Exposure (13 page)

‘Raining?’ asks Pargeter, a little suspiciously, as if Simon is talking in code.

‘Outside, I mean.’

‘Oh, I see. No, no. Lovely day, in fact.’ And he looks quite bright at the prospect of it. He’ll go out, in just a few seconds, into that sharp low sunlight you get at this time of year. Simon has always thought it’s the light that suits London best.

He’ll appear in the Magistrates’ Court tomorrow. And what will Giles do? Lie there in that hospital bed with his leg slung in a pulley, and wait for events to take their course? Giles. Christ. There was I feeling sorry for him. Giles was ahead of me.
I can’t muck about …
Simon mimics himself savagely, under his breath. What kind of a cocksure tosser would give himself away like that? He’d as good as said to Giles:
You’re screwed. I’m not going to help you.
He should have kept Giles guessing. He’d have gained a day. Two days, maybe. What a fool he’s been, all the way back. Not wanting to know … If he hadn’t been convinced that Giles was losing his touch, if he hadn’t felt sorry for him – Christ! Sorry for him? Always feeling stronger than Giles, surer than Giles, because Giles was letting himself go and he, Simon, was holding on …

Vanity. That’s what it was. Thinking himself such a bloody wonderful decent chap. The same vanity as Pargeter’s. Vanity of thinking he was doing the right thing by old Giles. If he hadn’t been such a blind bloody fool he’d have seen what was under his nose. He did see it, most of it, years ago, but he pretended that it didn’t matter or that somehow Giles had changed and
all ‘that old stuff’ didn’t have to be thought about now. How could anybody as frankly devious as Giles really be leading not one but two double lives? Giles half-cut, Giles rambling, Giles embarrassing at parties, Giles with his odd assortment of friends;
Old Giles was a bit of a Red in his misspent youth …

Giles has been shouting what he is from the housetops for years. Everyone has heard but no one has listened. It’s unspeakably clever. Good old Giles – poor old Giles – has been batting for the other side in more ways than one. He may look a shambles – he may
be
a shambles, an embarrassment, even – Giles may have wanted Simon when Simon no longer wanted him—

But none of that matters, not now.

He should never have telephoned Giles. He should have gone straight to Julian Clowde. He could have done it all without dropping Giles in the shit. Everyone knows about Giles’s drinking; Clowde most of all. Simon would only have had to say a word or two; Clowde would have picked it up, and no harm done. He would have acted quickly, in that cold, decisive way of his. Clowde would have taken it on. Giles wasn’t keeping on top of his work and he took home a file he shouldn’t have. He wasn’t thinking straight, and then, after the accident, he panicked—

Even though it was impossible that Giles could fail to be saturated to the bones with security, after all these years – Giles, who knew to a shade what each grade of clearance permitted – Clowde would have made sure it was all hushed up, because Giles was Giles.

The thing was, they were all so much in the habit of making allowances for Giles.

Simon isn’t sure what time it is, except that it must be getting late. The clanging and footsteps are muted. He shifts position on the hard bed. In the morning they will take him to court – to the Mags, as Pargeter called it. They’ll charge him with conspiring with a person or persons unknown to breach the Official Secrets Act. If that person is unknown, then he can’t be Giles Holloway. Giles is off the hook. Scot-free. In the clear, old boy. Off he goes while Simon jumps up and down protesting that it wasn’t him, it was one of the big boys—

A wave of humiliation makes Simon groan aloud. He hears the noise he makes. Steady. Get a grip, Callington. Don’t be such a drip.
Callington’s so wet you could shoot snipe off him.

He sees himself in another bed, in another room. He is lying on his back, lazy, drowsy, replete. Giles is sitting on the edge of Simon’s narrow student bed, reading. His weight bears down on the mattress. He looks like a Buddha in wool-and-silk underwear. Simon’s eyes are almost shut.

‘Wake up and listen to this, dear boy:

‘Did you know that they made him stand for half an hour in convict dress in the middle of Clapham Junction? Half an hour of spitting and jeering. He had dysentery. He must have been terrified he’d shit himself in front of all of them.’

