Exposure

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘How on earth do you know that?’ asks Erica.

  ‘Common knowledge. The baby’s crying, darling.’

  ‘I know.’ Both parents listen, looking up at the ceiling. ‘I thought she’d settled.’ The cry swells to a roar. ‘She’s standing up again.’

  ‘She used to be such an angel, but now she pulls herself up, and then she can’t get down again.’

  ‘She stands there screaming until one of us goes up.’

  ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I’ll go.’

  The stairs creak, the door opens, the volume of crying rises and slowly, sobbingly, declines. ‘He’s picked her up,’ diagnoses Erica. ‘He always does that. He’s hopeless. You have to sit by the cot and pat her until she goes back to sleep, but Tony hasn’t the patience. Oh God, he’s bringing her down.’

  And here they are. Tony smoothes back the baby’s feathery hair, which is damp with sweat and tears. She stares around. A hiccup shakes her and she buries her face in her father’s shoulder. Her arms go around his neck.

  ‘She knows I’ll put her straight back in her cot,’ says Erica. ‘That’s why she won’t look at me. Nine months old, would you believe it? She plays him like a violin.’

  ‘It won’t do her any harm. She’s just a baby.’

  ‘So you say. Come here, lambkin, let me wipe your face.’

  Lily watches them. Their tender, absorbed faces. They can’t feel this for anyone else, only for Clare and Thomas. Tony would do anything – or not do anything – to keep his own baby safe. It’s natural. Lily has always known that this is how it works. But usually she has Simon at her side and they are united as Tony and Erica are united, for all their differences. Now, though, there is only Lily.

  The children huddle alongside her as they walk home along the wet, glistening pavements. It has stopped raining at last. Bridget stumbles, half-asleep on her feet.

  ‘Thomas cheated at bagatelle,’ she complains, her voice blurred.

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘He always cheats,’ says Paul. ‘You should be used to it by now, Bridgie.’

  ‘We’ll soon be home, and then we’ll all have cocoa, and you can tumble into bed,’ soothes Lily. Bridget, she knows, isn’t listening to her words, only to the tone of them and the comfort of her mother’s voice. She was frightened. Sally whispered that, gravely, in her mother’s ear. ‘Bridget was scared, Mum. She wet herself. I told Erica and she gave her some clean knickers.’

  And she, Lily, had stupidly forgotten to pack clean underwear for the children. At home, she takes Bridget upstairs and kneels to undress her. Bridget stands still, shivering with tiredness. She is wearing, incongruously, Erica’s lace underwear.

  ‘Thomas didn’t know I wet my knickers,’ she says.

  ‘Of course he didn’t. Anyway it doesn’t matter. Let’s get your vest off. Arms up, knees stretch, rah rah rah.’

  That’s what Simon says to them. She’s learned all the English children’s sayings from Simon.

  ‘I don’t like these knickers. They’re scratchy. Take them off me.’ She starts to cry, not the usual Bridget bellow but a whimper that draws at Lily’s heart.

  ‘It’s all right, sweetheart. Look, here’s your nightie, all nice and clean.’

  ‘I didn’t like it at Erica’s. I wanted you to come and get me.’

  ‘I did come, didn’t I?’

  ‘Not for ages! Thomas was horrible to me! He said I was a stinky pinky pee-pants.’

  ‘You know what Thomas is like. He’ll have forgotten it all by tomorrow.’

  Bridget stops crying as her face flushes with rage. ‘I hate him,’ she screams. ‘I don’t ever want to go to his house again. If he tells anyone I’m going to kill him.’

  ‘That’s my girl,’ says Lily, laughing in spite of herself.

  ‘Mum …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Could I really kill Thomas? Would you let me?’

  It was years before Lily told Simon that his brothers had thrown her into the lake. She did so the summer that Simon’s mother pressed for Sally to visit Stopstone on her own. Sally was a favourite with the Callingtons.

  ‘Why not let her? My mother’s fond of Sally, at least that’s something.’

  Lily told him about the lake.

