Exposure (17 page)

‘Mum? Are you asleep?’

She opens her eyes and smiles at him. ‘Of course not. I was resting my eyes for a moment, that’s all. There’s so much marking.’ She pats the seat beside her. ‘Come and sit down.’

‘Your ash is dropping all over the carpet.’

‘Ash is good for carpets,’ she says, standing up for a moment and rubbing the ash into the carpet with the toe of her shoe.

‘I’ll light the fire for you.’

‘I don’t think we need it. It’s quite cosy in here.’

It isn’t. The room is cold and Mum has only turned on the overhead light, not the standard lamp that always throws a soft, golden pool over the red leather furniture.

‘It’s freezing in here, Mum.’

‘Go and put on your Aran sweater. Coal is expensive.’

‘You know when Dad got all those logs from Highgate Woods, after they chopped up the fallen tree? I bet I could go up there and find wood.’

‘Why not,’ she says, but not as if she really means it or believes that it will happen.

‘I could get wood from our copse as well.’

She sits up sharply. ‘Leave the copse alone, Paul! It’s nice to have all the trees and bushes.’

‘I only meant fallen branches—’

‘It’s all soaking wet. Leave it alone, please. I don’t want you children tearing up the woodland. If you’re
really cold, go and sit by the kitchen stove. I’ve got to get on with this marking.’

Coal has never been too expensive before. It’s been a nuisance when the bills come in. That’s what Mum always says as she bends to pick up the letters from the mat in the hall. ‘What a nuisance. The coal-man dropped in his bill yesterday, and now here are the gas and electricity as well.’ Mum frowns as she opens the envelopes, scans them silently, and then passes them to Dad. He looks at them and says, ‘That’s not too bad, Lil,’ in a surprised and cheerful voice. She says, ‘I suppose not.’ Later on Mum gets out her chequebook and writes cheques at the dining-room table. There’s always a fire in the dining room until Bridget goes to bed, and then a fire in the sitting room.

‘Mum,’ he says, ‘do you think you’ll be able to get a full-time job?’

She looks at him steadily. ‘The question is whether I will be able to keep the work that I have, I’m afraid, Paul.’

‘Why? You’re a good teacher. They had to give you more hours.’

‘It’s not whether I am a good teacher or a bad teacher.’ All at once, it’s there, deep inside her voice. A tone that he never usually hears. Or maybe it’s been there before, but he hasn’t recognised it. Now he does. It’s like the fingerprint of a different language, coming through from far away. There’s the ghost of a ‘z’ sound inside the ‘th’ of ‘whether’. He knows the sound, because Oma talks German sometimes with him and Sal and Bridget, when
Mum isn’t there. Nobody else would notice, he tells himself quickly. It’s only because he knows Mum’s voice so well.

‘Well, what is it then?’ he asks roughly, almost angrily. He wants so much to protect her. He doesn’t want other people to notice those German sounds.

‘I told you that there were stories about your father in the newspapers.’

Why does she say that? Why does she say ‘your father’? She always just says ‘Dad’.

‘Yes.’ Lucky that he doesn’t blush like Sal. Mum would guess something was up, and go on until she found out about them buying the
Daily Express.
He drops his eyes.

‘A lot of people read those newspapers. The parents, for example. I’m not a permanent member of staff. Even if I were, the school might not keep me.’

‘Are they going to give you the sack, Mum?’

‘I don’t know. For the moment, I am carrying on, but it’s not … There is an atmosphere. I don’t want to worry you, Paul, but you’re old enough to know how things are. We’ve got to be very careful with money.’

‘I could get a paper round, Mum. Forfars are always advertising for paper boys.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Will Dad get the sack too?’

Mum hesitates, then: ‘I don’t know.’ At once, he’s sure that she does, and isn’t telling him. ‘So you see why we have to be careful.’

‘Granny and Grandad C. have got loads of money. They ought to give us some.’

‘I don’t want to ask them for money. If I lose my job, I’ll find another. Perhaps not a teaching job.’

‘But what else could you do, Mum?’

