Keeping Secrets

by Andrew Rosenheim

  ‘It’s lovely here,’ she said quietly, and he stared down the hillside towards the lake several hundred feet below, which spread out like a dark stain. Stars were out and the Milky Way was visible across the headland opposite. He pointed it out, and she nodded.

  ‘I like the space here,’ he said, putting his glass on the rail.

  ‘Funny. San Francisco seems very spacious to me. I mean, for a city.’

  ‘I guess so,’ he said, thinking of his bachelor’s apartment above the Korean grocery store on Lake Street. It was a nice neighbourhood, and in the middle of San Francisco, but he paid for it by having only enough room to swing a proverbial cat – small bedroom, small living room, small kitchen, a sun porch, and that was it. The garden downstairs in back belonged to the owners of the grocery store.

  ‘Everything seems so undense,’ Kate said. ‘I walked around Sea Cliff yesterday and couldn’t believe how – I don’t know the word, it’s not rural, and it’s not suburban. It’s something like “floral”, only more to do with vegetation. I just mean, things are growing everywhere. It doesn’t feel city-like.’

  He laughed. ‘You pay for that. Houses start at two million dollars in that neighbourhood. Anyway, I thought you said you lived in the country.’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It’s the family home. I live in London.’ She turned towards him and in the light from the living room he saw her smile. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  They drank more wine and talked some more, mainly about her work this time, and the places it took her to, which seemed to include most of Scandinavia, which Renoir badly wanted to see himself, and all of the Middle East, which he didn’t. She mentioned a trip with ‘Emily’, a name he recognised from her conversation at lunch, and he wondered whether this was a friend or a colleague.

  Eventually, Renoir looked at his watch and saw it was half past one in the morning. ‘I had no idea it was this late,’ he said. ‘Listen, about sleeping,’ and he noticed her eyes widen slightly. ‘Is a sleeping bag okay? I’ve brought two along. There are sheets in the cupboard in back, but this would be a lot easier if you don’t mind.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘But I’m a little claustrophobic, so can I be on top?’

  He tried not to laugh. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Just don’t roll off.’

  He realised, as he said all this so matter-of-factly, that he wanted to sleep with this woman very badly. It was beyond the usual lust, engendered by her striking looks and those long, long legs. It was a sudden, intense, unexpected and novel desire for intimacy with her. But equally he was afraid of spoiling things – how awkward the rest of the weekend would be if she turned him down. The rest of the weekend? Don’t you want to know her longer than that? Yes, he did, in an entirely unpractical way, which he knew would never happen. She lived in England, after all, which for all its strangeness to Renoir might as well be the moon.

  She used the bathroom first, but emerged still fully dressed, though when he came out of it several minutes later in a T-shirt and boxer shorts and saw her poking the fire, she was wearing a man’s long shirt of pale pink cotton that came down almost to her knees. He noticed how slim but strong her legs looked, and that there was a large scar the size of a candy bar halfway down her right calf.

  ‘Dog,’ she said, moving the poker briskly among the embers.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘It was a dog what got me,’ she said, sounding like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. ‘My leg,’ she said finally in explanation.

  ‘Oh,’ he said mildly, and got into his lower bunk bed. ‘Take your time,’ he said, ‘but can you turn out the light when you come to bed?’

  She didn’t say anything, but put the poker down, walked across the room (he had a good look at the scar this time; it was impressively deep) and switched off the overhead light by the door. He could still see her clearly in the light cast by the dying fire, and the cedar walls of the room glowed with a burnished reflected light. As she walked across to the bed, his heart beat faster and he wondered what to say. He felt that she was absolutely in control; never had he felt more male or less masculine.

  ‘Thank you for bringing me here,’ she said quietly. She was by the bed now and to his immense surprise she leaned down. Before he could respond she pecked him once, twice, quickly and chastely on the cheek, and she must have been able to see his surprise, for she stepped away from the bed, and said with a light laugh, ‘I don’t bite.’