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘It would only have made trouble. Don’t get angry, it was years ago. But I don’t want Sally going there without me. It’s not a safe place for her.’

  She hadn’t cared about making trouble. It was because of the shame that she had kept quiet. She, Lily, picked up like a bag of rubbish, dangling from his brothers’ hands and then heaved into the lake. She didn’t want Simon ever to see that humiliated figure.

  Bridget presses against her mother. Lily holds her, rocks her, lifts her, puts her between the sheets like a baby and tucks her in. With her eyes tightly closed, Bridget puts her thumb in her mouth and begins to suck rhythmically. She’ll soon be asleep.

  12

  The Charge

  Simon is to appear at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court tomorrow morning, at 10 a.m. The charge is that between 30 November 1959 and 20 November 1960 he unlawfully conspired with a person or persons unknown to commit breaches of the Official Secrets Act 1911. Pargeter, Simon’s solicitor, has already explained that since bail is highly unlikely to be granted, he won’t be making an application.

  The police had enough evidence to charge him.

  They must have found the briefcase. It’s the only possible interpretation. They’d have ripped the house apart, looking for more evidence. Christ knows what damage they’ll have done. What did they say to Lily? She’ll have kept the children out of the way and made sure they didn’t see anything that frightened them. She wouldn’t have let anyone know that she was frightened herself. For a second Lily is before him. Their bedroom and the new green eiderdown. Lily’s face buried in the pillow. Her hair spread out and the ribbon strap of her nightdress slipping off one shoulder. He winces, and shuts off the thought.

  Simon has been brought from his cell for this meeting with his solicitor in the interview room. It’s Simon’s father who has instructed Pargeter, who is apparently ‘an absolutely top man’. He’s not from Blyth & Corston, the local solicitors who have handled Callington affairs ‘for generations’, as the Callingtons like to say. Simon and Lily wouldn’t be able to afford Pargeter, but the bill is going to Stopstone. He mustn’t betray himself, if Pargeter mentions the briefcase. He must seem to be open, but to know nothing. He can’t trust Pargeter.

  Simon’s father has acted fast, in that crushing way of his.

  When Pargeter came in, he was so clean that he made Simon feel dirty. He must be used to prison. He didn’t bat an eyelid. The green paint on the walls of the interview room was flaking, and the single bulb in its metal cage buzzed intermittently, like a bluebottle. Simon felt as if he’d brought the tang of his cell with him. The touch of the prison blanket and the taste of his metal mug made him dirty to himself.

  Pargeter wears an old, smooth watch which purrs through the minutes of his appointment with Simon. It was probably his father’s watch. He writes down Simon’s words with a heavy silver fountain pen. He smells, faintly, of cologne.

  Simon isn’t going to give him Giles’s name. Christ knew where that would lead. The file must have been missed pretty much straight away, he thinks. Brenda must have said Giles was working on it. They’d have rung Giles and Giles had clearly panicked. They’d have gone into the Latimer to question him about it as soon as possible, broken leg or no broken leg. Giles must have caved in. The anaesthetic … Giles was in a hell of a state when he saw him in that hospital bed – For God’s sake, what can he have told them? Surely not that he, Simon, filched that file from Julian Clowde’s office. The most basic inquiry would show that wasn’t likely. That file would have been locked up. Simon has still not sorted out in his mind why Giles had it at all. Those three names and three sets of initials. He sees the
m all the time, as if they’ve been written on his mind.

  Even if the file was supposed to have been lying on Giles’s desk, for some reason which was absolutely against every security protocol he’d ever heard of, then how the hell was he, Simon, meant to have known the exact moment when Giles had left it there – and then, presumably, managed to walk out with it, without anyone noticing?

  If only he had kept out of Giles’s office. But, for old times’ sake, he keeps the habit of dropping in. The air is always thick with cigarette smoke, and there are rings on documents from Giles’s endless mugs of tea. The chaos of his desk is a byword. Old Giles is a law unto himself. A brilliant eccentric, people said, in the old days when his brain seemed to work in a different dimension from everyone else’s. He spoke near-perfect Russian, played chess like a demon and could date any painting you had in your house. He’d tell you it was a fake into the bargain. He’d get roaring drunk but never drop a line in one of those marvellous stories of his. Not so much now. They will say that Simon has made use of him, trading on old friendship. Dull, plodding Simon, glorified clerk Simon, exploiting flawed but brilliant Giles to turn himself into an actor on a bigger stage than he merited. Milkman.

