“Please . . . be quiet.” I tried to pry his hands off my skin without making more noise.
“Go and open the door. Open it and let him see you are busy.”
Cautious Alexander was asking me to do this? I’d understood that the longer our trysting went on, the more likely it was to end in disaster. What I hadn’t registered was that some part of Alexander thrilled to the idea of being found out. He actually wanted people to know.
Eventually the knocking had stopped, and by the time it did I’d decided our game was over. I’d leave Australia. It was my only choice. I could think of no other way to end this.
• • •
I was sitting at the white dressing table, replaying this episode as I combed my hair. I put down the comb and picked up a lipstick. I drew a mouth. I took a pencil and gave myself eyes, and with a brush, cheekbones, making a mask behind which I could hide. When I’d received his invitation here, I was caught between wanting to push this thing—and my earnings—as far as I could and the desire to be done with it.
Was there an easy way to put him off ? I was always on the verge of confessing the truth—that one side of me wasn’t even very interested in sex, resented it in fact—and that this side actually found it mortifyingly teenage to be caught all day on a rat wheel of lust, perpetually fussing over one or another moist, swollen private part. Being in heat was like seeing the world through magic glasses; there was always another sexual dimension, each one more strenuous and absurd than the last. “To be honest,” I’d tell him, “I could happily do without the whole thing. You want to know who I am? That’s it.”
Smoothing my dress, I left the bedroom, pulling closed the door.
I walked slowly down the grand staircase, listening for the humming of pleasantries in the rooms below, my hand on the carved wooden balustrade with one invalid finger, the ring fixed tight.
In the drawing room, Alexander sat with his back to the fire. He’d switched on various lamps, and the soft light made the furniture’s upholstery appear less frayed, the birds in their glass case soothing shadows.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
An open bottle of champagne waited by a tray of six flutes.
I sat and took the glass he handed me. “Your guests are late.”
“They’ll be here soon.”
“What’s that sound?”
“Curlews.”
“At night?”
“Yes.”
The calls came spinning through the pitch-black and stayed in the air. Alexander did not speak further and neither did I. I was waiting to see who he’d invited—and then, after a while, to see if he had actually invited anyone. He was waiting, I supposed, for me to crack. Twenty minutes, then half an hour went by. The bottle of champagne was drained without fanfare.
“No one’s coming, are they,” I said finally.
Arranging his blazer cuffs, smoothing beige trousers: “They will.”
“It’s just going to be you and me.” I shook my head in disbelief. “Who did you imagine we were waiting for, Alexander?”
“I am waiting for some friends of mine.”
“Who are they?”
“People I know,” he said plainly.
“What do these people do?”
“When you meet them, you can ask.” His smile suggested that I should be quiet.
“Have they phoned to say they’re delayed?”
He began opening another bottle. “No.”
I listened to the clock marking time. I’d banked on the arrival of four people—one of whom, surely, would help me. But with each minute I grew more desperate. I thought again of the knocking at that apartment.
Afterward I’d found an envelope stuck under the door, marked to the occupier—a bill, perhaps, although seeing it waiting there I’d imagined it was the harshest possible rebuke for having sullied other people’s homes. And even through this guilt, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that Alexander was trying to find the limit to which he could push me. Did he have it in him to arrange for someone to come and knock? To hire an actor to pretend that he knew me?
“Are you expecting my ex-clients?” I now burst out. “Is that who the table is set for?”
“Would you like that, Liese?” he asked quickly, eyes alert. “What do you think we’d all talk about?”
“Your mothers, probably.”
“Really, is that right?” He nodded as though the guess were reasonable. “That reminds me: I’ve found something I want to show you.” Putting down his glass, Alexander walked to the bureau and produced an old leather photo album. Undoing a copper clasp, he held it out to me as a teacher would a storybook. There was a portrait of a woman in white, costumed as if for a coronation, the dress’s train spread before her and a bouquet of roses cascading to the floor.
My stomach knotted: obviously this was his mother. She was fair-haired, fair-faced, and gazing at the photographer with an expression of invitation much too liberal for one’s wedding day. Anyone seeing that look would have expected this marriage to have problems.
“What do you think of the dress?” Alexander asked.
“The dress is very nice.”
“I agree.” He paused. “Actually, I imagine it’s packed away somewhere in the house.”
“Shall we try to find it?” It would be a chance to get him out of the room—this time I would grab a coat and run.
“I’ll have to think about where it might be.” Stalling, Alexander bit his lip and took in the photograph once more. “She was so lovely, so kind. . . . Would the other men say similar things about their mothers?”
