Chapter 3
Suzannah was sitting on the arm of the sofa by the fire. She looked up with an expression of innocence on her face as Alistair and Luke came in. She had a book in her hand—Rosalind was checking the meat in the kitchen—and she plainly intended to appear to have been lost in the words rather than listening for the arrival of the car. She shook off the poetical vagueness and tossed the book on to the sofa.
'Hello, hello,' she said, kissing Alistair on both cheeks and squeezing his arm—to express her deep, her very deep, sympathy, he imagined. 'And hello, Luke, darling. How are things with you?'
'Not so good,' Luke said.
'Oh dear.'
'But I'm working on them. They'll get better.'
'Is it love? Or money?'
'Love.'
'Oh, I see. You must tell me all about it.'
The idea of continuing, in this frivolous way, to talk about the great tragedy of his life was impossible.
'Actually I should go and get changed and dump my bag upstairs,' he said. 'Where's Mum?'
'Your mother is in the kitchen.'
'OK.'
'Doing inspired things to the lamb or the potatoes or something. I forget which. It could have been the apple crumble...' She looked portentously at him, then grinned.
Suzannah had a way of mocking his mother that made him angry. 'Oh, has she made apple crumble? She makes the best apple crumble I've ever tasted,' he said. 'She's a totally amazing cook.'
Suzannah was looking for her drink now, and muttered vaguely, 'Yes ... yes, she is.' She found the glass of vodka-tonic on the mantelpiece.
Luke went to get changed. Alistair walked towards the window and drew the curtains, tugging them sharply, watching the thick red fabric cut out the last sliver of the street.
'So, how are you?' Suzannah said. He listened to the ice chink in her glass. 'I was so sorry to hear about your mother.'
'Thank you.'
'What a—I hope you don't mind me saying, but what a shame you never got a chance to make it up.'
'Yes.'
'I mean, what a peculiar thing that must be.'
'Yes,' Alistair said, 'it is.'
'Dad and I argued a great deal, of course, all the way through, but particularly at the end. It's odd—you expect the end of life to bring harmony, don't you?'
'Do you?'
'You expect it to bring resolution. The urge to tie up the loose ends.'
'Depends how many loose ends there are, I suppose. Sometimes everything frays uncontrollably.' How bizarre, he thought, that he should have dreaded this so much, and then be continuing the conversation himself when she was so unexpectedly moving off the subject. He was addicted to self-sabotage these days. Or had she engineered it? He was becoming paranoid. 'Would you like a drink?' he said.
She held up her glass. 'Got one, thanks.'
'Oh, yes—of course. You've got one. I need one.'
'Yes,' she said pensively. 'I feel more and more the urge to make peace with people.'
'You do?'
'Yes.' She laughed. 'What's that supposed to mean? You've always thought I was polemical, Alistair. I'm really not.'
'No, no. I just ... I just—need a drink, that's all.'
'So you keep saying. Do you need me to make it for you?'
'What? Oh—no,' he said. He had not moved towards the drinks tray and she was looking at him. 'Sorry. I'm on another planet.'
He went over and picked up the bottle of whisky. It was a wonderful single malt Sophie had given him last time she came over. He poured some, took a mouthful and felt the heat going down his throat. He let the perfume fill his nose and tipped a handful of salted almonds into his mouth, crunching them, feeling consoled by the delicious flavours, by the simple act of eating and drinking. This was life too, he told himself. He could smell the lamb cooking down the hallway—the rosemary and the garlic roasting.
'Yes, I want to make peace with people,' Suzannah was saying, 'with Andrew, with Michael and even with Stefan, my first ex—the one nobody ever met.'
He turned and faced into the room. 'So how will you do it?'
'How? I don't know. Maybe I'll write letters. You have to pay attention to letters, don't you? Actual handwriting looks so poignant, these days.'
She sighed. 'Why don't you write a letter to Rosalind?'
'Write her a—because we live in the same house, Suzannah.'
'I just thought it might be a way of...'
'It's kind of you.'
They heard Rosalind's footsteps coming up the hall.
'You know, Alistair, I'm really not as dreadful as you think.'
'Oh, probably not,' he said.
She laughed heartily. It was the kind of comment that appealed to her sense of humour. 'Cheers?'
'Yes,' he said. 'Why not?' He closed his eyes as the whisky went down.
Rosalind stood in the doorway, holding an empty wine-glass.
'Hello, darling,' Alistair said. He went to her and gave her a kiss on each cheek. A casual observer would not have known there was anything wrong between them. Suzannah, whose observations of other people were never casual, felt shocked and thrilled by her sister's coldness. Alistair pointed at Rosalind's glass. 'Can I fill that for you?'
'I put a bottle of Chablis on the drinks tray.'
'So you did.' He carried the glass away.
She was wearing her pale pink silk shirt and a pair of cream trousers. Her hair, which she still dyed dark, was curled and shining as it always was. Unlike Suzannah, Rosalind had kept her looks. Where Suzannah's beauty had taken risks—the sharp cheekbones and the plump red mouth—Rosalind's was essentially the result of balance. And it had remained undisturbed through childbirth, through her children's illnesses, through summer holidays and supermarket trips and traffic jams and school sports days. She had a neat mouth, neither full nor thin, pale blue eyes and a softly curving forehead. It was a placid prettiness—but there it was, still quietly making its point. She was not wearing the pearl necklace he had given her for her birthday.
