‘Not particularly, although I’m getting brassed off with family trusts. I’ve two on the go at the moment.’
‘So?’ said Simon. Trusts were a routine task in the firm. He took off his glasses, and Hartley noticed the small, pink indentations, one on each side of his nose, where they had rested.
‘I’m wondering whether in fact trusts are safe from clawback if people have to go into care. The advice we’ve been giving for years seems a bit shaky now.’
‘True.’
‘Well, people trust us, but the department’s starting to shift ground.’
‘We can’t be held accountable for changes in official policy. All we can do is give the best opinion for the time.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Hartley. Simon must have come with a specific purpose, so he sat back in his chair to show he was ready to give attention. From the ceramic ashtray he took a paper clip and began to straighten it out as a way to keep his hands busy. The bird-shit stain on his window drew his eye, still there although he’d twice asked office staff to get something done about it.
‘The thing is,’ said Simon, ‘I’m worried about you. All of us are, in fact. I don’t want to poke my nose in. I wasn’t going to say anything, and then I decided that as a friend I should.’ He paused, smiled, giving time for a response, but Hartley said nothing. ‘It’s just the business with the McWhinney crowd, and those missed appointments. No big deal, but I want you to know if you need to talk to someone I’m here. I don’t want to push in on anything, but I’m here if it helps. Okay?’
‘McWhinney’s just peeved because he didn’t get special treatment. I’m not putting myself and the firm at risk to suit him.’
‘The letter you sent, though. A bit off, wasn’t it? Some of the things you said would have been better not put on paper. Pretty hard to defend some of them.’
‘All true, all justified,’ said Hartley. Maybe he had got too personal, but McWhinney’s assumption of privilege annoyed him, and at the time he’d been especially down about Sarah’s refusal to see him. And despite his wealth McWhinney was an inferior person of no genuine achievement. Money disguises failure, but never compensates for it.
‘Anyway,’ said Simon, ‘I felt I should let you know there’s a bit of a groundswell. We’re just concerned and wondering how to help. Nothing major. You seem a bit closed off lately. If you need to talk, you know I’m happy to listen.’ In the silence that followed he glanced around the small room as if in search of a change of topic.
‘I’m okay, but thanks,’ said Hartley.
‘Right, then I’ll let you get on with it.’ Simon sat long enough to give Hartley the chance to say more if he wished, and then stood up. ‘Better go. There’s always work to do. The heat’s a real killer today,’ he said, marking his withdrawal with the same neutral topic as his arrival.
Hartley knew Simon’s comments were well intentioned, and normally he would have been responsive to that, if not to the others’ view of him. But what was mere friendship, collegiality or professional responsibility when love was at stake: a love that equated with life itself? For a lover, there are only ever two people in the world. He folded the paper clip back to shape and replaced it. He needed to get out, to do something, bring himself again into Sarah’s life.
He went into the outer office, not bothering with his jacket. Gillian wasn’t there, but Rachel was at the next desk. Hartley tapped the face of his watch, lifted a finger and mouthed ‘Back in an hour,’ although he imposed no such limit on himself. It was the time of the afternoon when Sarah and Robert often took a walk. If he went to the real-estate office he would be able to watch the entrance to the apartments, see if they were going out into the bright sun of the city. Simon’s door was closed and Hartley went quickly and quietly past it and into the street. Even to be heading in the direction of Sarah’s apartment was better than nothing: moving towards her rather than away.
WHEN THEY REACHED THE Magnus café, Robert didn’t even bother to suggest they stop there; Sarah had made it plain recently that she’d gone off the place. They walked slowly on down the street that sloped slightly towards the central city, their pace more a response to the heat than any debility on Robert’s part.
Since his illness Robert seemed to have recovered a simple pleasure in observing the people and the scene about him, instead of restricting himself to the narrowed focus of a busy professional. At times he would stop walking to inspect a gutter that was unaccountably gushing water, stand smiling at the lights to watch a bare-chested Maori boy break-dancing for coins, peer up a flight of narrow stairs, his mouth opening as his head rose, to see what was the cause of sudden, joyous laughter there.
They went into a mall, seeking coolness as much as anything, and found a large snack place on the second floor. It was full of exuberant young people, but Sarah had decided that because of the heat she wanted a smoothie instead of coffee, and Robert was happy to agree to the novelty. ‘I can’t think when I last had one of those,’ he said, and stood deliberating before the wall board that listed the flavours, as if the distinction between a berry banana and a tropical island was of more than passing significance.
Though they found a table in a corner, the noise was such that they had to lean towards each other across the table to talk. It wasn’t only voices, although they were babble enough, but an underlying pulsation of air-conditioning, multitudinous pieces of commercial apparatus, the human herd on the move, and the snickering of invisible urban gremlins that inhabit such places.
The smoothie was thick and cool, and it brought back for Sarah memories of the milkshakes she’d enjoyed as a teenager. The close girl group to which she had belonged, the Formica table tops of the milk-bar booths, the pop music buoying up their chatter while their real interest was in the quick glances they gave the boys who were watching them.
