Exposure Read online

  The truth is, Simon’s no good at this sort of thing. Using his own initials in a false name was idiotic, and he hadn’t even realised it. He might as well have laid a trail to his own front door. He’s got to get a grip. Lily and the children mustn’t be dragged into all this.

  7

  A Contamination

  Lessons are over, and the girls are going home. By the netball court, Miss Davenport claps her hand at a bunch of stragglers as if she is herding geese. The second team hasn’t yet given up the idea of holding an extra practice, although it’s raining and almost too dark for them to see the ball. Lily, standing at the staff-room window, watches idly. This is the rarest of moments for her: a corner of time when she doesn’t have to do anything. Bridget is going to tea with her friend Lucy. Even better, Lucy’s mother will collect both children from school. Sally and Paul are old enough to walk home on their own and look after themselves for an hour or so. They are sensible children.

  ‘Cigarette?’ It is Barbara Watson behind her. Lily turns, and takes a cigarette from the offered packet. They light up, and both turn back to the window, which has darkened, it seems, in the few seconds since Lily last looked out. A squall spatters the glass. The netball players have had enough and they run for shelter, shrieking. Everything girls do at this age is exaggerated, thinks Lily. There are chrysanthemums in the flower bed opposite the window, held up by bamboo canes but battered by wind and rain. The flowers will have lost their scent.

  ‘You’re usually off straight away,’ says Barbara.

  ‘I’m waiting for my timetable. They have to fit in the private lessons around the classes. It’s very complicated, apparently.’

  ‘Next term’s, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve got an extra morning’s teaching.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it will be useful.’

  Barbara Watson draws luxuriously on her cigarette, head back, eyes half-shut. This is the moment she’s been waiting for all afternoon: the quiet sense of camaraderie between old soldiers who have served another day. Or is it time in prison that is served? She slides a sideways glance at Lily, who seems rather out of sorts. It’s the weather, perhaps. Children are always restless when the wind blows. Perhaps her lessons have been difficult this afternoon.

  Lily stares into the gathering darkness. Simon is not himself. That telephone call from Giles has upset him. Why should he go out in the night like that? He came back so late that she was asleep. He is keyed-up. But perhaps it’s only because he is tired. He was boisterous with the children this morning. Too boisterous. Bridget cried after he’d gone. Usually he knows better than to get Bridget worked up before school—

  ‘Why the sigh?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is anything the matter, Lily?’

  For a second, in the dusk, as they stand together with the red tips of their cigarettes brightening and fading, Lily thinks: She is a friend. Not a friend like Erica … But I can trust her. The spatter of rain on the thin glass makes the room private. She knows that Barbara Watson is discreet. She has a dry humour that Lily likes very much. Barbara isn’t one of those women who suck your secrets out of you and then treat them like their own private property, to be shared out at will. But to trust or to like, Lily also knows, is not the same as to speak. She learned that long ago; had it drummed into her.

  The light snaps on behind them.

  ‘Here you are, all in the dark!’ announces Miss Harrold, the school secretary, as if they’d have had no way of knowing this without her. She surges forward with a sheaf of papers in her hand and a smile that shows her teeth. The little ones are often fooled in their first term, because Miss Harrold looks so motherly. They soon learn that she enforces school protocol to the letter. Her ample bosom, should you try to repose on it, would be iron-hard.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Lily, taking the papers. Yes, it’s the timetable. She glances quickly across the hours.

  ‘It was all rather complicated, I’m afraid,’ says Miss Harrold with an edge of blame to her voice.

  ‘I’m sure it was.’ Lily will not blunder into apologizing to this woman because she has had to do a job she is paid to do.

  ‘This is Week A and this is Week B. As you see, I’ve had to slot in a single Week C at the end of term, in order to equalise the times.’

  ‘I’m sure it will work very well. Thank you, Miss Harrold.’

  God knows what the woman’s Christian name is. No one ever uses it. The older members of staff refer to her as ‘Harrold’, but Lily is not on such terms.

  There’s a pause, as if more should be said or done, and then the secretary makes for the door, turning off the lights as she leaves, apart from a single bulb above Lily and Barbara’s heads. Barbara Watson raises her eyebrows, and Lily pulls a little, conspiratorial face.

