One of the best scenes?

A scene that I particularly admire in the ‘Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy’ series is the one where Smiley seeks out Jerry Westerby in a bar haunted, amongst others, by journalists. He descends the steps to this cavernous drinking place and threads his way through the crowd until he spots his target who is a newspaper journalist in real life. Approaching a side bar, he wanders up to Jerry who does a double-take and grasps George’s hand in pure joy and friendship at seeing his face.

Jerry, who like many journalists seems to fuel himself on alcohol before the day’s work begins, greeting Smiley with cheerful nonsense such as “How’s the demon wife?” and “I’ll tell you what - I’ll shack up with Ann and be the envy of London, and you can have my job on the Comic.. You have just the turn of phrase for the Womens’ Ping-Pong” and so the cheerful banter goes on.

But Jerry despite his ‘hale fellow, well met’ approach, has the deepest respect for Smiley. He has alerted him to something that has been worrying him concerning Toby Esterhase, to the extent that he dropped Smiley a confidential line which Smiley read, digested and then burned to ashes.

Smiley being the sort of good-natured person that he is, responds to Jerry’s banter by enquiring after an earlier remark concerning the bar-maid - “good girl that. Think I’ll marry her” to which Smiley counters, “How many will that be Jerry? and comes the reply - “I’m a divorce addict, old boy. Not lucky like you George.”

This little scene - so picturesque and warm, typical of English humour, is a cameo in its own right. It is most superbly acted, but continues on to more serious matters. Jerry goes on to tell a tale of how he was on newspaper business in Czechoslovakia (and delivering a small package for collection in a ‘phone box - a letter-box job which he is delivering for the Circus) and at the end of the day ended up in a bar with a crowd of soldiers listening, hugger-mugger, to the music of a squeeze-box. A squadie - a young Czech soldier of the line suddenly shouts in his ear (knowing he was English) had he heard about the story of the British spy seized up near the Austrian Border. Jerry, playing dumb, pretends he knows nothing of the ‘Jim Prideaux shambles.’ so the soldier shouts in his ear again of how the Russians were prepared and waiting for him with ‘tanks, armoured cars and tracker dogs, as well as a car-load of very sinister civilians.’

“Are waiting or were waiting?” asks Smiley.
“Were waiting,” say Jerry Westerby. “The kid was trying to tell me that the whole plan was known in advance by the Russian side.” And he continues, mimicking Red Indian speak: “Heap bad story. Bad for our big chief. Bad for tribe.”

This exchange appears to have given some bloggers a little trouble because of the use of the Present and Past Case. and shows how carefully one has to watch le Carre’s plots.............

So much for the scene above, but not long ago I was in touch with someone else on this blog who used to walk Hampstead Heath daily. My interest at that time was to try and spot the ‘tin pavilion’ mentioned in Andrew Dunbar’s blog which played a significant part in ‘Smiley’s People.’ He gave me directions after one fruitless search and indicated the block of flats where General Vladimir * was to meet Smiley - his Vicar, in order to deliver the 35mm negative picture of the ‘honey-trap sting’ at the Blaeu Diamante night club in Hamburg. Andrew Dunbar’s directions were quite straightforward - find the block of flats opposite Well Walk. The tin pavilion lies about 200 metres East of the flats. Eventually, I found it, but as it is overhung by trees and is probably covered by moss, it is far from easy to see using Google’s satellite images.

Andrew, being part of the theatrical scene, was able to tell me that the actor who played Jerry Westerby (Joss Ackland) in TTSS had a difficulty in learning his lines, and that his wife would read to him until he had memorised them. This worked extremely well as anyone who has watched the above scene will know, but unhappily his wife died a couple of years ago, and so Joss does more scripted work on sound radio plays these days.

Incidentally, Andrew told me that he was going into hospital with something rather serious. As I haven’t been able to make contact with him for some while, I hope he is all right and has pulled through...........

* this scene forms part of Smiley’s People - one of the better reasons for watching the dvd’s in their correct sequence.