“I really couldn’t tell you.”
“But what’s your professional opinion? You said yourself you’ve had to talk to a lot of men about their families—”
The dogs began to bark and howl, followed by the sound of a car’s wheels on the gravel. An engine was turned off. A door slammed. Footsteps—footsteps outside the house. In the dark this person approached the front door, then stopped, coughing. Both of us sat braced. The guest started rapping on the door’s brass knocker.
“Oh, it’s you,” I heard Alexander mutter when he answered it.
“Who were you expecting?” a woman replied.
He didn’t say.
“Are you going to invite me in?”
Walking into the room, this thin, flat-chested woman looked familiar in some way I couldn’t place. Long, blondish hair was clipped in chunks at the back of her head, crimson lipstick streaked her pale face; she was attractive, and had been very attractive, but her face showed the signs of someone who, having tried, had at last given in. She was dressed in a vintage burgundy pantsuit that was made for someone shorter, more buxom, more flamboyant. Over this she’d incongruously thrown a khaki padded vest, bulky as a life jacket.
“This is Liese.”
I was smiling dumbly.
His hands on his hips, Alexander added defiantly, “Liese is a close friend of mine.”
“That’s very nice,” the woman said.
“Actually, we’re engaged.”
She laughed, a high, uneven sound. Glancing at us both—one, then the other. “Brilliant.” She clicked her tongue. “How brilliant.”
Was she Alexander’s wife, or his ex-wife, or his ex-fiancée? Her outfit could have been from the wardrobe upstairs.
Picking up the champagne bottle, she poured herself a generous glass, and still amused by something—perhaps me in a white dress, given what she’d heard—held it up in ironic tribute. “You’ll have to marry at St. John’s. Have you been there, Liese?” She opened a corner cabinet, found an ashtray, and lit a cigarette in jerky, fluttering movements. “It’s the local church. Alex’s great-great-grandfather donated the stained-glass windows—some of the finest Victorian glass in this country.”
I was mute, still thi
nking, Surely this woman—whoever she is—can help me.
“It will be their wedding of the year!”
“Liese,” Alexander said sharply, “would you mind giving us a moment?”
As I moved toward the hall, with plans to go upstairs and get my money, the woman sniggered.
“You really know how to pick them, don’t you.”
“What do you actually want?” Alexander tried not to shout.
“I need to pick up some things.”
“So get them. Just go and bloody get them.” Alexander peered out the window at the driveway.
The dogs resumed their maniacal noise: another car was on the gravel. As Alexander went to greet the new arrivals, the woman put down her drink. “Excuse me,” she said dismissively, and soon I heard her running up the stairs.
A middle-aged couple followed Alexander into the room. Dressed almost identically in pressed jeans and navy turtleneck sweaters, they were the same height, the same austere build; even their hair was styled in standard-issue gray helmet cuts. The woman, however, wore a cross of beaten silver around her neck.
“Sorry to be late.” Already she was regarding me with curiosity. “We called continually but your phone must be out. The Barrett-Joneses tried calling too. Willow has her usual stomach problems—they send their apologies.”
Alexander turned to me, his eyes a cold blue. “My love, the Reverend Wendy Smythe. Wendy is our local minister, and Graeme, her better half.”
“Congratulations.” Her tone was no-nonsense.
I opened my mouth but no words would come.
She nodded. “It must be a lot for you to take in.”
With the arrival of the woman upstairs I’d gained my first witness; if she proved unreliable, I now had two more to choose from. I took it my imprisonment was effectively over: you don’t abduct someone with plans to release and hunt them down in the national park—because yes, that was where my mind had gone—then invite a bunch of spectators.
Gazing now at my soon-to-be-ex-fiancé, I found myself affecting a kind of awestruck, moist-eyed simulacrum of love. My voice, softer and higher than usual, finally worked. “Oh, Reverend, I’m the luckiest girl alive!”
The minister positioned herself on an overstuffed gentleman’s chair. “Have you set a date?”
I felt myself flush as if on cue. “No, it’s all been so sudden.”
“When a committed bachelor finally finds Miss Right there’s no time to waste.” Alexander passed the guests pâté and biscuits. Beckoning for me to sit next to him on the couch, he squashed my hand in his. “If I had my way, we’d all be down at the church tomorrow morning. Liese is more cautious, but I’m hoping to persuade her to speed things up.” He was hiding unease with joviality. “Wendy, what are you doing,” he said, glancing at his watch, “say, tomorrow afternoon?”
