She walks towards the table. ‘Marta.’ He envelops both her hands in his, a big man, with a belly now. Of course, he must be – she has no idea, but maybe fifty, fifty-five? He has not aged well.
‘This is Tom,’ he says.
Tom stands too, shakes her hand. He might as well be a clone of his father but so much younger, a beautiful, gangly, shy boy. The way he pushes back his hair; it is Mats.
‘I remember you as a baby,’ she says.
‘You were our au pair?’ Tom says. ‘Dad said. When Mum was ill?’
She nods. What a devastatingly charming boy. Her eyes search his face for the baby she knew – and did love.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘I’m going for a walk. Back in an hour, Dad.’
‘Make sure you are.’
‘Nice to meet you, Marta.’ A flicker of smile and he has gone, threading lankily between the tables. They both watch until the doors have revolved him away.
‘Sit, please,’ Mats says, sinking back into his own chair.
She does sit. Her legs feel weak. The place is noisy, a waiter passes with plates balanced all down his arm.
‘What will you have?’
‘A Coke.’
‘Nothing to eat? Sandwich? Cake?’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t have much time.’
Mats beckons a waiter and orders coffee, a cheese and ham sandwich, a Coke. ‘Sure you won’t have anything?’ he says and she shakes her head. Her eyes rest on the paunchy belly between the wings of his jacket.
‘So,’ she says, once he’s sitting. ‘What do you want?’
‘To see you again,’ he says. ‘See what became of you, if you like.’
‘What became of me,’ she echoes.
‘Tie up a few loose ends,’ he adds, tugging at his earlobe, a gesture she dimly recalls. He waits, looking at her over the rim of his glasses, almost shyly.
‘Well, this is it,’ she says, voice light and brittle, sweeping a hand to indicate her entirety.
He nods, clears his throat. ‘You teach, I understand?’
‘English.’
‘Of course, your English was always excellent. Married?’
‘No.’
‘Children?’
The waiter delivers their order, the bill in a smart little folder, embossed with gold, like a holy book. The Coke is in a towering glass with ice, a slice of lemon.
‘Tom is very . . .’ She almost says handsome but changes it to ‘. . . tall. How’s Artie?’
‘He’s at University – just finishing his first year. History. Doing well.’
‘Clever boy, I knew it.’
He stirs sugar into his coffee. The sandwich is huge and served with crisps. Her fingers itch to take one, but that might seem too familiar, might seem some kind of encouragement. But to what? What does he want? He takes a bite of the vast, dry looking sandwich and chews for ages; she can hear a clicking in his jaw.
When she lifts her glass the ice clunks against the sides. No need for lemon in Coke, she thinks, watching a pip spiral through the rising bubbles. With a teaspoon she flips the lemon out of the glass.
Behind Mats’ head she sees a woman take a dress from a flashy carrier bag to show her friend, or maybe her mother, a vicious lime green thing, strappy and frothed with lace. Horrible. The woman arranges it on a chair, tweaking the skirt straight.
An awkward silence stretches before he says, ‘Tell me about you.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. Where do you live?’
‘I have a flat, above ironmongers. The ironmongers. I live alone. It is fine.’
Her stomach growls. She should have said yes to a sandwich.
He asks about her work and she describes the various aspects of her job, the big workers’ classes in the evenings, the private tuition. He asks about her homecoming, and she braces herself. Will not think back to that time. Although he did help her. Maybe it’s natural of him to ask; but still. No. That time is over. Sealed up inside. Why would she ever want to think of it again?
She takes another sip, the bubbles scrambling through her empty stomach. ‘Of course, my family were happy,’ she says. She stops and scratches at a fleck on the table. He probably wants to hear that it was wonderful, wants her to fall at his feet in gratitude. It was good to be home, of course, and of course she was and always will be grateful for his help. But it was never the same; her family never looked at her the same way. Never was she able to feel properly at home again.
