I was tempted to call the old number at the Foreign Office or whatever it was, to ask Reresby (if he was still there and hadn’t been transferred or defenestrated), or whoever happened to answer the phone, if I could speak to Reggie Gathorne, who undoubtedly did exist, unlike Dundas, Ure and Montgomery. Yet Tomás had told me not to get impatient however much time passed, those had been his final words at the airport. I should do as I was told, I would have to put up with it as I had so often before, even though this time was different, and the waiting was harder and my unease unbearable when night came and I got into bed alone and reached out for his absent body, for the empty space that seemed still emptier because I feared that, this time, it might be permanent. To resist the temptation, I would remember and repeat to myself every time I went to pick up the phone, which happened every day (I would say it out loud to make it more real): ‘As usual, if I don’t get in touch that will be because I can’t, you know that.’ And I had agreed: ‘As usual, stay in touch while you can, or when you get back, if they send you somewhere far away.’ I had to respect that agreement.
But on this occasion, things weren’t as usual. September, October and November passed in silence. December seemed to me a propitious month for him to come home, and, filled with superstitious hope, I counted down the days: at Christmas, I thought, everyone takes a break, even moles and terrorists don’t have much to do, any actions are postponed, there’s a kind of atmospheric truce, and everyone has to spend those days somewhere; the executioners and their victims also have families who require their presence, or, rather, the former don’t want to arouse suspicions or attract too much attention, while the latter carry on with their normal lives, almost never imagining that they’re going to be victims. Of course, there are always some complete loners, people no one is expecting, who aren’t invited anywhere and who never receive guests, for whom those days are just like any other, individuals who hide away in some small isolated country hotel, pretending that they’ve been to visit family and then returned. I hoped that Tomás hadn’t become one of them and wasn’t doing something similar, wherever he was, in Ireland, in Scotland, in Israel, in Palestine, in Syria, in Russia or in Czechoslovakia, perhaps even in Argentina, which, for security reasons, he hadn’t yet dared to leave. These were, of course, conjectures – or, rather, fantasies.
I thought he might at least have phoned to say hello, to reassure me, to ask how the children were and if Guillermo still remembered him. Elisa was too young to have any memory of him. However, as the month went on, and he still gave no sign of life, I grew desperate. If he didn’t resurface then, when would he? Would the whole winter and spring pass with no news of him, then summer and autumn too, after all, why not? I no longer limited myself to staring at the phone, itching to call the Foreign Office number, instead, I dialled it on numerous occasions. And yet, after the first two or three rings – even after hearing the word ‘Hello’ several times – I would hang up without saying a word or asking to speak to anyone, overwhelmed by fear and regret at having made the call. The same old litany would echo around inside my head, or was it perhaps a spell intended to banish my worst fears: ‘If I don’t get in touch that will be because I can’t. Don’t get impatient if it takes a while, however long that might be.’ How much more time had to pass? Sometimes the spell had an adverse effect: perhaps he couldn’t send any news because he was no longer among the living, perhaps that was what he’d meant to say as well.
Walter Starkie, who knew everything, had died several years before, but Jack Nevinson, Tomás’s father, my father-in-law, was still alive, although he’d now retired both from the embassy and from the British Council; he was about seventy by then, and Tomás was his youngest child. Eager to fend off inactivity, he’d leapt at the chance to teach English phonetics in my department at the university while the usual lecturer was on temporary leave or on sabbatical – I’m not sure which – another Spanish Englishman, the excellent Jack Cressey White, who had been my teacher too. And so, that year, I met up with my father-in-law more often in the university corridors than I did in my apartment or his, where I often left the children, never staying very long myself, precisely so that I wouldn’t have to talk about Tomás, who was always our main point of interest. Now, though, I did want to talk to him about Tomás, before I gave in to temptation, before I butted in again and pestered that man Reresby, who would probably not even remember me. One day, I asked Jack if we could talk, without the children there and without his wife, Mercedes, Tomás’s madrileña mother. He led me into Mr White’s office, which was at his disposal while he was standing in for him, and he offered me a chair as if I were a mere colleague or a student and not his daughter-in-law; that is, he did so discreetly or shyly. He had slightly prominent blue eyes, very rosy skin, receding white hair and a very dimpled face – with a particularly deep dimple on his chin – a face that inspired confidence, that spoke of a natural innocence and kindness undiminished by age. He seemed incapable of deceiving anyone, even of lying. He had studied at Oxford (Pembroke College), and there, despite the difference in age with the first two, he’d been on friendly terms with Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and with Isaiah Berlin, but he didn’t tend to tell stories about them or to boast.
