Exposure

by Talitha Stevenson

  Every time Geoff performed this wizardry, his mother tutted and Geoff would wink at her and every time she would say, oh, all right, just this once—but it was very bad manners: small boys, licking spoons. This supernatural licence, this American privilege only added to the sensation of anarchy. It was so frightening it made you laugh! Geoff would laugh until the tears came down his face: 'I dunno, A1 - these two should be on stage,' he used to say, wiping his eyes. His big hand would paw the air for mercy as Ivy put a tea-towel round her head, like a silk scarf, to do the stuck-up vicar's wife. 'Those two could make us all a fortune in the West End,' Geoff said.

  Alistair was eleven before he realized that this was a fantasy and that the rest of the world had never heard of posh Mrs Nairne or of his mother's star turn, Ben Singer, the mincing, lisping butcher.

  Alistair laughed, remembering the risks his mother used to take when she was in one of her 'comical' moods. He had adored and hated her at those times and had giggled and shifted uneasily, strung up between these poles.

  But his mother had loved to seduce him into the wicked intimacy of a private joke. He saw now that this had been their most successful and vibrant manner of interaction: laughing together. It was as if his mother had been determined to reassure them that, no matter how remote and different his mind was from hers, they could still share a joke, have a few laughs together.

  He remembered an occasion on which they had gone out to buy the meat. For some reason—perhaps she had been left a tip by a guest—she had decided they deserved something special. 'Morning, Mr Singer,' she sang out innocently, tinkling the door shut behind them.

  Ben Singer's fat hands lifted a joint of lamb on to his chopping-board. 'Morning,' he said, in his quavering, feminine voice.

  'Lovely day out,' his mother observed.

  Mr Singer had a habit of repeating the end of other people's sentences, as if he was turning them over in his mind, inspecting them—like lamb chops. 'Lovely day out,' he said, nodding.

  Alistair felt his mother squeeze his fingers mischievously. He knew only too well what this meant and his heart began to race with dread and excitement. She leant down and looked through the glass-fronted counter at the various cuts of meat. 'Mmm,' she said casually, 'I came early enough for once, didn't I?'

  'Early enough,' he agreed, smiling.

  'Spoilt for choice. Would you believe it? Now I can't decide, Mr Singer. I think we won't have chicken today...' she tailed off.

  'Won't have chicken today...' Mr Singer repeated.

  '...but the question is, shall I do us a bit of steak or a lamb stew or good old sausages and mash?'

  Alistair's heart contracted at the minefield of sibilants.

  Mr Singer brought his cleaver down with a bang and turned. 'Ooh, I love a good mash ...' he said unexpectedly. And then he turned back.

  Alistair's mother pinched his arm under the counter and rolled her eyes at him. 'Mash?' she said. 'Oh, yes, me too, Mr Singer. But what to put with it, that's the thing. Is it to be—'

  And then Mr Singer, smiling placidly, interrupted her: 'Thteak or thtew or thauthageth?' he said. 'I'd do thteak. With a nithe thauthe.'

  It was as if a wild band had struck up. Sheer music! His mother gripped his hand. 'Ah,' she said soberly, 'would you? Well, Mr Singer, that's good enough for me,' and Alistair almost fainted with horror at her irreverence. Mr Singer (referred to as 'Thingy' by only the very wickedest boys at school) was a respected adult! Alistair tugged his hand free and knelt down to tie his shoelace. He faked a bout of coughing to cover the helpless laughter. After a Herculean effort to control himself, he stood up.

  His mother said, 'Sirloin or strip?'

  She was as cruel as a child. And sometimes she was as tender as a lover. When he had done nothing in particular—or nothing at all, having been left alone with his books all day—she would get home and rush up behind him to clasp him in her arms. 'My little hero,' she would say. 'You held the fort, didn't you?'

  He felt fraudulent for accepting her praise. 'Holding the fort' while she went out on one of her jaunts seemed a strange thing to be asked to do. He couldn't really see what it meant. He just sat with his books and puzzles and the sandwiches she had made for him and, occasionally, touched by the solemnity with which she had placed him in sole responsibility for the empty house, he would patrol it with his toy gun.