The wine felt cold through the glass as he carried it towards her.
'Thank you,' she said.
'Thank you for cooking for me. What a treat.'
She stared into her glass.
'God—it's your birthday, isn't it? I totally forgot to say anything,' Suzannah said. 'Many happy returns.'
They listened to Rosalind plumping up a cushion and sitting down on the sofa. 'Where's Luke?' she asked.
'He's upstairs, darling, getting changed.'
'Have you brought things back?'
'Not really. Actually—not.'
'But that was half the point, wasn't it?'
'Yes.'
She looked at him desperately for a second. 'Well, was everything all right? Is there much to sort out?'
'I've got rather a lot of papers to go through. It's a bit of a mess because she hadn't made a detailed will. There's no executor. I'm what's called the administrator because I'm her only living relative. The local authority track you down. You don't get a choice.'
'But you don't know anyone ... connected with her. How are you going to decide what to do with it all?'
'I'll have to go back, darling. I'll be more efficient next time.'
For a second, Rosalind felt sorry for him. On top of everything else, his mother had died. Even though she had been under the impression it had happened years ago, she still wanted to comfort him. She was a gentle person and she found her own anger painfully distorting.
Luke came in, dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a shirt. His hair was wet from the shower. He looked very young and healthy with the last of the tan from his summer holiday still on his face. The room felt simpler with him in it. He kissed Rosalind. 'Delicious smells, Mum,' he said. 'When are we eating?'
'Are you starving?' Her own voice surprised her. Her remarks just arrived on her lips and she wondered if that was the way it had always been—only now she could hear them. They did not seem to take any thought
at all.
'Well, I can't say Dad and I exactly feasted while we were away. It's not the culinary centre of the world, Dover.'
'God, I can imagine,' said Suzannah. 'What is it? All "pub grub" and fish and chips? Actually, it's McDonald's now, probably, isn't it? Bright pink milk shakes.'
'We were fine,' Alistair said.
'Greasy plastic burgers.'
'We did all right.'
His father looked humiliated. Again, Luke felt a jolt of compassion for him. 'Of course we did all right. It's just lovely to come back to something you've made, Mum, that's all.'
'Yes, indeed. We're very lucky,' said Suzannah.
'I do wish you'd all stop making such a fuss about supper,' Rosalind said. 'It's only roast lamb, for God's sake. You just put it in the oven and take it out again.' She blushed and her eyes were slightly wet with tears for a moment.
'Well, I think I'll grab a glass of that wine,' said Luke.
'You can get your venerable aunt one too—I've finished my vodka-tonic.'
Rosalind felt as though the world was going on in another room. It was like a song playing quietly downstairs on a radio, which you think you recognize to the point where you can pick out the words, until the rhythm starts to seem wrong somehow.
She felt too shocked by what had happened to know what to do with herself. She got up in the mornings and had her bath and put on her face cream and curled her hair and did her powder and her mascara and her lipstick. She chose a pair of trousers and a linen shirt or a cotton blouse—because it was still hot in London—and she went off to the showroom where she and two friends had a furniture and interior design business. There, she sat down at the huge table with a cup of coffee and studied the new catalogue they had put together. Rattan baskets, embroidered cushions, bamboo coffee-tables, faux-wolf throws. The pictures, the words, went past her eyes. She sifted piles of invoices while she ate her salad at lunch.
Carol and Jocelyn had been wonderful. They had become really close over the three years they had been running Home From Home. On the day after it had all been in the papers, she went into the showroom for fear of spending another day watching Alistair watch her. Carol had got her a bag of bubble-bath and creams to spoil herself with and Jocelyn had taken them all out for lunch.
'Will you leave him?'Jocelyn asked, when the waitress brought their water.
'Don't ask that now. It's too soon, isn't it?' Carol said. She put her hand over Rosalind's and smiled. 'You're in shock.'
'Look, all I really wanted to say was, you've got a place to stay—any time—with me,'Jocelyn said.
'Or me,' Carol said. 'Of course. It goes without saying.'
'Thanks. Thank you.'
'It's nothing. We're your friends. There's been a disaster. Have some water.'
'What are you feeling?' Jocelyn asked.
They waited. Rosalind gazed into her lap.
'Don't ask that. This is all too much for her. Of course it is. What would you like to eat, Roz? The salmon fishcakes look good. Let's think about that.'
'I don't agree with you, Carol. You don't get anywhere by skirting round the issue. Not that this is the same thing at all, but when Tom had his litde dalliance I was straight on to him and I've no doubt it's the only reason we survived.'
The business—Home From Home—was essentially Jocelyn's. It had been her idea and she owned most of it. The other two were shareholders and paid a salary. She had not told them but the money she had used to start it was guilt money—the guilt her husband felt for cheating on her had made him write the cheque. She knew this and it didn't matter to her. She could accept the genuine apology at the core of it because she saw herself as a realist about the scope of emotional transactions. She had more than paid it back now anyway. She owed nobody anything—least of all him.
