by Sarah Dunant
Home—Saturday P.M.
EIGHT O’CLOCK ON Saturday evening and it was so warm that we decided to eat in the garden. Paul had found some chicken in the deep freeze and was doing something nouvelle with it on the barbecue while I had made a selection of salads. I’m good at salads; something about the quiet ritual of chopping.
Michael arrived at the last minute, bringing a bottle of champagne with him. It wasn’t clear whether he’d expected to find Anna back or thought we needed cheering up. Either way, it was the right gesture. I watched him come up to Paul as he stood cooking at the fire and slip a hand around his waist, dropping a quick kiss onto the back of his neck. Paul pretended to ignore it, but I spotted the sigh of his hips as he moved himself back into his lover’s body.
From Paul, he came to me, and in place of the usual smile delivered a clumsy spontaneous hug. I was surprised by how much it warmed me. Anna had told me that Paul was only his second big romance, but for all his youth and energy there was a definite homely quality to him, as if his gayness were somehow incidental to his search for something domestic and nurturing. What other kind of man would have taken on not just Paul but his strange other family with such ease? It made me think—not for the first time—how there are some gay men who feel like a genuine loss to womanhood: men who in the nasty illiberal past would have been forced to settle for marriage, kids, and hidden affairs and yet might have got, perhaps, some kind of alternative pleasure out of the pretense. Was everybody happier now? The question was academic. It seems you can’t argue with sex. It always wins out in the end.
“Lily asleep?” Mike asked as he poured the booze.
“Just,” I said.
“How is she?”
Paul and I exchanged looks. “She knows something’s wrong, but she’s going along with the idea that it isn’t,” he said sagely. “On the other hand, she swam and played so hard today that she couldn’t help but conk out.”
It was true. It had been an exhausting afternoon. Torn between wanting to keep life as normal as possible and trying to give her everything we could as compensation, we had stayed longer than planned at the fair, going on every ride and trying every game, some of them twice. Paul had won her an abnormally large panda by throwing a neat hand of darts (not a talent I associated with him), and she had got herself a punchball balloon for finding the right number on a duck’s bottom. By the time we had left, the afternoon family–cotton candy crowd was shifting into knots of noisy Saturday-night teenagers in search of nonexistent action. Lily was so wiped out we had to stop her falling asleep in the car. We bought fish and chips on the way back; then she and I watched a video about a young girl helping a flock of geese find their way home. She was too tired for a bath but kept awake long enough to insist on a story from each of us. She didn’t say a word about Anna, simply curled over onto her stomach and went out like a light. The last time I had checked she was sound asleep. I couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or worried.
From the champagne we moved on to wine, and I went upstairs to get the photos and the personal ads. I watched their faces as I laid them out on the table.
“You really think this might have something to do with her not coming home?” It was clear Paul was not convinced.
“In the absence of anything else, yes, I suppose I do. Why? What do you think?”
He shook his head. “I can’t see her going off for some dirty weekend without saying something.”
I shrugged. “Maybe she felt weird about telling us.”
“Why should she feel weird?” Mike was leaning backward, balancing on the back legs of his chair, the photo of her in his hand.
“Well, getting your lovers through the want ads isn’t exactly something to boast about.”
Paul smiled. “You’ve always been a snob when it comes to sex, Estella.”
I laughed. “That’s a generous way of describing decades of failure. Anyway, what if I am? I still don’t think it’s the sort of thing Anna would shout about.”
“Why not?” Mike cut in quietly. “Paul’s right. This stuff is kosher nowadays—you know, ads and dating agencies. They’re all over the place. The world is full of busy single people who’ve got money but not enough time. Advertising is a way of spreading the net. Nothing to be ashamed of—loads of people do it.”
Spreading the net. It sounded vaguely biblical, like something you did before spending your seed. “Do they?”