She changes the subject, asks about his life, his work, but he won’t say much, and what he does say is dull. The conversation is tiresome. She longs to check the time. What is she doing here with this dull middle-aged man, who, she realizes hasn’t mentioned his wife?
‘How’s Vivienne?’ she says, remembering the troubled, suspicious woman. Maybe they’d had some warm moments together, watching soap operas and cookery shows, but Marta could never quite look her in the eye and Vivienne must have sensed that something was off. But she could be kind, gave her things, bought her things.
Mats shrugs unhappily, fills his mouth with sandwich. A waiter arrives at the women’s table with a bottle of wine in an ice-bucket. Maybe it’s a birthday and that’s the party dress for later. Mother and daughter. They are both baked tan-bed brown with stiff sprayed hair. She thinks of her own poor Mama, feet swollen in her slippers, hardly able to walk now. But at least she doesn’t have to work anymore. Milya lives in the same block so Mama sees her grandchildren every day, and Marta helps with the bills and visits at weekends. Milya married young, has two kids; her husband seems to be a good man. Milya and Sig are best friends now, neighbours, their children play together, and sometimes Marta feels left out. She feels replaced.
‘Vivienne’s fine,’ Mats says at last. ‘But we’ve gone our separate ways. Thought we’d wait till Tom had finished school, that was the plan, but well, she met someone and . . .’ He shrugs.
‘Shame,’ she says, although she’s more surprised they’ve stayed together all this time; there was never any true warmth between them that she could detect.
He’s gazing at her intensely, and she stiffens. Surely he hasn’t come here because of the break up? Surely he’s not expecting something from her?
‘Would you like these crisps?’ he says. ‘I’m supposed to be watching my weight.’ He pats his stomach ruefully.
She would like to refuse but reaches out. The crisps are stale, but still she eats them, finishes her Coke. She takes out her phone look at the time.
‘Well it was nice to meet you again.’ She stands and extends her hand. ‘Thanks for the drink.’
‘You’ve got to go? Already?’ As he stands to take her hand, he looks so stricken she almost laughs. Does he really want to prolong this deadly small talk?
‘Look,’ he says. ‘Can I take you out to dinner?’
She slides her phone back into her bag.
‘Tonight,’ he adds. ‘We’re leaving tomorrow. Tom wants to see Bucharest.’
‘Tonight?’ she says.
‘Just dinner,’ he says.
She stares up at him. Just dinner! She cannot read his expression.
‘What are you doing here?’ she says.
‘Seeing you.’
‘Yes but – you did not come to my country just to see me!’ She laughs, but he isn’t laughing.
‘Dinner?’ he says and he gives her a little smile, intimate, meaningful, and she sees what he wants, stupid, old man, after all this time; in English they call it a wild goose chase, he is on a wild goose chase and she’s filled with disdain. She stands up, takes a step away. ‘You think you will buy me dinner and I will have sex with you?’
He takes off his glasses and blinks. ‘No.’ He attempts to take her hand. ‘No, no, no, no, NO . . .’ The no grows louder and people are looking.
> ‘OK,’ she says quickly. ‘Sit down.’
‘Sex is the last thing on my mind,’ he says, much, much too loudly.
The two women and the empty party dress are riveted.
He is so earnest, the way he inclines himself towards her. ‘You must believe me, Marta. That is not why I’m here.’
Marta sits down and he slumps back onto his chair. They sit in silence for a moment.
‘What do you want?’ she says, her jaw is clenched so tight she can hardly speak.
‘To talk, there’s something I need . . .’
A bitter fragment of laugh comes from her mouth. ‘You need? Look, thank you for helping me back then. But there’s nothing between us. OK?’ Her voice is hard enough to strike sparks. ‘OK?’
The eyebrows of the women rise, they grin and nudge each other, but she doesn’t care.
Mats sits dumbly, slack faced, defeated, sad.
