Exposure (57 page)

'Caroline?' he said, as if he was not sure she had really acknowledged him behind the fog of terror.

'What, Luke?'

'It's not a real gun.'

'What?'

'It's a joke gun,' he said.

For a moment there was only shock, then every feature of her face wrinkled up in abject disgust. 'This was—what? Your idea of a
joke
? This was a
joke gun
? I mean,
what?'

He had never been gaped at like that before. Never in his life. It was the kind of look you gave to people who shouted at themselves on the street, people who bit their own hands, people who spat and screamed at dustbins. He felt the various glossy layers between himself and these lost souls begin to dissolve. Off they came: class, education, wealth, schooling, blazer, loafers, cufflinks.

Just then, there was another huge shower of stars. He gazed up and watched them fall—into his hair, onto his eyelids; they slid weighdessly across his face. He could hear Arianne laughing with excitement. Waiters in white gold shirts were taking champagne cocktails around on trays. It was hard to see for a moment, through the strobe light and the tumbling stars.

'Caroline?'
he said desperately. He reached out for her wrist and caught it. 'I—I've given you the wrong impression of myself.'

She laughed bitterly into his face. 'Oh, my God, Luke, that is just such a—such a
weird
way of putting it.' She tugged her wrist free, and as she did so he flinched and looked at her as if she had walked up and silently shot him in the stomach.

He said, 'Yes. No, I see what you mean.'

Then he turned away and she watched him slowly josde out through the last snowfall of stars and the bouncing, golden crowd.

Mila had thought the banging sound was in her dream, but gradually she realized it was coming from the annexe door. She called out sleepily, 'Goran?'

There was no reply. Right away she sat bolt upright and snatched the sheet up against her throat. She was afraid that they had been discovered, that she or Goran had been loud and the people had come over from the big house. They would be sent back to Kosovo—their whole journey was wasted—and there would be nothing but fighting and Albanians hating them for the rest of her life. There would be no joy, just evil graffiti on all the ruined beauty of her childhood; just foreign soldiers with their blank, impartial faces, queuing beside you at the market with their guns.

'Goran?' she said again, pleadingly, her voice weak with fear.

'No, it's Luke,' came the answer.

'Oh,
Luke!'
she cried out. And suddenly she felt that abundance of vitality, of joyous good health that only comes after a lucky escape. She thanked God as she hurried about the room, looking for her clothes. Hanging on the old hat-stand, she found her T-shirt and her long cotton skirt and pulled them on quickly, knocking over the children's globe beside the pile of tennis rackets. The globe lay, spinning on the floor for a moment and she muttered in irritation as she picked it up and set it back on its stand. 'I am just one minute, Luke,' she called nervously. 'Very sorry.'

Luke pressed his ear to the door so that he could hear

everything Mila was doing: she went into the shower room, water ran briefly, she came out, a metal hanger was knocked clanging on to the floor, then the camp bed was shifted and the two halves were folded and locked together. At last he heard her footsteps coming to the door.

Her hair was all fluffed up from brushing. She was slightly hysterical. 'I'm sorry I am long time. I sleep,' she explained. 'Luke, you know Goran is drive in cab now?'

'Yes,' he said.

She gazed at him, puzzled at first, and then, with a plummeting acknowledgement of her own capacity for self-delusion, it occurred to her that Luke was going to throw them out of the annexe himself. Why not? Goran had been so rude when Luke came round early the morning before—it had been unforgivable to make her tell him to go away. She and Goran had been arguing anyway, but after that she had been too angry to speak to him. She had hissed at him what an idiot he was to show disrespect to Luke in that way—that Luke had virtually saved their lives,
where the hell would they be without him
?—and then she had locked herself in the shower room until he gave up on tapping at the door like a little brother. He took ages to go away - he just kept telling her to 'relax', asking her, 'Why do you care so much, Mila? Just
relax!

