White Lies

by Rudolph Bader

  When people began to trickle away, while those who remained in the function-room of the hotel were increasingly having a good time - as it often happens at wakes - Nora joined her sister in front of the hotel. Margaret was smoking a cigarette. They smiled at each other.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Margaret said.

  “It’s only a pity it has to be under such sad circumstances,” Nora remarked.

  “Let’s walk a little,” Margaret suggested. They walked towards the seafront. They reached the street that runs parallel to the coast, from where they could look down at King Edward’s Parade and the rocky beach even further below. For a while they just looked at the horizon and the clouds in the deep blue sky above the metallic grey-blue sea.

  “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Nora enquired.

  “Well, I was wondering how you’d feel if I came back to England for a while.”

  “With your family?”

  “I haven’t worked that one out yet.”

  “Oh, what’s going on? What about Doug and the children?”

  Margaret hesitated before she answered. “We’re having a big crisis. I feel I’ve just got to get away from Doug, for a while at least.”

  “Why is that? I understand he’s such a caring husband, and only recently you told me how good he was with the kids.”

  “Yes, he’s a wonderful father. And I accept the fact that he only means well the way he treats me. But I’m being smothered by his love. I simply can’t breathe anymore.”

  “So, he loves you too much? Is that it?”

  “Well, you could put it that way if you like.”

  “But don’t you love him?”

  “I don’t know.” Margaret’s voice rose in desperation. “I’m telling you, I just don’t know!”

  “That’s bad,” Nora murmured.

  “Of course, it’s bad, as bad as it can get in a relationship. I mean, if he had an affair with another woman I think it would be easier. At least, then I would know what was wrong. But as things are now, I constantly feel guilty, guilty for wanting to be rid of him, and the only reason I can see is his overpowering presence over me, his over-protective love, the way he governs my whole life.”

  “How about your sex life?” Nora wanted to know. She knew she could ask her sister such an intimate question. They had always been quite open about this.

  “The sex is great. We’re having more than I can stomach. He can really satisfy me, but then again, it’s almost too much, too good, too fulfilling. It’s sometimes as if there was no life outside our bed. I tried to speak to him about it, but the only way he understood the problem was that he thought he wasn’t good enough for me, and it had the opposite effect of what I was aiming for.”

  “That’s a real problem.”

  “Yes, it is. I can hardly move without his approval or his supervision. I feel like a prisoner of my husband’s love. This visit to England without him is a true blessing. I feel I can breathe again. Perhaps I shouldn’t be smoking now. Now that I can breathe again.”

  The last remark made the atmosphere lighter because Margaret smiled in a self-apologetic way. The two sisters remained silent for a few minutes. Their minds evolved around what had just been discussed, while they were watching a sailing yacht making its way along the coast, heading for Beachy Head. When the yacht had disappeared from view, Nora resumed the topic.

  “So, what are your plans?”

  “Give me a few days. I need time to think. Let’s keep in touch.”

  “Of course, we’ll keep in touch. What else did you expect? Where are you staying?”

  “In a charming little hotel on the seafront. It’s an old fisherman’s cottage called Sea Beach House Hotel. I found it quite by accident. You know, I came head over heels, I hadn’t made any booking. So when I arrived, I just walked down to the seafront, looking for a suitable place, and that’s when I found it, tucked away in that corner at the back of the green triangle near Fusciardi’s, you know. Just like that. The owners are really charming people, my room overlooks the sea, and they serve you fantastic breakfasts.”

  “Just be careful you won’t put on any weight,” Nora smiled.

  “Oh, no danger of that. But what I was going to say was how relaxing that place is. I think by staying there I might be able to get some order in my confused life.”

  “Okay then. But if you feel like it you can come and stay with us in Horsham. We’ve got plenty of space.”

  “Thanks, Sis. But I think I need to be alone. I’ll let you know when I’m ready for further heart-to-heart talks with you. I know I have to find my own solution to my problem. You can give me advice, but you can’t solve my problem.”

  After this, the two sisters returned to the Hydro Hotel, where they found their father in discussion with Ken Hughes. Nora asked him if she could do anything for him, otherwise she’d like to get back home to her children. In the middle distance she could see George who seemed to be ready to leave, too.

  “No, my dear, I’ll be all right. Off you go. We’ll talk more a bit later. You’ll have to come round some time to go through Emily’s things. I can’t face that on my own.”

  As George was manoeuvring their big Jaguar out of the car-park at the side of the Hydro Hotel, Nora looked back towards the hotel entrance, where she could see Margaret standing, smoking and looking out into space.

  Back in her home in Horsham, Nora was busy with the children and had no time to think of either of the two issues which had burnt themselves into her mind at her mother’s funeral. The question of her father’s past had to be shifted to the background of her mind. There was no hurry with that. But her sister’s problem appeared to her more pressing. As Margaret had correctly put it, Nora couldn’t solve the problem for her, but she could at least offer to help her, to give her moral as well as practical support in this crisis. For example, she could be there for talks, and perhaps she might repeat her offer to have her at her home in Horsham for a while.