  ‘You don’t?’ he said with the kind of mock-disappointment that wasn’t altogether mock, since what he wished for more than anything was that she would come to him again so that he could kiss her back.

  ‘No, you’ve got nothing to worry about,’ she said determinedly, lifting a foot onto the end of the lower bunk and springing up onto the top bed. ‘I like girls.’

  He felt as if he had been slapped hard in the face. Was that why she kept talking about ‘Emily’, who must be her partner? That explained it. He knew he should say ‘That’s okay’ in a light and carefree way. But he couldn’t. It wasn’t okay. He was expert at suppressing disappointment, but this was a big enough blow to sneak past his guard. A drag had been put on his spirits, which was going to last for at least the length of the weekend.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said lightly.

  He tried not to wince.

  ‘Sleep well,’ he said, trying not to sound gruff.

  ‘You too,’ she said cheerfully.

  In the morning he chopped the large logs of the lean-to into more manageable proportions, while Kate went exploring on the hillside above the cabin. She came back with a bouquet of wildflowers in her hand, and found a vase for them which she set in the middle of the table. ‘Pretty,’ he said admiringly, determined not to let the disappointment of the previous night ruin the day.

  ‘Fritillaries and yarrow,’ she said with knowing enthusiasm. ‘And there’s iris in the woods here which I didn’t pick. Amazing.’

  ‘How do you know the names?’

  She shrugged. ‘My mother taught me. She doesn’t always remember her children’s names but there isn’t a flower or shrub she doesn’t know.’

  They went into town and ate breakfast in a diner which, like the town, seemed essentially unchanged since the ’50s. They had two blue plate specials of fried eggs, bacon, toast and hash browns, and a waitress kept their coffee cups refilled. Renoir ate quickly, methodically and she pointed at his empty plate. ‘Did you go to boarding school?’

  ‘It’s the army. “Keep your trap shut and your stomach full.”’

  ‘You don’t strike me as a soldier.’

  ‘I wasn’t much of one. I was an MP. Then I managed to get into Intelligence for the last four years.’

  ‘Was this National Service you were doing?’

  ‘There was no draft in my time. I enlisted when I was seventeen – the first day I could. I was living with my grandmother in the Sunset. Nothing against her, but I felt stifled.’ The Sunset – Jesus, how different from the popular conception of San Francisco. How to explain to this London sophisticate the working-class tedium of life there. No free love, no hippies strolling, or cable cars, or Chinese food, or seafood restaurants. Not even much of an elevation up and away from the cold and foggy shoreline of the city’s western edge on the Pacific.

  ‘Did you get sent overseas?’

  ‘Nope. And that was the irony. I was eight months in San Diego, then I got transferred back to San Francisco, of all places. I had another seven years here, and then I got out.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go somewhere else then?’

  Curiously, it was not a question he had ever answered before – to himself, as much as to anyone else. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘it just didn’t occur to me.’ How lame it sounded.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if it made you happy who’s to complain?’

  This seemed slightly dismissive, and made him want to explain. But what could he say? That happiness had nothing to do with it, that in fact he was suspicious of happine
ss. Not that he looked for misery, but that in his experience conventional happiness always ended. By contrast, happiness for him meant something that couldn’t be taken away. He said to her, ‘It was the one thing I had to hold on to.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ she said quietly. ‘You were virtually an orphan after your grandmother died – even if both your parents were alive.’

  He thought of the piano player, somewhere up near Anchorage, playing the Billy Preston numbers which were all Renoir’s mother could ever remember about his repertoire. ‘I suppose he was alive then. Maybe he still is. Not that it makes much difference now.’

  ‘Or back then,’ said Kate. ‘The city was the only family you had left.’

  She said this with such directness that he didn’t know how to reply. As an adult, he didn’t talk about himself this way – not to Jenny in the past, or Ticky, or anyone – so now embarrassment at his self-exposure replaced the urge to communicate. Kate may have sensed this, for she picked up a newspaper someone had left on the seat and, giving him a section, tactfully immersed herself in the local Gold Country news.

