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lift to London, and he felt ungracious. Mendel, untroubled by the niceties of the situation, opened the passenger door and got in. "Bit of luck," he observed. "Hate trains. Cambridge Circus you going to? You can drop me Westminster way, can't you?" They set off and Mendel produced a shabby green tobacco tin and rolled himself a cigarette. He directed it towards his mouth, changed his mind and offered it to Smiley, lighting it for him with an extraordinary lighter that threw a two-inch blue flame. "You look worried sick," said Mendel. "I am." There was a pause. Mendel said: "It's the devil you don't know that gets you." They had driven another four or five miles when Smiley drew the car into the side of the road. He turned to Mendel. "Would you mind awfully if we drove back to Wallis-ton?" "Good idea. Go and ask her." He turned the car and drove slowly back into Wallis-ton, back to Merridale Lane. He left Mendel in the car and walked down the familiar gravel path. She opened the door and showed him into the drawing-room without a word. She was wearing the same dress, and Smiley wondered how she had passed the time since he had left her that morning. Had she been walking about the house or sitting motionless in the drawing-room? Or upstairs in the bedroom with the leather chairs? How did she see herself in her new widowhood? Could she take it seriously yet, was she still in that secretly elevated state which immediately follows bereavement? Still looking at herself in mirrors, trying to discern the change, the horror in her own face, and weeping when she could not? Neither of them sat down--both instinctively avoided a repetition of that morning's meeting. "There was one thing I felt I must ask you, Mrs. Fennan. I'm very sorry to have to bother you again." "About the call, I expect; the early morning call from the exchange." "Yes." "I thought that might puzzle you. An insomniac asks for an early morning call." She was trying to speak brightly. "Yes. It did seem odd. Do you often go to the theatre?" "Yes. Once a fortnight. I'm a member of the Wey-bridge Repertory Club you know. I try and go to everything they do. I have a seat reserved for me automatically on the first Tuesday of each run. My husband worked late on Tuesdays. He never came; he'd only go to classical theatre." "But he liked Brecht, didn't he? He seemed very thrilled with the 'Berliner Ensemble' performances in London." Smiley had a fleeting vision of Eisa Fennan as a child--a spindly, agile tomboy like George Sand's 'Petite Fadette'--half woman, half glib, lying girl. He saw her as a wheedling Backfisch, fighting like a cat for herself alone, and he saw her too, starved and shrunken in prison camp, ruthless in her fight for self-preservation. It was pathetic to witness in that smile the light of her early innocence, and a steeled weapon in her fight for survival. "I'm afraid the explanation of that call is very silly," she said. "I suffer from a terrible memory--really awful. Go shopping and forget what I've come to buy, make an appointment on the telephone and forget it the moment I replace the receiver. I ask people to stay the week-end and we are out when they arrive. Occasionally, when there is something I simply have to remember, I ring the exchange and ask for a call a few minutes before the appointed time. It's like a knot in one's handkerchief, but a knot can't ring a bell at you, can it?" Smiley peered at her. His throat felt rather dry, and he had to swallow before he spoke. "And what was the call for this time, Mrs. Fennan?" Again the enchanting smile: "There you are. I completely forget."
    V
    MASTON AND CANDLELIGHT
    As he drove slowly back towards London Smiley ceased to be conscious of Mendel's presence. There had been a time when the mere business of driving a car was a relief to him; when he had found in the unreality of a long, solitary journey a palliative to his troubled brain, when the fatigue of several hours' driving had allowed him to forget