Love as a Stranger

by Owen Marshall

  ‘Ozone, they say.’

  ‘Yes, but what is ozone? I think it’s more about old shells, dead fish and kelp — salt and stuff,’ he said.

  There were three small yachts not far from shore. Clones except for the variety of colours, they passed briskly at exactly the same speed and direction, as if drawn by one piece of string. Sarah and Hartley watched for a time without needing to refer to them. Hartley had a strange sense that he and Sarah were coming closer and closer together, even though there was no movement. Their warm, bare arms and legs would touch as the yachts retreated across their field of vision.

  He was about to say how happy he was, when he noticed a large white dog running with purpose along the beach, right to left. No owner was obvious, and the dog passed by and went on for a hundred metres or more before turning and running back with equal resolution. It came directly to Sarah and Hartley, and stopped at hand’s reach. Despite the dash, its mouth was closed and there was no panting. A large, slim dog, with hair rather curly and very white, and a bright red collar in contrast. It stood quite still for a moment, as if expecting a greeting from them, and when that didn’t come it squeezed carefully between them, lying down with head extended on its paws.

  Such amiable familiarity was infectious, and Sarah and Hartley remained seated and relaxed. ‘Good dog, good dog,’ she said, and ran a hand along the warm, rough hair of its coat. Hartley patted its head and the dog closed its eyes in pleasure.

  ‘It likes you,’ he said.

  ‘He likes us both.’

  ‘He understands our closeness,’ Hartley said, accepting the gender without substantiation. ‘Dogs have a sense of such things.’

  ‘He even smells good.’ She bent down, put her face close to his back. ‘A woodsmoke smell, with a bit of old sacks in it as well.’

  ‘I don’t usually like dogs, but this fellow’s a bit different, isn’t he?’

  For a couple of minutes the white dog lay between them, then got up, looked at each in turn and bounded off again, taking no notice of anyone else on the beach. It ran with the same sense of purpose that had marked its arrival. It diminished in the distance, swerved inland and was lost to view among the dunes.

  ‘Not sure what that was all about,’ said Hartley.

  ‘A welcome, that’s what it was. He’s a member of the local beach committee.’

  They both felt a minor privilege in being singled out, though other people had paid little attention, and the oddity of it gave them a talking point as they gathered up their things. They walked back to the house, having put on just their shoes and hats, and carrying their towels. Through the fabric of his floppy hat, Hartley could feel the sun’s heat on his head, and it smote his bare back as he walked. It was after one o’clock.

  ‘I’m hungry now,’ he said.

  Casually, but with a certain pride, Hartley assembled their lunch on the glass-topped table of the kitchen. Boutique cheeses, fresh salads and bread that he had bought on his way in that morning from Titirangi, finely sliced ham, lemon cake in a plastic dome, and a bottle of Pol Roger enclosed in a shaped chilly bag.

  ‘I didn’t bring anything,’ she said apologetically. ‘I thought we’d be having lunch in a restaurant.’

  ‘You brought yourself. You came,’ Hartley said. It was turning out just as he had imagined it, and that was unusual — for once to have experience match expectation.

  ‘You’ve done all this, and I’ve just taken everything for granted.’

  ‘But you’ve got all sorts of difficult stuff to deal with. Come on, come on, let’s enjoy ourselves. Let’s get through as much food as we can. I don’t want to take bits and pieces back.’

  ‘I haven’t had real champagne for ages,’ she said. What reason would there have been for it?

  ‘I gambled on this place having decent glasses, and they have.’

  He sprang the cork with a satisfying explosion, and they sat in their swimming costumes in the new kitchen of glass, stainless steel and chrome, and drank champagne, feeling the last of the sand grains beneath their feet. Hartley could have almost wept for joy, and they hadn’t even begun to fuck.

