Exposure (33 page)

As he told himself this, Alistair knew there was more to it. He knew that at times there was a knowing, conspiratorial look in Rosalind's eyes—when someone asked him where he had grown up or where he had gone to school and he replied evasively. On occasion she had too conveniendy spilt her drink, needed help in the kitchen, or remembered a dull anecdote, just when he seemed to have no escape.

What was he to make of those times? He had made nothing of them. He had blocked them out as one blocks out the dirt on a glass when one is terribly thirsty and—well, the water tastes perfectly good.

The truth was, he had not been able to bear the idea of even Rosalind—his
own wife
—knowing the truth about him and his background. It was not because she would have told anyone—she would have been discreet for her own sake as well as his, fearing her mother's disapproval, her sister's glee. He had not been able to tell her because his performance required a globally captive audience, and the idea that her imagination could be roaming outside its boundaries would have thrown him off altogether. He really needed to think she believed him.

He had begun lying about himself before he met Rosalind, of course—at Oxford. He acquired a reputation for being a man of mystery because, with a tragic air he had adopted in a moment of inspiration, he said he 'loathed discussing Mummy and childhood'. This declamation had been made, of course, in Philip's public-school accent.

For the first year he felt guilty, but this changed. In the Michaelmas term of his second year, after much delaying on both sides, his mother came to visit him. Afterwards he thought he would never get over the experience and from then on he was able to justify each lie by working himself up on the rarefied surroundings of Oxford, running his fingers over his books and telling himself he had too much to lose. This was pure self-preservation—red in tooth and claw, he thought. In addition to this, he told himself that by excluding her from his life he was protecting her from ridicule. His friends would have taken one look at her and tried generously to assume that she was his old nanny or some other indulged retainer. It had seemed unbearable.

As he put her on the train at the end of her visit, he felt as though he was locking the cage on a wild animal—only he was not sure if she was the wild animal or his new life was.

She had arrived on the four o'clock, feeling 'sick as a parrot', wearing a vulgar green headscarf. He noticed immediately that her shoes were very battered. He rushed her away as quickly as he could, saying they could see his room after tea. Philip would be at church by then and John had an economics tutorial late on Thursday afternoons.

The strange thing was, his need to hide his mother from his friends was coupled with a desire to impress her with them. Ideally, he would have liked her to look through a hole in the wall as he and his chums were witty and incisive together in his room after dinner. He wanted to say: 'See,
this
is who I am, Mum.
This
is why I was never any good at home—I needed all this to bring me out.'

As they climbed the steps to the Victoria tea-rooms, he acknowledged that he was feeling something like anger and that maybe—secretly—he even wanted to intimidate his mother a little. This was the place where Philip always met his parents when they visited. There was nothing like it in Dover. He watched her flinch as they walked in through the chintz and mirrors and raw silk.
Yes, he wanted her to know this was how far he had come from her damp kitchen. He saw her eyes widen at the chandelier, the bone china—and, yes, he wanted to sock her in the face with his Lapsang Souchong sophistication. He was sure she didn't know you drank fine China tea without milk.

But in spite of all this—and at the same time—he wished they had gone somewhere simple together, where she might have been able to smile and speak naturally. Where she might have been his wide-hipped raucous mother with her grin and her intolerance of fools and those big hugs she gave him when he had fixed a tap or put up a shelf after hours of unmanly struggle. She could make him feel so proud—if only it had ever been for something he was genuinely good at! He handed her a menu and suddenly wanted to undo a litde of the damage he had done by using the Victoria tea-rooms against her. 'They have good scones,' he said, 'just normal ones. And nice jam.'

'Do they? This is very posh, Al.'

'It's not really, Mum.'

'It must be ever so dear.'

'Look, I'm paying so don't worry about that. I told you, I won that essay competition. Five quid. You did get my letter, didn't you?'

'Yes. That was a turn-up, wasn't it? Well done, Alistair.'

She had not written to congratulate him and his face reddened with anger at the belated praise now that finally he had it there, withered in his hand.

