Exposure

by Talitha Stevenson

  It had been Philip who suggested it in the first place: 'Why don't you ask her if she wants to be shown round?'

  'Shown round?'

  'Yes.'

  'Is that OK?'

  'What d'you mean?'

  'I mean, wouldn't she think it was forward or something?'

  'She's not as prim as she looks—I hope. Her mum's a scream anyway. She must have inherited some of it.' Philip elbowed Alistair in the ribs but he couldn't maintain the joke, faced with Alistair's frightened expression. 'It's perfectly acceptable to ask a girl something like that,' he said.

  'Really?'

  Rosalind was standing a little way off with a girl she had been to school with. Two nervous girls under a litde galaxy of fairy-lights strung up in a tree. Was there anything less approachable?

  'Come on, I'll distract the other one—she won't remember who I am but we won't let that matter.'

  Somehow Alistair asked and somehow she accepted. It was an agonizing few moments, but Rosalind was unsophisticated enough to make it obvious that she was pleased, and this encouraged Alistair. He noticed the schoolfriend grin and raise her eyebrows, and saw Rosalind return a faint smile.

  They walked away together towards the river where couples were going out in punts, the girls sitting on rugs, tilting their heads to look up at the sky as if they were drawn to do it by some irresistible romantic force. Everyone was putting on a beautiful show.

  'You know, I'm sure Philip's never met Veronica,' Rosalind said, as they walked over a little footbridge. Philip had rushed up to the girl with his arms open wide and told her he'd missed her. Alistair looked at Rosalind and wondered if she was going to laugh about it, but instead, she visibly gathered the implication of Philip's pretence and blushed. She looked away towards the river, pulled her glove on more tightly. 'It's very beautiful, isn't it? The trees, I mean ... with all the little lights,' she said.

  He was impressed by her. He respected her capacity to regain her composure. She smiled at him as they got into the punt, and as he watched her smooth out her dress beneath her, he thought she was the neatest and most ordered person he could imagine. The river glistened and rocked the boat as they moved out into it. What would it be like to be around that neatness, to feel reassured by the action of those elegant hands? She was the opposite of his humiliating rehearsals in front of the mirror: Alistair smoking a cigarette, Alistair drinking a toast, Alistair reading a newspaper and looking up as someone brought him a cup of coffee in his club. The scenes he played out! She was the proof that he was nowhere near fooling anyone. She had been born into it all. She had lived the life he was piecing together from talks with Philip—of Sunday lunches followed by walks in Wellington boots, the opera at Glyndebourne in summer, drinks parties on crisp rainy evenings in London, quiet talks with your father over a glass of port. When he imagined Rosalind's life, he often forgot to include the fact that she was a girl. Sometimes this meant that as he sent her out into the dream a detail jarred. He would see her suddenly, and it made him feel oddly disappointed, so that he turned to dreaming about Philip's life instead, with which he could more closely identify, rather than wondering what Rosalind's might be like.

  She did not have Philip's custodial air but she had his deeply impressive way of not being at all surprised that something delicious was waiting for her, so that when they got back from their punting she greeted a table covered with bottles of champagne, scattered with flowers, with a simple 'How nice to come back to,' and a quick smile. He wondered if he was in love already.

  They had not talked about much as they punted along, past the other couples, sometimes close enough for Alistair to be embarrassed to hear the same male speech, 'And that's Magdalen Tower where they have the singing on May Day,' and so on. Mostly he had just told her about the different colleges and received the incredible reassurance of her nods and smiles. She seemed fascinated. She was so unlike the girls from Dover Grammar, who rolled their eyes if you 'harped on'. They thought he was dull and the books with which he had scrupulously characterized himself (often trying three different tides under his arm before he left the house) had made him unpopular with them. Books were a self-fulfilling prophecy—he saw that now.