  Barbara is fond of Lily. If someone – she can’t imagine who – were to ask her, she would reply, ‘Oh yes, I’m very fond of Lily Callington.’ Suddenly Barbara is oppressed by her own emotions, muffled by a sense of possibilities that will never be realised. Perhaps, if she and Lily were to meet outside school, things would be different …

  She’s only seen Lily outside school once. You’d think you would always be running across people. West Hampstead isn’t so far from Muswell Hill, for heaven’s sake. Lily was on the other side of the road, with her little girl holding her hand. Lily was bending down and the little girl was saying something to her. Lily’s hair blew about her face and when she straightened up again she was smiling in a way she never smiled at school. Instead of crossing the road to greet her, Barbara stepped back into a shop doorway.

  ‘Really, you wouldn’t think it was a job she does every term,’ says Lily.

  ‘I know. What a performance.’ Barbara’s lips ache as they quirk into a dry smile. ‘Another cigarette, Lily?’

  ‘No, thank you. I must go.’

  Barbara Watson glances at her watch. ‘Good heavens, is that the time?’ she observes, as if she, too, is in a hurry. Rain streams down the windows. All the children have gone now. She must buy coffee beans from Enzo’s on her way home. She is very particular about her coffee. A cup of steaming coffee, her fire lit, the pile of marking, curtains drawn against the beating of rain and wind. She will have the wireless on. She’ll mark the odd, artless little compositions of the Upper Third. Sometimes she’ll glance up as if to share the joke with someone.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have asked Lily if anything was the matter. There is something wrong, she’s sure of it. Just for a moment, it seemed as if Lily might confide in her, but then that wretched Harrold came in, and the moment was gone. Lily is so reserved, she thinks to herself quickly, and then, in a flash of bleak insight: She will never tell you anything.

  Lily’s children sit around the dining-room table, doing their homework. She watches their bent, shining heads. Sally looks up, eyes blank as she counts on her fingers under the table, where she hopes Paul will not see. Even Bridget has invented some school task for herself and is crayoning a magic castle. Simon hasn’t come home yet. Lily waited to serve the beef casserole, but when he had not arrived by seven, she ate with the children. Eight o’clock. It’s late for Bridget. She’ll send them up to bed in a minute. The dining-room fire is uneasy too, as the wind blows down the chimney.

  ‘I want to show Daddy my drawing,’ says Bridget.

  ‘He’s going to be late tonight,’ Lily says. Earlier she had made a mistake, wondering aloud why Simon was late until she saw the flash of anxiety in Sally’s eyes. She must seem certain. Their family life must not appear to be blown about by forces she cannot control.

  ‘But he was going to paper the front bedroom of the doll’s house! He promised!’ bawls Bridget, tears spurting off her cheeks.

  ‘Dad didn’t promise,’ says Paul, bored. ‘He just said he might if there was time. Why are you such a baby? Can’t you see that Mum’s tired, Bridget the Pidget?’

  At last, Lily gets Bridget upstairs, an
d baths her as if she really is a baby, soaping her back and drying her on her lap in a towel that has been kept warm in the airing cupboard. All the while she watches herself with a touch of irony. She knows that she is doing this for herself, to comfort herself with the firm sweetness of Bridget’s body, and the logical rigmarole of Bridget’s thoughts. Sally is already in bed, reading. Paul has his Railway Magazine and is saying for the hundredth time how much he wishes they hadn’t closed the railway line at the bottom of the garden.

  ‘But if it hadn’t been closed, you wouldn’t have the copse to play in,’ Lily points out, as she always does.

  ‘I know, but …’ He wriggles in his bed, unable to explain himself. It is the romance of it he wants. The rails singing long before the train comes into sight, the thunder of the locomotive, the blur of light from the carriage windows. The whole house would vibrate with it. He bends over his magazine again and traces the outline of Britannia Standard Class Locomotive Evening Star. He will cut out the picture. Dad said that it was the last steam locomotive that would ever be built in Britain.