“Sure. It’s a laugh. Especially this kind. You just pick out a few interesting-sounding ads, you give them a ring, and if they deliver, you leave a message.”
“Have you done it?”
“ ’Course—when I first came to London and I didn’t know anybody. I had to start somewhere. I thought the Guardian would do a good line in cultured gays.”
“And?”
He shook his head. “Not as rich a harvest as I expected.”
“But did you see any of them?”
“Oh, sure. I met a couple. An adult-education lecturer from Surrey—he was okay. And this guy from Wandsworth, a computer analyst. He had a great collection of jazz records. Except I wasn’t into jazz.”
By his side Paul was looking at him affectionately. “Did you fuck him?”
“No. He was too earnest. Don’t look at me like that. I can’t believe you haven’t at least followed up a few messages in your more colorful past.” Paul gave a studied noncommittal shrug. Mike dug him in the ribs. “See. And I bet you did fuck them.”
Lovers’ talk. It was rather sweet to be eavesdropping on it.
“Certainly not. I never even met any of them. I just . . . well, they didn’t sound . . .”
“They didn’t sound dirty enough for you, I bet.” Mike laughed, filling Paul’s glass and then leaning over to do the same to mine. A bit of me was entranced, sitting there watching their relationship unfold. Anna would love this, I thought: the booze, the company, the teasing, and the chatter. It reminded me of evenings we used to have a long time ago when we all had more time and energy. But Anna wasn’t here, which is why we were. I shook my head. “I think it’s different for women. For gay men it’s probably another kind of cruising.”
Paul smiled at me benevolently. “This, darling Stella, is not cruising—far too round about the houses. Cruising denotes action. This is more head-entertainment.”
“Yes, well, at some point she stopped talking and started doing as well. Or at least that’s what her phone bills say.”
I had found it in a folder after I’d put Lily to bed. The telephone quarter to the end of June showed the Soulmates number clocking up pound signs in clusters of three and four sessions a week through the end of May into June. Then, midway through the month, it stopped. It was now the middle of July. We all sat looking at them.
“Boy, this stuff is expensive.” Mike whistled softly. “No wonder I never had any money those first few months. Does this bill mean a lot of calls or just a lot of windbags?”
“The latter, if my experience this afternoon is anything to go by. But see when the phoning stops? Either Anna got tired of listening or she found someone.”
Paul shrugged. “And you say you called some of these guys that she rang?”
I nodded.
“They were still available?”
“Not all of them. But a few were.”
“What were they like?”
“Pretty hopeless.”
“Not the kind of men Anna would go for?”
“Not at all. Not unless . . .” I hesitated over the words. “Not unless she was in some way desperate.” There was silence. “I wondered whether maybe you two getting together has made her feel . . . I don’t know, more alone, excluded.”
“We’ve been very careful around her.” Paul, immediately on the defensive. “She knows it won’t change anything.”
“I know that—I’m not attacking you. I just—”
“I think you’ve both got it wrong.” Mike, cutting in, sounding quite sure of himself.
“Go
t what wrong?” I said.
“This whole thing. Anna. I don’t think she’s desperate at all. I think she’s just been thinking about this stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Men. Sex.”
Paul looked at him for a moment. “What makes you think that?”
Mike pulled his chair back from the tilt and laid the photo down on the table. “Well, for one thing, she’s been getting more into how she looks these last few months. She’s been experimenting with her hair color, using something to lift up the black.”
“Has she?” Paul again.
“Yeah, she and I talked about it. Which shades would go best. It’s my speciality, color and light. She went for a mahogany shine. It was perfect under the right light. And she’s started to wear different clothes, more of the body and less of the drape. She’s definitely become a bit foxier.”
“Foxier?” I repeated, thinking what a wonderful word it was, all earth smells and sharp teeth.
“Yeah, foxier.”
“So what else has she said to you, apart from discussing hair color?” said Paul, and you could see that he was really interested, not just in what he was finding out about Anna but in what he was learning about his lover.
