Exposure (11 page)

‘Come this way, you little idiot!’ yells Rupert. She
tips her face up to look at him along the oily skin of the water.

‘You’re going in deeper, you fool!’ bawls Roger.

Lily pushes her hair out of her eyes. A coil brushes against her leg. Weed, she tells herself. Only weed. She mustn’t put her legs down. She must scull on the surface. She can float for a long time, perfectly safe, and the water isn’t cold. For half a second she’s exultant, with the sun in her eyes. The exultation of the one who has gone in. The sand, the sharp, sparkling water, all those crowding bodies, her mother pacing the water’s edge.

Nicht zu weit, Lili!

Of course the brothers wouldn’t harm her. They would probably reach down from that jetty to haul her out. They would say,
Can’t you take a joke? We were only mucking about.
But all the same she’ll stay here. There must be another way out of the lake, where the weed is not so thick and there aren’t all those reeds growing along the shore. She’ll keep her head and swim around until she finds it.

They are getting worried now. Clearly, they didn’t mean actually to drown her.

‘Lily!’ they shout. ‘Lily!’

She lies completely flat along the surface of the water. It isn’t cold. She breathes through her nose while the water laps at her lips.

‘Lily!’

But that is their mistake. They bellow too loudly. Suddenly she hears another voice. She turns and sees the gardener running down the slope, shading his eyes.

‘Mr Fitton!’ she cries out. ‘Mr Fitton!’

‘You all right there, miss?’

‘If I swim to the jetty, can you help me out?’

‘You hang on now, miss. Go careful. I’m coming.’ He does not so much as look at the brothers.

The jetty seems a long way off but Mr Fitton is down at the end, waiting for her. The brothers have stepped back. Lily swims slowly, keeping herself to the surface, sculling her way around another mass of weed. Mr Fitton is kneeling down, holding out his arms, encouraging her: ‘That’s the way. Go careful now.’

She listens to nothing but his voice. A few more strokes. His face swims above her.

‘Get your elbows up on the wood. That’s the way. I’ll pull you over.’

A last trail of weed catches at her as she rises. He seizes her elbows and pulls until she has her right knee up on the wood, and then pulls again, dragging the lake off her. Now she is on hands and knees, drenched, panting.

‘Get something to wrap her in,’ says Mr Fitton to the men behind him.

‘I’m all right.’

‘They ought to of told you. This lake’s not safe for swimming.’

One of the rugs from the steamer chairs is put over her shoulders. She doesn’t look at the brothers. Her mind is closed tight against them. She can no longer breathe them in.

‘You want to go and have a hot bath.’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘It’s a shame,’ he says, low, helping her up.

‘Thank you for your help,’ she says.

They are talking quietly: the brothers won’t be able to hear.

The brothers move aside as Mr Fitton helps her up the jetty. Without looking at them, she says clearly, ‘That was a bit off, wasn’t it?’

Mr Fitton walks her all the way to the house.

By the time Simon comes back from the garage, Lily has bathed and washed her hair. She has rinsed out her clothes, which smell of the lake. Rupert and Roger, she knows, will say nothing. Mr Fitton, perhaps, might mention it; but she thinks not.

The next day, her right foot is bruised over the arch. There are scratches on her thighs from the rough wood of the jetty. She examines her wrists carefully: they are unmarked.

The man who hasn’t introduced himself towers over her as she sits on the red sofa. He says nothing, just makes her feel his dominance in her own house. She understands him. She knows his type, and he doesn’t know hers.

‘Why are you standing so close to me?’ she asks in the clear, authoritative voice that she uses in the classroom. The policewoman snaps her a quick glance. He can’t help himself: for all his training and determination, he steps back.

‘Thank you,’ says Lily. ‘Are you intending to arrest me as well as my husband?’

‘What makes you think that?’

Lily is silent.

‘We may need to have another chat later on.’

The policewoman has her pencil poised. He nods. She closes her notebook and snaps a band over it. I should have asked for a solicitor, thinks Lily. He has been interrogating me. But to do so might be read as an admission of guilt. If you have nothing to hide, then why do you need a solicitor? Besides, she can’t think where she would find one, on a Sunday afternoon in rainy Muswell Hill.

‘Where have they taken Simon?’

He doesn’t answer straight away, and she thinks he means to balk her, but then he replies, matter-of-fact: ‘Scotland Yard.’

