Single & Single by John Le Carre

Author:John Le Carre [Carre, John Le]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Espionage, Fiction
ISBN: 9780743216524
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2001-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Single and Single

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Aggie drove. Oliver sprawled beside her, now attacking the top of his head with sweeps of his hand, now hoisting up his long legs and with a great puff releasing them to buffet against the floor, now wondering what would happen if he took a dive at her, like putting his hand on hers while she changed gear, or running his fingers round the gap between her collar and her neck. She’d stop the car and flatten me, he decided. The olive hills of Salisbury Plain flowed to either side of them. Sheep grazed on their slopes. A low sun gilded farmhouses and churches. The car was an anonymous Ford with a toy glider on the rear ledge and a second radio secreted beneath the dashboard. Ahead of them a pick-up truck rode point, Tanby at the wheel, Derek at his side. A red streamer was tied to its aerial. Aggie doesn’t like Derek, so I don’t either. Two leather-clad motorcyclists rode tail, their helmets blazoned with red arrows. Sometimes the car radio crackled and a chill female voice spoke a codeword. Sometimes Aggie responded with another. Sometimes she tried to cheer him up.

‘I mean, have you ever been to Glasgow, Oliver?’ she asked. ‘It’s really humming.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘I mean you could do worse than try it when this is over, if you get my meaning.’

‘Good thought. I might at that.’

She tried again. ‘Do you remember Walter at all?’

‘Yeah, sure, course, Walter. One of Tanby’s bruisers. What about him?’

‘Oh Walter, well, he just slunk off to one of these two-bit security firms up north. Thirty-five thousand a year and a fur-lined Rover, it makes you sick. Where’s loyalty? Where’s service?’

‘Where indeed?’ Oliver agreed, and smiled at fur-lined.

‘I mean wasn’t that awful for you? Discovering your own dad was a crook and all? - and you fresh from law school, believing that law was about protecting people and keeping society on a straight course? I mean how does a person deal with that, Oliver? And you’re talking to someone who read philosophy for her sins.’ Oliver wasn’t talking to anyone, whatever they had read, but Aggie plunged on. ‘I mean how do you ever know, in a situation like that, whether you just hate the bastard or love justice? Asking yourself day and night, Am I being a hypocrite, all the time pretending I’m high and mighty and virtuous on my white horse, when actually I’m getting my own back on my father? Is that how it went with you, or is it just me being vicarious?’

‘Yeah. Well.’

‘I mean, you’re a real star for us, do you know that? The lonely decider. The idealist. The walk-in of all time. There’s blokes in the Service would kill to get your autograph.’ Long delay in which even the doughty Aggie might have wished she had not been quite so doughty.

‘There’s no white horse,’ Oliver mumbled. ‘More a sort of merry-go-round.’

The pick-up ahead of them signalled left. They followed it down a slip road into country lanes.

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