‘How dare you come here and try to make me think about, about . . .’ The choke of tears is in her throat but she won’t cry; two waiters are making for the table, has her voice been raised so loud? She makes a dash for the Ladies where oh God it is familiar but dirtier than back then, paper towels overflowing from a bin and strewn across the floor. There was a rose she meant to steal for Mama, a tatty, cheap bit of shit. She locks herself in a cubicle in case they send someone in after her, but no one comes. She uses the toilet, washes her hands, stares in the mirror. Like a floater in her eye is the appalled sadness on Mats’ face. Her anger fizzles out of her into the wet paper towels under her feet.
She’ll be late if she doesn’t go now. And someone will be sure to complain. Her job is not secure. So many people with good English now. She catches her eye in the mirror, her hair needs washing, her face looks pinched – a bit like Mama’s. She touches her pale lips with her finger. What is she doing back here? If only she could leave and start again. But there is no chance of that, a waste of time to think it. Time is money, of course, it is; she must not keep the students waiting.
She straightens her expression and goes out through the door. Mats hasn’t moved. He sits, hunched, hands dangling between his knees. He looks defeated, humiliated. The women are looking at him with pity, giggling and watching her now. What will happen next in this little show? She means to walk straight past, straight out, but she swerves back to him.
‘OK.’
He looks up at her doubtfully.
‘If you want.’
He clears his throat before he speaks. ‘Thank you. Yes.’
‘So now I will go to work.’
‘Here? Eight?’
She shakes her head. ‘I am not finished work then. Nine 0’clock. And not here. There’s another place. Premiera. By the way,’ she says to the women who are rudely, openly listening, ‘that is a shitty horrible dress.’
And she walks across the lobby, through the revolving doors and out into the street.
Mats
Mats stands under the feeble shower. He puts his head back, lets water drench his face. The greyish soap is reluctant to lather, he rubs it against his chest hair, under his arms and with soapy hands washes his soft, slippery, unwanted genitals. When he thinks of tonight his stomach tightens as if a fist is in there, squeezing. Marta, she has grown so . . . he is afraid, awed by her. A child really, thirteen years ago, and now an assured woman, so stern. He felt an idiot at lunch under her level brown gaze. Didn’t dare speak of the past at all, or hardly, and that is all there is between them, isn’t it? The past. But tonight he will speak. It may be the only chance. He’s waited thirteen years for this; for thirteen years the secret has gnawed inside him. No one in the world knows that he killed a man. All the strategies to make it right, to bargain with the universe, all the money to charity, all the patience with Vivienne, the determination to be a perfect husband and father, stepfather to Arthur, none of this has worked. He still knows. He still did it. He still killed a man.
And then, after all those years of trying to be a good husband, Vivienne fell in love with someone else! With his stiff back he can’t easily reach his feet, knows the nails need clipping, rubs one sole on top of the other and staggers, leaning on the cold tiled wall. Not that he minds Vivienne going really, maybe it’s even a relief? He can’t imagine finding another wife. How can he move on with this secret lodged inside him? The only hope is to tell it. To go back in order to go forward. And the only one he can tell it to is Marta.
He switches off the shower and shudders as it trickles cold before the water stops. He dries himself, watching his own pink bulk in the steamy mirror. Of course, he would like another wife, someone to take care of, rub his back maybe, bring some fun into his life, some affection.
He sits on the toilet lid and grunts as he leans forward to dry his feet, the muscles dragging in his back. He can understand what Tom must think: that he is after Marta in that way. But no. Really no. What is it you want from her? he asks himself. Absolution comes the inane reply. Obviously no one can provide this. Not Marta, not a priest, not God, unless you believe in him, and even then?
He stands to rub deodorant under his arms, hairs catching in the roller ball. Besides, how can he offer a woman this stiff, bloated body? He thinks of Tom, the litheness, the effortlessly flat, muscular stomach, the gleam in the grain of his perfect young skin. Once Mats was like that. Christ, now even his father’s in better shape than he is. He squirts shaving foam into his palms and rubs it over his cheeks and chin, begins to strafe the razor through, a sensation he finds comforting, a kind of shedding.