  He’ll be home soon, Lily thinks as she settles herself with her marking. She works quickly and with method, making notes in a separate small book where she records each child’s progress. Each time the wind slams against the glass her nerves crisp, but she works on calmly. The telephone rings in the hall, and she jumps up quickly, in case its ringing wakes the children. But it’s only Erica, asking if Lily will be able to have Thomas after school while she takes the baby to the clinic. After she’s put the receiver back in its cradle, Lily picks it up again, then stands irresolute. There’s no point in ringing Simon’s office number now. She puts the receiver down softly, goes upstairs to their bedroom and pulls back the curtains. On nights like this the house is like a ship, surging in the wind above the sea of London. She clasps her elbows, then rubs her upper arms to warm herself. She thinks of Simon walking uphill, head down against the rain, doggedly making for home.

  As if her thoughts have brought him into being, she sees him, away down the street, under a swinging pool of lamplight. Now he has walked on into the darkness but she can still see him, head down, briefcase in hand. It is his shape and walk; she’d know them anywhere. She’s about to go down and open the front door when there is a cry from Bridget. She goes to the bedroom door, and there is Bridget, reared up in her bed, staring. Still asleep, Lily knows. It happens sometimes. She waits. The thing is not to wake her, or she will start screaming. There’s Simon, coming in downstairs.

  ‘Lie down, darling, and I’ll tuck you in,’ says Lily, as she says every night when she puts Bridget to bed, and through her sleep Bridget hears the words and lies down on her side. In a few moments more, she is breathing peacefully.

  Lily kisses Simon’s cold face.

  ‘Bridget had one of her night wakings,’ she says. ‘You go and have a wash. There’s no hurry. I haven’t put your rice on yet.’

  She listens to his heavy tread as he mounts the stairs, then she goes to the kitchen to warm up his share of the casserole and cook more rice. She wants to give him time. Something is wrong. The feeling of wrongness is all around him.

  ‘Here you are. Sit down.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to eat?’

  ‘I had mine with the children. It’s almost ten o’clock, Simon.’

  ‘Oh. Is it?’ He doesn’t apologise. He smells of soap now, but there is something else too: metallic, gunny. Has he been drinking? She doesn’t think so. Lily carries a dish of finely chopped and steamed Savoy cabbage to the table. She cooks it with caraway seeds and finishes it with butter. The children are beginning to realise that the food they eat at home is quite different from school food. At their friends’ houses, tea might be slices of Spam with beetroot salad, salad cream and bread and butter. Only the Jewish homes offer the intensity of taste and texture with which they are familiar. Bridget loves Spam, however. She can cut it into any shape she wants, as if it’s a more malleable form of Plasticine. Lily smiles, safe for a moment behind thoughts of the children.

  Simon eats a little, then pushes his plate aside.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

  He looks down at the casserole, the rice and cabbage. ‘Sorry, Lil,’ he says. ‘Hold on, I bought a book for you. I’ve been carrying it about all day.’

  It is a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

  ‘The full, unexpurgated edition,’ says Simon.

  ‘Could you get it so soon? Have they published a new edition already?’ It’s been only two weeks since the Lady Chatterley trial finished.

  ‘No,’ says Simon, ‘I got it from a bookseller who had stockpiled copies from the first edition. He’s safe to sell them now, so good luck to him. I thought I would bring one home for my wife.’

  She smiles, takes the book, flicks it open and begins to read:

  Connie was sorting out one of the Wragby lumber rooms. There were several: the house was a warren, and the family never sold anything. Sir Geoffrey’s father had liked pictures and Sir Geoffrey’s mother had liked cinquecento furniture. Sir Geoffrey himself had liked old carved oak chests, vestry chests. So it went on through the generations. Clifford collected very modern pictures, at very moderate prices.

  So in the lumber room there were bad Sir Edwin Landseers and pathetic William Henry Hunt birds’ nests: and other Academy stuff, enough to frighten the daughter of an R.A. She determined to look through it one day, and clear it all. And the grotesque furniture interested her.

  Lily looks up and smiles. ‘Like your family.’

  ‘But I don’t collect very modern pictures at any price.’

  ‘Are you all right, Simon?’

  ‘Of course I am. What are you talking about?’

