Exposure (40 page)

Two days before they were due to leave for Rome, Lara's appendix ruptured. Mrs Siskin called Rosalind's mother to explain. There was simply no question of Lara going away for at least three weeks—and she was due to start at her finishing school in September. Both mothers agreed it was a great pity, although Rosalind's mother had no idea how frustrated Mrs Siskin was to lose this opportunity to cement what she saw as a highly suitable friendship for Lara.

Rosalind had never cried like that before. Perhaps she never cried like that again. In the end her sister came in and sat on her bed. Rosalind could smell Suzannah's face cream.

'Rozzy, you're making the most frightful racket—it's heartbreaking,' she said.

Rosalind lifted her head from the pillow. 'I'm sorry.'

'Poor old you. God, why don't you just go anyway?'

'What? Don't be barmy. I can't.'

Suzannah went over to the mantelpiece and took down the tickets. 'What a waste of all that planning. All that ruddy gossiping.'

'Please don't, Suzannah. I know.
Don't.
'

'Don't what? I'm not just rubbing it in. I'm saying,
'Go'.
Go on your bloody own. It's what I'd do.'

Rosalind lifted her face from the pillow and looked at her beautiful sister holding the tickets as if she had just been presented with them as a prize for vibrant personality. 'But I'm not you, though,' Rosalind said.

Suzannah took this in. Her expression became serious—as if she had appreciated how irresponsible she was being. She exhaled soberly. 'No, I suppose not.' She walked back to the mantelpiece and propped the tickets against the clock. Then she stretched and yawned and said, oh, well, she must get a bit of beauty sleep and she was sure Rozzy would feel better in the morning. If she carried on bawling like that, she said, her eyes would be swollen for days.

As the door closed, cutting out the light from the hall, Rosalind felt another ending to what had already seemed to contain all the grim finality the world could muster. It literally went dark.

Six months later Alistair, who had passed his law exams and begun a pupillage at a reputable Inner Temple chambers, asked her out for dinner and not long afterwards if she would marry him. She was overjoyed and said yes straight away. Thrilled to have thought of the perfect way to put an end to the difficult atmosphere between herself and her friend, she asked Lara to be her bridesmaid.

Suzannah would have gone to Italy alone, it was true. Rosalind pictured her sister holding up the tickets, the lamplight from the hall bringing out the red in her dark hair. Their parents would have been furious—and then, when Suzannah got back, full of stories about grand somebody and grander somebody else, it would have been 'Our eldest daughter is quite the explorer, you know,' to everyone who came for drinks.

Rosalind felt keenly that she had been a bad example to Sophie. Alistair had always patronized her—it was true—and she had let it happen. Why? Because it was what she was used to. She had always been patronized—by her mother, her father, her sister, everyone.

Why had she never stolen the diamond from her mother's brooch or travelled around Italy alone? If she had been an adventurer, if she had used that boat ticket, if she had caught the overnight train from Paris to Rome, she might never have married Alistair. She might have married the vineyard owner's son in Montepulciano.

She smiled at this extraordinary thought. It was not that she had never imagined another life. There had been the affair with Rupert Sanderson, after all. She referred to it as an affair, though in fact it had consisted of a few moments of lingering eye-contact in the Sandersons' kitchen when everyone had rushed out to see a rainbow and Rupert stood in front of her in his tennis whites, tapping his racket vigorously against his shoe. There followed several months of erotic dreams on Rosalind's side. She woke up scandalized by her imagination. The things she did! Kneeling on the floor and pulling down Rupert Sanderson's tennis shorts, licking his ... his ...

But the longevity of her 'affair' with Rupert was an exception. She had only ever imagined other lives—the poignant, domestic aspects of marriage—in abstracted fragments, which confined them safely to the realm of fantasy. She had wondered what it would be like to be in a car beside Julian, to come down the stairs with Henry Phipps—to have her coat put on by
Omar Bhattachari!
These dramatized moments required a suspension of disbelief, just like a play or a film. But Alistair was the reality she came back to when the lights went up. Their marriage was a
sine qua non,
which was an expression Alistair used. Everything was an expression Alistair used! Her whole self was an expression Alistair used. After thirty-nine years of marriage, she didn't even understand what divorce meant.