  That was done in the main upstairs bedroom. Although the room wasn’t overlooked and they could see no one in other houses, they drew the net curtains over the open doorway to the balcony. The light sea breeze moved the curtains so that they whispered and rustled on the wooden floor like the hem of a full dress, and the sun remained strong behind them. Sarah had a shower to rid herself of the last of the sand and salt of the sea, and Hartley came and stepped into the shower box with her, and they stood silently, breast to breast in the water and steam, ran their hands over each other’s backs. They dried themselves without hurry and when Hartley went back into the bedroom, she used the jelly.

  ‘We’d better take off the cover,’ she said when she joined him. It was white cotton with satin edging and embroidered wild flowers, and they folded it and left it on the floor. They lay on a plain, green blanket, and at first he stroked just her arms and shoulders, and kissed her.

  They engaged in the most intimate of physical acts in the pristine house of complete strangers, and yet she felt more relaxed, more at home, than in the faux Spanish motel of the city.

  Afterwards they lay side by side, facing the same way, but not pressed together because it was too hot for that. They were not exposed to each other, and so comfortable in nakedness. The hems of the pale curtains whispered on the floor, and the blaze of the sun was dissipated in the folds as falls of colour.

  ‘On the DVD remotes they have that pause button, don’t they,’ he said after a while.

  ‘So?’

  ‘You push it and the scene stays as a tableau on the screen. That’s what I’d like now. A pause button and we’d just lie here together for ever.’

  ‘Romantic, but not realistic. Actually, I feel the need to go have a pee, and after that I’m going to have another shower,’ she said, and he laughed. ‘And I didn’t notice any pause button in your repertoire a while ago.’

  ‘If we were together I wonder whether every day would be like this?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve just remembered that our clothes are still downstairs. Damn.’ Practicality was a defence against emotion in which she might make declarations that were impossible to sustain.

  ‘I’ll get them,’ Hartley said. He stood up, took the swimming costumes from the floor of the ensuite, and went downstairs. She noticed again his lack of height, the slimness and finely lined face. There was something boyish about him, despite his age. His cock had become small, retreated into a nest of greying pubic hair. What was she doing, taking pleasure and relief in this way when she was a grandmother and still loved her husband? She got up and went in to the shower, refusing, or unable, to give an answer. What harm could there be in love and friendship when no pain was intended? She couldn’t help comparing the gratitude and solicitude shown by Hartley after sex, with the commonplace sense of entitlement and release she remembered as Robert’s response.

  When dressed they made coffee, and spread what remained of their lunch on the kitchen table again. As one hunger had been assuaged, another had returned. There was even some champagne left. They talked of trips and holidays, and whether they would have a home like this if they had the choice. They talked of those decisions and happenings in their lives the crucial nature of which had been hidden at the time. They talked of their day, the white dog on the beach, the champagne, and Hartley reached his hand to hers on the table.

  The time still came, however, when they had to leave. Sarah became an assiduous cleaner, determined that the unknown woman of the house would find nothing to object to, nothing smeared, crumpled or stained, nothing even of the sand they had cheerfully carried in on their bodies. She bagged up the detritus of their food to take with them, rather than leaving it in the lined and empty bin beneath the sweep of the stainless steel bench. Unconsciously, perhaps, she wished to erase the actuality of her day, so nothing remained that deserved a
ccusation, and all the pleasure was a blameless exercise of the imagination and could be carried away with them.

  So back they drove, the places of the morning still there, but reversed in order and in an altered angle of the sun: Matakana with its vivid pottery, Warkworth, Puhoi, Orewa and Silverdale.

  Hartley’s mood was precarious, buoyed by the success of the day, and simultaneously dragged down by its approaching end. ‘Come home with me and stay the night,’ he said. ‘Robert’s not back until late morning. I’ll run you in early. What do you say?’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What happens if he rings?’

  ‘Well, you’re out, that’s what happens. You’ve gone out to a film, or something. Jesus, surely you’re able to go out of the apartment when he’s away?’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ she said. ‘You know that.’ They drove for a while without talking. Then, ‘Let’s not spoil it,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank you for a wonderful, wonderful day. Everything about it. You know I’d love to come back with you, but it’s just not possible. We can have other times. There’ll be other times.’ A grey ute overtook them, a Maori youth sitting in the back with his long hair flowing in the slip-stream, and one arm around a sheep dog. He raised a thumb and smiled.

