Exposure

by Talitha Stevenson

  It was then that she gave up on her dream daughter. She grieved for this beautiful figment in instalments—during the arguments or the visits to the anorexia clinic, where she and Alistair sat with their teacups surrounded by all the weirdly thin girls, angular as bicycles beneath their clothes.

  Her own mother had come to visit the hospital the day after that first overdose and looked despairingly at Rosalind, her expression not without a tinge of judgement. Rosalind had wanted to remind her that Suzannah had been a total mess for years, but she would never have spoken to her mother in that way.

  Did her mother ever look at her without a tinge of judgement? Rosalind had spent her life attempting to meet the woman's standards and it had never done any good; in fact, there seemed to be far more appeal, far more romance in Suzannah's imperfections. Suzannah had got away with everything. She had once stolen one of their mother's brooches and sold the diamond out of it. Shortly after the theft was discovered, Suzannah had overshadowed the incident, with what Rosalind considered to be chilling expertise, by bringing home the heir to the Ellerson sugar fortune for Sunday lunch. Her sister had bought herself a whole new wardrobe with the money from the diamond. She made no secret of her purchases. But that autumn Hugo Ellerson was regularly to be seen in their hall, helping Suzannah on with her new fox-collared coat or waiting while she tightened her new pearl earrings in the mirror. Drunk on grand visions of the future, in which her father went shooting with Ralph Ellerson and her mother sat chatting in the drawing room at Nordean, Rosalind's parents stood by with indulgent smiles. It had shocked her most deeply of all to discover that her father made an insurance claim for the brooch, saying it had been lost.

  What a lot of secrecy family life involved. What a lot of mean, filthy secrets, she thought, pushing away her plate so hard that she splashed the water out of her glass. And then she remembered something Sophie had said when the anorexia was really bad and she had sat before an untouched plate, like the spectre at the feast, at every family meal. It had been raining hard, genuinely battering on the windows. They had just sat down to supper and Alistair had said he couldn't make it to something Rosalind had hoped he would come to. As far as she could recall, it had been the Holland Park Mothers Against Vandalism meeting, which it had been her turn to arrange. She had known perfectly well that Alistair would be bored stiff by the event and that he loathed all the women involved and thought they were 'silly twitterers'. But she had wanted him to be there as many of the other husbands were going and it would look odd if he wasn't.

  'Oh, I'm sorry, darling, I've got a big case on next week. I'll simply have to stay on at chambers on Tuesday evening,' he said.

  'Really? Oh, well.'

  'Yes, it's a big case,' he said.

  'I'm sure. Never mind.'

  'What a bore.'

  'Gosh, no—really. Really. Not important.'

  'This is wonderful partridge, by the way, darling. A real triumph.'

  Sophie snorted. 'Wonderful partridge?'

  They all looked at her leaning back against the wall, behind her untouched plate. She was doing 'the face', a mixture of disgust and despair. It signified a point of no return.

  'Do you know how much you patronize her, Dad? Why can't you just go to her fucking mothers' meeting? She goes to your boring legal dinners all the fucking time. How often does she ask you to do anything for her? Name one thing in the last ten years and I'll give you all my money. No, tell you what, I'll give you all my cigarettes.'

  Rosalind put some more peas on to Sophie's plate and said, 'Darling, Daddy works incredibly hard for us all the time so we can have everything we need. And you aren't meant to be smoking, Sophie. We agreed.'

  ' You agreed. I like smoking. And, no, Dad works incredibly hard because he loves it—because it's what he enjoys doing. Because it's a way of avoiding time at home or doing anything he doesn't want to do. Isn't that true, Dad?'

  Sophie stood up and looked straight into her father's face. (Wonderful, Rosalind thought. She won't eat anything now.) Alistair looked back, his mouth twisted into a crooked smile or frown, which was strangely embarrassing to stare at, like a facial spasm on a stroke victim.

  'Isn't it, Dad?' Sophie shouted. 'Why couldn't you just go to one little meeting for her—make her feel respected for once?' She turned to her mother. 'But, Mum, what I really, really don't understand is, why do you take this shit?'

