He gestured that I should help myself, and without ceremony resumed his position with the newspaper.
I took a slice of toast and ate quietly. If he’d noticed that I wasn’t wearing the engagement ring, he did not mention it. No reference was made to his proposal, to the plans for our bright future. In fact, Alexander seemed almost uninterested in me. He turned the pages slowly, as though reading every paragraph, every word in every line.
I waited.
I’d heard of men who liked to take hookers in white dresses, feeling the crisp rustling tulle, the smooth satin, while pretending the women were debutantes or brides. This must have been the same style of thing. He had some fetish, some script he wanted to role-play, but I’d evidently been something of a disappointment, and now it was over. I hadn’t wept with him about the strangers who’d abused my body, nor prostrated myself in gratitude at his saving me from the abuse. That, I guessed, was why I was receiving this silent treatment. Alexander may have been sulking but I hoped he might also be relieved when he took me to the railway station; he could simply put the ring back in a drawer and go about his business. I wondered why I had lain in bed rigid with fear.
The kitchen was chilled and perfectly still. Its walls had been painted long ago—everything white was now gray. Out the window were the bare trees of the orchard.
“What fruit do you grow?” I asked to stop the silence.
“Apples, quince, plums . . .” He did not look up.
“When did the gardener, all the gardeners, leave?”
“The sixties.”
I waited for a moment. “What happened then?”
“Not one thing. Overheads, markets, exchange rates, exhausted soil—you name it. My father’s bloody incompetence.”
“You didn’t like him much, did you?”
He looked up from the paper. “It doesn’t matter whether one ‘likes’ one’s parents. It’s juvenile to expect one should.”
He kept reading, and as I waited I began to sense his strange impatience. I had a sudden feeling he’d been in the kitchen with this scene set, expecting each element—myself included—to conform to the script in his head: Sitting at the table having breakfast.
“Perhaps you’d like the arts pages?”
“No, I’m fine— Oh, thank you.” I took them from his outstretched hand, and I saw today’s date. “Do you have this delivered?”
“Out here? No. I picked it up in town.”
“So you’ve driven in? Already?”
“You were quite safe here.”
Safe? Because he’d locked the door of my room? “I would’ve liked to come. How long does the drive take?”
“Half an hour each way.” He leaned back. “So, will I read you the ‘Odd Spot’?” Affability: he strained for it. “That’s the little whimsical piece on the front page.”
“I know.”
“All right, so: ‘A British Columbia woman called police after mistaking her neighbor’s noisy toilet efforts for a violent disturbance. The woman heard yelling and shouting and believed that . . . ’ ”
I wondered whether I could catch a bus from this town back to Melbourne, if it would be easier than the train.
Alexander did his closed-mouth chuckle. “Sorry. Did that offend you?”
I looked up, realizing I had been meant to join him. “Not at all.”
“You didn’t find it amusing?”
“No, it’s amusing.” A featherless dead goose was lying on a tray near the sink. “But . . . I-I’m not good with jokes.”
“It wasn’t a joke.”
I shrugged, blocking any picture of the bird’s end. Until this weekend, I must have seemed permanently on heat. But this is what I’m really like, I wanted to say, uptight, dull.
Alexander regarded me closely. “Humor isn’t everything, Liese, but I think it’s important to be able to laugh at the world.”
Usually I could. Usually I could do nothing but laugh.
He followed my gaze to the bird. “Well”—he flexed his fingers—“I’ve stocked up on supplies, and it’s a perfect day to cook a feast.” Standing, coming behind me, he carefully placed a hand on my head.
“Unfortunately I have to go back to Melbourne this afternoon.”
“But you’re staying until tomorrow.”
Had he forgotten last night, my telling him I was leaving? I could not see his face, whether he was testing me. “It turns out I’ve got work. Real-estate work,” I added stupidly. “An emergency has just come up at the office.”
“How did you find out?” His fingers spread, pressing into my scalp.
“My uncle . . . his assistant’s been sick . . .”
“I wouldn’t have thought your phone would have reception here.”
When I had no answer, Alexander said, “Wear your hair down like this; it suits you.” He moved away me, keeping his face neutral. His little victory hung in the air between us as he took an apron from a hook on the back of the door and tied it around himself. He rolled up his sleeves.
The goose’s torso was a strange, amputated thing, the stumps of its feet and wings and head still bloodied.
“Now,” he chuckled again, “have you ever gutted such a damned big bird?”
I shook my head at my own foolishness.
“Neither have I, but I promised I would cook for you.”
“Don’t trouble yourself.”
“But I want to. Liese, this is what normal couples do.” He spoke almost sweetly, although as if giving instructions. “One person has interests and the other tries to be interested in those interests. The two of them then find things to do in common.”
He was so much taller than I even without shoes, and sliding over the red linoleum in his thick woolen socks, slouching just slightly, he took a book down from a shelf: Home Butchery & Meat Preservation. His pelvis tilted against the kitchen bench, he straightened the book’s spine on the Formica. He licked his index finger and flipped through the pages. Each move he made reminded me of sex with him. And now the memories weren’t so pleasing.
