Berta Isla

by Javier Marías

  You can’t allow a suspicion to enter your mind without it taking full possession of you, invading and appropriating everything, at least until it can be roundly dismissed. Janet was three or four years older than him, and if those children were, as he reckoned, eleven or twelve and nine or ten, she would have had them quite late, when she was between thirty-three and thirty-six, which was perfectly possible. If she were alive, she would be about forty-six now. If she were alive? This jumble of ideas elbowed their way into his mind in a matter of seconds, a rapid succession of lightning flashes. Had he actually seen her dead? No, he hadn’t seen her corpse, just as no one had ever found his, because it didn’t exist. That policeman Morse had given him the news in Mr Southworth’s rooms, and he had seemed an honest, reasonable man, but Tom knew now, and had for a long time, that a modest policeman always obeys orders, especially if his superiors have received those orders from the Secret Service, who are always above all other authorities apart from a few army chiefs and high-up civil servants, and even then, if there’s no alternative, they simply sidestep those authorities. They would have forced Morse to lie, to play his part, and although Morse would have disliked having to deceive a poor, naïve student, still wet behind the ears, he wouldn’t have been able to refuse, or even complain, without ruining his career or possibly losing his job.

  Had Tom seen anything in the newspapers or on the television about the murder? He had barely glimpsed either at the time, being too preoccupied and anxious about himself, and, besides, since he’d been given first-hand information, why consult the media? Perhaps he’d seen a headline in the local paper somewhere, but he knew perfectly well – at least he did now – how easy it was for them, for ‘us’, to get a newspaper, especially one of the smaller ones, to include a bit of useful fake, even non-existent news, you had only to appeal to their sense of duty and patriotism, to mention the defence of the Realm. What he did know for sure was that the case had remained unresolved, no murderer had been found (people quickly get bored and stop asking questions). Perhaps because there had been no murderer. Not him or Hugh Saumarez-Hill or the man who arrived and rang the bell as soon as he left and while he stood smoking a cigarette on the corner of St John Street and Beaumont Street; how far away all that seemed now; how far away his all too recognisable Marcovitch cigarettes, which had ceased being manufactured eons ago, indeed, all those things had happened eons ago, so why should it come back to him with such force now, to someone so different and mutable, to Mr Rowland and Mr Cromer-Fytton, and to others who were rapidly dissolving into the mist of borrowed and abandoned identities, who had done such superfluous things, without which the world would have been no different? Yes, he had doubtless averted misfortunes, but he had doubtless caused others too, it was absurd, impossible, to try to keep a tally, he hadn’t always been told what the consequences of his actions were, he had struck a match and left before the fire started. All these thoughts were coming back to Tomás Nevinson now because they were all that were left to him during that empty period of waiting; he was increasingly reverting and returning to the old Tomás Nevinson, Berta Isla’s boyfriend and husband, the one from Madrid, the first one.

  But how could they have known he was going to visit Janet that night? It had been entirely unplanned, as it always was: he’d gone to Waterfield’s in the morning where they’d begun their fumblings, with him staring, he recalled, at the spines of some books by Kipling, and had postponed any further activities until the evening. What a fool he was, he thought. Janet would have had the whole day to warn them, Tupra, Blakeston, even perhaps Wheeler. Janet had agreed to be part of the farce; after all, she didn’t earn much as a bookshop assistant, and had little hope of there being any change in the situation with her London lover, Hugh Saumarez-Hill or another Hugh entirely; she wouldn’t mind leaving Oxford and living somewhere else, and those children, he thought, had a slight Yorkshire accent, although not very marked, which is only logical given that their mother was from Oxford, and it’s mainly mothers who pass on accent and language, their voice being the first their children hear. Tupra and Co. would have made her a good offer: a new life, a better job and a healthy sum up front, she had nothing to lose and didn’t owe Tom any debt of loyalty, he was just a pastime, a comfort and compensation for the routine solitude of certain Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays, a small dagger she could sometimes stick into the negligent Hugh, without him knowing. Tom would soon be leaving Oxford anyway and would forget all about her, he would go back to Madrid and his long-term girlfriend, so why shouldn’t she set a trap for him? Tomás was transient, a speck of dust or ash on an old man’s sleeve. There was no reason to blame or reproach her if she was still living, perhaps in Yorkshire, with a husband and two children, Claire and Derek, and hadn’t been strangled more than twenty years before with her tights. A grotesque imagined death.

