Itâs impossible to see Jimâs actions as driven by ideology or duty. We know, as Jim kills the man we assume was once his lover, that he experiences Billâs betrayal not to Queen and country, but as a betrayal of the heart.
- Joanna Di Mattia, Senses of Cinema
COLIN FIRTH and MARK STRONG as BILL HAYDON and JIM PRIDEAUXÂ in
TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (2011) dir. Tomas Alfredson
âIn our supposed ideological rectitude, we sacrificed our compassion to the great god of indifference. We protected the strong against the weak, and we preferred the art of the public lie. We made enemies of decent reformers and friends of the most disgusting potentates. And we scarcely paused to ask ourselves how much longer we could defend our society by these means and remain a society worth defending.â A glance to me again. âSo it wasnât much wonder, was it, Ned, if we opened our gates to every conman and charlatan in the anti-Communist racket? We got the villains we deserved. Ned knows. Ask Ned.â
Since we picked up a few new followers overnight, I figured Iâd address a couple of things.
First of all, youâre all very welcome here. The blogâs been around...almost a decade now, though for the past 2-3 years itâs kind of hovered in a semi-hibernation state due to a mixture of the ebb and flow of content, tumblrâs tags being almost useless, and my schedule being a complete mess. Despite this, itâs not quite dead, and while I donât trawl the tags for content as much as I used to, weâre still very much welcoming things!
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In the meanwhile, feel free to use any resources found on here and Iâll update things when I can (Iâve not really added anything from A Legacy of Spies yet because I havenât gotten around to that, but I will eventually add that information to the various resources/tags/etc).
do we know if Bill was faking it when he got called into the office the night Jim was shot? I've always found his reaction quite wrenching in all versions of the story, but it occurred to me that Le Carre might want us to think that he had inside info about the incident coming in & was pretending to be all surprised and torn up about his best buddy possibly being shot dead for appearances' sake
First of all, I want to apologise for only just now replying. I was in the middle of exams when I received your message, and then have had a lot of health-related nonsense distracting me, so itâs taken a while for me to get to this.
Thereâs a long answer and a short answer to this one.
The short answer is no. We donât really know, and thereâs no 100% right or wrong answer here, at least not entirely.
As for the long answer, which is more akin to âWhat is my interpretation?ââŠ.
Personally, I do think that his reaction was genuine, at least at its core. Might he have exaggerated his reaction for effect? Itâs possible, but I do think that in general, he was being at least somewhat genuine in his reactions.
But letâs pick things apart a little bit for just a moment.
If we look at the novel text (which is slightly easier for me at the moment), hereâs what we know (courtesy of Sam Collins, pgs.244-46 of the 2011 Penguin Edition w/Matthew Perryâs cover):
When Bill arrived â at around 1:15am, nearly an hour after the first call came in â he appeared to have already known the following:
An operation in Czechoslovakia had gone awry
There had been shooting
Both of which, we are aware, he found out from Ann when Sam phoned the house on Bywater Street.
Later on, of course, it is revealed that he was aware of the existence of Operation Testify, and at least partly aware of its purpose through Jimâs visit to him prior to leaving (373-77).Â
They [Haydon and presumably, Karla] âneeded to be certain Control would rise, and how he would riseâŠand who he would send.â
âIt had to be a big gun to make the story stickâ
Someone who Control would willingly pick â âoutside the mainstream and [âŠ] who wasnât Witchcraft-clearedâ
Someone old Circus âwho could bring down the temple a bitâ
The operation needed to take place in âa country with a recent history of counter-revolution,â making Czechoslovakia âthe only place.â
He also noted that making the bait a Czech limited the possible choices to Czech speakers, which are implied to be something of a commodity at the time.
So it narrowed down that Jim Prideaux was the go-to, and it is here, without any prompting by Smiley, that Bill snaps a bit (âWell, damn it, I got him backâ).
The subject of Jimâs fate is â for all Billâs talking about how repatriating Jim was a matter of keeping people from agitating for him and encouraging them to keep him quiet â clearly a sore subject and the sole shaky pillar in the house of cards that Bill had built around himself.
Further in, he relinquishes another point which makes it unlikely that Bill knew ahead of time that Jim had been shot:
If everything had gone according to plan, the first Czech bulletins should have broken at ten-thirty. Haydon would have had a chance to read his club ticker-tape after Sam Collins had rung Ann, and before he had arrived at the Circus to take over. But because Jim had been shot, there was fumble at the Czech end and the bulletin was released after his club had closed. (376)
This, while not water-proof entirely, strongly suggests that Jim being shot was perhaps the only piece of information that Bill did not have ahead of time.
Which brings us to his reaction â was it genuine?
As Iâve said before, I do think it is. Bill Haydon was certainly capable of improvised reaction, and I think the initial reaction as he entered the Circus was certainly ramped up, but the more focused reaction â the immediate shift in demeanour when Sam Collins (or in the film, Westerby, since they the condensed the two characters) told him who it was who had been shot â that I fully believe was genuine.
Jim being shot wasnât part of the plan. Jim being captured and repatriated? Most likely. The networks being blown? Certainly. But Jim being grievously wounded, moved from place to place with dubious medical care, and interrogated? Not what Bill had intended to have happen.
- In your day the Circus ran itself by regions⊠each region was commanded by its own Juju man, Control sat in heaven and pulled the strings. Remember?
- It strikes a distant chord.
- Today, everything operational is under one hand. Called London Station.
- Whoâs station commander?
- Bill Haydon. His number two is Roy Bland. Toby Esterhase runs between them like a poodle.
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