'And is that when he told you what he had done, about, his adventures?' asked Wheeler, and I thought I noticed a touch of apprehension in his voice, as if he were referring to something more specific than having collaborated with MI6 which, in Oxford, was, after all, something trivial, commonplace.
'He wanted to explain to me that he'd had a full life, that he hadn't, as it might seem, devoted himself solely to study and knowledge and teaching,' I replied. ('But I've had a full life, too, in the sense that my life's been crammed with action and the unexpected,' Rylands had said.) 'And that was when he confirmed the rumours I'd heard, that he'd been a spy, that was the word he used. And I assumed that he'd belonged to MI5, it didn't occur to me to think of MI6, perhaps because it's less familiar to us Spaniards.'
'That's what he told you.' There was no interrogative tone. 'He used that word. H'm,' murmured Wheeler, as so many people in Oxford did, including Rylands. 'H'm.' Seeing Peter so thoughtful and full of curiosity, it seemed to me selfish and unkind not to fill in the context, which I remembered so well, and not to quote to him verbatim his younger brother's words. 'H'm,' he said again.
' "As you'll no doubt have heard," he said, "I was a spy, like so many of us here, because that, too, can form part of our duties; but I was never just a pen-pusher like that fellow Dewar in your department, indeed like most of them. I worked in the field."' I could tell by the look in Wheeler's eyes that he had noticed that his brother had used some of the same expressions he had just used.
'Did he say anything else?' he asked.
'Yes, he did: he talked for quite a long time, almost as if I wasn't there, and he added a few other things too. For example: "I've been in India and in the Caribbean and in Russia and I've done things I could never tell anyone about now, because they would seem so ridiculous that no one would believe me, I know only too well that what one can and cannot tell depends very much on timing, because I've dedicated my life to identifying just that in literature and I've learned to identify it in life too.'"
'Toby was right about that, there are things that can't be told now – or only with great difficulty – even though they really happened. The facts of war sound puerile in times of relative peace, and just because something happened doesn't mean it can be talked about, just because it's true, doesn't mean it's plausible. With the passing of time, the truth can seem unlikely; it fades into the background, and then seems more like a fable or simply not true at all. Even some of my own experiences seem like fiction to me. They were important experiences, but the times that follow begin to doubt them, perhaps not one's own time, but the entirely new eras, and it's those new eras that make what came before and what they didn't see seem unimportant, almost as if they were somehow jealous of them. Often the present infantilises the past, it tends to transform it into something invented and childish, and renders it useless to us, spoils it for us.' He paused, nodded at the cigarette I had hesitantly raised to my lips after drinking my coffee (I was afraid the smoke might bother them at that hour). He looked out of the window at the river, at his stretch of the river, more civilised and harmonious than Toby Rylands's. He had momentarily lost all his previous haste and impatience, which is what usually happens when one remembers the dead. 'Who knows, maybe that's partly why we die: because everything we've experienced is reduced to nothing, and then even our memories languish and fade. First, it's our personal experiences. Then it's our memories.'
'So everything also has its moment not to be believed.'
Wheeler smiled vaguely, almost regretfully. He had picked up on my inversion of the words he had used a short while before, of the possible motto that he shared with Tupra, if it was a motto and not just a coincidence of ideas, yet another affinity between them.
'But nevertheless he told you,' Wheeler murmured, and what I sensed now in his voice was, I thought, not so much apprehension as fatalism or defeat or resignation, in short, surrender.
'Don't be so sure, Peter. He did and he didn't. He may have dropped his guard sometimes, but he never entirely lost his will, I don't think, nor did he say more than he was aware he wanted to say. Even if that awareness was distant or hidden, or muffled. Just like you.'
'What else did he tell and not tell you, then?' He ignored my last comment, or kept it for later on.
'He didn't really tell me anything, he just talked. He said: "I shouldn't be telling you any of this now, but the fact is that in my lifetime I've run mortal risks and betrayed men whom I had nothing against personally. I've saved a few people's lives too, but sent others to the firing squad or the gallows. I've lived in Africa, in the most unlikely places, in other times, and was even a witness to the suicide of the person I loved.'"
'He said that, "I was even a witness to the suicide…"' Wheeler didn't complete the phrase. He was astonished, or possibly annoyed. 'And was that all? Did he say who or what happened?'
'No. I remember that he stopped short then, as if his will or his conscious mind had sent a warning to his memory, to stop him overstepping the mark; then he added: "Oh, and battles, I've been a witness to those too," I remember it clearly. Then he went on talking, but about the present. He said no more about his past, or only in very general terms. Even more general, that is.'
'May I ask what those terms were?' Wheeler's question sounded not forceful, but timid, as if he were asking my permission; it was almost a plea.
'Of course, Peter,' I replied, and there was no reserve or insincerity in my voice. 'He said that his head was full of bright, shining memories, frightening and thrilling, and that anyone seeing all of them together, as he could, would think they were more than enough, that the simple remembering of so many fascinating facts and people would fill one's old age more intensely than most people's present.' I paused for a moment to give him time to listen to the words inside him. 'Those, pretty much, were the terms he used or what he said. And he added that it wasn't, in fact, like that. That it wasn't like that for him. He did still want more, he said. He still wanted everything, he said.'
Wheeler now seemed at once relieved and saddened and uneasy, or perhaps he was none of those things, perhaps he was simply moved. It probably wasn't like that for him either, however many bright, shining memories he had. Probably nothing was enough to fill the days of his old age, despite all his efforts and his machinations.
'And you believed all that,' he said.
'I had no reason not to,' I replied. 'Besides, he was telling me the truth, sometimes you just know, without a shadow of a doubt, that someone is telling you the truth. Not often, it's true,' I added. 'But there are occasions when you have not the slightest doubt about it.'
'Do you remember when this took place, this conversation?'
'Yes, it was in Hilary term during my second year here, towards the end of March.'
'So a couple of years before he died, is that right?'
'More or less, or perhaps a bit more. I think he may not have even introduced us yet, you and me. You and I must have met for the first time in Trinity term of that year, shortly before I returned to Madrid for good.'
'We were already quite old then, Toby and I, well into our emeritus years both of us. I never thought I would be so much older, I don't know how he would have coped with all the additional time that I've had and he hasn't. Badly I suspect, worse than me. He complained more because he was more optimistic than me, and therefore more passive too, don't you agree, Estelle?'