Love as a Stranger

by Owen Marshall

  In the southern summer the twilight is long, and after the call he’d sat and watched the shadows gather in the garden. There is a special and passing moment at dusk when, although the external light is fading, the colours of the flowers seem softly illuminated from within to form an aura. Sometimes the two families had come together for a barbecue in the garden, and although Robert tired of Harriet going on about her kids, they were good times and good friends. Sarah was right. It would be great to see them again.

  He’d decided to have a shower, but the water had barely warmed and he ducked in and out, not shampooing his hair. Even before he’d dried himself there was a hammering at the front door, and Robert tied the towel around his waist and went down the hall towards the uncouth and moving shapes he could see behind the stippled glass. He didn’t open the door fully, and kept his body protected. Four people crowded towards him: a middle-aged couple in front and a younger pair behind.

  ‘May I bloody well ask who you are?’ It was the older man who spoke, short, thin and with a ploughshare of a nose. The woman beside him was taller, heavier and her neck trembled with the tension of the moment. Robert explained as best he could, and as he talked the edging pressure of the foursome forced him back until the door was open and all of them in the hall. ‘I come to our new home,’ said the man in theatrical astonishment despite Robert’s story. ‘I come to our new home to find the key gone and a naked guy inside. Jesus.’

  ‘The Snowdens said it was arranged you’d take possession in the weekend. It was all okay by them for the night.’

  ‘The house is ours, signed and sealed. We come to it and find a naked guy living here.’

  ‘Well, I’m not actually naked, am I. I was just coming from a quick shower so I grabbed a towel. I can get dressed and buzz off in no time if that’s what you want.’

  But having taken possession of the moral high ground and established that Robert had at least a connection to the previous owner, the small man was no longer confrontational. ‘Now you’re here you might as well stay on,’ he said with conscious largesse. ‘Too late to go off finding somewhere now.’ He introduced himself, Terence, his wife, Mary, his son, as something that sounded like Binge, and Binge’s girlfriend, Amber. Binge was as short and spare as his father, but his nose was still growing so his features were in pleasant enough transitional balance. Amber was a head taller and a cheek wider at the arse of her jeans. She would end up a fat woman, but in the present could pass as voluptuous in a slightly ungainly way. Amber had a shy, low voice and a lovely smile as women with plump faces often do.

  Robert knew no one called Terence: surely no people alive had the name. While Robert put his clothes on, the others carried in blankets, a couple of suitcases and a chilly bin. They took the six kitchen chairs into the empty living room. When he came back in, Robert wondered if another family member was expected. Terence and Mary put their blankets in the main bedroom and Binge his and Amber’s in the room next to Robert’s. They were going to spend a couple of days, Terence explained. A sort of tester of the new place, he said.

  It was awkward at first: the five of them sitting on kitchen chairs and with nowhere to rest their arms, not even a table. Robert was the odd man out, but in the circumstances he couldn’t go to bed without a minimum of social interaction. He enquired as to Terence’s job, was introduced to the workings of the drainage board, and he asked a question that included the word reticulation. Good man, he congratulated himself. He didn’t forget Binge. ‘And what about you? What’s your line, Binge?’ He fudged the last word because he wasn’t sure if he had the name right, but Binge made no correction. Turned out he was a helicopter pilot, and had been all over the place, even Colombia. Turned out he’d met Amber only three weeks before when she’d taken a scenic flight from Queenstown. Amber was from Adelaide and taking a break from her media studies at a polytech there. She and Binge were more interesting than Terence and Mary. Mary didn’t do anything at all as far as Robert could make out, though she did have a rare condition that meant her toenails had fallen out, and more than once.

  Binge said he was tired, and he and Amber went off before ten o’clock. Robert thought that was his opportunity, but Terence made it clear that he had something of import to say. ‘You’ll want to hear this,’ said Mary, and even straightened somewhat in the kitchen chair.

