Becoming Strangers Page 5

  George shook his head, 'See, I'm really more your leader type than your worker. You've got the knack of it now, anyways. And as for Jan, well, he is strictly white collar.'

  'Excuse me?'

  'Office. Management.'

  Jan flushed and blew air on to the front of his cheeks, shaking his head gravely, 'No, no, no. Not at all. I grew up on a farm and then my business is car hire, so in the early days I did a lot of the mechanical work, the repairs, myself. The last fifteen years, I've been behind a desk, sure, but not always.'

  He noticed that George looked pleased with this answer, turning his red face from one acquaintance to the next, the common factor.

  'And how do you come to be working here?' Jan asked Adam, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the wet counter top. His expression was so grave that for a moment Adam had the impression of being on an interview. He sat back on his stool and held his lower leg across his lap.

  'I went to university. A pretty crap one. Did Business Studies. I can't think why. The old man, I suppose. But I just couldn't get any enthusiasm up for a corporate job, you know. I went and interviewed with lots of companies, but I'd always blow it at some point. Some of the interviews were a couple of days, with a sort of spoof business situation, like a contest. I'd end up taking the mick, having a laugh, being a bit rude. I suppose you got to respect that it's important to the people there, but I was just turning up for the old man. So I thought, fuck it, I've got to get out and do some thinking, and that's what I've been doing for the last couple of years. In Asia, in Africa, and now here. I'm going on to Central America next.'

  'Sounds bloody good to me,' said George, 'I wasn't so different from yourself. Had the wanderlust. Used to bugger off on the bike down to Brighton or up to Yarmouth. But we never had the chance to do anything like your world travel, though with the war you could see a bit of the world. But we had responsibilities to go home to, most of us were married or engaged, had kids.' He added with a sour grimace, 'No pill back then.'

  'But what will you do? Where is your thinking taking you?' asked Jan.

  Adam shook his head. 'I'm in the middle of it right now. Hard to say.'

  'How do you know it's the middle?'

  'Because it's not the end.'

  'But what's the point?'

  Adam looked at him with still blue eyes and, smiling, took a long draught of his beer. He sighed as he drained the glass.

  'Wine, women and song. Now that hit the spot,' he said. 'Got to get off, lads, work to do.' He shook hands with both of them, putting a second hand on their arm as he did so. 'Cheers, George,' he said, 'very much. I owe you. And for the bewie. Top man.'

  George nodded.

  Both men watched him walk slowly up the path to the main hotel, his feet half out of his trodden-down sneakers, untying the green staff shirt from around his waist and putting it on before he reached the door.

  'It's a different world, today,' said Jan, seeing George's admiration plain in his face.

  'It is, but people don't change, do they? I look at a lad like that and I see myself, Jan. Not the ponytail and tattoos, granted, but the attitude. Good laugh. I always wanted to have a boy. A chip off the old block they used to call me, and to see the old boy smile at that! He used to say, that's my wealth that is, pointing at me, that's what makes me richer than a rich man. It ain't things what carry you on, is it, it's your kids. I'd have liked a son.'

  Jan slid the menu towards George who took a quick look and they chose another pizza, taking account of each of the topping options. George sanctified Jan's suggestions sombrely.

  'Sausage is good. Peppers is good but they do repeat on you. Mushrooms. Good.'

  Jan ordered a bottle of the house white wine. He could recognize several of the people at the bar now that they had been there a couple of days and he nodded if his eye was caught.

  With the pizza shared equitably, George belched and pushed the remaining slice to Jan. 'Its yours, mate, fair's fair. I've had my half.' When Jan hesitated, he ate the last piece himself rather than let it waste.

  'Shame to chuck it.'

  They agreed that although it was nice to come away with the ladies, it was a bit of luck to find some quiet time like this, time for a bite to eat and a drink and some 'cordial conversation' as George put it.

