Becoming Strangers Read online

  'I thought we might make an excursion,' he said pleasantly. 'We could hire a car. Have a look round the island.'

  'I'm not a sightseer, Jan,' she said, 'as you know.'

  She gave herself a good wash; she wanted to feel just right when she lay down on that massage couch. These indulgences were fraught in so many ways. Money and time ticking away while you tried to feel good. An indifferent masseur or beautician, an unpleasant manner, a painfully deep rub or treatment, thin towels, or the sight of herself, under bright lights in a full-length mirror—any of these could ruin it.

  He was standing when she left.

  'We might have lunch together,' he said.

  'You look after yourself, I shouldn't want to hold you up.'

  Naked under a robe, waiting with a cup of lemon tea outside the massage room, she became increasingly nervous at the selection of music being piped over the speakers. It was young music, all pulse and beat and gravel and urgency. She would not be able to relax to it.

  With the usual command given, to undress and lie under the single white sheet while the masseuse stepped out of the room, she felt more at ease. The lights were dimmed, the music lowered. When the masseuse returned, she asked Annemieke questions in a monotonous voice of Eastern European accent, interspersing them with notes about the oils she was using, varying neither the cadence nor the metre of her speech.

  'So you have come here with husband. This is a neroli, orange and bergamot oil very good to stimulate the senses and invigorate your spirits. They are older, your children, then. They have left home.'

  'How old do you think I am?' said Annemieke.

  'Forty something,' she said, 'early forties.'

  Annemieke was reminded of the option to tip the masseuse. This gave her an anxiety like heartburn. She started to wonder how much time had passed and how much remained. Opening her eyes and turning her neck slightly to find the clock, she cricked her neck and exclaimed. The masseuse spoke gently.

  'You hurt your neck. You have very stressful life.'

  Already twenty minutes had passed.

  'Yes,' Annemieke said and snapped her jaws and eye-lids shut.

  The masseuse put her fingertips to Annemieke's temples and rubbed in small circles, softly but with growing pressure. In her mind's eye, Annemieke saw Jan's face, protuberant with his own sorrow. The masseuse finished with deep strokes of her thumbs against the sole of one of Annemieke's soft feet, clasping the foot like a prize, pressing the toes to her collarbone.

  Standing in her robe, at the spa reception, Annemieke signed the chit quickly, looking at the counter, not at the girl. She did not leave a tip.

  Only a homosexual or a has-been wears short shorts, thought Annemieke, standing still in front of the man. The South African pulled his short shorts back up from around his ankles and positioned his genitals gamely inside the fishnet interior. They were dark blue nylon with a white-bordered slit up either side.

  Annemieke had gone into the wrong changing room after her massage, deliberately. She had observed that it was the mens room and loosened her robe slightly to affect a deeper V before she entered. The day before, as she waited for the elevator back to their room, she had heard the South African arrange a midday massage—or a 'rub-down', as he called it—and as chance would have it, there they both were, in a small stark white changing room, her robe slipping.

  A man such as he was not going to refuse.

  'I must be in the wrong place,' she said, a shoulder exposed, and she could see by his expression that he remembered her and from the goofy turning of his mouth that he was rapidly putting two and two together and coming up with an erection.

  She locked the door behind them with the simple depression of a round button on the handle. She approached him and put her hand inside the short shorts, unleashing her catch from the net. And all the time he smiled like a son of a bitch. Expressionless, she gave the hot and hairy handful a few pulls in order to make sense of the mess. Humbly and warily he placed his hands on her breasts, as if waiting for the next steps to be communicated.

  She drew the line at giving such a man a blow job. She guided his apish right hand between her legs.

  'Okay,' he said with a friendly smile, a thumb either side of his waist, levering the shorts over his plumpness. With a gamin flourish of his hips, he let them drop down to his knees. One further shake and they were about his ankles and that seemed as far as he was able to dismiss them. She sat down, robe about her hips, her hands behind her, her back arched, then she slowly began to walk her hands backwards.

