Shortly afterward le Carre's mother, the former Olive Glassy, left her husband and moved in with one of his business associates. Cornwell later divorced her and remarried twice, and le Carre did not see his mother again until he was twenty years of age. He and his brother, Tony, spent some time with relatives who refused to discuss either parent, and le Carre later claimed that his earliest experience of espionage was his attempt to piece together, from the little that he and his brother managed to overhear, some explanation for his mother's desertion and his father's frequent absences. He concluded at one point that his father must be a spy, called away to perform dangerous missions for the good of his country.
As a result of his family's frequent moves le Carre never settled into one school or felt at home with one group of friends. At first he had the companionship of his brother, two years his senior, upon whom he was very dependent; but later their father, deciding that his sons should be more self-sufficient, sent them to boarding schools thirty miles apart.
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