‘Anything. There are all sorts of jobs. I could be a waitress, and get good tips.’ She smiles, and he’s not sure if she’s joking or not. ‘Don’t worry. We’re not going to starve. This isn’t the nineteenth century. But we may have to leave this house for a while.’

‘We can’t! It’s our home!’

‘I know. But there is a big mortgage – You know what that is? Money that we owe to the bank for buying this house. The bank lent us the money, and we have to pay so much back every month. It’s quite a lot. Erica’s friend Ruth knows some people in America. He is a surgeon and he’s coming to Barts on an exchange. Erica thinks this house would be perfect for them, and they’d be able to pay a good rent. It would cover the mortgage. Don’t look like that. I know it’s difficult, but it’s better than losing our home.’

‘Mum.’ The words in his head are a jumble. He has got to sound grown-up. ‘But after the trial, Mum, Dad’ll be home. He hasn’t done anything wrong.’

‘It isn’t looking very good, Paul. Believe me, you can be innocent, and terrible things can happen to you.’

He knows what she means: leaving Germany. Coming here with Oma. Mum never talks about it properly. Probably she doesn’t remember. She doesn’t even speak German, although Oma does, not just with them but with her friends, too. Oma is quite different in German and she teaches them the German words for everything.
Not by telling them, like at school: just by saying things and then he and Sal say them back until they know them. It’s easy-peasy. Oma doesn’t speak German when Mum’s there.

If Mum and Oma hadn’t left Germany, they would be dead and he, Sally and Bridget would never have been born. But in England, things like that don’t happen. That’s why they have proper trials and the police can’t lock you up just because they feel like it. Or take your home away.

‘I have to make plans for the future,’ says Mum.

‘But where would we go?’

‘Somewhere cheap, as long as it’s close to a good grammar school,’ says Mum promptly, and he can tell she’s been thinking it all out for ages. ‘You and Sally have got to go on with your education. Somewhere in the country, probably, or by the sea.’

He cannot believe any of this, but Mum is talking as if it’s perfectly normal. If Mum is talking about grammar school, then she means years, not months. He’s not even leaving primary school until next July, when he’s eleven – and Sally not for nearly two years. Two whole years, with someone else living in their house.

‘Has the surgeon – the American one – Have they got any children?’

‘Yes. Three children, like us. All boys, apparently. They need to rent a family house, like ours.’

Another boy will sleep in his bedroom. Other children will do their homework in the dining room. They’ll go to school here: Paul’s school.

‘I think it’s all rubbish,’ he says. ‘You’re making it up. Dad’s going to come home, and if you’re stupid enough to let other people live in our house, he won’t have anywhere to come home to.’

Mum takes another cigarette out of her packet, lights it and draws in the smoke. ‘I hope you’re right,’ she says. ‘Never mind. I ought not to have discussed it with you.’

A wash of shame comes over him. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he says. ‘I do want you to talk to me.’

She crosses her legs, and continues to smoke, saying nothing, but it’s not awkward because she smiles at him as if she knows why he was angry, and doesn’t mind. Paul drinks his Ribena, which has gone cold without him noticing. It’s freezing in here.

‘It’s hard for all of us to understand what’s happening,’ she says.

He likes the way she says ‘all of us’. It makes him feel safer, somehow, as if he’s not alone in a confusion of darkness. He hates it when grown-ups pretend that awful things are straightforward and even somehow good for you. Mum sucks in a breath. Her voice is tight, the same way that his own stomach is tight. ‘You know Dad,’ she says.

‘Of course I know Dad!’ He’s angry, indignant.

‘Dad hasn’t done anything wrong. You know that. But …’

The ‘but’ sticks into him like the barbed wire at the back of the copse. ‘Mum—’

‘I don’t want you to talk to anyone about this.’

‘I won’t. I promise.’

Another of those sucking breaths. He is so close to Mum that he can see the swallow in her throat. Her arm comes around him, squeezing him. ‘The date for the trial hasn’t been set. We don’t know, Paul …’ She’s silent. He wants her to say it. He wants to put his hands over her mouth so she can never say it. ‘Paul, Dad might – It’s possible that Dad will go to prison for a long time.’