  He knelt down above her, steadying himself with one hand, giving his old friend a stroke and seeing to the task of fucking a middle-aged woman in a grandiose lavatory just before lunch on a Monday.

  4

  SEEING SUCH A BITTER-LOOKING OLD MAN, all jowls, flushed from the heat, Jan took his seat at the bar well outside what he presumed was the old boy's limited range of hearing. In the last six years he had spent a great deal of time at a great many bars, even though he was not a heavy drinker. He liked public privacy. He liked to take an occasional modest respite from his life, to enjoy civilized refreshment and an altered perspective.

  The old man scowled when Jan was brought a large bottle of San Pellegrino with a long thin glass and a lime wedge. He leaned sideways; making a great and ungainly effort to see better what Jan was wearing.

  Catching each other's look, they smiled slightly.

  'Bit hot,' the old man said loudly, shaking his collar.

  Jan looked noncommittal, raising his eyebrows and steering his lack of opinion with his ears, left and right.

  'Oh, so-so.'

  The old fellow nodded and said nothing, then, apparently reconsidering, moved a seat closer to Jan. 'Can't hear you, mate. What did you say?'

  'Yes, it is. Hot.'

  'Been here before, then?'

  'No, this is my first time.'

  'On your own?' asked the man, showing his canines.

  'No, no. With my wife. I'm waiting for her now,' Jan returned, looking down at his glass so that the man would not see his thoughts. He resented the intrusion. He had a lot to think about and not much time. Was it possible for such an old man to be a practising homosexual? It was possible, he had a moustache, but usually they were writers or artists. This man did not look like either. He was English or perhaps Australian, the accent was coarse.

  'Same here.'

  Jan hoped that the conversation would end here. He was ready to stand up and make a polite farewell, to dash off a signature, to leave the two-thirds of his bottle that remained.

  'I say,' said the man, aspirating his words as if speaking to an officer and leaning over the bar with his eyebrows pumping up and down, 'did you happen to remark that the ladies go topless here?' His blue eyes flashed.

  Jan smiled stiffly. 'No, I haven't been to the pool yet. I'm not much of a swimmer.'

  'Nah,' he said, 'blow the swimming. But from where I'm sitting, you can get what they call a bird's-eye view. An eyeful.'

  Jan closed his eyes and took a breath through his nose. He had made a deal with himself, when the illness first struck, to be plain with people. He didn't have enough time to indulge them. He turned on his stool to face the man and opened his eyes slowly ready to reveal a stern expression. The old man was putting his eyebrows through a series of elevations and the back of his head was jostling his forehead. He remembered the English films of the 1950s and 1960s, the Carry On films. He laughed.

  'What are you drinking?' Jan said, pushing his glass of water aside.

  'Well, if you insist, a lager top,' the man said with pleasure, sitting back in his seat and taking a good look at his new friend. 'Are you buying?'

  'Certainly.'

  He winked, cocking his head. 'Then I'll have a whisky chaser with mine.'

  5

  GEORGE DAVIS HAD BEEN SITTING out by the pool with his trousers rolled up, thinking. He and his wife, Dorothy, had been up since six. He had never slept much, now he slep
t hardly at all. He'd had plenty of time to think about the past since he retired at seventy, but it seemed a bottomless well. There were so many different ways of looking at the same thing. By eleven o'clock, George was standing at the Hibiscus Bar, taking swigs from a ginger ale in a short glass. He was dissatisfied, on account of his normal preference for a drop of whisky along with the ginger ale. His eyes were fixed on the clock opposite. It was an old railway clock, oak rimmed, and he could discern the year on it—1856. He was waiting for midday, for decency's sake.

  He'd not had many holidays to speak of. His first had been with Tubby Haynes down at Brighton. They'd gone there on motorbikes, kipped the night on a bench. Glorious days, plenty of girls. It was exciting just to walk past a group of them—arm in arm they always were, keeping what they had to themselves, and he and Tubby raised their hats like real gentlemen. With his oiled red hair and twirly moustache, a tall man, he cut quite a figure. He and Tubby would take a couple of girls, and sometimes their mothers, for an ice cream on the front. Sixpence a cone and Tubby going through his pockets at a slight remove, looking for coins. George always came up with the brass. He worked hard and he was careful. And his old man gave him what he could, when he could.

