Becoming Strangers Read online

Back in their room, Jan took his book out on to the balcony and wound down the canvas rolling shade to cover the area, while Annemieke took her clothes off and lay on the cool sheets of the bed with the fan turning above her. She was bored.

  She flicked through the TV channels with the sound muted. She parted her legs to allow the breeze to move between them. She came across two channels with Adult Viewing. She looked down at her nipples and her pudenda and spread her legs further.

  Jan came into the room and she didn't cover herself up. He looked at her twice, went to the bathroom, and she heard him zip up and return, padding softly past her.

  'Jan,' she said as he passed her by, 'don't you want to have sex? It's been a while.'

  'No.' He stopped and held on to the doorframe as though he might choose to stay and say something, then he turned again.

  'Jan,' she said, 'is it the cancer?'

  He came back inside and removed his reading glasses. His eyes were small.

  'I don't think so.'

  'Is it me?'

  He rubbed his brow with the back of the hand that held the spectacles; light and wire-framed, they flailed, limbs akimbo.

  'It is us.'

  She closed her legs.

  'Do I revolt you?'

  'No,' he stopped, 'no, you are attractive, Annemieke,' he laughed. 'Is that what you want me to tell you? You want me to tell you this, now?'

  'You weren't interested even before the cancer,' she said, looking straight at him. 'I sometimes think it happened even before we met. You should have been a cleric or a scholar.'

  'Yes,' he agreed, 'I might have been happier. Maybe. Do we want to talk about this now?'

  'Would you like to talk about it another time?'

  'No.'

  'So, let's talk about it now. Shall I tell you my theory?'

  He looked at her body now and thought of the washcloths in their bathroom that crossed her nether regions and that she left for days. Washed and dried many times they had a low, rough pile, crisp after drying on the radiator, like poppadoms. He hated them, saw them as an indication that she was so active bodily that she must wash this way, in between showers. He had always hated them being around for the boys to see or even use by mistake.

  'My theory,' she went on, 'is that you have a feminine attitude to sex and I have a masculine.'

  'This is what you think.' He looked away, across the other balconies curving into his view, considered briefly that it was doubtful that George and Dorothy were discussing such things. He envied George the peace he felt he must have.

  'Yes. Because for you there has to be trust, you need to feel safe to have sex.'

  He rested his glasses on the side table by the door and stepped inside to sit in the armchair there, facing her still.

  'Whereas you have a masculine attitude.'

  'Yes,' she said, sitting up slightly, arching her back.

  Her mother had been the same. Both of them had adored the chauvinistic, philandering grandfather, rumoured to have sired some ten children, of whom only four were legitimate. What instruction had her mother given her in being a woman? Annemieke's mother hated being a woman.

  They were silent.

  'You don't hold it against me?' She cocked her head.

  'Do you need me to forgive you?'

  She looked away for a moment and when she looked back at him her lip was trembling and her chin was momentarily flaccid.

  'Perhaps,' she said. She reached her arms out to him and he went to her. He held her head against his chest, comforting her, saying, 'Come now, don't start, it is not all your fault, don't cry over it now.'

  He held her face between his hands and looked at her squarely.

  'We didn't know, we never did know—not in the beginning, nor in the middle, nor now—what to do about each other, but we have stayed together.'

  She nodded. As he rose he caught sight of her Chinese shawl over the ottoman at the end of the bed and he took a deep breath.

  'Haven't you ever wanted someone else during the last few years? I thought that was why you liked going on your own to those countries like Belize.'

  'I did spend a night in a whorehouse once. In Belize City actually. You're going to laugh. It was quite by accident and it was horrible. Remember my trip to Central America? I passed through Belize on my way to Guatemala. Belize City is absolutely amoral. It is how I imagine hell to be. At nighttime, the darkness is darker than anywhere else in the world. You would swear there were no stars; there is no moon, no street lamps either. The people fall upon you, for your money.'

  He took a bottle of beer from the fridge and showed it to her, she declined, so he opened it for himself.