  For the first time, though, at Oxford, he had felt respected—because he was a scholar and because he spoke well in debates at the Union. But he knew that academic respect was as far as it went. He saw that the others felt they couldn't invite him for weekends at home, for holidays in the summer. They changed the subject, they avoided the issue. With his terrible capacity to accept the worst in human nature, he quietly acknowledged this and would never have suggested they include him. He understood; he even sympathized with them. He imagined they felt he did not 'know how to behave'—they said it often enough of other people. He would have hated to embarrass them or the good, highly cultured, loving parents he was certain they all had.

  In fact, Philip was responsible for the situation. He was always tortured with concern that Alistair would not have enough money for holidays or even train fares for weekends away and that he would be humiliated by offers of loans. He made careful prior warnings to the others to stay off the subject of holidays or parties. So the combination of Philip's tact and Alistair's bleak and rigid view of humanity meant his life was confined to term-times and university gossip. When Michael and Sam started talking about people they knew in London or who was going where for Christmas, he would look away and wait quietly. He tried not to think about going home.

  This habit, this hard-learnt ability to wait, offstage, philosophically observing other people's big performances, was what accounted for the sense of recognition between Alistair and Rosalind—even though they had come from different worlds. It's possible that the strongest connections between people are generated like this, by the odd coincidence of similar emotional histories, no matter how different the events that brought those emotions into being. They provided a neat solution for each other. He felt authenticated by Rosalind. Her conventional prettiness and the unfakeable accuracy of her good manners instantly included him in the world of colour that flared up so threateningly in his path each summer when the balls were on. He felt himself very discreetly let in—or, at least, that was how he interpreted it when Michael Richardson leant towards his ear and said, 'I didn't know you knew Rosalind Blunt. Lucky man. Lovely-looking girl.'

  Rosalind thought Alistair was clever—obviously, indisputably clever. She noticed how his friends' eyes flashed to him when they told a joke or quoted something, to see if he approved. They said, 'Ask Al,' if something needed to be settled in a conversation.

  They were both attracted to what the other brought to a crowded room. They did not think about being alone together. These were short-sighted, powerful reasons for vulnerable people to fall in love.

  They stood near the punts, holding the new glasses of champagne. He said, 'Do you want to dance?'

  She glanced at him and smiled, then lowered her eyes. With a sickening sense of dread he wondered if he had done something wrong and embarrassed himself. His mouth went dry. He thought he would rather break his leg, lose a finger, than embarrass himself in front of this girl. The abrupt violence of his imagination shocked him and he let his eyes close for a second as if to contain it. He must control himself.

  'Maybe we should have a drink with the others for a bit?' Rosalind said.

  'Yes—yes, of course. Sorry. Of course.'

  At once the music seemed unbearably false, sinister as the hum of wasps, and the animal purpose behind all the ribbons and streamers and starched white shirts sweated through the artifice. This girl was too good for him. Who cared about the high esteem you were held in at the Ethical Debating Society if you did not 'know how to behave'?

  And then she put her hand very gently, just for a second, on his arm—or his sleeve, really, the pressure was too light to make contact with his skin—and said, 'We could chat with them for a while and then we can ask if they'd like to dance too.'

  Ins
tinctively, he did not tell his mother about Rosalind when he went home after his finals. Not that there was much to tell: just a week after that night she had gone away for several months, first on holiday with her parents and then on a French course, staying with an aunt in Lyon. She had promised to send a postcard. Back in the damp hallway in Dover, with the cooked-cabbage smell and the snoring from room three, he thought he had been insane to think she could be a part of his life. That shining girl—here.

  'D'you want scrambled or fried?' his mother said. She was doing the breakfasts. There were five staying.

  'Fried,' he said, loading all his disappointment into that one word.

  She moved over to the fridge for the eggs, her slippers flapping on the lino. 'God—what's the matter with you? Don't have them if you're not hungry—no point wasting it.'

  'No—I am hungry, Mum,' he said. 'I'm really hungry.'

  'I mean, I don't know what you're used to now. Cereal probably. Orange juice.' She almost shuddered.

  'No. I want the eggs. I really want the eggs,' he told her.

