that I wished to celebrate when I embarked on The Constant Gardener. Probably I realized it from the start, whenever the start was. Probably she did. And it was Yvetteâs presence that, before and after the moment of her death, steered me through the book. To all of which, she would say: of course.
11
Bumping into Jerry Westerby
In a ground-floor cellar in Fleet Street that is full of wine barrels, George Smiley sits with Jerry Westerby over a very large pink gin. I am quoting from my novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Whose pink gin it is weâre not told, but we assume itâs Jerryâs. A page later, Jerry orders a Bloody Mary, we assume for Smiley. He is a sports correspondent of the old school. He is built large and is a former wicket keeper for a county cricket team. He has âenormousâ hands cushioned with muscle, a mop of sandy grey hair, and a red face that in embarrassment turns scarlet. He wears a famous cricketing tie â which one, the text does not reveal â over a cream silk shirt.
In addition to being a seasoned sports correspondent, Jerry Westerby is a British intelligence agent and worships the ground Smiley walks on. He is also a perfect witness. He has no malice, no axe to grind. He does what the best secret agents do. He gives you chapter and verse, and leaves the theorizing to the Secret Serviceâs analysts â or, as he fondly calls them, the owls.
While being gently debriefed by Smiley in an Indian restaurant of Jerryâs choice, he orders himself the hottest curry on the menu, shatters a poppadom over it â again with his âenormousâ hands, repeated then spreads a crimson sauce on it, we assume a lethally hot chilli, to give it bite. It is Jerryâs little joke that the restaurant manager keeps the sauce in his deep shelter. In sum then, Jerry comes over as a shy, lumbering, puppyish, endearing fellow who, in his shyness, has a tic of resorting to what he would call Red Indian-speak, even to the point of saluting Smiley with How! before âpadding off into his own reservesâ.
End of scene. And end of Jerry Westerbyâs cameo part in the novel. His job is to give Smiley disturbing intelligence about one of the suspected moles inside the Circus: Toby Esterhase. He hates doing it, but knows itâs his duty. And thatâs all we learn about Jerry Westerby from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , and itâs all I knew about him too, until I set off for South Asia to research The Honourable Schoolboy , and took Jerry along with me as my secret sharer.
If the Jerry of my novel was loosely descended from anyone in my real life, then it was probably one Gordon, an upper-class drifter of vaguely aristocratic origin whom my father had relieved of his family fortune. Later, in despair, he took his own life, which I suppose is why the detail of him remains so clearly imprinted on my memory. His aristocratic origins entitled him to put the absurd âHonourableâ before his name, and this was the âHonourableâ that I had awarded to my Jerry in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy  â although nothing on Godâs earth would ever persuade him to use it, old boy. As to the âSchoolboyâ part â well, Jerry might be a case-hardened front-line reporter and British secret agent, but when it came to matters of the heart he was forty going on fourteen.
So that was the Jerry of my imagining, and that â in surely one of the eeriest encounters of my writing life â was the Jerry I bumped into at Raffles Hotel in Singapore: not a pen-portrait, but the man himself, right down to the huge cushioned hands and âenormousâ shoulders. His name wasnât Westerby, but by then it wouldnât have surprised me if it had been. It was Peter Simms. He was a veteran British foreign correspondent and also, as is now generally known, though at the time I knew it no better than anyone else, a veteran
11
Bumping into Jerry Westerby
In a ground-floor cellar in Fleet Street that is full of wine barrels, George Smiley sits with Jerry Westerby over a very large pink gin. I am quoting from my novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Whose pink gin it is weâre not told, but we assume itâs Jerryâs. A page later, Jerry orders a Bloody Mary, we assume for Smiley. He is a sports correspondent of the old school. He is built large and is a former wicket keeper for a county cricket team. He has âenormousâ hands cushioned with muscle, a mop of sandy grey hair, and a red face that in embarrassment turns scarlet. He wears a famous cricketing tie â which one, the text does not reveal â over a cream silk shirt.
In addition to being a seasoned sports correspondent, Jerry Westerby is a British intelligence agent and worships the ground Smiley walks on. He is also a perfect witness. He has no malice, no axe to grind. He does what the best secret agents do. He gives you chapter and verse, and leaves the theorizing to the Secret Serviceâs analysts â or, as he fondly calls them, the owls.
While being gently debriefed by Smiley in an Indian restaurant of Jerryâs choice, he orders himself the hottest curry on the menu, shatters a poppadom over it â again with his âenormousâ hands, repeated then spreads a crimson sauce on it, we assume a lethally hot chilli, to give it bite. It is Jerryâs little joke that the restaurant manager keeps the sauce in his deep shelter. In sum then, Jerry comes over as a shy, lumbering, puppyish, endearing fellow who, in his shyness, has a tic of resorting to what he would call Red Indian-speak, even to the point of saluting Smiley with How! before âpadding off into his own reservesâ.
End of scene. And end of Jerry Westerbyâs cameo part in the novel. His job is to give Smiley disturbing intelligence about one of the suspected moles inside the Circus: Toby Esterhase. He hates doing it, but knows itâs his duty. And thatâs all we learn about Jerry Westerby from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , and itâs all I knew about him too, until I set off for South Asia to research The Honourable Schoolboy , and took Jerry along with me as my secret sharer.
If the Jerry of my novel was loosely descended from anyone in my real life, then it was probably one Gordon, an upper-class drifter of vaguely aristocratic origin whom my father had relieved of his family fortune. Later, in despair, he took his own life, which I suppose is why the detail of him remains so clearly imprinted on my memory. His aristocratic origins entitled him to put the absurd âHonourableâ before his name, and this was the âHonourableâ that I had awarded to my Jerry in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy  â although nothing on Godâs earth would ever persuade him to use it, old boy. As to the âSchoolboyâ part â well, Jerry might be a case-hardened front-line reporter and British secret agent, but when it came to matters of the heart he was forty going on fourteen.
So that was the Jerry of my imagining, and that â in surely one of the eeriest encounters of my writing life â was the Jerry I bumped into at Raffles Hotel in Singapore: not a pen-portrait, but the man himself, right down to the huge cushioned hands and âenormousâ shoulders. His name wasnât Westerby, but by then it wouldnât have surprised me if it had been. It was Peter Simms. He was a veteran British foreign correspondent and also, as is now generally known, though at the time I knew it no better than anyone else, a veteran
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