Exposure

by Helen Dunmore

  He’s in prison. They don’t pick oakum in prisons any more, or make them work treadmills. It’s a soft life, compared to Oscar’s. ‘Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in style …’ They don’t make them wear uniforms with big arrows on them any more, either, so that people can spit on them on station platforms when they are transferred from prison to prison.

  Giles turns his head on the hospital pillow. I am mean, repellent and lacking in style. I look in the mirror and see that I am hideous. But I am not the one in prison. I have nurses, and a soft bed. They will look after me as I sink down into death, and help me not to suffer any more than I have to.

  No, I’m not like Julian Clowde. I’m worse.

  ‘I should like to make my will,’ says Giles to Sister, the next morning. ‘I want to see a solicitor.’

  ‘Is there a family solicitor I could telephone?’

  ‘Ross and Witherside. Holborn. They’re in the book. Ask for Ross.’

  ‘I’ll give them a ring now.’

  ‘I’ll need my pen, and writing paper. I must make some notes before he comes. And something to lean on. An envelope. I must have an envelope.’

  He starts to cough. His chest heaves, thick with disease. He can’t get his breath.

  ‘Gently, Mr Holloway. Let me prop you up a little more.’

  ‘Can’t—’

  ‘It’s all right. Breathe in slowly, through the mask.’

  Better now. A lifeline. He won’t drown this time. Cast up on the bed, soaked in sweat. Sister holds the mask to his face. Hiss of oxygen and the cylinder squatting there, making him safe. He keeps going.

  ‘I’m just going to give you an injection,’ says another voice, a male voice this time. A doctor. Not Anstruther.

  The windows are mauve, because another day is going. The day went so fast. One minute it was morning and now it’s almost dark. He must have been asleep for a long time. He feels better. The mask has been tidied away, but the oxygen cylinder is by his bed, waiting for him to need it. He panicked, that’s all it was. There was never any question of drowning.

  Sister stands in the doorway, dressed in her cape. ‘You’ve had a good sleep,’ she says. ‘I’m going off duty now. Sister Donnelly’s on tonight.’

  He likes Sister Donnelly. Euphoric, he loves them all. What the hell was in that injection?

  ‘Oh, and you’ve got a visitor. Do you feel up to it?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  Simon, he thinks crazily. Simon, out of prison and twenty again. My Simon. My boy.

  ‘He said his name was Clowde. Julian Clowde. A silver-haired gentleman.’

  She’s impressed. People always are. She’ll go off duty and leave me with that devil.

  ‘I don’t want to see him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Her voice humours him. ‘It might do you good to have some company.’

  He holds her eyes. ‘No. Don’t let him in.’

  Her face changes. She nods, a quick, professional nod, and turns, to find Julian Clowde standing behind her, gleaming under the light. Her cape seems to spread, to widen, blocking the doorway.

  ‘My patient is tired,’ she says. ‘He isn’t well enough for visitors today.’

  ‘I’ll only stay a few minutes.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t allow it.’

  ‘My dear lady …’ he protests smoothly, and makes as if to push past her, but years of lifting and carrying have made Sister strong. Giles sees her put out a hand, flat against Clowde’s chest, stalling him.

  ‘I won’t have my patient disturbed,’ she says, and then, raising her voice, ‘Nurse Davies! I want you here a moment.’

  But Clowde has already stepped back. He’s a head taller than Sister, but he won’t want a row. He never does. That’s the genius of the man. When things might go against him, suddenly Julian Clowde isn’t there. He melts away, never implicated. Not once seen to be baffled or confounded, in all the long years that Giles has known him. He has already stepped back, as if nothing was ever further from his mind than bullying his way to Giles’s bedside. He sweeps a hand over his hair.

  ‘Another time, then,’ he says, his voice light, as if it was all nothing. A mere bagatelle. That’s one of Julian’s favourite phrases. Sister will doubt herself, watching that elegant, silver-haired figure walk off down the corridor.