  After breakfast they walked around town and bought groceries for dinner, then drove back to the lake. He parked next to the picnic area above a strip of sandy beach; it was a sunny morning, but still early enough for a residual nip in the air. The beach was deserted. He pointed to a boathouse at one end of the sandy strip. ‘Kaufman keeps his boat and float in there; I promised to row the float out and moor it. Do you want to wait here or walk around?’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ she said, as if mildly insulted, and as if she had been expecting to be put to work. And it was a good thing she had come along, he realised as they struggled to shift the float, turning it carefully in cartwheel fashion until they let it fall with a great flopping whoosh into the shallows. The rowboat was an old dinghy made from thin wood planks and he manhandled this alone while Kate collected the oars. Tying the float to the boat’s rope ring, he clambered in first then held the boat steady while Kate climbed in and, pushing them off, sat down facing him in the stern. He rowed with long hard pulls and only made slow progress, while Kate looked over his shoulder at the hillside and into the air above them. ‘Terns,’ she declared, ‘and a cormorant.’

  ‘I wish I knew birds,’ he said, wistfully recalling Maris’s encyclopaedic knowledge of their names, even their calls. She had promised to teach him, but they had run out of time.

  ‘Easy to learn,’ she said. ‘The guidebooks are good. Or go out with someone who knows.’

  Go out? Did she mean take walks with or ‘date’? His wondering about this was interrupted when Kate pointed towards his feet. ‘I hate to tell you, but we’re leaking. And fast.’

  He looked down and saw she was right – water was beginning to gather in the well of the boat. He looked around for something to bail with, but there was nothing.

  ‘I think we’ll make it to the buoy,’ he said, turning to look behind him. ‘I can try and tip the water out there but I’m not sure we’ll make it back without sinking. Can you swim?’

  ‘Possibly,’ she said sharply. It sounded very English. ‘Can you?’

  He nodded, and asked teasingly, ‘What can’t you do? You know how to make a fire, you can chop wood, you know the names of all the wildflowers and the trees. I’m half expecting you to wrestle a grizzly bear before the weekend’s done.’

  ‘Well, I can’t fight very well. Roddy always won.’

  ‘Roddy?’ he said lightly, trying to disguise the intensity of his curiosity. For all the previous night’s talk, she had told him virtually nothing about her personal life.

  ‘My big brother. Only he’s not very big – I’m taller than he is. But he was always able to beat me up.’

  ‘Remind me to teach you how to fight dirty. If we get back to shore,’ he said doubtfully. The tear in the canvas lining on the boat’s bottom was widening and the water was welling up at an alarming rate. Soon it was sloshing around his shoes, so he perched them awkwardly on the gunwales while he rowed.

  They reached the buoy and he untied the float from the stern and tied it tight to the ring. He clambered out onto its canvas-covered deck and stood for a moment, riding the lateral movement like a rodeo cowboy. He gave up and got down on all fours, holding onto the boat’s sharp prow while Kate joined him on the float and he tied its painter to the same ring.

  Kate was laughing. ‘Is it you Americans who talk about up a creek without a paddle?’

  Renoir looked thoughtfully at the boat, which now had a good twelve inches of water in it. ‘We could try and tip it out, but it must weigh a ton. And even if we emptied it, we wouldn’t get very far on the way back without its filling up again.’

  ‘Can we leave the boat here and swim back?’

  He shook his head. ‘Kaufman wants it in the boathouse. If we leave it here it will fill up with water and then probably fall apart. Or kids will smash it up.’ He shook his head, his mind made up. ‘Tell you what. You get in, and I’ll strip down and push you back to shore. The boat won’t be weighed down so much with me out of it, so you shouldn’t get wet.’ He was looking at her trousers, smart white cotton ones, and a blue cable-knit sweater she’d put on when there had been a chill to the morning air.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said and started to unbutton her trousers. He looked around, suddenly circumspect; on the shore there was now a large grey SUV parked near his car, but no sign of its occupants. As he turned back to Kate she was sliding her trousers down her legs. He couldn’t help noticing that she wore the briefest of panties; he stared briefly but frankly at her legs, which were fashionably pale, her thighs the colour of milk, her calves developed but not muscular. He realised she had caught him looking, for she said reproachfully, ‘And don’t get all excited.’

