Short Pieces: John le Carre’s ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’

Part of the ‘Short Piece on a Short Piece’ Series

I’ve covered a fair bit of science fiction recently, so here’s a change in direction. This is one of those novels that I came across when I was fairly young, having churned through Ian Fleming’s Bonds (Blofeld in a Japanese castle with a suicide garden and suit of armour, anyone?) and looking for more spy stuff. And, of course, it is difficult to get much further away from Fleming than with le Carré while still being in the spy genre. It grips, however, does Tinker Tailor,from unremarkable beginnings in the rain to a final, anti-climactic uncovering of a mole.

Here’s the first sentence of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy:

The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn’t dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood’s at all.

Let’s separate this out, and take each step at a time. The first short clause, a very certain declaration. This is the truth, dear reader. Truth, in a novel such as this, is always quite concrete. It may never seem so, but there is always a definitive truth. It is never up for debate, or discussion, or interpretation. It may feel as if it should be, but that is normally because it is buried under layers and layers of secrets and half-truths and full lies. There must be a complete truth, because, like in any mystery or detective story, it will be discovered. The reader must know what it is, and be satisfied with it. How frustrated are you if, at the end of a murder-mystery, the murderer remains masked? This is the first sentence of the novel, so the truth is a long way away from the reader’s grasp. I find it to be an odd formulation, too; I would have expected ‘The fact of the matter is’, so it drew my attention specifically to the idea of truth. When truth is declared, it is as if this novel is written in the aftermath of its events, and a sort of post-novel analysis is being conducted on the causes of its characters actions. It shows us that the truth sometimes requires concentration and focus and hard work.

It’s a conditional sentence, as shown in ‘if’. Poor Major Dover, eh? Another way of phrasing this is to say, ‘When Major Dover died, Jim came to Thursgood’s.’ But doesn’t that suck so much of the joy of that opening out? What the conditional does is to foreground the idea of cause and effect. Something has happened before we ever got to this novel. Something happens to the Major, and so something has happened to also shift the trajectory of Jim’s life. Spoilers abound, but perhaps another formulation of this sentence would be, ‘The truth is, if Jim Prideaux hadn’t been shot in the back in Czechoslovakia, he never would have come to Thursgood’s at all.’ It retains the same sense of detail that evokes a world beyond what is directly presented. Perhaps a more direct thriller would open with the idea of someone being shot. Imagine that Jack Reacher has been sent to find a mole, for example. ‘Dover was dead. Jim took over.’ That isn’t a criticism or judgement, simply a recognition of the different and equally valid approaches. Moreso here, the faint ridiculousness of life and chance becomes more apparent.

This is especially true in the small details we are offered. Why tell us that he is ‘old’? Why at the races, and why at Taunton races in particular? The adjective ‘old’ married to the verb phrase ‘dropped dead’ suggests a man at the end of his life, who, perhaps in some raucous excitement at having won a large bet at the races, feels his heart betray him and collapses to the floor, surrounded by fellow revellers. And what of his rank? For me, it evokes a certain ruddy-faced man, thin grey hair, wearing a suit of tweed, perhaps a fat and a garish tie, polished brown shoes, who has a great familiarity with the place.

Returning to ‘dropped dead’, there is the first hint of the role of fate and accidents. We cannot plan to ‘drop dead’, and so Jim could not plan to go to Thursgood’s. On that, note the shortening of James to Jim and the lack of a surname; le Carré encourages us to become more familiar with him, and that is how we know he will be important. Later in the novel, we realise that there are a great many things that have happened due to chance or blind luck, or blind misfortune. The verb ‘come’ indicates this too; if he had ‘gone’ to Thursgood’s, he would have had some agency, some impetus, some idea of making decisions for himself. Instead, we are given the idea, however subtle, that Jim is not the master of his own fate. He has not chosen this for himself; rather, he has been beckoned. And this is borne out later in the novel, where we are let to understand how it was that Jim came to be in a position to go to Thursgood’s in the first place. Finally, the adverbial finisher, ‘at all’. This is not a place Jim wants to be.