‘These places make me feel old,’ said Robert.
‘What?’
‘We must be the oldest people here,’ he said more loudly. He was looking ruefully at the throng, as if he too had experienced a vision of his youth.
‘Well at least we’re getting out and about instead of sitting inside watching television.’
‘I suppose the people our age are probably in wine bars anyway, aren’t they, not places like this? How come all these kids can roam around town spending money?’
‘Things are more flexible now, the working hours and everything, and Auckland’s full of students.’
‘Beats me how they do it,’ said Robert.
He leant back from the table to give a pause in their conversation, and Sarah saw, through the clear glass behind him, Hartley watching them from the mall walkway. Many people were passing, but he stood quite still, a pace or two from the glass, looking directly at her. He wore a white shirt and a dark, striped tie, but no jacket. His hands were clasped low in front of him. His expression wasn’t at all threatening. It was more that he was hoping for recognition from her, and he had the beginnings of a smile prepared for that.
Sarah burst into tears — the shock, the sadness, the loss, perhaps even the betrayal of love.
Robert was taken by surprise and in clumsily getting up to comfort her, he knocked over his chair. No one paid much attention, or to Sarah’s tears, which she quickly suppressed. Noise and movement continued to swirl around them as he stood beside her, a hand on her shoulder, his head bent towards her in concern.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It was all too much for a moment. Sometimes I just have to let it out. You know? You keep stuff bottled up and then it just blows. I’m okay now.’ She sniffed slightly, dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, blinked deliberately, straightened in the plastic chair. Hartley was no longer there. People walked by beyond the glass, but there was no one standing and looking in.
‘We’ll go home. I’ll get a taxi,’ said Robert.
‘No. It’s fine.’
Hartley had gone, and she couldn’t see him when she glanced
around the tables. He hadn’t come in and must have gone on through the mall. Anger began to replace her other feelings. It wasn’t fair to follow her like that, to follow Robert and her, and suddenly appear. If he cared about her, he wouldn’t do that, would know how startling it was, how threatening.
‘I think we should go home. It’s that bloody hot you won’t want to walk any more anyway.’ Sarah rarely cried, and Robert took it seriously.
‘I’d like to go to the park and sit for a while,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s good for us to be out. It’s exercise, and even more important it takes our mind off things.’ She wasn’t going to be intimidated by Hartley, driven indoors because he chose to manifest himself. He’d followed her, as he must have done at other times. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s get away from the worst of the bustle and go to the park.’
At each crossing on the way, Sarah looked for Hartley among the people massing before the lights, but she didn’t see him. Twice she felt a small shock when for an instant she thought some slim, white-shirted businessman might be him, and once, having turned a corner, she stepped back deliberately to see if he was following, but Hartley wasn’t there.
Had she imagined him standing in the mall? Had it been an apparition born of guilt and suppressed affection? But she knew it had been him, tried not to think of the longing and desperation that drove him to leave his work and seek her out as she went through the streets with her husband.
The park was quite full. The benches were occupied and people sat and lay on the grass, most where there was shade, but some in full sun. Robert and Sarah sat rather awkwardly on the concrete kerb of a rose garden, close by a young shirtless guy lying on his back with a handkerchief over his face and a small tattoo of an eagle on his shoulder.
The kerb wasn’t high and Robert’s knees were forced up towards his face. ‘Do you want to just go on?’ she asked him.
‘I’m fine for a bit. Even the concrete’s hot on your bum, though, isn’t it.’
‘Just say when you want to go on,’ she said. She supposed they looked odd there: an older man and woman squatting uncomfortably on the rim of a rose garden, Robert with a hand to his forehead as a shield from the sun, she holding her dress close to her raised legs.
‘Keep an eye out for anyone quitting a bench and we’ll nab it,’ said Robert.
It was the same park in which she and Hartley had been approached by the foster mother and the little girl who said ‘shit’. Sarah could see the bench on which she and Hartley had sat with the gift of slippers, experience a brief reprise of the exalted mood they’d shared. How was it that when a place of powerful memory is revisited time’s divisions are not dissolved? She almost expected the elderly woman to come forward again, the blonde, small-eyed girl urged gently before her as an introduction.
Hartley was the one who appeared, walking in from the street onto the gravelled path, standing at a distance without drawing attention to himself, his hands held low in front of his body just as they had when she saw him behind the glass wall at the mall. This time he was farther away, and his expression unclear, but he was looking at her. This time she wasn’t surprised and she gave no sign of recognising him. She put a hand on her husband’s shoulder and began a conversation with him about their granddaughters, whether they were too young to come up by themselves in the school holidays. Talk of family was always easy between them.
‘My backside’s getting numb,’ Robert said. ‘I need a proper seat.’
‘We’ll go home now,’ Sarah said.
‘I’m okay if you want to go further.’
‘It’s too hot. We’ll get a taxi if you like.’
For a moment she thought she might walk right past Hartley as a challenge, as a sign she wasn’t frightened of anything he could do, but he might take that as flaunting her repudiation of his love. She didn’t want to hurt him; she just wanted him to let go.