  Rosalind found herself saying pleadingly, 'Sophie, everything's fine. Please sit down. Please. Everything's all right.'

  Sophie laughed. 'You and Dad want to know why I can't eat? Big fucking mystery! This is a fucking hunger strike against lies.'

  'Hey,' Luke said, leaning back in his chair in an attitude of paternal authority, 'calm down, Soph, for goodness' sake.'

  Sophie threw her water in his face and left the room.

  Now Rosalind looked at the tuna salad she had pushed away from her across the table. A hunger strike against lies. She could actually understand that. Had she always understood more than she had allowed Sophie to know? How terrible! Why on earth would that be?

  Or was this bizarre self-accusation unfair? After all, Sophie had always given her reason to doubt her insights from the moment she began to trust them. Because, as angry as Sophie could be, the day after an incident like the one over her speech at the Holland Park Mothers, she and Alistair would often behave as if nothing had happened. They would sit in the drawing room discussing newspaper articles in raptures of mutual appreciation.

  Just as Suzannah had always been forgiven, always remained their father's favourite, whatever wine she opened or whatever time she came in, Sophie was forgiven by Alistair. Their reunions were obscurely embarrassing to Luke and Rosalind, who stood up in silence and cleared the plates while father and daughter played word-association games in French or Latin and giggled at their private jokes. Luke and Rosalind did not look at each other while this sort of thing went on in the background.

  Rosalind's daughter was a wild and frightening mystery to her. One thing she felt passionately, though, was that, unlike her, Sophie did not hide things from herself. It was a painful way to live—there was no doubt about it. You could not see Sophie, with her emaciated arms and legs and the scars on her forearms, and say it was not a painful way to live.

  Suddenly Rosalind was proud of her daughter in a way she could not have expressed—in a way that deeply confused her, given all the anxiety Sophie had caused. Her cheeks had flushed and she looked at the letter again:

  I'm writing to you from Heathrow airport.

  Her heart raced with excitement. Then she read the end:

  I'm not sure why I feel this so strongly, but I know you'll understand.

  Why would she understand? Rosalind felt completely unworthy of this trust and her fist clenched in exasperation.

  She was the least adventurous person who had ever lived. Where had she ever been, other than on family ski-trips with her parents or family holidays with Alistair? She had only ever planned one journey without a family, without a man. It had been known as the Big Italian Adventure. She remembered this and cringed internally. It was poignant, but it was also embarrassing.

  She and Lara Siskin had planned the trip for months when they were both twenty and doing their secretarial courses in Chelsea. Alistair had been doing his law-conversion exams at the time and they saw each other rarely. She did not know that he could not afford to take her out to dinner and that his only option was to hope to be invited to the same drinks parties as she was. She imagined he took out other girls—clever Girton or St Hilda's girls, unlike her in every way. It was lovely to see him by chance at a party, though. She had told herself she must get on and forget the extravagant promise of that May Ball, over a year ago now. And, anyway, she couldn't help thinking it probably was more interesting to be dreaming about travel rather than weddings, as her friends always were.

  But in spite of these independent tendencies, love was still the incentive behind all action. She and
Lara had bought a map of Italy and a guidebook, which they took out every day over lunch, saying things like, 'Well, I think some dashing Italian will ask you to marry him on the Spanish Steps, which is where Keats died in 1821.'

  Then the other one would grab the book and flick through the pages, 'Well, I think you'll fall in love with a vineyard owner's eldest son in Montepul–Montepulciano.'

  Lara would giggle wickedly. 'You'd better not say yes if it's you on the Spanish Steps, Roz, no matter how dark and handsome he is, or someone's heart will be broken.'

  'Oh, what are you talking about?'

  Lara made a face: pompous, self-conscious, lovestruck. It was Alistair to a T.

  'Lara. Stop it.'

  'Well, he's mad about you. Everyone says so. Philip says he nearly faints if someone mentions your name.'

  'I don't know him that well,' Rosalind said, biting her lip to suppress the smile of pride—even if she didn't think it was true, it was nice to be thought of by her friends as an object of someone's desire. But she could not quell her natural honesty and modesty for long. 'Really, Lara, it's not as if he's endlessly taking me out to dinner or anything.'

