Exposure Read online

  'Yes. Just in case.' He would sigh contentedly, brushing off his sugary fingers on his apron, carrying the papers to the rack by the door. 'It's a job keeping up with it all—with life and death and all that.' As it turned out, it was all just in case of:

  LANGFORD

  On 6 June,

  to Rosalind (née Blunt) and Alistair, a daughter,

  Sophie Rose Catherine.

  His mother's letter had been brief:

  Dear Alistair,

  I saw on a clipping your Uncle Geoff showed me that your wife give birth to a little daughter and I thought why not write and congratulate you and wish you and the little one all the best. I hope you and your wife are truely happy and she is now comfy and all rested up at home. Funny how it makes me remember having you. It's been a long time since we saw each other but I do think of you.

  God bless—

  Mum.

  He never replied. He had thought about it and just not been able to imagine how his life would accommodate his mother, how her ungainly griefs and sentimentality, her vulgar anxieties and resentments (which would play out so obviously in her clumsy syntax) could ever fit into his smooth new reality. It was too late anyway. He drove Rosalind home from hospital. She was wearing the elegant navy blue suit she had purchased for the occasion. Sophie was wrapped in a white cashmere blanket on her lap, and Rosalind's own mother was stern and formidable in the passenger seat, her pearl earrings catching the sun like armour each time she turned to check that all was well.

  When they got home, Alistair went upstairs and threw away the letter, tearing the incriminating evidence of his past self into hundreds of pieces and flushing it down the toilet.

  What an act that had been—so impulsively performed. Had he really known what he was doing?

  He had told Rosalind a version of his childhood, of course; a picturesque version containing intimations of noble struggle against adversity. His mother cleaned and sewed, he told her—'For other people? For a living, you mean?' Rosalind gripped his hand.

  'Yes. She had to.'

  But blessed with innate culture and breeding, in spite of the poverty and widowhood into which Fate had cast her, his mother had also made money translating French poetry and novels, literary ones, not silly romances, long into the night. How fondly he remembered her teaching him French and reciting Shakespeare's sonnets while she mended the rich women's blouses and skirts. And after she had kissed him goodnight she would go to her desk and translate.

  It was all so poignant! He drew tears from his blue-eyed girlfriend with this Cinderella story. He even fed her the line about his father being killed in the war. Somehow this felt like the worst lie of all—perhaps because it was the first he had ever been told: his archetypal he; the charged source of all lies.

  Some of what he had said to Rosalind was true—that he went to a grammar school, not a public school, that he had been bullied for being more interested in Greek than football. But none of the real sordidness was there. He had edited out the boarding-house with its smell of fried eggs and sleep, and there was no mention of the male guests who stayed up drinking and talking with his mother. Talking and drinking, drinking and talking, long into the night, until he couldn't stay awake to listen and worry any longer.

  He saw no need to mention these details at all.

  But, of course, as soon as he had given her this story of himself and the miracle had occurred—the delicate, refined girl, falling in love with him— he could not risk exposure. It was as if her love was maintained by a potion: alter the recipe even slightly and she might wake up and open her beautiful eyes!

  His mother would only have had to speak. She would only have had to sip her sherry and burp, or to use a singular verb with a plural subject, and the whole story would ring false. And people who did elegant translations of Racine did not say 'Scuse my French' if they swore—which they did all the time.

  The absolute impossibility of introducing her was further heightened by his own struggle to be accepted by Rosalind's family. They had held 'high hopes' for Rozzy's marriage, her father had explained, when Alistair and he had had their highly significant first drink together. 'I'm sure you understand what I'm saying,' he said, swirling the brandy in his glass. 'It's just that—as I said—we had very high hopes.'

  'Yes,' Alistair said.

