Exposure

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘Your poor shoes,’ said his mother. ‘It’s frightfully muddy this way.’ She meant: Don’t you know enough to bring suitable shoes to the country?

  Lily glanced down at her black suede shoes. Her best, he knew. ‘They’ll be fine,’ she said indifferently, as if she had fifty pairs.

  So why doesn’t he confide in Lily? He trusts her completely, far more than he trusts himself. Lily is everything. She is the still point in his turning world. Again those ridiculous tears that will never be shed prickle at the back of his eyes and throat. Get a grip, Callington. Get a bloody grip.

  The briefcase with Giles Holloway’s file in it has entered the house, like a contamination. He doesn’t know what to do with it. He can’t return it now. Its absence must have been noted. He can’t get rid of the file, because it’s evidence. But that works both ways—He rubs his forehead, pushing up his hair. He has forgotten Lily. He is thinking of Giles Holloway. Giles …

  8

  The Single Bed

  He can’t even remember the first time he saw Giles. When he first met Lily, she seemed to fit a place within him that had always been there, waiting for her. Through Lily he learned what he was. But Giles claimed him, as if he’d lost Simon long ago and simply stepped forward to say, ‘This is mine, I think.’

  Afterwards, Giles said he’d noticed Simon a few times, around Cambridge, when he was visiting Ali Ferguson. But although Simon often looked back to those days, trying to remember when it was that he had first caught sight of Giles, he always came up with the same, original image: Giles standing there, one foot on the fender of the pub’s fireplace, with a glass of whisky in his hand. The fire wasn’t lit because it was June. Light spilled in through the low doorway, showing up motes which danced like gnats. The others were all out in the garden, drinking beer and eating pickled eggs because there was nothing else to be had.

  ‘You’re Simon, aren’t you?’ said Giles.

  Simon coloured slightly. Giles knew perfectly well who he was. Ali had driven Simon and three others from Cambridge in a crammed, clapped-out Austin 7. Giles Holloway had arrived in his new Wolseley 4/50, straight from London. Simon liked cars. He’d gone over to have a look at the Wolseley, in the pub car park. Giles had arrived first. He was older, and rich enough to drink whisky instead of beer.

  ‘Aren’t you coming outside with the others?’ Simon asked.

  ‘I like it in here,’ said Giles.

  The bar was empty. The publican was polishing glasses, slowly, with a blue and white cloth. His profile was carved, remote.

  ‘D’you want a drink?’ Giles asked.

  ‘I’ve got one outside.’

  There was a shout of laughter from the garden. It sounded exaggerated, Simon thought. There was a clock on the wall, stuck at half past seven. The floor was brick, in a herringbone pattern. If the clock were ticking, thought Simon, or if the fire were lit, it might be pleasant in here.

  Giles had crossed to the bar, and was tapping a half-crown on it. The publican moved slowly towards him, as if underwater. Simon heard Giles ordering more whisky, and he turned away to rejoin the others.

  Outside the pub door there was a bed planted with violently red salvias. He stared at them until the colour throbbed. His mother was always marching about the garden, telling the gardener what she wanted, going down on her haunches to point out some disease in the fiercely coloured beds. No gardener stayed long. When he was younger he’d had such an overwhelming desire to kick her in the backside while she knelt that he had to race past her, full tilt. He had to get away from her and from himself.

  Giles Holloway touched his arm and Simon just managed not to jump. He looked Giles full in the eyes and then away, as if the salvias and his mother might be visible in his own pupils.

  ‘What were you thinking about?’

  It was such a curious question that Simon answered it truthfully: ‘My mother.’

  Giles Holloway looked around the pub garden with its flaring, brassy flower beds and dry lawn. ‘Not much of a place,’ he observed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You still haven’t got a drink.’

  ‘I don’t need two drinks.’

  Half-hidden from them by the hedge, Simon’s friends yelped with laughter.

  ‘They sound as if they’re having a good time. Why don’t you join them?’ asked Giles.

  ‘I don’t know them very well, except for Rod.’

