The Landscape Beyond the Tunnel

What is there beyond the tunnel?

On the other side of the tunnel, there used to be a narrow path that was almost covered by the growth of vegetation on each side of it in the summer. Even though the path was just one, it was usually called “The Lanes”. A bit further on,  there were some tumbledown hovels that the children called “the Cottages”, ignoring the fact that it was an extremely grand name for such collapsed dwellings. All around the place, there were pieces of damaged objects,  children with ragged clothes and “misshapen dogs”. An abandoned farm was also located in “The Lanes” and it was important because it marked the frontier between the Cottages and, as Stephen called it, “no-man’s land”.

The Close

Here is a picture of the close:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2uJMEM03R8XY25Ic3NnNGI3eTA/view?usp=sharing

Braemar

            In Spies there is a very special place where Keith and Stephen used to play together: Braemar. It used to be Miss Durrant´s house but very little remained of it as it had been destroyed by a stray  German incendiary bomb. The kids used it as their hideout and lookout and they planned all their games and adventures there.

              To start with, this "secret" place was full of vegetation due to the thick shrubs that used to be the front hedge of Mrs Durrant´s house. However, Keith and Stephen were able to pass through it and get to the middle of the undergrowth. Besides, among the shrubs there was the privet which the narrator  remembered and was looking for in the first chapter. The smell from these bushes is important because it is the catalyst for the whole story.

               For Keith and Stephen, Braemar was a secret place where they could get away from adults´ surveillance: "There´s only one place we can talk without being observed or overheard".There, they were away from the constraints imposed on them by the adults, and they were able to act following their own rules. It was as if they entered  a completely different world:  "Once we get there we´re across the frontier into another country altogether" They had to leave behind the refinement, luxury and politeness that governed Keith´s house: "We´ve come a long journey from the chocolate spread and the silver picture frames"

           Everything was different between the bushes, where the children´s imagination flowed. On the one hand, objects acquired a new meaning and importance. A  broken piece of metal from a shot-down German plane, the remains of Miss Durrant´s life or the units of ammunition Keith had traded at school were considered precious treasure  and were kept in a locked tin box. A long carving knife found out in the rubble of the house became the famous bayonet with which Mr Hayward had killed five Germans. On the other hand, the children´s behaviour turned wilder and more aggressive there. Stephen was made to take an oath on the sharpen “bayonet” that he would never speak about their investigations or his throat would be cut. This is the first instance in the novel in which they considered hurting each other dangerously.

             In the last part of chapter 2, Keith misspelt "private" and wrote "privet" instead. In Stephen´s memory, the two concepts were linked:  "privets" and their private place. It was only in this privacy (created by the privets)  that they could start their adventure. Their findings would be related to something private as it concerned one of their families and, as Keith made Stephen promise, it should remain private. The story stems both from the smell of the “privets” that are in a private place and from the children´s nosing into private matters.

References to World War Two in chapter 2

We learn that the events from the narrator's childhood described in chapter 2 took place in the times of  World War II because there are many references to it.

First of all, there are many references to the feared enemies: the Germans, and to the Blitz, i.e. the German bombardment of the United Kingdom. Mr Haywards has taken out the wheels of his car “to prevent its being commandeered, as Keith explained, by invading Germans.” (Picador, page 23), and he is planning to use his revolver “to give any invading German a nasty surprise.”(page 23)  Once the two boys saw “a crashed German plane with the pilot sitting dead in the cockpit” (page 21), and there is “an air-raid shelter” in Keith´s garden. Clearly these last quotations refer to German attacks on England, and to one of the ways in which people took refuge from them. (In class, we also mentioned how, in London, people used the railway stations as shelters)

 

There are also some references to the way in which the war affected citizens´ every day lives: many of the men in the street are “away in the Services”, Mr Hayward can´t use his car because of  the shortage of petrol brought about by the war, and  Stephen mentions that leisure has been suspended for the “Duration”. Stephen capitalises this word to show how in his childhood there was so much talk about the duration of the war, that he thought it was a fixed phrase.

There is a reference to the “Jews” as well, who live in Trewinnick, the “mysterious house where the blackout are always drawn.” We wonder if the poor Jewish people living there are so terrified by the Holocaust that they don't dare open their windows but Keith and Stephen  took them for a sinister organization, and they called them the “Juice”.

Last but not least, the war is even present in the metaphoric language used to describe Stephen and Keith´s relationship: they are a “two-man army”. Keith is an “officer corps”, and Stephen is the “other ranks”.

In conclusion, the historical context pervades the descriptions of the characters and the houses in the Close in chapter 2, and makes us feel that War World 2 is in the air.

Stephen´s and Keith´s houses in chapter 2

Click here to see a chart comparing Stephen´s and Keith´s houses.

"Everything is as it was (...) and everything has changed" (Chapter 2)

The chapter opens with a paradox: "Everything is at it was, I discover when I reach my destination, and everything has changed".  This paradox invites us to wonder what has remained the same and what is different: the appearance of the place, the narrator´s feelings, the people, the atmosphere? In the following paragraphs, the narrator gives us many clues as to how to understand this initial paradox.

On the one hand, the similarities the old narrator notices between the Close of his childhood and the street he has in front of him are the ordinariness of the place and the number of houses. The same 14 houses stand in exactly the same place where they stood 60 years before and the street still looks as ordinary and unremarkable as it used to.

On the other hand, there have been many changes. The houses don´t look the same. Their appearance has changed and they have less vegetation around them. The trees have grown: “The stringy prunus saplings” that where along the verges of the avenue “are now wise and dignified trees”. The main road has now less traffic and the shop names have changed. Even the sky has changed from one full of war, falling flares and searchlights at night to one that was “mild and bland”.

In conclusion, we can say that even though the town has physically changed, the narrator finds it still familiar. In spite of the changes, he is still able to recognise the houses and the dull atmosphere that pervades the place.

Memories in chapter 1

The story is written in the first person and it presents the memories of the narrator, who is an elderly man. It is June. It is summer. A powerful perfume brings back the smells of the plants and gardens of the narrator's childhood into his mind, and activates his memory.

The narrator remembers his childhood in a suburb of London.  He remembers his friend Keith and Keith's mother with her brown eyes, laughing and a moment later, crying
Other apparently disconnected memories flash into his mind.: "A shower of sparks...A feeling of shame...someone unseen coughing, trying not to be heard...a jug covered by a lace weighted with four blue beads... " He also mentions six words, which “changed everything” but he doesn't reveal them yet.

All these glimpses into the narrator's childhood arouse our interest and attention as readers. We feel curious. We want to know what were the six words that his friend Keith said and how all these fragmentary memories are related, so we want to turn the page to find out what happens when he visits his childhood neighborhood.