by Nell Stevens
I google the honeymoon contest, the name of the magazine that ran it, and the hotel group offering the prize. The link to the top result on my search engine is purple, not blue, indicating a site I have visited before. It could be real, then. Have I absent-mindedly and forgettably entered the contest, and then won?
Later I show the email to Holly, Louise and Izra. They are unconvinced but entertained, and cautiously optimistic.
‘Reply,’ says Izra, ‘but don’t hand over any identifying information.’
‘Don’t give them your passport,’ says Louise.
Together we craft a response to Tanya at the PR company. I am thrilled, I tell her. I can’t believe it! I am available to meet the travel agent later this week.
The first thing the travel agent says when she sees me is, ‘Oh, your fiancé couldn’t make it?’
I am distracted by my mission to uncover the scam, scrutinizing the office for signs that it is fake, temporary, not a real travel agency. ‘No,’ I say, and leave it at that. The space, in the basement of a grand building just off Harley Street, is ordinary-looking. The windows need cleaning. There are posters on the walls of the Taj Mahal and tigers emerging from long grasses. Posters, I think – easy to put up and take down at short notice. Two employees sit at desks, tapping at their computers and answering phones. They don’t acknowledge me.
The agent takes me into a separate room, brings coffee and invites me to peruse brochures and itineraries and photographs of hotels. She describes the competing attractions of Agra, Shimla, Jaipur. It depends on the time of year, she says; the heat will be unbearable in Delhi before the monsoon. Shimla would be tolerable. I nod and scowl and wait for her to slip up, to ask me for one of the things my friends have forbidden me to hand over.
‘When’s the wedding?’ she asks.
‘Next month,’ I say, as coolly as I can. She might think she is scamming me, but I am the true con artist here. Joke’s on you, lady, I think. There’s no wedding at all.
I tell everyone I know about the honeymoon, sometimes more than once so they have to say, awkwardly, ‘Yes, you already said.’ I tell my parents and brother, and the other students at King’s, and Joyce, and then I tell them all over again. Gradually, cautiously, a question comes back in response to my announcement. Friends look down at their shoes; my mother clears her throat down the phone. Nobody really wants to raise it, but somehow they manage to: ‘What if it’s real?’ they say. ‘Who will you take with you if it’s real?’
To the list of questions that rotate through my mind – How could Max do this? How could the future I believed was mine – the marriage, the house, the babies – evaporate so suddenly and so entirely? What did I do wrong? is added this new conundrum. Who will come with me on my fake honeymoon?
When I speak to people at the (fake?) PR company administering the prize, and at the (fake?) travel agent, I fail to stick to one story and instead create an array of love-and travel-related disasters. My fiancé left me at the altar, devastatingly, I tell one woman. To another I explain that I am marrying an American who is in the process of applying for British citizenship, and so his passport is currently being held by the Home Office. My husband is unwell. My fiancé’s mother is sick, so he is nervous about being out of the country. We have had to postpone the wedding.
‘That’s awful,’ they say. ‘What a tragedy. Poor you.’ This is the most genuine interaction we have: they express sympathy for a disaster that feels, to me, not unlike the real, secret one, and I accept their condolences as rightfully mine.
In a state of supreme cognitive dissonance – I believe the honeymoon is hilarious because it is a scam; I believe it is hilarious because it is real – I send an email to Tanya saying that I would like to take my maid of honour in place of my husband. Would that be possible? I have told so many lies by this point that I’m not sure which sob story I have given her previously. But eventually, a reply comes: it is fine for me to take Holly. This seems to tilt the balance of probability towards the whole thing being a scam, because of course they wouldn’t mind me taking my fake maid-of-honour on my fake honeymoon that is never going to happen.