  ‘You don’t know Ali, then?’

  ‘Hardly at all.’ Simon knew that Ali was Giles Holloway’s reason for being here. They’d been at school together or something like that, although Giles was years older and had gone through the war. Ali said that Giles worked at the Admiralty now.

  ‘Is she beautiful, your mother?’

  ‘Good God, no!’ said Simon before he could help himself. He glanced round and there were the salvias, glaring at him.

  ‘I’m surprised,’ said Giles, and his eyes moved over Simon’s face, his neck, and down over his body. There was neither lasciviousness nor speculation in his gaze, but something Simon hadn’t come across before: certainty.

  Is she beautiful, your mother?

  Good God, no.

  He could tell the truth to Giles. The more lacerating, the more ridiculous the truth, the more Giles went for it. He positively roared with laughter when he heard that Simon’s brothers had given him the nickname ‘Milkman’ because of a supposed doubt over his paternity. Callington males ran to flesh as soon as they were over thirty. They had pale blue eyes which they screwed up against the light when they took aim. Simon was dark. He was strong but lightly made, and at five foot nine he was four inches shorter than his father and brothers.

  Giles ran one finger down Simon’s spine. They were jammed into the single bed in Simon’s room. Simon couldn’t often get to London, and anyway Giles seemed to like coming here, to the digs Simon had found on the Madingley Road. Simon couldn’t stand living in college. Everything about it rubbed him the wrong way, from the freezing dash to the bathroom to the procession of dons to High Table, all wearing the look of exalted sheep. Spiritually they belonged to the tribe of the Callingtons, although intellectually, of course, they were in a different league. At least, he hoped that they were, because if they weren’t then it was all, the whole pack of it, a gigantic sham where people kept telling other people how brilliant those other people were, in the hope that the same would be said about them.

  ‘Your sheets are extraordinary,’ said Giles.

  ‘They’re utility.’

  ‘Remarkable.’

  What was remarkable was that the landlady had sides-to-middled them, so that a ridge ran down the middle of the bed. Even so, Simon loved his room. He cherished the worn lino with its bald patch by the bed, the single gas ring in the corner, the strong iron bed, the ticking mattress, the gas fire and the curtained hanging-rail for his clothes. He’d bought a desk and chair in a junk shop. He didn’t want pictures or decorations. His landlady, Mrs Chapman, never troubled him. She had no time for the university or its rules and restrictions. As far as she was concerned Simon was a grown man. He paid for his room and could do in it what he wanted. She provided breakfast, take it or leave it. Simon usually left it.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been to bed in a room quite like this,’ Giles observed, rolling on to his back and lying with his head pillowed on his arms. Simon got up, wrapped himself in a dressing gown and went over to his desk to start work.

  ‘What are you doing? Come back to bed.’

  ‘I’ve got to finish this.’

  Giles reached down the side of his bed and picked up his whisky glass. The bottle, also on the floor, was a quarter full. More there than he’d thought. Giles poured himself a drink and lay back again, watching the cold, whitish sky and listening to the sound of Simon’s pen.

  ‘Do you think that this can possibly be the high point of our love?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Friday the twenty-third of January, two-zero-six pip emma. Look at those clouds. Write
it down, Simon. Damn, it’s two-zero-seven already.’

  ‘Could be,’ said Simon, not really listening, writing hard. Giles could not see that he had pushed aside the sheets of his essay, and was writing a letter.

  ‘You’re only going to get a bloody Third, you know. Why don’t you stop that and come here?’

  ‘In a minute …’

  But he wouldn’t, they both knew that. Giles drank his whisky, slowly and luxuriously. It would be dark before long. He had to get back to London but there was no need to think about that now. It was something he’d learned in the war: only think about what is directly in front of you. No, that wasn’t quite right. He’d had to plan ahead all the time … But not to feel ahead. For a man of Giles’s far-seeing, intricate temperament, that had been a hard lesson. But Simon, he could see, knew it by instinct.