  'See, I've had to ask myself, over the years, whether it wouldn't have been better if we'd got ourselves divorced, would we have been happier like?' George said in a quiet voice. 'People like us didn't do it. Not like nowadays. I remember in our village, people would whisper to each other about a certain lady, "Look, there goes Mrs So-and-so, she's divorced." Funny ain't it, the way things are now? My eldest daughter's gone and got divorced and is thinking about getting remarried. Didn't you ever think about it?'

  Jan was silent.

  'Beg pardon, didn't mean to pry.'

  'We are Catholic. There is that, you see. But I was just thinking that it must be something else also as I have not observed my religion in many years. I think the example was set before me. Although my own father was killed in the war, those families I respected, their parents were married all their lives. Well, they worked together, as business partners you could say on a farm or at a shop, I think it made a difference.'

  'Too right. It was different in them days. The family was the business, wasn't it. My mum was the boss. Lord above, didn't she mind the pennies, counting out of my father's wages for this and that and mine too when I got older, putting some by, here and there. It wasn't about religion then either really, we didn't go to church much. I've never been much of a religious man. I believe what I believe, more and more as I get older, but I've done a few things I ought to be ashamed of, that's the truth of it. Don't feel right going into church and doing the mumbo jumbo.'

  'We've all done such things.'

  'Yes, but,' George leaned forward, close to Jan so that Jan could smell a mixture of the white wine, garlic and beer, 'I've been ambidextrous. Had affairs.' A small burp released the smell of sausage into the mixture.

  'Oh,' said Jan.

  'There's the things I did and the things I thought about. The things I didn't do. Sometimes I wonder if the regret ain't the worst. First of all, right from the beginning, Dorothy was second best. That's the truth of it. There was a woman before her, Millicent, her name was. Millie. Lovely. She was a dancer. Not professional but she loved to dance. She said to me one time, "George, come dancing with me, do a few lessons and get yourself up to scratch, will you?" And I says no. I sat home thinking well, if she likes me enough, she'll come round, give up the dancing. Me old mum told me she would. Never happened. Five years later or more I got this letter from her, she got my address through an old friend. She went to some trouble to get it because this friend of mine, Arthur, his family had moved twice on account of the bombing. "You don't fancy having another go at the dancing do you?" she asked. "I'll stand you the lessons." It blew me away. 'Course I was hitched then. Kids too. It was after the war. I've often thought about that. I used to think, well if she still thought of me after five years, then it would be all right to write after five years, ten years. Even now, I sometimes think of writing to her and it's more than fifty years later.'

  He touched the bridge of his spectacles lightly. 'Probably dead now. I never did write back. No point. But I've often thought about her. I won't say every day. Some days you wake up with misery on you and I never thought about her like that, not to make things worse for myself, but I'd daydream, us in Europe, drinking beers out of mugs. That sort of thing.'

  Jan smiled. This is nothing to give yourself a hard time about, George.'

  'No, no, I know. I mean, I did right by Dorothy and the girls. There was a woman in the village I had a bit of a thing with. She was a widow. We saw each other on and off, for the fun and games really. Such as they was. She was a bit grim, on account of raising three kids on a widow's pension I suppose. Would never take her top off. I used to say, what you got, three of them? I can't say I ever thought m
uch of her, truthfully.'

  Bill Moloney stood on the other side of the bar, with a towel round his neck. He raised a full glass in their direction briefly before turning towards a Chinese woman who stood a foot or two back from the bar going through her wallet.

  12

  FINGERTIPS THAT SMELT OF SUN LOTION placed themselves over George's eyes.

  'Well, it ain't the missus,' he said, 'but I can feel a ring tapping on my specs. It's someone's missus. Is it yours, Jan?'

  'Yes,' said Annemieke, making a face at Jan, 'that's me.'

  'Hello,'Jan said, feeling slightly dazed after sitting in the sun through three beers and his share of two bottles of wine.

  'Join us for a drink then,' said George, signalling to the barman who raised an eyebrow and wordlessly attended them. Despite George's best efforts, he remained distant.

  'Haven't you had enough?' asked Annemieke, and George winced visibly and looked at Jan.

  'Well, yes and no,' he replied with a cheeky smile. His eyes were brimming with the alcohol, plump and viscous.

