Love as a Stranger

by Owen Marshall

  ‘I think my wife would have covered most of it, but she’s not in at the moment. We’re pretty much settled into a routine. Come in if you like, though. I’m lucky to have someone with me while I’m up here so I don’t suppose I need a lot of extra help.’

  Hartley followed him in to the living room, neat and modern apart from the clutter of photographs and albums on one end of the table. Robert had been watching the television, but as they sat down in leather chairs close to the large window he put it on mute — not switched off, however, as a sign to Hartley that he didn’t expect the interruption to be long. As merely a temporary home, the apartment had little reflection of Sarah. Hartley knew that, but was disappointed nevertheless not to have a greater feeling of her presence there. She would sit in the same chair, have the same elevated view of the busy street and the city buildings, watch the clouds tow shadows across the asphalt, or outlines blur as rain spat and ran on the window, or at night the winking, jostling flow of vehicle lights, a listless moon perhaps above it all. There was one sign of their love, however: the small, blue jug from Matakana, his gift, and he had to resist the urge to touch it, acknowledge it in some way.

  ‘I won’t hold you up,’ he said. ‘It’s routine really. One of us from the unit tries to make contact during the first few weeks. We’ve been a bit lax, I’m sorry. Sometimes we phone, but I find I get a better sense of the circumstances by making a visit.’

  ‘We’re about okay, I think,’ said Robert. ‘We could bring a car up from home, but my wife doesn’t like to drive in this traffic, and, quite frankly, neither do I now. I suppose the only situation I can think of when help would be useful would be if Sarah weren’t well, or needed to be away for a few days.’

  Hartley made the expected reply and laid out various adjunct services he said were available, though he agreed in Robert’s case it was unlikely they would be required. As they talked, Robert’s attention switched sometimes to the flickering television screen — medieval treasure troves unearthed with the aid of metal detectors — and Hartley assessed the man who stood between Sarah and himself. What would happen if she came back and found them together, seated companionably, discussing her husband’s needs? He had no idea how long she would be away, but the thought gave him a charge that was as much excitement and anticipation as fear. Everything would surely come out then, once and for all.

  ‘Nothing more then?’ asked Robert to indicate an end. How much more there was, and all of it of vital importance to him, but Hartley knew the time would come for that, and he just smiled and accepted his dismissal.

  They didn’t shake hands as they parted. Hartley favoured that brief meeting of flesh, but maybe if it had occurred he would have found it difficult to let go, would have used his free hand to give Robert such a thrust that he would stumble head first into the door frame. Robert was bigger, but he was older, he was sick and he was unsuspecting. Hartley was in no hurry to leave the apartments, even standing at the entrance to the building for a while looking across the lawn strip to the street. There was time for Sarah to meet him as she returned, but he saw only a young mother in tight jeans, and her small daughter, who turned towards him after passing with solemn scrutiny.

  Robert went back to the television after Hartley left, but the golden amulets and roughly cut emeralds and rubies of turbulent times had vanished into history again, and he was faced with another gaggle of competing and emotional amateur chefs. He turned it off and went to the table to be with his albums and memories. In a soiled envelope addressed to ‘The Householder’ he found a photo of himself and Ashley Dicks on a motorbike outside the flat in Moss Street they had shared with two others when they were at the dental school. A Norton 500, a brute of a thing that threatened their lives with every outing. Ashley had one ungainly leg on the road surface to maintain the stability difficult to achieve even when stationary, and Robert, without a helmet, grinned from the pillion. He’d lived for two years with Ashley as one lived with a brother, intimate yet with a casual disregard, combining in both the escapades and drudgery of student life, but with essential privacy preserved. Ashley had made a U-turn in his studies, and without explanation left Dunedin to study art at Canterbury. He bequeathed lecture notes that were superior to Robert’s own, and also a small mural of St Kilda Beach on his bedroom wall, with copulating dogs in the background as a Brueghelistic touch.