Once he’s talked to Marta, told her the truth, once he’s back home, then he will take control, cut out the booze, at least cut down, go on a diet, join a gym. With Vivienne there was no point. They stopped being physical years ago, she barely even looked at him. But he’s not old. In a couple of years he’ll be a different man. He could move back to Oslo now he’s free – though no, he must stay close to Tom, to both boys, of course. After drying his face he pats it with a stinging aftershave that Vivienne always gives him for Christmas. He’s not sure about it but supposes she likes it and thus that other women will.
Wrapping a towel around his waist he steps out into the room, where Tom is stretched on his bed, eyes shut, plugged into whatever the music is.
Tom
The TV’s in Romanian. My pizza hasn’t turned up. He said this holiday was about us time, boy time. He never mentioned leaving me stuck in a hotel room while he dated an ex-au pair. He says it isn’t a date but excuse me.
Anyway, tomorrow Bucharest.
I keep thinking about the revolution. In the museum it said eighty men and boys from this town were shot in a forest nearby. Eighty. Imagine me and Dad walking with a gun at our backs, walking with Artie and Ben and Si, to be shot. Ordinary men and boys like us walking on our own legs into the forest for that. Did they realise? What the hell was going on in their heads? Me, I would have run. Plenty of places to hide in the forest and you could live on berries and mushrooms and squirrels and stuff.
After lunch, we went to American Pie for doughnuts and Coke, though Dad only had coffee. We talked about massacre and war and he said I didn’t know how lucky we were living in the UK, my generation; we hadn’t had to go to war, not even national service.
‘Mind if I leave you to your own devices this evening?’ he said.
‘Went well then?’ I said.
He shrugged and began listing plans for Bucharest. There’s the Palace of Parliament built by Ceaușescu, which is the third biggest building in the entire world. Yesterday I would have yawned, but now I’m actually interested. He kept reading information out of a guidebook, building a sort of fence of words so I couldn’t ask him any questions. Not that I wanted to.
When we got back to the hotel I watched him getting ready for his date, slapping on the aftershave, trying not to look too keyed up for my sake. I could understand if she was som
e ‘sexy babe’ type, though the thought of Dad and a sexy babe . . . Don’t go there. They would only be talking, he said. For old times’ sake. She’s got missing teeth and grey hairs! Not my idea of a good night out.
Now he’s gone and where’s my pizza? There’s a match on TV so I watch the first half between two teams I’d never heard of, and still no pizza. There’s a phone in the room but I don’t know which number to call, or what to say if they answer in Romanian. Maybe if I just say, ‘Pizza Room 12’ they’ll understand. Pizza is an international word, I think? I picked up the phone but there’s only a beeping sound so I go down to reception. No one about except an old man asleep in a cupboard with his mouth hanging open and rows of keys behind him.
Outside the sun’s still shining so I go out through the open door. Surprisingly at this time of night, the streets are crowded with people strolling, eating ice creams, pushing prams, walking dogs. Many more people than during the day. I walk along behind a family like ours used to be: dad, mum and two kids about the same distance apart as me and Artie. The parents are holding hands as if they actually like each other. I never heard Mum and Dad laughing together like these two. It’s probably right that they’re getting a divorce. Mum’s happy with Brian (twat) as much as she ever could be; she’s never been a very happy person, I see that now.
Marta
Marta cuts a small slice of veal, puts it in her mouth and chews. It’s a little leathery, maybe, but good. She sips her wine. Mats has gone to the toilet and at last she can breathe, enjoy the food. It’s still a mystery – if he really isn’t after sex – what he wants from this awkward evening. OK, he wants to talk about the past, but that she will not allow, and he seems resigned to this.
The Squeeze Page 21