  She watches him out of sight, then comes into Giles’s room, shutting the door behind her. ‘I’m going to leave instructions that no visitors are to be admitted. They must send up their names and you can decide if you want to see them.’

  She understands. She hasn’t been fooled, unlike all those others whom Julian Clowde has fooled over the years. The silver hair cut no ice with Sister. She saw that Giles was afraid. She’d know about fear; yes, she would recognise it.

  Giles nods. He wants to thank her but doesn’t trust his voice. He is so damned weak. But he must tell her that he’s got to see a solicitor now. Ross or anyone else, it doesn’t matter, as long as they can come straight away. Before they do, he must write a letter. Get Sister Donnelly to give him more oxygen, and anything else she’s got that will keep a pen moving in his hand for long enough to finish his letter.

  26

  Points of Desperation

  Lily in the evening, by the sea-coal fire, with the children asleep upstairs. Or so she thinks. They can be silent when they want. Paul and Sally sit on Paul’s bed up in the attic, wrapped in blankets like Indian braves, talking in voices which don’t reach beyond each other’s ears. They sit like this most nights. Bridget’s asleep, Mum’s downstairs, and they are free. They talk about Dad, and what’s going to happen to him. They talk about Mum, and what she’ll do without Dad. They never reach an answer.

  ‘I hate those books where there’s a mystery but the children solve it and they all go home for tea.’

  ‘They’re rubbish.’

  ‘Do you think the people who write them know they’re rubbish?’

  ‘Why should they care? They just want to finish their books off.’

  ‘If Dad did get out of prison – just suppose, I know it’s not going to happen – do you think he’d get his job back?’

  ‘They’re not going to let someone who’s been in prison work for the government.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ agrees Sally quickly.

  It has been a long day. Lily’s day off. She walked to the station, took the branch line and then changed to the London train. She’s used to the journey now. She didn’t bring a book, or buy a newspaper. She sat with her hands in her lap and looked out of the window. She might have been going up to town for a day’s shopping.

  When she got home again, the children were waiting. Bridget jumped round her, over-excited. She’d told Bridget that she was going up to see the people who were renting their house. There were some things that needed sorting out. The elder two knew she’d been to the prison. They were wary and knew better than to ask questions in front of their little sister.

  ‘Dad was well,’ she said to them later, when Bridget had gone to bed. ‘He sent you all his love.’

  Sally’s eyes darkened. She doesn’t believe a word I say, thought Lily. She ought not to look like that, at her age.

  At last she’s alone. Every moment of the visit is tightly rolled up inside her. Now she can spread it out, and pore over it.

  Simon was pale. ‘It’s the indoor life,’ he said when she asked him if he was well. ‘How are the children?’

  She told him about Paul’s visit to the grammar school where he’d be going in September. He’d liked the science labs.

  ‘Good,’ said Simon. ‘Do you think it’s a decent place, Lily?’

  ‘It has a very good reputation.’

  ‘He’s a clever boy, he’ll do well,’ said Simon, as if he were talking about someone else’s son.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lily.

  ‘Is there a proper lock on the front door?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The door of
the cottage. Could someone get in round the back? Have the doors got good locks?’

  ‘I don’t know. They look all right. I haven’t really noticed, it’s so quiet down there—’

  ‘Get a locksmith.’

  She held his gaze. ‘I will.’

  He mustn’t be worrying about things like that. His fingers were beating on the table in nervous rhythm. She wondered what song he was marking out. He loved those old music-hall songs, but when he sang them to her they meant nothing. She thought the words silly, though she never said so. He whistled while he worked on Paul’s train set. Something was always going wrong. A buckled rail or a tender that wouldn’t couple. Paul was almost as good as his father now, when it came to working out where the problem lay. Now the train set was put away in the loft of their old house, and Paul might be too old for it before they went back.

  Simon made her feel safe. They were safe together. When they met each other’s gaze over the heads of their children, what they felt was for them alone. No one else could touch it. Now she was cut loose, and the children too. Dr Wiseman had looked round their house in Muswell Hill and thought only of what would suit his own family. He hadn’t cared tuppence about the Callingtons. Why should he?

