John le Carré

by Adam Sisman

  James Kennaway was a handsome, virile, charismatic man, three years older than David, with easy charm and a winning manner, strongly committed to his writing, determined to ‘blaze in every direction’. His father had died suddenly in his mid-forties, leaving him with a powerful sense of urgency; he had resolved not to ‘sink with too much left undone, too much never tried, too many sensations missed’.2 He had become a much praised novelist, and a successful and highly paid screenwriter.

  Susan was a stylish beauty, her dark hair set in a fashionable bob. David found her enchanting – though somewhat in James’s shadow. The Kennaways’ marriage seemed to him to have everything that his own lacked. In fact it was tested by James’s repeated infidelity. From boyhood Kennaway had recognised two sides to his nature, ‘James’ and ‘Jim’. James was quiet and studious, enthusiastic and eager to please, a domesticated man constrained by society; Jim was an actor strutting the stage, often outrageous and exuberant, the master manipulator, a boy who should be allowed unlimited licence, above all the freedom to sleep with as many women as he wanted. ‘You need a different woman for each book,’ he would tell David. To Susan, he would justify his philandering as ‘an essential part of the creative process of his writing, a necessity’.3

  Kennaway claimed a philosophical underpinning to this thirst for experience. From Ortega y Gasset he had absorbed the idea that the novelist is involved in the process of writing his own life. He had come to believe that in order to write about triumph and disaster, he had first to experience them himself. There was therefore a tendency in him to push things to extremes.4 He often quoted Scott Fitzgerald’s dictum that the obligation of early success is to lead a romantic life.* David understood this to mean that one should identify one’s own private standards, and adhere to them.5

  Kennaway had been in New York while David was there, researching a possible film about the life of the war photographer Robert Capa (another energetic womaniser). David had sought his advice about a screenplay for The Looking-Glass War, which seemed certain to be adapted into a film. Already a large sum had been offered for the rights, sight unseen. Guy Trosper’s changes to The Spy who Came in from the Cold had made David uneasy: in particular that Leamas, instead of punching a grocer and going to jail for this, was to be confined in a psychiatric hospital. David resolved to script the film of the new book himself, or at least not to allow it outside his control. In New York he and Kennaway had ‘cooked up’ a plan to collaborate on a screenplay.

  The relationship between the two men quickly became very close. Shortly after returning to Crete David wrote to James, addressing him as ‘my new mate and mucker’; the letter’s margin has ‘CORNCRAKE AND KENNAWAY ARE SOUL MATES’ written in large capitals in the margin, between a succession of cartoons.6 He expressed confidence that they would soon be working together on a screenplay for The Looking-Glass War. The producer/director Karel Reisz was interested in adapting it. David liked what he had heard about Reisz, best known for Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, based on Alan Sillitoe’s novel. His most recent feature had been a film of Night Must Fall, the Emlyn Williams play that had so enthralled David when he saw it as a boy in Bournemouth.

  On 30 May 1964 David reported that his new book was finished. ‘It should be in my hands next week,’ Peter Watt wrote to Victor Gollancz on 11 June. As Gollancz was leaving imminently for a holiday on the Continent, it was agreed that the typescript should be submitted to his daughter Livia. She forwarded a copy to her father at the Hotel Danieli in Venice, with a note explaining that only the first two-thirds was finished. ‘The last third is, he considers, in a very rough state indeed.’8

  Jack Geoghegan, who saw the typescript first, thought it too dark, and requested rewriting. He wanted more action and less gloom; for his sake David introduced a sub-plot of rivalry between the Department and the Circus, and tried to brighten up the book in various ways that he has since forgotten – though it remains a very bleak book, so either this attempt failed or it must have been even more depressing in its original form. The Looking-Glass War would be the only one of David’s books altered radically at an editor’s request. He would come to regret making these changes:

  I should not have pulled my punches. I should have let the Department exist where I was convinced … that Britain herself existed, and in some eerie way contrives to exist until this very day: in a vapour of self-delusion and class arrogance, in a gung-ho world of ‘we’ve-never-had-it-so-good’ bordered on one side by our supposed external enemies – the Europeans, the Russians, you name it – and on the other by an illusory conviction that our island can live off its colonial heritage and the favour of its American Cousins for all time.9

  Later, in an attempt to explain what he was trying to say in the book, David would write an open letter to his American publisher, which Geoghegan printed and distributed in advance of publication. As originally written, the plot drew on David’s perception (which proved true) that the Western intelligence services in Germany had been penetrated to the hilt: agents inserted into East Germany were rarely seen again.