  Robert saw him only once again: more than thirty years later in the crowded foyer of a theatre in Wellington, during the interval of a Roger Hall play. He knew him immediately from the long, equine face and forelock. They’d been pleased to meet, but the call of nature prevented them from sharing anything of their lives. Ashley had put a hand briefly on Robert’s shoulder after their greeting, and leant in to be heard above the hubbub. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Great to see you, but I’m busting for a pee. Fair busting,’ and he went off with his hand held up briefly in apology, half a head taller than most others he pushed through.

  After the performance, Robert had hung around the entrance for a while, hoping to see him coming out. No luck, and so whether Ashley had made it as an artist, or given up the dream and turned to some mundane competency, remained a mystery. But there he was on the bike when they were young, and Robert remembered how morose he was at exam time, his generosity with the baking his mother sent him, the well-upholstered girl studying biology who would leave his room with demure repletion. ‘Ashley Dicks,’ said Robert to himself softly. He looked up hoping to share his nostalgia. ‘Ashley Dicks,’ he called, but Sarah didn’t respond. He opened his mouth to call the name more loudly, but stopped himself. Of course, she’d gone out, and anyway she’d never met Ashley; he was nothing to her. So Robert, mouth still agape, just looked at himself with Ashley on the Norton and wondered where so much time had gone. Maybe in Moss Street the wooden house still stood, and beneath several subsequent coats of paint was Ashley’s mural of St Kilda Beach waiting to be discovered and made special by his fame.

  ‘Some outpatients services guy from the hospital came,’ said Robert when Sarah was back.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Nothing really. He went on about the help that’s available if you need it. I said probably the only thing would be if you were away for a few days.’

  ‘Which I never am,’ she said. ‘Did he leave a card to get in touch?’

  ‘No. He was a skinny, jittery sort of chap. What about you?’

  ‘I got the watch battery put in and a couple of DVDs. Are you feeling okay now?’

  ‘Just tired,’ he said, ‘I’ll be glad when I’m not always tired. You never think about it when you’re young and fit, just take energy as being inexhaustible. I never thought that I could look forward so much to going to bed alone.’ She had to smile at that. ‘I’ve had enough of the television,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent a bit of time with the photos, but think I’ll rest for a while now.’

  Sarah went with him into the bedroom, and they talked as he took off his shoes and trousers, then lay on the bed. When he was comfortable she half pulled the curtains to keep the sun from his eyes. ‘I’m going to think of something special for tea,’ she said.

  ‘I look forward to it,’ he said. ‘I’m quite peckish.’

  HARTLEY FELT ENCOURAGED BY his meeting with Robert; what could someone like that offer Sarah for the future in competition with himself? Robert was a large, intelligent, self-centred man who had run down into needy dependence. Even if he came through the treatment he would never be an equal partner again. When he returned home, Hartley rang Avignon Furnishings and asked for someone to bring their range of blue curtain material to the house the next day. He remembered Sarah saying that was her favourite colour — a powder blue like a clear winter sky.

  That was what he chose for the master bedroom. A lightish fabric that would allow a suffusion of the sun as he and Sarah lay there in the afternoons just as they had when she was meant to be arranging flowers in the Titirangi hall, and instead they had first made love. />
  ‘My partner’s away at present,’ Hartley said as the young guy took the window measurements. ‘It’ll be a surprise when she comes back.’

  ‘Nice,’ the salesman said. ‘Jesus, some view you get here.’

  ‘Blue is her favourite colour.’

  ‘Right.’ He wondered how you got to live in such a place, which must be worth over a million easily. This old guy must be a doctor, or a lawyer. One of those people who can charge hundreds of dollars an hour even if they’re just yacking on the phone.

  ‘I don’t want those cheap plastic runners,’ said Hartley.

  ‘Right,’ the guy said. It was okay for some. He still flatted with two girls in Otahuhu, both of whom kept him out of their bedrooms because they wanted a boyfriend with better prospects.

  ‘If there’s any over, perhaps you could make up a couple of cushions,’ said Hartley. He was pleased with the idea, showing surely the sort of sensitivity to décor a woman would appreciate. ‘In fact I’ll have them anyway,’ he said.

