‘How did you know that, sweetheart?’
Bridget shrugs. Her eyes become opaque. Whatever she knows, or has known, it’s slipping away now and soon even Bridget won’t be able to recapture it. The moment passes.
‘Why have you got the poker stuck into your belt, Mum?’ asks Bridget in a quite different voice – for Lily’s coat has swung open.
‘I thought I might use the poker to dig bits of coal out of the shingle,’ she answers slowly.
‘That’s not how you do it, Mum,’ explains Bridget. ‘You just use your hands.’
‘It was silly of me, wasn’t it?’ Are Paul and Sally buying this? She can’t tell. Sally’s face is still, attentive.
‘I don’t think you ought to let anyone see you carrying a poker like that, Mum,’ says Paul.
Lily crouches down so that her face is level with Bridget’s. ‘It is dangerous on the jetty,’ she says. ‘Look where I fell.’ Bridget stares at the blood on her mother’s knee. ‘I could have gone sideways. I could have hit my head and fallen right into the water, and nobody would have been able to save me.’
‘What if you’d swum to a ship?’
‘There’s no ship, Bridget. Even if there were, I would never go on it. I would never leave you.’
29
Perfect Aim
Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knewest, and I know not –
So much the happier I …
The lines drum in Giles’s head. He’s not dead yet. Hasn’t floated off in a cloud of morphine. It’s not going to be as easy as that.
It won’t be long now, he tells himself as the dark goes on and on and refuses to give way to morning. Oxygen most of the time now. He’s written the letter, given it to old Ross. Ross came. Good of him. The will was simple. All to his sister, for dog-breeding no doubt. The Kandinsky to the Tate. Lucy would only put it in the bin. That would be no good. Wanted to give the Kandinsky to Simon. Make it up to him. But it doesn’t work like that. Might cause more trouble for Simon.
He sweats. It’s hard to sleep sitting up but he can’t lie down. Sister left a lamp on by his bed. She knows he doesn’t like the dark.
‘You’re looking better this morning, Mr Holloway,’ says a young voice.
Silly fool of a girl, what did she know. His mouth tastes like hell. Nurse Davies isn’t in today. But the awful thing is that he does feel better. Perhaps this is how it’s going to be, dragging on like this, better and not better, dark and not so dark.
If thou, Lord, should’st mark iniquities,
O Lord, who shall stand?
Simon sang that.
The letter. Ross has taken the letter. He promised he would lock it in his safe and post it when I’m dead.
Clowde. That devil. What if Clowde gets hold of it somehow? A letter is only a piece of paper. It can be intercepted. Burned. A letter isn’t enough.
Sister adjusts the knob on the oxygen cylinder. The gas hisses and Giles breathes in; then he signs for her to take the mask away. They will put him in a tent if he needs it. He raises his hand to attract Sister’s attention. She bends close to his mouth.
‘Do you believe in hell?’ he whispers.
‘Hell?’ she repeats, to make sure.
‘Yes, hell.’
‘You won’t be going anywhere like that,’ she says, half-smilingly, all her lovely, plain consoling face bent on him.
He shakes his head. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘my breath stinks,’ and then he’s too tired to talk for a while.
Evening comes. There’s a bright liveliness about the place. Voices and footsteps. They are changing shifts. He feels so much better. It’s almost incredible. He could get up now and walk. He rings his bell. Sister hasn’t gone off duty yet, and in she comes.
‘I feel so well,’ he says, fixing her with his astonishment. She comes over to the bed and rests her fingers on his pulse. She counts silently and as usual she gives a small, satisfied nod.
‘Good,’ she says.
‘Perhaps I’m getting better.’
He sees her face then. It’s not pity, no. He feels for a word that he doesn’t think he’s ever used. Compassion. He’s not getting better, of course he isn’t, they all know that. He knows that. So why does he feel all at once as if anything is possible?
‘I want you to telephone someone for me,’ he says rapidly. ‘His name is Frith.’
Sister is off duty now, but she has left instructions with the new night sister. It only took an hour for Frith to arrive. There’s a woman police officer with him. She has a shorthand notebook and she sits on one side of Giles’s bed while Frith sits on the other, beside the pillows.
Giles’s private room is dark outside the pool of lamplight that falls on him and on the woman police officer as she writes. Frith sits more shadowily. Every few words, Giles has to stop. Sometimes Frith gives him the oxygen mask: the night sister has shown him how to do this. Sometimes he moistens Giles’s lips with the little sponge that lies on the bedside locker, in a kidney dish of clean water. The door is open and every so often the night sister leaves her station to survey the scene. Sometimes she steps to the bed and checks Giles’s pulse and once she checks his blood pressure. He is becoming uncomfortable. He is heaving himself up on the pillows with each breath. If it weren’t for Frith and the policewoman, the night sister would call Mr Anstruther. It’s time for the morphine dose to be increased.
Giles closes his eyes. They are sunken but his nose is prominent, almost beaky. His colour is dusky. It’s hard. He wants them all to go and leave him alone, but they can’t go yet. There’s more to say.
