I was wearing a new, simple navy dress, which I was hoping was deceptively demure, provocative in its refusal to be provocative. It was, I thought, an outfit that was putting up a bit of a challenge – ‘OK, only take me on if you think you’re really seductive.’ Matt got it – he said I looked great, and he’s gay, so he does notice – but for all I knew, the signals might be too complicated for James, who might just think I wasn’t making enough effort and looked like someone’s secretary, which is what I am.
The door to the Al A’ali house was opened by a tall North Indian, with James crossing the hall not far behind him, wearing a pale blue shirt that emphasized the splashy, Hockney‐in‐California colour of his eyes. He’d hardly put on any weight over the years: his chest and shoulders were more solid but his waist and hips were slim and his neck hadn’t fattened – unlike the necks of most middle‐aged men I knew – or gone scrawny.
He hugged me for a moment – holding on slightly too long again – and led me into the drawing room, which was lit by at least fifty fat candles, guttering against the dark wood and the Persian carpets. They were Qashqais – my favourite – and, a little nervously, I started chattering away about the door‐to‐door carpet salesmen who try out their merchandise on your floors, rug after rug until they spot a weakness, then up and leave without any money, so you can find out how you feel about it. The annoying thing about carpets is that you almost never go off them: if you like one, you’re going to like it even more a week later.
I was prattling and James didn’t know anything about carpets and didn’t have much to contribute to my stream of consciousness, so it was a relief when the handsome waiter came in with champagne.
James indicated a place on the sofa and I sat down. He sat next to me, knees closer to mine than you’d put them if you were trying not to give someone the wrong idea.
‘I want to know all about you,’ he said. ‘Everything. Why are you here?’
‘You invited me.’
‘No, I mean in Hawar. Why did you stay on?’
‘I hadn’t planned to…’ Fourteen years ago, everyone had assumed that I’d leave, including me, because I had three children under the age of eleven and my husband was dead and it seemed unlikely I could live in an Arab country without a man. Some people (Chris and dad) couldn’t understand how I could live here with a man, what with the heat and the Hawaris.
But then, one afternoon, about a week after Dave’s accident, I was driving home along the Corniche and, for no good reason, perhaps simply because everything was off balance, I didn’t turn off up the Jidda Road to the compound, but carried on driving towards Saffar, which was still a fishing village then, toppling into the salt flats at the western tip of the emirate, the houses made of gypsum, the roads rough. I parked the car at the point where the road petered out, and walked along the rubble track to the place where palm trees sprouted along the shore and the land and sea seemed to wrap into each other. An old Hawari was crossing the mudflats on a wooden cart pulled by a white donkey, a pile of conical wooden traps behind him. There was near‐silence, aside from some rustling palm trees, the occasional shout of a child in the village behind, the soft squelch of wheels through muddy wet sand. I stood for a long time, losing track, watching the sun sink through the sky like a slow weight until it touched the water, seeing the horizon spit up its oranges and pinks, its yellow and mauve livid lights. I felt the heat sink out of the day and the darkness fold over.
That was the day I decided to stay. The idea wasn’t completely irresponsible. Sue had offered to keep me on at school, which I knew would take care of the rent and mean that Anwar would sponsor me. So I could stay legally, and I could afford to stay. And standing there on the shore, it occurred to me that I didn’t need protection – at least not the kind my dad and Chris were talking about – in Hawar, where so much that was meaningful was veiled in politeness. With everything so quiet and reflective and the sea and sky seeming to pour back their colours into each other, I realized that it would be perfectly possible to live here.
‘You haven’t regretted it?’ James asked, when I explained some of this.
‘Well, no, although you always wonder how things might have been different.’
‘Yes,’ he said, so meaningfully that I blushed. ‘It must have been hard, though,’ he added, ‘being on your own.’
‘I wasn’t really. I had three children.’ I didn’t want him to feel sorry for me, or think I felt sorry for myself. He said something then about my obviously being a great mother, which was just flattery, because all he knew about my children was that one of them was gay.
