Exposure (41 page)

It did not give her pleasure to be dishonest. She had always known that certain things Alistair told her didn't ring true, or didn't contain the whole story—of course she had. Not that she had doubted for a moment that his mother had died of lymph cancer, but it had been peculiar that there was not
one
other family member to meet and not
one
friend in existence from before his Oxford days. And he was incapable of talking about his father: there was only the bald fact of his death. It was as if Alistair knew nothing about him.

But Rosalind was in love, and, improbable matchmaker though he was, dry, sarcastic Alan Campbell had spoken so highly of Alistair and his professional potential that her parents were able to contemplate the idea of a marriage. So long as his past went consistently unmentioned, he might redeem his present with his future. Under these unspoken conditions, he began to be invited round for lunch or drinks.

Rosalind saw that Alistair's quick brain had propelled him into a world whose rules she had never even defined as rules before. Just as his mind made her feel authenticated and safe from exposure to the intellectual ridicule she constantly feared, she made sure to offer him what little she had in return. She took great care slowly to lift the right spoon or fork at dinner so that he could imitate her. She said, 'Why don't I take your arm?' or 'Why don't you help me to put on my coat?', or, 'Look at me, barging ahead, so you can't even
open the door for me!
' at all the right moments. She took great trouble with her appearance and saw what good it did him to walk into a party with her on his arm.

But she also began the long habit of pretending to Alistair that she did not notice the gaps in his account of himself. Of course, it had always preoccupied her that he did not have any photographs of his 'beloved' mother or, in turn, that his mother did not appear to have left him any of her possessions. Rosalind was acutely aware that, after those first heartbreaking descriptions of his mother's work, Alistair never told a single anecdote from childhood. It was as if he had no past and she conspired with him to maintain this illusion, in public and in private, because she understood the agony of a sense of inadequacy, even if she did not understand its source in him. This subtle transformation of sympathy into deception was Rosalind's first act of love.

Now she looked down at the frightened face in the newspaper cutting. The weak, frightened,
stupid
face. Alistair had never failed her before, and she had never failed him. This was what love was: it was not failing each other. This was what they had silently agreed. And between them, with each other's help, they had never said or done anything wrong in front of anyone—even each other.

But now in her hands was a flash-lit portrait of failure: this photograph, taken by an unthinking stranger. How much better it would have been not to know about Alistair and Karen Jennings! And if only Ivy Gilbert had not had an attack of sentimentality about a son who had not contacted his mother for almost forty years, a son who had been heartless enough to tell everyone his mother was already dead! She would rather have lived in ignorance of these facts.

Yes
, she answered the Sophie in her mind,
more
dishonesty. So what? Wasn't it better than this? After all, for a great many years dishonesty had looked like health and happiness, like life. And honesty? Honesty looked like her husbands shamefaced picture in the paper, like her daughter's starved body, like death.

Her lip curled. The fear on Alistair's face was grotesque: it was revoltingly intimate, like the smells you would never dream of mentioning, the sounds you pretended not to have heard. She began to cry. She felt contaminated. She pushed the cuttings safely back under the mattress because she could not stand the sight of her husband's fear any more.

Alistair put down the receiver in the hall. 'Well, it's all done now,' he told Rosalind. 'I've arranged for the industrial cleaners to go in tomorrow afternoon. I left a box of things there that might interest Ivy and Geoff. I'll just send them the keys,' he said. 'It's just so much simpler that way.'

The rapid aversion of his face after he had said this made it obvious to her that he did not want to explain himself. He had said he might see Ivy Gilbert in person, and Rosalind thought he should, out of respect for someone who had cared enough to call and announce his mother's death. But he had decided against it. Rosalind sighed inaudibly and pushed the hair off her forehead.

Alistair picked up the envelope containing Mr Wilson's 'breakdown', which she had put beside him while he talked on the phone. 'Very efficient, these estate agents,' he said, holding up the letter. He was in the habit of holding things up as proof these days—cups, books, his glasses, whatever he had referred to abstractly in speech.