  One minor change was that Coward-McCann preferred to do without the hyphen in the title. ‘Do it your way and vive la différence,’ David cabled Geoghegan. More recent British editions have appeared without the hyphen.

  Gollancz was keen to publish the novel, whatever its shortcomings. From Venice he wrote David an enthusiastic letter in his own hand. The Looking-Glass War was ‘quite magnificent’, he wrote. ‘It’s every bit as exciting as Spy.’ David was in London to discuss film rights in the new book. Again he stayed with the Kennaways. He left a typescript of The Looking-Glass War with James, and arranged to spend the second half of August with him working on a treatment.

  Gollancz was still abroad when David met his daughter Livia and James MacGibbon at a publishing party in London. A few days later Peter Watt came to see them. Obviously embarrassed, Watt delivered a succession of complaints: David felt that they had published The Spy who Came in from the Cold badly and sold far fewer than they ought to have done; Victor himself was paternalistic and always giving advice; David had heard a rumour that the firm was up for sale. Watt then told them that David wanted a commitment to three books, with an advance of £6,000 for each. Consulted by telephone, Gollancz immediately agreed to the proposed terms, and was disconcerted when these were not immediately accepted. On his return from Venice, he was incensed to learn that Watt was negotiating with Heinemann. ‘I can remember nothing since I started publishing in 1922 that has astonished me so much,’ he wrote in a furious letter to David. He threatened legal action if the option clause was not honoured, and desisted only after Watt persuaded him to back down.10 Even then he continued to fulminate. The Evening Standard’s ‘Londoner’s Diary’ reported him as saying: ‘In my own time, I shall tell the whole story of the le Carré affair – an affair of the gravest import to every publisher in the land.’

  It rankled with Gollancz that his bestselling author had been poached by a man to whom he had given ‘his first chance in publishing’: he found it difficult to accept that David had chosen to go to Charles Pick rather than stay with him. ‘Why would anyone want to leave a West End Jew for an East End Jew?’*

  David returned to Crete, to resume work on a second draft of The Looking-Glass War. He had hired Liz Tollinton,* who had worked at MI5, to be his secretary; she came to Agios Nikolaos and was billeted in a hotel a few hundred yards away. Early in August the Margetsons arrived for a visit. Miranda was by this time three months pregnant, and John was naturally very attentive to her. Though David was an entertaining host, as charming and amusing as ever, he was noticeably frustrated not to have more time alone with his friend. In mid-August, he left for Paris, to join James Kennaway.

  The fortnight that followed was bacchanalian. Kennaway was exhilarating if hair-raising company: David trailed in his wake as he prowled the pavements for prostitutes, brought woman after woman back to their hotel and explored bars, nightclubs and brothels.
Kennaway was capable of taking two women to bed in an afternoon, drinking all night and being ready for work the next morning. He argued that an active sex life, far from being a distraction, was a stimulus to his writing. For David, this seemed almost too good to be true. James was a real writer, whose life expressed his art: a philosopher, a poet, an adventurer. He was reckless where David was timid; James embraced life, while David stood on the sidelines. James goaded him to take advantage of the sexual opportunities available on every street-corner, urging him to shed his bourgeois scruples, but David held back, still shy and fearful.

