Mr Southworth took out a cigarette and offered one to Tomás, who accepted it, and they each lit their respective cigarette on his proffered lighter. Then Southworth asked:
‘What’s happened to you, Tom Nevinson? Where have you been all this time? I don’t know what decision you’re talking about, I don’t understand. But what can I do to help, if I can do anything, that is? It’s not that I’m not glad of your visit, but why on earth have you come to see me after all these years?’
No one ever knew what had happened to Tom Nevinson, what had become of him, not exactly, not in detail; not even in a very broad-brush way. Where he’d been or with whom, what missions he’d undertaken, what damage he’d caused, how many misfortunes he’d averted. Only he knew that – but, then, the same applies to everyone, as regards knowing him or herself – and, to a lesser degree, Tupra or Reresby or Ure or Dundas, the man with all those names and possibly more, and Blakeston, who were his immediate superiors, his recruiting officers, the ones who had stolen what he had thought his life might be. Others may have known something too, very vaguely, the various, high-up people he presumably served, ultimately and theoretically: Sir John Rennie and Sir Maurice Oldfield, Sir Dick Franks and Sir Colin Figures, Sir Christopher Curwen and Sir Colin McColl, although it’s unlikely he was ever under the remote orders of Sir David Spedding, the director of the Secret Intelligence Service from 1994 to 1999. But perhaps he never saw any of them, and they knew nothing about what he actually got up to, probably preferring to know as little as possible about what happened in those different places or about the methods employed by their subordinates, whom they kept at a prudent distance. They would issue instructions from their lofty peak and hope eventually to see them carried out, without ever knowing who or how. They would be grateful to the intermediate officers for deceiving them and keeping them in the dark, thus sparing them the grim or disagreeable facts about the actions they had unleashed without ever having to soil their hands, and who acted without asking for authorisation and without consulting them. They would be grateful for being wrapped in several opaque veils of ignorance, for being exempted from all guilt if an operation or a device proved to be a resounding failure or ended in disaster. They would positively demand not to be involved. Although, who knows, perhaps one of them did deign to meet Nevinson in person, if the latter had been particularly useful or performed outstandingly well, or had risen up the ranks to become one of those intermediate officers, above Blakeston perhaps, but always below Tupra; Tupra wasn’t the kind of man to allow himself to be overtaken by an inferior. And no one ever knew, either, what promotions Tomás Nevinson might have received. No one outside MI5 or MI6, that is.
Mr Southworth was the person to whom he revealed most, but he didn’t answer the question Mr Southworth had asked, namely, what had happened to him and where he had been all that time. Besides, it was more of a rhetorical question really, a manner of speaking, for no one is able or, indeed, willing to give a full account of the last twenty years or more of his life just like that, and almost no one would happily listen to such an account, unless it was a fiction about someone who didn’t exist, an invented character, and, even then, it’s not easy to follow such a long story. And so Tomás summarised as best he could what had happened to him since he left Oxford, when he was still an undergraduate or about to cease being one.
‘Of course you don’t know. You don’t even know the beginning.’ And when he said this, when he realised how little Southworth knew, Tom Nevinson calmed down, became more composed, and, in a way, found his feet, as tends to happen to those obliged to explain themselves, when they see that this is vital if they are to be understood, however minimally. ‘At the time, I told you that everything had been resolved, that I was no longer a suspect in the murder of that girl, Janet Jefferys, who was strangled on the same night I’d been with her. Things looked very bad for me, do you remember? I told you I’d been ruled out as a suspect. However, I didn’t tell you how this had come about, nor what I had to do in exchange, because, among the conditions imposed on me was that of absolute secrecy, by which I’m still bound today. But this much I can tell you.’ And he told him how Professor Wheeler had recommended him and arranged for him to meet Bertram Tupra, whom Wheeler described as ‘a very resourceful fellow’, about his encounter with him and Blakeston in Blackwell’s, and what they had proposed. About the decision he had taken, about that moment he could remember so clearly and to which he had kept returning in his mind ever since.
‘So am I to understand that you’ve been working for the Secret Service all these years? I’d heard you were working at the embassy in Madrid and for the Foreign Office.’ Mr Southworth’s tone revealed a mixture of incredulity, amusement and shock, as if, from the haven of the university, from his post outside the universe, he considered such a thing to be inconceivable. He would have assumed that Tom was pulling his leg had it not been so painfully clear that his troubled state was utterly genuine and that he was speaking very seriously, almost dramatically. The last thing that would have occurred to him was to make a joke about his situation, about himself. It was as if, with age, his youthful frivolity had vanished without trace, and his whole character had changed. Now he was an exhausted, introspective man, burdened down by the past.
‘Oh, I was there as well, combining the two jobs, but, yes, I’ve been working for the Secret Service all these years,’ said Tomás. ‘Although circumstances have meant that I’ve had to spend a number of years out of circulation, out of commission. But I don’t work for them now, I’ve left. Even so, I still can’t tell you very much, the ban on talking is for life. I can’t say where I’ve been or what I’ve done. I can only talk in general terms. I’ve been to quite a lot of places and done quite a lot of things, some doubtless useful, but most ugly and sordid. There’s very little I can feel proud of, as I once did in the helpful smugness of youth. In fact, there are some days when I can barely stand being me, living constantly in my own company. You do what’s necessary, you’re focused on your mission and don’t really think about anything else. You have no perspective, there’s no time, and that’s the best way to be while you’re on active service. You pass from one day to the next, and every day is full of pressing problems and dangers, for which you have to find solutions, leaving little space for anything else. You’re given your orders and you never question them or even analyse them. In a way, it’s quite a comfortable life, having someone telling you what to do all the time. You can understand why some people like being in prison, because then you don’t ever need to ask yourself any questions. You get precise instructions: do this, that and the other, or imprecise: just get results. That’s how I’ve lived for a long time, convinced of what I was doing and merely doing it as efficiently as possible. When you’re obliged to do something, it’s best to become a convert to the cause, a fanatic. I was serving my country, the Crown, in an abstract way. Obviously, the Queen knows nothing about all that, poor woman, she’d probably shoot herself if she knew the things that are done in her name.’ He had finished his cigarette and now took out his own pack, offering one to his former tutor, who preferred, however, not to smoke another so soon after the first. Mr Southworth remembered the brand of cigarettes Tom Nevinson used to smoke – Marcovitch they were called – and how intrigued that policeman Morse had been by them. Marcovitch were no more, but he noticed that Nevinson was now smoking an equally original, unusual brand, the Greek-sounding George Karelias and Sons. While he was lighting his Karelias, Tomás remained silent for rather longer than it took to light the cigarette. Then he went on: ‘Of course, sometimes you have to choose, usually between two evils, and decide there and then. One of the things I did that most torments me is having participated in the deaths of three colleagues. Well, they weren’t colleagues exactly, I didn’t actually know them, but they were compatriots, British soldiers, fighting on my side. And they had to be sacrificed, that’s the word that was used. I had to allow them to be killed without warning them in any
way. I couldn’t say anything. Worse, I had to collaborate in their execution, pretending an enthusiasm I certainly didn’t feel. What mattered most was not to bring down a long-standing operation, not to arouse suspicions, not to risk giving myself away. If I’d refused to take part, if I’d even held back, if I hadn’t shown a kind of savage glee at the success of the attack, they would have viewed me with distrust or, worse, hostility. And I would probably have ended up dead. And you always watch out for yourself first, before anyone else. You learn that very early on. If your own survival is at risk, you’re perfectly capable of disobeying orders or not even waiting to receive them. With one eye on the consequences, of course, but you only think about them afterwards, not at the moment it’s happening. Besides, if you get caught, there is no mission, nothing, so the main thing is to stay alive. And undetected. At least I wasn’t the executioner, they reserved that privilege for themselves. But if they’d asked me to do it, then I suppose I would have to have pulled the trigger. What else could I do? I’m speaking figuratively, of course, because there wasn’t an actual trigger, but a detonator, you can imagine the mayhem. Mr Southworth, could I have something to drink? My mouth is really dry, and I’ve barely slept for several nights now.’
Southworth listed what drinks he had available, and, standing up while he poured Tomás a white wine, lukewarm despite having been in his mini-fridge (it was still rather early for wine, only half past nine in the morning, but that was what Tomás Nevinson had wanted out of the rather limited choice available), he asked him a series of questions to which he already knew the answers:
‘Were you an infiltrator? Were you a mole? Is that what you did? What you’re talking about sounds very like the situation in Northern Ireland.’ There was still a sceptical tone in his voice, as if what Tom was describing, that world so different from his own, was some absurd fairy tale. Mr Southworth didn’t go to the cinema or watch television and only read novels by nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century authors like Galdós, Clarín and Pardo Bazán, Valle-Inclán and Baroja, and occasionally, for a treat, Flaubert, Balzac, Dickens and Trollope. He hadn’t read any spy novels at all, and so he couldn’t even resort to fiction to grasp what was involved.
Tomás avoided that last remark.
‘I didn’t just do that, but, yes, I’ve been in different places on different occasions, where exactly doesn’t matter, because it’s always the same thing, making friends with your enemies and, if possible, deceiving them. I’m not saying it isn’t interesting, even fascinating, because you do get to know those people. And what else would they have had me do, Mr Southworth, given my wretched gift for languages? Because I speak so many and can imitate any accent. Don’t you remember? That’s why I was recruited, why else? Well, the main reason anyway. And the first person to suggest it was Professor Wheeler, but I don’t imagine you would know that, he wouldn’t talk about those things with anyone, apart from his colleagues in the SIS, or the SAS or the PWE, if that still exists. Earlier, you asked me why on earth I came to see you after all this time. I came partly to ask you to tell me to what extent the Professor was responsible. You’re a friend of his. You know him well and are close to him. You admired him, almost worshipped him. You are still friends, aren’t you? Even though he’s retired now and no longer runs the sub-faculty. There’s a Welshman in charge now, I understand. Ian Michael.’
‘Responsible for what?’ Mr Southworth broke in.
‘For what happened to me. For what I think they did to me. Replacing my life with another life. It’s too late now to recover the life I thought I would live. Parallel time also passes, yes, parallel time,’ he repeated quietly, then drank down that glass of wine in one.
‘I don’t know what you mean, Tom, but whatever it is you’re referring to, I’m afraid I’m not in a position to tell you to what extent Peter, the Professor, is responsible for anything. You’d better ask him. He’s in Oxford at the moment. Then he’ll be off to Austin for a few months. He often gets invited to American universities now that he’s retired. He spends part of the year there. They treat him with something bordering on reverence, and it brings him in some extra money too.’
‘No, I wouldn’t want to go and see him unless that’s absolutely necessary. I wouldn’t want to turn violent with someone his age. How old is he now? Over eighty? Especially someone for whom I have a lot of respect. I wouldn’t want to call him to account if you don’t think I should. You would know better than me how to interpret him.’
‘Violent?’ Southworth couldn’t help but laugh at this unlikely declaration. He decided to pour himself a glass of wine too and then sat down again, with a flourish of his gown. ‘What are you talking about? Although I don’t think he’d mind very much as long as you finished the job off and were quick about it. The last time I asked him how he was, he said: “Awaiting the visit of the Grim Reaper, preferably a painless one and with a bit of advance notice, like a ship firing a warning shot across the bow before discharging the first cannon.” He’s very aware of his mortality. He remains active and in good health, but he’s accepted the idea that he’ll gradually go downhill. He might not mind a violent death. He might be amused by the sheer unexpectedness of it.’ All Oxford dons seemed to have a rather sarcastic vein.
‘Laugh if you want,’ said Tomás gravely. ‘Besides, I meant verbal violence not physical, although I could be tempted. Look, you’ve always struck me as an honest man, a fair man, the kind who says what he thinks. I want you to tell me how much the Professor knew about me. He won’t know anything for certain, of course, how could he, but I would value your opinion and accept it. You know Wheeler better than almost anyone, and if you think he wasn’t in the know, then I won’t go and see him. But if you think he was guilty, then I’ll have to visit him, and I won’t make do with firing a few warning shots either.’
‘Guilty of what? In the know about what?’ asked Southworth, half-impatient and half-confused. ‘The Secret Service has made you very cryptic. Appropriately enough, I suppose.’
Tomás let this new joke pass.
‘I’ll come to that in a minute. One step at a time.’
‘As long as the steps aren’t too long,’ said Mr Southworth, maintaining his humorous tone, and glancing at his watch. ‘I have a lecture at midday in the Taylorian. Luckily for you, that’s my only lecture this morning. I was going to use this time to prepare, but it’s a lecture I give every year – I probably gave it when you were here – and Valle-Inclán is a permanent feature. I doubt it will make much difference, though, if I don’t read through my notes again.’
Tom Nevinson realised that it wouldn’t be easy to tear Mr Southworth away from his old habits, from his tranquil world and his routine. He thought he had done so by bursting in on him like that, by his wild appearance and his incoherence, like an angry, unrecognisable ghost. However, once he’d calmed down and begun to explain himself, Southworth had reverted to the usual courteous Oxford way of speaking, ironic, sceptical, and slightly offhand, Tom remembered it well, even among the nobler, more serious members of Congregation. Mr Southworth had been there so long now that he’d become corrupted, his natural ingenuousness and rectitude diluted; it’s very hard not to be contaminated by an eight-hundred-year-old clerical institution. Tom, however, was no longer a student, but a veteran of far harsher worlds, and he cared nothing for hierarchies. He sprang to his feet, went over to Mr Southworth and, in an extraordinary act of aggression, grabbed the false lapels of his gown with both hands.
‘You don’t take me seriously, do you, Mr Southworth? Well, you’re going to have to. You’re going to listen to me now until I’ve said everything I have to say. This is not a game. My life has not been a game or a joke. Twenty years ago, you conspired among yourselves to take my life from me. How could you do that? My services couldn’t have been that indispensable, I was hardly unique. But the State is a capricious thing and wants to get everything it can out of every citizen. Yes, you played your part too: you advised me to go and tal
k to Wheeler and put myself in his hands, then Wheeler sent me to Tupra, and that was that, there was no escape. I only left two weeks ago, two weeks.’ He still kept a firm grip on Southworth’s gown, thinking: ‘Now he’ll see that I can be violent, that I could even turn violent with the Professor if I needed to, if he deserved it. That would be easy enough. Age doesn’t absolve him.’ And then came this other contradictory thought: ‘Poor Mr Southworth, he hasn’t done anything, he just wanted to protect me, to help me.’ Then he shamefacedly released him, took a step back and sat down again. ‘Forgive me, Mr Southworth, I went too far, and I’m sure you had nothing to do with it. Please forgive me. It’s just that I’ve wasted more than twenty years of my life, and that, I think, is quite enough to drive anyone to madness and despair. You can’t imagine what those years have been like. You’ve spent them quietly here, year after year, with your lectures and tutorials, your Valle-Inclán and your seminars, a continuum, barely noticing the passing of time. I, on the other hand, have spent them waiting for the Grim Reaper, for Death, any day, any hour, with just occasional periods of respite, but always knowing any respite will be short-lived, and you never do truly rest. It’s been years since I’ve known any real rest. And I wasn’t waiting for that visit because of my age, like the Professor, but because I kept being sent to the places that Death most frequents, because there are some territories that Death inhabits more than others; I told you what happened to those soldiers, well, that’s the kind of terrain I’ve been travelling in, no, trickier than that, more dangerous.’
Mr Southworth calmly adjusted his gown and smoothed his wide lapels; he didn’t lose his composure for a moment and even elegantly crossed his legs. He was still holding his glass of wine and hadn’t spilled a drop because he hadn’t resisted. He had simply let Tomás do as he wished, and not a flicker of alarm had crossed his face, although he may perhaps have pursed his lips slightly – more out of caution than anger – while Tom had hold of him, although without going so far as to actually shake him.
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