  All over Berlin, thousands of deserted apartments were taken over by new inhabitants. Soon it was as if the new people had lived there for ever. Those who’d gone weren’t missed. Good riddance to them: let them go to the East or wherever it was that they’d gone. That was for the government to deal with.

  Dr Wiseman comes from America. Of course he puts his own family first, it’s only natural, and if you didn’t have his rent you wouldn’t be able to pay the mortgage. You’d have to sell the house.

  The lock on the back door in Muswell Hill was so weak that a child could push it open. It had never bothered them, until the day the police came.

  ‘There are bolts on the cottage doors, front and back, as well as the locks,’ she said. ‘They’re rusty but if I oiled them they’d work.’

  Simon glanced quickly at the warder on his left, then back to her. She understood that there was something he had to tell her, but they were listening. She tensed, and gave him an almost imperceptible nod, to let him know that she was listening too.

  ‘I wish I’d worked harder in French lessons at school,’ he said, out of nowhere. She frowned, to show she hadn’t got it. ‘Must be wonderful’, he went on, looking at her, ‘to be able to say whatever you like in another language. I end up talking absolute rubbish.’

  She had it now. He was telling her that he would try to say something to her in French. His French wasn’t good, and besides the warders wouldn’t allow them to talk in a foreign language. But if he were quick, something could be said.

  ‘I’m used to it,’ she said. ‘You should have heard what the children used to come out with, at school.’

  He nodded. He knew she’d understood. ‘I like that scarf you’re wearing,’ he said conversationally. ‘It’s new, isn’t it? It looks like a French design. A Monsieur Nuage …’

  The warder glanced at him, looked away again. He was a decent man and didn’t like sitting staring at man and wife.

  She sat silent, willing herself. Her brain whirred and caught. The words had meaning because they were not words, but a name.

  Mr Cloud …

  She’d got it. Julian Clowde. It was something about him.

  ‘Yes, it’s pretty, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very. He’s such a good designer. A master designer.’

  Now she had it. She could touch the words.

  ‘But they’re temperamental, those types,’ went on Simon. ‘You have to be careful not to upset them. It’s the artistic temperament. I used to know another designer like him – not as senior, but still pretty good. The pressure got to him, though. He started drinking and then he lost his touch.’

  ‘I think I know the one you mean.’

  ‘Yes. The problem is that these chaps have regular customers, and customers like that want new stuff all the time. They get impatient.’

  ‘I suppose the designs become well known.’

  ‘Sometimes, although the designers don’t want the limelight. They’re happy to do the work and let others take the credit.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Lily. The warder on Simon’s left wasn’t happy. He was wondering what the hell they were going on about. They hadn’t much time now.

  ‘Tricky lot, these artistic types,’ said Simon. His eyes were points of desperation. Did she follow him?

  ‘I count myself lucky that you haven’t got an artistic bone in your body,’ she said, and although he didn’t smile, for the first time his face warmed and lightened. He had understood her. He knew that she had understood him.

  ‘Where did you buy your scarf?’

  ‘Oh, Liberty’s. They’re pricey, but you can be sure you’re getting the real thing.’

  ‘You’d never buy anything from a door-to-door salesman, would you?’

  ‘I’d shut the door in his face.’

  ‘You shouldn’t open the door, Lil. Not even if they’re selling high-quality stuff like Monsieur Nuage.’

  ‘I shan’t.’

  He wanted to give her a shotgun, a tank, a machine gun. He wanted to weep because she’d understood him. How had that happened? But he knew, really. He’d always known what it was that set Lily apart, even when she wanted so much not to be. Lily had lived in fear before she knew why she was afraid. She’d grown up knowing that people hated her. Perfectly ordinary people, the kind of adults who ought to be helping her to cross the road, hated Lily and wanted her gone. That was the climate of her childhood. It was the rain that fell on her every time she went out of that apartment she rarely talked about, into the streets of Berlin.

  ‘I almost forgot,’ he went on. ‘You know those leather gloves I lost? I think they must have fallen behind the children’s wellingtons. Could you have a look?’