Most of the time, as I confessed to him, I believed I was only getting it half‐right – unlike, say, Maddi’s parents, who’d known what they wanted from the outset, and had cultivated various accomplishments, musical instruments and off‐piste skiing. I hadn’t known that off‐piste skiing even existed, and I’d brought up my children haphazardly… But the truth is that you can only be self‐deprecating and oh‐I’m‐rubbish‐really about motherhood up to a point, because you run the risk of suggesting your kids are failed kids, useless and disappointing, whereas in reality they’d have to become murderers or heroin addicts or something for you to feel that, and probably even then you wouldn’t.
‘Well, I think you’re incredible,’ he said at last. ‘And you always were determined. I knew you’d be brilliant at whatever you put your mind to.’
I raised my eyebrows, trying to look lightly amused in a sophisticated way, as though film stars were always paying me compliments. I asked about him, to give myself a moment to reestablish my composure, although, in reality, I knew what had happened, because I’d read the profiles. I knew that he’d only been in Los Angeles a few months when he’d got his first part in a low‐budget movie, and that three years later the director Brett Berkovic had cast him as a drily witty time‐travelling professor of genetics, a role he’d since reprised five times.
‘It’s mad, all that,’ he concluded. ‘But you’re in the real world,’ he added, as though that was something to admire. ‘You have all these kids and people to worry about.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘that won’t work. That real world stuff. I’m not going to feel sorry for you because you’re too busy to get out to your ranch in Arizona more than twice a year.’
‘OK,’ he said, smiling. ‘So, anyway, we seem to have established that you were prepared to go abroad with Dave, even though you wouldn’t with me?’
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘I want to know where I went wrong. People generally find me fairly attractive.’
‘You are,’ I smiled. ‘You know you are. You always were.’
‘Well, then?’
‘I suppose…’ I glanced at him uncertainly, but he seemed genuinely to want an answer. ‘I suppose I felt left out. It was your decision to go.’
‘But I asked you to come…’
‘Only at the end. I didn’t feel it was about me.’
‘It was always about you.’
‘I thought at the time I couldn’t trust you. Now… well, I think that perhaps it was myself I couldn’t trust.’
‘OK, maybe that’s acceptable. That’s quite gracious. I think we can live with you taking the blame for messing up our relationship.’
I remember thinking at the time that James was selfish, but what had seemed like self‐obsession then now seemed more the kind of youthful drive and ambition that would allow a person to become successful. I’d grown up in a very enclosed world, where you were a bad daughter if you didn’t pop in to see your parents every day. I’d been too insecure to contemplate leaving Thornton Heath; I’d lacked the imagination to envisage a larger world. I could have had a bigger life, an oxygenated life, only I’d been too frightened to take it. I had turned down experience and adventure, while James, very sensibly, had gone ahead and seized it.
The waiter arrived to say that dinner was served and we moved into the dining room, although I wasn’t in
the least bit hungry.
Over sashimi followed by sea bass – at which we only picked – we made general conversation, a lot of it about the film and Al Maraj’s ambitions for it.
‘Nezar’s idea is that Arab investors won’t put much money into an industry they know so little about,’ James explained, doing rather a good job of pretending to be discussing matters of general interest while actually staring at me and touching my ankle with his toes. He’d kicked off his sandals under the table and his flesh against mine sent little shocks of sensation through my body as he shifted his feet. ‘They need one or two films to release well, so they can see that the business can make money – and he’s obviously hoping that this is going to be one of them.’
‘It’s asking a lot, though,’ I observed, trying to ignore his toes just above my ankle, ‘that the Arabs should get involved in an industry where they’re so often seen as the enemy.’
‘I suppose that’s partly the point – to prove to Hollywood they aren’t the enemy, and to show the Arabs that Hollywood can help demonstrate that to the rest of the world.’
‘It’s ambitious, anyway.’
