One of GM’s guilty summer pleasures is to read spy novels. This summer was no different, as he returned to John le Carré for a mid period book GM had previously overlooked: The Perfect Spy. The semi-autobiographical work tells the story of Magnus Pym who (spoiler alert) rises up through the British secret service while operating as a double agent for Czechoslovakia. And towards the end of the book Georgetown makes a cameo appearance.
The book is structured intermittently as a book-within-a-book as Pym writes a coming-clean narrative to his family and colleagues explaining his actions. At one point he describes his time in Washington where he lived with his wife in a small Georgetown home. And he explains to his son that one of the locations of the “dropboxes” that he used to communicate with his Czechoslovakian handlers was in Oak Hill Cemetery. Pym writes to his son Tom [it gets a little confusing because in his “book” to his family and colleagues, Pym refers to himself in the third-person. It’s the same tiresome affectation that GM uses.]:
He wandered Georgetown’s beautiful Oak Hill Cemetery and imagined he was with Dorothy at The Glades, confined to the dripping orchard where his guilty face could be hidden from the passers-by. Minnie Wilson was our letter box at Oak Hill, Tom. Our first in all America–go and take a look at her one day. She lies on a curled plinth a short way down the terraced bowl, a small dead Victorian girl in marble drapes. We left our messages in a leafy recess between Minnie’s backside and he protector, one Thomas Entwistle, who had died in later age.
The reference was so specific that GM was convinced that it must be a real place. So recently he headed over for a much overdue visit to Oak Hill and search for the gravestone.
GM immediately found several small sculptures of babies or children, but none with that name. He walked up and down looking, about to give up hope he finally spotted the name Thomas Entwisle (not Entwistle, like in the book).
Continue reading →
Photo by M.V. Jantzen.
