episode of that plot in which there seems to be room for us, if we sense that we are caught up in its weak wheel even for an instant, then it is hard for us ever again to be able to imagine ourselves torn from that half-glimpsed, partial, intuited plot – a mere figment of the imagination. There is nothing worse than looking for a meaning or believing there is one. Or if there is one, even worse: believing that the meaning of something, even of the most trivial detail, could depend on us and on our actions, on our intention or our function, believing that there is such a thing as the will or fate, and even some complicated combination of the two. Believing that we do not owe ourselves entirely to the most erratic and forgetful, rambling and crazy of chances, and that we should be expected to be consistent with what we said or did, yesterday or the day before. Believing that we might contain in ourselves coherence and deliberation, as the artist believes is true of his work or the potentate of his decisions, but only once someone has persuaded them that this is so.
Wheeler had, in the end, begun at the beginning, if anything ever really has a beginning. Anyway, that Sunday morning, when I woke up much later than I would have wanted to and, of course, much later than he was expecting me to, he allowed himself no further preambles or postponements or circumlocutions, in so far as it was possible for him entirely to renounce such long-established characteristics of thought and conversation. The incomplete words he had at his disposal to tell me what he was going to tell me were, I suppose, mystery and limitation enough. As soon as he saw me come downstairs looking sleepy and ill-shaven (just a quick once-over with the razor so as to appear presentable or not, at least, too thuggish), he urged me to take a seat opposite him and to the right of Mrs Berry, who occupied one end of the table at which they had both just had breakfast. He waited until she had very kindly poured me some coffee, but not until I had drunk it or woken up a bit. On the half of the table unoccupied by table-cloth and plates and cups and jams and fruit lay open a large, bulky volume, there were always books everywhere. I had only to glance at it (the attraction of the printed word) for Peter to say in urgent tones, doubtless because he had not counted on such a late awakening on my part:
'Pick it up, go on. I got it out to show you.'
I drew the volume to me, but before reading a single line, I half-closed it – with one finger keeping the place – to have a look at the spine and see what the book was.
' Who's Who? It was a rhetorical question, because it clearly was Who's Who, with its rich red cover, the guide to the more or less illustrious, that year's United Kingdom edition.
'Yes, Who's Who, Jacobo. I bet you've never thought of looking me up in that, have you? My name is on that page, where it's open. Read what it says, will you, go on.'
I looked, I searched, there were quite a few Wheelers, Sir Mark and Sir Mervyn, a certain Muir Wheeler and the Honourable Sir Patrick and the Very Reverend Philip Welsford Richmond Wheeler, and there he was, between the two last names: 'Wheeler, Prof. Sir Peter', which was followed by a parenthesis, which I did not, at first, understand, which said: '(Edward Lionel Wheeler)'. It only took me two seconds, though, to remember that Peter used to sign his writings 'P. E. Wheeler', and that the E was for Edward, so the parenthesis was only there to record his name in its official entirety.
'Lionel?' I asked. Another rhetorical question, although less so this time. I was surprised by that third name, which had always seemed so actorly, doubtless because of Lionel Barrymore, and because of Lionel Atwill, who played archenemy Professor Moriarty to the great Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes, and because of Lionel Stander who was persecuted in America by Senator McCarthy and had to go into exile in England in order to continue working (and become a bogus Englishman). And then there was Lionel Johnson, but he was a poet friend of Wilde and Yeats, a man from whom John Gawsworth claimed descendance (John Gawsworth, the literary pseudonym of the man who was in real life Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong, that secretive writer, beggar and king, with whom I had been rather obsessed during my time teaching in Oxford all those years ago: his fanciful ancestry also included Jacobite nobles, namely, the Stuarts, the dramatist Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's contemporary, and the supposed 'Dark Lady' of the Sonnets, Mary Fitton, the courtesan). 'Lionel?' I said again with just a hint of mockery, which did not escape Wheeler.
'Yes, Lionel. I never use it, though, but there's nothing wrong with that, is there? Anyway, don't get distracted by trivia, that's not what matters, that isn't what I want you to see. Read on.'
I returned to the biographical note, but I had to stop almost at once and look up again, after reading the facts about his birth, which said: 'Born 24 October 1913, in Christchurch, New Zealand. Eldest son of Hugh Bernard Rylands and of the late Rita Muriel, nee Wheeler. Adopted the surname Wheeler by deed poll in 1929.'