  Shielding his eyes he looked straight out at the ocean, then he turned and looked back at the hotel. Between its two main buildings, the Caribbean sun was hand on hips, staring back at him, square and brazen.

  'He loved me, the old boy did. No questions asked.'

  The British Telecom phone directory had had no listing for Thomas Haynes in the London region. He'd gone to call him a few weeks ago. He thought about Tubby Haynes and the others in their old gang of mates nearly every day. All dead, he supposed, since he couldn't track down Tubby. The lot of them. And he was the last, still alive, with the memories to himself.

  The wife would say, just to egg him on, 'Whenever you get a phone call these days it's to say old so-and-so has passed on, makes me glad I gave up my friends years ago, when I married you.'

  'Nobody asked you to give up your friends when you married me.'

  'Well, we moved to the country, didn't we?'

  After the war,' he'd tell her. 'You had the chance for plenty of friendship during the war when I was away.'

  She'd not look him in the face then. 'Well, we left London and I never did see Glenys Guthrie again. Nor any of the other girls from the paper mill.'

  It provoked him, so he'd stop her from what she was doing and stand in front of her to have it out.

  'You wanted to raise the kids in the country, fresh air, you said, and it was me what made it happen with the idea for the nursery. In thirty-odd years I couldn't make anything of it but I stuck with it because it was what you'd said you wanted.'

  'I never asked you to stick at it!' she'd cry, getting shrill like she had a whistle stuck in her throat.

  They always argued about the past, they couldn't seem to share it.

  He could feel his heart pumping just thinking about it. Why did it all matter so much now when it was all too late? As if he was arguing for his life.

  'You married a man that stuck at things. Tough luck. Couldn't you have written letters to bleeding Glenys Guthrie?'

  'I did,' she'd falter, her bottom lip giving way.

  'AN'...SHE ... NEVVAH ... WROTE ... BACK ... TO ... YUH,' his voice went all London when he was at the end of his rope.

  'I forgot to put the address in.'

  'She'd got other things to think about. We all did. There's me breaking my back in that bloody mud, pulling lettuces no bigger than weeds out the ground hoping to make some money and one thing after another going wrong, and this and that needing fixing or buying new ... Look at me, what have I got out of life?' He'd see that she was about to subside, and then he'd say it again, just to con the both of them that there was something left to fight over. 'Well, what have I got?'

  'You've only got yourself to blame!' she'd say, dying down as soon as she'd said it.

  Because she'd start with the friends business regularly now, they were at each other's throats nearly every week. He didn't know what was wrong with her, harping on about the same thing. He ought to be able to let it drop, seeing she didn't seem to hear anything he said, but sure enough she'd start up the next week with 'Of course I had to drop my friends.'

  'You're losing your marbles,' he said.

  And you're going deaf, so that makes us even,' she retorted and her teeth got in the way of her lips, so quick and so pleased was she with her reply, like when she'd got a word with an 'x' in it when they used to play Scrabble.

  The week before they came away, he wouldn't talk to her for three days. Then their younger daughter came by to take some cuttings from the geraniums. What with the others coming for photos and medals and bits of crockery, relics, it was like a museum with a takeaway, he said to his friend Norman.

  Nigh on sixty years together and they'd had their share of love, in a practical sort of way, but there'd been hate too. You couldn't tell him that there was any marriage that wasn't equal measures love and hate. That was the way it was and it killed you off in bits and pieces, got you ready for the end, like stewing meat for the pot.

  'Put that in your pipe and smoke it,' she'd said and that was one thing he'd noticed lately she did that she didn't do before. She was getting spiteful and triumphant with it. She wasn't content to have the last word; she had to have it twice. That was why he'd headed off to the bar, he'd told her he was going out for a spot of fresh air and some normal company.

