Exposure (60 page)

'For God's sake, Dad, she'd put them on the mantelpiece. It's you that cares so much about things being smart all the time. Mum would put them on the mantelpiece to be respectful.'

Alistair let his eyes close. 'Luke, I wish I had had the benefit of your advice a long time ago,' he said.

They did not speak for much longer. Some conversations are so heavy with matter that the imagination cannot bear them for long and must find rest. When they said goodbye to each other a few moments later, it was with a sense of peace that neither of them had ever known before.

Alistair got back into bed and folded the covers over himself.

Luke took off his clothes and got under the duvet.

Each put his phone on the bedside table with a kind of reverence, a shared amazement at what power so small a machine had contained. Then, both father and son fell into a deep sleep.

Early the next morning, Alistair walked round to Ivy's house with an envelope in his hand. Inside it was a note. It read,

 

Dear Ivy,

I would like to do some things for you and I hope you will accept my help, because it comes with much love and it would give me great pleasure to think I might be of use to you after all these years.

If you agree, I would like to arrange for your house to be converted properly, so that you have a separate bedroom and sitting room and a downstairs bathroom. I would also like to fix for you to see a specialist about your hip because I am sure life could be a good deal more comfortable for you.

For now, here is a bit of money for a new milk jug—or whatever you choose to spend it on.

I must hurry back to London, but I will call you in the next few days after you have had time to think over my ideas.

With love,

Al.

 

It had seemed right to make no reference to Geoff. There would be time for all of that. His immediate concern was to improve Ivy's life. Her poverty had shocked him. If he couldn't renovate her house with his own hands, as the incomparable Martin would undoubtedly have done, then he could at least pay for it with the money his brain had earned him. He remembered then that Martin had died of cancer and he felt sorry: Martin had been an easy-going, friendly man and would never have suspected he was the subject of Alistair's paranoid rivalry.

Having slipped the envelope under the door, Alistair limped back round the corner to a breakfast of crackers and lime cordial, which was all there was in the kitchen. Then he called for a cab to take him to the station.

The driver was the same one who had taken him to Rosewood the day before. 'Morning, boss. Up to see your old dad again, is it?'

'No. Not today. I must get back to London,' Alistair told him.

'Right you are.'

Alistair laid his bag on the back seat and eased in his bad leg. 'Actually,' he said, 'I wonder—would you mind doing a slight detour before we go to the station? It's such a clear day I'd rather like to look out at the view,' he explained shyly, telling himself there was no need to justify his actions to a cab driver.

'Up the cliff, is it? No trouble at all,' came the reply.

They drove up to the car park at the foot of the path. Alistair got out and said, 'I'll leave my bag, if that's all right. Listen, I won't be long - and I'll pay you for waiting, of course.'

The driver wound down the front window and began to roll a cigarette. 'Don't you hurry, boss - my sort of day's work, this,' he said, winking.

Alistair smiled and made his way off.

As he climbed, looking out at the sea, with the soft chalk crunching under his shoes, he was surprised to find he had no sense of occasion at all. He had almost expected—perhaps he had actually wanted—to be filled with a portentous gloom by the sight of this view. It was, after all, hyper-charged with memories of his childhood. But as he reached his favourite spot, he was merely aware of a gentle smile on his face. Just as it had on the bizarre day of his sixty-third birthday, the view brought back a sense of himself, aged twenty-three, on the cliff one last time before he started his shining new life in London. How fiercely he had stared out at the waves, certain he was on the edge of making a grand, indelible gesture to the world. Alistair shook his head affectionately at his silly young self.

Now he saw that all our actions are less final than we insist. He saw, above all, that we are eternal optimists when it comes to love. Our minds entertain strange, secret attachments, long after they ought to. Perhaps only death is blunt enough to convince the human imagination that it is too late to make amends.