‘How can I help, Berta, my dear?’ he said in Spanish, a language he’d never entirely mastered, despite his many years in Madrid, and which he spoke with a strong English accent that he never managed to shake off.
‘Jack, will you be totally honest with me? What do you know about Tomás?’ I asked.
He seemed genuinely surprised and replied in English, using my continued improvement in that language as an excuse to take a rest from the one that so stubbornly resisted his efforts.
‘What do you mean, what do I know? I know what you tell us, Berta. In London he must be so busy, I imagine, that he only has time to phone you. He never calls us when he’s away. And we understand completely, we don’t take it amiss. You’re his wife, and parents have to take second place. As far as I know, he doesn’t get in touch with his sisters or with his brother either. He did warn us, a long time ago, that when he was in England he would communicate entirely through you.’
‘So he never talks to you? He never confides or asks advice?’
‘Advice?’ He laughed. ‘No, I think he’s always rather looked down on me as being a rather useless father as fathers go. He’s a very different man from me. More confident and more determined. He hasn’t consulted me about any doubts, if he has any, not since he was a boy, although he might tell me about them once he’s resolved them.’
‘So what has he told you, Jack? I haven’t heard a word from him, nothing, not since the last time he set off, at the beginning of the Falklands War. Everything I’ve told you during that time, about vague bits of news or brief phone calls, has all been a lie, pure invention. I didn’t want to worry you, and I didn’t want it to look as if he’d abandoned us, the kids and me. He left on 4 April, eight months ago. He’s never before gone for so long without contacting me. Two or three months, yes, perhaps a bit longer, I don’t know, it’s best not to count the days too exactly, and I’m used to that, I’ve learned not to worry overmuch and to wait. But, of course, this time, he left when a war was just beginning, and no one has told me anything since the war ended, no one from the Foreign Office or the embassy or anywhere has been in touch. If something grave had happened, they would have told me, wouldn’t they? They’d have told you as well. Or perhaps not. Do you know anything more than that? Do you know what he actually does?’
Jack Nevinson opened his eyes very wide; he was one of those innocent men who opens his eyes wide in order to look more intensely. I understood what that intensity meant: he was trying to work out how much I knew. He obviously didn’t want to lie to me, nor did he want to compromise his son, or go against his instructions.
‘Oh, that,’ he said.
‘Yes, Jack, that. I think we both know something. Tell me, please, what do you know?’
My fath
er-in-law sat perfectly still, momentarily lost for words. He was looking for a way of saying something without really saying anything. He asked if I’d like a cup of tea, but I shook my head; he stammered out a few unintelligible words, then, finally, managed to say:
‘I probably know no more than you, Berta. He’s probably told you a lot more. But I’m not as innocent as I may seem, and I’ve seen the look on my son’s face when he returns from those absences or journeys, and it’s not the look of someone who’s just been on some diplomatic mission, however arduous and complicated it might be. It’s the look I’ve seen on other men’s faces; during the war, the Second World War, I saw it quite often. It’s a look that’s simultaneously a look of pride and horror, the two things mingled to form one indistinguishable whole. Horror at what they’ve seen, and pride at having been able to cope with it, for not having completely lost their minds or run away. A combination of horror and pride at the barbarous things they’ve done or were capable of doing. It’s the look someone wears when he comes back from the front, but also from other covert activities. And since there’s been no open warfare since then, I think I know what he’s been involved with all these years.’
‘But has he ever actually told you?’
‘That’s a very big question, Berta, but it really doesn’t seem likely to me that he’s been in the Falklands; sending him there would have been a waste of his talents.’
‘He has told me, Jack,’ I said cautiously, hesitantly. ‘And I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn by telling you that.’ He didn’t even blink, and I assumed that he knew everything, even if he wouldn’t admit it. ‘I know he works for the Secret Service, MI5 or MI6, or whatever. But I’ve never known exactly where he goes or what he does or has done, or what risks he runs. He doesn’t tell me, and I don’t ask. That’s what we’ve agreed.’