Neither of them hears the stifled noise that Sally makes from behind the door, which she has pushed open, just a little bit, so that she can hear better.

She’d gone up to her bedroom, as she and Paul had planned, but even though Mum had said she could, Sally didn’t fetch the electric fire. She hated the sparks that came out of it. She got the scissors and glue, and her big sugar-paper project folder. The thing she wanted to do most was the cover. Her plan was to cut out a cardboard comb, mix powder paint and paste until it was stiff, spread it over the outside of the folder and make swirls with the comb, which she thought would look like the Aboriginal drawings in the
National Geographic
magazine. This cover plan had been warm inside her for days. When she thought about it, the frightened feeling in her stomach went away for a bit.

She lay on the lino, sorting out her pictures. But down here, close to the floor, she could hear voices, although she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She rested her head so that her ear touched the cold lino, but she still couldn’t make out any words. Her stomach
hurt. Their voices went on and on. Paul was supposed to be finding out whether he could visit Dad or not – that shouldn’t take all this time. It sounded as if he and Mum had secrets together.

She goes down the stairs so lightly that she can’t even hear herself. Bridget is fast asleep. Bridget’s only a baby and she doesn’t understand anything. It was stupid, thinking that they could be like the children who lived in the barn, if Mum got arrested. There aren’t any barns in Muswell Hill. Mum can’t be arrested. But what is she telling Paul? The talk goes on and on. If it was good news, if Mum had said, ‘Yes, of course, Paul, you can go and see Dad, I should have thought of it myself,’ then Paul would have rushed back up to Sally’s bedroom, to boast about it. It doesn’t sound like good news.

She sees they haven’t closed the sitting-room door, and slides herself noiselessly into position.

‘I don’t want you to talk to anyone about this.’

‘I won’t. I promise,’ she hears Paul say.

How dare he promise? He’s only down there talking to Mum because she, Sally, has agreed the plan with him. Half of it was her idea. Mum is murmuring again. Sally catches some of the words, but not all. She will have to risk it. She moves forward, and pushes the sitting-room door a little wider. Now she can see them. They’re on the sofa, side by side. Paul is right up next to Mum. Sally sees Mum’s arm come out along the sofa back, and then go around Paul’s shoulders. They are so close that they are like one person. Mum’s head comes up as if something has jerked inside her, and she
says, not in a murmur now but clearly: ‘It’s possible that Dad will go to prison for a long time.’

Sally hears the sound that comes out of her own mouth. She freezes, waiting for them to turn, but they don’t seem to have heard her. She shrinks back, as if them not seeing her is the most important thing in the world. Here are the stairs, with Mum’s stair carpet hiding the sound of Sally’s feet. She holds tight to the banister rail. It’s like going up the stairs in the ferry when they went to the Isle of Wight. The sea was very rough even though Dad said it was only a short crossing. The ferry stairs swung up and down at them and Bridget nearly fell, because she wouldn’t hold on.

She has got to get back into her room. The doorknob spins round without opening, the way it sometimes does, and for a minute Sally can’t remember how to push it in and then try again. But she gets it right and the door opens. Mum says don’t shut your door completely, that doorknob’s going to come off and you might get stuck. Dad was going to mend it.

Sally shuts her bedroom door. The overhead light glares on the lino and hurts her eyes. She switches it off, feels her way over to the bed and burrows down and down, under the counterpane, under the eiderdown, in between the cold sheets. She curls up into a tight ball with her eyes shut and her hands over her ears. When Paul comes in, she hopes he’ll think she’s asleep.

Deep in its nest of soil and leaf debris, the briefcase begins to breed. Damp leaks into the pigskin. The lock is no longer true. This was Giles’s school briefcase, kept for sentiment rather than security. Woodlice truffle along the stitching. Maggots cluster where the pigskin is rubbed away, as if this were a wound they might debride. Already, the file within the briefcase is swollen with the seepage of autumn rain.