  'When I came by bus from Mexico into Belize City at midnight I was mobbed. I managed to duck into a taxicab and two other tourists followed me. We told the driver the name of a guesthouse from the guidebook. He laughed, telling us it was impossible, but started to drive anyway. He asked us for money and I told him there would be no money until we got to the hotel. The other two with me were young, students, a couple. The driver went up and down streets, marking time. Outside there were small groups of men, waiting. Eventually he stopped, in the middle of a street, not even close to the kerb. I looked out of the window. It was obvious that he had brought us to a brothel. Two girls sat on the veranda and seeing our car arrive, they went inside, came back with the Madam.

  The driver asked us for a sum of money. I refused. He simply waited, as dark as the dark. I couldn't see even the glimmer of his eyes. And then the doors to our car were opened and a sliver of light entered the car—a knife blade. I tried to stand. A hand from outside came through to put me back in my seat. I told the young man to try his side. He managed to get out and stood outside, holding the door and saying " Vite!" We went out after him to find we were surrounded. After we gave them our money, we were left to walk. We walked, each with a backpack, trying to attempt some sort of good humour. You know how one does. We were in this together. There had been nothing heroic in their attempt to rob us and nothing heroic in our handing over our money. It was as mundane as shopping. I remember as we sat to drink a beer in a Korean bar. We tried to find common ground and failed. You can't apply good nature or reason to a desperate place. When everything is bad, how can a single thing or a single person be good or bad? What is there to say? It was nighttime; there was no good.

  'We asked the owner where we could stay and he pointed upstairs. He had rooms. We should pay first. I had some traveller's cheques, and I asked that they let me pay for the rooms. They thanked me pretty coolly as though this were some sort of recompense for my being older than them. I can tell you, I felt pretty envious of them as I stepped past their door down the hallway to my own room. I heard the bolt. They were safe, being together. In my own room there was no working light; there was no lock. Tied dogs howled and barked through the night and I sat vigilant, fully dressed with my neck deliberately uncomfortable on the side of my backpack.

  'Then, from the opposite room came these animal noises of pain. A woman moaned and screamed and whined and begged and behind her noises was the regular thud of the machine of a big man. Some women like to make a fuss, I thought to myself. Some women like to be hurt. Some men too. Perhaps he too, perhaps they exchanged. But I think that such an arrangement was unlikely in a brothel in Belize. I didn't know what to do. I sat for a while. And then I walked across the hallway and knocked on the door. The machine ceased for a second. A woman's voice answered.

  '"Is everything all right?" I asked. "Go away," she replied. Her voice was level, it gave nothing away. He must have been still; waiting. So I returned to the room to sit on the bed and I listened until the sounds ceased. I felt a fool, Annemieke, a total fool.

  'When the sun came up I got up to leave. I went to the bathroom to pee and saw blood on the floor. I could piss anywhere in this country, I could piss in the street, I could piss on the bar floor, I could piss in a bank. I would not piss into someone's blood. I heard panicking voices at the
door down the hall, the Korean owner angry and afraid, the sound of another man, aggressive, then heavy footsteps running and the Korean calling out for his wife. In the city, that morning I went to the bank, got some money, took a boat out to the Cayes and I told myself that the previous night was done with; obliterated by the sunshine of the islands and the ganja in the air.

  'But I was wrong. It stayed with me. I'd had a brush with evil, alone in that room hearing two people mesh pain with pleasure to make something false. I know that sex can be bought or sold. But something base about the noise in the dark threw me—for good. That was, what, four years ago, that trip? It was about then that I gave myself over to bad luck. To cancer.'

  'Do you think he killed the woman?'

  'I don't know what happened. I feel very bad about it all. It was like I was without a moral compass. Or maybe, more than likely, I was afraid. Perhaps that's why I gave up too, I saw who I was then.'

  They hadn't spoken like this to each other for many years, the two of them. She looked at her husband. He sat up at the end of the bed with his creased forehead and bagged eyes, his long nose pointing down to the hands that were at rest together between his legs.

  'Why didn't you tell me about this before?'

  His face flickered for a moment, then fell.

  'Part of giving up.'