‘It’s more likely to be MI6, I think. He’d be more useful there,’ said Jack, like someone picking me up on a minor error. ‘Although they often swap personnel, depending on the mission.’
He spoke with a serenity that I increasingly lacked. Indeed, right there and then, I gave in to my despair. I clutched my head in my hands, my elbows resting on Mr White’s desk, and was on the verge of tears.
‘I don’t know what to do, Jack. I’ve been patient, as Tomás advised me to be, but I need to know whether or not he’s alive.’
‘There’s no reason why he wouldn’t be. These matters sometimes take a long time, sometimes years, not months. You’ve been lucky so far, three or four months isn’t bad at all. And the last thing he can do is make a false move, like phoning home, because someone might be listening in. Or sending a telegram. That would be even worse. Someone could read it.’
That isn’t what I wanted to hear, I didn’t want to imagine actual scenes, Tomás going to the post office or looking for a public phone box hidden away somewhere, fearing for his life if he were to be discovered doing something that would be perfectly normal for the rest of humanity. I wanted to be spared the sordid details.
‘Eight months is a long time. For me, I mean. I can’t take it any more, Jack, I need to know something. Once, years ago, I spoke to someone called Ted Reresby in London. Something really alarming had happened here, something I never told you about, and I couldn’t get in touch with Tomás. If you don’t know where he is now, I’ll phone that man Reresby again, or at least try to.’
‘Ted Reresby?’ Jack said, repeating the name. ‘I’ve never heard Tomás mention him. For me, the key name would be Tupra, Bertram Tupra. That’s who I’d turn to as a last resort, the person I’d try to track down. Tom introduced me to him when I was on a trip to London, when Tom was working there. I just happened to bump into them in the Strand one day. Tom gave me the impression that Tupra was his boss, that he was under his direct orders, whatever it was they did, and I’m not at all sure what that was. “We work together,” Tom said. A charming chap, but a bit daunting; he was wearing a pinstripe suit, with rather too wide a stripe, complete with waistcoat, far too smartly turned out to be a real diplomat or a minor functionary at a ministry. When I say “daunting”, I mean decisive, capable,’ he added, thinking that the adjective might have alarmed me. ‘Confident, self-assured. Look, Berta, I’m really not sure about anything. I have my own theories, but whether they’re right or not, I have no idea. I am pretty sure, though, that I know what Tom does, even though I couldn’t prove it. Whatever it is, he’s involved in it body and soul, that I do see, that much is clear. At least when he’s not here. When he’s not here, he forgets all about here, we don’t exist. You, me, his mother, even the kids, we all cease to exist. He becomes part of another life, he becomes another person and will sometimes believe he is that person. And that’s how it has to be if things are to work out well. Then he comes home, and, insofar as he can, he becomes his usual self, he becomes himself again.’
Jack Nevinson was clearly well informed, or his suspicions were enough for him to take the facts for granted. He took it all remarkably calmly, as if he knew that, when someone has chosen a path, all you can do is watch them through binoculars, wish them luck and hope they make it back.
‘Do you know how I could get in touch with that man Tupra? What a strange name, by the way.’
‘It’s certainly not English, of course, but he was an Englishman to his fingertips, and his spoken English was impeccable. I don’t honestly know how you could get in touch. You could try ringing the Foreign Office or MI6, but phoning there will be like entering a labyrinth, and they’ll end up asking you questions. I think you should wait a bit longer, just a little. As I said, it’s not unusual for operations to last two to three years. At least wait until a whole year has elapsed.’
‘Until April? How can I possibly wait that long, Jack?’
‘Until April or May or even June. Don’t imagine I don’t worry about him, that I’m not filled with fear and anxiety whenever he goes off who knows where; he is, after all, my youngest son. But I put up with it, what else can I do? Nor could I criticise him for having decided to put his knowledge and talents at the service of my country. I wouldn’t try to dissuade him either; in fact, I feel very proud of him. What I do know is that, in these matters, a pestering wife trying to find things out is a real menace. That could make Tom’s work more difficult, or even make things more dangerous for him. The same would apply to a father or mother or a husband trying to track down his wife.’
When he mentioned the word ‘mother’, the penny suddenly dropped.
‘What about Mercedes? Doesn’t she wonder about him? Doesn’t she get impatient or worried? Does she know anything about what he does?’