  Annemieke spoke to Jan in her own language and George closed one eye and swayed slightly on his bar stool, wondering if he would have to get acquainted with someone else at the bar, in order to carry on drinking, or whether he should go up to the room. Dorothy would be wondering what had happened to him. He'd best see if she'd had some lunch.

  The young fellow, Adam, passed by the bar and stopped to tap George on the shoulder, lightly but nearly causing the old man to fall off his stool. George regained his balance wildly, holding on to the bar counter with two hands and putting his feet out in front of him.

  'Easy,' he said.

  'Bloody hell, George, have you been here all this time?'

  George turned to his assailant, 'I've been shanghaied by this here gentleman. How's the tiling going? Need a hand?'

  'No thanks. You all right?'

  'Marvellous.'

  'All right then, take it easy. I'm off for a siesta.

  Cheers.' And raising one arm in a salute that lasted until he was out of sight, Adam dipped down below the terrace towards the seashore.

  'Who was that?' said Annemieke, accepting a glass of wine.

  'A young man working here, doing some tiling. A Brit. His compatriot lent him a hand this morning.'

  'Really? I wouldn't have thought you were still up to it at your age, George.'

  'Oh you'd be surprised what I can still get up to, my dear,' said George, with a sly nod of his head and a smile at Jan. 'Or at least,' he went on, 'where there's life there's hope.' And the three of them laughed while Jan finished the bottle of wine between their glasses.

  'Let's drink to that,' he said.

  George finished his glass in one draught. 'A siesta, the lad said. I think I'll nip back to the room for forty winks. Enjoy yourselves, you two.'

  The drugs that he was taking for the cancer made it almost impossible for Jan to drink. The combination dealt instant nausea. He had stopped taking them that morning. It was a waste of time. He would take the morphine when he needed it but from now on he would drink. The desire for alcohol had wrapped itself around the ancient feelings that he'd suppressed during the illness—love and hope and stupidity. He was going to be silly, he had made his decision. He was sick of being ill, it had been a dead-end profession. It was not too late to be an idiot. George was a fine companion for that.

  The wine was burning a hole in his sadness like the sun on his back.

  'You are going to burn if you don't put your shirt back on,' said Annemieke, recognizing with slight jealousy that his upper body was beautiful in a way, lean and supple still. She had been surprised to see him sitting there like a manual worker with his shirt off, his shoulders rounded for once, a drunken smile on his face.

  'Are you having a nice time?' Jan asked his wife, putting his hand around her waist, nodding at the waiter and pointing at the wine list.

  Annemieke readjusted her sarong and gave her bikini top a tweak behind her neck. Her breasts were the soft dropping consistency of batter. She gave him one of her bright and anonymous smiles.

  'Well, as you like to say, yes and no.'

  'This is your version of paradise, though.'

  'What do you mean by that?'

  'You like this sort of thing. Elegant society.'

  'If you think it's much fun for me to come away for the last time, again, then you're mistaken. It was the boys' idea, not mine.'

  'You sound bitter. But it's me who has to do the dying.'

  She pushed her wineglass away from her.

  'Don't I know that!'

  He looked down at his body. It was very bad form to die slowly, he had learned.

  'I am sorry.'

  'Oh, don't say things like that, Jan. It makes it worse.'

  He meant it though. He swallowed and looked hard at the barman, signalling for a whisky to go with the wine, then changing his mind and ordering two. She did not disagree.

  'We need to talk,' he explained as the drinks were served. He was waiting for the right moment. He would take her hands in his and he would say, let's go all the way back to the beginning, let's be two people without this past we have made, let us be friends. Let us do something silly together, now while there is time.

  But the barman was taking a long time and his wife was looking at the other people around them, so he started to speak, quickly.

  'Do you know, I haven't been so drunk in a long time.'

  'No, that's true.'

  'I owe you an apology. As you know, I didn't choose for this to happen to me, but I should not have let it win so completely.'

  She took a breath and reached for her drink.