The lamp burns on. Frith sits forward, still, attentive. This is his moment. He has earned this. The girl’s bent head shines as she takes down Giles’s words in shorthand, every one of them. Frith will have his avalanche of evidence and it will sweep away Julian Clowde.
Giles is going down. The words come out struggling. It’s very hard now. The night sister has called Mr Anstruther and he is here, a dark column by the white bed, waiting. As Frith stands up, he steps forward, and in goes the needle, into the crook of Giles’s arm.
The room rushes away.
O my boy, his arm drawn back, his perfect aim.
30
Arrival
The little train chugs along the branch line. It stops endlessly, but Simon doesn’t mind that. He’s in no hurry. In fact, he’s afraid of arriving.
The compartment is empty now. He stands up and walks from one window to the other, pulling down both straps as far as they will go so that cold air floods in. He leans out and the wind fills his mouth and drags at his hair. He would like to smell of the air, not of prison. He has slung his bag up on the luggage rack. At the station he thought of buying something for the children, some chocolate, perhaps, or comics, but he had hardly any money. They gave him a travel warrant but he didn’t want to use it, and the train ticket took most of the cash they’d handed back to him. He could have gone to the bank, he supposes, but he wasn’t sure they would give him any of his money. Everything will need to be started up again.
The case against him has been dropped. It was Frith who told him that, not Pargeter. Simon hasn’t even seen Pargeter, which is peculiar when you come to think of it. Frith looked the same as ever, although presumably he must have had some luck with his investigations or he wouldn’t be here, saying those extraordinary words: You’re free to go.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There are a few formalities to be completed, but the case against you has been dropped, and consequently you are free to go.’
There was no hint of an apology.
‘What the hell do you mean by that? Is that all you have to say? You arrested me, you’ve kept me here for months, and now that’s it, let’s all go home?’
‘Not all,’ said Frith. ‘Not Mr Clowde, for example.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He appears to have gone to visit friends.’
r /> ‘He has friends all over Europe.’ Did they know?
‘And beyond,’ said Frith, in his strong, flat voice. ‘We think that’s where he is. However, he hasn’t surfaced yet.’
Clowde had gone. They knew. Christ. They must have been on to him, but he got out in time. Someone must have tipped him off.
‘I gather he’s very fond of ballet,’ said Frith. ‘He’ll get plenty of that, where we think he’s gone,’ and for the first time, a smile of satisfaction edged his lips.
‘You wanted him to go,’ said Simon, astonished.
‘He wasn’t going to do us much good here.’
‘Has it been in the papers?’
‘Not yet. There’s some tidying up to do. But you needn’t worry. It’ll be made clear that charges against you have been dropped and that there was no case to answer.’
Christ, perhaps Giles has gone too. How he used to joke about Moscow. What was it he said? Like Birmingham, but without the bright lights.
‘What about Giles Holloway?’
Frith leaned towards Simon. ‘He’s dead,’ he said, while his eyes watched sharply. Simon sucked in a breath.
‘Who killed him?’
‘Why do you say that? He died of natural causes.’
Giles dead. Just like that.
‘When did he die?’
‘Two weeks ago.’
‘Why did no one tell me?’
‘Would you expect them to?’
Simon looked at him. This game was going to come to an end. He wasn’t going to have it. Question in return for question, nothing ever clear. He’d had enough.
‘Yes, I would expect to be told,’ he said. ‘Giles Holloway was one of my oldest friends.’
‘Was he such a good friend to you?’
If thou, Lord, should’st judge iniquities
O Lord, who shall stand?
‘I’ll decide that,’ said Simon. ‘Have they held his funeral already?’
‘Yes. It was very quiet.’
All those friends. All Giles’s boys. They’d tiptoed away at the end.
‘I want you to go now,’ he said to Frith.
He sat for a while after Frith had left, not wanting to move. He’d have sat longer, but they came to get him. A screw, one of the more decent ones, who was pleased for Simon. All the time they went through the procedures, getting him to sign things and sign for things, he thought of Giles going down into the earth, a handful of soil, a few indifferent mourners. That sister of his. Lily would say that Giles had got what he deserved. She’d be angry with Simon for sparing a thought for Giles, after what he’d done to him.
You’re only going to get a bloody Third, you know. Why don’t you stop that and come here?
Two stops left. He’ll walk from the station to the cottage. Lily says it’s about a mile and a half. She doesn’t know he’s coming. She doesn’t know that he’s out of prison. They offered to send a telegram but he made excuses: she wasn’t on the telephone; he didn’t want her to hear the news from anyone else. Giles is dead, Clowde has disappeared, and he, Simon, has been released.
Lily is putting on her coat to leave when Mr Austin comes in from the garden. He is carrying a basket of apples. His Bramleys, stored all winter, wrinkled but still good.
‘I’ve picked out the best,’ he says. ‘Here you are. They won’t keep for much longer. Apples for the Young Turks.’
‘Please don’t give me all these. You won’t have any left for yourself.’
‘My dear, I insist.’