Perching one foot against his ankle, he absentmindedly scratched at his shin. His socks had a crest on them—rows of tiny royal lions and stars. Were they school socks? I felt repulsion. I felt it even for his toes that I’d once had inside my mouth. It was horrible that I had ever desired him.
The book was open to a diagram of a bird in X-ray.
Picking up a steel, he casually sharpened his knife. “When I was a child Warrowill did all its own butchering, but my father thought it too time-consuming. A steer can take two men the best part of a day. He stopped it, although he wasn’t often around to check. The men took cows that couldn’t get in calf and butchered them on their days off.”
Tentatively Alexander put his hand on the goose and made the first incision, a long, deep cut, his face locking in a frown as his wrist then went into the hole, this nightmare creature like his puppet.
He wanted me to be scared, and I resented it. “Now butchery’s terribly fashionable, of course,” I said coolly.
“Is that right?”
“Yes.”
The organic café near my studio in Notting Hill advertised classes in venison butchery. The beau monde couldn’t get enough of evisceration—it made them feel their lives weren’t just about accounting.
“Can you cook?” he asked after a silence.
I grimaced. His hand—the one that had just stroked my hair—was now a raspberry color, a deep slime-pink. “Not really. It’s not my thing.”
“No, the English, I forget . . .”
Outside the dogs barked as though they could sense his work.
“You should see your expression—it’s a cartoon of disapproval,” Alexander said, tugging at something dense and entwined. One or two grabs and the intestines emerged, wrapped around other oozing, complicate
d, vermilion parts. He threw the tangle into a yellow bucket, picking out the heart and liver and putting them to one side. “But perhaps you will think of learning? Learning to cook?”
Now he began hacking at the carcass—at the windpipe, perhaps. I can’t believe he’s holding an actual cleaver, I was thinking. How melodramatic, how desperate, and yet my hand went to my mouth: the sight, the smell, were overwhelming.
“Liese, sometimes I can’t get away from the farm until late,” Alexander’s face was also strained, “and I’d like it if you knew how to prepare something other than pasta.”
Standing now, I leaned against the table. “No one at home is much of a cook,” I admitted cautiously. I’d never told him about my family, sensing this wasn’t what he wished to hear. “Mum does okay, but Dad can’t even open a can of soup.”
Alexander scowled with surprise. “Mum and Dad?”
“Yes.”
“I assumed you’d lost contact with them, or that they were both—” He stopped himself, using his sleeve to move a curl from his eyes. “What do these parents of yours do?”
“Before retirement, an engineer and a . . . homemaker.”
“A homemaker?” He put down the cleaver, assessing my candor. “You mean a housewife?” He repeated the word, trying to convince himself. “And they don’t know about your . . . profession?”
My packed suitcase was waiting upstairs. I’d put it back together before coming down to breakfast. There was nothing I’d left in the bathroom. I could just pick up the case and leave.
“What is your father’s name?”
I hesitated. “It’s Robert.”
“Robert—and his surname?”
“Campbell.”
“All right then,” he almost rolled his eyes, “I suppose I should call Mr. Campbell and ask him officially for your hand in marriage.” This complication annoyed him. “And may I ask if Liese is your actual name?”
I nodded.
“So Robert Campbell will presumably know who I’m talking about?” Alexander went to the sink and began washing his hands, then his wrists, now also covered in the bird’s liquids. He turned off the tap, the pipes creaking, and started riffling impatiently through a drawer, pulling out a pad and a thin silver pencil. “Why don’t you write down the number for me.”
“Of course.” I went over and took the pencil, pivoting my body so he would not see my hands tremble. If I could get to the telephone I would call for a taxi. This situation was now beyond my realm of expertise: perhaps I could handle this man, but no longer did I wish to try. “Do you think I could quickly ring my parents and let them know you’ll be in touch?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’ll reverse the charges,” I said, keeping my voice light. “The thing is, I haven’t yet mentioned that we’ve been seeing each other.”
“I’m not surprised.”
Giggling weakly, “But I should think they’ll be thrilled. . . . Alexander, where is the phone?”
Picking up his knife again, he started cutting at something in the bird’s open cavity. “It’s the middle of the night over there.”
“My parents won’t mind!” That was the irony: even if I were trapped miles from anywhere with a sociopath, my mother would be delighted I was finally engaged.
“It’s not the sort of first impression I want to make. I’ll call tonight. Fuck!”
“What is it?”
“I haven’t unhooked the gallbladder properly, and now there’s bile on the bird’s meat.” He seemed to feel this was my fault. Agitated, glancing around, he grabbed a cloth, then another knife, and tried to wipe and cut away the problem. “Liese, before you start calling Robert and . . . ?”
“Sue.”
“Robert and Sue,” he nodded, “with your happy news, can I ask you why you chose this career?”
“Please don’t start that again.”
His neck was strained with irritation. “Well, if you’re not actually a whore, then I want my money back.”
There was no point trying to convince him that this was a case of mistaken identity, because surely Alexander knew the precise nature of the mistake.