  'You were gone ages. Did you have a lovely time, Mum? Who were you with?'

  'I was with your uncle Ian, love. You remember your uncle Ian?' she said.

  Alistair nodded. 'The man with the moustache.'

  'The moustache? Who are you thinking of, I wonder? Oh, no, love, that's Bob Kelmarsh. No, he's married.'

  Alistair could smell beer on her breath. He felt a familiar uneasiness—from an early age he had suspected he was the victim of some kind of trick and that he must keep a note of all the details if he wasn't to be fooled entirely.

  His mother leant over, slapped her hands on her knees and did the grin she gave to babies in prams. 'Want to see what your uncle Ian got you?' she said. She fumbled in her bag and dropped it a few times. Her old cigarette case ratded out on to the floor. 'Aren't I the butterfingers?' she said. And then she held out a tiny little toy car, no larger than a stamp, on the palm of her hand. 'What do you think of that?' she asked him.

  'Thank you very much.'

  'There's a good boy,' she said.

  Was he my father, Alistair thought, the man who bought the little toy car? It might have been him. It might even have been the man with the moustache. Or it might have been Tony or Ray or ... He threw off the sheet and went into the bathroom to wash and shave.

  It was a glorious day, golden, windy and autumnal; the rush of early brown leaves past the window still contained the perfume of summer. Soon he went out into the garden with his coffee. Rosalind was already on her knees by one of the flower-beds and he raised his cup to her. She looked up, squinting, and pushed the hair off her forehead with her wrist. The gardening glove looked comically large against it. 'Sleep all right?' she said. But before he could answer her, she told him, 'I'm out all day today. We're having a Home From Home meeting at the showroom.'

  'Oh, right,' he said. 'All well?'

  'Yes. Why? What d'you mean?'

  'I just—all well at Home From Home?' Did he imagine it or had Rosalind snorted derisively?

  She stood up and brushed off her knees. 'Everything's fine, thank you,' she said. 'We're planning the next catalogue. We always do at this time of year.'

  'Oh. Oh, I see.'

  She walked past him into the house. Suddenly he felt afraid. He wanted to say something else to her. What else could he say? He couldn't think of anything at all.

  He looked up at the clear blue sky. As if to rescue him from this groping loneliness, the pleasant feeling of his dream came back. He heard Rosalind start her car and drive away, but he was smiling again, picturing dear old Ivy with the tea-towel knotted under her chin. She had done brilliant caricatures (which he was able fully to appreciate only now), satirizing the small-mindedness and the hidden lusts of prominent local women. 'A naked Easter parade? No, no, no, Mrs Dawson. (What? A third piece of may Battenberg cake? Why, please do - it is very good, or so I'm told.) No, no, no, Ay'm afraid may husband (whom is the bloody vicar, you know) would nevaah stand for nakedness, Mrs Dawson—particularly from me. What's that? Cream and jam, Mrs Dawson? On top? You're sure? Well, each to his own, as Ay orften say. Call me progressive, if you will ... er—yes, just finish the jug, Mrs Dawson, bay all bloody means!'

  He missed Ivy. He had been missing Ivy for a long time now. What did she think of him? he wondered. Disappearing like that. Apparently she forgave him, at least to some degree: her telephone call was testament to that; it had been incredibly generous of her to make it.

  He closed his eyes. Why had he not gone to visit her a few weeks ago? Why had he merely sent her and Geoff the spare keys to his mother's old house? And that cowardly little note!

 
Do feel free to take anything you want from the box of ornaments and photographs I put on the kitchen table. They are all things which I thought you might like because of the memories with which they are associated. If any of the furniture interests you, please do take it too. The same goes for the box of clothing. Anything you don't want will go to charity.

  'Because of the memories with which they are associated'? What icy tongs he used to handle their shared past, holding it out at arm's length, at the furthermost point of a Latinate ending. How hurtful it must have been to read that note. He ought to have asked them both round, made tea, shown them the things personally. He ought to have dived headlong into collective memory—if only to thank Ivy for preserving that last vestige of her faith in him.