  ‘Terence Berne, Terence Berne,’ he said slowly and with an intent look at Robert. ‘It doesn’t ring any bells?’ He leant towards Robert as if proximity would encourage recall, as if his face should strike recognition.

  ‘I don’t think so, no.’ Terence’s nose was more like a muzzle really, but his teeth were sound for a man of his age, and he had a good head of hair.

  ‘The child in the stormwater drain at Tainui?’ said Terence significantly.

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘It was news all over the country,’ insisted Terence. ‘On TV and everything.’

  ‘He was interviewed,’ said Mary. ‘He would’ve got a bravery medal except several had already been nominated that year. Any other year he would’ve got an award, the superintendent said.’

  ‘It burns into your soul, it does, something like that. You never forget it,’ said Terence.

  ‘Being a child makes it that much worse, doesn’t it,’ added Mary.

  ‘Seven years old,’ said Terence, and he was off on the story that was the defining moment of his life. All about the callout, and the manhole cover off, and the girl’s body face-down with the parting in her hair between the braids bone white in the dimness. As he listened, Robert thought he remembered the tragedy, although it was years ago.

  ‘He had two weeks’ special leave because of it,’ said Mary. ‘We went up to my sister in Nelson, who’s passed on now. She was always closest to me in the family, though not nearest in age.’

  ‘You carry it always,’ said Terence with a tinge of heroic dignity. He was disappointed that Robert didn’t recognise him, and consequently thought less of him as a companion for conversation. Robert was able to say goodnight.

  ‘I’ll be out of your hair early tomorrow,’ he said.

  He didn’t sleep well, being awoken at two and again at five by tempestuous lovemaking in the next room. It’s never comforting for a man to lie alone at night and hear the physical pleasures of others. Amber worked up to a sort of pulsating moan that was synchronised with the loud workings of the bed. Her noise was almost unbearably sexual and quite involuntary, brimming with ecstasy and submission at the same time. Robert couldn’t get to sleep again after the second time, even when the house was quiet. Binge might have been a helicopter pilot, but he was surely never closer to heaven than when clasped to Amber.

  By seven, Robert was dressed and packed, hoping to slip away without disturbing the family, but although Amber and Binge were no doubt in deep, sated slumber, Terence and Mary were in the living room eating marmalade on toast, and in muted dispute over a colour scheme for the kitchen. Their single point of agreement was that the existing yellow walls were intolerable. ‘You’ve got to be practical in a kitchen,’ said Terence. His nose seemed slightly enlarged, though he may well have been telling the truth.

  ‘The kitchen’s not the place to get all house and garden,’ said Mary. ‘Yellow’s for a sun room, or a conservatory.’

  ‘Practicality, see,’ emphasised Terence, ‘cause there’s all that plumbing, and work stations and storage. Yellow’s not a colour for any of those, you’d have to say, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I have to be on my way,’ said Robert. ‘Thanks again for putting up with me. Much appreciated. Phil must have got muddled about when you were going to take possession.’

  ‘No harm done,’ said Terence. ‘These mix-ups happen.’

  Terence and Mary had even come to the door to watch him walk to his rental car. The same door that showed clearly behind Phil and Harriet in the photograph Robert now held. He had to make a mental effort to break from memory and return to the present.

  ‘We never
see Phil and Harriet now,’ he said to Sarah.

  ‘What made you think of them?’ She was testing the seal on the home-made chutney that was a gift from the previous day’s visitors.

  ‘This photograph,’ he said, holding it up. Sarah came to his shoulder, put on her glasses and took the photograph. Robert was about to start talking about Terence and family, but his wife had no connection with them and he couldn’t be bothered establishing their invisible presence in the picture. ‘I stayed a night there once after they’d moved out’ was all he said, referring to their friends.

  ‘When you’re feeling better,’ she said, ‘we’ll take a trip and catch up with them and others as well. They still send cards, you know.’ She gave the photo back. Maybe when she and Robert were back in Hamilton everything would be okay, everything as it had been. She would be home again and able to work things out. All that had happened in Auckland would be distanced and manageable. Please God.