  He’d lost sight of those two elusive, mercurial children, Claire and Derek; he’d become sunk in his own thoughts, distracted by those memories, conjectures and hypotheses. Cursing himself, he walked briskly through the different rooms looking for them, but in vain; he waited outside the Chamber of Horrors in case they’d gone in there, again without success; he trawled through the rooms once more, then went out into the foyer, peered into the shop and, there, to his relief, he saw them: they’d obviously finished their visit and were about to leave. He had to find out the truth, he wouldn’t get another chance, he would have to ask them something, but wasn’t sure what he could ask without alarming them, without arousing their suspicions, or giving rise to misunderstandings; even in 1994, approaching children in a friendly manner already constituted a problem, if not a depraved act in itself, for the age of susceptibility and hysteria was just beginning.

  They were looking longingly at the plastic reproductions of some of the wax figures, about the size of old-fashioned lead soldiers, gazing with delight at the handful of figures lined up on a shelf, but without touching them, because they clearly wouldn’t be able to afford them. He did actually see them counting out their few coins, doubtless calculating whether, if they pooled their funds, they would have enough to buy at least one. There was still no sign of teachers or parents or other adults keeping an eye on them; they were still alone, perhaps they were self-sufficient, or orphans living with a young, irresponsible aunt who sent them off to do whatever they liked. They were dressed quite ordinarily and seemed neither rich nor poor, just middle-class kids of which there are millions; if Janet had died, they would be motherless, but Tom immediately corrected himself, telling himself off for mixing up tenses and times: if Janet had died when she had been murdered, the children couldn’t be hers, because she wouldn’t have had any children.

  He joined them in viewing the figures of the most popular characters: Winston Churchill was on sale, but not the Queen (perhaps out of respect), as were Indiana Jones, or Harrison Ford; James Bond, or Sean Connery (however many actors may have played the part, Connery in a dinner jacket is always the real Bond), Shakespeare and General Gordon and the diminutive Queen Victoria, Napoleon and Montgomery with his beret and moustache and stick (Blakeston would definitely have bought that one), Elvis Presley, Lawrence of Arabia on a camel (that would probably be more expensive), Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson and Long John Silver, Oscar Wilde with cane and gloves and long hair, Alice in Wonderland, someone resembling Fagin with a goatee beard and wearing a long overcoat, Mr Pickwick and Mary Poppins and Frankenstein’s monster and Dracula; fictitious characters are always more famous and more memorable than historical ones, although sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart.

  ‘Which is your favourite?’ he asked after a brief pause, because this seemed the most innocent approach.

  The children turned to him, and an involuntary look of recognition crossed the girl’s face. She wasn’t frightened or suspicious, her expression was one of natural sympathy (Janet Jefferys’ lively face), as it had been when she’d indicated to him that she knew he was watching her.

  ‘Mine�
��s Sherlock Holmes,’ she said at once.

  ‘Mine’s Indiana Jones,’ said the boy enthusiastically (children appreciate adults taking an interest in their tastes and opinions). ‘What’s yours?’

  Tomás made a pretence of thinking long and hard. Then, to engage their interest, he said:

  ‘My real favourite isn’t here, alas, nor in any other museum.’

  ‘Really? Who is he?’ they asked, intrigued and almost in unison.

  ‘Just William – William Brown.’ He had named his son, Guillermo, after him, the son who would be so much older now and would assume that he was fatherless.

  ‘Who’s he?’ asked Derek with a mixture of disappointment and surprise. ‘It’s hardly surprising he isn’t here if no one’s heard of him. What film was he in?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ said Claire, ‘but I don’t know what he looks like, I’ve never seen him. He’s not in any films, he’s in one of those old children’s books.’