“Nothing really. But it’s obvious, isn’t it? I mean Lily’s not a baby anymore. And however much Anna loves her, she has to recognize that fact. I think she needed to spread her wings. Or try to. Just to see how it felt again.”
And as he said it, it struck me that maybe knowing Anna as long as we had done didn’t help us here. That while we saw a woman somehow fashioned by the past, by old wounds and the all-encompassing love of Lily, Mike had met someone who had come through that, someone who perhaps had more sense of the future.
Paul frowned. “So if she didn’t tell you, how do you know all this?”
Mike smiled. “You know, your trouble is that you think being younger than you means knowing less.”
“I do not!” Paul guffawed. “What a fucking cheek.”
Mike grinned, enjoying the joshing. “Listen, it’s simple. I watched Megan go through this same thing last year. Megan’s my elder sister,” he said to me as an explanatory aside. “Her husband walked out on her, what, three years ago, leaving her with two small kids. She’s been a really good mum, got on with the job and not played around, but she also gets tired of it. Sometimes she needs to blow out a bit, to have something for herself as well as for them, see if she can still do it. I think something like that is what’s been happening to Anna.”
We both sat and thought about it. I hadn’t seen her since that visit at the end of April when she had been busy and working and had bought new clothes and seemed intermittently so high. Then there had been the missed phone calls, and the ones where we didn’t talk much because of work, hers and mine. Maybe she’d sensed I wouldn’t approve. Or maybe with my settled life I hadn’t been the right person to tell. Something similar could be said of Paul, with his expanding business and his new sexy love affair. He’d appreciate his lover more after tonight, though. The vein of compassion and intuition revealed would make Mike even more of a match for him, adding further spice to their relationship. It seemed strange to admit that Anna’s absence might actually have achieved something positive.
“So what do we think?” said Paul. “Do we tell all this to the police? Stella?”
“I don’t know. What is there to tell? You’re right. We have no proof that her not coming home has anything to do with these ads. And even if it had, how would we ever know which one it was? She circled ten or fifteen. She could have called a hundred. She might have answered ads elsewhere, or even put one in herself. We could be chasing them for weeks.”
“Yeah, I suppose. If you’re getting up, Mike, can you bring out another bottle of wine from the rack? And stick your head into Lily’s room. Check she’s asleep?”
“Sure.” He gathered up the plates and walked to the kitchen door, then turned back as he got there. “Hey—have you guys got the answering machine on?”
Paul and I exchanged glances. “No,” I said. “I turned it off when I checked the messages. Why?”
“Because I think there’s someone talking in the hall.”
Away—Saturday P.M.
AS HE STOOD aside from the door she had to steel herself not to run.
This time she noticed everything. The four other closed doors on the landing, the bars on the window halfway down the stairs, the main door at the bottom, dark, heavy wood apparently impenetrable. She had a sudden vision of a woman in a vermilion dress pulling frantically at the lock, yanking it open, and flying down a path, the bottom of the dress catching on the undergrowth, the sound of someone in pursuit after her. But she couldn’t tell if the woman was herself or someone taller. She brushed it aside.
Downstairs they passed further closed doors on their way to the single open one. Even if he lived like a hermit, he would need a kitchen and a bedroom at the very least. In one of them would be her passport and ticket, and a window that opened onto the world outside. Don’t rush it, Anna. First Lily and food. After, she would put her mind to ways of leaving.
The place was transformed for evening: fat church candles on the mantelpiece and windowsills, and music, devotional, young voices recorded in old spaces, echoing through the room. On a blue damask tablecloth laid on the floor in front of the fireplace was the food: a dozen dishes on bright ceramic plates, generous helpings of cheeses, meats, bread, salads, cooked fishes, and roasted peppers. And next to the food, a bottle of red wine. The whole thing was almost sinister in its perfection. Nevertheless the very sight of the food made her salivate. She turned away from the fire and looked around for the phone. It was already in his hand. She thought of his obvious lie when he had tried to call the taxi. He wouldn’t dare try that again, would he?