  Margaret called her after three days. She said it would do her good to meet again soon. Nora postponed a few of her commitments and drove down to Eastbourne on the following day. It was half-past twelve when she found the pub where Margaret was waiting for her. It was the Marine in Seaside, just more or less at the back of her hotel, quite a large pub with that red velvet atmosphere and a very long bar that sported a large selection of single malt whiskies, something that Nora had only become aware of through George’s keen interest in Scotland and its distilled waters. She herself didn’t like strong liquor, a good glass of red wine was what she preferred.

  The sisters embraced for a long moment before they sat down. Margaret already had a gin and tonic in front of her, so Nora walked to the bar to get her drink. Now, before lunch, she went for a white wine, an Australian Chardonnay.

  After some small talk they embarked upon the sensitive topic of Margaret’s marriage.

  “I’ve had a long discussion with Doug on the phone,” she began, “and he seems to understand my problem, at least he says he does.”

  “I find that hard to believe, after what you told me,” Nora said with a frown on her face. “How can he understand your problem, if he loves you too much to take note of your supposed imprisonment? As I understood the situation, it appears to me that he loves you in a selfish way, as a child loves a toy or as a man might love his car. Wasn’t he treating you like an object rather than a living human being with your own feelings?”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been explaining to him on the phone. You know, talking on the phone instead of face to face made it easier for me to insist on my view of things, to make him listen and try to see our relationship from my side.”

  “And you think you’ve been successful?”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure. And I told him.”

 
“So, what now?”

  “During our talks, and especially between our phone calls - which, by the way, cost me a fortune - I began to see my way ahead. So, I’ve come to a decision. I’m going to take a long break from my marriage. I can see that I need this in order to find myself again. I need to be on my own for a longer period, and only then will I be in a position to decide if we’re going to stay together or break up.”

  “What does he say?”

  “At first, he tried to talk me out of it, but eventually he came round. In the end, he even agreed that it might be a good idea. What seemed to be the hardest part for him was the sexual abstinence he could see ahead of him. I told him he could have affairs during my absence or see a prostitute if he needed it so badly. I told him I wouldn’t mind. That was a lie, but it helped him agree to my plan. He must have sensed this. He said he didn’t want another woman, because his sex life was completely focused on me. I jokingly suggested he could look at the photos he has of me, and he jumped at the idea.”

  “Isn’t that a bit theatrical? I mean it’s very operatic to be excited by a picture in the absence of the real woman and without any hope of getting the woman in the picture. Think of Tamino in the Magic Flute.”

  “Oh, it’s not so stuffy,” Margaret laughed. “It’s a lot juicier. In fact, it’s quite sexy.”

  Nora frowned. “Sexy?”

  “Yes! You see, when we were first together, before we had children, we were both so full of our newly discovered sex life that we did all sorts of things I wouldn’t tell anyone. One thing we did was taking pictures of each other. Nude shots, you know, in sexy poses. We have quite a stock of very special photos of each other. So, when I suggested photos, he naturally thought of those.”

  The two sisters were silent for a while, taking long sips from their drinks. Nora pondered what she’d just learnt. What a daring thing! Taking nude photos of each other! She couldn’t imagine ever doing that with a man, not even with George. She couldn’t find it in herself to be so happy about her brother-in-law and his professed love for her sister. What sort of love was that? Only focused on sex and on looking at his wife in the nude? She kept her thoughts to herself.

  “So how long are you going to be on your own? What are your plans?”

  “I think for the time being I’m just going to stay here for a while. A month or two, maybe three? I’ll see how I feel.”

  “Aren’t you coming to stay with us in Horsham? We’d love to have you.”

  “Not now. I like it here, on my own. Maybe later.”

  The conversation turned to other things. The sisters discussed the new Prime Minister, who had only been in office since November. While Margaret admitted she’d lost touch with British politics and was more concerned with President Bush’s speeches about the situation in the Gulf Region, Nora expressed her own mixed feelings about John Major’s reaction to the American calls for support in that sensitive issue.

  “Major seems a soft fellow, I don’t know if he can be trusted. We’ll see. At least I’m glad we’ve left the Thatcher era behind.”

  “People in the States admired her a great deal. She was as thick as thieves with Reagan, which gained her enormous sympathies.”

  “Well, I never liked her,” Nora stated and put down her glass with an energetic gesture.

  “Why?”

  “Many reasons. Her personality, her egocentric ways, her arrogant language.”

  “But wasn’t she very good for Britain? Wasn’t she a very shrewd politician?”

  “She may very well have achieved a few good things. Future history books will tell. But she’ll also go down in history as the Prime Minister who led her people into the most ridiculous armed conflict.”

  “What do you mean?” Margaret wanted to know.

  “Well, that stupid Falkland War, back in ’82.”

  “I always understood that it had given a big boost to national pride in this country. Another country, and a dictatorship at that, had occupied one of Britain’s territories, which gave Britain the right to take it back.”

