by Paul Torday
I already knew who Emma Macmillan was, because our parents were friends. We had been in each other’s houses and I knew that I liked her, but had never got beyond a feeling that I liked her on the few occasions when we had met. Most of the people of my age at that party were from Yorkshire or Durham or Northumberland and I didn’t know that many of them. In those days the Pennines were a social as well as a physical divide and I was on the wrong side of them that evening, as far as I was concerned. Then I recognised Emma, sitting at a table talking with two other girls, so I asked her to dance. We bopped away energetically to a couple of songs and then left the marquee, which was very hot, and went into the house to cool off. Quite a few people were wandering about in the enormous marble entrance hall, or staring at the pictures. There was a drinks table attended by a waiter in one corner, and I managed to obtain a couple of champagne cocktails. As we sipped our drinks I asked, ‘Emma, why do I have to come all the way to Yorkshire to meet you when you only live an hour and a half up the road?’
‘You must know the answer to that question better than me,’ she replied.
I smiled. ‘Fair enough. Do you think you could face another dance with me when we’ve finished these drinks?’
We returned to the dance floor a few minutes later and, as luck would have it, it was a slow number. Some time during this dance, I pulled Emma very close to me and we kissed. When we did this, I felt a tingle like an electric shock go right through me to the bottom of my feet. Emma seemed to have experienced something similar, for I felt her body quiver against mine. It was very hard to let go of her when the kiss ended. Nothing further of consequence was said or done that night, but when we said goodbye – she left with her parents at about one o’clock – both of us knew that something momentous had happened.
That dance was at the end of August, and in September my leave ended and I went back to my regiment. But it was the beginning of my long affair with Emma. After a year we became lovers, during one of my leaves. Two years later we were engaged, but our agreement was that I would take the junior staff course I had put off for so long and apply for promotion when I was thirty. Then I would become a major and we would get married. We were both faithful to each other. As far as I knew Emma never even looked at another man. And with each leave it was like the beginning of the affair all over again, except that Emma lost her plump, puppy look and her features became more finely drawn. She was a grown-up woman with her own job and her own life. She would have been a catch for anyone but, miraculously, she kept herself for me.
But the innocent schoolboy in the photograph – the person who had gone to Sandhurst all those years ago and was going to be a colonel one day – had disappeared. I had gone into the army feeling cheerful, optimistic, certain that I could help make the world a better place, confident in the expectation of a happy future when I came out. It hadn’t worked out like that.
It took me a while to realise what had changed. At first I thought it was everyone else who was behaving oddly. After a while I realised something had gone wrong inside me. Very wrong. Emma was the only person who understood what had happened, and the only person who tried to do anything about it.
The taxi slowed down and I saw that we were approaching the twin stone pillars and the lodge that marked the entrance to Hartlepool Hall. Adeena was sitting bolt upright. The taxi entered the long drive that led in a great curve first underneath an avenue of limes, the leaves now turning golden, then an avenue of wellingtonia, then blue cedars. Adeena spoke for the first time in what seemed like hours: ‘Where are we going?’
‘This house belongs to a friend of mine. He is away in France so the house is empty.’
At that moment Hartlepool Hall came into view. You can visit the website, or look it up in Johansens or Hudson’s, but nothing quite mirrors the effect the house itself has on you when seen for the first time. The grand front was interrupted by a portico with a great colonnade. Uncountable windows gleamed in the late-morning sunshine, and the house was crowned with a stone balustrade above which appeared leaded roofs and a central dome of white marble, contrasting with the grey stone all about it. Behind the house were stables, estate offices and a sign that indicated the way to the gift shop and tearoom (closed until Easter).
The taxi pulled up in front of the house and I paid the driver, then unloaded my overnight bag and Adeena’s carrier bags from the boot. Horace appeared silently at my side and took the bags from my hand. I turned, startled.
‘Lord Hartlepool called to say to expect you, sir. Everything is ready for you.’
Horace was ageless. Silver-haired and slightly stooped, he nevertheless betrayed no evidence of the fatigue that many decades of buttling for the Hartlepools must have brought upon him. By now he would have been well into his seventies, but his face was unlined and rosy-cheeked and his eyes were clear. He turned and bowed to Adeena, who stared at him.
I said, ‘This is … you’d better call the lady Mrs Gaunt, Horace.’
‘Congratulations, sir,’ said Horace, without a flicker. ‘Lord Hartlepool did not mention that the person accompanying you would be your wife. I had been instructed to make up two bedrooms, Mr Gaunt, sir. I hope that is correct.’
‘I’m a bad sleeper,’ I replied. ‘That is correct.’
Adeena and I followed Horace up the wide stone steps and into the hallway. This was a vast space, with a black and white marbled floor, and walls covered with pictures depicting scenes from naval battles, rural idylls or stories from Greek mythology. At one end of the hall was an enormous white marble group portraying a she-wolf suckling the twins Romulus and Remus, a testimony to the deep purse and imperial longings of an earlier Lord Hartlepool, who had purchased it on his grand tour. At the other end was an enormous fireplace, unlit. Beams of light shone down from the circular dome above the hall.
