Exposure (27 page)

He thought these thoughts—about his daughter and his wife and the two Hindu gods—in rapid succession, while sitting on the edge of the hotel bed. He was putting on his pants and his socks and his crumpled shirt while Karen was doing something in the bathroom. At first he hurried to dress, in an irrational panic of modesty and shame: his body, his ageing body. Then he stopped this and sighed deeply and put his hand over his heart.

He listened to the brazen trickle of Karen's urine and did up his tie, rather tightly. Then he heard the loo flush and out she came, grinning, wearing the hotel bathrobe—and his barrister's wig. The robe, adult-sized, was poignantly enormous. Her legs were posed seductively, one in front of the other. She had her hand on her hip and the robe fell open over her left breast and all the soft skin he had kissed and licked just a few moments before.

Yes, that had been him—my mouth, my hands, he thought. His eyes moved up her neck to the giggling, winking face and the disfiguring horsehair wig. What sort of joke was this? It was such a sinister muddle of vocabulary. He felt lust and sheer horror and a desire to hide either her or himself immediately, to throw a cloth over the squawking canary in the cage.

Alistair's had been a life spent on the run from the grotesque and he had never developed a sense of humour with which to confront it.

Her smile fell. 'Oh, you're dressed,' she said.

'I—yes.'

'Oh.' She tossed the wig on to his bag and fluffed up her hair.

'Listen, Karen,' he began, in the voice of order, as he straightened his shirt, 'it's all—it's all paid for, this room. You may as well stay the night if you'd like to.'

'Are you going, then?'

He bent down to tie his shoes—and also to be nearer the floor. 'Yes, I've got to go,' he said.

She walked over to the bed and lay across it, spreading her hair out behind her. She was the picture of the tragic starlet. 'So are we going to do this again or was this a one-time-only thing?' There was a pause and then she met his eyes. 'Oh, don't
worry.
I knew it would be just this once really. Not your style, right?' She checked his face one last time. 'Nope, thought not,' she said.

He walked across the room for his coat and he heard the TV volume go up again on another music video. Of course she had known it would be one time only, he told himself. She was wise beyond her years and would hardly have entertained fantasies about being kept as a mistress. Oh, who did he think he was, for God's sake? She would not even have
wanted
to be his mistress. She was merely being polite.

He said, 'Karen, could I order you some supper up here? They could bring something to the room for you, if you like.'

'Oh, my God, you mean like
room service?
Yes, please. How cool. Is it really OK?'

'Of course ... it's the least ...' he said, struggling. There must, of course, be a kind of etiquette—but he had never had cause to learn it.

She said, 'I should order it now, shouldn't I? Then you can pay on your way out.'

Such earthy delights, such robust pragmatism, he thought. Was it all too much for his prissy little butterfly heart? 'Yes, I suppose that would be sensible,' he agreed.

The very least he could do was try to remember—if only in the name of good taste, for God's sake—that there was no place for disappointed romanticism in a hotel room. He cleared his throat. 'I must just ...' He pointed at the bathroom and escaped behind the door.

He did not look into the mirror. He touched nothing. Suddenly he was afraid to leave his fingerprints anywhere, afraid the hotel would leave signs, marks, would subtly adhere to the surface of his skin. After a moment or two of absolute stillness, he walked towards the toilet and flushed it. Then he heard Karen calling, 'What's ... Kewsa ... koyza ... something-dilla?'

He ran the tap for a second over the empty basin, watching the water run down the drain, aware of infinitely refracted versions of himself in the mirrors on each side of him. His hand moved and ten thousand hands moved. His shameful legs were ten thousand shameful legs walking towards the door. He was his own strange god.

When he came out she was cross-legged under the bedside lamp, smiling up at him. 'I think it's Mexican food,' he said. 'Quesadilla.'

'Oh, is it? I'll have that, then. And a Bacardi and Coke, please.'

He called Room Service and ordered. When he replaced the receiver, she put her hand on his arm and he jumped. '
Hey
,' she said. 'What on earth's the matter?'

He turned round and took the fingers—and, with infinite gentleness, he let them go. 'Jumpy,' he told her. 'I'm sorry.'