  Robert looked again at the house with its glass-panelled front door and the Snowdens smiling as they stood before it. He half-expected Terence to appear behind them, nosing forward, eager to recount again his experience of tragedy.

  Robert held up well after the next round of chemo, and Mr Goosen saw no harm in Sarah taking him home to Hamilton for a few days, provided he got the rest periods he needed and didn’t get carried away with trying to do the little maintenance jobs that tend to arise during absence. The Goosens had a holiday home at Snells Beach, and he said there was always something needing attention. He took a little time to tell Robert of a minor plumbing job that he’d attempted to do himself, but which became rather tricky and necessitated a tradesman. As is the case with many high-achievers, Mr Goosen was impatient when others took his professional time with personal asides, but not averse to such musings himself. Robert wondered without rancour how many present cancer sufferers had been made aware of details concerning a defective toilet they would never visit at Snells Beach. Maybe the specialist’s account of ballcocks and reflux was a deliberate attempt to humanise his image.

  Robert and Sarah were glad to have the opportunity to be in their own home, and Donna brought the girls up for the weekend. For Sarah it was also an opportunity for space between herself and Hartley: time in which she could make decisions with some objectivity. Before she went she had the idea that she might confide in her daughter, but as soon as she was with Donna she realised that was impossible. Impossible because daughters confide in their mothers, and not the other way around. Donna sought counsel about weight gain, urinary tract infections and her husband’s unwelcome enthusiasm for investment in a Queenstown property scheme, and she was oblivious to her mother’s subdued mood, or accepting of it as a consequence of Robert’s illness. What possible concern could her mother have other than her family’s welfare?

  ‘Dad’s so lucky to have you,’ Donna said. ‘Imagine going through something like this all by yourself, and he was always so healthy until the prostate. Always the fit guy.’ They were watching the two girls using playing cards to build houses on the carpet. Sarah wondered how she could ever have explained to them why she and Robert were no longer together, if that had happened.

  ‘He’s resilient. He’s always been strong-willed,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be fine,’ said Donna. ‘It’s amazing what they can do. The reports have been pretty good, and I think he’s realising now that there’s more to life than just success with the practice. I know he’s got plans to take you overseas.’

  ‘Yes, he’s pretty keen. It’s nice to have an aim beyond everything that’s going on at the moment, and he needs something to keep his mind busy.’

  ‘What does he do all the time?’

  ‘He watches a lot of television,’ said Sarah. ‘We do try to get out, of course, but it’s all centred around the treatment. And he’s got really keen on cataloguing the photos. You know what he’s like.’

  ‘What do you do?’ asked Donna.

  As she answered with half-truths and evasions, Sarah watched her granddaughters playing and contrasted their innocence with her own duplicity. There she was lying to her daughter, as she lied to her husband. She’d never before sustained deceit for so long and its effect was painfully corrosive. Returned to her home and the pattern of accustomed life, she found it difficult to understand how she had become Hartley’s lover. When she wasn’t with him, the whole affair seemed something oddly imposed on her by external agency. She loved him in a way that was distanced from the rest of life, and was dismayed when that division couldn’t be maintained. She blamed him only for his unwillingness to see they must let each other go. How clear the need for that was, when she was home and with her family. How incongruous the affair with everything else important in her existence.

  She found Hamilton and the old life no real escape from her predicament, and every day there was something to remind her of it, in addition to Hartley’s texts. Each television programme seemed to centre on infidelity, and every magazine article to include it. Her friends Katherine and Gay came for coffee, and took a voyeuristic satisfaction in sharing the news that their mutual acquaintance, Philippa, had been discovered shagging the local golf professional in the clubhouse toilets. Sarah forced herself to join in the laughter.

  ‘Maybe her home life’s been very unhappy,’ she said. ‘I’ve never quite known what to make of her husband, what little I’ve seen of him.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Katherine. ‘She’s just being a slut.’

  ‘Why would she do that, for Christ’s sake?’ exclaimed Gay, delighted that Philippa had provided such gossip. ‘And what’s he got going for him, apart from a big driver.’