Rain slides down the windows of Julian Clowde’s office. His desk is clear. Brenda has just left. In her long, belted mac and headscarf she looks like a housewife going shopping. But her mind is not the mind of a housewife. She is absolutely loyal, resourceful, discreet, intelligent, tireless. She was married once, but thought better of it. Brenda is also one of the few people who never laughs at Giles Holloway’s jokes.

He runs a hand over the leather top of his desk. The
day’s work has crossed it and left no trace. That is as it should be.

The smell in Giles’s hospital room was really quite unpleasant. Giles is a liability, but he has been contained. In the longer term, he must be pensioned off. Simon Callington has been isolated effectively and his position will be made clear to him in no uncertain terms. He will co-operate.

The missing file niggles at Julian Clowde. It’s messy. He likes his desk clear. The wretched thing may turn up at any time.

It’s highly unlikely that Callington has destroyed it. Either he’s hidden it, or he’s given it to someone.

Julian Clowde passes his hand over the waves of his hair, slowly, as if he were stroking the pelt of a beloved cat. His eyes are half-closed. There is something missing: a last hole that must be stopped up. The wife. Of course, it makes perfect sense. If Callington has given that file to anyone, it will have been to her.

He can picture Lily Callington quite clearly. A slight, dark woman, with something about her that grated on him. Exactly the kind of woman to make trouble. Jewish, of course.

Julian Clowde sits for a long time, thinking, calculating, stroking.

The wound in Giles’s leg is not healing as it should. His temperature is up again, his pulse rapid. He mutters restlessly. Mr Anstruther has been telephoned, and will be in to see the patient at nine o’clock.

Mr Anstruther was not always a pinstriped god, walking the corridors of the Latimer. Once he was a captain in the RAMC. He landed on Sword Beach, and while the troops hid and hunted in the terrible
bocage
, Captain Anstruther worked sixteen hours a day, up to his elbows in blood, gristle and bone splinters. When he could, he stripped naked to sluice himself with a pail of water. The healing of wounds was his obsession. Usually several hours elapsed before a wounded man could be got to the operating table. It might be longer. A soldier might have lain under a hedge for a day and a night, with soil blown into a compound fracture of the leg. There was the new ‘wonder-drug’, penicillin, saving lives that would have been lost even two years earlier, but even penicillin could not do everything. Sometimes, necrotic tissue continued its advance, eating through flesh and bone. Maggot debridement might be deemed old-fashioned, but it could salvage a limb when everything else failed.

Captain Anstruther was precise about the timing of his maggot dressings. They must not be left on the wound an hour too long, because maggots that had devoured the necrotic tissue might move on to healthy flesh. He was always present when the cage dressing was removed. He could tell instantly, by the smell of the wound, whether or not he would see pink, clean tissue. The men called him Dr Maggot behind his back, and Anstruther could not have cared less. If it was their own stinking, necrotic wound that had been cleansed, they sang a different tune. While penicillin steamrollered
over the field of infection control, Anstruther remained quietly passionate about maggots.

Giles Holloway has a strong family history of vascular disease. Claudication is present in his lower legs. His wound has abscessed and the infection is not responding to antibiotics. Pain and fever are present.

Anstruther’s glance sweeps over the patient’s chart. He talks, low-voiced, to Sister, with whom he works easily and well. For a successful consultant, Anstruther has very little side. He is so sure of himself that he does not need any. They both agree, in a few murmured half-phrases, that Mr Holloway isn’t ‘doing’ as they would wish. They both know that he stank of whisky when admitted, but they are too experienced to need to smell the alcohol on a man. They can perceive its effect throughout the organs of his body.

Draining the abscesses has not been successful. Acute osteomyelitis is now present, and this is failing to respond to methicillin.

‘He seemed to be doing rather surprisingly well over the first four or five days. Disappointing,’ says Anstruther. Sister nods her agreement. ‘Has he had visitors?’

‘One or two. No family.’

‘I see. Well, we must press on. We’ll continue with the methicillin, and I intend to prescribe maggot debridement in addition.’

