Warlight

“Ours was a family with a habit for nicknames, which meant it was also a family of disguises.”

Names play a symbolic role in the novel, as many of the characters go by nicknames that reflect aspects of their personality. Nathaniel’s family was accustomed to disguises, implying a climate of deception and secrecy. The comment emphasizes the central mystery of Rose Williams’s identity and Nathaniel’s desire to distinguish between truth and fiction in his past. The lack of given names also enhances the tone of mystery and suspense, as Nathaniel is never certain of his safety.

“We were used to partial stories. Our father had been involved in the late stages of the earlier war, and I don’t think he felt he really belonged to us.”

Nathaniel’s experiences of postwar alienation are not unique in his family, as his father, a survivor of both World Wars, also felt distant from his family. A fragile sense of belonging characterizes postwar London, where The Lasting Impact of War was pervasive and caused transgenerational and collective trauma. Whereas Rose’s silence was guarded due to her work in intelligence, Nathaniel’s father’s reticence is rooted in the trauma of war. The “partial stories” allude to the unspeakable nature of trauma.

“Mahler put the word schwer beside certain passages in his musical scores. Meaning ‘difficult. ‘Heavy.’ We were told this at some point by The Moth, as if it was a warning. […] It was a strange warning to be given, to accept that nothing was safe anymore.”

The concept of schwer is a motif in the novel, and Nathaniel and Rachel often repeat the word to remind themselves that though their lives may be difficult, they are prepared to face the challenges. Yet the term means something different to each sibling. To Rachel, schwer is a condition of life to confront and manage, as she does her epileptic seizures and the pain of her mother’s absence. For Nathaniel, schwer is to be avoided or repressed, and he spends his youth thinking he is either impervious to it or capable of circumventing it. In the chapter titled “Schwer” where the siblings are attacked, they learn that The Moth’s warning was also meant to prepare them for the physical danger they may encounter from his mother’s enemies.

“There are times these years later, as I write all this down, when I feel as if I do so by candlelight. As if I cannot see what is taking place in the dark beyond the movement of this pencil.”

Light and shadow are significant symbols in the novel, signifying the illumination and obfuscation of knowledge. Nathaniel writes his memoir with the intention of unveiling the secrets of his and his mother’s past. Yet even with his personal memories and archival records, Nathaniel feels he is still writing by dim candlelight. The analogy signifies the elusive and constructed nature of memories and the myth of total recall. The imagery also references the book’s title, Warlight, and the repressive, barely perceptible light by which those in wartime lived.

“And our house, so orderly and spare when inhabited by my parents, now pulsed like a hive with these busy, argumentative souls who, having at one time legally crossed some boundary during the war, were now suddenly told they could no longer cross it during peace.”

Part of Nathaniel’s uncertainty as a youth is rooted in the moral ambiguities of wartime. The Moth and his associates were former intelligence agents who were given license to transgress certain laws as part of the war effort. What was acceptable during the war is no longer permissible, and the shift highlights the debate of universal versus relative ethics and whether any of the violence during the war was “right.”

“Lesser works were housed in the basements of large hotels and temporarily forgotten, but now they were being gradually lifted back into the light. […] So many saints and heroes I never knew.”

The paintings and sculptures Nathaniel rescues from the Criterion basement depict saints, goddesses, and figures without limbs which reference the sacrifices of those who served in the war. As a youth, Nathaniel had no idea how significant the clandestine actions of his mother, The Moth, and their associates were. In his memoir, he finally brings them to light, just as he did the artworks.

“[I]t was impossible not to be thereby amazed at the truth of what we had thought were his earlier fictions. And when he finished he sat there for half a minute and eventually closed the piano quietly as if that in itself was the end of the story, the truth or proof of it.”

Mr. Nkomo is the 46-year-old worker at the Criterion who regales his co-workers with stories of his sexual escapades as a youth. Nathaniel marvels at Mr. Nkomo’s explicit story of being seduced by an older woman who also taught him piano. This episode highlights the subjective nature of memory: Mr. Nkomo’s artfully told story alters Nathaniel’s perception of both past and present, leading him to see Mr. Nkomo’s piano playing as proof of the story’s veracity even though the connection between claim and evidence is illogical.

“The house felt more like a night zoo.”

