In clearing out the bungalow, among shelves of well-tended hardbacks of history and nature, I found a small yellowing paperback. It cost as written on the back: (30p) 6/- That tiny detail dates it quite precisely to that period when the UK was preparing to decimalise its currency but hadn't quite got there. The book was six shillings… but just in case stock was still on the shelves post-decimalisation that would be 30p in new money. My copy is the second printing (1970) so closer to the sterling switch from £Sd to £p, than the original edition of 1968.
Even so, that tiny detail on the back cover sums up the mood of the times. It was a time when the UK was Europeanising…and as we read again and again in the book, in the diplomatic circles "it's all about Brussels." The implication threading through is that nothing can be allowed to detract from the project that is Britain's negotiation with the European Economic Community. The country had applied to join in 1961, but was vetoed by the French, who repeated the block in 1967, so at the time Le Carré was writing Entry (or otherwise) was probably taking up just as much government and diplomatic time as Exit is doing today.
Then of course, there are also relations with the Russians to consider.
Naturally, this is early Le Carré and it is pure espionage. The time is described as "the recent future" and the 'small town' in question is Bonn, the West German capital of just over 20 years' standing that is still growing into its role but only hesitantly as though it is only a temporary staging post. Students are rioting. Neo-Nazism is on the rise. And a "temporary" from the British Embassy has gone missing – along with a number of files of varying degrees of secrecy.
Alan Turner is sent out from London to find him…what he finds is that the missing Leo Harting had never been a permanent member of staff although his contract had been renewed year to year almost from the day the Embassy opened. And he was everybody's friend. Nothing was too much trouble for Leo. He could always get you want you wanted, often at a discount. Hairdryers seem to have been a particular favourite but perhaps that's just a sign of the times. Lots of other things also seem to have gone astray in the Embassy. No-one is sure whether they're just relocated in the building, the stress, the ongoing crisis negotiations, not so much lost as mislaid…or whether as well as being a defector – which is the natural assumption – Leo Harting is also a thief of the more common variety.
Stylistically the book is thick with detail on the operations of the various diplomatic departments and the minutiae of daily activity, which serves not only to make it very readable but to draw you into this strange world with its own rituals. For some of us 1968 doesn't seem that long ago, but for younger generations the most stark contrast is that "the war" (by which is always meant the Second World War) was a recent memory for many: the Blitz, Stalingrad, the concentration camps, the death camps. It was less than half a generation ago, and yet it seems as though the world is heading back in that direction. Clearly longer memories are needed now, but even so I found much in this book that echoes the world as we know it today (changes in technology notwithstanding).
It is perhaps more a mystery than a thriller, moving slowly as it does, hunting down the missing, hunting down the reasons…but the tension is unmistakeably and there are occasional sudden bursts of violence, all the more effective for being constrained in their description and often unexpected in their setting. One in particular actually made me jump the way it would in a movie.
I'm not completely new to Le Carré but likely many I know his work from the screen adaptations and I had not appreciated what a fabulously picturesque writer he is. His descriptions are probably the best to be found, effortlessly mixing the mundane and the lyric.
Favourites include: The smoke hung all around, lifting in the glow of the long tube lights, curling into the darker corners. The smell was of beer and smoked ham and municipal disinfectant; the far counter, white with Dutch tiles, glinted like an ice wall in the fog.
There's also a long passage that describes the weather which was stolen from other seasons and other places…a sea wind from March…the frost of November…arctic water…the last strips of an Oxford sun…a Yorkshire evening in autumn.
And this: cruel Gothic script jagged as barbed wire…
The most important quote however comes very near the end, when one of the protagonists in speaking of what they have witnessed, thinks And now it is all happening again.
If there was ever a time more appropriate to read this novel than in the couple of years after it was published, that time is now.
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My copy: published in paperback by PAN
ISBN 330023063
Now available from Penguin Modern Classics
ISBN 978-0141196381
