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overcoat, he continued his solitary march. “Shop-soiled white hope,” he muttered furiously. “Little bit of sandstone in the street. You bombastic, inquisitive, impertinent—”
    And then, of course, he remembered far too late that he had left the Grimmelshausen at his club.
    “Oh, damn!” he cried sopra voce, halting in his tracks for greater emphasis. “Oh, damn—oh, damn —oh, damn.”
    He would sell his London house: he had decided. Back there under the awning, crouching beside the cigarette machine, waiting for the cloudburst to end, he had taken this grave decision. Property values in London had risen out of proportion; he had heard it from every side. Good. He would sell and with a part of the proceeds buy a cottage in the Cotswolds. Burford? Too much traffic. Steeple Aston—that was a place. He would set up as a mild eccentric, discursive, withdrawn, but possessing one or two lovable habits such as muttering to himself as he bumbled along pavements. Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn’t these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time. At a certain moment, after all, every man chooses: will he go forward, will he go back? There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one’s own generation. And if Ann wanted to return—well, he would show her the door.
    Or not show her the door, according to—well, how much she wanted to return.
    Consoled by these visions, Smiley arrived at the King’s Road, where he paused on the pavement as if waiting to cross. To either side, festive boutiques. Before him, his own Bywater Street, a cul-de-sac exactly 117 of his own paces long. When he had first come to live here, these Georgian cottages had a modest, down-at-heel charm, with young couples making do on fifteen pounds a week and a tax-free lodger hidden in the basement. Now steel screens protected their lower windows, and for each house three cars jammed the curb. From long habit, Smiley passed these in review, checking which were familiar, which were not; of the unfamiliar, which had aerials and extra mirrors, which were the closed vans that watchers like. Partly he did this as a test of memory to preserve his mind from the atrophy of retirement, just as on other days he learnt the names of the shops along his bus route to the British Museum; just as he knew how many stairs there were to each flight of his own house and which way each of the twelve doors opened.
    But Smiley had a second reason, which was fear, the secret fear that follows every professional to his grave. Namely, that one day, out of a past so complex that he himself could not remember all the enemies he might have made, one of them would find him and demand the reckoning.
    At the bottom of the street, a neighbour was exercising her dog; seeing him, she lifted her head to say something, but he ignored her, knowing it would be about Ann. He crossed the road. His house was in darkness; the curtains were as he had left them. He climbed the six steps to the front door. Since Ann’s departure, his cleaning woman had also left: no one but Ann had a key. There were two locks, a Banham deadlock and a Chubb Pipekey, and two splinters of his own manufacture, splits of oak each the size of a thumbnail, wedged into the lintel above and below the Banham. They were a hangover from his days in the field. Recently, without quite knowing why, he had started using them again; perhaps he didn’t want her to take him by surprise. With the tips of his fingers he discovered each in turn. The routine over, he unlocked the door, pushed it open, and felt the midday mail slithering over the carpet.
    What was due? he wondered. German Life and Letters? Philology? Philology, he decided; it was already overdue. Putting on the hall light, he stooped and peered through his post. One “account rendered” from his tailor for a suit he had not ordered but that he suspected was one of those