The Wheatleys: appearance and reality

At the beginning of the book, when Stephen introduces Keith´s family, it is clear that he regrets having been born a Wheatley and would have liked to be a Hayward instead. Keith´s parents have a glamour his own parents don't seem to have: “I think I feel a brief pang of admiring jealousy for yet another demonstration of his unending good fortune. A father in the Secret Service and a mother who´s a German spy- when the rest of us can´t muster even one parent of interest!” As for her own mother, Stephen believes “There's something so hopelessly ordinary about her that it's difficult to take account of her existence.” As regards his father, he considers Mr Wheatley´s job was “too dull to describe”, and that his father´s appearance is as “unsatisfactory” as his own. Besides, his father uses words which are “embarrassingly private” as nobody else in the Close uses them. Stephen seems to envy even the way in which Mr Hayward punishes Keith, as he comments about his own father: “ (...) the worst punishment he could contrive was a generalised swipe at their heads, which they effortlessly ducked.”

The tittle of the novel

  The title of the novel  may describe different characters. The most important spies in the story are Keith and Stephen. However, the curious thing is that they become spies because they  believe Keith´s mother is a German spy. So they spy on a spy! They start observing all her moves and following her around. They believe Mrs Haywards may be spying on neighbours in the Close and passing information to the Germans.
At the end of the story, we discover that Mrs Haywards is not a spy at all and that she behaved suspiciously due to the fact that she was having an affair with Uncle Peter, who had deserted from war and was hidden at the Barns. We also found out that the real spy in the Close was the character we least suspected from: Stephen´s father. He was a German Jew who was helping the British side with his knowledge of the German optical industry.
   

Is it possible for Stephen to revert to childhood? (chapter 9)

In chapter 9, after handing in the basket, Stephen runs "home to Mummy". The word “mummy” suggests the wailings of a little boy who looks for the comfort of his mother´s bosom. When reading it, we have the impression that Stephen is sick of the adult world and that he is trying to escape his anguish by reverting to childhood.

Stephen´s and Keith´s fathers in chapter 2

Stephen, the narrator of the story, looks up to  his friend Keith and his family, and considers that they are clearly superior to himself and his own family in all aspects. This is clearly seen in the way in he contrasts his father to Keith´s.

On the one hand, Stephen's father seems to be a very inconspicuous man. His presence at home, as Stephen says, “(…) was scarcely noticeable”. His activities were not particularly interesting or attractive : ”He’d sit for hours at the dining room table, with his paper and files spread out in front of him and a pair of glasses on the end of his nose, or else collapse into one of the scuffed armchairs in the lounge and silently doze through obscure concerts on the wireless that nobody else wanted to hear.” When he wasn’t at home he  :”(…) was out at an office somewhere all day and often evening doing a job too dull to describe” In this quotation, we can see that Stephen didn’t think much of his father´s  job even though he didn't know exactly what it consisted in.

Even the description of his father´s appearance shows Stephen´s negative view of him, as it focuses on the strange looks that the inadequate distribution of hair in his body creates:  “(…) quantities of disorganized dark hair on his chest would come sprouting out of the open neck of his shirt. Then his head would sink and present the world with yet more disorganized hair, dotted in irregular tufts about the infertile landscape of his scalp. Even the back of his hands had coarse dark hair on them –even the gaps between his cuffs and his crumpled socks.” The narrator concludes that his appearance was “as unsatisfactory as Stephen`s”

Stephen´s father´s inadequacy is also highlighted by his peculiar vocabulary. Stephen confesses there was “something embarrassingly private about this”. He used words like “coodle-moodle” ( meaning “messy”) and “shnick-shnack” (meaning “nonsense”) Stephen once tried one of these words with Keith, but he realised from the disconcerted look on his friend's face that “he´d said the wrong thing”

On the other hand, Keith’s father didn´t spend the day working in some unseen office, like Stephen’s, and his job wasn't dull at all.  On the contrary, what he did was exciting and prestigious:  he was part of the Home Guard  and he had participated in the Great War. He had even won a medal for killing five Germans with a bayonet, and, according to Keith, he worked for the Secret Service.

When he was at home, his presence was noticeable, by his incessant whistling and by his constant work around the house “making perfection yet more perfect.” Stephen shows his admiration for Mr Hayward´s work in the house in the  description of the garage where he worked and kept his tools. The narrator defines this place as “the headquarters of Keith’s father´s operations”. The word “headquarters” suggests the importance Stephen assigns to this place. He also speaks of “the wonderful private kingdom inside”, and describes the care Mr Hayward put in each task he undertook, the enormous variety of tools he had, and the impressive order in which he kept them.

Mr Hayward was a man of few words, but when he spoke, he didn´t use embarrassing terms that nobody understood. On the contrary, he used fashionable forms of address: “old bean” or “old chap”, and he ascertained his paternal authority with the menace of caning. He never spoke to Stephen, only to his son, and Stephen seemed to feel so uncomfortable in the presence of such a respectable man, that he didn`t even dare look directly at him.

In conclusion Keith´s and Stephen´s fathers were completely different in all aspects. Even though Stephen seems to fear Mr Hayward, he is also very impressed by him, and, at this point of the story, he presents him as the prototype of a father.