And yet I – and Holly, too – still go through the motions of preparation for the trip. At each stage, just when I think they are about to ask for something shifty, they don’t. They offer to arrange our visas for us, and ask us to drop off our passports at the office; I write and say that we would prefer to do this ourselves; they say that is fine. They ask us to confirm when we want to fly, and we send the dates, and they write back and say the flights are booked. Would we like to pay extra to extend our trip for a few more nights? If so, we just need to send over our bank details. No we would not, we say, and they tell us that is not a problem at all. I spend the money I earned from the Saliva Study on clothes to take to India. I buy sunglasses and sandals. In the Rare Books Reading Room, I spend hours looking up pictures of the hotels where we will, apparently, be staying: blue swimming pools and gold gilt decor, balconies with views of the Taj Mahal, drops of condensation seeping down the outsides of champagne glasses, with a mountain range out of focus in the background.
When Holly and I board the plane at Heathrow, we look around – at the other passengers and the flight attendants and the images of India sliding past on the seat-back screen – and become hysterical. We are weeping with laughter. We have believed in the reality of the prize enough to pack and come to the airport, enough for Holly to take time off work and for me to tell Joyce not to expect my usual fortnightly update; enough, even, to go to the Indian Embassy and pay for unflattering visa pictures to be taken by an extortionately priced photo booth in the waiting room. And yet we are astonished to find ourselves sitting in seats that are actually, really, truly booked in our names, and for which we have definitely not paid. We are bound for Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport.
At some point on the flight, the combination of overexcitement, extended periods of giggling, and several mini-bottles of red wine send me into a murky doze. When I come round, hours later, I peer past Holly to stare out of the window, over the bulk of the aircraft’s wing, at the pale creases of a mountain range beneath us. The woman sitting on my other side notices my gaze and says, excitedly, ‘Pakistan! It’s Pakistan!’
At the Arrivals Terminal in Delhi, a man is waiting to meet us, holding a sign that says, ‘Mrs Stevens’. At the hotel, where we are greeted with wreaths of orange flowers and blessings for our health, the false title follows us everywhere we go: ‘This way, Mrs Stevens!’; ‘How was your flight, Mrs Stevens?’; ‘Would you care for some tea, Mrs Stevens?’ We are introduced to our butler, and our driver, and the chefs.
In a moment of quiet, Holly mutters, ‘Are we supposed to be pretending to be a couple?’ and I shrug. I have told so many stories to people in London about our situation, I’m not sure which, if any, has been relayed to the staff in India.
The following morning, while we are eating breakfast, surrounded by important-looking business-people, casually glamorous, talking loudly on phones, the hotel manager introduces himself. He shakes both our hands vigorously and says, ‘Congratulations!’ several times. He beams. ‘Our lucky winner.’
He asks about our itinerary for the day – spice market, Jama Masjid, an afternoon by the pool – and offers some suggestions about where we can buy rugs. Then, to me, he gives a slight bow and says, ‘Mrs Stevens, I am so sorry Mr Stevens could not come.’
I look away. I am uncertain which, of the many meanings his sentence might have, is the intended one. I can feel Holly’s eyes on me, waiting for my response. I bob my head. I say, ‘Me too.’
Delhi. Rickshaws weave between buses. Street vendors call out as we pass. Sweat slides down the nape of my neck. The air in the spice market is so thick with dust it makes everyone sneeze, and the whole street is loud with the sound of it: a-choo, a-choo, a-choo. A child follows us down an alley, calling, ‘How are you, ma’am? How are you?’ At the Jama Masjid, a flock of birds swells a
nd shrinks between the arches. Old men doze in the shade. We leave our shoes at the entrance and walk barefoot across ground so hot it burns the soles of our feet, and we have to keep shifting our weight from side to side. We are red-faced and ungainly, sticky, hopping from foot to foot.
Agra. A view of the Taj Mahal from our roll-top bath. Mint juleps on the balcony.
Jaipur. We ride an elephant up to the red fort.
Udaipur. A ‘romantic boat ride’ out across Lake Pichola; at dusk, bats fill the sky, swerving over their reflections. We eat candlelit dinners by the water, and sleep in a bed doused with petals.