  “How primitive must your critical historical understanding be? There are so many serious critical issues connected with the Falkland War. For one thing, the British stole the Malvinas, as they were originally called, from Spain in 1833, before they colonised the islands with British settlers, just like the Russians colonised the Baltic States and many central Asian territories with Russian settlers when they made them Soviet republics. The idea was to claim these areas as true Russian homeland, and the British have always been very good at that strategy, too. Colonial history is full of examples. Then there’s the sense of proportion: all that money, all that military equipment and all that risk and even loss of human lives just to fulfil a weakened Prime Minister’s strategy for re-election, which, as the whole world knows, was the only real reason for the War. Besides, you know what our father taught us about national pride. It’s only the British themselves - and probably certain circles in the United States - who can’t see things as they really are.”

  “You seem to have kept your interest in history, it appears,” Margaret smiled.

  “Indeed, I have. But my sense of history is different from many other people’s interest. Most people think of history in terms of nationalistic narrow-mindedness, they’d glorify their so-called heroes from the past rather than look at the realities with a critical eye.”

  “Hey, Sis! Hold your horses. This isn’t a university lecture. I was just surprised you didn’t share most people’s enthusiasm for Mrs Thatcher. I must say I can see your point, but let’s change the subject. I don’t really know all that much about politics or history.”

  The sisters decided to meet again on a regular basis. Margaret agreed to come to Horsham for the next Sunday lunch.

  After their drinks at the Marine, they went across the street for lunch at the New Mum Taj Mahal Restaurant. Nora claimed she’d heard people say it was Eastbourne’s best Indian restaurant. When they entered the restaurant, however, they were surprised to find it quite a low-class place. Old faded black-and-white photos on the walls, depicting the Taj Mahal, Delhi street scenes, elephants and political rallies of the National Congress Party; worn plastic-covered seats and plastic table-cloths: all in all, not a very inviting atmosphere. They were the only customers.

  “We may as well sit down, now we’re here,” Nora suggested.

  The middle-aged Indian waiter slouched across the room and stopped at their table without uttering a word. He looked as if he was sleep-walking. His eyelids were only half-open. He threw two plastic menus on the table and remained standing in silence. When the two women looked up at his face, trying to understand what they’d done wrong to deserve such treatment, he whispered: “Drinks?”

  They ordered their drinks. The tall waiter shambled back to the rear of the restaurant and disappeared through a dirty door to the kitchen. Nora and Margaret looked at each other meaningfully. Presently, the waiter returned with a sticky yellow plastic basket containing two poppadoms. The sisters placed their orders.

  After this unpromising beginning, their meal eventually turned out a great success. The place might have looked dirty and awful, but the food was a real revelation, indeed one of the best Indian curries Nora had ever tasted. Hers was a chicken dhansak, while Margaret had a lamb vindaloo, and they shared a portion of pillau rice and a sag bhaji.

  After such a satisfying meal, they went for a pleasant stroll along the seafront. Their talks never returned to either Margaret’s marriage or British politics. They spoke about books they’d read recently and about their children’s activities. It was half-past three when they said good-bye, Nora jumped into her little car parked further along the seafront and drove off. Margaret remained seated on a bench facing the sea, looking into the distance and thinking.

  * * *

  It didn’t come as a
surprise when, about ten days later, Margaret told her sister on the telephone that she intended to stay in England for a longer period than originally planned.

  “You see, I need to find myself in all this muddle,” she explained.

  “Would you like to come and stay here?” Nora asked.

  “Actually, that’s exactly what I was going to ask you, if it’s not too much of an inconvenience. I’ll pay you for my board and lodging.”

  “Nonsense. You are welcome. I was expecting this, and I’ve talked it over with George. It’s quite okay. You can stay as long as you like, and we won’t hear a word about payment.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. We are sisters. When are you coming?”

  “Well, I was thinking of tomorrow if that’s all right for you.”

  “No problem at all. I’ll be out all day tomorrow, but you can get the key to our house from Lucy next door. She’ll be looking after Andrew and Lisa for me. Just come in and make yourself comfortable in our guest room. I should be back by about half-past five.”

  “Oh, what can I say!” Margaret sighed.

  Nora had to repeat her invitation twice before her sister could bring herself to accept such natural trust and unlimited hospitality. But in the end, she was glad to accept.

  When Nora arrived at her home the next day, Margaret was sitting in the downstairs lounge with Lisa on her lap and Andrew playing with his Lego set on the floor near his auntie’s feet. Margaret was reading the captions of a picture-story for Lisa, who was obviously very happy listening to her auntie’s voice and looking at the colourful pictures.

  For a very brief moment, Nora’s heart gave an extra beat of surprise, not without a hint of jealousy, before she collected herself within a fraction of a second, dismissing all traces of any bad feelings and welcoming the great relationship between her sister and her children. In her conscience, she scolded herself for her slip into a fond mother’s exaggerated sense of protectiveness. She vowed to steer clear of any such negative feelings for as long as Margaret was going to stay with her family. After all, in the bright daylight of practical life, she was relieved to have her sister here. Margaret might turn out to be a great help.