'Good. I'm glad,' Rosalind said. She was carrying a laundry-bag stuffed with clothes. She had it propped on her hip the way she had carried Luke and Sophie when they were little. She began to climb the stairs.

'Goodness, look at all that. Has that son of ours got you doing all his washing? Can't the cleaner do it?' Alistair said.

She turned and furrowed her brow 'I've done our washing for years, Alistair. It's a total waste of money having Lani stay an extra hour just for two people's washing. She irons your shirts, of course. That's the hard part. I just bung it in the machine and flick the switch.'

'Oh, I see.'

Hadn't he heard her reduce the quality of her actions to mere mechanics on some other occasion only recently? This troubled him for a moment. But, as ever, he was profoundly struck by how unspoilt she was. He had made a lot of money, but somehow she had never treated it as hers, never indulged herself. She made her clothes last; she still wore the watch she had been given for her twenty-first birthday. He wished he could give her a present—but of course it would look like guilt rather than a genuine desire to see her smile about something—which, in fact, it was. He would have liked to buy her the silk jacket she had admired one afternoon a couple of months ago as they walked back from a restaurant. They had eaten lunch together—just the two of them, which was rare—and as they caught each other's eye over the menu, a silent acknowledgement had passed between them. It was a whisper, a nascent anticipation of peace to come. Stretched out ahead of them was a series of quiet lunches, discreetly luminous as a string of pearls. What could be so bad about getting old if it was going to be like that?

Retirement could seem to Alistair to be a kind of annihilation. He was liable to bouts of panic, to feeling a landslide of his identity. 'My occupation gone!' he would say to himself, only half believing that he was being melodramatic. But that afternoon Rosalind's calm gaze had penetrated the depths of his fears. Perhaps it really was for the first time that he imagined they would read the papers after breakfast, that she would prune the roses, that he would collect the Venetian glass he had always admired in pictures. One of them would say, 'Shall we take our books out on to the terrace and just sit and read for a while?'

'Yes, what a lovely idea. Shall I bring some tea? We can look at all our letters after lunch, can't we?'

Perhaps these gentle routines really would soak up the frantic significance of his dashing from court to chambers; perhaps they would blossom it all out in a garden of softer colours.

'Oh, lucky you!' Rosalind said, pointing at the menu. 'They've got Tarte Tatin, darling—your passion.'

'Aha!' he answered, thinking he really was very lucky indeed.

Yes, he thought. Her ordered mind, in which everything was clean and folded and sprinkled with lavender water, would steer him quietly towards ... sleep. There would be no annihilation.
This
was love, not the eroticized battle of intellects which he had dreamed of in secret, which had excited him dangerously when he was up against a woman in court. Love was bringing out a jumper, an extra cushion, sweetly remembering a favourite dish. He felt wise and happy that afternoon.

The jacket was still there—he had driven past the shop with Luke. She would have looked beautiful in it: the dark pink would have brought out the elegant pallor of her complexion. Why had he not rushed in and bought it for her straight away, when she stood there smiling at it after lunch? Why hadn't he ever done that kind of thing impulsively, he wondered.

It occurred to Alistair that this last sequence of thoughts was probably typical of the adulterous husband: choosing from a range of palatable remorse options, he had decided to feel he had not bought his wife enough presents.

Rosalind had noticed he was doing the odd sentimental expression he had developed recently and she averted her eyes, faintly disgusted.

'Have you heard from Sophie?' he asked quickly.

She jogged the laundry-bag as though it had wriggled away from her. 'Um ... yes. I was going to tell you about it,' she said.

'Oh? What's happened?'

She saw how white his face had gone and she knew he imagined Sophie had hurt herself. 'No, it's nothing like that,' she said. 'Don't worry.'

'Thank God. What, then?'

'She's just gone away, that's all.'

'Gone away?'

Rosalind came back down the stairs so that she was level with him. She put down the laundry-bag. 'Yes. She's got herself a teaching job.'

'A
teaching job?
What?'

'Yes, teaching English.'

