The Naive and Sentimental Lover

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN LE CARRÉ, the pseudonym for David Cornwell, was a member of the British Foreign Service from 1959 to 1964. His third novel,
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
, became a worldwide bestseller. He has written twenty-one novels, which have been published in thirty-six languages. Many of his books have been made into films, including
The Constant Gardener
;
The Russia House
;
The Little Drummer Girl
; and
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
.

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First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton 1971
First published in the United States of America by Alfred A. Knopf 1972
Published in Penguin Books 2011

 

Copyright © le Carré Productions, 1971

All rights reserved

 

PUBLISHER'S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product
of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

ISBN : 978-1-101-53548-6

CIP data available

 

 

 

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T
he Naïve and Sentimental Lover
is widely regarded as the blip in my work, the aberration or, more baldly, the turkey. At the time of its publication British critics fell gleefully upon it, welcoming it almost with one voice as the proof, if proof were needed, that I should stick to the “genre” novel and not aspire to “real” literature, to which they alone held the golden key. In the thirty years since publication contrary voices have occasionally made themselves heard, though their message is hardly more consoling. According to them,
The Naïve and Sentimental Lover
marked my proper departure from the “genre” novel and my first ascent towards the sublime pastures of “real” literature. It was only the chorus of critical philistines, and my excessive sensitivity to it, that drove me from the path of literary virtue, back to the safer, lower, but more lucrative trade of spy writing.

Neither version, surveyed with hindsight, rings true to me. Granted, I dispensed with the paraphernalia of espionage, to the considerable disappointment of a readership avid for more Smiley, more Berlin Wall, more spookery of every kind, and I paid for this in sales and popularity. But my central theme—or so it seemed to me then, and seems to me again now—had not wavered. Aldo Cassidy, like Smiley, is a naïve Hamlet, constantly havering between institutional commitments and unattainable hopes. Like Smiley, or another character close to me later in my work, the luckless Magnus Pym of
A Perfect Spy
, Cassidy seems to invent inside his own head the dilemma from which he can never escape, since it is made up of the unfordable gulf between dream and reality. Once Cassidy is embarked on his journey of self-discovery, nothing in his life goes away. Therefore the story ends as it begins, and as it could begin again tomorrow. And for me, that was always Smiley's problem too; he was at war with a continuum; the ultimate solution was an illusion.

There was something else, apart from “literary,” that I was not allowed to be in those days, and that was “funny.”
The Naïve and Sentimental Lover
was a sixties novel. I wrote it as a sad comedy about the hopes and dreams of a middle-class, inhibited, senior-management, public-school Englishman caught in mid-life crisis at a moment in our social history when followers of the sexual revolution saw themselves locked in mortal conflict with the slaves of convention. It is a matter of history that both sides lost, which is England now. It is a matter of self-knowledge that both sides are in all of us, and probably they always will be. The same hypocrisies that Shamus was mocking are with us today, and will be with us for as long as the permanent, unelected government of middle England continues to rule our lives. We owe our stability to it, but also our imprisonment.

In all my work, as I see it now, I have been hammering away at the same nail. If you read
The Constant Gardener
, written thirty years after this novel, you will find me at it again.
The Naïve and Sentimental Lover
, far from being an aberration, is consistent with everything that has been driving me back to my desk all these years. Whether it succeeds as a novel is for you to judge. But however you eventually find, please look for a laugh or two along the way, because these days you're allowed to.

C
assidy drove contentedly through the evening sunlight, his face as close to the windshield as the safety belt allowed, his foot alteras close to the windshield 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 dashboard. At a corner of the windshield, accurately adjusted to his field of view, a copy of the Estate Agent's particulars issued under the distinguished title of Messrs. Grimble and Outhwaite of Mount Street W. was clipped to an aluminum stand of his own invention.
For the attention of Mr. Aldo Cassidy
ran the deferential inscription; for Aldo was his first name. 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 hood 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 car's engine he caught the sounds of cattle and the cry of a cowhand harmlessly insulting them.

“It's an idyll,” he declared aloud. “It's 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. We'll have to level it of course.”

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

“It's a quarter of a mile from the largest boys' school and eight hundred yards from the girls'. The city authorities say there's a fair chance that if we do the levelling and donate the changing rooms, they'll put up a footbridge on the by-pass.”

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, I've got my clinic,” Sandra agreed, her voice lilting slightly in counterpoint. “So you'll have to go alone, won't 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.

“I'm sorry,” said Cassidy.

“It's not
your
fault,” said Sandra. “It's the Mayor's, isn't it? After all,” she added speculatively, “he
runs
the town, doesn't he?”

“Naughty Mayor,” said Cassidy.

“Naughty Mayor,” Sandra agreed.

“Spank him,” Cassidy suggested.

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