Love as a Stranger

by Owen Marshall

  BRILLIANTLY TRACING THE PROGRESS OF UNEXPECTED LOVE AND THE PERILS OF RELATIONSHIPS, THIS GRIPPING NOVEL IS A TOUR DE FORCE.

  Temporarily in Auckland while her husband is undergoing treatment, Sarah enjoys a walk in the coolness of the Symonds Street Cemetery. As she pauses at the grave of Emily Keeling, murdered in 1886 by a rejected suitor, a stranger named Hartley strikes up a conversation. Before long he arranges to meet Sarah for coffee.

  So their friendship begins, and soon blossoms into an affair, rich in mutual understanding and sexual excitement. But love may become obsession, which brings with it disquieting demands, even menace.

  ‘When love is not madness, it is not love.’

  Reviews of Owen Marshall’s Previous Works

  ‘New Zealand’s best prose writer.’

  — Vincent O’Sullivan

  ‘I find myself exclaiming over and again with delight at the precision, the beauty, the near perfection of his writing.’

  — Fiona Kidman, The Dominion

  ‘I’m an admirer of Owen Marshall’s literature, with my favourite stories, chapters, etc.’

  — Janet Frame

  ‘He’s not just the finest short story writer we have, but the finest we have ever had.’

  — Sue McCauley

  ‘Quite simply the most able and the most successful exponent of the short story currently writing in New Zealand.’

  — Michael King

  ‘Owen Marshall … charts those loves and griefs and brief encounters with an eye so sane and honest that it takes your breath away.’

  — Justin Paton

  ‘Marshall is too versatile, too adept at adjusting his narrative technique, ever to be described as a formulaic writer.’

  — The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature

  ‘Owen Marshall has established himself as one of the masters of the short story.’

  — Livres Hebdo, Paris

  ‘Marshall is a writer who speaks with equal intensity to the unbearable loveliness and malevolence of life.’

  — Carolyn Bliss, World Literature Today

  ‘Marshall is held in uncommon affection by New Zealand readers — generally we admire and respect rather than love our writers.’

  — Peter Simpson, New Zealand Listener

  ‘“Mumsie and Zip” is the blackest and most brilliantly sinister portrait of the suburban marriage in New Zealand fiction.’

  — Lydia Wevers, New Zealand Books

  ‘[I]t is only when we have finished reading a given story that we understand that besides a story in the more usual sense, we have experienced an environment which has mysteriously become a kind of character in its own right. [Supper Waltz Wilson and Other New Zealand Stories] is as fine a book of stories as this country is likely to see … one that will stand close re-reading for many years to come.’

  — Frank Sargeson, Islands

  ‘The satisfyingly unsentimental humanity of Marshall’s work [Coming Home in the Dark], combined with his great eye for detail and his striking similes, reassures us that we are in the firm but sensitive hands of a master craftsman. Timaru’s answer to John Updike is once again in fine form.’

  — Michael Morrissey

  ‘After finishing this book [The Best of Owen Marshall’s Short Stories], you feel as if you’ve read it all, know it all. As if you’ve just finished a comprehensive tour of the human heart, experienced every human emotion, met every type of human being. But you’re not exhausted because Marshall maintains full control, always. His ability to express our paradoxical, chaotic lives so honestly but with such precision and grace — it’s a paradox in itself, and it’s breathtaking.’

  — Sarah Quigley, The Press

  ‘Owen Marshall has the gift of telling stories that take hold of you in a personal way and bring echoes of people, places and events you have known, but not paid enough attention to at the time. It is a magical heightening of the ordinary … [H]istory demonstrates that few things in the world are more emotionally compelling than a well-told story, and the true test is how consuming and satisfying are those in this book [When Gravity Snaps]. Well, I was enraptured. It is 25 years now since readers realised that among us was a remarkable talent continuing the long literary tradition of the short story that has enriched the culture of this country. From time to time I still feel exasperated that he is not better known, not more widely acknowledged.’

  — Gordon McLauchlan, Weekend Herald

  ‘Among active New Zealand writers only Maurice Gee writes with comparable — and equally unfashionable — moral and psychological weight. In such books as this [When Gravity Snaps] the New Zealand tradition of a morally concerned humanist realism is kept alive in a post-modern age.’

  — Lawrence Jones

  ‘Marshall [in his poetry] weighs his words as if regarding you with a raised ironic eyebrow. The poems employ the same bluff, resilient, yet harmonious language as Marshall’s prose.’

  — David Eggleton, New Zealand Listener

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Acknowledgements

  Previous Works by Owen Marshall

  About the Author

  Copyright

  In memory of my mother, Jane Ella Jones (née Marshall), who died before I was three years old.

  When love is not madness, it is not love.

  — Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 1600–1681

  People in love have a longing to tell others how they met, even if the circumstances are banal, or best suppressed. It’s an expression of their wonder, and gratitude for having found each other. Sarah and Hartley met in the old Symonds Street cemetery, though neither had links with any of the residents there. Summer — and the shade of the large trees was inviting, despite the dereliction of the place, and the long, disordered grass encroaching on the sloping paths. The aged headstones and statuary, some at tipsy angles, gave a Dickensian impression, yet looming above were the great concrete supports of the overpass bridge, and the noise of the unseen city traffic was loud and persistent.

  Sarah had been at an afternoon high tea at the Langham hotel. Afterwards she crossed the road and went down the steps into the sloping and shadowy cemetery in search of quiet time before returning to her husband and their apartment. Almost the first grave she came to proved a fascination. A small headstone set before a larger one:

  SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF

  EMILY MARY

  THE BELOVED DAUGHTER OF

  GEORGE & EMILY KEELING

  OF ARCH HILL

  WHO WAS SHOT

  WHILE ON HER WAY TO

  THE PRIMITIVE METHODIST CHURCH

  BIBLE CLASS

  ALEXANDRA STREET

  APRIL 12TH 1886

  AGED 17 YEARS.

  The surface of Emily’s grave had collapsed, as if the coffin had been spirited away and left a sunken rubble of concrete and bricks. Two stunted cabbage trees stood ineffectual guard, and the sun through the leaves made a play of harlequin patterns over it all.

  Sarah had bent over the rusted iron railing to read the inscr
iption and as she stepped back became aware of someone stopping beside her. A lean man in a quality dark suit, but wearing yellow and white sneakers that gave a touch of incongruity.

  ‘Yes, there must be quite a tale there,’ he said. ‘Sad, isn’t it, but I suppose a cemetery is like a library in a way. So many stories, but in tombs rather than tomes.’

  It was clever enough, but also a little glib, and Sarah wondered if it was rehearsed. ‘Yes, it is sad,’ she said. ‘I wonder who did it.’

  ‘I’ve meant to Google it, but never got round to it. Auckland was such a small place then you’d think they must have found the murderer, though what could possibly be a motive for shooting a girl on her way to Sunday school?’ Hartley gave a sudden, attractive smile, as if pleased that they shared an interest in such unusual history. It was the moment for one of them to move on, or for them to introduce themselves and keep talking, but Sarah made no reply, and he smiled again, gave a nod to excuse himself and walked up the path, then the steps and onto the busy street. She didn’t like the colours of his shoes. His hair was greying, fluffed above his forehead, generous above his ears, softly thin over the crown so that a shaft of sunlight through the trees had shown a glimpse of scalp beneath.

  I should use Google myself, Sarah thought. She had no pen in her handbag, and so repeated the name and the date on the gravestone several times. She’d forgotten both by the time she was home, and would have forgotten Hartley almost as quickly if they hadn’t met again.

  Robert was interested in her description of the cakes and sandwiches at the hotel’s high tea. He liked food, although his appetite had dwindled. The little chocolate cups filled with raspberries sounded bloody good, he said. He asked later about the old schoolfriend whom she’d met there, Deborah, who seemed to have amassed a startling number of grandchildren, whose talents and appearance she extolled exhaustively one by one. The silence of the graveyard had been welcome after that.

  ‘What about you?’ Sarah asked her husband.

  ‘I watched tennis,’ he said. ‘Slept a bit.’ Since his illness, sleep had become an acknowledged activity in his day, as playing golf, work, or section chores had once been. Two years ago his prostate had been removed, but subtle cancers had since emerged that sapped his energy and took the colour from his face. She had expected illness to make him more self-absorbed, and that had happened in regard to much of what had been important to him before, but towards her Robert had become solicitous, more aware of her place and significance in his life. As the scope of his activities contracted, they spent more time together than in any other period of their marriage.

  ‘I thought we might go down to the little place by the Aotea Centre,’ he said. ‘Have something light and listen to the buskers.’

  ‘Of course. Why not.’ Little of relief was happening in their own lives, and it was diversion to watch other people act out theirs. ‘As long as you feel up to it,’ she said. ‘It’s a good sign that you want to get out for a bit.’

  Although his cancer dominated their lives, they rarely talked about the thing itself: the glare of it was too great to face directly. They talked about the treatment, the new people introduced to them by the disease, the necessary changes to their lifestyle, their plans for a future they pretended was assured. More than the future, though, they talked about the past. The past had been good to them, until recently.

  SARAH AND HARTLEY MET again two days later when she went in the afternoon to a gallery not far from the apartment to see an exhibition of Samoan art: younger practitioners who had been born in New Zealand but esteemed their own culture. There were wooden forms at a calculated distance from the walls, and closer, on the floor, blue tape beyond which observers were asked not to advance. Hartley recognised her as soon as she came in — tall, smooth walking, a little overweight perhaps, but any excess carried on the breast and hip rather than the waist. Weight was important in his assessment of people. He could eat a horse and not have to change a notch in his belt, and he was rather proud of that, although he realised it was linked to his metabolism and not some virtue in himself.