'I'd divorce him,' Suzannah had said, as they stood there with the terrible newspapers. 'It's what I'd do, Rozzy.'

And she had found herself answering her sister, 'But I'm not you, Suzannah. You've never understood marriage. You may have had four different surnames, but you've never really been
married.
'

Suzannah had studied her face in the drawing-room mirror, her knee resting on the club fender. The slightly aggressive tension in her shoulders relaxed. 'No, I suppose you're right, Roz,' she said, nodding with genuine humility.

 

She knew she was being eccentric, but Rosalind decided to have a cool bath instead of eating her lunch. She put the whole plate in the fridge, splayed knife and fork included.

As she sat on the bed, listening to the water running in the bathroom next door, she put her hand under the mattress. This was where she had kept the articles with the photographs of Alistair and the girl. She took them out from time to time and looked at the faces, not knowing why she felt the need to hide them, since they could hardly have been made more public already. And Alistair had not set foot in their bedroom since they had agreed it was best he move into the spare room.

The girl was not a child the way the papers made out, but she was very young. She was younger than their daughter. This fact was terrible enough—annihilating of Rosalind and her attractiveness, and faintly sinister in its own right. She looked at the photograph of her husband. To imply his amorality, the
Daily Mail
had chosen a grinning one taken on some courtroom steps after a victory a few years ago.
The Times
had opted for him in downtrodden mode, 'Miserable Sinner'. They had snapped it on the doorstep when he came out unsuspectingly to answer their ring. He appeared much smaller and older in that photograph. There was such fear in the clenched face. Part of her could not help feeling desperately sorry for him.

She, more than anyone else, could imagine his humiliation. Not only because she was the wronged wife and shared it, but also because she had long felt his disappointments as keenly as her own..

She had acquired the habit gradually. In the early days of knowing him, before they were engaged, she had noticed an agonized, tight look on his face occasionally, when his friends were chatting in a perfectly ordinary sociable way. At first she wondered if he disapproved of their frivolity—he did seem happiest when discussing something heavy and serious, like whether the Tories would win the next election, or if John Lister's new book was a fair portrayal of Churchill. Perhaps he thought restaurants and ski-trips and musicals were a waste of time. The idea thrilled her; the idea of a mind
that
superior. Perhaps his parents were strict or puritanical, she thought. This was also exciting in its severity. But he gave her no clues at all.

Then, shortly after the Big Italian Adventure fell through, when there seemed to be nothing left to hope for in life, something Philip said to her began a process of understanding. She and her cousin had bumped into each other at a crowded drinks party in a tiny flat on Ebury Street. He said, 'You're rather keen on my friend Alistair, aren't you?'

Rosalind averted her gaze, but then she brought it determinedly back again. 'Well, he wrote to me a bit after that ball you took me to, that's all. Actually, I haven't seen him for ages, and when I do it's only by chance, at a party like this,' she said.

Philip was amused by her uncharacteristic petulance. 'Well, I shouldn't be at all surprised if you hear more from him now, Rozzy.'

She looked at him hopelessly.

He laughed—he was always irrepressibly charmed by romance—and leant towards her. 'Listen, he's just been offered a pupillage at
Alan Campbell's
chambers. You know Mr Campbell, don't you? Great friend of your wonderful mama's—probably madly in love with her like everybody else. Anyway, this is between us, but apparently there's no question of their not taking him on. Mr Campbell told my father he's the best candidate they've seen in years. Great future ahead of him and so on. Alistair's going to be a huge success.'

'Oh,' she said, nodding, not understanding how this related to her. 'Good for him.'

'He'll ask you out to dinner in no time. Bet you.'

It was just as Philip had said. At first it was merely to friends' parties, though: he asked if he might escort her, if they might
arrive
together. She was delighted.