Nathaniel compares the bustling activity of The Moth’s associates at Ruvigny Gardens to the nocturnal activities of zoo animals. The simile alludes to the eclectic identities of the strangers, including a chess player, an opera singer, a gardener, and The Darter. The night symbolizes the nature of their hidden work, which remained a mystery to Nathaniel until his research as an adult. The zoo-like atmosphere signifies both the chaos and excitement of Nathaniel’s upbringing and the freedom he experienced despite his disorienting homelife. The night zoo also recalls the nocturnal animals Olive Lawrence teaches the children to empathize with.

“There are many such incomplete and guilty moments I have packed away, meaningless as those unused objects in my mother’s suitcase. And the chronology of events has fallen apart, for whatever defensive reason.”

Nathaniel recalls helping Mr. Florence use his bee smoker to gas a guard and steal paintings from a gallery. The memory is brief, and Nathaniel considers it one of many hazy and compromising memories of his youth. The example highlights the subjective nature of memory: Nathaniel’s memories are not linear or objective but motivated by desires and intentions that he may not even be conscious of. Like the unused objects his mother pretended to pack for her Singapore trip, some of Nathaniel’s fragmented memories remain packed away and without any meaning until he provides the context for their significance.

“‘Half the life of cities occurs at night,’ Olive Lawrence warned us. ‘There’s a more uncertain morality then.’”

In addition to teaching the children how to recognize the nocturnal sounds of animals and empathize with the stories of others, Olive Lawrence also teaches them that life’s ambiguities cannot always be resolved. The lesson is a philosophical one and demonstrates how Olive never patronized or talked down to the siblings but sought to teach them lessons that would help them understand the difficulties they will face in life. In depicting the cities as half lived at night, she indirectly alludes to Rose’s work as an intelligence agent and the moral ambiguities of her work and the impact it has on their family.

“In youth we are not so much embarrassed by the reality of our situation as fearful others might discover and judge it.”

Nathaniel describes a duality in his youth where his school life was separate from the home life he kept private from his peers. The two separate lives highlight the multifaceted nature of identity and allude to the many characters in the novel who live different versions of themselves. Nathaniel’s fear of judgment also illustrates the insecurities of youth and a desire for belonging. The comment suggests that as an adult, Nathaniel has come to accept his life without needing others’ approval.

“If I do not speak of my sister in this story so much, it is because we have separate memories. Each of us witnessed clues about the other we did not pursue.”

Nathaniel’s portrait of his mother considers the multiplicity of perspectives and the composite of memories with facts and fiction. Rachel’s version of their mother is distinct but equally valid from his, as her map of her mother followed different trails that led her to reject her mother entirely. The scene highlights the subjective nature of memory, suggesting that memory is constructed and truth is neither absolute nor singular.

“Find out who can be a valuable father. It’s important to disturb rare bloodlines with changelings.”

The Darter advises Nathaniel to construct his own family rather than rely on the sanctity of bloodlines. The comment alludes to The Darter’s own abusive upbringing and foreshadows The Darter’s decision to marry Agnes and be the father of her and Nathaniel’s child. As a father figure to Nathaniel and now his daughter, The Darter represents the ways family can be chosen and built on support and loyalty.

“[A] sacred moment in my life I carry secure within whatever few memories I hold from that time, filed and labelled in that half-completed way. Agnes, with dog. Unlike other memories it has a location and a date.”

Although many of the memories Nathaniel holds of the past are faintly defined, he also retains several memories with sharp precision, such as the evening with Agnes and the dogs in a vacant house. Nathaniel titles his memory as if it were a painting to emphasize how much he cherished that moment. The imagery of Agnes half naked and helping a dog down the stairs symbolizes the thrill of his sexual initiation, and the wild abandon and fulfilling companionship he sought in his lonely youth. The happy memory is complicated when Nathaniel remembers that the girl he so lovingly captured in this memory was also the person he abandoned and neglected.

“I had become a liar not so much to confuse her as to remove the hurt she felt because I kept the inexplicable situation in my life from her—and perhaps from myself as well.”

Nathaniel acknowledges in hindsight that the pain he projected onto Agnes was more accurately his own pain due to his parents’ absence. By having The Darter pretend to be his father, Nathaniel fulfilled a longing to have a stable, if fictional, family. At the same time, he avoided confronting the feelings of abandonment that would haunt him as an adult.

“But it was not The Darter she was drawing, as I thought, but me. Just a youth looking towards something or someone. As if this was what I really was, perhaps would become, someone not intent on knowing himself but preoccupied with others. I recognized it even then as a truth.”