  'You did not choose it. Neither did I, nor the children. But it was given to us and we have had to deal with it.'

  'I am ashamed, Annemieke,' now he took her hands in his, 'I wish I were a better, stronger man. Dying does not make you good. Nothing makes you good, not even the life we want can do that, not even success.' He looked over at the Americans. A man was checking his watch against the time on the bar clock, his wife was running her fingertip around the inside of the rim of her eye. He looked beyond them, saw the flowers nodding, the shapes blurring and blending in his confused distant vision.

  'Will you sit down?' he asked her. She shook her head.

  'I have been bad company these last years. I am sorry.'

  She did not want him to say sorry. It would require her to say the same, surely, that was why people said it, and she felt incapable of that.

  'Don't worry,' she said.

  But, like Bill Moloney, he wanted something from her it seemed, he pressed her.

  'I am not worrying. I have decided not to worry, that is the point, you see I'm going to loosen up.'

  Bill Moloney presented himself at the other side of the bar, elbowing one of the Americans aside, gently and with apologies.

  She laughed with her head back. 'You have drunk too much, Jan-tche, you will be back to your usual self tomorrow!'

  He was hurt by the way she scoffed at him. He said angrily, 'Ah, yes, I forgot, you know how to live.'

  'I make no excuses for myself, I don't pretend to be what I am not.'

  Across the bar, Jan noticed the Moloney fellow withdraw abruptly and he felt sure that they had been observed. He felt it was disgraceful, even though plenty of people did it, to bring such misery on holiday. And then he hated the holiday too.

  'Not so loud,' he said. He noticed she had finished her drink and was passing the empty glass over to the waiter.

  'Not so loud,' she mimicked, not so loud. This is all we have heard in the house. You have become so obsessed with your life in a technical sense that you have not lived it at all.'

  'Happily, the same cannot be said of you. Have you sent De Vries a postcard?'

  She turned towards him and put her hands on his shoulders. She bent her head to get her eyes squared with his. 'Look, Jan, what do you want? It's been a lousy end to a lousy marriage. Do you want m
e to say something else? Just because you are dying I am supposed to change, to be noble? For six years? I feel young inside. I feel like an eighteen-year-old. I am not dying. You have robbed me of too many years and yes, I resent it and I've had enough. I have always been honest with you.'

  He had heard this before, this last part. It was not the right place, there were people watching and yet she had dashed his hope from him, she judged and categorized his life and now she would do the same with his death. He would speak.

  'Annemieke, your honesty is miserable. It is rude. This honesty of yours does not uncover any truth, it allows you to do as you please.' He stopped because his anger was getting ahead of him, and then he slammed his hand down on the bar making their drinks jump and he said, 'It is convenient!'

  'I'm not a philosopher. How lucky for you that you are capable of seeing the truth. Add another note to your book.'

  He felt outclassed by her, and yet he was still sure even after all these years that good was on his side. He took his glass in his hands and supped the whisky like a mug of soup.

  'This is ... terrible,' he said. He had bags under his eyes; to her he looked both doleful and importunate.

  The very sight of him annoyed her.

  'You know,' he said, 'when I think of you in the early days, I miss you, Annemieke. I knew from the beginning we had our difficulties, our differences. But you were a friend once. Now it seems as if there is nothing, no safe place. I thought...' He put his empty glass down on the counter and it slipped in the wet until he steadied it. Then he closed his mouth and was silent.

  She held her glass between her breasts and looked away. She was thinking about the days after his death, the quiet house, the boxes on the floor, the boys making coffee in the kitchen, touching her back as she knelt, the sudden heart-starting sound of the phone ringing.

  He went on, clearing his throat, muttering miserably, 'Nobody needs to win. Nobody needs to be right. Nobody cares about us, who's winning. I had an idea, you see, how to do it.'

  She heard his voice crack and looked quickly at him, and she saw her younger son, Ben, saw the way he looked after admitting to her he had an overdraft again. In spite of her cold and hard mind, her mother's heart arched like a swallow making a circle of the sky, turning south for the winter.