Love as a Stranger

by Owen Marshall

  ‘Every weekend in Berlin,’ she said, ‘I made a point of going to a different gallery, or museum, or maybe a building of special interest, and I never got round half of the places I wanted to. Just so many of them. There were a few times, though, when the snow meant I couldn’t go out. It’s a tough winter there. For a lot of people the culture of the place seems to be obscured by its political history, which is a pity. I like the Germans: their energy, the ability to get things done, their pride in craftsmanship.’

  ‘I had trips to Spain and France, but I never got to Germany. Berlin sounds great.’

  The noisy entrance of a school group broke their concentration, and filled the gallery with extrovert adolescent energy. One boy shambled behind the woman teacher’s back in the posture of a gorilla, and the others tried to hide their delight so as not to give him away.

  ‘Happy days,’ said Hartley.

  ‘Well, I’d better be on my way,’ Sarah said, standing up, smiling.

  ‘I’d like to talk again,’ he said simply. As she considered that, she let the smile remain and met his eyes. She felt the same. She knew almost no one in Auckland, and she and Robert had weeks there before his care was complete. A friendly local might unlock the place for them as well as providing variety.

  ‘We could all meet perhaps for a drink. My husband’s not well and is having treatment, but he likes to sit and watch the world go by.’

  ‘My wife died two years ago.’

  Did it make a difference? Of course it did. Was she to return to her husband and say that she’d invited a widower, met in the cemetery, to go out with them for drinks? The security of her marriage may well have been sufficient for that, but more important was Hartley’s possible interpretation of the offer.

  ‘Oh, that’s sad for you,’ she said, even as she sought for appropriate phrases to follow it. ‘I imagine that your work now plays a larger part in your life,’ and she took up the red handbag with resolution that signalled she was leaving. ‘It was nice to have a chat.’

  ‘It was. It was,’ he said. ‘I hope things go well for you here.’

  They parted with surprising ease, without shaking hands, or even the awkward proffering of them. They smiled, and Hartley nodded, as if in acquiescence that this was the only way it could be. Sarah was rather pleased with herself as she left the gallery. As a young woman the situation would have embarrassed her, and no doubt she would have made clumsy endeavours to explain why she couldn’t sustain an invitation to meet again. It had been managed well enough. She might tell Robert how comfortably she had extricated herself from the situation.

  IT WAS UNEXPECTED, HOWEVER, that she should meet Hartley for a third time, a few days later when she’d seen Robert off in a taxi to get his hair cut. It was almost a trip in itself to walk slowly with her husband from the lift, across the small, cropped square of lawn before the entrance to the apartment block, and then to the car. He didn’t need support, but accepted an arm on the long, smooth steps from the main entrance in case he slipped. When he’d gone, Sarah returned to the lawn and sat in the morning sun on one of the benches by the small fountain. There were no flower beds, just one cherry tree that had been heavily pruned to keep it low, but spreading. It reminded her of her own garden and the pleasure she felt when working in it. Perhaps they should go back in the weekend and make sure everything was being looked after.

  She was about to go back into the apartment building when an Asian woman with two black dogs half her own height went past the gateway, and then Hartley, who spotted Sarah immediately, turned in and came towards her.

  ‘So this is where you live,’ he said, as if surprised. He wore light blue jeans, a red jersey that caught the sun, and she noticed how lithe and active he was. He sat down beside her as a friend would, and amused her by saying that as he’d walked behind the Asian woman both dogs had done their business in sudden unison at a crossing lights pole, and she had adeptly captured the droppings by placing plastic bags over her hand, and had gone on quite unruffled, nonchalant, with the bags swinging in her free hand as if containing grapes purchased to accompany Gruyère cheese and cabernet sauvignon, to share with friends who wore sunglasses and laughed together.

  ‘What an imagination you’ve got,’ Sarah said. ‘A whole story about dog poop.’

  ‘No, no. It’s the composure she showed that impressed me. There were other people there and she was quite unconcerned.’

  ‘It’s one of the things with dogs in public, isn’t it. I couldn’t be bothered, and I don’t like dogs inside the house. They smell and scratch.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ he said.