‘Who? Who was terrified?’

‘Oscar.’ And after a pause, ‘Oscar Wilde.’

‘Oh. Did he shit himself?’

‘Not as far as we know.’

‘You wouldn’t think he’d want to write about it.’

‘You’ve got a lot to learn, my dear boy. It’s from
De Profundis
.’

Simon closes his eyes again and recites:

‘My view exactly. Do you still sing, Simon? There are so many things I don’t know about you.’

‘Hardly at all. My voice broke. There was some idea that a fine baritone might emerge from the wreckage, but it turned out not to be the case.’

‘I shall imagine you in a red cassock and a white surplice.’

‘We wore black.’

‘I wonder why he didn’t kill himself.’

‘Oscar Wilde?’

‘Yes. He could have done it before the trial. He had time. Or during it, when it became clear things were going wrong. The trial lasted for several days, so he could easily have done it then. Or he could have killed the wretched Bosie. That might have been more to the point. Queensberry would have left him alone then. Do you know, the old bastard couldn’t even spell “sodomite”? He left a calling card: “To Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite.”’

‘How on earth do you know that?’

‘Education, my dear Simon, education. The trouble with Oscar, he didn’t believe it was really going to happen to him, until it was too late. He didn’t believe they were going to find him guilty. One of his friends had a yacht waiting to take him off to France, but he didn’t go. I suppose he must have imagined himself in court, giving marvellous speeches, and then going home at the end, just as he’d always gone home from the theatre when the play was over. That was his mistake.’

And so it went on. Giles pondering, reading out more passages, scratching his back.

Once, he turned and stroked Simon’s hair, tenderly, almost as if he were sorry for him. Simon couldn’t have cared less about Oscar Wilde, but he thought it polite to take an interest.

‘How long did he go to prison for?’

‘Two years.’

‘You wouldn’t kill yourself, surely, if you were only going to prison for two years.’

Giles had looked at him strangely. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about, Simon.’

You tell yourself you’ve forgotten things, but you haven’t. It’s all there, under the lid he’s crammed down on it since he met Lily. Lily must never know. Lily mustn’t suspect, and so Giles must be absent even from Simon’s thoughts. But now it seems that not thinking about those days for so long has only made the memories stronger. Giles on the bed in his old-fashioned underwear, about which he was as unselfconscious as a baby, telling Simon what he feared most in the world. And also telling Simon that he, Giles, wouldn’t make the same mistake as Oscar. He would know when the play was over, and he would get out. But Simon hadn’t listened. Giles’s voice buzzed on, like the knocking of a bee inside a flower. Simon lay there, drowsy, sated, half hoping Giles would go home soon so that he could have the bed to himself – he used to guzzle sleep then – and half coldly wishing that Giles
wouldn’t talk about ‘Oscar’ like that, because it made him sound like an old queen.

He thinks he can sense, far below him, the rumble of the Tube. It feels like a kind of freedom, as if he’s still part of that outside world of weary office workers swaying as they strap-hang their way home. He wouldn’t care how packed the carriage was.

He used to lie and listen for the trains, when he was eight or nine. There was only a branch line to Stopstone, so that was no good, but his prep school was half a mile from the main line. When he couldn’t sleep, he used to pretend he was on the train and rushing away through the darkness. Sometimes he became the train itself. Rushing and rushing into the dark, until he slept.

Desks and chairs are set out in the hall. It’s to make the final practice Eleven-plus for Paul’s class – Top Class – as much like the real exam as possible. The lower panes of the internal classroom windows that overlook the hall have been covered with sugar paper. No one can look in or out. Top Class lines up by the door. In five minutes, not a minute more or a minute less, they will march into the hall and take their places. The desks are set far apart. Old Craven has spoken to them about trying to look at someone else’s paper. Anybody who does so will be sent straight home in disgrace, and a letter will be written to the Local Authority. As he spoke, Craven flexed the cane which he always brought out at such moments. It was called ‘showing the cane’.