  The fan was turning, turning, turning above them and she thought suddenly of the blades on the front of the aeroplane. As they stepped down on to the Caribbean tarmac and walked towards the airport building, she'd looked back to see the plane bereft, the noise of its engines fading, the rotors slowing tragically, slicing nothing, mired in the butter heat, coming to a standstill.

  'Has it put you off sex?'

  He laughed. 'No. I don't think so.'

  'But it's put you off me.'

  'No. I want a safe place.'

  'Do you remember what I said to you on our first holiday together, when we were in the sea, trying to make love in the sea?'

  'Yes,' he said, 'we have talked too much.'

  In the Mediterranean, with the exaltation of a young woman whose lover fitted her exactly, she had reared up in his arms as he lifted her on to him and said, 'I will destroy you.' Later, back in the hotel room, she had said that she didn't know why she had said that. He had replied that she was merely showing off.

  32

  AT DINNER THAT NIGHT, Bill Moloney was seated with the Chinese lady. Jan, Annemieke, George and Dorothy were all together again, with the men reasonably animated, teasing each other and drinking good wine, and the women otherwise occupied.

  The dining room filled early that night. Bill came over to their table and with a hand on each of the men's chairs asked them if they'd like to join him on a jaunt the next day.

  'We need a change of scene,' he said. He wanted to drive up to the north of the island, take a look about, see if there was much to be seen. He'd get a picnic packed for the beach. He had room in the car.

  'For all of us?' Annemieke asked with raised eyebrows, taking her wineglass towards her mouth. She looked across at the Chinese lady. 'All of us and your lady friend?'

  'Laurie? She's not coming. She's here to unwind. She's got a big public relations company in Hong Kong, needs to relax.'

  Dorothy looked across at the woman called Laurie, who had laid her cutlery either side of the plate and was smiling across at them, brightly. She gave a small wave and Dorothy returned it.

  'Is she married?' she asked.

  'Divorced.'

  'Oh.' Dorothy waved again, 'that's nice.' She saw how beautifully the woman's grey chiffon dress was made, Empire line, and looking below the table she saw matching shoes. 'Very nice.'

  Jan swallowed and wiped his mouth. He gave the woman a stern smile.

  'So are we on?' Bill asked.

  George nodded. 'Sounds all right. Plenty of food?'

  'Chicken, rolls and sandwiches, salads, a quiche or two and a big Victoria sponge cake, would you believe. One or two tinnies—och, maybe there are twenty-four, I can't recall,' he added, looking at Annemieke with a smile.

  'Well I'm no Hong Kong big shot, but I've come here to relax too. So I'll let you three go ahead without me,' she said.

  The chicken,' said George, 'tell them to cook it right, lad. So there's no blood in the meat. I can't take it pink or raw-looking. Turns my guts.'

  Bill laughed, 'Fair enough.'

  'Fancy having quiche and sponge cake,' said Dorothy raising her eyebrows and stretching her neck. 'Seems a bit queer in the heat.'

  'We can pick up some ice cream somewhere.'

  'Oh, I had a lovely ice pop the other day when I was out,' she said, 'they're so clever with their ideas for them these days.' Noticing that everyone was quiet or looking elsewhere she paused before saying, 'When I had my funny turn.' George put his hand on hers and gripped it roughly. 'I'm just getting on a bit,' she said, looking at Annemieke, 'the mind gets slack too, you know. First the body, then the mind.'

  Annemieke saw that a sliver of prawn skin remained on the old lady's bottom lip, like the empty pocket of a blister.

  'Well, you'll have three fine men to treat you like a queen tomorrow,' she said, patting Dorothy's hand.

  'You will,' said Jan, and Bill nodded.

  George blinked and Jan saw that he put his great plate of a hand on his wife's shoulder and squeezed it briefly, as if it were an unfamiliar action.

  With it agreed that they should meet in reception at nine, Annemieke watched as Bill went back to his table and was all eager attention to the Chinese woman.

  'He's a Christian, you know,' said Annemieke with a small smile, 'born again.'

  George looked over at Bill. 'No. Not like that American Bible-bashing stuff?'