  ‘I shan’t get a Third,’ said Simon now, as if informing Giles of something that had already been decided.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’ll be an Upper Second. I haven’t worked hard enough for a First.’

  ‘And then what?’

  Simon shrugged. ‘I’ll leave Cambridge. No point staying, unless you get a First. Do my National Service, then find another room like this. In London probably. Find something to do.’

  ‘Any idea what?’

  ‘No idea. Something’ll turn up.’

  I bet it will, thought Giles, watching him turn back to his work. ‘Who’s that letter from?’ It lay on the floor: a thick, creamy envelope covered in sharp writing.

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘So you don’t open her letters.’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I doubt if you do.’

  ‘You don’t read their letters. You live in this room, which must be one of the least attractive the city has to offer, even though it’s perfectly obvious that you could do better.’

  ‘I don’t agree.’

  ‘This sheet …’ Giles ran his hand down the lumpy seam. ‘Is this your flag of rebellion, Simon?’

  Simon swung round on his seat. ‘Rebellion! Hardly. I’m at Cambridge, remember?’

  ‘So you are.’ The whisky sang and burned inside him and he was – as he sometimes was in Simon’s company – for a moment, perfectly happy.

  ‘I could help you find something,’ he said. ‘I think you’d do well in the Admiralty. There’s a chap I’d like you to meet.’

  ‘That would be good,’ said Simon, but again, he wasn’t really listening. Everything outside Cambridge still seemed unreal. ‘But I warn you, I’m not very ambitious.’ As he said it, he discovered that it was true. He didn’t want to do well and make his mark. He wanted to live peacefully and privately, far away from Stopstone, Norfolk, the World, the Universe and all that. Not wanting things made you free.

  ‘I don’t have to go back tonight,’ said Giles, to push away the black thoughts that were beginning to swarm in him. He had plans for Simon, even if Simon hadn’t any for himself. He wanted to stay. Simon stretched back in his chair, eyes blank, tilting the chair legs. A yawn went over his face like an ecstasy, and he pushed his papers into a heap.

  ‘Finished,’ he said. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’m staying tonight. We’ll get drunk at the Ram.’

  The Ram was out at Emberley, more than ten miles away.

  ‘Fine,’ said Simon, ‘but we’re having something to eat first. I’ve got a tin of baked beans.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, if you’re hungry we’ll go and have dinner—’

  But Simon was already assembling plates, cutlery, his one saucepan, half a loaf. Giles watched as he toasted slices of bread at the gas fire while the beans bubbled on the ring. He was as handy as a matelot.

  ‘Butter!’ said Simon. He thrust the toasting fork into Giles’s hand, leaped to the window and pulled up the sash. On the broad sill he kept a pint of milk, a packet of margarine and a small lump of cheese wrapped in greaseproof. He unwrapped the paper, regarded the cheese, then wrapped it up again. Suddenly he drew back his arm and hurled the cheese as far as it would go, into a neighbouring garden.

  ‘For God’s sake, shut that window,’ said Giles.

  Simon spread margarine on the toast, poured out beans lavishly and heaped salt on the sides of their plates. Both of them shovelled in the food.

  ‘What was wrong with the cheese? Maggots?’

  ‘Christ! It was my mother’s ration. She doesn’t need it at Stopstone, of course. Do you like milk?’

  Giles watched as Simon poured milk into two cups, and drank his own down in one draught. He smiled. ‘Have mine as well. I don’t drink milk.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ In a second draught, the second cupful was gone.

  He was young and hungry: two things Giles liked. But as for finding something for Simon in London, he still wasn’t sure which way the cat would jump. Simon, with his anger and his baked beans, his desire to tear down a world that was old, soiled, falling apart at its promises: Simon had possibilities. He hated the world into which he’d been born. Well, that was fine, that was what was required; but Giles was coming to think now that the hatred was all too real and thoroughgoing. Simon hadn’t the grace to appear part of what he detested, to bide his time as it was necessary that he should bide his time.

  Or did he simply loathe his mother? And that father of whom he never spoke?