  Is that the story? Poor old Giles, they’ll say. He deserved better. That shit Callington knew his weaknesses. If that’s the story, then the police already knew what they were looking for when they came to the house. They’d have found the briefcase in five minutes.

  But have they got the briefcase? He can’t ask Pargeter. The solicitor is still writing away on his pad. Simon clears his throat. ‘This charge against me,’ he says, and stops. If he asks about what evidence the police have got, then it might sound as if he knows there is some.

  Pargeter caps his pen. Instead of meeting Simon’s eye he stares somewhere past his left ear, and frowns. ‘Something’s come up,’ he says. ‘I’ve had information that certain material has been found in the course of further police investigations.’

  ‘Where?’ asks Simon, instantly. Pargeter’s face changes. You fool, you bloody fool. Why did you say that? A man who’d never seen the briefcase wouldn’t have asked ‘Where?’ He’d have burst out: ‘They can’t have found anything! There’s nothing to find!’

  ‘They can’t have found anything,’ he says, but it’s too late. Pargeter won’t meet his eye.

  ‘It’s highly unusual for Special Branch to let anything slip at this stage,’ he says. ‘But I happen to know one of the investigating officers pretty well. Known him for years, in fact. He’s a decent type.’ He smiles faintly, in appreciation of the world of decent types to which he also belongs. ‘It was quite a coup for him.’ Simon stares. What the hell was this man talking about? Quite a coup? You’re supposed to be my solicitor, for Christ’s sake, he thinks. Angry words burn on his tongue, but he says nothing. ‘This chap led me to believe that the material was found during a search of your office,’ Pargeter continues.

  ‘In my office!’

  ‘You seem surprised.’

  ‘Well, of course – Of course, for God’s sake, I’m surprised.’ It’s the truth, so why does he sound as if he’s acting? ‘Whatever this material is, it’s got nothing to do with me.’ He isn’t saying any of this right. He is telling the truth and he sounds like a liar.

  Pargeter places his hands on his knees. His fingers drum once, twice. ‘Look here.’ He’s avuncular now, playing the twenty or so years that he has on Simon. ‘Cards on the table. I can’t help you, you know, if you don’t help me. No, no’ – and he holds up a hand, to forestall an interruption that Simon hasn’t been about to make – ‘I don’t need to know everything. But don’t, I beg of you, send me barking up the wrong tree and expect me to make a case out of it.’

  ‘It’s a pretty easy case to make, as far as I can see,’ says Simon. ‘I know nothing about whatever it is they’ve found in my office. I have done nothing to contravene the Official Secrets Act. I don’t believe there can be any evidence against me that’s going to stand up in court.’

  Pargeter leans back. Without looking at Simon, he says, ‘If you’ll forgive me, that’s not a case. That’s an assertion on your part. Where was it you were at school?’

  ‘Renton.’

  ‘Renton. Of course. Splendid. I’ve a nephew there. Look here, about this barking-up-the-wrong-tree business. One develops an instinct, if you’ll forgive me.’

  ‘For when someone’s lying, you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, and I didn’t mean it. But it tends to become clear when a client is holding something back. Sometimes, it has to be said, in order to protect others.’

  ‘You think I am part of a ring of spies, is that it?’

  Pargeter glances at the door. ‘That’s not what I said.’

  ‘If they’ve found something compromising in my office – a file, say – I can assure you that it has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Is there any reason why it should be a file?’

  ‘No, of course not, it’s just that offices are full of files—’

  ‘It wasn’t a file.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘A Minox. A type of camera. You may have heard of it.’

  ‘Was there a film in it?’

  Pargeter gives him a glance. ‘I believe so. Possibly my contact was cleverer than I thought. He must know the implications of disclosing such evidence to the defence.’