  Kennaway had brought with him to Paris the manuscript of a play adapted from his novel Household Ghosts, due to be tried out in Stratford, Ontario, that autumn.† In a letter to Susan he boasted that David ‘loved the play’. If this was true, the admiration was mutual. ‘I’m truly amazed by David,’ wrote Kennaway. ‘Believe me, he didn’t get here by luck. The head is strong and the heart a much hunted one.’ A subsequent letter suggests that he felt his talent inferior to David’s. ‘As much as possible I’m trying to get it all out of him, and sometimes I feel I’m way behind,’ he admitted. ‘David has a very big nut, good for plotting with.’ The fortnight together had cemented their friendship. ‘David and I are inseparable chums.’11

  By contrast, Karel Reisz, who joined them in Paris, was obviously irritated by Kennaway’s self-indulgence. Although only a couple of years older, Reisz was more mature and serious: he had escaped from Nazi-controlled Czechoslovakia as a child; his parents had died in Auschwitz. In the late stages of the war he had served as a pilot with one of the RAF’s Czechoslovak squadrons. ‘Some of us seem to find it very hard to grow up,’ he snapped at Kennaway in a difficult moment. Stung by this rebuke, Kennaway was doubly upset that David did not immediately spring to his defence. It was clear that Reisz saw him as more of a nuisance than a help. Relations between them deteriorated to the extent that David contemplated telling Reisz to leave; but they patched things up enough to continue. From a letter that David sent afterwards to his publisher, it is clear that the discussions between the three men in Paris were at least as much about the novel as about the film. ‘I have spent the last eight days with Karel Reisz and James Kennaway talking of nothing but the book, and in doing so I have considerably clarified in my own mind what I am trying to say,’ he wrote.

  The outer story of incompetence, ministerial rivalry and self-interest, the echoes of war, the restlessness of old soldiers, is pretty well told, I think. But the inner story of ritual sacrifice is not quite effective because of the lamb – Leiser. If the half-people, the impotent and inward-looking men, are to destroy a life, a life-force almost, it seems to me mistaken to have him almost half spent. I think Leiser must be a young man and someone we can really love. We must watch the destruction of someone far more vigorous than Leiser as he now is.12

  ‘JIM, you have done more for me in a week than I have done for anyone else in a lifetime,’ David wrote on Kennaway’s draft of the script, though one suspects that he was referring more to his friend’s liberating influence than to his assistance with the writing.13

  When the time came for Kennaway to go back to England, the two could hardly bear to part, so David decided to accompany Kennaway on the drive to the Normandy coast, where he would take the ferry back to England. Near Barfleur they dozed for a while in the car, and on waking he confided to Kennaway some of his most intimate secrets, revealing how miserable and lonely he felt in his marriage. The only other person with whom he had shared his innermost feelings was the woman in Bonn: she and James were his two loves, as he then saw it.

  David returned to Paris for a day or two before flying back to Greece. A dreamy letter written shortly afterwards gives a sense of the euphoria of that fortnight together in Paris. ‘Cher Jeem, I think you went off with both copies of the treatment you lovely boy,’ wrote David. ‘Paris was empty without you, quite empty … It was all lovely … bonne, bonne chance with your play you great big positive person.’14

  Kennaway had returned to his wife in England ‘with many tales of happy, funny, outrageous and awful days spent together with David’. He told Susan that his new friend did not seem to be a very happy person, dissatisfied with his marriage and until recently very short of money. The success of The Spy who Came in from the Cold had taken him by surprise, ‘and he was quite unprepared for it’. From what James said it appeared to her that David’s life up to this point had been comparatively restrained. She deduced that he had professed to need help with the scriptwriting only as an excuse to get to know James better.15

  Hale Crosse had come over to Paris to meet David while he was there. His efforts were concentrated on attempts to reduce the amount of tax his client would have to pay. The top rates of tax at the time were considered by many punitive: 88.75 per cent in the UK on income in excess of £15,000 a year, and an even higher rate, 91 per cent, in the USA – with surtax or supertax (tax on tax) on top. In reality very few of those on large incomes paid these rates, as accountants devised intricate schemes to minimise their liability. After consulting a specialist lawyer and ‘an intensive period of brain flogging’, Hale Crosse had found a loophole in David’s tax position, which he thought might be exploited to considerable advantage: to sell The Looking-Glass War to Heinemann outright.16 Coward-McCann would underwrite Heinemann’s purchase of the rights by guaranteeing $370,000 of the cost. They could well afford to do so, having received an offer from Dell of $380,000 for the paperback rights alone. The British paperback publisher, Pan, contributed a further £50,000, an exceptionally large advance for paperback rights, encouraged by the huge sales of their edition of The Spy who Came in from the Cold.* The eventual sum paid by Heinemann for English-language rights in The Looking-Glass War was approximately £145,000:† a remarkable increase on the advance of £175 paid by Gollancz for The Spy who Came in from the Cold.