  In fact, Ivy had always believed in him. More than his mother ever had. When he had won his state scholarship for Oxford, Ivy said, 'There's a brilliant head on them shoulders of yours, isn't there? Oh, you've made me ever so proud, Al. Me and Geoff and your mum, too—even if she doesn't know how to say it, love.' She had been tearful, he remembered. She had made him a cake: a Victoria sponge with white lemony icing and raspberry jam in the middle. Ivy made wonderful cakes. Hadn't she always done his birthday cakes, too?

  Without thinking about what he was doing, he went inside and called for the train times from Charing Cross to Dover Priory station. There was one in an hour. Then he called a mini-cab. After that he went upstairs and packed a small bag with a change of underwear and socks, and a clean shirt and sweater. He put in his shaving kit (it was a beautiful ivory-handled set: a present from Rosalind on his fortieth birthday), a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste and a comb. Then he went down to the kitchen and, using up some cold sausages, which must have been left over from one of Rosalind's princely breakfasts for Luke, he made sandwiches for the train.

  He checked his watch. The taxi would arrive in five minutes. He could hear Luke upstairs, running a bath, padding to and from his old bedroom. Alistair thought of going up to say goodbye, but couldn't face it. His son's unhappiness frightened him; it had become almost audible, like the neutral hum of a loudspeaker that threatens at any moment to screech out feedback. He picked up the pen by the phone notepad to write Luke a note. On the top page was an elaborately patterned 'A' surrounded by hearts and butterflies and flowers. What was going on in his son's mind? he wondered. He had heard Luke come in at four in the morning for the fifth night running. Alistair felt troubled by an emotional response he found unintelligible and faintly undignified.

  He didn't know how to advise his son, although that was plainly what the situation required. When he had come quietly down the stairs and caught the end of a conversation between Luke and his mother - 'But I don't care about anything else. That's the whole point. I've just got to get her back, Mum' - he had known he couldn't mix himself up in it all just now.

  He was also avoiding the issue of his daughter. Occasionally he eyed the two airmail envelopes on his wife's desk, addressed in what looked like his own hand. Rosalind had told him that Sophie had sent a phone number and address as she had promised, but somehow Alistair could not bring himself to ask for them. He was unnerved by the hint of solidarity between his wife and daughter. He had never seen it before. He was not sure why, but it made him feel even less hopeful that Sophie would ever forgive him. It was as if she had changed sides.

  The thought that his daughter might not love him again was unbearable. It made him frantic. His brilliant, beautiful daughter, with whom he could laugh and argue as with no one else, who sent him to the edge of despair and confusion with her self-destructiveness and to the dizzy heights of pride with her flamboyant successes. She was all wild contradictions: anorexia, suicide attempts, self-harm, two A levels at sixteen, a sparkling first from his old Oxford college, a star job at the Telegraph. All the way to the station, in the back of the mini-cab, he clenched and unclenched his fists, absorbing the full horror of the possibility that Sophie might never talk to him again. No more highs and lows. From now on there would just be time and getting old on a level wasteland of loneliness.

  Alistair did not think about Rosalind at all. Tentatively, he had tried to begin a conversation about Karen Jennings, about his idiotic mistake in that hotel room, but as soon as it became obvious to her that this was his subject, she had remembered a phone call she had to make. He had found himself alone in the drawing room, staring at her glass of wine. He wondered if she felt she would have to leave him and was merely trying to delay the inevitable. After that one occasion, he did not formulate this thought again.

  When they arrived at Charing Cross, the driver pulled up with a jerk. 'Is fifteen pound, sir,' he said.

  Alistair handed him a twenty-pound note and waved his hand at the change. When the car pulled away, he was mildly amused by the vulgarity of this gesture and hoped the driver kept the tips for himself.

  It was a familiar bustle at Charing Cross. His work as a barrister often involved his travelling on trains. He would go to Norwich Crown Court, to Chichester or Leeds. He was allowing himself to confront the end of this agreeable way of life by degrees, like a swimmer lowering himself slowly into a cold sea. Never again would he sit on a train, with a blue legal notepad on his knee, his briefcase and robing bag beside him, putting the finishing touches to his speech for the jury. Work had been a good friend to him for many years.

