Becoming Strangers Read online

  What is sweeter than a problem one makes because one's other problems are too familiar?

  Looking again at the scene, he saw that his body was turning, and in his expression he saw the bleak moment in which one realizes one needs help, if only from a waiter. Something was missing, could it be that merely a drink would set things right? His hand twitched but he would not raise it. The waiter came and the evening began in earnest. The Chinese starlet was silent, as impenetrable as a poster. Her bag was new and expensive, so were her shoes and dress. Her worn-in lipstick was the only indication of there being a chance of a discount. And the compliment he'd chosen to pay her was priceless. It was one that you only gave to one or two people in your lifetime. No, he could never afford it! His Catholic upbringing would not let him ditch Annemieke, no matter what the circumstances. It was ridiculous to spend so much time on this woman, to talk with painful candour about love.

  As soon as he'd done so, he'd regretted it.

  She had faded, she was fictitious, she might as well not be there. She barely lived now. Her eyes were moving slowly across new territory, just gained, she was assessing it quietly. She did not smile.

  He opened his eyes and saw the Chinese woman, who was lying flat on her back, with a book dangling from one hand.

  Perhaps what he should have said to her was, 'I am alone. Forget everything else. I am coming to you for help.'

  But he knew that one persons truth—even when they know it, even if it is with their last breath that they say it—is for another person nothing much more than an imposition.

  28

  DOROTHY HAD SENSED GEORGE'S ANXIETY about their going to dinner that evening; even as he washed she knew he was giving himself a pep talk in the bathroom. He came out and gave a big resounding clap of his hands, it had made her jump. Being an old lady was not as hard as being an old man. She could be old but George must ever be the man. He didn't say a word all the way down to dinner, kept his teeth gritted. Like the good fellow he was, he pulled her hand on to his arm and placed his other hand over it.

  'I shan't get into talking about it,' he'd said to her after lunch, people will want to know. Some were concerned, I expect. But some are just bloody nosy. So we shall just carry on as if nothing had happened.'

  'Is that what you and I will do as well?' she'd asked him. He'd nodded, absorbed by his worries.

  They'd taken a table and for some reason an

  American couple had joined them. They'd started off with some nonsense about her 'adventure' and being 'so happy at the way it had worked out' and progressed to the husband knowing the chairman of the group. After a few glasses they'd told them how poorly they thought the manager had handled it all. Jason dealt with what he perceived to be the most serious injury, George's ego, and Missy with Dorothy's feelings. With her jabbering on, Dorothy couldn't hear what the men were saying. She would have liked to know what it had been like without her, like witnessing your own funeral. She was rather thrilled to hear of her George organizing things, to think of him on his own, putting his best foot forward. That was what she wanted to hear, but the woman went on and on.

  She was attractive, the woman. But Dorothy felt it was rude of her to be half-naked, with her breasts almost exposed, nipples quite visible through a pale white smock. What was it her London Jewish friends used to say? Chopped liver. That was how Dorothy felt and she resented it now even as she had when she was young and fresh-faced.

  Other people had come up to them, with nice things to say, and she could cope with them but not with the American woman. She was ashamed of her animal hatred. The only difference between herself as a young woman and herself now was that she could see her own hatred plainly for what it was, she didn't have to invent other names for it or find faults with the woman that weren't there. Even so, she felt miserable.

  Other Americans came up to talk to them, propelled by their good intentions. Talked about other English people they knew or a town in England they or their friends had visited, and all the time their eyes moved like servants' hands, moving over a mess and making it into something tidy, forming an opinion for later.

  'I think that events like these, near-misses, are very fortunate. They help us to know what's important,' Missy said. 'We had a really difficult time with Jason's niece. She had started to take drugs, her parents felt so helpless, you know, but we managed to reach out to her at the right time and we got her back. The pain, the worry, I told Jason, it's for a reason, it makes you value what you have. The pain, the worry,' she took a sip from her wineglass and exhaled heavily to suggest she was familiar with both, 'awful things. But you have to deal with them. There are so many people in denial. Pitiful.'

  What she said was reasonable, she said things that were measured and well-concluded, they were not ragged, nor did she allude to things that were beyond her scope. She settled where she was and deemed it the universe. You couldn't dislike her, or you oughtn't to, but she said things harshly and finally.

  'My own father was an alcoholic who left us. He came back of course when I was first married to Jason, wanting to be friends. That was pretty pitiful.'

  Dorothy had never heard the word 'pitiful' used the way the American woman used it. How awful, to reduce the charitable emotion of pity to the equivalent of disgust. It is not the British who have the stiff upper lips any more, she thought, looking at George's bristled profile in the elevator after they left the dance, its the Americans. She found them proud and complete. Other people suffered openly, like fish held up in the air, lips with hooks in them, gasping.

  'All right, love?' said George as the doors opened.

  'Oh yes,' she said.

  'Tired?'

  'Yes.'

  'Don't want to go down to the disco then? It's in your honour, you know.'