  She had decided they didn't eat proper English breakfast at university and that he had developed a hatred of this staple part of his upbringing. No amount of reassurance would convince her—particularly since he had come home underweight after the stresses of his finals.

  She did eggs fried, scrambled, boiled or poached. An American man had once made the mistake of asking for an omelette. Bacon, kippers, sausage, tomato, mushrooms, he recited to himself. Tea, coffee, milk, sugar. Staring at the pattern on the plastic tablecloth, tracing his finger over it, he remembered that he was the person who had written the answer to question 14a in the jurisprudence paper, and his heart beat hard with excitement. He knew he had done well. It was like an electrical storm contained in his chest. He was going to be a barrister.

  He watched his mother putting a row of tomatoes under the grill and slipping the toast into a rack with the other hand. He knew her movements by heart. It was always four steps between the fridge and the hob. Slap, slap, slap, slap—and then the thunk and clink of the fridge door opening.

  'You're not drinking up your tea,' she said. She turned and put one hand on the sideboard, reaching for the cigarettes in the pocket of her apron.

  I am.

  'If you don't want it, Alistair, you don't have to. I don't want you thinking you have to.'

  'I don't. What's the matter with you, Mum?'

  She picked up the ashtray and slammed it down again. When she was angry you could literally see the rage jump into her eyes like a wild animal on a nature film. It filled the screen. 'Don't you talk to me like that!' she said. 'Don't you ever talk to me like that. You come here with your head full of ideas about yourself, thinking you're too good for the place you grew up in—not bringing one of your Oxford friends to visit the whole time out of shame. And now you talk to me like this!'

  And this was his first morning home. All he could think of when he observed her was how different this angry, weathered woman was from Rosalind. How long had he hated her without admitting it to himself? Suddenly he could not separate her from the suffocating fug of her kitchen, the cooking-fat smell, the crazed sound of the kettle whistling. He stared at the veined hand splayed on the plump, aproned hip and wondered how often she had stood in that pose at the bottom of the stairs, calling him away from his desk—'Come on, Al, you're supposed to be young. What do you want to waste a day like this for with those old books?' Always calling him away from his desk. He saw that now. It had taken Rosalind—the purity and order he imagined she would bring to him—to make him see it: his mother had been trying to sabotage his life!

  She stubbed—or, rather, crushed—out her cigarette and looked right at him. 'Who do you think you are, Alistair?'

  'I don't know, do I?'

  'What do you mean "I don't know"?'

  'I mean I don't know, Mum, because you won't tell me anything about my father, will you?' he said. And then he left the room, left the eggs, left the tea untouched, because he knew perfectly well he had said the unsayable.

  'What are you thinking, Dad?' Luke said.

  'Me?'

  He always said that: 'Me?'Always the avoidance, the delay tactic, as if he hoped to find there was someone else in the room to whom the question was really addressed.

  'You just looked funny for a minute.'

  'Oh ... I was just wondering what the traffic will be like on the A2. That's all.'

  'Right,' Luke said. 'Look, you don't mind if I listen to my Walkman, do you?'

  'No! By all means,' Alistair said. 'You listen.'

  'Thanks.'

  It was a relief to both of them not to have to make conversation. They had never had much to say to each other. Luke often dropped things or spilled his drink when his father came into the room. When his sister was around he felt like the odd one out and he couldn't understand why they bothered with their long, exhausting arguments when they were not going to change US foreign policy or President Mugabe's whatever it was, anyway. He loaded the dishwasher with his mother or had a look at what she had been doing to the garden while Sophie and his father stayed on at the table. In the past couple of years, since he had been earning a really good salary, he had gradually stopped feeling upset by it. He had stopped feeling so—stupid.