  Both preferred cats, and they endorsed each other’s opinions with satisfaction. ‘Where are you off to anyway?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I’m not in the office today. I’ve done a few chores, and now I’m going to have a coffee at Magnus on the corner just down from here.’

  ‘We’ve been there sometimes. It’s one of the best places within walking distance for Robert, and you can sit outside.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  ‘I’m not dressed to go out,’ she said.

  It gave her a moment to think. Why shouldn’t she walk with an acquaintance to a café, talk and have a drink, watch people going by, while she waited for her husband to return? There was no reason at all except outmoded decorum, and strangely perhaps as she got older herself she cared less about that.

  ‘Come anyway,’ said Hartley. ‘You look fine.’

  ‘I can’t be away long. Robert’s just getting his hair cut, and hasn’t got a key with him.’

  ‘As long as you’ve got then. It’s only down the road. The woman with the dogs might be there, and we can turn our backs on her, or complain about the smell.’

  ‘All right,’ Sarah said. She would have preferred to go back in and change her shoes, put lipstick on, but that would mean inviting him into the apartment and she wasn’t ready for that. For various reasons. ‘All right,’ she said again, ‘but I have to be back by half past eleven at the latest.’

  Only when they were walking together, well matched in step, did she realise how slow Robert had become. It was a pleasure to walk at a natural pace, to take notice of what was around her rather than just a companion, to be aware of no responsibility for another’s progress. Robert in his infirmity tended to catch his feet on anything above the level of the ground.

  There were no dogs at Magnus, and few seats not in use. Sarah and Hartley had to hover at the fringe watching for any departure, and then hurry to claim a small table. They moved the dishes left there to the far edge. ‘Is the sun in your face?’ He moved her chair to make it easier for her to sit comfortably. They seemed to her natural courtesies, rather than ploys to impress. ‘Let’s each guess what the other is going to order,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the prize?’

  ‘If you win, I pay. If I win, I pay and you agree to come again.’ Before sitting, he took off his red jersey, not tugging at the back of the neck as Robert would, but crossing his arms to grip the bottom and peeling the garment over his head. He folded the jersey and put it on the chair back, smoothed down his fluffed, grey hair. ‘I’ll go first,’ he said. ‘I reckon you’re a green tea sort of person.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  ‘Okay. Your turn.’

  ‘Hot chocolate. Slim people seem to like it, and the marshmallows that come with it.’

  ‘I do actually. Not all the time — sometimes I have a cappuccino. You’ve won, though. What should I order for you then?’

  ‘Flat white,’ Sarah said, and she sat watching him as he went to order. The conversation and movement around her meant she couldn’t hear his words, but he was talking to the young guy behind the counter, making him laugh with some pleasantry. When he returned with the small chrome stand holding their order number, she asked more about his job, but he said they’d talked enough about him, and he wanted to know more of her. He was a good listener and his interest was flattering, but while she told him of her lif
e and what had brought her to the city, she made her own assessments, as Hartley made his.

  He was okay for his age, she decided objectively. She and Robert both tended to put on weight, but Hartley was leanly agile, and quick to smile. His eyes were dark, and his skin slightly brown as if he had worked mainly outdoors, which wasn’t true. The years showed most in the lines of his face and neck, but the wrinkles were multiple and fine rather than pronounced, like those on a paper bag that has had repeated use. The arrival of their drinks caused a pause in their talk, and when the girl had gone, Sarah leant towards him to overcome the surrounding chatter and the traffic noise and said, ‘How old are you?’

  Well, it was that sort of unconventional friendship, wasn’t it? Unlike any she’d experienced for many years. He recognised the question for the rejection of pretence and shallowness that it was, smiled, looked at her directly. ‘I’m fifty-eight,’ he said, ‘but only for a couple of months more.’ Sarah, a year older, made no mention of that, and he knew better than to ask.

  ‘What about children?’ she said.

  ‘One son, Kevin, who has his own courier business in London. It seems to be going well. He’s got three drivers now. A girlfriend, but not married — well, as far as I’m aware. What about you?’