'Rylands?' This time there was nothing rhetorical about the question, just spontaneous, sincere astonishment. 'Rylands?' I repeated. There must have been a look of distrust in my eyes, and perhaps a suggestion of reproach. 'It's not, it can't be, can it? It can't just be coincidence.'
The look that Wheeler gave me reflected a mixture of patience and impatience, or of annoyance and paternalism, as if he had known I would stop there, at his father's unexpected surname, Rylands, and as if he accepted and understood my reaction, but also as if the matter bored him, or he saw it merely as a tiresome stage that had to be gone through before he could focus on whatever it was he really wanted to get to grips with. To judge by his expression, he could easily have said: 'No, that's not what matters either, Jacobo. Read on.' And he almost did, although not immediately, he showed me some consideration; but not without first making a vague attempt to avoid my reproaches:
'Oh, come on, you're not going to tell me you didn't know.'
'Peter.' My tone was one of clear warning and overt reproach, like the one I used with my children sometimes when they insisted on ignoring me so they wouldn't have to do as they were told.
'Well, I thought you knew, I could have sworn you did. In fact, I find it very odd that you don't.'
'Please, Peter. No one knows, not in Oxford. Or if they do, they keep very quiet about it, in fact, they've been unusually discreet. Do you think that if Aidan Kavanagh or Cromer-Blake had known about it, or Dewar or Rook or Carr, or Crowther-Hunt, or even Clare Bayes, do you think they wouldn't have told me?' They were old friends or colleagues from my time in Oxford, some less prone to gossip than others. Clare Bayes had been my lover too, I hadn't seen her or heard anything about her in ages, nor about her little boy Eric, who would no longer be a little boy, not now, he would have grown up. Perhaps I wouldn't even like her any more, my distant lover, if I saw her. Perhaps she wouldn't like me. Best not to see each other, best not. 'Did you know, Mrs Berry?'
Mrs Berry started a little, but did not hesitate to say:
'Oh, yes, I knew. But bear in mind, Jack, that I've worked for both brothers. And I tend to keep things to myself.' She, like all English people who had difficulty in pronouncing the name Jacques and who did not know that the name could be converted into Spanish as Jaime or Jacobo or Diego, always called me Jack (a phonetic approximation), the diminutive of John or Juan, but not of James. When they stopped addressing me as 'Mr Deza' (as happened quite quickly), Tupra and Mulryan also called me Jack. Not Rendel though, he wasn't on such familiar terms with anyone, at least not in the building with no name and no obvious function. And young Nuix, like Luisa, inclined to Jaime, or sometimes to my surname only, plain Deza, as Luisa did too.
'Brothers,' I murmured, and on this occasion, I managed not to turn my repetition into a question. 'Brothers, eh? You know perfectly well, Peter, that I knew nothing about it. I didn't even know you were born in New Zealand until you mentioned it to me for the first time a few days ago, on the phone.' As I was speaking, memories of Rylands came rushing in on me, sometimes memories surface with such terrible speed. 'So Toby…' I said, rousing myself, '… but, he was supposed to have been born in South Africa, and I thought it must be true because once I heard him mention in passing that he didn't leave that continent, Africa, I mean, until he was sixteen. The same age that you were when you arrived here, which you also mentioned in passing for the first time during that phone conversation of a matter of days ago. You're not going to tell me now that you were twins, are you?'
Wheeler turned to look at me, but without speaking, his eyes said that he wasn't up to the labour of listening to reproaches or half-ironies, not that morning, he had other things on his mind, or on the repertoire drawn up for that performance.
'Well, if you really didn't know… I suppose you simply never asked me,' he replied. 'I've never concealed the fact. Toby might have preferred to, he may have concealed it from you, but I didn't. And I don't really know why I should have told you anyway.' He said these words in the same impassive, almost self-exculpatory tone, but I picked up on it, recognised it: it was intended to bring me up short. 'No, we weren't twins. I was nearly a year older. And now I'm considerably older still.'
I knew what Wheeler was like when something made him feel uncomfortable or when he became evasive, it was a waste of time insisting, you merely risked irritating him, he always decided the topic of conversation.
'All right, Peter. If you would be kind enough to explain, I'm all ears, curiosity and interest. I assume that's