  That night Sarah had a dream that she was in the Spanish motel room making love with Hartley, when she saw through the window Katherine and Gay coming towards them, and with Robert, Donna and her granddaughters close behind. Further back there was a glimpse of her mother, and Janine, her hairdresser, even Mr Goosen, smiling and at the same time smoothing back his hair, moving in the unhurried way that the most successful have. In reality there was no window by the motel bed, but the dream had its own complete conviction. She had attempted to push Hartley off her, scrabbled for the sheet to pull over herself, but he’d continued to pump ecstatically, raising himself up on his arms for better leverage, his eyes closed and lips drawn back in fierce concentration. Her family and friends crowded through the door with laughter and exclamations as if arrived for a surprise party, and grouped around the bed joyfully. ‘Slut, slut, slut,’ cried Katherine, and the others laughed and clapped, except for the two girls, who stood wide-eyed. Sarah had tried to turn away from them, and woke herself in the desperate effort, flinging an arm across the bed and striking Robert, who woke with a gasp. When he’d turned back to sleep, Sarah lay with her mouth open, trying to slow her breathing, sweat on her upper lip, as the dream images faded, but the reason for their grotesque posturing tightened its grip.

  During the time at home she spent many hours in her garden, the physical effort providing some release for the growing tension. When she was alone she felt less afflicted with guilt and worry than when with those she was deceiving. The plants were neutral and incapable of judgement. The roses were as voluptuous as ever and grateful for her care. She spent most of one afternoon sitting by the cherry tree, repainting the outdoor seat.

  At times she was able briefly to forget her predicament, but the return always came, and with an emotional thud. She knew that the opposing elements in her life could not much longer be kept apart and that the clash would be fearful when it came.

  WHILE SARAH WAS AWAY, Hartley tried to occupy himself with work, with walks, gardening, his share group and television. He rang his son in London and was pleased to learn that the courier business was doing okay, if not exactly booming. But nothing put Sarah from his mind for long. His love for her was a sort of noose that brought him back always to their relationship. Was she thinking of him? Was she wishing to be with him rather than wherever she
found herself? Was she lying with her husband in accustomed and tender embrace? Sarah never talked of sex with Robert, and although Hartley was eager to know if they fucked, and on whose instigation, he was never crass enough to ask. She spoke quite freely of her husband’s illness and treatment, however, and Hartley assumed Robert hadn’t been up to sex for a long time. Yet thoughts of them together were painful, images in which a fully recovered Robert claimed his wife in every way.

  Hartley was aware that she became exasperated if he sent texts too often, but couldn’t stop himself when she was away, became unsettled when she didn’t reply. Surely she too thought that whenever they were apart life lacked the full spectrum of emotional colour. He masturbated in view of Sarah’s photograph, but felt sadness as a consequence rather than pleasure, or even relief. Love became a lingering unhappiness that put all else of life at a distance. A dispossession in which he couldn’t be fully content, or at ease, except when he was with her.

  Oddly, however, even within this preoccupation there came the decision to visit Madeleine’s grave. He’d rarely been, and not at all since meeting Sarah. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, more that he believed death to be absolute, and nothing to be gained by moping beside buried bones. Maybe the visit was a subconscious wish to prove to himself that his love for Sarah deserved no reproach. Madeleine had been dead for over two years, after all. They’d made the best fist of things they could, given their natures.

  Sunday morning seemed an appropriate time, and he took with him not flowers, although the garden possessed many, but the greenery that Madeleine had loved to have within the house. Arum leaves, sheaves of angelica, even the furred and partly furled koru of the ferns beneath the kauri and beech trees. Although it wasn’t a work day, the traffic was heavy and it took him half an hour to reach the lawn cemetery. Dark glasses and internal climate control were some insulation from the heat and hassle, but it was still a relief for Hartley to turn off from the lines of Sunday recreation-seekers, and enter the peaceful domain of the dead.