Stephen´s hypotheses

Stephen´s hypotheses change a lot along the novel. At the beginning, Stephen believed  Keith´s mother was a spy helping the Germans. Later, this first hypothesis evolves into the belief that Mrs Hayward was  having an affair with a shotdown German pilot whom she is also helping to survive. 

Everything starts when Keith tells Stephen the six words: “My mother is a German spy”. Stephen is surprised and excited about the idea of going out and investigating. The first hypothesis that comes up to his mind is “She has her eye on all of us”, and together with his friend Keith, he starts  observing her closely and following her around. They believe she is passing information about the neighbours in the Close to the Germans. They even consider the idea that she might have been responsible for the destruction of  Miss Durrant´s house.

Minor characters in chapter 3

  Mrs.Elmsley was Mrs Hayward's housemaid. She seemed suspicious to Stephen just because she has a moustache and a wart in the middle of her forehead, and she speaks very softly. Stephen had never wondered before why she looked like that, but after Keith accused her mother of being a German spy,  the children considered all the characters to whom she spoke possible accomplices.

   Another character who seemed suspicious to Stephen was Mr. Hucknall, the butcher. He sung humorously loud and tossed the sniking brass weights from hand to hand.Stephen thought his behaviour was just pretence to conceal his true nature and that the mutton chops in his orders could be a secret code.

   To conclude, Stephen was just a boy with a fertile imagination. After his friend uttered the six words, even these two minor characters, Mrs. Elmsley and  Mr. Hucknall become suspicious for him so the reader can't help doubting the reliability of his perspective.

Memory and reliability

We have already seen how the narrator's point of view can affect reliability in any type of narration, but memory also plays an important part in its reliability, just as much or even more than vantage point. Depending on how well the narrator remembers what happened, the atmosphere and the message transmitted to the reader changes significantly.

In the case of 'Spies', there's a particular event in the story which changes its course significantly, and while Stephen tells it he tries to recall the order in which things happened. Even though he ends up making clear what the conclusion of all the incident was ( Keith's uttering the six words: “My mother is a German spy”), he doesn't really make up his mind on when, or how it was that this happened. He remains doubtful about the day in which everything occurred, stating "When is this?... Still May, perhaps? Why aren't we at school? Perhaps it's a Saturday or a Sunday. No, there's the feel of a weekday morning in the air...". This doubt in his thoughts makes the reader suspect of just how reliable what Stephen is telling actually is. He does remember what happened, but he can't seem to put the pieces together chronologically, so he is not completely sure of what order things occurred in, as he well expresses "...Or have I got everything back to front? Had the policemen already happened before this?". He even questions the possibility of making up a story : "It's so difficult to remember what order things occurred in--but if you can't remember that, then it's impossible to work out which led to which, and what the connection was".

This, as a whole, shows how the memory of a narrator when explaining a particular event can sometimes make the reader distrust his reliability. In Stephen's case, he makes us suspect something in his way of narrating  Keith's confession is wrong, because he seems to have forgotten the date and the chronological order the facts have happened in.

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.