The Naive and Sentimental Lover by John le Carré

filled with Gerrard’s Crossers.
    Helen and Shamus were playing darts, Smoothies versus Bumpkins, Bumpkins were all right because they were still one with nature. Shamus had drawn a pig on one side of the blackboard and a bowler on the other.
    â€œLovers, I am not asking you to vote,” he assured them. “I am teaching you to read.”
    Helen’s turn. She missed the board and nailed the poor box to the panelling. A peal of laughter shook the bar.
    â€œExcuse me,” Cassidy said confidentially to the landlord. “Have you a telephone I could use?”
    â€œThese your friends, are they?”
    â€œWell, in a way you know.”
    â€œI don’t want trouble. I like fun but I don’t want trouble.”
    â€œThat’s all right,” said Cassidy. “I’ll pay for breakages.”
    â€œMind you, I’ll say this. He’s a lovely boy. They don’t come like him often do they? And she’s a lovely girl. I haven’t seen a pair like that for quite a while.”
    â€œHe’s a very famous television writer,” Cassidy explained, intuitively adjusting Shamus’ talent to the mass audience. “He’s got three serials running at the moment. He’s worth an absolute bomb.”
    â€œIs he though?”
    â€œYou ought to see his Bentley. It’s a two-plus-two, dove grey with electric windows.”
    â€œWell I’m blessed,” the landlord said. “There’s not many of them about is there?”
    â€œIt’s unique. Here, care for one yourself? Anything you like. How about a gold watch?” he suggested, mixing with the men.
    â€œA what? ”
    â€œA Scotch,” said Cassidy in a lower tone.
    â€œThat’s all right son, I’ll just take a shilling’s worth off you, thanks. Cheers.”
    â€œCheers,” said Cassidy. “Through here is it?”
    Â 
    From Bath he can dial direct.
    â€œHi,” he says. “How was the clinic?”
    Sandra wife to Aldo (of Cassidy’s General Fastenings) is not a quick girl. Sound takes longer to reach her, particularly on the telephone.
    â€œAll right. Where are you?”
    â€œJust in the pub. Heather bearing up?”
    It may, of course, be the other way round: that her voice takes longer to carry the distance. That she has already answered me, but the words are clogging the line. Ay’m sorry, sah, there is a traffic jam on the M4 telephone route. Will you tray later? That there are too many husbands apologising to too many wives on cheap rates shortly before closing time. Or that an atomic bomb has fallen, never impossible: hurry back and shoot the children. Alternatively that the Russians have—
    â€œWho with?” the earpiece demands suddenly.
    She has her father’s military instinct for monosyllables. Montgomery’s five basic questions, who, why, when, where, how? And my God the chaps respected him.
    â€œThe Corporation,” says Cassidy. The Corporation is with me, in full-bottomed wigs, and furs and chains, we have just given a fiveyear contract to the Pied Piper. “The Corporation, the people who run the city. Great chaps, you’d love them. We only finished an hour ago.”
    Winged words, flying but not settling. He musters still greater enthusiasm.
    â€œListen it’s all falling into place. The land is absolutely central, it needs very little levelling, and the boys in the Corporation assure me that the moment we raise the first twenty thousand they’ll come through with the footbridge. Free. They really believe in it, I’m astonished.”
    Silence. Does she believe in it? For Christ’s sake, Sandra, this is our meeting point. What does it matter whether it’s true or not? Say yes, admire the achievement. What the hell?
    â€œThere’s one fellow here’s a contractor, in heavy machinery, all that sort of stuff. He’ll level the place free and give us a cost quotation on