  ‘Yes, I read them when I was a child, and even then, he was quite old, so there’s no reason why you should know him,’ explained Tomás. ‘Anyway, out of the figures here, I’d choose Sherlock Holmes too.’ Claire looked pleased, her face was much easier to read than Janet Jefferys’ had been. She was flattered to have a grown-up endorse her choice. ‘Which one are you going to buy? I can see you’re having to pool resources.’

  ‘We were deliberating,’ said the girl, and she used that particular word. ‘We’ve only got enough money for one.’ The wax figures weren’t expensive, but for children everything is expensive.

  ‘How will you get home if you spend all your money? Or do you live nearby?’

  ‘No, we don’t live in London, we’re just visiting.’ Claire was the spokesperson; Derek was still absorbed in gazing at that unaffordable row of dolls. ‘But our father is waiting for us in a pub next door. He’ll take us back to the hotel. We’ve only got one more night here, and we go home tomorrow.’

  Tom Nevinson or David Cromer-Fytton immediately saw an opportunity to play the nice guy or the even nicer guy.

  ‘Let me guess where you’re from, and if I’m right, I’ll treat you to four wax figures, two each, to reward myself for giving the correct answer.’

  The boy looked as intrigued as he was sceptical:

  ‘You’ll never guess. Britain’s huge and there are so many different places.’

  ‘You’re from York or thereabouts,’ said Tomás confidently.

  The children stared at him open-mouthed with admiration.

  ‘How did you know? You must have learned how to do that from Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘Well, we’ve all learned from him,’ said Tomás. ‘But I happen to be very good at distinguishing and imitating accents. Anyway, as agreed, you can now choose four figures.’

  ‘Really? Are you serious? Thank you very much.’

  The children were so thrilled that they didn’t even wait for him to confirm his offer, although Tomás did so at once (‘Of course I’m serious. A wager is a wager, and wagers are sacred’). They immediately turned their backs on him and again began deliberating over which four they would choose, which two pairs, and without having to spend any money either. While they were deciding, Tom continued asking questions:

  ‘And what about your mother? Did she not come with you?’

  Claire half-turned her head to answer, but only half, because now she couldn’t bring herself to look away from the figures.

  ‘Our mother died a year and a half ago in a car accident.’ She said this in a flat voice, like someone who’s had to give this explanation far too often.

  ‘So she is dead,’ thought Tom, with the very briefest feeling of relief. ‘But not when she should have died.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘What was her name? It’s just that you’re the very image of a friend I had when I was young and whom I haven’t heard from for years now. You could almost be her children. Almost.’ And he thought: ‘They’re going to say Janet. And they are motherless. I’m sure they’ll say Janet.’

  ‘Her name was Janet,’ said the girl, again half-turning her head, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, less out of curiosity than out of deference, not wanting to offer him the back of her neck when she was speaking to him, although she wasn’t in the least bit interested in that supposed friendship.

  ‘What a coincidence! That was my friend’s name too,’ said Tom. But there were millions of Janets in Great Britain. ‘Janet what?’ he asked urgently, because this would be his one chance to find out.

  ‘Bates, like us.’

  ‘So that was her married name,’ thought Tom. ‘She obviously didn’t marry Saumarez-Hill; well, he was hardly likely to leave his wife for a bookshop assistant. At the time, he was an MP on his way to becoming Somebody. As far as I know, he didn’t get far in politics. So she must have got married late to a man with the very ordinary name of Bates, from Yorkshire. The same name as one of Shakespeare’s soldiers, one of the soldiers duped by a disguised Henry V, a mere private, I seem to recall.’

  ‘I mean her name when she was single. My friend wasn’t married when I knew her. Do you know her maiden name?’ They might not know, since English wives don’t usually keep their names, unlike Spanish women, unlike Berta Isla.