Old Craven walks up and down the line of children, and flips Danny Coughlan’s head with an exercise book for not standing still. Several of the girls have brought in their mascots, even though this isn’t the real exam. None of the boys have mascots.

This time last year, Paul was sent to fetch the crates at milk-time with David Alexander. They were both trustworthy boys, Mrs Wilson said; they were in her class then. Paul and David were told to carry the crates across the hall in absolute silence. Don’t look at the children doing the exam, because it might distract them. Straight there and straight back, and make as little noise as you can. Don’t rattle those crates!

Now Paul is in Top Class, and everybody else in the school is keeping quiet for them, even today when it’s only practice. Last year only one boy and one girl passed for the grammar, and four boys and one girl to the technical school. Mum says this is because there was a bulge of babies born around the same time as Paul, and there aren’t enough grammar school places. Craven says it is because last year’s Top Class was full of thickos. This year, at least six are capable of passing for the grammar. They know who they are: Paul Callington, Richard Cemlyn, Andrew Dodds, Joseph Lodge, Penelope Fawley, Anne-Marie Gorman.

‘I don’t see what there is for you to smirk about, Daniel Coughlan. If you weren’t bone idle you might be on the list, instead of going off to Payne’s Wood.’

Penny is best in the class at Comprehension. Paul is best at Mental Arithmetic. The Intelligence Test is the part Paul doesn’t like. If he thinks about the questions for too long, he makes them more complicated in his head than they really are. You have to be quick. You have to allow the right amount of time for each section.

‘It’s no good knowing the answers. It’s what you put
down on the paper that counts. The examiners aren’t mind-readers.’

The examiners aren’t code-breakers either. ‘A spider with DTs could write better than that, Joseph!’

Old Craven says that if he had to choose between being deaf and being blind, he would choose to be blind. He knows about both, because he was shelled during the war.

They sit at their desks. Everybody looks neater and cleaner than usual, as if they have been polished, ready for the exam. This is not like all the other practices they’ve done in the classroom. This is the dress rehearsal. Alison Wigley throws her plaits back over her shoulder. On your marks, get set—

A long time later, Paul surfaces, dazed. He has finished. The clock on the wall shows that there are eight minutes left. If you have time left over, use it to check your answers. Go right through the papers. Don’t sit there staring round and wasting time.

Alison Wigley is crying. Her plaits have fallen forward and her shoulders are hunched. She isn’t making any noise. Her papers are messy on her desk. The minute hand on the clock shivers, then bumps forward. Paul shuffles his own papers without looking at what is written on them. He cannot read through everything. He cannot check his answers.

Seven minutes. Dad has been gone for three days. Four if you count Sunday as a day and today, Wednesday, as another day. But if you count it in hours, then it’s not even three days. Sunday afternoon to Monday afternoon, Monday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday
afternoon to eleven-fifty-three on Wednesday morning. That’s not even sixty-eight hours.

Their house is the only one he knows that the police have been to, apart from Danny Coughlan’s. That was because of Danny’s big brother. Martin Coughlan is twenty and he’s a mod. He goes down to Brighton and gets into trouble.

Five minutes. Paul arranges his papers. They are messy because he was writing fast. That doesn’t matter too much. Craven keeps switching about whether or not neatness is important. Sometimes slow and neat is worse than fast and untidy. ‘The Eleven-plus isn’t a handwriting competition, Susan Trudgmill!’ That was because Susie only wrote half a side for her composition—

A flash of heat goes over Paul. It’s all right, he tells himself, calm down, you idiot. There isn’t always a composition. Sometimes they put in a long Comprehension question instead – he wrote loads for Comprehension—

But his hands don’t believe him. They blunder at the papers in front of him. Read through the question papers. Don’t rush at the exam like a bull at a gate. The examiners have put every word on that paper there for a reason.

‘Write a composition on ONE of the following subjects: The Life of a Horse, Grace Darling’s Daring Rescue, The Holiday I Will Always Remember, A Winter’s Day, The Race to the South Pole.’

How can he not have seen it?

‘Two more minutes, children,’ says Mrs Liddell from the front.