  'Who knows what goes on in men's minds?' Lara said, sighing like a woman who has reconciled herself to much disappointment. In fact, she had never had a boyfriend. 'Anyway, Roz,' she said, 'there's lots of time for getting married, isn't there? You aren't on the shelf till you're twenty-five.'

  They took Italian lessons on Tuesday and Thursday evenings with an enormously fat woman named Elena Forli whose house smelt mouthwateringly of fresh pastry and icing sugar and vanilla. Signora Forli had faintly alarming baby blue- and pink-hued pictures of Jesus all over her walls and He smiled down at Lara and Rosalind like a patient nanny as they struggled with the past perfect and licked their lips.

  During their dull shorthand lessons, they hid their Italian grammar books just beneath the desk, smiling conspiratorially at each other. was 'Andiamo in Italia , which was

  'We are going to Italy.'

  Lara made pasta out of flour and eggs and they ate it rever-ently, even though it was revoltingly overcooked. Was this slimy stuff what the Italians were famous for, they wondered. It was all part of the mystery of adult life, of a piece with the thrilling uneasiness that came of imitating grown-up talk at their parents' dinner parties. There was a distinct sensation of fraudulence, and eye-contact with each other at the wrong moment might have blown their adult personae apart in an avalanche of stifled giggles. They solemnly avoided this eventuality. Each secretly vowed to pretend to like tagliatelle, almost as if this constituted a rite of passage in itself.

  Two days before they were due to leave for Rome, Lara's appendix ruptured. Mrs Siskin called Rosalind's mother to explain. There was simply no question of Lara going away for at least three weeks—and she was due to start at her finishing school in September. Both mothers agreed it was a great pity, although Rosalind's mother had no idea how frustrated Mrs Siskin was to lose this opportunity to cement what she saw as a highly suitable friendship for Lara.

  Rosalind had never cried like that before. Perhaps she never cried like that again. In the end her sister came in and sat on her bed. Rosalind could smell Suzannah's face cream.

  'Rozzy, you're making the most frightful racket—it's heartbreaking,' she said.

  Rosalind lifted her head from the pillow. 'I'm sorry.'

  'Poor old you. God, why don't you just go anyway?'

  'What? Don't be barmy. I can't.'

  Suzannah went over to the mantelpiece and took down the tickets. 'What a waste of all that planning. All that ruddy gossiping.'

  'Please don't, Suzannah. I know. Don't.'

  'Don't what? I'm not just rubbing it in. I'm saying, 'Go'. Go on your bloody own. It's what I'd do.'

  Rosalind lifted her face from the pillow and looked at her beautiful sister holding the tickets as if she had just been presented with them as a prize for vibrant personality. 'But I'm not you, though,' Rosalind said.

  Suzannah took this in. Her expression became serious—as if she had appreciated how irresponsible she was being. She exhaled soberly. 'No, I suppose not.' She walked back to the mantelpiece and propped the tickets against the clock. Then she stretched and yawned and said, oh, well, she must get a bit of beauty sleep and she was sure Rozzy would feel better in the morning. If she carried on bawling like that, she said, her eyes would be swollen for days.

  As the door closed, cutting out the light from the hall, Rosalind felt another ending to what had already seemed to contain all the grim finality the world could muster. It literally went dark.

  Six months later Alistair, who had passed his law exams and begun a pupillage at a reputable Inner Temple chambers, asked her out for dinner and not long afterwards if she would marry him. She was overjoyed and said yes straight away. Thrilled to have thought of the perfect way to put an end to the difficult atmosphere between herself and her friend, she asked Lara to be her bridesmaid.

  Suzannah would have gone to Italy alone, it was true. Rosalind pictured her sister holding up the tickets, the lamplight from the hall bringing out the red in her dark hair. Their parents would have been furious—and then, when Suzannah got back, full of stories about grand somebody and grander somebody else, it would have been 'Our eldest daughter is quite the explorer, you know,' to everyone who came for drinks.