‘That’s Nezar, though. Look what he’s achieved here, making a film in a location that’s about to become a war zone.’
‘He seems rather stern,’ I said carefully, ‘as if he disapproves of a lot of things.’
‘Does he? Like what?’
‘Well, me, actually.’
‘He’s probably jealous.’
‘Of what?’
‘He probably thinks you’re going to distract me.’ He pushed away his plate. ‘I hope you are.’
‘Oh, and how do I go about that?’
He smiled. ‘You haven’t changed.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not true in any sense…’
‘– You’re fun, you’re incredibly sexy. You’re not after anything.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure…’
He grinned. ‘You see: that’s what I mean. Most women are too serious. At least, around me. They think they’re going to get noticed. I often feel like a kind of soapbox. Women use me to stand on, so the paparazzi can get a better view of them. I can never tell whether they’re genuinely interested in me or if I’m just a career opportunity.’
‘I think you can safely assume they want to be with you. People generally speaking would.’
‘You’d be surprised.’ He looked at me intently. ‘You know, I haven’t had a proper relationship – not one that’s been really meaningful – since you.’
I didn’t quite know how to respond.
‘I meet a lot of women like Rosie.’
‘You’re dating Rosie?’ I said in alarm. ‘Isn’t that illegal?’
‘What?’
‘Isn’t she underage?’
‘Oh, I see.’ He grinned. ‘I’m not dating her, though she might if I were interested – which I’m not, because I’ve got my mind on other things – but the point is, I wouldn’t know whether she was just using me to claw her way up. She’s very ambitious.’ He smiled. ‘Shall we stop pretending we’re hungry?’
‘The waiter will be gone soon,’ he murmured, as he steered me into the drawing room, his hand in the small of my back.
‘I have to tell you, though, that I’m jealous,’ he announced in a different tone, as we sat down to wait for the staff to finish clearing up: ‘I consoled myself all those years with the idea you wanted security – that you didn’t want to leave home – but now I find that as soon as I was out of the way you ran off to the desert.’
I didn’t want to talk about Dave. ‘If I remember rightly,’ I pointed out, ‘you wrote me a letter saying I was dull and that it would serve me right if I married someone at the insurance company and lived in Thornton Heath for the rest of my life. What was I expected to do after that?’
‘Did I? How appalling. I can’t believe that was me. I don’t write letters.’
‘It was very badly misspelt.’
‘Oh, right. Probably was, then.’
I had a sudden swooping sensation of familiarity as he bent his head towards me; a jolting moment of recognition, of the shape of his skull, the blur of his face as he came close. I registered shock that this was happening, that James Hartley was about to kiss me, and then he was, and then a few moments later he broke off, scooped me off the sofa and in a single movement only possible for someone who did weight training, carried me towards the stairs.
I burst out laughing. He’d done this the first time we’d ever had sex – lifted me off the sofa and carried me up the stairs of my house when my dad and Chris had gone off to visit my nan in Frinton. I’d thought then (you have to remember that this was well before the gesture was rendered ridiculous by too many schlocky movies and also that I was only seventeen) that this was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me. I’d been scared about sex – about getting pregnant, about sexually transmitted diseases, which they implied at school were rife, about sleeping with a boy who if he wanted to have sex with you had probably slept around with slags, about being a slag, about getting it wrong and not knowing what to do. But I’d been excited too, and James’s carrying me upstairs had misted up the lens, made it hazy with romance. My ankles may have bashed on the banister and my shoulder scraped along the woodchip wall‐paper but I was a princess being carried away from a tower. Clearly I was not a slag.
‘You can put me down, though, now.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m heavy.’
‘No!’ he lied. ‘Not at all! Same as ever.’
Oh no, I thought: he’s going to trip over the corner of one of these Persian carpets and cut his head open on some piece of Indian carved furniture and it’ll wreck the shooting schedule and cost the producers a fortune, or at least their insurers… and maybe he’ll need plastic surgery and never look as good again and his career will be finished and it’ll all be my fault.