  He’d been right. He knew it now for certain. Lily had taken the file. He was sure of it when she gave him again that tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I should have told you. I found them and put them away.’

  That’s my girl, he thought. You found them and put them away. He has never known Lily do any job other than thoroughly. Monsieur Nuage can whistle for it now. But he knows, too. That bastard knows.

  ‘Remember,’ he said. ‘Keep the doors locked.’

  The fire is slumping into red ash. Lily will let it die down now. She’ll put on the kettle for her hot-water bottle, then go out to the privy. It’s a windy night. Giles Holloway, Julian Clowde. There are others, no doubt. They will be holding their breath, waiting for Simon to go down and so release them all. It will all be pinned on Simon. That’s what they want.

  She is the only one who knows where the briefcase is. She wonders how long it will take for it to dissolve into the earth. Probably the brass fittings will remain and be identifiable. Even if the Wiseman children were to play in the copse, it’s very unlikely that they would ever find it.

  Suddenly it comes to her that she won’t go out to the privy tonight. All that darkness seems to be bulging against the back door. She’ll use the chamber pot.

  Lily gets up. In a box on the top kitchen shelf there are some odds and ends from Simon’s toolbox. It was Paul who’d thought of bringing them: ‘We’re bound to need these, Mum.’

  How sensible he was. A hammer, a couple of screwdrivers, sandpaper, a can of oil, a paper bag of hooks and nails. Lily gets the sandpaper, the oil and the rag. She’d tried to put the bolts across earlier, and given up because they were too stiff. Rusted in. She could have asked Paul to oil them. He’d have been glad to do it, but she didn’t want to alarm the children.

  Now, Lily fetches a kitchen chair and props it by the back door. As the wind gusts it brings the noise of the sea. She wouldn’t hear anything if someone were moving about in the garden tonight. Panic prickles at her neck. She climbs up, and directs the nozzle of th
e oilcan into the top bolt. There’s another at the bottom. Mrs Woolley has told her that years ago this was a coastguard’s cottage, and smugglers round this way had guns: ‘So did the coastguard, mind, in these out-of-the-way places.’

  There’s a lot of rust. Lily works away at it with the oily rag. It would be easier to do this by daylight, with the door standing open, but she can’t leave it now. She twists the sandpaper, and flakes of rust loosen. After a while, the bolt eases.

  Lily treats all the bolts, top and bottom on both doors, then slides them home. In the hearth there are two pokers: the stout everyday one, blackened with soot, and a slim, whippety brass poker that looks as if it belongs to a fire-set. Lily pauses, then picks up the brass poker and puts it behind the front door. She does this quickly, ashamed of herself.

  The children will notice the bolts, unless she’s up before them. She’ll explain that out in quiet country places, people do bolt their doors. She isn’t sure that Paul will be fooled. She has seen his eyes on her. He knows that she visited Dad in prison today. Neither he nor Sally asked questions beyond – once Bridget was safely out of the room – ‘Did you give Dad our love?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course I did. And Dad sent his love back.’

  Later, she said to Bridget, ‘Dad loved the drawing you did for him. I sent it with my letter.’

  ‘Did he put it up in his cabin in his ship?’

  ‘Yes, straight away, he said.’

  She saw Paul and Sally exchange glances. Just before Lily left Simon had said, ‘Tell the children—’ But nothing more. She couldn’t bring herself to make up any further message for them. It was all right to say that he sent his love. That wasn’t a lie, even if Simon hadn’t spoken.

  The doors are safe now. I shan’t go to bed tonight, I’ll stay down here by the fire. And then, if anything happens …

  Lily brings down her pillow and a blanket and curls herself into the armchair. Now that the light is off, there’s a faint glow of red in the hearth. The cottage grows cold quickly. You can’t keep warmth in it. Lily drowses, starts awake, drowses again. The wind is dying down. Good, that means she’ll be able to hear footsteps if anyone comes. But would she hear anything? The earth is so soft – deep and soft – good for burying things …