It was perfectly obvious why she cared so much!
Relax?
How could she, when they were beggars, nobodies, who had to guard what little they had with their lives or they would end up in one of those bunk-bed boarding-houses with cockroaches and thieves. Did he have a
relaxing
solution to that? After half an hour or so she came out of the shower room to find Goran in a dead sleep of physical exhaustion. His hand still gripped the unopened beer Luke had passed her through the doorway. She eased the bottle out of his fingers and, as she did so, she thought about how it had been those very hands that had sold all her jewellery to an Albanian woman. She had cried and cried when he did that.

'But we agreed. It's for our bus fares. Our
future!
Goran had told her, stroking her hair. 'It's worth so much more than a few rings and necklaces, little one.You're too beautiful to need jewellery, anyway.'

He snored a little on the sofa and her mouth curled in disgust. She longed for her pretty things. All other girls had pretty things, but not her. And now, to top it all, Goran had been unforgivably rude to Luke, the one source of comfort and beauty in their lives.

And now here Luke was, about to throw them out. She could see that he wanted to come in and she let him pass, remaining in the doorway, utterly stiff with despair. She looked out into the garden for a second or two at the place where Luke had been standing. The temperature had dropped a little and it felt as though it was going to rain. For a second or two, she missed her mother desperately.

Why had she come to this country to work like a slave, anyhow? To be spat at by those angry pink faces at the port with their weird signs and their chanting? Had it been her life's ambition to scrub and clean luxurious houses, to be tortured by the sight of other women's beautiful clothes, by other women's unused kitchens? Why had she ever listened to Goran? She could have gone somewhere else, on her own, somewhere life was much easier ...

She heard Luke's shoe scuff the floor and knew she must turn round. She closed her eyes tightly, and, with the little energy she had left in her tired body, she decided to work a miracle. Mila had been born with a natural talent for optimism. She was deeply grateful for it: it was all that had got her and her brothers through a childhood punctuated by air strikes and bombs, and by doubt in what the adults were doing. She summoned it up in a kind of prayer, or perhaps it was a spell, really, since it was not on God but on her own body that she called for help.

The familiar sensation spread through her: hope. Perhaps, she told herself, Luke was not going to throw them out, but merely wanted to make sure they had not damaged anything. Immediately, the thought took hold - just as hope always did, no matter how bad things were; it was like a desert plant. Yes, she told herself, of course that was it! Goran was so big and clumsy - he ate in such a disgusting, dog-like way—she was not surprised if someone as elegant as Luke was simply
concerned for his family property.

Luke stood beside the old pink sofa, running his fingers over a few of his county sports medals, which were piled on the table.

He noticed Mila smiling at him and watched her shut the door. He said, 'What happened yesterday? You didn't want me to come in. Were you having an argument?'

Mila was confused. Luke always spoke so quickly. It infuriated her that she needed Goran to translate.

'You and Goran?' he prompted. He shook his fist for anger.
'Yesterday?
When I came with the beer?'

She knew the word 'beer' and immediately she understood. OK, so he was offended, she told herself. But she would stay calm because she would simply apologize and Luke would forget all about it. That was what was going to happen. She laughed tensely. 'Oh, I am understand. Argument is fight of words, yes? Yes, it is argument. Please I am sorry, Luke. Very sorry. Goran also is very sorry.'

'Forget it,' Luke said. He was not sure why he had mentioned it.

'Please, Luke. He speak bad to you. I know this. Please.'

'Look, I said it's OK. Forget it.'

Mila thought her heart might break with gratitude. 'Thank you.' She blushed, and then she said passionately, 'Goran is angry man sometimes. He is
stupid
man.'

Luke was shocked by this assertion. He was used to seeing Mila tease Goran, but fundamentally she always seemed rather afraid and obedient. Goran only had to tell her to stop joking around and open his beer and she did. It amazed Luke. He had often wondered if women were simply more respectful where they came from - if Serbian women, unlike English ones, thought men had a purpose, a real place in society—or if Mila's respect for him was due to some special power of Goran's. Luke would mull this over as they shared an early-morning beer, while he tried to banish his latest memory of Arianne: her bright shape whisked past obliviously to a table, or flickering by in a cab, or waving at him in a strobe flash from a crowded dance-floor.

He would observe Goran and wonder what this tall, rather awkward-looking man had that he so obviously didn't. How did Goran command female respect? Luke had been forced to admit he was jealous—jealous of a man who drove a taxi all night and had to wear someone else's old trainers because he had no shoes of his own.