  He believed in his mother's love in a way he could not believe in his father's. Not that this was because he and his mother 'really talked' the way some people did, going into details about their relationship problems and sex lives and so on. No—his mother parcelled out her love neatly and hygienically: she put flowers by his bed, remembered if he had a doctor's appointment, got him fluffy towels for the flat. That was her vocabulary: it was restricted, but it was sincere. He could never tell what his father was really thinking when he thumped him on the back and said, 'So, how are things, Luke?', looking as though he would rather get away to his study than suffer a long explanation. Sophie thought he imagined this. She said he should grow up and stop the childhood angst routine. The infuriating thing was, there was no 'routine' when he was away from home. He was cool and confident as far as his friends were concerned: he was the guy people called to find out what was happening ... The 'routine' appeared as soon as he went through the front door. And his family thought it was the real him!

  That Alistair had a background he had always kept hidden was the beginning of an explanation for the gap that lay between them. Luke did not know what to say about this, or about the scandal—though this was more out of concern for himself than for his father. It was almost impossible to contemplate what his father had done without a sense that the sky might fall in, let alone actually say something about it. A few times in the past week, he had realized Alistair suspected he was about to refer to it and seen fear, actual terror, in his eyes. He had never seen his father so much as unnerved before, not so much as taken aback.

  Luke felt like a teenager again. It was terrible how quickly he had regressed in his two weeks at home. For a moment he felt embarrassed by the reflection of himself, sulky and slouched, headphones on, that the car window gave back at him. He was twenty-eight. But why be embarrassed anyway? Why go to all the effort? Both he and his sister had apparently stayed at around seventeen in their parents' minds, anyway. They were both openly amazed when he was up by midday. Normally he would have had to go out to the garden for regular cigarettes, gritting his teeth in anger, thinking did they not know he made £75,000 a year? Had they seen his flat? But it was not in his interests to emphasize his autonomy right now. He wanted to be a child again—just for a couple more weeks, until he got Arianne back.

  He also felt deeply sorry for his mother and it seemed like no bad thing for her to have him around to worry about. He could see it was less complicated for her to look after him than his father, with whom each instinctive kindness triggered a reminder that all was not well, that he had spoiled everything. When he really thought about it, he was amazed that his mother was still in the same house. But he wa
s prepared to believe things might work that differently when you were old and married. Actually, he wanted to believe it. His parents' marriage had to be unbreakable or he would fall apart.

  A friend had said to him in a bar the week before, 'You keep saying that, Luke, but what d'you mean "fall apart"? What does falling apart look like? You just go on, don't you? Breathe in and out, go to work, eat a Big Mac, press "play". You'll find another girl, for Christ's sake. You're horribly good-looking, and Arianne was a nightmare, right? She was sexy, though, no doubt about that, mate...'

  Luke thought about her waist, her breasts, the way she jutted out her chin to dismiss something boring or somebody 'weak'. 'Falling apart' looked like his flat when she left. It looked like him, on the sofa in his boxer shorts on a Friday morning, calling his mum. He was going to get Arianne back.

  ***

  Luke and Alistair got home to find another car parked in the space on the driveway.

  'Suzannah,' Luke said, with a sigh. 'Why's she here?' He glanced at his father's tense face.

  'I'm not walking miles with this leg,' Alistair said. 'She'll just have to...' he scraped the gears '...get blocked in. I'll have to block her in.'

  'God, d'you think she's come for supper? I'm not in a very Suzannah-ish mood, actually.'

  'No. Neither am I,' he said. Why had Rosalind invited her? He and Suzannah had never got on—Alistair felt sure she had never forgiven him for being interested in her less beautiful sister. After everything that had happened, she would be pleased to see him and gloat. Why had Rosalind asked her over? But when he thought of his wife, of her pale eyes with their new, hunted expression, and of the world he had constructed and shattered for her, he thought, If this is a little revenge then just let her have it. 'Oh, Christ,' he said out loud. And then, for a second, Luke caught his eye. A spark of humour passed between them. Who knows why people laugh? The collapse of the last bridge of logical argument, perhaps—the discovery of shrugging humanity down there in the rubble beside you. There was nothing to do but submit to the good release in the chest and stomach and back. They sat there in the car, laughing together, Alistair shaking his head. It was something they had never done before.