Adeena gazed around her in amazement. Horace stopped and put the bags down.
‘I have lit a fire in the Green Drawing Room, Mr Gaunt. If you and Mrs Gaunt would like to go there I will have these bags taken up to your rooms. May I bring you some refreshment?’
I declined anything for the moment and steered Adeena towards the drawing room. A log fire burned merrily away and, after the hall, the room had a more human quality. The walls were hung with green silk, and yet more enormous oil paintings hung from the picture rail. On a side table stood a drinks tray. I looked thirstily at it, and wished I had accepted Horace’s offer of a drink.
Adeena looked around her for a moment longer, then turned to me and said:
‘Your friend: is he a government minister?’
‘No.’
‘Or a general?’
‘No, he is just the man who owns the house.’
Adeena went to the door of the room and stood looking again at the cavernous splendour of the hall.
‘Why is your friend not here?’
‘He lives in France,’ I explained.
‘If he is in France, who lives here? How many families?’
‘Nobody lives in the house just now. My friend may come back here again one day.’
Adeena shook her head in disbelief.
‘One man lives in this house? One man only?’
‘Well, he isn’t here at the moment. They keep the place going, though. I expect it gets used now and again.’
‘There is enough wealth here to buy a whole province in Afghanistan,’ Adeena said, ‘Why do the British bother to come to our country when they have such houses as this?’
Horace returned before I could think of an answer.
‘Your rooms are ready, sir, and I have taken the liberty of unpacking your bags. Lunch will be served in the dining room in half an hour, sir, if that is convenient?’
‘Fix me a gin and tonic, please, Horace,’ I said. ‘And the lady – Mrs Gaunt – would like … what would you like to drink, Adeena?’
‘A glass of milk.’
When Horace had served us our drinks I took Adeena out through the French windows
at the other end of the room. We stood on a stone terrace, looking down across banks of dark green rhododendrons towards the lake. A family of mallard, disturbed by our arrival, skittered across the water half in flight, then subsided back on to the surface a few yards farther on and paddled away demurely. Clumps of water lilies floated on the water. From the other bank a heron flapped lazily into the trees.
‘It is very beautiful here,’ said Adeena suddenly, her tone different to before. ‘I have never seen a place like this. So green, and so quiet.’
We walked to the end of the terrace, where there was a view of the formal gardens beyond the house.
Adeena drank her milk and gazed thoughtfully at the scene. Then she said, ‘I would like to stay in this place for a while. I feel safe here.’
‘I’m afraid we can only stay for a few days,’ I replied.
‘Why is that so? If your friend does not like his English house and stays in France, why should we not stay here longer?’
It was a good question.
A little later Horace appeared at the doors that led from the drawing room on to the terrace and announced that lunch was served. After lunch Adeena and I went for a walk in the formal gardens. It was a glorious autumn afternoon. The sun still felt warm: a last memory of summer. There were displays of dark green topiary, plain avenues of yew, bushes that had been sculpted into birds, dogs or other shapes too indistinct to define. As I walked, Adeena followed quietly just behind me, not speaking. I was trying to work out what I was doing here, and what I was going to do next. Since Kevin had knocked me over in his car four days ago, I felt as if I had never got my balance back. Although I had been off balance for a lot more than four days.
I couldn’t understand why Adeena was here with me. Why hadn’t she gone to her embassy and asked for help? Why had she come to me? And what on earth was I going to do about her? That was the real question. I was beginning to feel responsible for her, just because I had married her, even though we both knew that was a sham.
I looked at her as she walked along the gravel path and suddenly she smiled for the first time since I had met her. Since we had arrived at Hartlepool Hall she had become a different person: the haunted look had left her face. Now she wore the expression of someone who found herself unexpectedly on holiday.
‘You are wondering what to do about me,’ she said, breaking the silence. ‘You were tricked into marrying me and now you want to find a way to get rid of me. Is that not so?’
She had not wanted to marry me, to say the least. When I met her for the first time it seemed as if she would rather cut her own throat. But now she appeared to have accepted, for better or for worse, that she was stuck with me for the moment.
For better or for worse: I wondered whether they used that phrase in Afghan marriage ceremonies. Because of my own habit of agreeing to almost anything anyone suggested to me, I had ended up getting married to a girl about whom I knew nothing and with whom I had even less in common. She was without doubt easy to look at, but she would never be easy to talk to: we had no friends in common, no memories that we shared. I had mostly seen her country from inside an armoured vehicle because the people who lived there sometimes shot at you or tried to blow you up.
I was beginning to realise what I had to do. Instead of running around the country with her, I had to get her back to London and then she could either go to her embassy or back to Aseeb. It wasn’t my problem. I turned to face her. If we were going to have a difficult conversation, the sooner the better.
‘Adeena,’ I said. ‘We need to talk.’
She came up to me and put her arm through mine. The physical contact was unexpected and pleasant.