  Annemieke nodded. 'I don't care what people follow, but when they start preaching it, then I can't listen.'

  'Did he preach to you?' asked Jan.

  'Tried to convert me in the hot tub the other day. You'll get it tomorrow, I expect.'

  'Oh, I hope not,' said Dorothy, 'it makes me uncomfortable talking about religion. It's not something you should talk about. Like talking about medals. It never seems very modest. There's the ones that do the jawing and the others who do the work.'

  'You're right,' said Annemieke, 'you're so right, Dorothy.'

  The three of them looked over at Bill again and were quiet.

  On their way out, Jason and Missy came over to the table, arm in arm; they were off to the bar and wanted to see if they could offer anyone an after-dinner drink. The English couple declined, and the Belgians accepted. George looked after them as a dog looks at a man with a stick.

  'You go and have one,' said Dorothy.

  'No.'

  'Yes, you have one. I'll be fine.'

  'I'll walk you back first, then perhaps I will,' he said, chewing on the one side of his mouth, his eyes glazing over. He no longer heard what the others said, made no replies to their questions, and came back to the conversation only after the dishes were cleared.

  33

  STEVE BURNS WAS BUSY IN RECEPTION on Saturday morning with his trousers far too tight. He'd put on weight and his chinos were tight not just around the waist, as it goes with men, but also in the seat. He was reminded of one of his school teachers, who'd contributed to his very acute sense of what was not cool, a man who'd worn too tight maroon Farrah trousers, his arse sashaying rudely between the rows of pupils, his voice drawling sarcasm.

  Burns felt like a fruit, handing out leaflets, drawing pencilled circles on maps, reminding the punters of the Saturday night event as they left the hotel. He'd spotted two women of a more mature persuasion, 'Silvers' as they called them in the business, passing comment on him from their huddled position in two cane armchairs, looking at him over their fishing expedition leaflets. He'd asked if he could help them and heard snorts of laughter as he'd walked away. He'd fucking sashayed, he was sure of it, it was the trousers, and then he'd turned round like some Butlin's poof and told them off with a very
camp, 'Now, now, ladies, none of that.' It was a loathsome business, at times.

  The Yank had been in to discuss with him docking arrangements for his friend's yacht. He was grave and so Burns was grave in response. This was a hundred-footer they were discussing, not a fishing boat. Burns reminded Mr Ryder, Jason, of what he'd advised him the day before—it would be fine. Mr Ryder had nodded patiently, not listening at all.

  'I just don't want any problems,' he'd said.

  His friend, not Mr Cohen but a mutual friend of theirs, a serious venture capitalist, was going to dock about eleven. He was going to take a few of the guests there out for the day. Mrs De Groot was going, Annemieke.

  Burns couldn't believe that Jason would fancy the Dutch woman given he had a highly amenable piece of ass, as the Americans called it, at his obvious disposal, but he was used to all sorts of arrangements taking place on these holidays. He ought to write a book. He'd seen it all, he said to himself, thinking about the old girl and the young black man.

  Ryder was all starched up for the day, khaki-shorted legs, a linen shirt brusque about its Polo emblem, his hair a sticky dirty blond, gelled against the elements.

  'Should be a good day for some fishing, what can we expect? Marlin?'

  'I've no idea, Sir,' he said.

  'No idea? How can that be?'

  'You fucking prick,' thought Burns, 'you fucking pompous boring fucking nobody, I ought to tell you to shove all hundred foot of that boat up your big American arse.'

  'Bluefish, kingfish, I guess. What the locals call dolphin fish, a frying fish.'

  The American shook his head, his nostrils dilated, 'I think we'll be throwing those back. Have some things put together for the lunch. My friend has a staff, they'll cater, but I don't like to show up empty-handed. Some shellfish, some chicken, some salads, nothing too crazy. I guess you can do that? Hello, sweets.'

  Burns nodded. The wife had arrived, in matching kit, except her shirt was sleeveless and only half-buttoned and she had a polka-dot navy bikini top underneath it. Ryder pulled one strap.

  'Just testing,' he said.

  'Honey,' she reprimanded him, 'you'll get the knot too tight to undo.'