Everyone walks soberly out to the playground. Their milk has been kept for them in the crates by the wall. Paul stabs through the silver-paper top with his straw and sucks up his milk. It’s cold. He likes it cold. In summer the milk tastes of old cheese by playtime. He doesn’t want to talk to anyone. A knot of girls has gathered around Alison. Some pat her cardigan; one holds her milk bottle so she can drink.

‘It doesn’t matter, Ali,’ somebody says. ‘It’s only the stupid old practice.’

‘And next time it’ll be only the stupid feckin’ Eleven-plus,’ says Danny to Paul. He grins around his straw. ‘It’s well for you.’

‘I left out the composition,’ says Paul.

‘You never.’

‘I didn’t see it.’

‘Nerves,’ says Danny professionally. ‘Our Martin had so much nerves before his trial, he was sick in a bucket four times.’

‘Was that for the Gunners?’ asks Paul, although he knows.

‘Yeah, the Youth, when he was fourteen.’

They sit on their heels, backs against the wall. Even though it’s a cold day, the sun has left some warmth in the bricks. It was only the feckin’ practice.

‘It’ll be gas at Payne’s Wood,’ says Danny, and digs Paul with his elbow.

Paul hangs around playing football after school, until he sees Craven at the door, peering about as
if there’s someone he wants. He’s been in the office all afternoon, going through the exam papers. Paul slips to the gates.

He has threepence ha’penny. He goes into the sweet shop, buys fourteen Black Jacks and puts the bag in his pocket to warm up. They have to be soft and chewy.

Now he’s at the top of their road. It’s so steep that when he was little he used to think that if he ran as fast as he could and flapped his arms he would take off like an aeroplane.

He slows. There are men in the road. Some of them have got cameras and they are walking backwards, in the middle of the road, pointing the camera at the houses. They are jostling each other. One is almost in the hedge outside his house. Another is leaning over the gate with his camera.

He sees his mother at the window, dodging behind the glass. She disappears and a moment later the front door opens. He can’t see her, so she must be standing behind the door.

‘Paul!’ she cries sharply. ‘Paul.’

He runs, with his head down and his satchel bumping. By the gate he nearly trips but he saves himself by grabbing the post. A man catches hold of his arm and he tears himself free.

‘I was only trying to help, sonny!’ the man shouts after him as Paul jumps the steps. He is inside. The door slams and Mum shoots the chain into its slot.

‘Where’re Sally and Bridgie?’

‘In the back.’

Mum pulls the curtains across in the sitting room. As the curtains swish together, he sees faces bobbing over the hedge.

‘Do you think they’ll break in?’ he asks.

‘No. They’re newspaper photographers, that’s all. They want pictures.’

‘Why are they here?’ he asks, but he knows, just as he knew even before he found the unanswered composition question in his paper. Mum turns to him. It is darkish in the hall but he can see her face.

‘Dad was remanded in custody this morning.’

Mum thinks he knows what that means. Sometimes she thinks he knows more about English words than she does, because he was born here and she wasn’t.

‘Are they going to let him come home?’ It’s a stupid question. Childish. He knows that as soon as it comes out of his mouth, just as he knew it would be worse than useless to write out one of the essay titles and underline it, in the couple of minutes he had left.

‘No. In custody means in prison.’

‘Custody,’ says Paul.

‘Bridget thought he had been put in a big pan of custard.’

‘Did you tell Bridget?’

Mum frowns. ‘I said the police were talking to Dad about an accident. She’ll be more frightened if she hears things that she doesn’t understand. Or if people say things to her.’

Paul doesn’t agree. Bridget is only five, and blurts out everything. ‘But why custody, Mum?’

‘Dad didn’t get bail, which means he can’t come home. They’re keeping him in prison until the trial.’

‘But Dad hasn’t done anything.’

Mum looks down at Paul’s hand and says sharply: ‘Come into the light.’

In the kitchen he too sees that his hand is bleeding.

‘How did this happen?’