And then I thought that was typical. Here I was, being carried upstairs like Scarlett O’Hara or a princess from a tower, about to be seduced, and I was thinking about insurers.
The staircase was much wider than the one in my dad’s house in Thornton Heath and this time I didn’t graze any part of my body on the fixtures and fittings.
And then a door slammed downstairs.
‘Oh,’ said someone. ‘Oh, right.’
I couldn’t see a thing, but you would have to guess that the person was pretty pissed off.
James spun round. I thought he was going to drop me. Even action heroes can fall over, especially when they’ve been drinking champagne.
‘Nezar!’ he said, out of breath (he had been lying about my weight) ‘bit busy, as you can see.’
‘Ah‐hah,’ said Al Maraj, or something like that. ‘Hruff. Hmp. You’ve got a five‐thirty call.’
‘Fiona said six.’
‘It’s five‐thirty.’
‘James, can you put me down?’
‘No, we’re going up.’
Why were we whispering? We could still be heard.
‘Good evening, Mrs Lester,’ Al Maraj said coldly.
‘Annie,’ I offered, over my shoulder. ‘For God’s sake, James, put me down!’
He finally did then, but awkwardly, so my foot twisted slightly as I landed and I staggered, like a drunk person.
‘Good evening.’
‘I suppose this was bound to happen,’ he said – sneered wouldn’t actually have been too strong a word, ‘but, really…’
But really what? And why was it bound to happen? Did he think I’d thrown myself at James? Did he always shag old girlfriends?
Al Maraj turned and went back out, slamming the front door.
‘What odd behaviour,’ I said. ‘Is he allowed to barge in, just like that?’
‘He uses the house as an office. He’s got a room here.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘He was supposed to be out. It didn’t come up. It’s a big enough house. I thought you knew.’
That seemed to be too many reasons, not all quite fitting together, but I didn’t say so. I was wondering if there was any chance of getting back to where we’d been before.
James must have been too, because he said, ‘Now, where were we?’ and lifted me up again, although it was quite a lot harder from a standing position.
‘We need a stunt couple,’ I suggested, but he didn’t smile, just took a deep breath and trudged on up the stairs.
It’s a funny thing about sex that it’s physically quite limited. There are only so many things you can do: a limited number of body parts to pay attention to and a finite number of positions, only some of them wholly practicable. Emotionally, on the other hand, almost anything could be going on. It’s perplexing that the same physical process can leave you feeling so entirely differently. Unfortunately, given the sameness of the moves, you can’t always be completely sure what emotional variant you’re getting. Unless there’s some transcendent moment when you look into one another’s eyes and divine the intensity and scope of the other person’s feelings, you can’t be one hundred per cent sure their mind hasn’t floated away to tomorrow’s shooting schedule or whether to buy the latest Ferrari.
I suppose I hoped that by having sex with James, I’d be able to answer that question everyone kept asking me, ‘What’s he really like?’ I’d acquire some special insight from shagging.
It didn’t happen, though the shagging was good, in the sense that he was very expert (much more so than I remembered; evidently, he’d had plenty of practice). But despite our neatly timed orgasms, I can’t say I really lost myself. I didn’t ever forget that I was having sex with a film star, and I’m not sure he forgot I was either.
I caught myself almost feeling sorry for him. People must expect so much of such a perfect body, of a man whose sexiness was hyped around the world. That could be quite paralysing: how could he not be conscious of being James Hartley? Of the fact that just by getting into bed with you a woman had achieved most of what she was going to get out of the encounter, so that it almost didn’t matter what happened subsequently? She’d still have been to bed with you. And whatever did happen would almost certainly be a disappointment, because being good‐looking and a competent actor did not in fact mean that you were a sex god. How could you hope to live up to your image? But at the same time, how could you not try? You’d have to put on a performance, to concentrate on being James Hartley, suave and sexy; and in the process, you could easily forget to focus on who it was you were in bed with.
The Gulf Between Us Page 14