We are living in a picture-book version of a vast and diverse country. As the days pass, the joyful ridiculous feeling subsides, and is replaced by a kind of sweat-drenched, philosophical anxiety. I lie in a hammock watching Holly swimming in the private pool that surrounds our suite on three sides. What are we doing here? I wonder. How did this happen? Life is intolerably random. Nothing is certain. The whirrings of a computer award honeymoons to unmarried strangers. The murky churnings of a human mind nudge love to silence with no warning, no logic. Things just happen, without order or reason. I am so sorry Mr Stevens could not come.
At the end of the week, we spend a final night in Delhi, from where we will fly home to the rest of our lives, to a world in which I am not a newlywed. I lie awake, my body filled with dread that feels like adrenalin. Beside me, Holly is sighing in her sleep, and beyond our room are the sounds of the hotel at night: occasional footsteps, the faint ding of the lift doors, the clatter of crockery as a bellboy collects a discarded room-service tray. The thought of resuming my solitary London routine is nauseating. I am the opposite of a newlywed: a newlyleft, a newlyalone. I don’t want to go back.
In the morning, the driver who takes us to the airport is curious. ‘You won a contest to come to India?’ he asks. ‘You are the winners of a competition?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘A contest in a magazine.’
‘You are very, very lucky, Mrs Stevens,’ he says.
2015
People Who Fit Your Criteria
It is summer and I am in America. Specifically, I am in New York. Specifically: Harlem. After dithering about whether or not to go to the ‘Nineteenth-Century Female Relationships’ conference, to which I only applied so I could see Max, I decided to attend, and to stay in the city for a while afterwards. From here, I will go directly to Texas to begin a four-month research fellowship at the archives of the Harry Ransom Center.
London had begun to feel toxic. After returning from India, my gloom darkened into something more acute. I started crying on the tube, provoking responses from strangers that ranged from sympathy to alarm. My social life, previously a source of comfort, began to feel like a series of arduous challenges: evenings I had to grit my teeth to get through before I could return to my default state of lying on the sofa in my pyjamas. My friends’ patience, too, was beginning to wear thin. There were only so many times I could expect them to listen to me philosophizing on heartbreak, or my plans to persuade Max to come back, before they felt the need to suggest that, a) my problems were not as severe as I thought they were and b) Max was not going to change his mind. Both of these points enraged me, and made me feel bitter and resentful, though I knew they were made for the kindest possible reasons.
It was time for a change of scene. I found a tenant willing to take over my flat for the summer, and rented a sublet apartment on West 113th Street for the same money. I booked a flight. I got on a plane.
My friends in New York, including my brother and an ex-boyfriend from my early twenties, have not yet had their supplies of empathy exhausted by my post-Max misery. Promising, too, is the fact that they are not quite as uniformly coupled-up as my friends in London; for the summer, at least, I will not be the only single person in the room at every social event I attend. There will be new things to do, new people to see, and, hopefully, new feelings to feel. After giving a paper on ‘Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Story of the Face” and the invisible relations of influence in nineteenth-century Rome’, my time is my own in this sweltering city.
I have told Max I am here, of course, and hope, ardently and obsessively, that he will come to New York. In the evenings, I crawl out of the window of my bedroom onto the fire escape, and stare down at the rats tearing through bin liners in the alley below. I try calling Max, and when he doesn’t answer, I cry and cry and cry.
Each day I walk from my apartment to the library at Columbia University. It is humid and sticky, even first thing, and I move slowly, my bag always too heavy on my shoulder, leather straps rubbing sweaty skin. I cross Frederick Douglass Boulevard and buy coffee from the place on the corner, and then enter Morningside Park. There, masochists use the steps that climb its steep incline for their morning workouts. I stop halfway to rest, catch my breath and mop away sweat, while glistening, topless men pass me multiple times on their way up and down, and up and down again. Stray cats emerge from the undergrowth and watch me, wide-eyed and dusty.
I spend the rest of the day in the silent, air-conditioned library, reading about the Roman catacombs discovered by nineteenth-century archaeologists, and working on a chapter that presents nineteenth-century Rome as the artistic equivalent of a coalmine: a resource to be tapped.
