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circus_cupbearerFor rickitikitarr
Source: David Monaghan. Smiley's Circus: A secret guide to the world of John le Carré. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986. Print. pp. 176-177
Tarr, Ricki The scalphunter who, on a routine mission to Hong Kong in 1973, discovers that there is a mole in the Circus. He is born in the late 1930s in Penang, Malaya, the son of an Australian solicitor with evangelical tendencies and an actress from Bradford who is also a petty criminal. With the outbreak of war the Tarr family is evacuated to Singapore which is soon invaded by the Japanese. They spend the rest of the war in Changi jail and are unable to return to Penang until 1945. Tarr’s failure to take his law studies seriously brings him into conflict with his father and he flees to Borneo. By the time he is eighteen, in the mid-1950s, he is running guns around the Indonesian islands. Disappointed by an unsuccessful involvement with some Belgian gun-runners to whom he loses his girlfriend, Rose, Tarr proves susceptible to Steve Mackelvore’s suggestion, made in Djakarta, Indonesia, that he join the Circus as a scalphunter. Vetting takes place in Djakarta, Singapore and finally at Sarratt where Smiley is involved. Tarr’s first mission sends him back to Malaysia where he rejoins the Belgian gun—runners and Rose, who are supplying arms to the communists. After blowing their contacts he kills four of them and Rose. Tarr is sent next to Kenya to fight the Mau Mau. In 1964, working under Dutch cover, he bungles an attempt to bribe a Brazilian armaments minister but in 1965, acting on a tip from Haydon, he successfully blackmails a Polish diplomat who has become involved with a dancer in Spain. Encouraged by the bonus and commendation he wins for this mission Tarr pressures the diplomat again but the man commits suicide after confessing to his ambassador.
On March 31, 1973 Tarr is sent to Hong Kong under cover as Tony Thomas, an Australian car dealer from Adelaide, to check on a Soviet trade delegate named Boris. Boris proves to be inaccessible but Tarr finds a rich source of intelligence in his common-law wife, Irina. Convinced that Tarr loves her, Irina passes on to him the information that a Moscow Centre deep-penetration agent serviced by Polyakov is operating in the Circus. Made suspicious by the Circus’s failure to respond to his cables and by Irina’s sudden forced removal to Moscow, Tarr goes underground in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he has a Eurasian mistress and a daughter, Danny, and acquires a passport in the name of Poole. In November Tarr returns to London secretly via South Africa and Dublin and uses his workname, Trench, to contact Peter Guillam. The story he has to tell begins the operation which ends in Haydon’s exposure as a traitor. During most of the time that Smiley carries out his investigation Tarr is confined to a house in Suffolk near Little Horkseley, Wormingford and Bures Green but he plays a vital role in the final stages of the operation. Armed with the knowledge that the mole is unaware of Tarr’s return to England, Smiley orders Tarr to Paris from where he sends the message which panics Haydon into a crash meeting with Polyakov at the Lock Gardens safe house. Despite his enormous contribution to the Haydon case, Tarr does not seem to have any further involvement with the Circus.
Ricki Tarr is tall with an aging but immature face and speaks with a colonial accent. Perhaps because of his peculiar childhood and eccentric parents Tarr has never really "grown up" and he is an incongruous mixture of brutal and romantic qualities. A strong tendency to fantasize, which is equally evident in his projections of a Scottish menage a trois with Irina and his Eurasian mistress and his interest in the football pools, is a further symptom of his immaturity. Peter Guillam dislikes Tarr intensely but he has a boyish quality which is quite appealing and, despite a tendency to overreach himself, he is an intelligent and resourceful agent.