  ‘I don’t think you’ve ever called me “darling”,’ Hartley said, drawing back from the brink of any disagreement, wishing to keep the mood of the day intact. ‘Don’t people in love call each other “darling”?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you’ve ever called me “darling” either.’

  ‘All the time when you’re not there,’ he said.

  ‘Doesn’t count and can’t be proved.’

  ‘Let’s do it now then,’ and he leant towards her as he drove. ‘Darr — ling,’ he drawled extravagantly.

  ‘Why yes, darr — ling,’ she said. They didn’t kiss; they laughed. That’s how they returned to the city, amusing each other in flippancy as if they were young again, and yet holding to the present while they were able. The low sun was strong and gave the landscape a chequerboard quality of sharp features and shadowed concavities.

  Hartley felt down after he’d taken Sarah home and returned to Titrangi. He knew it was reaction to the emotional high of the day, but understanding didn’t lessen the effect. The Pol Roger bottle he didn’t throw out with the other rubbish, but placed on the bench as a sign of the outing’s success. What would it be like, he wondered, to have a string of such days — on and on until they become an accustomed life? What would Sarah be doing, alone in the apartment? He hoped she would be just as convinced of the worth of a future together.

  All he saw began to shiver and fragment as twilight deepened, not because the light was failing, but as a harbinger of a migraine. He wasn’t surprised. Everything had to be paid for. He took the tablets straight away, changed and lay on the bed. If he were lucky it would be only the headache, and not the retching until even a thin bile was exhausted. He shrugged his shoulders to relax his neck muscles. He endeavoured to concentrate on the day: the rich glazes of the pottery at Matakana, the muscular movement of the ocean’s swell, the high bedroom in his client’s new house, the white dog that chose to come and lie with them on the warm sand of the beach.

  Every meeting was the more special because of the difficulty in achieving it. On several occasions there was bitter disappointment when something came up for Sarah at the last moment and she couldn’t make the time and place. Because such care, preparation and subterfuge were needed for each assignation, it startled them both when once they met by accident.

  Sarah had been to the optometrist for a check, and been advised to buy new glasses, just as Robert had cynically predicted. He understood how the professions prospered. She had afterwards gone on the brief distance to Queen Street, and as she turned away from looking into the window of a dress shop, she noticed Hartley in the café next door. He was wearing a lighter suit that she hadn’t seen before, and a pale blue shirt and darker blue tie. It was unusual for her to observe him objectively, for almost always they were swept up with each other when they met, eyes locking with all the signals that lovers have. Even when she was alone and thinking of him, she imagined them together, and now she saw him in his separate life, focused on someone else.

  He was angled forward in his typical intensity, his longish, grey hair slightly unruly. He was talking, and moving his right hand palm uppermost in small jerks as if bouncing an invisible balloon. In a film the plot would dictate that Hartley’s companion was an attractive, younger woman leaning in with reciprocal close attention, but in reality the person opposite was a man of similar age to Hartley, and similar occupation judging by his suit and dark shoes, but quite distinct in appearance, his balding head seeming to sit directly on his shoulders, and his face full.

  Sarah could have walked on, content with the glimpse of Hartley in his workday world, but she was in love and needed the frisson of his attention. Because the meeting was authentically a coincidence, she felt somehow, illogically, free of any guilt. She went into the café and up to the counter as if she hadn’t seen him, and he noticed her immediately, as she knew he would. He stopped talking, excused himself and came over.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he said, his voice infused with unexpected pleasure.

  ‘I had to have an eye test,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have to get new reading glasses. More expense.’

  ‘It’s so great to see you. You should have said and I’d have popped out to meet you. Well, anyway, come over and meet Simon.’

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt. It’s one of your business days, I know.’

  ‘Not at all. It’s such a bonus to run into each other. Come on, really. He’ll be going back in a minute anyway.’