'I won against two hundred other people,' he said, disgusted by the brazenness of his desire for her approval. 'Logical positivism. It's an interesting subject, actually,'

'It sounds ever so complicated. Too clever for me by half. Oh, Al, do you think my clothes are good enough for in here?'

He sighed. 'No one
cares,
Mum.' But this had not occurred to him and he glanced around uneasily at the tweed skirts and pearls on the other women. Did she stand out? He knew nothing about the right clothes for women. He had known the headscarf was wrong but, thankfully, she had put that in her bag now. Maybe it would be best to get things moving.

'What will you have, then, Mum?' he said.

'Oh, you order me something, love. Only not bread and dripping.'

'They won't do that here anyway.'

'Well, I think I'll go to the Ladies.' She put on a mock posh accent for a moment and winked at him. 'Ay shan't be long—Ay must just powder may nose.'

He winced in case anyone should have heard. He had no appreciation then of how valiant she was being. He had his youth, after all, he had the full potential of his brain to protect him from glib categorization. But, unarmed, she walked the full length of the polished wooden floor, stared at by each of the tables, because it was perfectly obvious—from her brassy hennaed hair to her un-gloved hands—that she was not exactly
a lady.
She was shaking in spite of her private indignation.

As she reached the end of the room, Alistair watched her do a big, flashy, showgirl smile as she addressed one of the waitresses and all he could think was: Please, God, let her say 'cloakroom', not
'toilet'.

Tea was a disaster: they barely spoke about anything other than the food—all of which had struck her as mysterious or too rich and exotic. The cucumber from her sandwich fell into her lap and, not knowing where was the right place to put it, she tucked it into her cardigan pocket and said rather frantically that she could always have it if she got peckish on the train. Alistair became so agitated himself that he spooned a great slop of cream right past his scone and on to his shoe and had to mop it up with his handkerchief. They were like a pair of zoo animals, he thought. His mother rounded it off by apologizing to the waiter for having used the napkins. 'Seems a crime,' she said, as he cleared their plates, 'when they're all beautifully starched and pressed like that.' The young man smiled patronizingly.

When he had gone, Alistair spoke through gritted teeth: 'Why did you say that about the napkins, Mum? That's what they're there for. You've as much right to use them as anyone.'

'Yes, love. I know that,' she said absentmindedly.

It was then that he noticed she had her handbag on her lap and that she was holding something inside it with her right hand. It was her return train ticket. It was with a mixture of genuine sympathy and almost voluptuous martyrdom that he sighed, 'Tired out, are you? I expect you are.'

And, as he offered her the escape, he felt the full weight of his loneliness crash down. She smiled with obvious relief. 'Oh—well, yes, love. You're not wrong. I'm ever so tired. I was up at five to get the rooms done.'

'Well, perhaps you'd like to get the earlier train,' he said—and immediately she was looking in her bag for the timetable,

'You know, I think that might be best. Yes—best get the earlier train.'

'You don't want to look round my college? See my room?'

'Next time, love. I'll come again soon. Maybe Ivy and me could make a day of it. A proper jaunt.' She squeezed his arm, but they both knew that this was a fantasy. Of course she never came back.

What an idiot he had been. They could have gone to a litde cafe and had mugs of tea and sausage rolls or crumpets and he would have heard all about home. He would have loved to hear about home because, hate it as he did, he missed it too. He missed Auntie Ivy and Uncle Geoff and the seafront and the sugary buns at the Igglesdon Square bakery. He missed those rare occasions on which he had helped his mother to understand a bill or some legal document and she said, 'Clever little sod, aren't you?' and the high note of happiness was literally painful in his ears. He shattered with joy.

And he had heard that Ivy and Geoff's 'real nephew' Martin was staying with them for a few months while he did an apprenticeship with a local craftsman. Alistair was still senselessly in awe of Martin's celebrated carpentry skills and the news had filled him with envy and anxiety. This great hulking favourite would obliterate his memory altogether. It was no wonder his mother had not rushed to visit him.

