“Many years ago”
The phrase “many years ago” recurs to such a degree that it begins to serve as imagery. The novel is, after all, largely set within a retirement community where nostalgia as well as regret lurks over the collective outpouring of memories and recollections like an almost sinister zeppelin hovering in the sky. The single most effective use of the phrase is arguable, of course, but the following example definitely gets into the discourse:
“Many years ago, everybody here would wake early because there was a lot to do and only so many hours in the day. Now they wake early because there is a lot to do and only so many days left.”
Aging
It is not just the older characters who are prone to recalling things that happened some years ago. But most of the philosophical observations about the transitory nature of existence is left to the wisdom of the seniors staring down approaching death right in his chalky face:
“In life you have to learn to count the good days. You have to tuck them in your pocket and carry them around with you. So I’m putting today in my pocket and I’m off to bed.”
Not Your Average Retirement Community
This story is set in a retirement community, but don’t go getting certain familiar images into your head. This is one of those upscale retirement communities like the ones in Florida filled with all those privileged people who voted for the right candidate for Governor and got to be first in line for the Covid vaccines they all complained about. This is retirement living for former doctors and lawyers and spies and high-level law enforcement; a replace to retire for those who knew where the money was in their younger life:
“Chris has been to retirement communities before and this is not at all what he had been expecting. This is a whole village. He wanders past a bowls match, wine chilling in coolers at each end. One of the players is an extremely elderly woman smoking a pipe. He follows a meandering path through a perfect English garden, flanked by three storeys of flats. There are people gossiping on patios and balconies, enjoying the sunshine. Friends sit on benches, bees buzz round bushes, light breezes play tunes with ice cubes. Chris finds the whole thing deeply infuriating. He’s a wind-and-rain guy, a turn-up-the-collar-on-your-overcoat man.”
The Sherlock Thing
It is Elizabeth who was the spy in her younger life. Or, at least, that is the conventional wisdom about her past. Many things seem to support the wisdom, including her behavior during questioning by PC Donna De Freitas. That particular interview quickly takes a strange twist for Donna when Elizabeth begins the doing the whole Sherlock thing about her:
“This is what I see, and I know you’ll stop me if I misspeak. You are in your mid-twenties, you give the impression of being clever and intuitive. You also give the impression of being very kind, yet very handy should a fight erupt. For reasons we will get to the bottom of, almost certainly a doomed relationship, you have left London, where I would have thought the life and the work would have suited you to a T. You find yourself here, in Fairhaven, where the crime is minor and the criminals are petty...You are single, you are living in a rented flat, you have not found it easy to make friends in the town. Most of your colleagues in the station are a bit old for you. I’m sure that young PC, Mark, has asked you out, but there’s no way he could handle a south London girl, so you had to say no. You both still find it awkward.”