  'Oh no,' she said seriously, 'it's not for me, it's for them. They're young.'

  'Good supper,' he said, putting the card in the lock and waiting for the lights to change.

  'Yes.' She slipped her feet out of the shoes and felt the cool marble tiles on her poor hot feet.

  'Nice people,' he said, moving towards the balcony.

  'Yes, very nice,' she said, and she saw his shoulders relax at last. He opened the double doors and breathed in the night air.

  29

  DOWNSTAIRS, STEVE BURNS WAS BUSY. It had taken a considerable amount of work to get the music and lights set up in the second restaurant and ballroom. They hadn't been able to find the amplifier. It turned out that

  Abner had taken it home for the weekend. Burns was going round on foot, with his hand around his mouth, shouting in the ears of various guests, explaining that it was all in honour of the previous night's happy conclusion.

  Faces to the dance floor, the Americans nodded as they heard him, one by one. Jason replied, with formal graciousness, that it was a 'good idea/ Steve was pleased. He had considered, at this high point of the evening, whether he oughtn't to lead the old girl herself out on to the dance floor, but it emerged that the pair of them had gone off to bed. Let's hope he keeps the chain on the door, thought Burns.

  Jan grimaced when the manager slapped his back for the third time as he passed by their table at the door to the dance hall. Burns had said nothing, but stopped once to give him an exaggerated thumbs up, or else he winked and mouthed 'Good man.' When Adam walked through the doors, Burns rushed to him and led him into the room by the elbow as though he was bringing in the comic turn. He stood him next to Jan and gave a short clap of his hands.

  Jan put his hands around his mouth and leaned in to Annemieke, who bent her head to hear him. 'Is the man drunk?'

  She turned to him and cupped his ear. 'I think he's trying to say well done.'

  Jan frowned and indicated that he was going to get them both a drink.

  Annemieke had been watching the young black lover and his elderly cargo, moving about the dance floor. With his careful hip movements and a firm grip on the woman's upper arms, the young man looked as if he was carrying
a wardrobe over a rope bridge.

  Although the music that Steve Burns had chosen, revived 1970s and 1980s hits largely British in origin, demanded solitary movement, the couples from Europe and America were determined to sway with each other, forcibly if they had to. Many of them resorted to swing-type movements, holding hands temporarily until one or the other deemed it time to break away and spin on his or her heels or shake and shudder at the hips, fingers clicking like castanets.

  Still, their children were not there.

  Harry and Maxine performed a tango and the Americans pointed them out to each other with fond smiles. Jason had his hand round his wife's middle, his fingers dipping underneath her waistband.

  Bill Moloney was using one arm as a support for his mammoth figure, hand against wall. A woman was sheltered underneath.

  Annemieke averted her eyes and finished the dregs of the drink she'd been meaning to leave.

  She looked back at the old woman and the black man. She thought of them in bed together, the young man servicing the old creature. She herself was going to take hormone replacement; therapy, as soon as she felt the first hot flushes of menopause. She had said to her doctor, I will not be rewarded for my duties as woman by becoming a man. I will fight my nature if I have to.

  'I suppose she says she likes the company,' she said to Adam, in a half-shout, pointing out the old woman. Adam grinned.

  Bill Moloney was offering his woman his hand, wiping his brow with a napkin. She couldn't wait to see him dancing! The woman was Asian, prettily turned out, petite, elegant even. She accepted graciously, as if being asked to dance by the Prince and not the frog. With her right hand in his left they moved comfortably to the music. They were fortunate that the song that was playing was slower than the previous ones.

  Jan had been displaced in the queue for drinks a couple of times and when one of the Americans forcibly pointed out that he needed to be served, he declined with a shake of his head and stood waiting still. She wondered to what principle he was deferring. She was thirsty. She turned towards Adam. She pulled on his loose shirt and he lowered his head.

  'I am abandoned,' she said, 'I want to dance.'

  He obliged, raising his brow and putting his beer bottle aside. She walked out on to the dance floor, right into the middle and he stood opposite her, moving with ease, his shoulders and hips in time with the music, his eyes half-closed. She mirrored him for a short while, with a slightly faster pace and jogging style motions with her forearms.

  She felt awkward. Where was Jan? Whenever she needed him he was elsewhere. He was moving back from the bar now, a drink in each hand, but had stopped halfway to talk. She could see the other person smiling politely as Jan questioned them with the slow and excessively considerate manner of elderly royalty.

  When Moloney's back, sports-jacketed and vast, came into her view she reached out and put a hand on his arm. He turned his head round to see her and smiled. The Chinese-looking woman smiled also, as if she were about to make a new friend.

  Annemieke leaned in to him, so that he could hear.

  'I know why you said those things this afternoon.'

  'Oh yes?'

  'You want to get into my pants one more time,' she said.

  'Is that so?'

  'Yes.'

  'Would it make you feel good if that was the truth?'

  She shook her head knowingly, wagged a finger at him.