Jack placed one finger on his lips, as if bidding me to be silent. It was a courteous gesture, accompanied by a look from his clear eyes. It was a request not an order.
‘She prefers not to think about it. She makes do with the lies you tell us. And if you don’t mind, it would be best if you could carry on lying, and keep inventing those phone calls, without ever going into too much detail. Just as you have done up until now. You may not know it, but you’re very good at pretending.’
I did as he suggested and waited a little more and then a lot more. I waited until April and May and June, and continued to wait without lifting a finger – literally: without dialling the Foreign Office number or any other English number – during the whole of July and August and September of 1983, and when you wait for a long time, you become filled with an ambivalent, contradictory feeling: you discover that you’ve become used to waiting and may not want to do anything else. You don’t want it to be interrupted or to come to an end with the long-awaited phone call, with the long-awaited arrival, with the longed-for reappearance, but still less do you want the opposite, the news that this won’t happen, that your husband will never be seen alive again, will never return. That second possibility is, of course, the graver and more dramatic of the two, but both come to the same thing, the end of the waiting and the uncertainty to which you’ve become so ac
customed that you’d rather they didn’t end and thus take away your reason for getting up in the morning or the thought with which you go to bed at night, you’d simply prefer that nothing changed. ‘If Tomás comes back, he’ll already have arrived in a way,’ I told myself, although not in so many words, for it was more a sensation than a thought, ‘and everything will be as it used to be, unchanged, exactly the same; yes, more time will have passed, and I’ll have worried myself sick, but, basically, it will be just another chapter in this absurd life of comings and goings and opacity on his part; it will become superimposed on the previous absences and a moment will arrive when I won’t be able to tell that disappearance from all the others, especially if future disappearances go on for an equally long time, not just for two or three months but a year and a half like this one, who knows how long they could go on for. A year and a half about which he’ll tell me nothing and about which I won’t even ask, just as it’s always been and always is. Then we’ll enjoy another period of apparent normality until he gets the call and goes away again. Perhaps what I have now is better. It’s the illusion of the future, to which I can give any shape I like, because the future is so malleable. I can imagine that the day he comes back, he’ll tell me he’s retiring, that this mission only dragged on for so long because he wanted to go out on a high, with one final crucial job, and that it’s the last one he’ll take on; that he’s wasted the best years of his life and that nothing lasts for ever, that he wants to stop now and stay here; that he’s had enough of the dark side of the world, the one we ordinary citizens are never obliged to see and that we don’t even dare to set foot in or peer into. I can imagine him admitting to me that he’s weary and has had enough, that what he’s done and seen others do is so sickening that he doesn’t want to be left alone with that vision of ugliness, unpleasantness, distrust, disappointment and cruelty, and to live indefinitely on the treacherous margins of the universe. I can treasure that idea for as long as Tomás doesn’t return, because I know that, when he does, the idea will vanish and succumb to the inertia of events, that is, to habit. “Whatever it is, he’s involved in it body and soul, that I do see, that much is clear,” Jack said to me, and Jack is his father and knows him well, and has known him far longer than I have. Tomás won’t be able to leave his chosen path, the path he’s set off along; he’s caught. By this stage, he probably needs not to be here, not to be him, but to be someone else or various other people, he won’t be able to bear being ceaselessly, unequivocally one person. Jack had also said: “When he’s not here, he forgets all about here, we don’t exist. You, me, his mother, even the kids, we all cease to exist.” And I have no illusions in that respect, I’m sure he’s right: for long periods, Tomás will need us to be erased, to evaporate, to remove ourselves from his field of vision; no, more than that, from the field of his imagination and the field of his memory, just as Hyde doesn’t remember Jekyll and Jekyll doesn’t remember Hyde, or only as they leave each other, at the moment of transformation. He’ll only retire if they make him, if someone else dismisses him as redundant and burned out, after having squeezed every last drop out of him, if Tupra or Reresby give him permission or whoever it is who issues the orders, perhaps the actual head of the Secret Intelligence Service, the SIS; before he left, he told me that there was or was going to be a new man with a strange surname, Figures, apparently the SIS heads are replaced every few years, perhaps so that they don’t go mad, only their subordinates. That will happen sooner or later, they’ll get rid of him, and then what?’
Berta Isla Page 29