  Before the war it would have been easier. Everything was so much more clear-cut then. A young man like Simon would have realised, by the end of his first Michaelmas term, that he was on the side of the future. With his temperament he’d probably have rushed off to Spain. But now, with Nye Bevan and the National Health Service, the Bank of England nationalised, the Coal Board, the Gas Board – all those things that made Giles deeply weary and impatient and as if the wrong people had got their hands on the levers of power, even though it was what he’d always wanted and worked for – but not like this, not now, not here – Giles’s thoughts stopped him, in their confusion.

  And there was Simon, naked in the middle of the room, pulling his vest over his head, and then his shirt. He knew, he must have known, that there was nothing Giles liked more than this: the shirt over the head, the face invisible, buttocks, cock, balls exposed as if even their possessor possessed them less than did Giles himself.

  They were in the Ram by seven, and by half past eight Simon had three pints inside him and a fourth on the table. The fire was too hot and for once the pub was crowded. Payday, Giles supposed, although he knew little about such things. Men seemed to have come in off the farms from miles around. The air was thick with smoke and the barmaid pulled pints as if she were stoking a furnace. The pump’s brass handle flashed through the fug. They’d never been in on a Friday night before.

  They didn’t belong here; Giles knew that. They ought to be in the snug, on the tight leather chairs that looked as if they should be set in rows in a funeral parlour. Bugger that. Everyone who came in glanced at Giles and Simon, noted their strangeness and then went on to the bar. Simon was sitting back in the shadows, watching ash gather on the end of his cigarette. He looked half-asleep. Time to be getting back, Giles thought.

  ‘Let’s have another drink,’ said Simon, getting up clumsily and knocking the table. He reached his hand into his pocket and peered at the coins. ‘Same again?’

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ said Giles. He didn’t want to drive the Wolseley into a ditch on one of those godforsaken Fenland roads.

  ‘I’ve never heard you say that before,’ said Simon, and laughed loudly. A couple of heads turned. Giles watched as he made his way to the bar. It was all right. He must have given one of his smiles, because a man with a pint in his hand stood aside with a nod of recognition to let Simon get past. All the same it was time to get him home.

  This time Simon didn’t knock the table. He put his own brimming pint down, and a double whisky in front of Giles. Carefully, he edged round to the bench where Giles sat, and settled himself. They were
touching. The heat of their bodies travelled up and down them, inside their clothing. Giles moved away, just a little. The pub was packed and they were in their corner, hidden away, but all the same …

  Simon put out his hand, his right hand. He laid it over Giles’s left hand, where it rested on the table, loosely clenched.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Simon.’ Giles swung round to look into Simon’s face. It wasn’t flushed – Simon’s skin didn’t flush – but it was dark, mantled with blood as it became during sex. His eyes glistened.

  ‘You’re drunk!’ barked Giles. ‘Come on, we’re going.’

  ‘I haven’t finished my drink.’

  ‘You don’t need another sodding drink.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I need.’

  Giles looked at him. Simon wasn’t twenty-one until the spring, but he was old enough to know what could be done where. This was sheer bloody-mindedness. Simon needed some sense knocking into him. The thought came from nowhere, surprising Giles. He saw himself standing over Simon, Simon on the ground, both of them panting, Simon’s knees drawn up, his arms shielding his face.

  ‘As long as I’m out with you, you’ll fucking do as I say,’ he said.

  ‘You’re wrong about that,’ said Simon. He was half smiling now. ‘Don’t you want me to put my arm around you?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Giles again, and heard his own impotence. ‘Get a grip, Simon.’

  ‘Why not? Don’t you like it?’

  ‘You know fucking well why not.’

  ‘No one’s looking at us.’

  But they were. It wasn’t Simon’s touch on Giles’s hand that had drawn their gazes, but an intensity between the two men that instinct told them shouldn’t be there. Two men glanced over their shoulders as Giles looked up. A third was openly watching them, with a flat, stubborn interest that might easily turn nasty. And here was Simon, smiling, reckless, intimate, crossing the line as if he didn’t even know there was one.