  'Now, I know you're considered to be terribly bright and all that...' Rosalind's father had failed his Oxford entrance exams. He had subsequently developed a philosophy in which 'common sense' and 'decent manners' outranked all other virtues. He derived a great deal of relief from the slights life had dealt him by mocking the 'impracticality' of his brilliant wife—or that of anyone else who might have succeeded where he had failed.'...but one has to be practical,' he said. 'There are certain things Rosalind has been brought up to expect. Clothes, restaurants, holidays. It's all very well to be an intellectual, but—'

  'Yes, I understand. Of course. One has to be practical.'

  'And, not to put too fine a point on it, but who are your people? We don't know anything about them.'

  So, while he sat there in Mr Blunt's study, holding a cigar, which had to him the sublime flavour of acceptance and conventionality, Alistair began the murder of his mother. There was no choice—it was done in self-defence. He gave her lymph cancer and she died shortly before they announced the engagement.

  Six months later, people kissed the bride and said it was a great shame Rosalind and her mother-in-law had never met. They pressed the groom's hand and said how sorry they were that Mrs Langford could not be there on that day of all days ... and Alistair, whose eyes missed nothing, felt sure he saw relief on his new mother-in-law's face as she took a neat forkful of kedgeree.

  He had just four guests at his own wedding, all acceptable friends from Oxford, one of whom was Rosalind's cousin Philip, who had introduced them.

  What he couldn't understand now was why, after the early days of love when, like all couples, they had both been prone to infantile sensitivity, he couldn't simply have admitted his dishonesty and ended it. Surely he could have talked openly to his wife, she could have forgiven him and they could have set about repairing the damage together. Couldn't they?

  But when he thought of the distance, which, for one reason or another, had always been there between himself and Rosalind, he knew it would not have been possible. In the difficult first year of marriage, they had felt this distance painfully whenever it tested the elasticity of their dreams. Suddenly they would be forced to see each other simply as a man and a woman lying in a large bed together, rather than 'powerful husband' and 'devoted wife' in a novel or a glossy advertisement.

  They had quickly learnt to fill the distance with life—with searching for Sophie's hamster or Luke's hockey boot, with rushing into the back pews at the carol service, with ski-trips and dentists, with tearing the clingfilm off the salmon and pouring the Chablis just as cars pulled up for lunch. They had been very, very busy for years.

  As he told himself this, Alistair knew there was more to it. He knew that at times there was a knowing, conspiratorial look in Rosalind's eyes—when someone asked him where he had grown up or where he had gone to school and he replied evasively. On occasion she had too conveniendy spilt her drink, needed help in the kitchen, or remembered a dull anecdote, just when he seemed to have no escape.

  What was he to make of those times? He had made nothing of them. He had blocked them out as one blocks out the dirt on a glass when one is terribly thirsty and—well, the water tastes perfectly good.

  The truth was, he had not been able to bear the idea of even Rosalind—his own wife—knowing the truth about him and his background. It was not because she would have told anyone—she would have been discreet for her own sake as well as his, fearing her mother's disapproval, her sister's glee. He had not been able to tell her because his performance required a globally captive audience, and the idea that her imagination could be roaming outside its boundaries would have thrown him off al
together. He really needed to think she believed him.

  He had begun lying about himself before he met Rosalind, of course—at Oxford. He acquired a reputation for being a man of mystery because, with a tragic air he had adopted in a moment of inspiration, he said he 'loathed discussing Mummy and childhood'. This declamation had been made, of course, in Philip's public-school accent.

  For the first year he felt guilty, but this changed. In the Michaelmas term of his second year, after much delaying on both sides, his mother came to visit him. Afterwards he thought he would never get over the experience and from then on he was able to justify each lie by working himself up on the rarefied surroundings of Oxford, running his fingers over his books and telling himself he had too much to lose. This was pure self-preservation—red in tooth and claw, he thought. In addition to this, he told himself that by excluding her from his life he was protecting her from ridicule. His friends would have taken one look at her and tried generously to assume that she was his old nanny or some other indulged retainer. It had seemed unbearable.

