Free A Perfect Spy by John le Carré Page A

which Rick was at that time an elected officer—I believe, God help them, treasurer. The second when Rick was captain of the Tabernacle’s football team and one Morrie Washington, a Night School Boy and another of Rick’s lieutenants, was goalie. Dorothy, as sister of the Sitting Member, was invited to present the cup. Morrie remembers the line-up ceremony, with Dorothy walking along the troops and pinning a medal to each victorious breast, starting with Rick himself as captain. It seems she fumbled the clasp, or that Rick pretended she did. Either way, he let out a playful cry of pain and went down on one knee, clutching his bosom and insisting she had pierced him to the heart. It was a bold and rather naughty number and I am surprised he took it so far. Even in burlesque, Rick was normally very protective of his dignity, and at fancy-dress balls, which were the rage until the war came, he preferred to go as Lloyd George rather than risk ridicule. But down he went, Morrie remembered it like yesterday, and Dorothy laughed, a thing nobody had ever seen her do: laugh. What assignations followed we can never know, except that, according to Morrie, Rick did once boast that there was more than cake and lemon barley waiting for him up at The Glades when he delivered the church magazine. Syd, I think, knows more than Morrie. Syd saw a lot. And people tell him things because he keeps his counsel. Syd, I believe, knows most of the secrets that lurked in the wooded house that Makepeace Watermaster called his home, even if in old age he has done his best to bury them six foot under. He knows why Lady Nell drank and why Makepeace was so ill-at-ease with himself, and why his damp little eyes were so tormented, and his mouth unequal to his appetites, and why he was able to castigate sin with such passionate familiarity. And why he wrote of a special love when he put his wretched name in my Dorothy’s Bible. And why it was that Dorothy had taken herself to the furthest corner of the house to sleep, far from Lady Nell’s rooms and further still from Makepeace’s. And why Dorothy was so accessible to the smart-tongued upstart from the football team who spoke as if he could build her a road to anywhere, and drive her there in his coach. But Syd is a good man and a Mason. He loved Rick and gave the best years of his life, now to roistering with him, now to hanging on to his coattails. Syd would have a laugh, he would tell a story, provided it hurt nobody too much. But Syd won’t touch the black side.
    History records also that Rick took no account books to that meeting, though Mr. Muspole the great accountant, another Night School Boy, offered to help him write some and probably did. Muspole could invent accounts the way others can write postcards on holiday or rattle off anecdotes into a microphone. And that in order to prepare himself, Rick took a stroll over Brinkley Cliffs, alone, which I believe is the first known walk of this kind, though Rick, like myself after him, was always a one for striding out in search of a decision or a voice. And that he returned from The Glades wearing an air of high office not unlike Makepeace Watermaster’s, except that it had more of the natural radiance in it that comes, we are told, of inner cleanliness. The matter of the Appeal had been attended to, he informed his courtiers. The problem of liquidity had been solved, he said. Everybody was going to be seen right. How? they begged him; how, Rickie? But Rick preferred to remain their magician and allowed nobody to look up his sleeve. Because I am blessed. Because I steer events. Because I am destined to become one of the Highest in the Land.
    His other good news was not vouchsafed to them. This was a cheque drawn on Watermaster’s personal account in the sum of five hundred pounds to set himself up in life—presumably, said Syd, in outer Australia. Rick endorsed it, Syd cashed it, since Rick’s own bank account, as