John le Carré - The Naive and Sentimental Lover

The premier spy novelist of his time. Perhaps of all time

Time

One of those writers who will be read a century from now

Robert Harris

The great master of the spy story the constant flow of emotion lifts him not only above all modern suspense novelists, but above most novelists now practising

Financial Times

The master

Henning Mankell, Daily Telegraph

Our greatest living master of espionage fiction Le Carr is one of our great writers of moral ambiguity, a tireless explorer of that darkly contradictory no-mans land

Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

Le Carr is not just todays gold standard, but the best there ever was

The Huffington Post

No other contemporary novelist has more durably enjoyed the twin badges of being both well-read and well-regarded

Scott Turow

Le Carr is one of the best novelists of any kind we have

Vanity Fair

He can communicate emotion, from sweating fear to despairing love, with terse and compassionate conviction. Above all, he can tell a tale

Susan Hill, Sunday Times

A masterly understanding of moral complexity the signature clarity of his prose is matched only by the distinctive murkiness of what it describes

Guardian

Brilliant, morally outraged works that mine rich veins of post-Cold War venality

Seattle Times

The worlds greatest fictional spymaster

Newsweek

John le Carr was born in 1931 and attended the universities of Bern and Oxford. He taught at Eton and served briefly in British Intelligence during the Cold War. For the last fifty years he has lived by his pen. He divides his time between London and Cornwall.

John le Carr

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THE NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL LOVER

UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia

India | New Zealand | South Africa

Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published by Hodder & Stoughton 1971

Published in Penguin Books 2018

Copyright le Carr Productions 1971

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover illustration by Matt Taylor

ISBN: 978-0-241-32245-1

For John Miller and Michael Truscott,
at Sancreed, with love

Cassidy drove contentedly through the evening sunlight, his face as close to the windscreen as the safety belt allowed, his foot alternating diffidently between accelerator and brake as he scanned the narrow lane for unseen hazards. Beside him on the passenger seat, carefully folded into a plastic envelope, lay an Ordnance Survey map of central Somerset. An oilbound compass of the newest type was fastened by suction to the walnut fascia. At a corner of the windscreen, accurately adjusted to his field of view, a copy of the Estate Agents particulars issued under the distinguished title of Messrs Grimble and Outhwaite of Mount Street W. was clipped to an aluminium stand of his own invention. He drove, as always, with the greatest concentration, and now and then he hummed to himself with that furtive sincerity common to the tone deaf.

He was traversing a moor. A flimsy ground mist shifted over rhines and willow trees, slipped in little puffs across the glistening bonnet of his car, but ahead the sky was bright and cloudless and the spring sun made emeralds of the approaching hills. Touching a lever he lowered the electric window and leaned one side of his head into the rush of air. At once rich smells of peat and silage filled his nostrils. Over the reverent purr of the cars engine he caught the sounds of cattle and the cry of a cowhand harmlessly insulting them.

Its an idyll, he declared aloud. Its an absolute idyll.

Better still it was a safe idyll, for in the whole wide beautiful world Aldo Cassidy was the only person who knew where he was.

Beyond his conscious hearing, a closed-off chamber of his memory echoed to the awkward chords of an aspiring pianist. Sandra, wife to Aldo, is extending her artistic range.

Good news from Bristol, Cassidy said, talking over the music. They think they can offer us a patch of land. Well have to level it of course.

Good, said Sandra, his wife, and carefully rearranged her hands over the keyboard.

Its a quarter of a mile from the largest Primary and eight hundred yards from the Comprehensive. The Corporation says theres a fair chance that if we do the levelling and donate the changing rooms, theyll put up a footbridge on the bypass.

She played a ragged chord.

Not an ugly one, I hope. Town planning is extremely important, Aldo.

I know.

Can I come?

Well you have got your clinic, he reminded her with tentative severity.

Another chord.

Yes. Yes, Ive got my clinic, Sandra agreed, her voice lilting slightly in counterpoint. So youll have to go alone, wont you? Poor Pailthorpe.

Pailthorpe was her private name for him, he could not remember why. Pailthorpe the Bear, probably; bears were their most popular fauna.

Im sorry, said Cassidy.

Its not your fault, said Sandra. Its the Mayors, isnt it?

Naughty Mayor, said Cassidy.

Naughty Mayor, Sandra agreed.

Spank him, Cassidy suggested.

Spank, spank, said Sandra gaily, wife to Aldo, her face in combat with its shadows.

He was a fair-haired man of thirty-eight and quite handsome in certain lights. Like his car he was groomed with loving elegance. From the left-hand buttonhole to the breast pocket of his faultless suit ran a thin gold chain of obvious usefulness whose purpose was nevertheless undefined. Aesthetically it perfectly answered the subdued pin-stripe of the cloth behind it; as a piece of rigging it joined the head of the man to the heart, but there was no telling which end if either held the mastery. In both build and looks he might have served as an architectural prototype for the middle-class Englishman privately educated between the wars; one who had felt the wind of battle but never the fire of it. Heavy at the waist, short in the leg, a squire always in the making, he possessed those doggedly boyish features, at once mature and retarded, which still convey a dying hope that his pleasures may be paid for by his parents. Not that he was effeminate. True, the mouth was well advanced from the rest of the face and quite deeply sculptured under the lower lip. True also that as he drove he was guilty of certain affectations which pointed in the female direction, such as brushing aside his forelock or putting back his head and wrinkling his eyes as though a sudden headache had interfered with brilliant thoughts. But if these mannerisms meant anything at all, then most likely they reflected a pleasing sensitivity towards a world occasionally too shrill for him, an empathy as much parental as childish, rather than any unwelcome tendencies left over from public school.

Clearly he was no stranger to the expense account. An untaxable affluence was legible in the thickening of the lower waistcoat (for his safety and comfort he had unfastened the top button of his trousers) and in the widths of white cuff which isolated his hands from manual labour; and there was already about his neck and complexion a sleek rich gloss, a tan almost,