  Simon feels something awful happening within himself. His stomach loosens. He’s going to shit himself. He bends forward, tightening every muscle, breathing shallowly.

  ‘Here, have some water.’

  The mug with its taste of dirty London. He drinks. He is sweating but he has got control. He burned the cartridge. He didn’t burn the file. Why not? Evidence, his mind said. He’d thought that, there in the kitchen, with the cartridge burning. The file was evidence, and he might need it. And why think that at all, unless another thought lay under it? That Giles, perhaps …

  That Giles was not to be trusted. His mind knew enough, but he didn’t listen to it. Instead, he’d let Giles know what he’d done. He’d said: ‘I can’t muck about with a file like that.’ That was what he said to Giles, those exact words. He told Giles in so many words that he wasn’t going to do what Giles wanted, wasn’t going to get the file safely back into Brenda’s hands. And now a camera has been found in his own office. A Minox with film in it. But Giles, for God’s sake, Giles is strapped up to a pulley – He can’t get out of bed, let alone to the office – He can’t have planted the camera. Giles wouldn’t—

  But someone has planted it. Simon remembers the man in Giles’s flat. He wasn’t English. He’d never have got into the Admiralty. But how many others are there? My God, if they’ve got someone else inside the Admiralty – someone whom no one would suspect, or more than one … But in that case, why didn’t Giles ask that person to replace the file in the first place? All this could have been avoided. Giles wouldn’t have needed to ring Simon.

  Another thought goes through him like an electric charge. They haven’t found the file. They can’t have found it, or it would have been the basis of the case against him. A top-secret file discovered in Simon’s own house: that’d make it easy for them. So they don’t know where it is, unless Pargeter’s hiding something—

  No. You’ll go mad if you start thinking like that. They haven’t found the file. But they should have done. An old briefcase tucked behind the children’s boots: they’d have found it in no time. Someone got rid of it. There’s only one person who can have done that. Lily.

  Pargeter is waiting. That same look is on his face, watchful.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with me. That camera. I’ve never seen it in my life. Someone must have put it in my office.’

  ‘You know what kind of camera a Minox is?’

  ‘Of course I do. My work involves handling classified information. My clearance—’ He stops himself.

  ‘Yes.’

  There they are, the two of them. Pargeter’
s face is set; rather a beefy face. Neutral. Frowning. He doesn’t like this. He’s not going to help me. Why should Pargeter believe that the Minox was planted? It sounds like something out of the Boy’s Own Paper.

  Soon Pargeter will get up to leave. His way will be opened for him through all the locked doors, and he’ll walk out into the rain. He’ll put up his umbrella and hurry to the Tube. Buy the Standard if he feels like it, or a pomegranate from a stall. Lily likes pomegranates. Simon always buys one for her when they are in season.

  There isn’t enough air. Simon breathes shallowly again. In a minute Pargeter will stand up and go. Simon will be taken from the interview room, back to his cell. The cell door will clang shut. There’ll be the rattle of keys and then heavy boots walking away. The warder will say something to Pargeter about the weather. Call him ‘sir’. They are in it together, professionals. Pargeter will do his job. He thinks I’m lying.

  ‘I’ve been giving some thought to the question of your barrister,’ says Pargeter. ‘Unless you have someone in mind? A family connection possibly?’

  ‘We don’t go in for being on trial.’

  ‘Absolutely not. Absolutely not,’ he repeats, almost dreamily, tapping the cap of his pen on the table. ‘Your family place is in Norfolk, I gather?’

  ‘Stopstone.’

  ‘I’ve talked things over with your father, of course. It would be best if your wife and children were to go down there straight away. Things can get pretty hot once the press get hold of a story.’

  They’re parcelling him up between them. His father and Pargeter. Now they want to get their hands on Lily.

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘Oh. Don’t they get on?’

  ‘Not particularly. Besides, Lily will want to be here in London.’

  ‘Oh. Pity. Never mind: back to our muttons. The chap I have in mind is very good. Peter Learmonth. Come across him at all?’