  When the van had gone, Hartley walked through all of the rooms, endeavouring to see them as Sarah would. He’d heard that women had difficulty in feeling fully settled in a home that bore a strong imprint of a predecessor. The obvious personal belongings had gone — the clothes and shoes, toiletries, the worn toys speaking of family togetherness and the favourite knick-knacks — but what of the choice of towels, the unusual multi-coloured glass whorl Madeleine had bought at a charity auction, the travel souvenirs? Whatever went, the photographs of Kevin would stay, even those that included all three of the family. Hartley was sure Sarah would have no trouble with that, would bring in elements of her own former life. They wouldn’t try to deny any of their past, just celebrate the new beginning.

  He was proud of his home, although he knew that he had done nothing to earn it except marry Madeleine. And Sarah admired it, which made it even more attractive to him. When he’d first come to Auckland, not much more than a boy, he’d boarded with the Ironside family in Mangere. His bedroom had no wardrobe and a view of the clothesline. It was next to the only lavatory in the house, and elderly Reg Ironside came down the passage at least once every night, to appease his prostate, with a friendly fart or two in passing.

  Mrs Ironside always cooked fish on Fridays, and only years later did Hartley twig that they must have been Catholics, for he wasn’t aware of them attending church. Mrs Ironside smoked while she stood over the fry pan and watched television, rejoicing in any sexual innuendo. Reg grew Super Toms, and winter and summer wore thick socks and sandals. He had a strange crab-like walk on the stairs so as to avoid the worn middle of the carpet. Hartley had come to be fond of them both, but also was now pleasurably aware of the improvement in his accommodation.

  Once Mrs Ironside went away for three days to look after her sick brother in Wanganui, and Reg and Hartley had bached inexpertly. They spent more time together than ever before, or afterwards, sitting at the kitchen table and talking, Reg picking idly at the yellow contact over the wooden surface, and telling him about being in the navy during the war. He served in the Pacific, but never shot at anyone, or was shot at himself. Reg said everything then had to do with booze. Any sort of booze: they drank polishes and put kerosene in the beer, even drank ethanol stolen from torpedos. Booze, booze, booze, said Reg. There was bugger-all sex, and booze was king.

  The three days had ended badly. Reg ate the last of an ageing takeaway on the third day, and it gave him violent diarrhoea. He didn’t even make the lavatory, and Hartley helped to clean up the mess, a rich chowder all down the hall. They did their best, but weren’t able to deceive Mrs Ironside, who held both equally responsible. Reg’s embarrassment was so great that from then on there was always a slight reserve on his part. He’d lost face, and wouldn’t risk such vulnerability again. They still got on well, but Hartley regretted the change for he’d enjoyed Reg’s war stories — so much less heroic and more human than most. Guys coping as best they could, and taking any means to forget where they were.

  Hartley had spent fifteen months living with the Ironsides, and had gone back once later to visit them. Mrs Ironside was happy to see him, but said Reg had died some months before. She insisted Hartley come in and have a coffee. When he entered the small living room, made even more restricted by the piano that was never used, he got a shock to find Reg seated there in his usual chair by the sash window. But Mrs Ironside introduced him as Winston, Reg’s brother, and sure enough there were differences as well as similarities when Hartley had a chance to notice them. He wore brown shoes, not sandals, and had egregious teeth. Mrs Ironside and Winston were quite at ease, and neither felt the need to offer any explanation of his presence. Mrs Ironside told Hartley he would be welcome to come back to board if he wished, and Winston confirmed the offer with equanimity. ‘The room’s lying idle,’ he said, ‘and might as well be used.’

  ‘You were never any trouble. Quiet like. Not like some we’ve had. One had stuff growing under the bed,’ said Mrs Ironside. Hartley assumed the stuff was weed.