He has never called her ‘my dear’ before. Lily takes the handle of the basket.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You don’t look well.’
‘I’m fine, really.’
‘You don’t look well,’ he repeats gently. ‘I know that things are difficult for you at the moment, Mrs Callington.’ He lifts his eyes and, for once, this shy man looks her full in the face. His eyes are grey. They are lucid. He knows, she thinks. Probably he has known all the time. ‘But they will get better, I can promise you that. There was a time in my life when things seemed pretty pointless, for one reason and another. That was after I came out of the convalescent home. They sent me there, you know. Get the old leg working again: that was the idea. It’s still got shrapnel in it now. They were very good there, but … sometimes I felt like chucking it all in. I felt I was no use for anything. A few months later, I met Louise. Ah well, there we are.’
He’s embarrassed now, to have said so much. He’s not sure how I’ll respond.
‘He didn’t do it, you know,’ she says.
‘I know that.’
‘How?’
‘He wouldn’t be married to you, if he were that sort of chap.’
She smiles. His innocence moves her almost to tears. If only you knew what I’m really like, she thinks, you would take away these apples and never let me into your house again. I pushed that man as hard as I could. I watched him drown.
‘It’s not so much what you see,’ he says abruptly. ‘It’s what you see in yourself. But you can’t keep on looking at it.’
He’s telling her that he, too, has done things that frighten him.
‘I know,’ she says.
They are silent for a while.
‘I must go. I’ll make the children an apple crumble for supper. They’ll love it.’
‘That’s the ticket. See you tomorrow.’
‘Yes, see you tomorrow.’
Lily makes the crumble extravagantly, with butter, and prepares the apples with cinnamon and brown sugar. Her hands are still shaking, but not so much. She should drink less coffee. She’ll make Bird’s custard, because the children, like Mr Austin, prefer it. Usually Lily would be soothed by cooking, but it doesn’t work today. Her whole body is restless. She feels as if there’s something she ought to do, something important that is clawing at the sides of her mind but she can’t remember it. She looks at her watch. Half past two. Not long before the children come out of school, although as the evenings grow lighter they come home later. She’s tempted to walk up to the school to make sure they are all right, but Paul and Sally wouldn’t like that. What is this feeling? Restlessness, yes, but something else too. She thinks of the children coming down to the beach. If they’d got there ten minutes earlier—
She mustn’t think of that. She must remember what Mr Austin said.
She pushed Julian Clowde as hard as she could. He was off balance and she shoved him and he fell. Again she sees his legs, scissoring. Those white eyes, turned up. He hit his head so hard. Perhaps he was unconscious even before he went into the water. But his arms flapped. Only his nose and mouth were above the water, and his arms flapped, and then the sea carried him away.
I did nothing, she thinks. He would have killed me and so I let him die and I didn’t even try to save him.
That letter is in the sea with him. It was written in ink: she can see the words now. They’ll have dissolved into a wad of pulp. She can forget them. It will be like a letter written in German.
But I do speak German, she thinks. I understand it. I must remember what Simon wrote.
She remembers herself on the jetty, with Julian Clowde watching her. She was consumed with anger, shaking with it. Why was she so angry? Simon had betrayed her, he had shamed her, he had loved another man. Because it was love, not something to do with public lavatories and police fines. He was twenty years old. He had never seen Lily then. He’d never dreamed of hurting her. It was only that he loved Giles Holloway. There, she has said those words to herself.
She thinks of Simon’s eyes, when he talked to her about Monsieur Nuage. They were points of desperation, begging her to understand him. When she said that he hadn’t an artistic bone in his body, his face had warmed and lightened. He understood that she meant: I trust you. I know that you are not like Julian Clowde. You are not a traitor to anyone.
‘You’re very hard sometimes, Lily.’ Her mother had said that, and
Lily had immediately suppressed it, because it was her mother being unreasonable. Am I hard? thinks Lily, leaning on her hands, which are flat on the kitchen table. She remembers Simon’s face, and the plea for understanding. And on my face too, she thinks. I wanted him to understand me.
The clock ticks on. Ten to three. She can’t stay in here. The crumble is ready to go into the oven. She’ll walk – not down to the beach – the other way.
She sees him coming, far off. He is a small, indistinct blot on the rutted track, but she would know him anywhere. The shape of him. The way he moves. She stands utterly still. He is walking slowly, laggingly, like Bridget when she’s had a bad day at school. He looks as if he doesn’t quite want to arrive.
She sets off running. She stumbles in the ruts and comes on, running faster. As she runs she opens her arms and begins to cry out incoherently, his name, her name, other words all mixed up, English words, German words, all the stream and fountain of language that is within her when the dam breaks and the words cry out for themselves. She runs, runs, runs, her legs flying and her arms open and she sees that slowly, tentatively, his arms too are opening like wings, wider and wider, to receive her.
Acknowledgements
The epigraph to Chapter 29 is taken from the poem ‘I Saw A Man This Morning’ by Patrick Shaw Stewart, written in 1915. I am grateful to Lawrence Sail for his help with translations into German.
Helen Dunmore, Exposure
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