‘This is a place like paradise. I have never seen such a house, or such gardens. Thank you for bringing me here. It is so peaceful. There has never been any war here, has there?’
‘Not in a long time.’ I saw a stone bench set against a yew hedge a few yards along the path. ‘Let’s sit down for a moment.’
We sat side by side. The view across the gardens carried our gaze westwards, across to the encircling woods. Beyond was a hint of hills: the dales, running up to high moorland far away. My parents’ home was thirty or forty miles from here. The sun was lower in the sky now, and I had to shield my eyes from it. Adeena’s eyes were closed and she had tilted her face to catch the warmth of the sun. She looked tired and sad again. I felt sorry for her, but I knew what I had to say.
‘Coming here was a mistake. Another mistake.’
‘Why was it a mistake?’ she asked. ‘Did you mean to go somewhere else?’
‘No, I didn’t mean that. It seemed like a good idea. I was worried Aseeb would find you if we stayed at my flat. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he wouldn’t have bothered … just cut his losses.’
After a moment Adeena replied: ‘I know Aseeb. He will kill us both if he finds us. He does not like people who do not do what he wants. He is full of anger. You do not know him.’
This seemed a bit melodramatic to me.
‘Well, maybe. But I shouldn’t have married you, you shouldn’t have followed me to London, and I shouldn’t have come here with you.’
There was another silence. Then Adeena asked: ‘Why did you marry me? Was it as a favour to Aseeb?’
I swallowed. I couldn’t speak for a moment, I felt so ashamed of what I had to say.
‘He offered me money,’ I told her. ‘It was thousands of pounds. I don’t have a job at the moment and the money would have been very helpful to me.’
Adeena was silent. Then she said:
‘It is normal for money to be given when a husband takes a bride.’
‘It was an immigration problem, wasn’t it?’ I asked her. ‘You needed an English husband to get a residency permit. Do you know what Aseeb’s plans were for you after that?’
‘I cannot say,’ Adeena told me. She looked away and again I had the feeling she was contemplating something unpleasant. ‘But Aseeb would have kept me, and the things he would have made me do … would have been very bad. And if I did not do what he wanted he would find my brother in Kabul and harm him. Or he would send me back and give me up to the Taliban. That is why I had to escape. And when I escaped, to whom should I go? I know only one other person in the whole of this country.’
‘But even if I am your legal husband …’ I began. Adeena put a finger to her lips.
‘No more now. I understand what you will tell me. But I do not want to hear it. I am tired. I have not slept properly since I left Kabul. Take me back to the house and ask the servant to show me to my room.’
I awoke after sunset. I opened the curtains and wandered next door to have a bath. By the time I had finished wallowing – it was one of those deep, old-fashioned baths in which you could lie flat out without your toes touching the taps – it was nearly time to go downstairs for dinner. There was no sign of Adeena. I wondered whether I should knock on her door, but decided to leave her to wake up in her own time.
Downstairs I found that Horace had lit a fire in another room lined with books from floor to ceiling. On the drinks tray behind the sofa was a selection of bottles and glasses including a jug of milk with clingfilm over the top. I helped myself to a whisky and water and sat by the fire. Then there was a rustle and Adeena appeared at the door. She looked like a different girl; someone who was used to coming downstairs dressed for dinner in a house like this. She was wearing a long black evening dress with silver edging. It had not been one of her purchases that morning.
‘Where did you get that dress?’ I asked, getting to my feet.
‘The kind servant put it on the bed for me. He said it belonged to – I cannot pronounce her name – the woman who lived here before your friend. His mother. Do you like it?’
The dress could have been made for her. She looked wonderful in it.
‘You look fantastic.’
Adeena was pleased with the phrase.
‘Fantastic! That is how I feel – like I am living in a fantasy.’
Later, over dinner, I tried to return to the afternoon’s conversation, but Adeena would not let me. She surprised me by using my name for the very first time.
‘Richard, I know what it is you wanted to say to me this afternoon. You are right. We should not have been married. You should not have taken the money, and I should have not let Aseeb threaten me.’
‘But you were scared. You have every excuse for what happened and I have none.’
‘Please,’ said Adeena. ‘I do not want to talk any more about it. Just for the next few hours, I would like to pretend. I would like to live in this fantasy house, in this fantasy dress, and pretend it is all mine. There is no Aseeb, no Taliban, and we have always lived here. Let us agree that it is all real, and not just a dream. Will you not do so?’
She seemed so earnest. I smiled and said, ‘Of course.’
After dinner we went back to the library and Horace brought us coffee. We sat for an hour or so, not talking very much, but this time the silences were not awkward. When it was time to go upstairs, I followed Adeena to the landing outside her room, opened the door of her bedroom for her and said, ‘Goodnight. I’ll see you in the morning.’
She did not reply but stood there in her black evening dress, her blonde hair falling to her shoulders, giving me a look that could have meant anything. I thought it meant that I could go through that bedroom door with her if I wished. I knew that I would like to do that – I would very much like to do that – but also that getting any more involved with this girl would be absolutely crazy.