  ‘Think it over if it takes your fancy,’ said Winston. ‘Of course the board would have to be more now. Everything domestic’s gone up to hell, hasn’t it.’ Hartley had taken a dislike to him, not from any perceived evil intent, or deficiency, but from loyalty to old Reg who had been so easily supplanted. He never visited again.

  One of the things that worried Hartley a bit concerning a future life with Sarah was that he had no significant circle of friends to invite her into when they were together permanently. He wasn’t sure how that had come about. Madeleine and he hadn’t been without acquaintances, some from his work, some from hers, some gathered by common association as Kevin progressed through his various schools. But no one close, and after Madeleine’s death they seemed to drift away. Hartley felt no discomfort, or inadequacy, when with other people, and could be quite talkative, but he felt no pressing need to assemble them on his own account. He had developed a glib conviviality and a carapace of assurance.

  His gumboot family in the south were distanced more by lifestyle than geography. He told himself that if you had a soulmate you didn’t need anybody else. Yet he didn’t want Sarah to think him some sort of loner, a widower without friends to encourage him, or welcome a new partner. Simon Drummond was a pleasant guy who liked music, and his wife did extramural papers on European history. Hartley had been to their house twice since Madeleine’s death, found them good company, but neglected to return hospitality. Sarah had already met Simon, and liked him. Hartley decided he would invite the Drummonds to go with him to some exhibition, or recital, and then take them to a restaurant, or to his home. Naomi Drummond had a calmness and independence of disposition not unlike Sarah’s own. She knew something of art, would make an ideal companion for a coffee morning, a festival event, an occasional dinner, without seeking an intimacy and frequency of contact that would hinder Sarah’s and his concentration on themselves.

  He’d become lonely in the two years after Madeleine’s death, yet admitted they had never achieved the closeness he’d hoped for in the marriage. It was his fault as much as hers perhaps, but her deficiencies were clear in his recollection. Her absorption in her work at the airport, and a walled privacy lest the ravening world break through. Madeleine could have turned to alcohol, and Hartley admired her courage in not doing so. They hadn’t argued much, though when Kevin was little, she was conspicuously loving towards the child after any dispute, as if to emphasise his attachment to her rather than his father. When there was only the two of them living together, they had done so mainly in companionable disassociation.

  He would try harder with Sarah and do better: he would learn from his marriage with Madeleine to be more successful with someone else. Sarah wasn’t perfect and neither was he, but they loved each other and knew how to be happy together. They would have something special together that very few people achieved. He was convinced of that, and nothing must stand in the way of it.

  Hartley was surpri
sed to find that he was crying, tears running freely on his cheeks although his thoughts were of love and happiness. It had happened several times recently, and slightly embarrassed him. It was just that he was able to release his feelings more readily since finding Sarah, he told himself, and went out onto the wooden deck, wiped away the tears and took several deep breaths. He was a lucky guy, he told himself. He had the hiccups, and concentrated on more long, even breaths in an attempt to stop them. There was a light wind that caused a slight swaying of the tree branches and an accompanying subdued music of comfort. He was a lucky guy to be living in such a place, and the best of times lay ahead.

  ‘Wen + wer?’ was the message. Sarah received it, as she expected, early on the Friday morning, for the two days before were his work days at Hastings Hull and he had distractions, so didn’t send texts until he was settled in his office. She had been cleaning the bathroom, and she didn’t reply immediately. Robert was sitting close to the big living-room window so he could see the goings on in the street and look into the city. He liked watching the pedestrian crossing: how at busy times the walkers continued to stream over the road even when the lights had turned against them and the car horns were sounding. How some people took no notice of the red anyhow and just crossed when there was opportunity, some strolling, some swiftly adroit, and not all young, impudent people, but businessmen, too, with a purposeful stride proclaiming that their personal priorities outweighed regulations for the proletariat.

  ‘Somebody’s going to get flattened there you know,’ he said. ‘I can see it coming.’

  ‘If enough do it, though, they get away with it. It’s like we saw in European places, where people drove and parked and walked wherever they could and there were just too many for the traffic people to cope. Mass disobedience defeats authority.’