Sister nods. She is used to Mr Anstruther’s ways, and the almost boyish light that comes into his eyes at a chance to deploy his beloved maggots. Nurse Foster, who will have to affix the dressings, may be less
enthusiastic. Mr Anstruther can’t see any reason for disgust. Maggots are clean, beneficial little creatures.
Have you a cat at home, Nurse Foster? A dog, hmm? The creature will be swarming with parasites and bacteria, you may be sure of it.

Giles lies as still as still. His head is huge. It may float free of him if he’s not careful, to bounce against the ceiling like a balloon. The nurse with the handwriting on the wall hasn’t come back. That chap – the tall striped-column chap – is here again. Giles knows he knows him, but can’t remember who he is.

‘Could we light a fire?’ asks Giles, as politely as he knows how. It doesn’t do to get on the wrong side of these people.

‘Don’t you know that there’s a war on?’ counters the other. But Giles knows that isn’t true. He’s not so far gone. The war is over. Did they think they could trick him, dressing up as doctors? He knows what they are up to.

‘I’m not going anywhere with you,’ he says clearly.

‘No one’s going anywhere,’ says the voice. It’s Anstruther. Giles remembers him now. The sawbones, Julian Clowde said. He was going to send Giles to the King David Convalescent Home for Officers.

‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ says Giles, ‘I don’t think I can walk.’

‘No one wants you to walk. Nurse is going to put on a fresh dressing. You’ll soon feel more comfortable.’

It seems a long time since Julian Clowde was here,
and since then Giles hasn’t been very well. His hands, too, are huge. He wishes they would light that fire. It’s so cold in here.

His leg is out of the pulley and lying on the bed. It is enormous. He squints at it. Like a barrage balloon.

‘What’s that smell?’

‘It’s nothing, Mr Holloway. I’m just changing your dressing.’

Two days pass, as the maggots inside their cage dressing go to work. They liquefy and absorb Giles’s dead and dying flesh, cleansing the wound with a precision far beyond the finest surgical instrument. At the right moment, the sated maggots are removed. Nurse Foster, pale and sweating, disposes of them and applies a fresh dressing under the direction of Mr Anstruther. It’s all going well. Clean tissue has started to appear. The patient is quiet now. The temperature is down, the pulse steadier. It is all very satisfactory.

Giles wakes to a pale splash of light on the wall. He turns his eyes towards the window, where winter sunshine outlines a black mass of twigs. For the first time in days, he knows exactly where he is. His head is his head, resting on his pillow. His hands – he flexes them – are the right size. He is as weak as a baby but even weakness is a pleasure when his body has nothing to do but float here under the gaze of those twigs. They are perfectly motionless. Lozenges of sky appear within their cradle. Giles traces the pattern. Even though the
twigs aren’t moving, the pattern seems to change and shift, becoming more perfect until his eyes blur with looking at it. But perhaps he isn’t even looking at the twigs. No, they are looking into him, printing themselves on him, through his skin and through his flesh, into the centre of him. Everything else has been washed away. Even the pain is still.

Not to have pain. To be still, not to thresh or cry out. He tests himself and finds that he wants nothing. He is neither hungry nor thirsty. There’s nowhere he wants to go, and nothing and no one that he wants to see. The splash of light. The size of it about the same as the size of his hand. The light trembles, but the twigs don’t move. He feels his body, lying, resting, pressing down on the white sheet. His wreck of a body that is cast up here and good for nothing. Nobody wants it any more, not even him. He doesn’t want the old body back. This is enough: his eyes, watching; his ears, hearing the tap of feet.

The door opens and Sister steps quickly, lightly to his bedside. She takes up his right hand. She holds the little watch that is pinned to her breast, and times his pulse. With great effort, Giles opens his lips.

‘Am I dying?’ he asks.

She smiles, and shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says. ‘You’re much better today.’

He doesn’t know how to name the pang inside him. Is he afraid, because he has to live? All this will go away. His life will start to push at him again, darkly.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, embarrassed, because Sister must
have noticed the tears that have leaked out of him. She shakes her head again.

‘There’s nothing to be sorry about, as far as I can see,’ she says. ‘You’re doing nicely now. Mr Anstruther will be pleased.’

She goes away again. For as long as the splash of sunlight stays on the wall, he lies and watches it.