Agnes’s portrait of Nathaniel on the mussel boat captures his habit of avoidance and emotional detachment. For Nathaniel, it was easier to observe the world around him than to confront his own pain and anxieties. Agnes’s drawing highlights how Nathaniel would avoid the schwer or difficulties in his life. As an adult, Nathaniel realizes that his focus on his mother’s past should be a project and not a distraction to understand himself.

“You return to that earlier time armed with the present, and no matter how dark that world was, you do not leave it unlit. You take your adult self with you. It is not to be a reliving, but a rewitnessing.”

Nathaniel describes the subjective nature of memory. He uses the metaphor of light—a motif in the novel—to describe how his present knowledge illuminates the past. He uses the second person “you” to emphasize how memory is always mediated as subjective observations. Witnessing differs from living as it implies a perspective that is distanced from the event. Even with his own memories, Nathaniel accepts that he cannot occupy the past but only retell it.

“I could have entered and roamed within the story of their marriage as easily as I might have within the lives of others who had surrounded me in my youth, who were part of my self-portrait, composed from the way they had caught glimpses of me.”

Nathaniel fondly remembers the Malakites, who symbolized stability and security for him in his youth. Rather than consider his identity as emanating only from himself, Nathaniel acknowledges that the perspectives of others also inform who he is. He applies this composite approach to his investigation of his mother, considering how her life intersected with others to form a multi-faceted portrait.

“The lost sequence in a life, they say, is the thing we always search out.”

Nathaniel is haunted by his parents’ absence during his youth, yet the return of his mother does little to clarify why she left and what she did. Instead, Rose’s return only brings further confusion and unanswered questions. Nathaniel desires to find continuity in his life and connect his past to his present, but he realizes that a clear cause and effect relationship may always be elusive.

“Your name is Nathaniel, not Stitch. I’m not Wren. Wren and Stitch were abandoned. Choose your own life.”

When Rachel meets Nathaniel again as an adult, she rejects their mother’s endearing pet names as false because they were bestowed by the mother who abandoned them. Rather than live in the past, Rachel chooses to define and name herself according to her own decisions rather than those imposed on her. For her, the pet names symbolize their mother’s neglect and betrayal and are not worth keeping. Her injunction to “choose your own life” highlights the multifaceted nature of identity: She advises Nathaniel to build an identity of his own rather than accepting the one his mother chose for him.

“‘What did you do that was so terrible?’ And she would, I think, have said, ‘My sins are various.’”

Nathaniel imagines a conversation with his mother in which Rose addresses the moral ambiguities of her work for intelligence. Aware that she was still a target, Rose had written in her journal that she expected to be found and killed. Although the conversation only takes place in Nathaniel’s mind, Rose’s confession offers a version of his mother where she feels remorse not only for her involvement in the foibe massacres but also for leaving her children.

“But most of the cupboards were empty, as if someone had removed the essential evidence of her life.”

Nathaniel stays two nights in White Paint after his mother’s funeral and finds the home barren of any clues to Rose’s past. Rose’s activities and heroic deeds in intelligence are kept hidden from public knowledge, and even Nathaniel is unaware of who cleaned up the crime scene, organized her funeral, and chose her epitaph. The empty cupboards symbolize the erasure of Rose’s identity and the unknowability of her life. Yet Nathaniel is not left destitute of any understanding or compassion for who his mother was. In the novel’s final scene, Nathaniel hangs Rose’s ironed clothes in the empty cupboard, symbolizing the silhouette of a woman he may never fully know but whose memory should not be forgotten.

“Facts, dates, my official and unofficial research fell away and were replaced by the gradual story, half dreamed, of my mother and Marsh Felon. […] All I had, in reality, was no more than a half-finished verse of an old ballad rather than evidence. But I was a son, parentless, with what was not known to a parentless son, and I could only step into fragments of the story.”

Toward the end of the novel, Nathaniel’s narrative point of view shifts to third-person omniscient to fill in the gaps of Rose’s past. Rather than evidence, Nathaniel relies on speculation and storytelling to describe the imagined love story between Rose and Felon. Although he initially hoped to “clarify the fable” of his family, Nathaniel realizes that he can only add to and hopefully match the lyrics and cadence of his mother’s ballad. He also realizes that it is not only his mother’s life that he needs to understand, but whether he can identify himself as something more than a “parentless son.”