Twice a week, I visit Dr Maier, a therapist in her midsixties who listens to me ranting and crying over Max and says things like, ‘You talk about him as though he has died. You are talking like a bereaved person.’
‘I just feel grief,’ I say. ‘I am grieving.’
‘You are talking like a bereaved person,’ Dr Maier says again. ‘Your depression has twisted this breakup into a kind of death.’
She prescribes me antidepressants. I swallow them and wait: perhaps, miraculously, these drugs will make everything seem all right again, will close up the edges of the gaping hole that Max left in my life. I look around, expecting things to appear different, expecting the light to change. It all looks the same.
‘I turn thirty this year,’ I tell Dr Maier. ‘And I don’t have a husband and I don’t have a baby.’
‘And is that what you want?’ she asks. ‘A husband and a baby?’
‘I got used to the image of myself as someone who could have those things – the things that other people have, the things that everyone is supposed to want. I felt as though they already belonged to me. And now they have been taken away, which probably makes me want them even more. It’s perverse, I know.’
‘What is it about those things that you think you want?’
‘I don’t know if I do want them – at least not necessarily the husband. I do want the baby, I think I really do, and the husband, or at least the partner, would make that more straightforward. I want to have the option. I want the option to have the things that other people want.’
‘Are you giving yourself the option?’ Dr Maier asks. ‘Are you dating?’
I go to the offices of a match-making service, where a twenty-something girl called Anisha asks me a series of questions about the kind of person I would like to meet.
‘I just want to meet someone who has their life together,’ I say. ‘Someone who knows what they are doing. Nobody in a crisis.’
‘Right,’ says Anisha, typing something into her laptop. ‘Anything else?’
I rack my brains. I try to think of any other quality that was lacking in Max, the absence of which should have warned me of the inevitable failure of the relationship.
‘Maybe not anyone who is lactose intolerant?’ I say. ‘Someone who can eat cheese.’
‘Right,’ says Anisha. ‘Both men and women?’
‘Yes.’
‘Height preference?’
‘No.’
‘Do you have a physical type?’
‘Not really.’
‘Can you name a celebrity you think is particularly attractive?’
In that moment, I cannot recall the name of a single celebrity. ‘Not really.’
‘OK,�
�� Anisha says, at the end of the interview. ‘I’m pretty sure we have some people on our books who fit your criteria.’
I go on dates with a marketing executive, a technology consultant and a woman who is fund-raising for a start-up that delivers cupcakes to office workers, and then I take the subway to my friend Laura’s apartment in Carroll Gardens, and complain to her that I have lost the ability to be attracted to anyone at all. She feeds me tacos and tells me that six months after the breakup is too soon for me to be dating.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I say. We are drinking margaritas and I am coaxing my mind away from self-absorption and towards the far more interesting, edifying topics: Laura’s life, Laura’s writing, Mrs Gaskell, the nuclear deal with Iran. My phone buzzes in my bag. I dig it out and see Max’s name on the screen, glowing.
The message: I’m coming to New York next week.
I reply: Do you want to meet up?
He writes back: Yes.
In the lobby of the Ace Hotel, Max and I stand and stare at each other. I don’t know how to act, how to be. Should I hug him? A kiss on the cheek? A handshake? My heart is racing. I feel as though I have forgotten how to stand naturally.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Hi.’ He opts for a hug. His body against mine feels astonishingly solid: a reminder that Max is a real person, occupying space, and not just an idea over which I obsess, not just a series of lines of text on the screen of my computer. He has lost weight since I last saw him; I can feel his shoulder blades through his T-shirt.
‘You look good,’ I say.
‘You look beautiful.’ I know him well enough to understand that he will always say this, that he is polite above all else, that I can read nothing into it.
There is nowhere to sit. Every sofa, chair or ledge is occupied. We are surrounded by Apple logos glowing from the back of laptops, an electric orchard. Behind the little white fruits: the illuminated faces of people at work on their novels. It goes without saying, I think; they are all working on their novels, every last one of them.