Spies

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Events in the Close don't bear close examination, even if the secrets the boys uncover, without quite understanding them, are relatively mundane. No less painful for that. Stephen all along only sees and understands bits of a much larger picture, and so the reader is left in the dark about much as well. The key to the book's success is Frayn's decision to respect young Stephen's point of view without staking everything on recreating it. Stephen's older self frets over the past which is the boy's present, without claiming authority over it. The sheer foreignness of childhood requires that he use the third person as often as the first ('I watch him emerge from the warped front door, still cramming food into his mouth from tea'). Physical sensations - the feel of a tumbler of lemon barley, the taste of chocolate spread - survive better in memory than past states of mind. This can seem a rather perverse piece of construction, setting up a double perspective and then muffling it, but its great virtue is that it shuts out whimsy. Stephen fast-forwards the narrative to when he and Keith create an official hiding spot where they can spy on Keith’s mother in the privet hedges that adorn the front of Miss Durrant’s bombed house. They swear to never tell anyone about their secret mission, and Keith erects a sign labelled “Privet” (“private” misspelled) at the entrance of their concealed hangout.

Uncle Peter – Auntie Dee's husband, a handsome young man currently fighting abroad. He has garnered a reputation as a war hero. Frayn tries his best to evoke a feeling of nostalgia and lost youth and innocence and present an old man seeking to recapture time past, but he doesn't succeed. When Michael Frayn came to discuss his novel Spies at the Guardian book club, he spoke openly of its autobiographical basis. The novel had grown out of his memories of his own wartime childhood. Yet the odd thing about the audience discussion was the readiness of one reader after another to recognise his (and in each case it was his) own experiences in Frayn's book. A literary critic might say that this testified to the novelist's capacity to identify the universal hopes and fears of boyhood, but the readers themselves all talked of the novel being vivid and recognisable because of its sense of place. The book is narrated by Stephen Wheatley, now an old man, who reminisces about events that happened in his childhood, during World War II.From that moment onward, Stephen does not question Keith’s claim, and the two begin devising an undercover mission to spy on Keith’s mother. They convert a used notebook into a logbook and carry out their first investigation in Keith’s mother’s sitting room. Stephen and Keith find her diary and make note of little “ x” marks in her calendar that occur once a month. They attribute it to a notation for secret meetings, but it is more likely that the x’s simply mark her menstrual cycles. Stephen, from the present, notes that this is another turning point in the story. Worse yet, first-person narrator Stephen switches largely to the third person in describing his younger self and his adventures -- perhaps appropriate, given that the young boy is an entirely different person from what the old man has become, but it's all done in a way that is terribly annoying. Stephen begins bringing the story to a close, as (in the present) he revisits the tunnel and the Lanes and thinks about the hidden scarf. He describes what had happened after that night: he never played with Keith again, Uncle Peter had gone missing, and there was a falling out between Auntie Dee and Keith’s mother. Stephen finally reveals that he himself was the secret German, because he used to be “Stefan Weitzler.” He explains that his family had moved from Germany before the war had started and, since his mother was English, they all became the Wheatleys. He also reveals that they are Jewish, though Stephen hadn’t known this growing up. Auntie Dee – Mrs. Hayward's sister, whom she sees every day. Described as very bubbly and a frequent smiler.

Barbara joins Stephen in the hideout, and they are discovered by Stephen's father, who instructs Stephen to take the basket with him. Stephen's parents take the basket, leaving Stephen feeling guilty, worried that the man will go hungry. Upon his return to England, Stephen visits his former house from 50 years ago. He realizes that although it initially appears unchanged, the environment has transformed drastically and no longer resembles his childhood abode. Despite questioning his reasons for returning, Stephen's conviction is reinforced when he hears the familiar sound of a train from his childhood. He reminisces about his neighbors, particularly the Pincher family living next door at No. 2, who were shunned due to their untidy lawn. Keith announces to Stephen that his mother is a German spy, so the boys make it their business to spy on her; their suspicions are, in their fevered minds, sensationally confirmed by her strange errands and disappearances. The reader is invited to piece together the reality while savouring how absurd and yet astute the boys' imaginations are in divining subterfuge and treachery - and they are revealed, in Frayn's final bravura twist, to be not so very wide of the mark.Frayn withholds information presumably to allow Stephen to relive the whole process of obtaining (guilty) knowledge, of losing innocence; unfortunately he goes about it in a far too heavy-handed way. Stephen suggests various approaches to handle the situation, but Keith dismisses his ideas. Keith reveals an old knife and makes Stephen swear secrecy regarding his parents. Keith implies that he will confront his mother on the night marked with an X. Despite facing bullying at school, Stephen derives strength from the shared secret. At home, while his father attempts to engage him in conversation, Stephen remains distant and easily distracted.