She and Robert went off in the other direction, and she glanced back only once as they turned onto the street. Hartley hadn’t moved. He was still watching, still in the same posture, but diminished in perspective. Still alone. She had a brief, inappropriate inclination to wave, but knew she had no right to that. She’d made her decision, but could still be overtaken by a confusion of feeling, by the wish to hold onto things that she was forcing away for greater good. She didn’t know her own mind, and was filled with sadness.
‘You know, it’s a funny thing, but back there I thought I saw that hospital services fellow,’ said Robert.
‘What fellow?’
‘I can’t remember his name, but you know who I mean. I told you about him coming to the apartment and asking if we needed any help with anything. It looked a lot like him, but maybe it wasn’t.’
‘Who was he again?’
‘No. I can’t remember the name at all,’ said Robert. What did it matter anyway? He was of no significance in their lives, and Robert started to talk of the heat again, and the possible purchase of Greg’s bach at Manaia, which he wasn’t really serious about, but found pleasant to discuss partly because he had the money to do it. Quite often he found himself totalling his assets: he knew the answer, but found satisfaction in arriving at it. Whatever losses he was being forced to accept in other ways, he knew he was still financially secure.
SARAH WOULDN’T SEE HIM, wouldn’t answer texts, cut him off whenever she recognised his voice on the phone, never left the apartment alone on any of the occasions he was watching it. Hartley told himself it was merely loyalty to a sick partner rather than any lessening of love for himself. He convinced himself that her scruples were a sign of decency and self-denial that made her even more admirable.
There was only one answer. It had been there all along, but he’d hoped for some alternative. Since Robert wouldn’t die conveniently from his cancer, then he must die from some other cause, and equally conveniently.
Hartley was in the office at Hastings Hull when he made the decision. He had been talking with a client about the repudiation of a fire insurance claim, and the man was still clumping down the stairs when Hartley resolved to do what was necessary for Sarah and him to be together. There was no sense of the momentous: the whispering hum of the desk computer continued the same, the pale bird-shit stain on the right-hand corner of the window remained, Gillian in the outer office answered the phone with rote response as always. Robert had to die. Hadn’t that always been the only way, no matter what?
Hartley considered the means as he drove home, and later as he sat in his quiet room with the view to the city heart. The subtleties of crime drama were no benefit to him. What did he know of poisons, choke-holds that left no bruises, hired assassins, or the illegal purchase of pistols with silencers? Life is not a television programme. He sought simple and direct means, and took no pleasure in the planning. He didn’t hate Robert, and if things went wrong he might lose his own life, or spend the rest of it imprisoned. It was a desperate and terrible thing to kill someone, but there was no other way now that Sarah and he could be together.
By the time he went to bed the simple plan was made. He would have Robert come onto the balcony of the apartment, and push him over to his death. If for some reason that was impossible then he would stab him unawares. Hartley thought he might dream that night of carrying out the act, but although he lay awake for several hours in turmoil before he could sleep, sometimes talking aloud to comfort himself, sometimes in tears, in the morning he had no recollection of dreams. And, rather to his surprise, the emotional stress hadn’t brought on a migraine.
He felt a strange release that a decision had been made. He assembled all the knives he had on the kitchen bench to gauge their suitability. The largest would be unwieldy and difficult to conceal, the smallest might not penetrate deeply enough to cause death. So he chose a medium one with a serrated blade and a black handle secured by slightly raised stainless steel studs. It was made by Standfast of Ohio, and he laid it on the windowsill before replacing the others.
He would have a coffee.
He would take it onto the deck and listen to the birds in the native bush around the house. He would place Sarah’s green and yellow silk scarf around his neck and think of the happiness they had shared at the Magnus café, on their walks in the city, at Omaha, and in their Spanish motel. He understood that the future is determined by resolute action in the present.
Robert had a dream that he was dying, and woke to find with relief that it wasn’t necessarily true. He said nothing to Sarah, gazed at the recessed lights in the ceiling as the image faded. Most dreams were like that — insistent and bright in the instant of experience, but then dissolving before fixed by memory. All he could recall was a green-robed doctor bending over him, repeating, ‘He’s gone, he’s gone,’ in the sonorous voice of his old headmaster, and his own desperate inability to express any denial, despite the entreaty in the faces of his granddaughters.
He lay until the unpleasantness passed, saying nothing of it to his wife although he knew she was awake. When they were getting dressed soon afterwards he told Sarah with apparent cheerfulness that he needed to get more regular exercise: the varicose veins on his right leg were getting worse. He put his foot up on the bed to display his calf.
‘Maybe it’s all that rugby you played years ago,’ she said. ‘You used to knock yourself about.’
‘Nah, it’s the treatment,’ he said. ‘It seems to have an effect on everything. I reckon it’s put ten years on me at least. But I need to keep moving more. There’s not even a lawn to mow here.’
‘Mr Goosen said when the treatment’s over, your whole system will right itself again. You know that.’
‘I’m hanging out for it,’ Robert said. ‘Thank God there’s not much longer.’
Love as a Stranger Page 21