‘When will he be allowed to come home?’

‘That’s not my area, I’m afraid. He is helping with inquiries. He hasn’t been charged. My advice to you now is: Go and collect your children, bring them home and give them their supper. It’s school tomorrow, I believe. We’re finished here for today. I’ll drop in another time.’

He has wrong-footed her again. She is to expect him at any time. She is not to relax for an hour. He’s inserting himself into her house, her life. He keeps on being much cleverer than she expects. Be careful, Lily.
Go careful.

He’s gone, and the uniformed officers with him. They have taken all the papers from Simon’s desk in the
bedroom and Lily has had to sign for them. They don’t seem to understand that the papers are only insurance policies and bank statements. It is nine o’clock by the time they leave. Bring the children home and give them their supper, indeed. They have been at Erica’s for hours. She goes to the telephone.

‘Erica?’

The children are still up, playing bagatelle with Thomas. They can stay over, says Erica. She’s already put Clare’s cot into her and Tony’s bedroom, and made up three beds on the floor in the baby’s bedroom. The children will be fine. She’s got plenty of sofa cushions, and there’s the camping mattress.

‘It’s all right, Erica, I’ll bring them home.’

‘Are you sure? Is everything – I mean, are they still there?’

‘They left a few minutes ago.’

‘My God, they were there for hours. Is Simon back yet?’

‘Not yet.’

Erica is silent. The line hisses. Does it always make that noise? This is craziness, Lily. No one’s listening to you. But perhaps you should talk as if they are.

‘I’ll be round to fetch them in ten minutes,’ says Lily.

It’s Tony who opens the door. He doesn’t quite look at her as he says heartily, ‘Come on in. Let me take your coat.’

Erica rushes downstairs, clutching a nappy bucket.

‘Here you are!’ She kisses Lily, and the smell of
ammonia from the bucket mixes with Erica’s Jolie Madame. ‘They’re all playing in Thomas’s bedroom. You’re freezing. Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m all right.’ She feels dazed, coming into the light of Erica’s hall.

‘And Simon—?’

Lily shakes her head.

‘It’s all some ridiculous mistake,’ says Erica quickly.

‘I know.’

Tony has hung up the coat, and is watching her. Yes, there is a reservation. He would be happier, really, if Lily weren’t in their hall,
dragging them into it.
Tony’s not like Erica.

‘I don’t really know what’s going on,’ says Lily.

‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

‘Gin might be more to the point,’ says Tony nicely, and Lily melts. She’s started to suspect the worst of everyone and she’s got to stop it.

‘I’d love a drink, but I must get the children home,’ she says. ‘School tomorrow, and Thomas needs his sleep too.’

‘I only wish he did,’ says Erica. ‘Darling, at least come and get warm. You look awfully tired. Come in the dining room; there’s still a fire there.’

As always, the laden clothes horse is up, the baby’s pram wedged against the piano, and Thomas has made another elaborate den under the table. Tony and Erica usually have to eat their meals on their knees. Erica drags a dining chair to the fire.

‘Sit down. Tony’ll get you that drink.’

Lily spreads her hands to the heat. She knows Erica’s house almost as well as her own. Even the smell of it. She should tell Erica about the two of them being watched at the CND rally. But Tony is back, with a gin and tonic for her and a saucer of peanuts.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve had anything to eat.’

Lily swallows her drink gratefully. Tony has made it strong. She can feel it going into her veins. They are her friends: good friends. The gin eases her.

‘What did they want?’ asks Tony.

‘I don’t know. It’s to do with Simon’s work.’

‘The Admiralty, isn’t it?’ Tony’s eyes are dark and inward. He is no fool. He knows perfectly well that Simon works at the Admiralty and it’s all a bit hush-hush even though, as Simon says, he’s really just one of the back-room boys. Tony likes Lily; always has done. He likes coming home to find the two women thick as thieves, laughing over some idiotic joke that they can never explain while Thomas and Bridget roister over the furniture. But there’s no question about what comes first. Tony likes reading newspapers and is always quoting from articles: ‘Would you believe it, this chap Burrows was really called Buryakov? No one had the faintest idea, not even the next-door neighbours.’ Spies aren’t cloak-and-dagger types at all, not in real life. They’re dull as ditchwater. They keep themselves to themselves, leave notes for the milkman and take the same bus to work as you do.