  Rosalind felt keenly that she had been a bad example to Sophie. Alistair had always patronized her—it was true—and she had let it happen. Why? Because it was what she was used to. She had always been patronized—by her mother, her father, her sister, everyone.

  Why had she never stolen the diamond from her mother's brooch or travelled around Italy alone? If she had been an adventurer, if she had used that boat ticket, if she had caught the overnight train from Paris to Rome, she might never have married Alistair. She might have married the vineyard owner's son in Montepulciano.

  She smiled at this extraordinary thought. It was not that she had never imagined another life. There had been the affair with Rupert Sanderson, after all. She referred to it as an affair, though in fact it had consisted of a few moments of lingering eye-contact in the Sandersons' kitchen when everyone had rushed out to see a rainbow and Rupert stood in front of her in his tennis whites, tapping his racket vigorously against his shoe. There followed several months of erotic dreams on Rosalind's side. She woke up scandalized by her imagination. The things she did! Kneeling on the floor and pulling down Rupert Sanderson's tennis shorts, licking his ... his ...

  But the longevity of her 'affair' with Rupert was an exception. She had only ever imagined other lives—the poignant, domestic aspects of marriage—in abstracted fragments, which confined them safely to the realm of fantasy. She had wondered what it would be like to be in a car beside Julian, to come down the stairs with Henry Phipps—to have her coat put on by Omar Bhattachari! These dramatized moments required a suspension of disbelief, just like a play or a film. But Alistair was the reality she came back to when the lights went up. Their marriage was a sine qua non, which was an expression Alistair used. Everything was an expression Alistair used! Her whole self was an expression Alistair used. After thirty-nine years of marriage, she didn't even understand what divorce meant.

  'I'd divorce him,' Suzannah had said, as they stood there with the terrible newspapers. 'It's what I'd do, Rozzy.'

  And she had found herself answering her sister, 'But I'm not you, Suzannah. You've never understood marriage. You may have had four different surnames, but you've never really been married.'

  Suzannah had studied her face in the drawing-room mirror, her knee resting on the club fender. The slightly aggressive tension in her shoulders relaxed. 'No, I suppose you're right, Roz,' she said, nodding with genuine humility.

  She knew she was being eccentric, but Rosalind decided to have a cool bath instead of eating her lunch. She put the whole plate in the fridge, splayed knife and fork included.

  As she sat on the bed, listening to t
he water running in the bathroom next door, she put her hand under the mattress. This was where she had kept the articles with the photographs of Alistair and the girl. She took them out from time to time and looked at the faces, not knowing why she felt the need to hide them, since they could hardly have been made more public already. And Alistair had not set foot in their bedroom since they had agreed it was best he move into the spare room.

  The girl was not a child the way the papers made out, but she was very young. She was younger than their daughter. This fact was terrible enough—annihilating of Rosalind and her attractiveness, and faintly sinister in its own right. She looked at the photograph of her husband. To imply his amorality, the Daily Mail had chosen a grinning one taken on some courtroom steps after a victory a few years ago. The Times had opted for him in downtrodden mode, 'Miserable Sinner'. They had snapped it on the doorstep when he came out unsuspectingly to answer their ring. He appeared much smaller and older in that photograph. There was such fear in the clenched face. Part of her could not help feeling desperately sorry for him.

  She, more than anyone else, could imagine his humiliation. Not only because she was the wronged wife and shared it, but also because she had long felt his disappointments as keenly as her own..

  She had acquired the habit gradually. In the early days of knowing him, before they were engaged, she had noticed an agonized, tight look on his face occasionally, when his friends were chatting in a perfectly ordinary sociable way. At first she wondered if he disapproved of their frivolity—he did seem happiest when discussing something heavy and serious, like whether the Tories would win the next election, or if John Lister's new book was a fair portrayal of Churchill. Perhaps he thought restaurants and ski-trips and musicals were a waste of time. The idea thrilled her; the idea of a mind that superior. Perhaps his parents were strict or puritanical, she thought. This was also exciting in its severity. But he gave her no clues at all.