“I’ll dial for you,” he said quietly. “To be sure you get through to the right place.”
He punched in some digits. She hesitated. Did he really know her home phone number? He’d claimed to have called it the night she had arrived to tell them she would be delayed, but that had to have been a lie, hadn’t it? Lie or not, he seemed to know what he was doing. She watched his finger hitting the numbers. She had an image of her kitchen in the summer evening twilight. Lily would almost certainly be asleep by now (Paul was more scrupulous about bedtimes than she was), and he and Estella would be stalking the phone, waiting for her to call. If he got through to either of them, would he put the phone down? Certainly a foreign man asking to speak to Lily would make them immediately suspicious. Even if he hung up immediately it would be enough to alert them. Or that, at least, was what she hoped. It was the most and the least she could do. Could you trace an incoming number from a foreign destination? He would no doubt know that, too. She felt her stomach knot again. She took some deep breaths to get her voice ready.
He looked up at her. “The number is ringing.”
It wouldn’t take long. If it was the answering machine it would pick up after a couple of rings. He listened for a few seconds, then thrust the receiver abruptly toward her.
“Remember,” he said, as she took it from him, his fingers rested above the disconnect button. “Only what we agreed.”
Away—Saturday P.M.
HIS WORDS LAY between them, a teasing invitation to honesty.
Sometimes it is hard to know what is more painful, telling the truth or lying. Now would have been the perfect moment for her to confess. It wouldn’t take that much. “Remember that first night at the restaurant, Samuel? Well, I didn’t tell you the whole story, either. I’m not exactly the woman you think I am. . . .”
In the right circumstances such an act of confession could be its own erotic activity. Penance comes with in-built absolution. The sexuality of submission. She formed the words in her head. But it turned out not to be the right moment after all.
The cry burst in through the shutters like breaking glass, and it was clear from the first note that this was the voice of a c
hild in pain. The jagged howl was followed by an equally sudden out-of-control sobbing, full of panic and fear, as if he or she had been struck viciously or had sustained an instant terrible injury. On the bed Anna lifted her head to the noise like an animal reading a scent in the wind. She recognized the cry as that of a child around Lily’s age, and its distress turned her stomach over. She disengaged herself from his arms and sat up.
The sobbing continued for what felt like the longest time. Surely someone must have got there by now? Eventually, a woman’s voice could be heard rising up, intervening between the yells, and gradually the hysteria subsided, softening into a gulping tearful sound; more familiar, more confined, a sign of comfort given and received. Anna could almost feel the weight of the child’s body on her own lap, touch the sticky heat of the tears on flushed cheeks. In her experience no adult could be both so monstrously hurt and so utterly comforted. It spoke of a different passion from the one unfolding in the room, and its intrusion served to break the spell between them.
“What time is it, Samuel?” she asked suddenly.
He smiled, acknowledging the loss of her gently, as if it were a bet that he had always been willing to lose. He stretched across the sheets and down to the floor where his watch was lying by the edge of the bed.
“See. No need to panic,” he said, scooping it up and presenting it to her face upward. “She’ll still be awake. It’s always an hour earlier in London.”
He pulled himself off the bed and moved across to the shutters to let in the pastel shades of a gathering twilight. “Give me a couple of minutes to get dressed and get out of here. I’ll order the first course while you phone.”
Home—Saturday P.M.
THERE WERE A number of ways we could have made excuses for ourselves: the night was hot, the outside patio inviting, there had been music coming from a nearby garden muddying the silence, and the kitchen door had blown half closed. We had been talking intently, voices overlapping with the odd rise of laughter in between, and we had all had a sufficient amount to drink. It wasn’t enough. If the phone had been ringing in the house we should have heard it. The fact was we didn’t.