He knew perfectly well that he had spent his life in avoidance of reflection and confrontation. He had defeated every impulse to think about his past, or to sit down and confide in his wife, with a relentless emphasis on his work or other practical concerns. He had even put elaborate research about health care or financial security long before an afternoon with his children—a very long way before time with his son. Somehow, for the last thirty-nine years, there had always been a letter to write immediately after supper, or a million bills and a new brief to go through over the weekend.

But, of course, it had recently turned out that even resolute pragmatism requires a particular kind of faith. And it was as if, in return for his long worship, he had been granted a pardon, so long as he went quietly, from the humiliation of disciplinary proceedings. But he had lost the faith itself. Now that it had gone, Alistair found that the manifold little acts of will or of self-denial that account for the steady outline of a personality no longer felt 'natural'.

Here he was again, after all, on the cliff—
thinking.

He watched the waves curling up and over and back in on themselves. After a while he began to wonder if he hadn't always had the wrong idea about the sea and its display of supreme indifference. The disappearing waves had reminded him of all that is transient and uncontrollable in the world and he had literally dared himself to look at them. But now it was as if, quite suddenly, his perspective altered. He saw that with absolute consistency, with every breaking wave, the sea was repeating the point: nothing lasts and that is why it is beautiful. Just then this seemed to be the unexpected secret of happiness, which he had made it his life's purpose to destroy.

He was conscious that the driver was waiting, but he stayed on for a few more minutes, calmly aware that he would see the view again, that this was in no sense a final gesture of farewell, but that he simply did not want to go just yet. As he stood there, he did not ask for or receive any grand philosophical insight, but every so often there was a kind of sensual satisfaction, when he seemed literally to hold the idea of time, like cupping a marble egg in the palm of the hand. There was weight and there was smoothness and then these qualities dissipated, and perhaps it was time that he saw reflected back at him by the cool and empty horizon.

When he went back to the cab, he found the driver doing the crossword and they discussed clues all the way to the station. It gave Alistair enormous satisfaction to find that he was able to supply all the answers and to receive such enraptured gratitude. 'Oh, well, you're very kind. I'm afraid I'm not much good for anything else, though,' he said, as they arrived, feeling unworthy of such praise although it meant so much to him.

'Sharpness,
though,' the driver said, refusing to hear anything of the sort.'
Brains—
they'll get you a long way in life.'

Alistair smiled and paid him.

The first train was going to Charing Cross, rather than to the more convenient Victoria. It did not matter very much. On the platform, he took out his book on the Ottoman Empire by his old acquaintance Henry Downing and a coincidence in his mind caused him to remember a particularly touching description Henry had written in a
Times
book review in connection with Charing Cross. He had described how Edward I, distraught at the death of his wife Eleanor of Castile, had brought her body from Scotland to London and placed a cross at each point where her body and retinue had rested. Alistair felt moved all over again by this gesture—particularly when Edward I was only ever remembered for his cruelty to the Scots. There had been good in him, after all—there had been love. Alistair felt tears coming and wondered what on earth was the matter with him. He bought a paper to see if there was another crossword he could do.

But the crossword was of no interest. Neither was the news. Sitting in the train carriage, with his bag tucked rather spinster-ishly behind his feet, his thoughts turned to Rosalind - inevitably to Rosalind. His hands folded and unfolded the edge of his ticket. He knew that it was not to an address that he was going back, not to a white house in Holland Park with a number on the door, but to a woman with brown hair and graceful hands and an abject disillusionment in her eyes. He was deeply afraid.

He looked out in amazement as the train pulled in at its first stop, Folkestone Central. Surely this was the fastest train in the world.

Alistair might, as ever, have made a success of avoiding the issue of his marriage, but his mind had none the less been prey to nervous tics. He was curiously plagued by the uncharacteristic phrase that Rosalind had used on the night of the attack: 'But how could you not have
heard
them, Alistair? They must have been ... silent as
dogs.'