  As he put her on the train at the end of her visit, he felt as though he was locking the cage on a wild animal—only he was not sure if she was the wild animal or his new life was.

  She had arrived on the four o'clock, feeling 'sick as a parrot', wearing a vulgar green headscarf. He noticed immediately that her shoes were very battered. He rushed her away as quickly as he could, saying they could see his room after tea. Philip would be at church by then and John had an economics tutorial late on Thursday afternoons.

  The strange thing was, his need to hide his mother from his friends was coupled with a desire to impress her with them. Ideally, he would have liked her to look through a hole in the wall as he and his chums were witty and incisive together in his room after dinner. He wanted to say: 'See, this is who I am, Mum. This is why I was never any good at home—I needed all this to bring me out.'

  As they climbed the steps to the Victoria tea-rooms, he acknowledged that he was feeling something like anger and that maybe—secretly—he even wanted to intimidate his mother a little. This was the place where Philip always met his parents when they visited. There was nothing like it in Dover. He watched her flinch as they walked in through the chintz and mirrors and raw silk. Yes, he wanted her to know this was how far he had come from her damp kitchen. He saw her eyes widen at the chandelier, the bone china—and, yes, he wanted to sock her in the face with his Lapsang Souchong sophistication. He was sure she didn't know you drank fine China tea without milk.

  But in spite of all this—and at the same time—he wished they had gone somewhere simple together, where she might have been able to smile and speak naturally. Where she might have been his wide-hipped raucous mother with her grin and her intolerance of fools and those big hugs she gave him when he had fixed a tap or put up a shelf after hours of unmanly struggle. She could make him feel so proud—if only it had ever been for something he was genuinely good at! He handed her a menu and suddenly wanted to undo a litde of the damage he had done by using the Victoria tea-rooms against her. 'They have good scones,' he said, 'just normal ones. And nice jam.'

  'Do they? This is very posh, Al.'

  'It's not really, Mum.'

  'It must be ever so dear.'

  'Look, I'm paying so don't worry about that. I told you, I won that essay competition. Five quid. You did get my letter, didn't you?'

  'Yes. That was a turn-up, wasn't it? Well done, Alistair.'

  She had not written to congratulate him and his face reddened with anger at the belated praise now that finally he had it there, withered in his hand.

  'I won against two hundred other people,' he said, disgusted by the brazenness of his desire for her approval. 'Logical positivism. It's an interesting subject, actually,'

  'It sounds ever so complicated. Too clever for me by half. Oh, Al, do you think my clothes are good enough for in here?'

  He sighed. 'No one cares, Mum.' But this had not occurred to him and he glanced around uneasily at the tweed skirts and pearls on the other women. Did she stand out? He knew nothing about the right clothes for women. He had known the headscarf was wrong but, thankfully, she had put that in her bag now. Maybe it would be best to get things moving.

  'What will you have, then, Mum?' he said.

  'Oh, you order me something, love. Only not bread and dripping.'

  'They won't do that here anyway.'

  'Well, I think I'll go to the Ladies.' She put on a mock posh accent for a moment and winked at him. 'Ay shan't be long—Ay must just powder may nose.'

  He winced in case anyone should have heard. He had no appreciation then of how valiant she was being. He had his youth, after all, he had the full potential of his brain to protect him from glib categorization. But, unarmed, she walked the full length of the polished wooden floor, stared at by each of the tables, because it was perfectly obvious—from her brassy hennaed hair to her un-gloved hands—that she was not exactly a lady. She was shaking in spite of her private indignation.

  As she reached the end of the room, Alistair watched her do a big, flashy, showgirl smile as she addressed one of the waitresses and all he could think was: Please, God, let her say 'cloakroom', not 'toilet'.