'But she's a journalist. She's got a job at the
Telegraph,
for goodness'...' He spoke abruptly, without thinking, jogged by his paternal pride, which was as sure in him as the patellar reflex. As soon as a stranger exerted the slightest pressure at the relevant point, it had him boasting about his clever daughter: 'Yes, I have. One of each,' he would explain, 'thirty and twenty-eight. My daughter—she's the eldest—she works for um ... for the
Telegraph?
' (This odd questioning emphasis had first been added to this setpiece to imply modesty, a sense of proportion that recognized there were people in the world who had never heard of the
Telegraph.
But the formula was repeated out of pride, as he soon discovered there was no other reaction available to the listener, who was invariably English, than a stressed 'Yes, of
course -
the
Telegraph',
which might refer to his odd tone—or might be an expression of awe.)

'Yes, Sophie's done tremendously well,' he would say. 'Of course, she's the real academic of the family.' He was so starry-eyed when he spoke about her.

'Well,' Rosalind said, 'I'm afraid she's given up her job.'

'But her flat. Her
job.
Her
flat,
' he said senselessly. 'She just bought that sweet place in Chiswick. What do you mean she's gone away? Where?'

'Ghana. She's gone to Ghana to teach English.' Rosalind found she was enjoying telling Alistair this. She took in the shock on his face. Was this the power Sophie had enjoyed as a teenager? She could see its appeal. She shrugged casually saying, 'Yes. She wrote and told me,' knowing this hidden intimacy between herself and her daughter would hurt him.

'She wrote you a letter?'

'Yes. I only read it yesterday. It had been sitting there for a while—I'm not sure how long, but she said she'd send an address when she was settled.'

'I don't understand,' Alistair said.

'Well, there isn't much to understand, is there?'

'But I thought she liked her job. She did so well to get it. She's worked so hard. And the flat—that was a big landmark.'

'She wasn't
happy,
Alistair. You know that.'

His shoulders sank. His eyelids lowered a little. 'I do know that. Of course I do,' he said quietly. Then he rubbed a hand over his face. 'Oh, God, is this all my fault?'

Suddenly Rosalind felt very angry. She stood up and lifted the washing on to her hip so violently that a balled-up pair of socks bounced out of the top of the bag and rolled away. 'Alistair, you're not the reason we all breathe, you know. People have all got their own lives independently of
you,
' she said.

He watched her, amazed, as she climbed the stairs. Then he bent down and picked up the socks where they had stopped by the umbrella stand.

 

Luke took a bag of shopping down the side passage to the bottom of the garden. In his numbed state he had wandered about the local delicatessen picking up curious food for Goran and Mila: overripe bananas and hot roast chicken, rye bread and a packet of butter, some potent-looking Italian cheese and four litde chocolate truffles wrapped in foil and cellophane. He had no idea what the Serbian palate preferred. He had picked up baked beans and thought himself incredibly unimaginative. It had occurred to him that some religions didn't let people eat certain things—he knew Jews weren't allowed to eat bacon and some Indian people weren't allowed to eat beef (or was it the other way round?) but he was pretty sure no one cared about chickens. He had assumed Goran and Mila would be deeply religious in one way or another, as people who got into wars usually were.

He went down the side passage and knocked on the annexe door. There was a scuffling sound followed by dead silence.

'It's Luke again,' he said softly. There was more scuffling, uninhibited this time.

'Please come in,' Goran called.

He pushed open the door. 'I'm so sorry if I scared you. We must work out a signal, mustn't we? What about three knocks, then two short ones?' He tried this out on the picnic table.

'OK,' Goran said, and smiled, wondering if Luke thought he was in a spy novel. He didn't care if it was a game to this English boy, though—they needed him. And he was kind and it looked like he had brought them some more food. Goran stretched. He couldn't help staring at the plastic bag.

'Um—I got you this,' Luke said. 'It's nothing special but it should fill you up again.'

'Thank you,' Goran said, reaching out for it, 'you are very kind to us.'

They all sat down and Luke smoked a cigarette and watched while the other two ate. 'Were you all right on the sofa?' He picked up one of the cushions he had brought them. They were from the old playroom and they had Disney characters on them. 'Donald Duck didn't keep you awake quacking all night?'