But perhaps he had been deceived in this, as in so much else.

'You think Goran's stupid, Mila?' he asked.

She sat on the edge of the sofa and brought her knees up to her chest, her bare toes curling under the hem of her skirt. 'Sometimes I think. Yes. Sometimes I hate. Sometimes I ...' She gripped the sides of her face hard, shaking it in her hands.

Through the darkness, Luke studied this display. After a while, he said, 'So why string him along, then? Why don't you just dump him?'

It was a maze of colloquial English. 'Again I do not understand you, Luke.' Mila sighed. 'I am sorry.'

'It's OK. I didn't think you would.'

'I am sorry, Luke.'

He wished with all his heart that she would stop saying sorry to him. Why did he deserve her apologies? Was she so low that she must apologize to a fool with a gun in his pocket, which he was too scared to fire? He felt a pulse of hatred. But hate could not be maintained: it involved too direct an acknowledgement of another person, of the world outside, and his focus returned quickly to the narrow corridor of despair.

There was silence, and then came the sound of the neighbour's cat thudding off the fence on to its pads. It leapt on to the windowsill in front of them. Because it was not possible to turn on lights at night without drawing attention, the only means of visibility in the annexe were the moon and the enduring London glow. The cat seated itself, blocking out the fragmented view of the lawn, and around its soft body there bristled a halo of silverish-orange light.

Mila watched Luke staring at the cat. She decided he looked reassured that they had not broken anything or wrecked the place and she began to relax. Her shoulders sank and she crossed her legs; she leant back a little on her elbows. She enjoyed staring at him—he was so handsome you always wished you could take a photograph. She remembered pretending to sleep in the back of the car on the way here from Dover and hearing Goran ask Luke if all English men were as handsome as he was. Luke had said they were all far
more
handsome! She had not been able to believe her ears at the time. And, of course, she had been right not to—Luke was just being modest and good. He had done so much for them—saved them from the horrors of boarding-houses and extortionate rent—out of the goodness in his heart. She hated this French girl he spoke to Goran about for hurting him so much. How could a woman undervalue a man like Luke?

Then Mila had an idea and she clapped her hands. 'Oh, I am forget everything! I am stupid girl! Luke, I tell to you I have present for you—yes? Not
big
present, but ... I tell this, yes?'

He looked at her blankly and then he recalled that she had told him she had some kind of surprise for him. He had mentioned it to Goran when he collected the gun and Goran had not known anything about it.

'Oh ... yes,' Luke said. He felt exhausted by her enthusiasm, pummelled by her smile. 'You really don't have to do anything, Mila. Really.'

She dismissed this with a flap of her hand. 'ife/ Is not
big
present. I just—I say thank you, sincerely,' she said. 'I get it?'

He felt he would be incapable of a show of gratitude and wished she would drop the subject, but her bright, pressing manner told him she would not. It would be easier to give in. 'Yes, OK,' he said.

He flopped down on to the sofa despondently, and she rushed behind him to the back of the room where there was a chest of drawers. He heard a drawer open and something removed from a paper bag. It was a faintly nostalgic sound ... a Christmassy sound ... his mother depositing a stocking packed with little parcels at the foot of his bed in the early hours of Christmas Day. But no pleasant thought could long have survived the atmosphere in his mind.

Mila was humming a tune. Her vitality was so senseless it began to make Luke angry. What was there to be so excited about, for God's sake?

She held out a small brown cake on the palms of her hands. 'Is Serbian cake,' she said. 'Is for you. I make in Mr Hugo Johnson apartment. It is easy. Luke, no people they do not use these good kitchens and everything it is
beautiful
! I just quickly do' - she mimed mixing in a bowl - 'and I put the cake inside there,' she opened an invisible oven door, 'and why nobody is care? Then I iron all shirts and then it is ready!' Suddenly a thought jolted through her thin body and she looked afraid. 'Luke, I pay money the eggs and all this - I
buy
it. You understand this? Is not take it from Mr Hugo Johnson. I pay
money!