His immediate reaction had been to wonder if she had ever had an affair. A few little words had caused this big doubt! But his wife's imagination had roamed flagrantly beyond its usual parameters and he had felt threatened. If that, then why not sex, too? Why not one of his friends? Julian, perhaps? Julian had always been in love with her, and Elise knew it and behaved impeccably. How fitting, then, that it should have been Julian who had secured Alistair's disgrace with his upstanding neighbourly spirit.

Yes, Rosalind and Julian—an odd couple, but who knew what women found attractive? Or Henry Sanderson, perhaps - with his broad hands and the thick head of hair he was plainly never going to lose. Or Anthony Crichton, with that smarmy way he had of offering to help with the plates and the way he called her Rozzy, which
no one
did, except her
sister,
for God's sake— 'Oh, Rozzy, you're being an angel as ever. Do let some of us mere mortals lend a hand.'

Alistair heard Rosalind's giggle. Yes, his wife and Anthony Crichton. They were not implausible, physically. Anthony would kiss her neck as he undid her shirt and ran his blunt-ended fingers between her breasts.

There was sweat on Alistair's forehead and his fist gripped the train ticket. The image of Rosalind and Anthony was replaced by one of an early horror in his life: it was the one of his mother, the time he came back unexpectedly from his confirmation class at the church hall. There she was, struggling under Mr Bisset's fat body on the floor in the hall. He remembered thinking at the time,
Can you kill a man with an umbrella? Would they hang you if you were saving your mother's life?
But before these questions were relevant, the huge shoulder moved back to reveal his mother's smiling face. She was enjoying the attack. She was
urging on
her aggressor. What did it mean? What horrible mystery was being played out in front of him on the grubby hall carpet?

'Oh, Alistair, I thought you were down the church.'

'I forgot my sandwich. I got hungry.'

The train burst, obliviously, through a station, past men reading papers, mothers holding children, a man with a dog, two teenagers kissing. It all flashed curiously by, and Alistair found himself wondering if he had ever satisfied Rosalind sexually. He was not sure. They had always made love fairly regularly, but in the back of his mind had been the suspicion that she was always elsewhere, that he might have had possession of her soft, pale arms and legs, but that her mind was closed to him. On one occasion - and this was excruciating to remember—she had fallen asleep. It had been just for a few seconds—a few heartbeats, in effect—but she had undeniably been asleep. OK, it had been after a few very hard months with Sophie in and out of a clinic, Luke with tonsillitis and Suzannah getting divorced, but the sleep had somehow not seemed like tiredness so much as escape. He had stopped moving and stared down at the blind female body, which, though it was heavy in his arms, had left him completely empty-handed and foolish. He remembered thinking: What I am looking at now is the very opposite of desire—not boredom, but isolation, loneliness. And after she woke and he pretended not to have noticed, he had tidied the thought away, so as to survive.

It was fair to say that they had both suffered a good deal of sexual frustration.

He had blamed her for this, of course. (He had done such a lot of blaming over the years.) And yet now he was beginning to wonder if the fault lay primarily with him. Now he could hardly bear to remember the poignancy with which, in their early days, she had put up her face to be kissed, or unbuttoned her dress so that he could lay his weight on top of her, against her pale skin. It had been like leaning towards light to make love to Rosalind. She had been so tender, so trusting of him, her one and only lover. And at first it had been beautiful. He had felt blessed with her body, and when she stood by the window wrapped in her dressing-gown, gazing out over the little garden at their first house, he knew she had been blessed by his. There was a mutual satisfaction that fed on itself; a pleasure in what they gave to each other and of what they created in combination.

But it had not lasted. He couldn't help associating its disappearance with the disappointment he knew Rosalind had suffered shortly after they were married. They had agreed not to have a child for a few years. Rosalind's parents had insisted that Alistair did not make enough money. Her mother said, 'To speak with brutal frankness, Alistair,' he had found himself wondering when she had ever spoken otherwise to him, 'you do not yet have a
secure
environment in which to bring up a child
safely.
You can't
afford
to do it
properly—
in a
civilized
way.'