  'Go on then,' she'd said, 'see if I care. Even if you find someone to talk to, you won't hear them.'

  So he'd left her in the room and as soon as he put his foot outside the door he'd felt bad about it, angry with himself and with her, sick of it all. He ought to have turned about and made it up with her, but it was too late for all of that. Their bad habits would go with them to the grave now.

  'She wasn't keen to come, the missus,' he admitted to Jan. 'She's a stay-at-home sort. She's sitting in the room now. Blimey, we might as well be at home. She's got her book and a cup of tea, she's all right. I've always had to drag her along with me to whatever we did. She wasn't always a homebody but she's got worse lately, likes to sit on her arse all day; thinking, she says she is, or reading,' he raised his eyebrows and sighed. 'Always seems as if she's on the same page.'

  'I suppose my wife feels that way about me,' Jan said, finishing his drink.

  'Oh yes?'

  'Sure. I also like my own company.'

  'I'm not sure that's the case with the old girl. Sometimes it's hard to get through to someone even if you've known them your whole life. The years seem to make it harder, as a matter of fact. Like you've found thousands of ways to get around them, detours, you know, road closed, follow diversion. Do you know what I mean?'

  'Yes, I do.'

  'Shall we have another?'

  Jan looked at the clock. It was one-thirty. Annemieke would not still be in the spa, she must have decided against joining him. Perhaps she'd found her own lunch.

  6

  DOROTHY DAVIS WAS RUBBING HER TOES through her stocking, perched on the edge of the bed, her bag beside her.

  'I don't feel like eating a big dinner now. I had some scraps for lunch. No thanks to you. Got them sent up. Still, if you've made an arrangement we shall have to go and that's that. I'd prefer to have a sandwich in the room. But there's no point in making a fuss then, is there?'

  'You won't give in to it, will you,' said George, taking his shirt off and wiping his armpits with it. He laid it beside her on the king-sized hotel bed.

  'Open the suitcase, George, you'll find the dirty clothes bag at the top,' she said.

  'We're on holiday,' he said, dropping a sweet wrapper into the ashtray on the side table and opening the doors that led on to the balcony, examining the mechanism as he did so. Nice work. He'd helped himself to a handful of the boiled sweets on the reception desk.

  'I see from the notes here that everything excepti
ng alcoholic beverages is included in the payment for your stay,' the chignon-haired woman down at reception had told him. Like a doctor's nurse. He'd loosened his grip on the sweets.

  Their granddaughter had sprung this holiday on them. She was a thirty-year-old banker who earned a fortune. She sent them gifts from time to time, with incomprehensible notes, like 'Just because' or 'Happy Tuesday.' Now the granddaughter had provided for them their first and last luxury holiday. Left with the brochure between them on the coffee table in their front room, George had trailed a single finger down through the sample buffet menu descriptions. With the gas fire at full tilt and the rain lashing against the windows, he'd read aloud to her from it.

  'Fresh oysters, crab, shell-on tiger prawns, filet mignon, seared tuna steaks, a selection of braised root vegetables, herb salads, and organic fresh-picked garden vegetables—these are some of the items you'd expect to find at our buffet bar.'

  She'd shivered. 'A goose just walked over my grave,' she'd said, putting her library book aside.

  'No goose,' he'd said, deadpan, not looking up, 'but listen to this; typical dishes from our chef Jean Martin's a la carte menu include, boeuf bourgignon, slow-roasted guinea fowl and duck a l'orange. Do they peel the Jaf-fas before they stuff them up their back passages, do you think?'

  'It's a sauce.'

  'I know that,' he'd said, sighing and shifting his bad leg off the spring-loaded footstool deftly, to avoid the jack-in-the-box retaliation, the smacking of the back of his calf. She'd heard him rattling around in the pantry, purposefully making noises that were bound to alarm her, and on cue—she had fifty-five years' worth of being on cue—she followed him out to the kitchen to help him make his tea.

  'Call her,' she'd said to him there, her head round the pantry door, 'give her a ring and say we can't go, on account of your arthritis. She won't have paid for it yet.'