  Tea was a disaster: they barely spoke about anything other than the food—all of which had struck her as mysterious or too rich and exotic. The cucumber from her sandwich fell into her lap and, not knowing where was the right place to put it, she tucked it into her cardigan pocket and said rather frantically that she could always have it if she got peckish on the train. Alistair became so agitated himself that he spooned a great slop of cream right past his scone and on to his shoe and had to mop it up with his handkerchief. They were like a pair of zoo animals, he thought. His mother rounded it off by apologizing to the waiter for having used the napkins. 'Seems a crime,' she said, as he cleared their plates, 'when they're all beautifully starched and pressed like that.' The young man smiled patronizingly.

  When he had gone, Alistair spoke through gritted teeth: 'Why did you say that about the napkins, Mum? That's what they're there for. You've as much right to use them as anyone.'

  'Yes, love. I know that,' she said absentmindedly.

  It was then that he noticed she had her handbag on her lap and that she was holding something inside it with her right hand. It was her return train ticket. It was with a mixture of genuine sympathy and almost voluptuous martyrdom that he sighed, 'Tired out, are you? I expect you are.'

  And, as he offered her the escape, he felt the full weight of his loneliness crash down. She smiled with obvious relief. 'Oh—well, yes, love. You're not wrong. I'm ever so tired. I was up at five to get the rooms done.'

  'Well, perhaps you'd like to get the earlier train,' he said—and immediately she was looking in her bag for the timetable,

  'You know, I think that might be best. Yes—best get the earlier train.'

  'You don't want to look round my college? See my room?'

  'Next time, love. I'll come again soon. Maybe Ivy and me could make a day of it. A proper jaunt.' She squeezed his arm, but they both knew that this was a fantasy. Of course she never came back.

  What an idiot he had been. They could have gone to a litde cafe and had mugs of tea and sausage rolls or crumpets and he would have heard all about home. He would have loved to hear about home because, hate it as he did, he missed it too. He missed Auntie Ivy and Uncle Geoff and the seafront and the sugary buns at the Igglesdon Square bakery. He missed those rare occasions on which he had helped his mother to understand a bill or some legal document and she said, 'Clever little sod, aren't you?' and the high note of happiness was literally painful in his ears. He shattered with joy.

  And he had heard that Ivy and Geoff's 'real nephew' Martin was staying with them for a few months while he did an apprenticeship with a local craftsman. Alistair was still senselessly in awe of Martin's celebrated carpentry skills and the news had filled him with envy and anxiety. This great hulking favourite would o
bliterate his memory altogether. It was no wonder his mother had not rushed to visit him.

  Throughout Alistair's childhood, Martin had stayed with his uncle and aunt in the school summer holidays. Martin was the older, more muscular boy, who spoke of having half a pint of beer with his dad from time to time and swore he regularly kissed girls. When he was fourteen, Alistair remembered Martin bringing his mother a present. It was a sealion he had carved in oak. She had never been more thrilled and Alistair, who had been saving the big news all week, for the first day of the summer holidays, said nothing about his history-exam result, which was the best his school had ever seen.

  Why was it that even when he was an Oxford scholar he was still crushed when he was shown a 'marvellous' table or a 'smashing' bookcase that his old pal Martin had made?

  He saw his mother on to the earlier train and walked back to his college. Although he knew his memory might be exaggerating to emphasize the point, when he remembered it now, he was sure he had sat in the college dining room at a table of strangers that evening. Philip and John and the others were at a dining society for Old Etonians.

  When Luke was born, Alistair half wondered if he would hear from his mother again, but there was silence. She had given up. And he continued the business of forgetting her and the boarding-house and Dover.

  The sound of the doorbell reached into his mind as an alarm clock reaches into a deep sleep, at first existing only as a sound, then acquiring significance. Alistair woke to the present moment, stood up and opened the door to find his son standing there.

  'Dad?' Luke said. His son looked scared and Alistair remembered he had been crying and that his face probably showed signs of it. He turned away quickly, wiping his eyes, and Luke followed him towards the kitchen.