'I think you're right,' Rosalind said. 'You don't get anywhere by ignoring things.' She was staring at Jocelyn. Unusually for her, Jocelyn felt unnerved by the scrutiny. It was as if, finally, this was what she had set herself up for with all her sassy remarks. 'I think you're right,' Rosalind said again.
Carol looked at her. 'You mean you do want to leave him?'
'I still love him,' she said. And then she started to cry.
She had carved the lamb herself and she put it down on the table. With a casualness she did not usually exhibit, she threw the oven gloves across the kitchen and on to the sideboard. Alistair noticed it all. 'What can we get? What can we bring over?' he said.
'Everything else, I suppose. Potatoes in the oven, green stuff on the side.'
'Right,' Alistair said. The oven gloves had fallen on to the floor and he picked them up and put them in their place on the oven door. The others sat down.
'Rather fascinating place at the moment, Dover,' Suzannah said. 'Did you think so, Luke?'
'You mean all the stuff in the news?'
'Yes. Exactly.'
'Places never feel like the news, though. I remember when they did a thing on Eton and we all watched it and thought how great it would be if it was really that weird and exciting. They made it into a story with, like, a beginning, middle and end when it was really just a big mess. It was just ordinary bullies and teasing and spraining your ankle at rugby and not concentrating in history. A mess—you know, not like a book or a film where things fit together and mean something.'
'But there have been demonstrations in Dover, haven't there? Riots? Pretty dramatic stuff.'
'There were St George crosses up in people's windows.'
'Were there really? How strange. But how strange that our own flag should be so conspicuous to us, so embarrassing somehow. Why?'
'It wasn't like there were actual fights in the street.'
'But there are, Luke. On the news. An Albanian man got stabbed there the other day, stabbed in the street by two skinheads.'
'What does it all mean—"skinheads"?' Rosalind said. 'These weird descriptions and you're meant to know what it means. Why do they shave their heads?'
'I don't know, Mum. It's just a sign, isn't it? Membership.'
'Like your pearl earrings,' said Suzannah. 'It's sort of monastic, I suppose—shaving your head like that. Paring yourself down. You refine yourself, show you mean business. Then off out to stab a couple of asylum-seekers and down to the pub for a few gallons of beer to celebrate.'
'No, Suzannah. It's exaggerated. It's all exaggerated in the press,' Alistair said.
'You can't argue with photographs.'
'Suzannah, that's ridiculous. Photographs tell incredible lies.'
'Like propaganda,' Luke said. 'The Nazis.'
'Not in England, for God's sake.'
'Why not?' said Rosalind. 'Probably they con us all the time and we just think it's the truth.' She pulled out her chair and sat down. They all watched her unfold her napkin and lay it on her lap.
'No, I see,' said Suzannah.
'Can we start, Mum?'
'Of course. I'm not stopping anyone.'
'It looks delicious, darling. Such a—'
Rosalind scraped her chair out suddenly and said, 'Salt and pepper.'
As a gesture towards acknowledging the incredible tactlessness of starting a conversation about newspapers, Suzannah lowered her voice to a stage whisper and carried on: 'You can't argue with the fact of a death, though, Alistair. The man got stabbed.'
'You can argue with why it happened. The press interprets things.'
'You're telling me there's no racial tension in places like Dover and Folkestone?'
'I'm saying it's hard to know how much of it is exaggerated—or caused—by the press.'
'Dad, I saw a woman spit out of a car at this Albanian guy. It was pretty bad.'
'I'm not saying there's nothing. I'm saying—'
'And the b & b on the corner of your road had a sign saying, "Asylum scum not welcome". That was pretty bad, too.'
'They're threatened, Alistair. It's not surprising. We all are. We have no sense of national identity any more. You try living
on the edge of a country—a weird outpost—with people passing through all the time, never staying. Ferries coming and going. Europe coming to get you. That'll only make it harder to know who you are. Like a constant tide wearing you down—in both directions.'
'I grew up there, actually.'
'Oh, yes. I keep forgetting,' Suzannah said.
After supper they went into the drawing room while Rosalind and Luke made coffee. The Chopin CD was still playing quietly, on repeat. Alistair turned it off. There was something exhausting about it, the piano going on and on.
'Why have you been so secretive about your past? It wouldn't have mattered, you know,' Suzannah said.
He laughed. 'Wouldn't it?'
'I certainly wouldn't have cared.'
You would have been disgusted, he thought. You're the worst snob of them all. He smiled at her. 'You would have found it funny because it would have upset your father,' he said. So, he still had the capacity to humour them, to prettify their disgusting prejudices, making them sound playful—exuberant. 'Them', he thought. Still 'me' and 'them' after thirty years.
'Would I? Oh, God. You might be right. Maybe I am as terrible as you think.' She took off her shoes and lay back on the sofa. 'Am I allowed a whisky anyway?'
'You are.'
It was strange. They had never got on so well. Not that he trusted her for a second. She still smiled at nothing in particular, in her secretive way, as if she knew all about him.
Exposure Page 4