  ‘A daughter, and she has two daughters of her own. It’s great because they’re in Wellington and we get to see them often.’

  ‘How’s your husband coping with the treatment here?’

  She meant her reply to be brief and brisk — who wants the full travail of a stranger’s illness heaped on them while they sit in a sunlit café with a new acquaintance — but he was attentive and she found release in talking of it. She realised that motive even as she spoke, but found satisfaction in the sharing nevertheless. ‘Anyway,’ she said, after it was all out, bar the most personal, ‘I’m sorry to have gone on about it, and now I’d better get back so that I’m there to let Robert in to the apartment. Thanks for the coffee.’

  ‘On Monday I’ll be here at the same time. I hope you can come, even though I didn’t win the bet. I’d like to meet Robert, too, if he’s up to it.’

  She didn’t make any promise, or refusal, and when she looked back she saw him raise a hand in farewell, then take his red jersey, place it on the back of the chair she’d been using, and sit down in his own again. She liked him, she decided, felt happier and taken out of a reduced, apprehensive life for the first time in weeks. She thought idly how unusual it was that Hartley should be passing the apartments at just the time she’d returned from accompanying Robert to the taxi.

  It was, of course, no coincidence. As Hartley watched Sarah walk towards her home he was glad that, after she’d left the gallery days before, he’d followed at a distance, aware of an almost cinematic element of espionage that he half indulged, yet endeavoured to suppress, until he saw her reach her apartment block. And before their present meeting he’d sat for over an hour on warm stone steps of a real-estate agency not far away, hoping to see her come outside her building. It had been worth the wait. He hadn’t been so drawn to a woman for a long time, and while they had talked, seated among the crowded tables of the café, he had regarded her with admiration.

  A tall woman with the frame to carry some kilos without appearing overweight, her fullness retained the attractive contours of her face, which had no deeply incised wrinkles, but rather showed the softness from many years of quality creams and moisturisers. Only at the base of her neck was there a gathering of soft, pale flesh, and on the backs of her hands the skin was thinning and the first age spots showing. She would be perhaps a little younger than him, Hartley decided. He was drawn also to the calmness of her manner, her intelligence, an absence of petty preoccupation. A woman who didn’t prattle: Hartley suffered enough of that in his work. He imagined the two of them on a sofa and watching television, or just talking. The weight and warmth of her against his shoulder, and her glossy brown hair close to his face. She would come again, he thought. He had this certainty that she’d enjoyed being with him, and would come again.

  Sarah had intended to tell Robert about the café and Hartley, but because she hadn’t mentioned the earlier meetings, it was slightly awkward to explain the later one. Easier just to leave it, and there was no reason to feel uncomfortable. She was a grandmother of fifty-nine, and some aspects of her married life had always been her own, as in most long-standing relationships: certain friends, activities and hobbies that registered only dimly for the partner of a shared life. Not hidden, but accepted as of little concern, or interest. Anyway, on Monday morning she might well have more to do than walk down to the Magnus café to have coffee with a male acquaintance.

  Nothing, however, arose to prevent it, and so she asked Robert if he’d like to come the short distance and sit with her in the summer weather, observe the bustle of the city without being caught up in it. It was a sort of test of herself — proof that her intention was open to scrutiny, and if he came and Hartley was there, she would introduce them, despite having mentioned nothing earlier.

  ‘I don’t think so, thanks. I’m going to get on to some of those emails I’ve neglected,’ he said. ‘And I might ring Donna.’

  ‘No, wait until I’m back for that. I want to talk, too.’ Their daughter and her family had become the most pleasurable focus in their lives.

  ‘Okay. I know it’s nice outside, but I just can’t be bothered at the moment. There’s that stuff to get off to the accountant, too.’

  She admitted to herself no special preparation, but when they met, Hartley noticed the bright lipstick, the casual, gauzy scarf. A woman would have seen that they matched her shoes. He’d come early and table-hopped until he held one of the best places, quieter and with an umbrella, even if slightly tattered. He stood up, gave his pleasant, open smile. ‘Great,’ he said. ‘I knew you’d come,’ and before talking about himself, asked how things were for her.