  At Hale’s recommendation a company was formed, to take over David’s income once he returned to live in the UK. David became an employee of le Carré Productions Limited, to which he assigned all his copyrights.

  The Cornwells’ stay on Crete was coming to an end; Ann had found a house to rent from the beginning of September on the fashionable island of Spetsai, which was less remote, being only two hours from Athens by hydrofoil. David wanted the Kennaways to join them and take the house next to theirs; but even if they had been tempted to do so, James was in no condition to travel, having succumbed to glandular fever on his return from Paris.

  Over the next couple of months David sent him several further letters, addressing him affectionately as ‘lovely boy’ and ‘golden boy’. He was reading Kennaway’s novels for the first time, and his letters glow with praise. ‘Jeem boy, you really got it,’ he wrote in one of these. ‘In a big way. Far bigger than most of us lot. So for Gawd’s sake take your silly finger out and give. Write bigger books with more crap in them … But oh Jim if you love us at all write.’17

  David’s faith in his talent was clearly important to Kennaway, who was struggling to write a new novel himself, without much success. Looking back at this period a year later, he acknowledged that David’s appearance in his life ‘had several effects – envy, love, the idea that I was after all an artist of integrity who could help, and a man to set others free …’

  The Cornwells stayed in Spetsai only a few weeks before moving on to Vienna for the winter. They rented the top floor of a grand house on the Hohe Warte, an apartment recently vacated by the conductor Herbert von Karajan, who had lived there during his tenure as director of the Vienna State Opera. Ann was told that the Maestro would order his minions to telephone from the theatre as he left, so that when he arrived all the doors would be open and the household gathered to greet him.

  In Vienna David was soon being lionised by the Austro-Hungarian nobility. It helped of course that he spoke fluent German. At one dinner party a countess laid her hand on his knee and left it there through the meal. Ann was uncomfortable at such grand
gatherings. She felt neglected by her husband, having to fight off unwanted advances by other men without his protection.

  They had moved to Vienna because David thought that he might set a novel there. He had clear memories of his visits to the Austrian capital fifteen years earlier, when Austria was still occupied by the Allied powers, and Vienna itself was divided into sectors like Berlin. It was in many ways a suitable setting for a spy story: a melodramatic city of intrigue and scandal, unforgettably evoked in Carol Reed’s 1949 film The Third Man, conceived and written by Graham Greene. For his new novel, David planned to write about a revived German nationalist movement, drawing on his experiences while stationed in Bonn. He consulted the Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who helped him to construct a convincing past for the movement’s leader, Karfeld. In Vienna David was able to hear first-hand the language of uninhibited anti-Semitism, which in post-war Germany was rarely heard in public, from embarrassment if not from decency. ‘If you are studying the disease,’ Wiesenthal advised, ‘you have to live in the swamp.’

  In mid-November David returned to London to deliver the final version of The Looking-Glass War to his agent. Among those thanked in the foreword was ‘my friend James Kennaway, to whom this book is dedicated, for his generous advice’. (This acknowledgement was removed before the book was printed, though the dedication remained.) The end of the book had been rewritten, to include an appearance by George Smiley, rather as he appears at the end of The Spy who Came in from the Cold.

  While in London David met the new scriptwriter for The Spy who Came in from the Cold, Paul Dehn, a replacement for Guy Trosper, who had fallen ill. Dehn was an Englishman; David was relieved to find that he had no patience with psychiatric hospitals and no compunction about punching grocers. An experienced screenwriter, a gay man nicknamed ‘King of the Queens’, Dehn had won an Oscar for his film Seven Days to Noon, and had recently adapted Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger for the screen. David particularly admired his film Orders to Kill, about the assassination of a suspected double agent in the French Resistance. Dehn had been in SOE during the war, and for a while had been stationed at SOE’s training camp (Camp X) in Canada, so he knew his subject. When in due course his script arrived, David was not surprised to find that he liked it.