Throughout Alistair's childhood, Martin had stayed with his uncle and aunt in the school summer holidays. Martin was the older, more muscular boy, who spoke of having half a pint of beer with his dad from time to time and swore he regularly kissed girls. When he was fourteen, Alistair remembered Martin bringing his mother a present. It was a sealion he had carved in oak. She had never been more thrilled and Alistair, who had been saving the big news all week, for the first day of the summer holidays, said nothing about his history-exam result, which was the best his school had ever seen.

Why was it that even when he was an Oxford scholar he was still crushed when he was shown a 'marvellous' table or a 'smashing' bookcase that his old pal Martin had made?

He saw his mother on to the earlier train and walked back to his college. Although he knew his memory might be exaggerating to emphasize the point, when he remembered it now, he was sure he had sat in the college dining room at a table of strangers that evening. Philip and John and the others were at a dining society for Old Etonians.

When Luke was born, Alistair half wondered if he would hear from his mother again, but there was silence. She had given up. And he continued the business of forgetting her and the boarding-house and Dover.

The sound of the doorbell reached into his mind as an alarm clock reaches into a deep sleep, at first existing only as a sound, then acquiring significance. Alistair woke to the present moment, stood up and opened the door to find his son standing there.

'Dad?' Luke said. His son looked scared and Alistair remembered he had been crying and that his face probably showed signs of it. He turned away quickly, wiping his eyes, and Luke followed him towards the kitchen.

'So, all done with the surveyor,' Alistair said. The paperwork was spread out on the kitchen table and they both glanced at it.

'Well, that's good,' said Luke.

'Yes, that's out of the way, at least.'

'So, just the packing up to be done now.'

'Yes. I'll give most of it to charity. There are one or two things she'd have wanted the Gilberts to have, though. Mementoes—photos and things. Nothing valuable.'

'You'll keep a few things yourself, won't you?'

'I—I haven't really decided.'

'No. Right. Well, we'd better get on with it, hadn't we? I'll get the boxes out of the car, shall I?'

Luke smiled good-naturedly at him and Alistair felt a rush of pity for his son, who must be struggling to comprehend so much. 'Luke?'

'Yes?'

'Listen, there's truly no need for you to do this with me, you know. It's not as if there's anything to lift and carry. It's just sorting through old things. I've been thinking,' he said, although it had only just occurred to him, 'if you like, you could leave me here for the night and come back for me tomorrow afternoon. I'll have it all done by then and you can get it into the car for me and drive us back and so on.'

Luke's heart raced with joy.

Alistair held back his smile: his son's feelings were as transparent as his grandmother's had been.

'Are you sure? I mean, will you be OK?'

'Of course I'll be OK. This is a depressing business for you.'

'No, no—it's been ... fine.'

'Well, even so, I'm sure you'd rather be out with your friends.'

'OK. Yes,' Luke said, thinking there was nothing he would like less—other than staying here with his father—than to go out with his friends. His friends, a few of whom had called him from a bar to tempt him out, had appeared to be high on some appalling stimulant, which rendered them emotionally tone deaf. They would not even hear the subtle range of his longing for Arianne and sitting beside them, listening to the percussive jangle of their one-night-stands talk, their promotions talk, their parties and flat-hunting and new-car talk, would be torture. At least his mother's sadness had musicality.

'Will you explain to Mummy?' Alistair said.

'Yes, I will.'

'Of course I'll call later tonight but, well, she doesn't need me phoning all the time. Best if you just say I'll be staying here and then I'll ring later and just say goodnight.'

'I'll explain.'

'Thank you.'

Alistair felt an intense nervousness—half excitement, half dread—about the idea of being alone with his mother's things,
at liberty to look through them with a clear conscience, as one can with the possessions of the dead.

 

Luke drove away quickly. As he got to the end of the road, he saw two figures sitting on the wall by the hedge. It was the Serbian couple to whom he had given cigarettes just half an hour before. Again, he was overwhelmed with curiosity about them. He slowed the car and ran the window down. 'Hello again. Is everything OK?'