  Simon Drummond worked with Hartley at Hastings Hull, and they had been to the university to listen to a visiting academic talk on the law of contracts. Sarah was introduced as a family friend and found Hartley’s colleague to be both affable and courteous, but he soon apologised and left to return to the office.

  ‘You should go, too,’ she told Hartley.

  ‘No way. We meet little enough, and this is great. Serendipity, or something like that. How long have we got?’

  ‘You don’t need to stay.’

  ‘Nonsense. How long have you got?’

  ‘Well, I suppose as long as I’m back by five or so. A couple of hours anyway.’

  ‘We’ll go to a hotel, or motel.’

  ‘No,’ she said. Making love was joyous, and affirming, but this meeting was different to the others and she wished it to play out in a different way. Not everything was about sex. She had thought the day had no other point than the remedy of her increasing long-sightedness — presbyopia the eye woman had called it — but now she was with a man who loved her and she felt lifted, favoured, because of it. ‘Let’s walk somewhere together,’ she said. ‘We could go to your office. I’ve never been there. I could be an influential client with a big business deal to discuss.’

  ‘Why not? I’m happy to take you.’ And he was. He would be proud to take her anywhere.

  But she was joking. Really she wanted them to walk together in the sun and talk, enjoy the time with each other that had come so naturally as a gift of chance. So they turned up the slope from the main street heading towards Albert Park. Hartley took her hand, and Sarah responded by giving his a squeeze.

  Hartley paused at the window of a jeweller’s and looked closely at the display. ‘I’d like to buy you something. Something special that you really like, something lasting, and I don’t care what it costs.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got no one to spend money on.’

  ‘You’ve got a son. You’ll have grandchildren.’

  ‘That diamond solitaire,’ he said. ‘There on the second pad, or that sapphire one in platinum.’ The diamond was over nine thousand dollars, the sapphire more.

  ‘Come on,’ she sa
id, tugging at his arm slightly.

  ‘I absolutely mean it.’

  ‘You know I couldn’t take it, and I couldn’t wear it anyway. There’s no way I could explain something as valuable as that.’ She knew that he was serious, that if she agreed he would go right in and buy it then and there. Such a demonstration of his love, and her own ability to create it, gave her a brief and almost giddy charge.

  ‘I’m not letting you go home until I’ve bought you something.’

  ‘Okay, you can buy me something flippant then — something that I’d buy myself, and ordinary enough not to be noticed.’

  ‘Flippant?’ said Hartley delightedly. ‘What sort of a description is that?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Lingerie. I’ll buy you French undies.’

  ‘Like hell you will.’ They were close to a shoe shop. ‘You can buy me slippers. I need a pair. All grandmothers do.’

  That’s what happened. They went in and had fun trying on far more pairs than were necessary for her to make a decision. Hartley took over the duties of the slightly dour woman shop assistant, sitting down with Sarah and putting her foot on his knee, making extravagant commentary on each slipper he tried.

  ‘Stop being so silly,’ she said. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

  ‘Flippant you said, so I’m giving you flippant. Right? And anyway we’re going to buy blue ones. You know that.’

  Blue velveteen they were, with leather piping. Rather silly slippers really, but that was their mood, and they loved the mood, the slippers and each other, and Sarah knew she could have had a diamond or sapphire ring worth thousands if she’d wished. That’s what a pair of blue slippers represented, she thought, and she smiled to herself as Hartley took up the wrapped cardboard box. She thanked the quiet shop woman, aware that she had stood by and witnessed the little play of affection, and despite herself Sarah felt pleasure in that, too, for there is almost always an element of vanity in love.

  It was too hot to walk far, and when they reached the park they sat on a bench shaded by the trees and talked. A group of young Chinese women came happily past, dark and pretty, chatting in English, but not with a Kiwi accent. Although Sarah had been in Auckland for many weeks, she still found it unusual that she shared it with so many Asian people. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone except Robert before, in case it was thought that she resented their presence, but she was safe with Hartley. ‘I’m still not used to it,’ she told him. ‘The malls especially. You’re outnumbered, aren’t you?’