  She sighs. ‘I wish you’d ring when you’re going to be so late. Bridget was waiting for you to wallpaper the doll’s house with her. She wouldn’t go to bed. She’s done all these tiny paintings to hang once the walls are finished.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have done it?’

  ‘I could. But it was you she wanted.’

  At once, a black mood overtakes him. He frowns, hunching over the drink Lily has given him. Such moods are familiar to her and they always pass. It’s not his mood that worries her, but the tension around him, the almost audible zizz of his nerves. Something has certainly happened.

  ‘There’s Bridget now,’ she says suddenly, looking up at the ceiling. ‘She must have woken up again.’

  Simon puts down his drink and goes upstairs. She hears Bridget’s voice, cheeping, instantly sociable, and Simon’s, deeper. She guesses that they are coming up with a plan about the doll’s-house wallpaper. Lily takes the plate into the kitchen, but does not yet throw away the food. That, for her, is the hardest thing in the world to do.

  As he comes downstairs, Simon notices for the first time that Lily has replaced the cherry blossom with burnt-orange and brown chrysanthemums. The room is full of their bitter autumn tang.

  ‘What happened to the blossom?’

  ‘It got knocked over, and Bridget stood on it. Fancy you noticing.’ She’s pleased, he can tell, and he’s flooded with compunction. Lily gave him beef casserole with rice, at ten o’clock and without comment. Lily’s cooking makes him feel as if he belongs to a secret society because it is so unlike the meals that his colleagues describe. He wishes now that he had eaten his meal. He isn’t hungry, but he says, ‘Could you warm up the casserole again, Lil?’ and sees her face brighten. He can almost hear her thoughts: He’s hungry; he must be feeling better.

  While he eats, Lily sets the clothes horse in front of the dining-room fire. ‘Your coat is soaked,’ she explains, and spreads it out carefully. It is a good coat, a charcoal-grey Crombie. A Callington coat. A present from his mother, for his thirtieth birthday.

  He watches her. She’s frowning, not because she’s worried now but because she’s thinking about his coat. She kneels down and adjusts the legs of the clothes horse to make it more secure under the heavy weight. She
always handles his things carefully, and in just the right way, as if she is touching him.

  Usually he rings the doorbell, for the pleasure of hearing her come to the door, but tonight he used his key. Lily was upstairs. He pushed the briefcase with the file in it right to the back of the coats again, behind the children’s boots. It would do for now. If Lily was looking for something – one of the kids’ gloves, say – she might find it, but it’s probably all right. Perhaps he wants her to find it. He wants her to say: What’s this, Simon? and then it will all come out. A trouble shared is a trouble halved. Lily says that, without irony. It’s one of the little sayings that make you realise, as nothing else does, that she wasn’t born speaking English. Well, of course, no one was, but Lily’s ear is almost faultless. That’s why she’s so good at languages, because she can hear what sounds right. But sometimes, she misses a beat. He doesn’t correct her. He likes her moments of slightly old-fashioned bookishness. He likes her sudden foreignness, which only shows for a moment before it disappears, and Lily is a Londoner again.

  He’s smiling in spite of himself, thinking of her. Lily mustn’t know anything. Lily and the children must be kept safe.

  He won’t think about the damned file any more tonight. He’ll find a better place for the briefcase. With luck, it will all die down—

  ‘Simon!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought you hadn’t heard me. Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right. I’m tired, that’s all.’ He makes an effort, and smiles. ‘Let’s have an early night.’

  She isn’t fooled. She won’t ask him, though. His mother said that Lily was cold.

  ‘She doesn’t seem awfully interested, Simon.’

  ‘Interested in what, Ma?’

  She meant that Lily wasn’t giving her what she wanted. There was no touch of deference, no shadow of eagerness to join the Callington world. Lily wanted nothing that the Callingtons could give or withhold. He can see her now, in the shrubbery at Stopstone, in the winter coat she’d made herself from a Vogue pattern. She had found a bolt of tweed inside a chest in a junk shop – old stuff, pre-war quality. Lily loved things like that. His mother was talking at her, while Lily rubbed between her fingers a leaf of bay.