  Hartley watched Sarah stroll the length of a wall and then sit before the work of her choice. She didn’t fidget. She sat relaxed with one hand on the red handbag beside her and the other in her lap. Even from behind he could see enough of her face to notice her eyebrows lift, as if to ensure the best view of the paintings. He went forward and reminded her of the cemetery on the slope of Grafton Gully, and their brief meeting there. ‘Do you mind?’ he said, giving a small gesture towards the space beside her on the form, and after her smile he sat down.

  ‘And I did finally Google the murdered girl’s name,’ he said, when they had exchanged their own.

  ‘I suppose it’s so long ago it was difficult to find anything,’ Sarah said. ‘Poor girl. Terrible really.’

  ‘The opposite actually. It was huge news in the papers. It said up to ten thousand people watched the funeral procession, or were at the graveside. That must have been a good proportion of Auckland then. A scriptwriter could hardly come up with a more heart-rending tragedy, and it was all about love, of course. The murderer was besotted with her, and after shooting her he ran off and killed himself on a street corner.’

  ‘What agony for them both, and she was so young.’

  ‘“Love me. I am dying.” Those were her last words.’

  ‘How sad it is. How difficult young people find life sometimes,’ she said. ‘Did she really say that — love me, I am dying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a pause in conversation, not because of any awkwardness, but rather a sense of ease in each other’s presence. For him that wasn’t unexpected, but Sarah was a little surprised. In the cemetery two days before, she’d been aware of no particular affinity with him. He wore the same suit, moved with the same deftness and economy, but wore quality, dark shoes instead of the yellow and white sneakers. ‘No walking shoes today?’ she said.

  ‘I keep them at the office so I can slip out somewhere for a breath of air if the chance comes up. The parks mainly. In the winter the cemetery’s too cold and greasy, but the summer’s fine. Are you a walker?’

  ‘I used to be, but not so much now, and we’re only up here for a few months and don’t know the best places.’ She used the plural quite deliberately. Better for Hartley to have that information early in conversation. He made no reference to it of course.

  ‘I’ve been to Manono Island,’ he said. ‘No vehicles are allowed there,’ and because a painting of the place was directly in their view, the change of subject was a natural enough transition.

  So they began a conversation about travel that flowed easily to other things. Sarah wasn’t particularly concerned about his motives for wishing to talk. A married woman of fifty-nine with a career behind her, she was confident socially, and she was in a city not her own, without her established activities and friends to divert her from Robert’s illness. It was a pleasant release to talk of art, other countries and the idiosyncrasies of Auckland’s transport system without any of those topics bearing emotional weight, and with someone who felt no need to temper everything with commiseration. Talk with a stranger was leaving old territory and welcoming the new.

  Hartley’s interest was from the very first partly sexual, but without particular design: he had been attracted by the sight of her at the graveside, still, full-figured, well dressed and with her dark brown hair burnished by the glint of the sun. She had it coloured, he imagined. He now knew that she was married, but it was still a satisfaction to be seated with her, and find that she was quick and intelligent in conversation. A good thing that he’d bothered to look up the information on Emily Keeling’s murder. He would go back to his office and continue work on conveyancing, family trusts and advice to a business that imported fabrics, feeling better for having met Sarah again. Hartley told her something of that occupation. ‘I don’t work a full week now,’ he said, and although he couldn’t be much older than herself, she didn�
�t seek any explanation.

  ‘Have you always lived here?’ she asked.

  ‘Pretty much. My parents farmed in Southland, but I came north after leaving school. I never felt I wanted to be a dairy farmer. You’re supposed to talk about the country always being with you, love of the land and so on, but I’ve never missed it. I sometimes think there’s a sort of aesthetic snobbery at work. Look, I’ve got spiritual affinity with the land! I like the city just fine. What about you?’

  ‘We live in Hamilton, which is just a big town, it seems to me, rather than a city. It’s got bigger without growing up somehow.’

  ‘People knock Auckland because they realise it disregards those outside it. For us there’s only Auckland — or somewhere else that doesn’t matter much. I wouldn’t live anywhere else but here. A city gives you choices.’

  As they talked, he wondered how he could segue from any of the things they discussed to the possibility of another meeting. Almost certainly they wouldn’t cross paths a third time by chance, yet what could he suggest to her that wasn’t suspect? Her company was ambition enough, but how in the circumstances could any invitation be free of a possible sexual intent? He sought an answer even as they continued to talk of the advantages of city life — and its frustrations. They were both able to draw from wider personal experience: as a young man he had a year scrabbling for a living in London, and she had spent almost as long in Berlin while overseas after completing her degree. For a time he’d worked for a removal firm, carrying things in and out of people’s houses and eating pies, or chips, in the cab of the truck. ‘One day packing crystal in Knightsbridge supervised by the Indian housekeeper,’ he told her, ‘the next, lugging collapsed sofas and stained mattresses from a basement flat behind greyhound kennels, while the husband and wife swore at each other, smoked, and kicked holes in the walls to get at the landlord. It’s all there in London, isn’t it.’