  'You know him, do you?' said Adam, leaning in to her.

  'He made a pass at me,' she said. 'Why is it that Americans can't dance?' Jason and Missy were standing opposite their friends, shuffling their feet, drinks in hand, conferring a little, with serious faces, as if they didn't really have time to dance. Catching her look, Jason lifted his head, and called out, 'Where's Jan?'

  'Oh, saving someone,' she called back, laughing.

  'Join us?'

  'Certainly,' she nodded, heading towards them, leaving Adam where he was.

  30

  THE NEXT MORNING and for the next few days, the sun shone and the air conditioning system ran, and all was well. Yet everyone seemed to be suffering from impatience—the crisis had awakened their appetites for events and as successful, busy people, they were unable to quieten it now it had followed them here. Rest and recuperation would no longer suffice.

  Annemieke attributed her dissatisfaction to drink. The morning after the party found her sweating out a hangover as privately as possible with a headscarf around her hair, a large bottle of mineral water at her side and a sarong creased and screwed up around her midriff, having tossed and turned on her sun-lounger for an hour. Jan was having a massage.

  'Why do men get women and women get women? For massages. Why can't women get men?' she'd said, putting on her shoulder bag as she left breakfast.

  'Have a nice morning,' he said, placing a single cigarette on his saucer, alongside his coffee cup.

  They'd had a good evening at the bar the night before, everyone had wanted to speak to them. The little crisis had stirred a sense of camaraderie that she meant to enjoy while it lasted. Jan, who was usually so holier-than-thou when it came to such things, allowed her to have her sway, standing back, drinking and blinking like a child who'd just discovered fizzy soda. He was relaxing, she'd noticed. He'd had a good nap in the afternoon.

  'You look happy to be alive,' she said to herself, looking at him.

  There was a sudden weight on the end of her sunbed and sure that Jan could not be through with his massage, she assumed that Mr Moloney was paying her a visit.

  It was Adam. He was eating a Mars bar, and seemed happy just to sit there, looking past her at the work that was being done on the new spa building. He nodded at it.

  'Look at that.'

  'Oh hello,' she said, pulling her sarong from under the damp weight of her rear. Was she mother or woman? She sat up.

  'They're making a right mess of my tiles,' he said, and turning her head she saw a Caribbean man behind a wheelbarrow, pushing it over the entrance steps, through the double doors that were being held open.

  'George's tiles, I mean,' he grinned, and took another bite of his Mars bar. She pulled the back of the sun-lounger up to match her seated position and watched him while he ate. Only young people know how to eat, she thought. People like her were never hungry, they never ate properly.

  She saw a symphony of muscles, sinew and bone at work beneath his throat. Below the hollows of his cheeks and the cud-massaging stretches of his lips, with the chin firm, there were two great exclamation marks that stretched from nostril diagonally to either side of his mouth, a double expression of pleasure. His hair was pushed back behind his ears. Even his ears were at work, moving too. With a swallow, he was done. Alerted by a sudden crash and shout from the new building, he raised his head like a dog pricking up its ears.

  'You should have something decent to eat,' she said to him.

  'Does me,' he said with a young man's pride in imaginary virtues. 'Don't need much. Mars bar, can of coke and me tabs. Cigarettes,' he said.

  'It won't always be that way.'

  'Well, I'm twenty-six,' he said, with a smile, going on thirteen. I hope.'

  'I don't feel any different to the way I did at eighteen,' she said, stretching one leg.

  He looked at her, smiled vaguely and looked across at the building again, wincing as another crashing noise was hailed by a round of blame.

  'They're making a right mess of it,' he said.

  Still lying, she pulled her feet up the lounger, raising her knees to give him room to sit. She picked up her book.

  'Well, best not to look,' he said. 'Jan in bed?'

  'No, he's getting a massage.'

  'Lucky sod, not the old naughty is it?'

  'I don't think he'd understand the offer. Jan's like a professor, or an academic. It's all happening up here,' she said tapping the side of her head with the book, 'not down there.'

  Adam raised his eyebrows, 'Harsh words.'

  She opened her book again.r />
  'Leaves you in a bind. You're the one that needs the massage then.'

  'That's right,' she said, looking at him over the top of her book.

  He stood up and stretched and she saw that his stomach ducked beneath his shorts, leaving space at the front of the waistband, space for a modest hand.

  'Oh go away,' she said.

  31

  THAT AFTERNOON, the sun was hotter than ever and only the Americans remained by the pool. Jan and Annemieke had lunch with George and Dorothy inside, agreed to look at making a trip together, perhaps a boat ride, and then the four of them walked along the corridor that led to the main building. George held Jan back a little as they were leaving, to tell him that he was thinking he ought to call England and mention the incident to their daughters, but he was concerned he would be betraying Dorothy, selling her out. Jan assured him that he would be doing the right thing. Annemieke and Dorothy were at the turquoise and silver jewellery in a display window outside the dining room when the men rejoined them.