But Erica hasn’t read those articles. ‘It’s absurd!’ she bursts out. ‘Simon, of all people. Haven’t they got better
things to do? You only have to
look
at Simon. I hope you get a proper apology, Lily. They can’t behave like stormtroopers.’ And then she blushes deeply, all over the smooth even skin Tony loves. Erica, in the heat of it, has forgotten about Lily. Damn silly thing to say, anyway; as if a British policeman could ever be anything like those Nazi thugs.

Lily, too, sees the blush. Erica; her dear friend Erica. She isn’t naïve at all, and in fact she would call herself well informed about politics. Committed, even. She was so determined about the rally:
We’ve got to do something, Lily. Those idiots are quite capable of blowing up the whole world.
Her eyes glowed as she signed petitions, delivered leaflets, attended rallies. Sharp, funny Erica even knew all the words to ‘Don’t you hear the H-bombs’ thunder’, and sang along. And yet Erica knows nothing, because she has never been afraid.

‘Of course it’s all a mistake,’ says Lily.
Es ist alles ein Mißverständnis
, says her mind. Did she speak aloud? Did she really say those words aloud in German? No, all’s well.

‘Of course it is, darling,’ says Erica, dropping to her knees beside Lily’s chair, taking her left hand, chafing it between her own. ‘You’re still cold … It must have been a most awful shock for you. Are you sure you’re up to taking the sausages home?’

It’s nothing to be scared of, Lily tells herself. Of course there was always the German language in her mind. You don’t forget things. You put them away, out of sight and sound, and think that you have forgotten
them, but they are still there. They come out when you least expect it. It’s the shock. She and Erica haven’t called the children ‘the sausages’ for years.

‘We’ll be fine,’ she says, and gently disengages her fingers. Tony proffers the gin bottle, but she shakes her head. ‘I must get them home.’

‘What an absolute bloody nightmare,’ he says, his face flushed by the gin or the heat of the fire. He splashes gin clumsily into his own glass. ‘Isn’t there somewhere you could take the kids until it all dies down?’

At once she realises that Tony doesn’t believe it is all an awful mistake. In Tony’s world, the police do not turn up to ransack a house for no good reason. A man like Simon would not be arrested and taken in for questioning unless there were solid grounds for suspicion.

‘Of course she can’t take them away. It’s the middle of term,’ says Erica. ‘She’d lose her job.’

‘All the same. The papers will kick up a hell of a stink if they get hold of it. Might be best to go to ground for a while.’

Both women stare at him. ‘Why should the papers get hold of it?’

Tony shrugs, avoiding their eyes. Lily understands. Simon hasn’t been charged, the man said, but the papers would soon get hold of it, if he were. Tony doesn’t want to say that. ‘The police talk to the press all the time, off the record,’ he says.

‘How on earth do you know that?’ asks Erica.

‘Common knowledge. The baby’s crying, darling.’

‘I know.’ Both parents listen, looking up at the ceiling. ‘I thought she’d settled.’ The cry swells to a roar. ‘She’s standing up again.’

‘She used to be such an angel, but now she pulls herself up, and then she can’t get down again.’

‘She stands there screaming until one of us goes up.’

‘I’ll go.’

‘No, it’s all right. I’ll go.’

The stairs creak, the door opens, the volume of crying rises and slowly, sobbingly, declines. ‘He’s picked her up,’ diagnoses Erica. ‘He always does that. He’s hopeless. You have to sit by the cot and pat her until she goes back to sleep, but Tony hasn’t the patience. Oh God, he’s bringing her down.’

And here they are. Tony smoothes back the baby’s feathery hair, which is damp with sweat and tears. She stares around. A hiccup shakes her and she buries her face in her father’s shoulder. Her arms go around his neck.

‘She knows I’ll put her straight back in her cot,’ says Erica. ‘That’s why she won’t look at me. Nine months old, would you believe it? She plays him like a violin.’

‘It won’t do her any harm. She’s just a baby.’

‘So you say. Come here, lambkin, let me wipe your face.’

Lily watches them. Their tender, absorbed faces. They can’t feel this for anyone else, only for Clare and Thomas. Tony would do anything – or
not
do anything – to keep his own baby safe. It’s natural. Lily has always known that this is how it works. But usually
she has Simon at her side and they are united as Tony and Erica are united, for all their differences. Now, though, there is only Lily.