“I’ve told you I’m prepared to put your past behind us,” he went on, “but I’m just trying to understand, okay? I’m just trying to understand because you seem very normal, very sensible. Why did you get into prostitution so young? You were only a teenager, still in school.”
“I’ve never told you that.”
“You didn’t need to.” Pursing his mouth, his expression turned skeptical. “Your father, Robert, was he a drunk, or violent?”
I shook my head, hating that he now knew my father’s name.
“I mean, did he, did he do something to you?”
“No!” I found myself shouting.
Alexander held out a flattened palm. “Don’t get so defensive.”
He went back to studying his book, and through my rage came a sudden clear thought: This man is punishing me for not loving him. Our relationship was meant to be devoid of love. That was its whole point. Yet part of him despised me for being in it for the money. Did it always come down to this? The client deciding: You are only a whore, how dare you not genuinely want exactly what I want you to want? Do as I say—love me as I desire, of your own free will. Not that I believed Alexander actually loved me. He didn’t even know me. My body was a stand-in for whoever hadn’t returned his real devotion.
This room’s stink kept edging closer.
“Did anyone try to hit you? Were they dangerous?”
I could hear my heart beating, my blood. “No, never.”
“Was it something you allowed, if they asked?”
“I’m afraid not, Alexander.”
“That’s fortunate,” he said quickly. “You are very lucky, because you hear about it all the time: some adventure’s gone awry and a young girl ends facedown in a faraway ditch.” He presented the image without emotion, looking up from his work to gauge the effect. “I imagine the most frightening thing would be to end up with someone not right in the head. For all you knew at first, I could have been a psycho.”
Alexander continued cutting at the bird, but I could tell there was more, that he was blocking some longer speech—and I waited. Nausea swirled around us in the particles of air; I kept waiting. It was so fine, this situation, the signals so faint, like turning for no reason to catch something flicker on the periphery of your vision.
“Look, there’s no point keeping this from you,” he broke.
“What?”
“I . . . I don’t want us to hide things. I want us to always tell each other what we are really feeling.”
I felt unease, so sharp it was a gut ache. “I agree.”
Alexander looked at me and closed his eyes, tilting back his head to contain the distress. “Two months ago a letter arrived.”
Taking a dishcloth, he wiped his hands, smearing it with pink. From the center of the table he picked up the envelope addressed to him and held it in front of me.
“I’ve thought about burning this. However”—he was making a resolution—“I won’t have secrets between us, Liese. I just won’t.”
From within the envelope, he unfolded a sheet of white office paper, which he handed to me. Upon it was typed:
Dear Mr. Colquhoun,
A few weeks ago, I was driving when I saw you outside a block of flats in the Docklands with someone calling herself Liese Campbell.
The wise man says, “Beware the unknown woman, she is like a river whose twistings you do not understand.” He means, you will be dragged under by her, as I was. I had dealings with her back in England and was pulled down all the way. At first I took Liese for a sweet young lady who had fallen into a bad habit. I tried to be a true friend, and encourage changes to her career path. All week, when I was not with her, I thoug
ht of ways to help her, and ways to satisfy her needs.
But Miss Campbell is a deceitful woman (deceiving no one as thoroughly as herself). By taking payment for her favors she can say, “Oh, I don’t really want it (i.e., to mount thousands of different men). It is just a job.” Yet it is not just a job. Whoring is her way of controlling her own constant, sick desire, pretending to herself she is not a NYMPHOMANIAC.
Only her price tag stops the rutting. She wants it all the time, but money keeps you, and all the others, at a safe distance. Hand her all you have and the one thing she gives back she’s really taking. Not one true word or feeling will come from her lips because how can someone who’s frozen inside make what passes for a heart feel love? She takes you for a fool—and every time you give her money you confirm it. Behind your back, she is laughing.
Yours,
A Friend
I stared at the page: trying to take in its claims, my brain rebelled. The words would not crawl toward sense, the sentences turn to thoughts. I’d told no one I was meeting Alexander, let alone taking his money, and obviously I’d never done such a thing before. So how, and why, and who? On the top corner of the page was a perfect thumbprint of light red blood: the illiterate’s signature—and I knew. I knew with a kind of physical certainty that he had sat at the keyboard in his study and slowly picked off these lies. The pious tone was his alone. Alexander had put this letter in an envelope, addressed it, then mailed it to himself.
I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.
“So it’s true,” he said slowly, his voice catching. “Everything in your reaction tells me it is true.”
I reached for a kitchen chair, needing to conserve my energy for thought.
I could not exist for him except as something to despise, so he’d invented evidence that made me despicable. This was like feeling a cocoon form—each silk thread another of his fantasies—while I was being wrapped inside.
“You can see,” he said defiantly, “why I would be upset?”
“Yes. It’s confronting.”
“Confronting?” he repeated sarcastically. All the restraint in his body was now gone; limbs uncoiling, he bent and took the letter from my hands, waving it in my face. “Confronting? Some pervert is sitting around trying to fill my head with this filth, and that’s all you have to say? Tell me who wrote it!”
The Engagement Page 10