Having the opportunity to watch Alistair with friends less close to him than Philip, she began to notice how insecure he was. She saw he was pretending to have had all the experiences they talked about so casually—shooting, fishing, skiing. It wasn't pretending exactly: he just let it be assumed that he knew exactly what they were talking about by remaining completely still and saying nothing. She could feel the brute force of his self-composure as she stood beside him. She could not imagine why he thought it was necessary, when his friends were plainly so much in awe of his intelligence–just as she was. But nothing could throw Alistair off his brilliant argument like being asked how good his tennis game was or a suggestion they all try some swanky new restaurant together the next week.

When her mother first brought up the subject of Alistair, Rosalind felt the issue at first-hand. 'Suzannah tells us you've got a young man,' her mother said, her eyes not lifting from the newspaper.

Rosalind buttered her toast, pressing out this betrayal of confidence under her knife. 'No, I haven't.'

'Oh?' The paper lowered. This simple exclamation of her mother's could mean a thousand different things. It was always an invitation to do better. 'What I mean is, he's just someone I know. That's all. A friend.'

'I see. We've met him, haven't we?'

Suzannah really was very indiscreet. Rosalind swallowed her toast and said, 'Yes, at Philip's twenty-first birthday party.'

'That friend of Philip's? From Oxford?' her mother said, plainly in full possession of the facts.

'Yes,' Rosalind said.

'With the dark hair and the rather gaunt look? Terribly earnest?'

'Yes, I suppose so.'

Rosalind thought Alistair was chiselled, not gaunt, and 'terribly earnest' did not relate at all to the vicarious thrill of sitting beside him at a party and hearing him talk on any subject in the world. Of course, the biggest joke and pleasure of all was that he would break off his brilliant argument to ask if she needed a refill! It was crazy—that intellectual young man being interested in dull, ordinary her. She had laughed and laughed internally when he told Philip, 'Tolstoy can wait a few minutes,' because he was getting Rosalind another glass of fruit punch.

'Well,' said Rosalind's mother, pausing to sip from her coffee cup and replacing it carefully on the saucer,'I hear he's not stupid. Alan Campbell appears to think he's worth something, anyway. But, Rozzy, you mustn't go falling in love with him.'

For the first time in her life, Rosalind's curiosity overwhelmed her instinctive desire for privacy. 'Why not?'

'Why not? Because he couldn't possibly look after you, darling. One can tell things about a person's upbringing—the standards they're used to ... There's a certain
polish.
Don't make me spell it out.'

'But he's going to be a
barrister.
'

The newspaper was already up, seemingly impregnable. 'Is he?' came the weary, sceptical reply.

'Yes. With Mr Campbell. He must have said so. It's a very good profession.'

'I'm aware of that, Rosalind, but he'd be starting from scratch. Most young men you might be interested in have already got something to begin—'

'Mummy,
I think you've got the wrong idea about him. I think Suzannah must have given you the wrong impression. She truly doesn't know
anything
about him. He's one of Philip's best friends, you know. They're
inseparable.
'

Helena Blunt was unused to hearing Rosalind challenge her, but she respected spiritedness and she smiled behind her paper at this rather touching ploy of using her favourite nephew Philip as a sort of royal seal of approval. She could not imagine what it would be like to be as simple-minded and transparent as her younger daughter.

Rosalind had never attempted to conceal or deceive before. But when Alistair told her about his mother—a story that, after all these years, had proved to be a lie!—she had known her parents would look down on someone who did sewing for other people and lived in a tiny cottage in a village somewhere in Sussex, the name of which she could never remember, though she knew she must have been told. The fact that Mrs Langford was a widow, that she might have been a serious writer but used all her time and talent on doing underpaid translation work would have left her father cold. Her mother might have liked the idea of it, though: she would have respected Mrs Langford's courage and cleverness. But ultimately, Rosalind knew, her parents wanted a Hugo Ellerson for both of their daughters.

There was no question of depicting Alistair as a Hugo, but she could at least manage the picture he gave of himself in accordance with what she knew about her parents' prejudices. That these prejudices were nothing more than the standard snobbery of the day was something Rosalind learnt with mounting disillusionment. Like most children, she had grown up thinking her family was rare and exceptional, engaged in a unique drama.