Michael Frayn's Spies Help

Here is some Spies help, for all those people who are stuck or confused with this novel.

I'll start by typing up summaries for each of the Chapters.

Chapter 1
*The narrator, Stephen Wheatley, struggles to recognise a scent which prompts a strange, uneasy response in him each year.

*His daughter tells him it is the scent of privet, using it's German name 'Liguster'.

*Stephen recalls events of sixty years ago that have caused the scent to have particular resonance for him and decides to revisit London, where he grew up.

In late June, the narrator is disturbed by a scent. He is not able to trace it to any of the plants in the gardens that he is walking past, but it makes him feel homesick. He realises that it is familiar from his childhood. He asks his daughter which plant produces the smell and her reply is 'Liguster'; he doesn't recognise the name. He feels that it reminds him 'of something I don't quite like to think about'(pg.4) in his childhood, and it continues to trouble him.

Waking in the night, he realises that his daughter was not speaking English and looks up the word in a dictionary. In Chapter 2 the word is revealed to be privet.

A rush of details from the past comes back to Stephen, prompted by his recognition of the plant. He mentions Keith's mother and Keith who are both central characters in the main action of the novel, and wonders what has become of them, or if they are dead. Then he mentions the six words which 'changed everything'(pg.6). At this point they remain unspoken, creating dramatic tension as we naturally want to know what they are. He tells his children that he will go to London for a few days, on a nostalgic trip, but doesn't tell them the purpose of his planned visit.

Taken from York Notes Advanced

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Chapter 2

* Stephen returns to the town where he grew up, and remembers his past as he walks around the Close where he once lived.

* His recollections create a picture of his childhood and the key characters who will play parts in the coming action of the novel: Keith and his parents, Stephen's own family and Auntie Dee.

* Stephen questions the accuracy of his memories as he prepares to begin his story.

Stephen has returned to his childhood home, and notices that although the layout of the street is superficially the same, numerous details have changed. Many of the distinguishing features of the hosues have disappeared and modern additions have made them look similar to one another. In particular, he notices that the scent in the air is of cypress and there is no hint of privet (pg.10).

Many of the triggers to Stephen's memory are not visual, but relate to other sense - like the scent of privet. The noise of the train, which is another memory important later in the novel, is the trigger for the past to 'rematerialis[e] out of the air itself'(pg.10). In his mind's eye, he sees his younger self come out of his house and go to visit Keith, the childhood companion who is to be the other main protagonist. Stephen's sense of his own inferiority as a child comes across clearly. His reminiscences reveal the imaginative boyish games and adventures that occupied Stephen and Keith, the relationship between the two and the differences between their two households. They also introduce Keith's parents, Mr and Mrs Hayward; Auntie Dee (Mrs Hayward's sister) and her daughter Milly; and the absent Uncle Peter (Auntie Dee's husband) who is serving in the Air Force during the Second World War; and Stephen's own father and brother. His mother is not included.

Keith's house is impeccable and Stephen finds it intimidating as well as appealing. It is revealed that Keith's parents are at home all the time, Mrs Hayward doing very little, as she has a housekeeper to help her, and Mrs Hayward working in his garden and garage. Mrs Hayward is serene, elegant and polite; Mr Hayward is a strict disciplinatiran.

Stephen's own house, by contrast is messy and disorganised. He shares a room with his 'insufferable'(pg.13) older brother who irritates him with his 'supercilious jibe'(pg.13), and the room is filled with a jumble of old bits and pieces and broken toys, nothing like Keith's neat array of boxed toys in working order. Stephen finds his father dull and 'his appearance was as unsatisfactory as Stephen's'(pg.27). To us he appears endearing, though not obviously interesting. There is a clue to there being something more to him in the strange words Stephen reports that he uses, but we are unlikely to be able to make much of these at this point in the novel. Auntie Dee, Mrs Hayward's sister, has a house as chaotic as Stephen's and she is bustling, talkative and kindly. Keith disdains her, assuming the characteristic attitude of half-closed eyelids that becomes a hallmark of his displeasure, yet Stephen sees in her a quintessential 'perfect aunt-likeness'(pg.24).

The narrator finally draws back from his reverie and returns to the present and his tour of the Close. He identifies the house that had the bushes whose smell has drawn him back here, and at last reveals that the bushes were privet. He finds their ordinariness embarrassing, given the effect they have had on him. He tries to return to the beginnning of his story - the start of the event that will follow - but stalls to examine his memory and how reliable it is. At last, he reveals the wrods that triggered the main action of the novel: 'My mother' [Keith] says reflectively, almost regretfully, 'is a German spy' (pg.33)

Taken from York Advanced Notes