-%20Tinker%20Tailor%20Soldier%20Spy%20v1.htm (4 of 746) [22.03.2003 12:30:19]

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

didn't stop but drove straight on to the

wet grass, travelling at speed to keep the

momentum. Then over the hummock into the

Dip, head first and out of sight. Roach

half expected the caravan to jack-knife on

the brink, Jim took it over so fast, but

instead it just lifted its tail and

disappeared like a giant rabbit into its

hole.

The Dip is a piece of Thursgood folklore.

It lies in a patch of waste land between

the orchard, the fruithouse and the stable

yard. To look at, it is no more than a

depression in the ground, grass-covered,

with hummocks on the northern side, each

about boy-height and covered in tufted

thickets which in summer grow spongy. It

is these hummocks that give the Dip its

special virtue as a playground and also

its reputation, which varies with the

fantasy of each new generation of boys.

They are the traces of an open-cast silver

mine, says one year, and digs

enthusiastically for wealth. They are a

Romano-British fort, says another, and

file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/TEMP/LE%20CARRE...-%20Tinker%20Tailor%20Soldier%20Spy%20v1.htm (5 of 746) [22.03.2003 12:30:19]

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

stages battles with sticks and clay

missiles. To others the Dip is a bomb-

crater from the war and the hummocks are

seated bodies buried in the blast. The

truth is more prosaic. Six years ago, and

not long before his abrupt elopement with

a receptionist from the Castle Hotel,

Thursgood's father had launched an appeal

for a swimming pool and persuaded the boys

to dig a large hole with a deep and a

shallow end. But the money that came in

was never quite enough to finance the

ambition, so it was frittered away on

other schemes, such as a new projector for

the art school, and a plan to grow

mushrooms in the school cellars. And even,

said the cruel ones, to feather a nest for

certain illicit lovers when they

eventually took flight to Germany, the

lady's native home.

Jim was unaware of these associations. The

fact remains that by sheer luck he had

chosen the one corner of Thursgood's

academy which as far as Roach was

concerned was endowed with supernatural

file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/TEMP/LE%20CARRE...-%20Tinker%20Tailor%20Soldier%20Spy%20v1.htm (6 of 746) [22.03.2003 12:30:19]

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

properties.

Roach waited at the window but saw nothing

more. Both the Alvis and the caravan were

in dead ground and if it hadn't been for

the wet red tracks across the grass he

might have wondered whether he had dreamed

the whole thing. But the tracks were real,

so when the bell went for the end of rest

he put on his Wellingtons and trudged

through the rain to the top of the Dip and

peered down and there was Jim dressed in

an army raincoat and a quite extraordinary

hat, broad-brimmed like a safari hat but

hairy, with one side pinned up in a rakish

piratical curl and the water running off

it like a gutter.

The Alvis was in the stable yard; Roach

never knew how Jim spirited it out of the

Dip, but the caravan was right down there,

at what should have been the deep end,

bedded on platforms of weathered brick,

and Jim was sitting on the step drinking

from a green plastic beaker, and rubbing

his right shoulder as if he had banged it

file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/TEMP/LE%20CARRE...-%20Tinker%20Tailor%20Soldier%20Spy%20v1.htm (7 of 746) [22.03.2003 12:30:19]

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

on something, while the rain poured off

his hat. Then the hat lifted and Roach

found himself staring at an extremely

fierce red face, made still fiercer by the

shadow of the brim and by a brown

moustache washed into fangs by the rain.

The rest of the face was criss-crossed

with jagged cracks, so deep and crooked

that Roach concluded in another of his

flashes of imaginative genius that Jim had

once been very hungry in a tropical place

and filled up again since. The left arm

still lay across his chest, the right

shoulder was still drawn high against his

neck. But the whole tangled shape of him

had stiffened, he was like an animal

frozen against its background: a stag,

thought Roach on a hopeful impulse,

something noble.

'Who the hell are you?' asked a very

military voice.

'Sir, Roach, sir. I'm a new boy.'

For a moment longer, the brick face

surveyed Roach from the shadow of the hat.

file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/TEMP/LE%20CARRE...-%20Tinker%20Tailor%20Soldier%20Spy%20v1.htm (8 of 746) [22.03.2003 12:30:19]

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Then, to his intense relief, its features

relaxed into a wolfish grin, the left

hand, still clapped over the right

shoulder, resumed its slow massage while

at the same time he managed a long pull

from the plastic beaker.

'New boy, eh?' Jim repeated into the

beaker, still grinning. 'Well that's a

turn up for the book, I will say.'

Rising now, and turning his crooked back

on Roach, Jim set to work on what appeared

to be a detailed study of the caravan's

four legs, a very critical study which

involved much rocking of the suspension,

and much tilting of the strangely garbed

head, and the emplacement of several

bricks at different angles and points.

Meanwhile the spring rain was clattering

down on everything: his coat, his hat and

the roof of the old caravan. And Roach

noticed that throughout these manoeuvres

Jim's right shoulder had not budged at all

but stayed wedged high against his neck

like a rock under the mackintosh.

file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/TEMP/LE%20CARRE...-%20Tinker%20Tailor%20Soldier%20Spy%20v1.htm (9 of 746) [22.03.2003 12:30:19]

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Therefore he wondered whether Jim was a

sort of giant hunchback and whether all

hunch backs hurt as Jim's did. And he

noticed as a generality, a thing to store

away, that people with bad backs take long

strides, it was something to do with

balance.

'New boy, eh? Well I'm not a new boy,' Jim

went on, in altogether a much more

friendly tone, as he pulled at a leg of

the caravan. I'm an old boy. Old as Rip

Van Winkle if you want to know. Older. Got

any friends?'

'No, sir,' said Roach simply, in the

listless tone which schoolboys always use

for saying 'no', leaving all positive

response to their interrogators. Jim

however made no response at all, so that

Roach felt an odd stirring of kinship

suddenly, and of hope.

'My other name's Bill,' he said. 'I was

christened Bill but Mr Thursgood calls me

William.'

file:///D|/EBooks/Le%20Carre/TEMP/LE%20CARR...%20Tinker%20Tailor%20Soldier%20Spy%20v1.htm (10 of 746) [22.03.2003 12:30:19]

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

JohnleCarré-TinkerTailorSoldierSpyTinkerTailorSoldierSpyJohnleCarréPublished:1974.ISBN0-340-73961-4.ForJamesBennettandDustyRhodesinmemoryPARTONECHAPTERONEThetruthis,ifoldMajorDoverhadn'tdroppeddeadatTauntonracesJimwouldneverhavecometoThursgood'satall.Hecameinmid-termwithoutaninterview,lateMayitwasth...

展开>> 收起<<

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.pdf

共746页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: