Tomás Nevinson knew he was in for a few days of psychodrama, with alternating bouts of tears, reproaches, pleas, rages and wounded silences. It was a price he was happy to pay, because what he wanted, above all, was to get out of there, to return to the universe and not continue slowly, unfailingly, to wither and rust away. Those days and nights of pointless struggle were as nothing. They would pass and then, suddenly, he would be free, he would be in London, and after London, who knows. He found it far more painful having to leave his little girl than having to leave her mother, but then again, he was used to separations, often abandoning people to a far worse fate, some even condemned to die. He made a suggestion: ‘I’d like to come and see you both from time to time, and spend a week here with you, at least until you meet someone else. Because you will meet someone else, and you know that, even if, right now, it seems impossible. I beg you, please, to allow me that. I will, of course, understand if you say no. How could I not, when I once left my other children behind so as to ease my own pain, so as not to rub salt in the wound. I’ve been in your shoes too. I know how much that wound hurts. I’ve been through it myself.’
He said nothing to her about Madrid, nor that he was half-Spanish, nor gave her his real name, he didn’t tell her what he’d devoted much of his life to (besides, he wasn’t authorised to do so and never would be). Best not to tempt fate, best not to encourage her to find out more, best not to let her even know the name Tom Nevinson existed, a name he still couldn’t be sure he would ever be able to reclaim, given that, for those who remembered him, it was the name of a dead man. If he did manage to return to Madrid one day, he didn’t want Meg turning up there with a little girl, his little girl; never give desperate people ideas, because they might put them into practice.
‘No, I don’t want to see you again, and I don’t want our little girl to see you either,’ was Meg’s final answer, her verdict after those days of accusations and screams and tears and nights of fitful sleep, if they slept at all, and a lack of sleep can wear down even the most hard-hearted of men. ‘If she does ever have another father, it would be best for her if she doesn’t remember you. She’ll be happier if she gets used to your absence as quickly as possible, and then forgets you completely, as if you’d never existed. I wish my own memory were equally malleable, but we grown-ups are not so lucky. I’ll remember you, though, and I’ll hate you until the day I die.’
Tomás Nevinson waited patiently for that week to pass. Everything comes if you wait long enough. And he waited sadly, but doubtless with a frisson of excitement too. He preferred to spare himself a final farewell, with all three of them aware that it was final, or, rather, just the two of them, because for the little girl it would be inconceivable. They’d said all they had to say, and so he didn’t tell Meg the exact date he would be leaving. He took advantage of a morning when Meg and Val were both out, one at the dental practice and the other at nursery school, then he packed a few belongings into a bag, including his gun, because he wouldn’t want Val to come across it by accident. Finally, he threw his keys down on the bed and left, shutting the door behind him; it seemed unnecessary to write a note. As soon as she arrived home, Meg would know he had left, she would smell it. He walked briskly to the station, where, this time, he would board that train to London; he wouldn’t have to loiter on the platform watching as it moved off. He would get on and, a few hours later, would arrive in Paddington, or so he assumed, never having travelled to London from that provincial town. From there it was just three stops on the Underground to Baker Street, and Molyneux would be waiting for him outside the Dorset Square Hotel, to take him to his garret, give him the keys, and probably some instructions too. He would be free, his exile at an end. What came next, well, he would just have to wait and see, but, at that moment, he really didn’t care.
When he saw the train come into the station, he didn’t move, he didn’t immediately stand up and move to the edge of the platform. On his occasional afternoon visits there, he used to stay sitting on a bench, and, for a moment, it occurred to him to do as he always did. Perhaps he had a moment of doubt. He looked up at the big station clock. He had two minutes, three at most, otherwise he would miss the train. There was a calmness about that place, about that whole monotonous, dull, sleepy existence, which he hadn’t known anywhere else. And it’s a pleasant feeling having no responsibilities, or only those everyone else has. When something comes to an end, even the something you most want to end, you suddenly regret that ending and begin to miss it. He thought: ‘What we leave behind us seems inoffensive, because we’ve successfully come through it, that is, we’ve emerged alive and unscathed. We’d like to go back to yesterday because yesterday is over; we know how it ended and we’d like to repeat that day. “What was to be the value of the long-looked-forward-to, long-hoped-for calm, the autumnal serenity and the wisdom of age?” I’ve been safe here, I’ve led a tranquil, orderly life. Boring, really, but I’ll miss that boredom. I’ll miss my classes and my pupils, the walks along the river watching the water flowing past, and I’ll even miss my colleagues. I’ll miss the football matches and sitting in the Jarrold’s lounge drinking tea and reading the papers, like an idle provincial gentleman or someone just passing through. I’ll miss Meg and her warm body, and, above all, I’ll miss Valerie, her short, quick steps when she runs to greet me, her sudden bursts of laughter for no reason, which is always the freshest and most delightful of laughters, and which will, in time, disappear. “Because I know that time is always time, and that place is always and only place and what is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place.” There was the train, its doors standing open, calling to him as they always did. Tomás only had to take a few steps: one, two, three, four; perhaps five. He thought or remembered: “History is a pattern of timeless moments … Quick now, here, now, always …” Those lines read distractedly in Blackwell’s had accompanied him all those years. He got to his feet, picked up his suitcase, took a few steps and was inside the carriage; all it would take was one backward step to be outside again, on the platform. He looked at the platform and looked at the time on the clock. The doors closed.
As the train pulled out of the station, with him now safely in his seat, he allowed himself just one more thought, as brief as these words, before forcing himself to forget as he had so often done before: ‘Farewell, river. Farewell, woman. Farewell, child. How much I continue to accumulate and how much I leave behind.’
A few months passed, bringing with them 1994. Tomás Nevinson found that things were exactly as he’d been told: he was to keep well away from MI6 and MI5 and their various scattered, semi-clandestine buildings, and from the Foreign Office too; he must make no attempt to meet Tupra or Blakeston or any former colleague, there could be no phone calls, no snooping. No attempt, either, could be made to establish contact with Madrid, nor could he succumb to the temptation of revealing to anyone that he was back in the land of the living. He was no longer James Rowland, and it would be wise to stop using the name by which he was known now by a number of people, the inhabitants of a medium-sized town where he had spent a few years, had forged rather too many bonds, and where he had left a child. Molyneux gave him new papers. He was now called David Cromer-Fytton, and he had no idea why they had given him such a strange, double-barrelled name (it made him sound like a character in a novel or an army general, or someone straight out of the Crimean War), precisely the kind of name that would attract attention and be remembered, and yet he was supposed to go unnoticed. Tom Nevinson was still officially dead, and ever fewer people would remember him; ephemeral or hurtful people are quickly dismissed once dead and equally quickly fade from view, and there’s little point in keeping them in your memory or keeping their telephone numbers in your address book. However much you resist, you do end up putting a line through both. It’s also true that memories are easily awoken, even by the mention of a name or the glimpse of a face. And although Tom had changed his appearance many times, it would be unfortunate if an
yone from the old days were to recognise him. What lay ahead was more waiting, more passivity, more inaction, more invisibility and pretence. He was finally back in London, but it was as if he were there as a tourist or a retiree, as if he were still in exile. At least in the other place, he’d had his teaching and his little girl.
Two weeks after moving into his garret, he’d asked the pudgy young man who had become his only contact: ‘What should I do?’ The flat was small but comfortable, and he had everything he needed. He had lived in infinitely worse places, and there was plenty of light and he had a nice view of the square, which gave him the fascinating option of watching the comings and goings at the Dorset Square Hotel, where Molyneux and he had first arranged to meet. It wasn’t in the Strand or in St James’s, but it was very central: there were endless visitors to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, which was still quite new at the time, and Madame Tussauds wasn’t far away either; the multitudes also made expeditions to Selfridges, while a refined few went to the Wallace Collection.
‘Absolutely nothing for the moment,’ said Molyneux, smoothing the polychrome moulding on his forehead; he had let said moulding grow a little longer and now it looked like a petrified lizard, doubtless heavily lacquered. ‘Do whatever you like. I’m sure you’ve never had so much time on your hands before, so take the opportunity to explore the city, because there must be thousands of worthwhile things you haven’t yet seen. You are, after all, from Spain. There’s Sir John Soane’s house, for example, which more and more people are starting to discover. Soon you won’t be able to move in there for visitors, and it’s full of fascinating details. Or there’s Kew Gardens.’
‘Are you telling me I should buy myself a guidebook?’
‘That’s up to you, whether it’s end-to-end films, or a theatre binge, or a porn show. You have enough money. We give you money.’ He continued to use that plural ‘we’, with which he puffed himself up, but suddenly he shifted to the first person singular, and Tomás interpreted this as a desire to humiliate him. ‘In fact, I’ve brought you some money today, and I’ll bring more every two weeks, in cash. Spend it as you wish. What with one thing and another, you’re turning out to be quite expensive for us.’
‘Careful, Molyneux,’ said Tom Nevinson gravely, angrily; or was it already Cromer-Fytton speaking? ‘Just don’t go there, all right? Who says I’m expensive? Tupra? If he does, tell him from me that however much they spend on me or my family over a lifetime, they would still have got a bargain. Don’t make me list what I’ve done, or the money I’ve brought in or saved them. He’s perfectly aware of that and shouldn’t need reminding.’
Molyneux obviously didn’t want any problems with his boss, and so he immediately corrected himself:
‘I’m sorry, I just invented that. Mr Tupra has never said anything of the kind and has never complained. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing. It’s just that I noticed you’ve spent a long time in dry dock, but then again I know nothing about the remote past. Forgive me, I shouldn’t have made that remark. I withdraw it.’
‘I would just remind you that we do have ranks, even though we don’t use them, and you, Molyneux, would be a mere corporal at most. So don’t you get cheeky with me, or over-familiar, or you’ll be in big trouble. And don’t talk about the years I was active as the “remote past”. It’s not my fault you’re an ignorant little squirt. I don’t know why I wasn’t assigned someone with more experience. The thing I want most in the world is precisely to leave this dry dock, as you call it. I haven’t the slightest desire to remain out of circulation or become a retiree, or, according to you, a burden. When will I be able to talk to Bertram?’
The fatuous fool Molyneux was taken aback. He went instantly from braggart to coward. After that dressing-down, he very nearly saluted. He must have thought Nevinson was a hard man of the old school, one who had seen it all. That he would have committed unimaginable atrocities. For the younger generations, the days of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union were beginning to seem mythical, almost archaic, fictitious. Such is the speed with which the world moves on. He answered politely and respectfully now:
‘Mr Tupra? I don’t know, and he may not know either. That’s the main obstacle to you rejoining the force, Mr Cromer-Fytton.’ At least he had remembered the name he was supposed to call him at all times. ‘We have to wait, we have to be sure it’s safe, that no one is looking for you and no one’s going to shoot you the moment you put your head above the parapet. I’m speaking metaphorically, but not entirely, and I’m sure you know what I mean. Try to be patient. It will take whatever time it takes, but in comparison with what you’ve been through, those months will pass quickly enough. That’s why I suggested you make the most of it, that you spend the time as best you can. I certainly didn’t intend to demean you.’
‘And don’t say “you’re from Spain after all”, as if I were a foreigner. Do I look like a foreigner, Molyneux? In what way? Do I seem any less English than you are? What accent do you want me to put on?’
‘No, not at all. It’s just that I’ve read your file, insofar as I can, of course, as far as it goes. As you can imagine, there are a lot of blanks. Again, I’m sorry if I upset you in any way.’
‘And do I look like someone who wants to see porn, Molyneux? Just watch your step in future.’
During the weeks that followed, the first weeks of only a few months if he was lucky and didn’t have to wait too long, Tomás Nevinson remembered that brief exchange more often than he would have expected, on one of his interminable, aimless walks or when shut up in his garret. He was not yet forty-three and yet, to a mere youth, he already belonged to the remote past, like a mammoth. That, perhaps, was the problem with having begun so early. It was true that he’d spent some of those years in dry dock. And it was true that he was from Spain, where he’d spent his childhood and early boyhood, as well as some of his adult life. He had married there, and his wife and children were Spanish. It was twelve years since he’d visited Spain, since he’d seen Berta and the children, who would hardly be children at all now. In his enforced state of inactivity, he had time to miss them intensely, perhaps more than he had during his exile in that provincial town. There he’d had to create a persona, to pass himself off as someone else, someone invented, something at which he was highly skilled and which kept him occupied and alert, even though it had nothing to do with any investigation or mission, merely with remaining hidden. In London, on the other hand, he didn’t have to be anyone. In the capital, almost no one asks questions or even notices other people: you can enter and leave your house for decades without a single person taking an interest in what you do, what your job is, whether you’re single or married or divorced or widowed, if you’re alone in the world or have family near or far, if you’re healthy or ill. In London, he was invisible, even more invisible. He would often wonder who on earth would come looking for him, who would take the trouble to station himself somewhere, wait for him to appear and then kill him. All these precautions seemed to him superfluous, a waste of time and money. He had ceased to exist for nearly everyone: his wife, his children, his parents, and, of course, his siblings, comrades and enemies. He didn’t really have any friends, he realised, or perhaps a few in Madrid who would have forgotten him completely, and whom he had shamefully neglected. Who would remember him, who would ever think about him? He lived just a few stops away on the Underground from MI6 and from Tupra – the man who used to breathe life into him with his orders and commissions – and yet, at the same time, he wasn’t close at all: he was living in another galaxy, until he was summoned. Now he really was a ghost. And Molyneux had been talking utter nonsense: this time of waiting didn’t seem shorter at all, it seemed infinitely longer. The nearer you get to your objective, the nearer you get to the time when you can return, the less bearable any delay: there comes a point when another twenty-four hours turns into a hideous torment for someone who has already been waiting for what seems like centuries.
He wandered the stree
ts, he strolled about like a living being who has renounced the smallest privileges most people enjoy, the most ordinary and modest of privileges: work, company, a chat over a couple of beers, the sense of beginning the day and ending it, the idea that the next day will be slightly different from the one that has just finished. For him, morning, noon and night were all the same, and he had to fill them; he had nothing to do, he barely spoke to anyone. He went to Sir John Soane’s house and to all kinds of other museums, even the most obscure. He went to the theatre occasionally and saw a fair number of films. He walked so as to have some exercise and not spend all his time in his attic flat, watching TV or reading, or looking out of the window, and yet he did still spend a lot of time there. He would steep himself in the crowds who traversed the city from one end to the other, some in a hurry and with things to do, others with the idleness of tourists, who, nevertheless, also seemed to be in a hurry. He liked gatherings and envied them. He drank in the excitement, the buzz, the chance phrases caught on the wing, the bad manners and the laughter. And he knew, on the other hand, that his presence had not the slightest effect on them and gave them nothing back. He was like the air. ‘Yes, that’s what I am,’ he would think. ‘Dead air.’
Berta Isla Page 42