  Derek turned and looked at him in some bewilderment, as if that were the first time he’d ever heard the expression ‘maiden name’, as if it had never occurred to him that his mother could possibly have been called anything other than she had always been called, his always that is. The girl was older, though, and she did know. Tomás read it in her eyes before she even opened her mouth. ‘She’s going to say Jefferys,’ he thought, ‘she’s sure to say Jefferys.’

  ‘I know,’ Claire said. ‘When she was young, she was called Janet Jeffries.’ That’s what it sounded like to Tom, the pronunciation of both names was very similar, almost indistinguishable. It would have been too much of a coincidence for their mother and Janet not to be one and the same. Especially given the astonishing resemblance, for they were exact replicas of her. And he wasn’t going to ask them to spell her surname. ‘Was she your friend?’

  ‘No,’ said Tomás Nevinson. ‘My friend was called Rowland, Janet Rowland.’ He preferred to leave it there and to withdraw, what would be the point of exposing himself to more questions? He didn’t owe those Bates children from York the truth, he didn’t even know them. For half a lifetime, almost a whole lifetime, he hadn’t owed anyone the truth, not even those closest to him, and would do so even less from now on.

  Derek chose his favourite, Indiana Jones, and Frankenstein’s monster. Claire chose her favourite, Sherlock Holmes, and his inseparable companion, Watson, she couldn’t have one in the house without the other; she understood about loyalty, unlike her mother, who was finally dead, having been a very long time dying. He, on the other hand, was not dead, or only officially, and that official verdict could be refuted and annulled if the corpse turned up alive. Tom gladly paid for the figures and handed them, neatly wrapped, to the children, then said goodbye with a handshake at the exit; after all, none of this was their fault. They didn’t ask him his name. It would have made no difference if they had: he now had so many names, perhaps as many as Tupra. Or Reresby or Dundas or Ure.

  ‘Do you think Professor Wheeler knew about the whole thing right from the start, and was in on the deception?’ Tomás asked Southworth, adding: ‘He was the first one to try to draw me in, and I remember you telling me that very little of what happened in Oxford escaped him, still less a murder. That he would be sure to know about what happened before I did, and would probably be better informed than I was. And that’s certainly how it seemed to me when I spoke to him on the phone.’

  Mr Southworth paused for a moment, as if he were examining his conscience, peering into his inner depths with his small, honest eyes. He no longer kept looking at his watch, he must have forgotten about his lecture. Then he spoke with great certainty:

  ‘No, I’m sure he di
dn’t know, I’m sure they deceived him too and concealed from him the fact that it was a fake death. I don’t know much about the Secret Service, but I can’t imagine they would be capable of killing an entirely innocent person purely in order to recruit a new agent. I can see them using pressure and blackmail, and generally putting on a farce – that would be easy enough.’ He gave an ironic sigh. ‘That’s essentially what they do, isn’t it, put on farces?’

  ‘That much I can guarantee,’ said Tom, interrupting him. ‘That’s par for the course, it happens every day. You’d be amazed at how many people we have at our disposal, how many unexpected, unsuspected candidates.’ He realised that he was still using the first person plural, was still including himself among them. Like Tupra and Blakeston on that now distant morning. But he didn’t correct himself. He would gradually learn to exclude himself, and his mind would grow accustomed to that. ‘Nor how relentless those people are. Once they start, once they step up, pause for a moment to ask for instructions, they never want to stop, they need to be productive. They can put on a farce at the drop of a hat, for almost no reason at all. And it’s done in a trice, because the world is full of volunteers, amateur enthusiasts or the merely venal.’ And there he used the Spanish expression en un santiamén – in a trice – although that was already rather old-fashioned. Like the Spanish spoken by Mr Southworth, who would probably never, for example, have heard of en un pispás.

  ‘I’ve known Peter for years and years, and I know he would never have set such a trap for you. Nor would he have allowed it, had he been told about it. That would be completely out of character, at odds with his sense of decorum. I’m convinced that he would still believe now that the girl was strangled, if, of course, he does ever think of her, which, to be honest, I very much doubt. He has far too many things in his head already. Think of what he must have accumulated there since he was born in 1913, and in the Antipodes too.’