  From their first meeting by the grave of poor murdered Emily Keeling they had been open in conversation, and as familiarity grew so did the significance of what they said, and the enjoyment they took in it. Without any spoken pact, each made the decision to be honest with the other: to open their lives, share what had happened and what they hoped for. The worn fringe of the umbrella gradually moved a late-morning shadow across the table as their talk went on, yet for them time had light feet. Sarah told him of the narrowing of life since Robert’s illness, her apprehension of old age as a fighting withdrawal. Hartley told her of his wife, and the consequences of her death. Nothing to belittle her, but a selection of the truth. Life is an imprecise experience, and he wasn’t consciously shaping his past.

  ‘Where did you meet?’ asked Sarah. Meetings and partings are the stuff of life. Beginnings and endings impose some order on the rush of experience. He’d met Madeleine in a café in Ponsonby Road not long after joining the legal firm of Hastings Hull. He had a place then in Clarence Street, not far away. Quite often after work he would have a coffee on his way home from the office. The impersonal congregation of the place provided transition time before he went to be alone in his flat. Madeleine had been at the next table, reading, hair half covering her face as she leant forward. She was groomed without being titivated: an accountant maybe, or a government department receptionist, he’d imagined.

  Hartley would have thought no more about her, but as she closed the book he saw a thin silver bracelet fall from her arm to the cork flooring. He expected her to retrieve it, and when she didn’t, and got up and walked away, he went over and picked it up. A short, fine chain hung from one end. He’d followed her and caught up as she stood at the door to put on her coat.

  ‘Have you lost something?’ he said.

  ‘Lost something?’ she repeated, bemused, yet not disconcerted.

  ‘Yes, lost something,’ and he held the bracelet up by the chain that had failed. Her gratitude was somewhat underwhelming. She thanked him fully enough, but with no excitement at having the jewellery returned, and they didn
’t exchange names. She slipped the bracelet into her pocket.

  ‘Thanks again,’ she said. ‘It has sentimental value,’ and she went into the gathering darkness outside, where the street lights turned the drizzle to drifting aurora, and the surface water hissed underneath the cars, and people hurried past with their heads bowed.

  Hartley didn’t tell Sarah all of this. Nothing of what was actually spoken, not the description of the fine, swaying silver chain, or the winter street, both of which were still clear to him as he talked. He did try to make it entertaining by stressing the random element people find interesting in life.

  ‘You seem to meet women by accident,’ Sarah said.

  ‘So what about you and your husband?’

  ‘Rather mundane, I’m afraid. We were both finalists in a provincial sports person of the year event: myself for netball and Robert for rugby. Different categories, of course, but neither of us won. We were seated together at the dinner, though, and had a good time. Got on well. The night became a bit of a fiasco later when a drunk guy set off the fire alarm.’ She remembered someone shouting that they were all to go out of the building in an orderly fashion and assemble in the carpark, but most people didn’t do either. Robert had taken her home, kissed her and put his hand down the front of her dress. She didn’t share that recollection with Hartley. Robert had always been direct in matters of sex.

  Hartley imagined her as the netball player she’d once been. Tall, rangy, with big hands and elbows, her hair tied back, her pale face with a sheen of sweat like the glint of winter light on a wet window. That young woman and the resolve she had would still be there, cloaked by the much fuller figure of an older woman and a mature manner.

  ‘I was never much at team sports,’ he said. ‘Distance running I was okay at, but nothing special.’ In fact he’d been no athlete at all, and city walking was now his chief physical recreation. ‘You must have been pretty good,’ he said.

  ‘I went to one of those girls’ schools where you had no choice. Well, except which sport you were going to play, rain or shine.’ She remembered that even the plea of having her period as exemption had been regarded with suspicion by the Amazonian phys ed teacher, but said nothing of that. ‘I wasn’t a boarder, but all of us had compulsory sport, summer and winter. I didn’t mind. You’re with your friends, and that’s what matters. My mother was quite sporty actually, more so than Dad. One or other would cart me around on Saturdays when it was too far to bike. It wasn’t until we had to do the same for Donna that I understood the commitment. All the things you do for your kids.’