She looked down at her hand, knowing it contained their momentary intimacy—a souvenir as small as a ticket stub. 'Why are you sorry? No harm done.' She rubbed his arm with the other hand, 'You know, maybe you should have ordered two dinners. I'm starving.'

He said goodbye, he said, 'Thank you very much,' to her in the bathroom, where she was arranging the complimentary shampoo and soap bottles along the side of the bath, singing along to the TV. The hot water crashed in. She kissed him on the mouth with her hands on either side of his face and wrinkled her nose up at him, saying, 'Go easy on the guilt.'

'The guilt?'

'Look, I know I'm young and I know fuck-all, really, but everyone deserves a bit of pleasure, you know? Life's not long, is it?'

'No.'

'The way I think about it is, it doesn't matter if nobody sees. Didn't happen. Haven't you ever started wondering if something you just remembered really happened or if you dreamt it?'

He nodded vaguely, afraid to commit himself to agreement.

'Well, then,' she said, 'that's what things are like if nobody sees. If there's just you to say what they are, then they could be a dream, or you could
call
them a dream and nobody's going to know better.'

She was smiling at him and stroking his face and he did not know how to reply. He watched the water pounding into the white bath, whipping up a thick foam of bubbles.

'Anyway,' she went on, 'I had a lovely time. I think your wife's really lucky.'

He kissed her goodbye and left.

It was just after a quarter to nine when he got home. It was dark now and the air was damp and smelt of recently fallen rain, of wet paving-stones and brick. Drips came off the railings and the leaves along the avenue where he lived. The dripping was part of the darkness: it seemed to be the sound of the darkness. For a moment it was almost unbearably beautiful and again he put his hand on his excited heart.

He got out of the cab outside his house and glanced up at the drawing-room window. The curtains were drawn. Friends must be behind them already, having drinks, wondering where he was. A halo of light escaped round the edges of the window. It would have been sensible to call Rosalind from the taxi, but he had not felt able to.

He walked up the steps and patted his pockets for his keys, but they were not there. He remembered he had left them in his study at chambers. Had he gone back there, as he had intended to after court, he would have seen them on the desk and slipped them into his pocket. Not once in almost forty years of marriage had he forgotten his keys. He rang the bell. Rosalind came to the door and opened it to a flood of home: the dappled hall light, the warmth from the kitchen, her face ...

'Oh. Alistair? I assumed you were Peter and Isabel,' the face of his wife said. And around it poured the hall wallpaper, the vase of lilies under the mirror, her perfume, the umbrellas in the rack.

He smiled at her from underneath this tidal wave of sensory information. 'Alas, it's only your husband,' he said.

'Alas?'
She laughed. 'What d'you mean, darling? I'm actually rather relieved to see you're all right. Where on earth have you
been?'

'I left my keys behind,' he said, pointing at the door by way of an explanation. She looked at the door and then at him.

'Yes, I see that. Are you all right, Alistair? What kept you so long?'

'Working,' he said.'
Working. Working.
May I come in?'

Rosalind leant over to kiss his cheek. 'Darling, I'm sorry. Come and have a drink. Goodness—another drink,' she said, smelling the alcohol on his breath. And then, as she went towards the drawing-room door,' "
Alas"?
What a funny word.'

He couldn't help agreeing with her. Guilt appeared to have poor taste in language. With distorted emphasis, he heard the dark rain dripping off the trees as he followed her inside.

It was very, very bright in the drawing room.

'There
you are!' Anne Nicholson said, setting down her glass. 'We were all beginning to suspect you didn't want to see us.'

'Poor man's just been working late,' David Nicholson said. 'Honestly, Anne.'

Alistair received the hugs. As Anne pulled away from him, she said, 'Goodness, was that your stomach?'

'Yes, how very embarrassing. I'm so sorry. I—I'm evidently rather hungry.'

Peter and Isabel arrived shortly after Alistair. It was strange for them all to see Peter without Erica, to whom he had been married for twenty-eight years, and as Rosalind took coats in the hallway and was politely amazed by a rustling bunch of flowers, they each prepared themselves for a good show of civility.

Peter looked tired but very much in love with his new young pregnant wife. He brought her in protectively, with his arm round her. She was a rather fat, not particularly pretty girl, but Peter couldn't take his eyes off her. Alistair, whose face was still hot from sex, who still had the flavour of another woman on his tongue, was appalled by this flagrant lust. The world was plainly drowning in it. As they went into the dining room, Peter took hold of his arm. 'Isn't she fantastic?' he said.