‘I caught it on the gate.’ He thinks he remembers, now, a pain he didn’t feel at the time. There’s a scrape across the back of his hand, and a deeper cut. Mum reaches up to the shelf where she keeps the Dettol. She pours a capful into a cup of water, takes down the cotton wool and bathes his hand with the cloudy liquid. He likes the ordinary smell of the Dettol.

Mum reaches up. ‘There should be some plaster in the tin, if Bridget didn’t have it all for her knee …’

She finds the plaster, and snips it to size with her kitchen scissors. Now the cut is hidden.

‘There,’ says Mum. ‘Remember to keep it out of the water when you have your bath.’

‘What do they say Dad’s done?’ he asks, his voice small and casual. What he thinks is that Dad must have killed someone by accident, when he was driving the car. Dad always drives too fast.

Mum has her back to him as she reaches up to the shelf again to replace the tin. ‘They say that he has given important secrets to the Russians.’

It is so unexpected, so extraordinary, that Paul can’t take it in. Mum must have gone mad.

‘You mean, like a spy?’

‘Yes. They think he has taken information from his work and given it to the Russians.’

‘But Dad doesn’t know any Russians.’

‘They think he does.’

‘If Dad was doing anything like that, we’d know about it.’

Mum pushes back his hair from his forehead, and strokes his head as if he were as young as Bridget. ‘Sally is playing Ludo with Bridget in the dining room,’ she says. ‘I’ll come in a minute and hear Bridget’s reading while you and Sally do your homework.’

‘Mum, you didn’t tell Bridget, did you? About them thinking Dad was a spy?’

‘No. Oh, Paul, I forgot all about your exam. How did it go?’

‘It was only the practice, Mum.’

‘Didn’t it go well?’

‘I missed out the composition question.’ He pauses. Mum knows what that means. She’s a teacher. She’ll be angry that he did something so stupid.

‘It wasn’t the real exam, was it?’

‘No. I think I did the rest OK. Craven will go mad when he sees my paper.’

‘Take no notice of him,’ says Mum. ‘He’s been in that school too long.’ Mum has never said anything like this about his teachers before. ‘Take no notice of anything that anyone says. They will say things, you can be sure of it. Ignore them.’

‘What kind of things?’ he asks, although he already knows.

‘Lies about your father.’

Behind them, the doorbell rings, and goes on ringing.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it, Mum?’

‘They’re journalists. They’ve been ringing that bell all afternoon. They’re trying again because they saw you come in.’

‘I could disconnect it,’ says Paul.

‘Could you?’

Paul picks out the small screwdriver from Dad’s toolbox in the cupboard under the stairs. He’s watched Dad replace the batteries loads of times. First, he must twist off the bell’s metal cover by hand. Luckily, it has stopped ringing. Paul undoes the two screws that hold down the bell’s connections, and pulls out the ends of the wires. Easy-peasy. He replaces the cover, and scoots down the hall to put the screwdriver back in its exact place. Mum is pleased.

‘Did you put the bolts across?’ Paul asks.

‘Yes.’

He likes feeling together with Mum, doing jobs for her. She has shot both bolts across, top and bottom.

‘I’ve bolted the back door too,’ says Mum. ‘I don’t want Bridget to play out in the garden tonight.’

Bridget always plays out after supper, even when it’s pitch black. She’s scared of dark in the house, but not of dark in the garden. She has a camp down by the apple tree, with the cushions from the old sofa they had before Mum bought this one with her teaching money.

The door-knocker bangs against its metal plate. It’s
the dolphin door-knocker that Dad found for Mum in a junk shop. They shouldn’t be touching it.

‘They’ll stop soon,’ says Mum. ‘I’m going to make corned beef hash. I haven’t been able to get to the shops.’

‘Did they stop you going out?’

‘No, but they’ll take photographs, and try to talk to me. Don’t worry, Paul. Tomorrow they’ll be somewhere else.’

The children are in bed. Lily stands by her bedroom window, screening herself with the curtain even though she is sure that all the press people have gone. One of them came up to the letterbox and shouted through it, but that was before the children came home from school. His dirty voice filled her hall.