  He moved towards the ticket office, still slow on his bad leg, still suspecting violent intentions in the crowd, and still embarrassed by the walking-stick. He wondered if people guessed he was injured or if the stick just made him look like an old man.

  Like an old man, he thought. He virtually was an old man. While he stood in the queue, he studied a few free brochures and found he might have been given a pensioner's discount for his ticket. He had never once thought to use the card he had been sent on his sixtieth birthday. He had thrust it into a drawer as soon as it arrived in its ascetic brown envelope. He had felt personally insulted by it.

  'You really should try to remember your Rail Card if you've got one, sir. It does make you a good saving,' said the benevolent ticket salesman.

  'Yes, you're quite right,' Alistair said, too tired to be offended. Why be offended, after all? Wasn't it a pleasant relief to be spoken to in this gentle way?

  There was not much gentleness left in the world. As he took his seat on the train, the thought of soft, round, cool-palmed, cake-scented Ivy made him close his eyes with relief. Perhaps Ivy would forgive him for what he had done. As he drifted into a light sleep, he found himself confused about who might forgive him for which of his wrongs. Was it Ivy to whom he had been unfaithful, Rosalind he had abandoned, Luke to whom he had sent an inadequate, hurtful note? And was it Sophie he had hated with such violent passion for laughing and drinking and drinking and laughing, long into the night, with all of those male guests?

  All the way to Dover, he dreamt of men with moustaches.

  Chapter 19

  There were local mini-cabs outside Dover Priory station and Alistair eased himself delicately into the back of one. His leg felt the strain of the journey already and he longed to stretch it out flat for a while. He asked the driver to take him home, to Maison Dieu Road, where he would drop off his bag and rest for a bit, before going to see Ivy.

  The new scenery was becoming familiar to him now, even though it bore little resemblance to the Dover of his childhood. There were taller buildings, there was a brisk, industrial atmosphere that had not existed before. The billboards were designed to be viewed from passing cars, the lettering full of that urgent American song, bright as TV screens, in which the whole world was beginning to join. At the site of his lovely old Café de Paris was a roundabout: lorries—right through the little corner table.

  But, still, there was the sea on the right and all the seafront hotels, some with different names, but essentially they were their bleached, sun-strained, pastel-coloured selves, serving the same English breakfasts, no doubt. 'The Castle Hotel', he read, 'The Br
itannia', 'The Queen Elizabeth' and then,' We take Euros. 'There certainly had been a few changes. He smiled out at the old place with the kind of affectionate surrender with which he had greeted Sophie's blue hair. It had become a sunny, blustery afternoon, of the kind that best suited Dover because it brought the smell of the sea into all the streets.

  He paid the driver and walked up the old path with his bag in his hand. The work he had arranged had improved the place no end. The missing tiles on the path had been replaced, the weeds had been removed from the front garden, the grass mown and all the tangled rubbish had been taken out of the hedges. The window-frames, rotten as they were, had been repainted. It looked respectable—if a little battle-worn, he thought. Much like himself. In fact, the place now looked much the way it had when he left it, forty years ago.

  He glanced along the street at the other boarding-houses, most of which had 'No Vacancies' signs outside. Business was obviously booming. A group of thin, exhausted-looking people stood at the end of the road, talking. The women wore headscarves and long skirts. The men were black-haired, dark-eyed. Were they Roma gypsies, he wondered. There had been an influx, The Times said: yet another group of people sick of persecution or just of being held back, in search of a better life even if it must be in a foreign country, even if it must mean starting from scratch. He watched an Englishwoman with a tartan shopping-bag cross the road to avoid passing them.

  When the door was unlocked he felt immediate relief. The cleaners had been and the builders had thrown out what was broken—old tables and chairs and so on—so that now it was straightforwardly good to be there, in the freshly scrubbed little house, with its few remaining pieces of furniture. Suddenly it was a huge relief to escape from the accumulated weight of his possessions and the unspoken demands of their elegance. He wanted nothing more than to put his feet up in the front parlour, as they had always called it, and rest his bad leg for a bit.