  Before he could protest she added, ‘I’ve got nothing on under this sweater, but I’ll drown if I try to swim with it on.’ And in one swift movement, she lifted it over her head, then shook her short hair, took a deep breath and jumped feet first into the lake.

  ‘Hurry up,’ she said, treading water next to the boat, as he struggled to take off his own clothes. He tied his jeans and shirt and her trousers and sweater into two neat bundles and placed them and their shoes on the middle bench of the boat. Then wearing only boxer shorts he slid into the water, which was icy, freezing cold

  They each took a corner of the stern in their hands and started to kick the water-laden boat back towards shore. It was hard work, pushing with their extended arms, while kicking as hard as they could to make any progress at all. They stopped at one point halfway back, and Kate began to laugh. It was infectious, this laugh, wholly uncontrived and unselfconscious, and Renoir found himself joining in. ‘Is that what you expected for the weekend?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing this romantic,’ she said, and began to laugh again. Then she resumed pushing and Renoir joined her, bemused. Romantic? He wondered why she had chosen the word, regardless of the envelope of irony it came in.

  They reached shore at last and, having pushed the boat up the sandy beach, stood a little shyly and caught their breath. Renoir tried not to stare at her breasts. The SUV was still parked next to his car, but there was no one on the beach. They struggled to tip the boat on its side to drain the water out, since it was colossally heavy – Renoir’s protestations that he would do it alone soon gave way to welcoming her help. Together they managed to lift the corner of the stern high enough to let water slosh out of the far corner in irregular waves; as the burden lightened, they slowly flipped the entire boat over on its side, standing back as the water cascaded onto the beach around them.

  ‘Hurray!’ The shout came from up the beach, and Renoir saw a small group of kids – teenagers – standing outside the SUV. They waved at him and began applauding, and suddenly Renoir realised he had been concentrating so hard on the boat he had forgotten that Kate was naked from the waist up.

  ‘God, I’m sorry, I didn’t see anyone. Here,’ he said,
picking up Kate’s sweater and handing it to her.

  She seemed unfazed, taking the sweater with a wry smile. ‘It’s a little late for modesty, don’t you think? If the little bastards hadn’t seen a pair of tits before, they certainly have now. So I think they should pay for the privilege.’ She draped the sweater awkwardly around both shoulders so it covered her front, more or less, and, advancing several steps towards the group of youths, beckoned them to come help. A little sheepishly, they did, and under Kate’s supervision carried the rowboat to the boathouse. Inside they placed it on its rack, while Kate belatedly put on her sweater and the boys averted their eyes. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and they shyly went away.

  Renoir and Kate drove back to the cabin, where they took turns standing under the dribbling shower. Once dressed in dry clothes, he made a fire and had Kate sit by it in one of the captain’s chairs with a glass of wine while he cooked supper – baked potatoes wrapped in foil and placed in the now hot ash of the fire, stir-fried mangetouts and baby carrots, then two steaks he put in hand grills and propped over the largest burning apple log.

  ‘Do you like cooking?’ she asked as he put the food on their plates.

  ‘I like to eat. I find one follows the other.’

  ‘Not for me,’ she said ruefully. ‘I’m a hopeless cook. And London’s single greatest subsidiser of restaurants.’

  ‘San Francisco’s not exactly short of restaurants. But it’s expensive, and I get tired of eating alone with a paperback propped against my plate and everybody else thinking “who is that sad guy eating alone?”’ She laughed at this, and he realised she probably never ate alone in a restaurant – there would be an endless stream of offers to take this woman out to dinner, gay or not.

  They were drinking a bottle of Sonoma Zinfandel, and he opened another one. They sat in the two chairs facing the fire, each with a glass on a wide flat arm. ‘This is my idea of heaven,’ she said.