Wheeler fell silent then and glanced at his watch, and this time he did register the position of the hands; then he looked back at the house, Mrs Berry's piano-playing was still providing us with an accompaniment.
'Shall I go and see how lunch is coming on, Peter?' I suggested. 'We might be running a bit late. My fault.'
'No, the music is reaching the end now, there's just a very brief minuetto to come. She'll call us at five minutes to, it's only twelve minutes to at the moment. I know this piece.'
I was tempted to ask him what the piece was, but I wanted him to answer another question, and opportunities vanish so quickly:
'Am I to understand, Peter, that what you call "the group" is still active, and that Mr Tupra is in charge?'
'We'll talk more about that in a minute, because I want you to do me a favour in that regard. It would be a good thing for you too, I think; in fact, I phoned Tupra this morning, while you were still asleep, to tell him that you had shown great perspicacity in the test, about him and Beryl I mean. But, yes, I suppose you could say that; although it's changed so much I barely recognise it. It's difficult to be sure that anything or, for that matter, anyone, has remained unchanged. As far as I can tell, these anonymous duties and activities have evolved a lot, and are required for very different purposes. I imagine they've gone downhill, like everything else: that's just a realistic supposition, I don't say that in order to criticise or blame anyone. I simply don't know. Look at me: am I the same as I was then? Can I, for example, be the man who was married to a very young girl who has stayed forever young and who has not accompanied me on one single day of my long old age? Doesn't that possibility, that idea, that apparent truth, doesn't it seem totally incongruous, for example, with the man I've been since? Or with the acts I committed later, when she was no longer there to witness them? Or even, simply, with the way I look now? She was so very young, you see, how can I possibly be the same man?'
Wheeler again raised one hand to his forehead, but not this time out of sudden exhaustion or fright, his gesture was a thoughtful one, as if he were intrigued by his own questions. And then I tried to get him to answer another question, although it was perhaps absurd to do so at that precise moment, when lunch with Mrs Berry was only a matter of minutes away. Although, had he chosen to respond, he probably wouldn't have minded answering the question in her presence, for she would know the whole story.
'How did your wife die, Peter? I've never known. I've never asked you. You've never told me.'
Wheeler removed his hand from his forehead and looked at me, red-faced, not from surprise or annoyance, but with his eyes alert.
'Why do you ask me that now?' he said.
'Well,' I replied, smiling, 'perhaps so that you won't one day reproach me for never having shown any interest, for never having asked you about it before, as you did last night when I finally found out about your part in our War. That's why I'm asking now.'
Wheeler suppressed a smile, immediately erasing the temptation. He raised his hand to his chin and made the same sound that Toby Rylands used to make when he was considering how best to answer:
'H'm,' that was the sound. 'H'm', the sound of Oxford. Then he spoke: 'It's not because you're worried about Luisa, is it, and that you suddenly thought the worst and saw yourself reflected in me? Is that it? You're not afraid you might end up widowed rather than divorced, are you? Be careful with such apprehensions. Distance invokes many ghosts. Loneliness does too. And ignorance even more.'
This disconcerted me slightly, it could be a cunning ploy on Wheeler's part to avoid the question, a swift change of direction. But I wasn't going to let him go. I nevertheless paused to think. He was, unwittingly, quite right, at least in part, and I didn't see why he shouldn't know that, for he so enjoyed his own perspicacity:
'Yes, I am a bit worried. And about the children, too, of course. I haven't really had much news of them since I've been here, and even less of Luisa. There's a kind of opacity, even though we talk to each other fairly frequently. I don't know who she's seeing, or not seeing, who comes in and who goes out, it's a kind of process of creeping ignorance, of her and her replacement world, or perhaps that world is still in flux. The truth is I no longer know what's going on in my own house, I have no images any more. It's as if the old images had grown dimmer and get darker every day. But that isn't why I asked you, Peter, it was because you mentioned her – Valerie, I mean.' And I dared to pronounce that name, so private that I had never even heard it until that morning. I had a sense of sacrilege on my lips. 'What did she die of?'