Alistair nodded, wanting his friend's incriminating hand off him quickly.

Rosalind had made an opera of a meal. To start with there was fried pink bream in a fish and vegetable broth. Just before serving it, she sprinkled finely sliced raw vegetables over the fish—orange peppers, mushrooms, fresh coriander and spring onions. Alistair watched her quick fingers as he waited to carry the tray through. The broth was clear and spicy and slightly sweet, and with it they drank a good Riesling. The main course was a fillet of beef in filo pastry. Hidden in the crisp, golden pastry, over the beef, was a stuffing of wild mushrooms, garlic, chilli and parsley. The meat was pink and velvety and complemented perfectly by the earthy spiciness of the stuffing. For pudding there were caramelized apples and pears with hot butterscotch sauce and cold, tart Greek yoghurt. This she served in their wedding-present champagne glasses. And then there was cheese, Explorateur, St Marcellin, Epoisses, St Félicien, with biscuits, crisp sweet grapes, and fig chutney. Alistair ate ravenously, indulging his body in spite of his mind, which reprimanded him with deeply distasteful biblical images of dry bread and water.

Around him, the gentle talk went on: was Tuscany overrun these days? Parts of Spain were just as lovely but then there was the far less interesting food. France, of course, would be utterly fantastic, if only it weren't for the French.

'Where are you two going on holiday this summer, Al?' said David.

Alistair forked spinach on to his salad plate. 'We thought we might stay with Chris and Lara in Malta,' he said. Then he looked at his friend and thought:You have absolutely no idea who you're talking to. If you knew, you'd leave. He said, 'How about you? Andalusia again?'

'Absolutely.
If it ain't broke—that's what I always say. Can't bloody wait. A chair and the sun,' David sighed, capturing the idea between his raised hands, like a photographer, implying this was all he had ever wanted out of life.

By the time Alistair was helping Rosalind bring through the cheese, he was telling himself that he must regain control of his thoughts. He would contain the aberration in the hotel room within himself and he would most certainly resist the childish desire to confess.

He looked around the table, then he let his eyes fall on his wife's smiling face. Rosalind had always been beautiful. What a lucky man he was to have spent his life with one so beautiful. When was the last time they had made love—or even kissed each other? He felt intense love for her and a desire to be physically close. He wanted to make love to his wife and to have her familiar body wipe away the other woman's fingerprints. He longed to apologize to Rosalind physically.

I have been unfaithful to my wife, he thought. I am an unfaithful husband. There were tears in his eyes.

Then he listened to the conversation, to Isabel talking with what seemed to him to be a feigned respect about schools with the older women.

'Well, Luke
hated
Eton,' Rosalind was saying. 'It really only suits some characters. He's so sensitive, that was the thing. We had to move him. Alistair was disappointed, of course, but obviously he never let Luke see that.'

So, family life was beginning all over again for Peter. Alistair found it so exhausting to contemplate he had to stifle a yawn. Erica was a lovely woman and he thought his friend had been an idiot to throw her away. There was Peter, grinning murderously.

'We thought maybe weekly boarding, actually,' Isabel said. 'I mean, Westminster's very good academically.' Her fingers reached over to Peter's.

Oh, why bother sending it to school? Alistair thought. What did any of it matter? Another identikit education, another job in the City, another mortgage, another marriage at twenty-eight in a rented manor house, another first child at thirty-two. He looked at the self-satisfied young mother face and told her silently, 'It's an illusion, that sense of identity your swollen belly gives you. We unmake ourselves in a matter of seconds.'

She looked up at him with a slightly anxious expression. She had plainly noticed him staring. He forced a smile. 'Not long now,' he said.

'Two months. We're so excited,' she replied, the uncertain hand scrabbling across the table for her husband's again, 'aren't we, darling?'

Dinner was over. Very calmly, Alistair decided that it was quite late now and he really ought to be going. This peculiar thought made him laugh out loud and he managed narrowly to suggest it was in response to a story David was telling. He felt safe until he saw that the pregnant girl was looking at him again. She turned away, embarrassed.