The minister turned to her husband, signaling he should laugh. The sound he made was nervous. Like a humble servant in a play, he had the habit of ducking his head whenever I met his gaze.
“Enough about us,” I said. “Graeme, what do you do?”
It took a moment for him to register that he’d been asked a question.
“He plays the guitar and sings for our elderly community,” Reverend Wendy explained.
“A troubadour!”
Graeme blushed. “I try to keep the set upbeat and bright, that’s all.”
As his wife detailed his musical program, I nodded and smiled. I found it easy enough to play the chaste bride (especially when I saw how much the act was irritating my fiancé). My exit strategy solved, I could not resist fucking with him a little. He’d paid for a whore, not a prim bride-to-be. Mock gentility seemed appropriate. I held my champagne flute, a little finger flaring, and took delicate, lizard sips, smiling straight through his scowls to assess this situation. I had wanted to cry with gratitude upon seeing other people, but all the while the minister spoke I felt a new disquiet. She regarded me knowingly with two very seasoned eyes.
“Have you called your parents?” Reverend Wendy asked.
“Oh, they’re over the moon!”
“And they’re from Norfolk . . .” It was half a question.
“Yes.” I met her gaze even as I felt Alexander’s.
“So you are still in contact with them?”
I hesitated. Exactly what had the minister been told?
She spread pâté thinly on a biscuit. “Will they mind you living so far away?”
“There’s plenty of room here. After I’ve redecorated, just knocked down a few walls and lightened the place up,” I said, coughing, “I’d adore it if Mum and Dad could spend part of the year with us. No, Alexander’s teasing you. I can hardly wait!”
“Very well.” The minister inhaled deeply, finishing the hors d’oeuvre. “If you feel you’re ready, truly ready,” swallowing again, “I will try to move at your speed. . . .” She waited for one of us to back out. “Okay, I’ve put together a list of questions, twenty-five questions, that you might want to consider.”
Graeme retrieved his wife’s old leather bag, and from it took two photocopied sheets, handing one to Alexander and one to me.
“THE BIG TWENTY-FIVE”
PREMARITAL COUNSELING QUESTIONS
The minister remained grave. “I’m afraid I never just marry couples without fulfilling my pastoral duties.”
“We understand—” I began.
“But we’d like to start now,” Alexander cut in.
“Well, usually I do one or two sessions before the ceremony. Some of the questions will strike you as remedial. In fact, you can have a good laugh over them, but I hope they’ll help us move on to the serious stuff and address any niggling doubts about”—she paused—“about compatibility.” A biscuit crumb was squatting in the downturned corner of her mouth. “We’ll then get together—nothing formal, of course, just with a cup of tea—and talk about your thoughts, impressions, the difficult spots you might have encountered.”
I glanced down at the questions.
1 Why do you want to marry?
2 Why do you want to marry me?
3 What values do we share?
4 Do you plan to attend church after our marriage?
5 What is your image of God?
The curlews called from outside. My image of God—and the proof of His existence—would be this house shrinking in the rearview mirror as I sped away.
6 Is it important to know one another’s physical/mental health history?
7 Do you have a criminal record?
8 Have you ever hit anyone?
From out in the hallway came a loud clanging—something heavy had fallen. The minister glanced at Alexander in alarm.
13 What are your expectations of our sexual relationship?
14 Are we comfortable discussing our sexual likes and dislikes together?
15 Are we prepared to forsake all others?
16 Do you expect or want me to change?
The blond woman’s footsteps echoed on the hall tiles, along with her expletives.
25 Can we both forgive?
Walking back into the room, she stuffed a metallic object into a soft black travel bag.
“Reverend Wendy, Graeme”—Alexander had stiffened—“obviously you know my sister, Annabel.”
Annabel’s bag bulged with chattels, which, judging by how tenderly she put it down to greet the guests, must have been valuable. Her arms were outstretched with that posh mix of hauteur and intimacy that made it impossible to tell if she loved or despised them. The minister patted her back in a manner suggesting a history of forbearance.
“Thank you,” Annabel said, turning to her brother. Her accent, like his, had that fruity, gentrified strain. “We’d be delighted to stay for dinner—Lachie’s out in the car, I’ll go and get him.”
Exiting,
she slammed the front door hard behind her.
I smiled at Alexander, but he was staring at the floor.
Outside Annabel was yelling, and these yells were matched by another’s. At last she reentered with gangly, eczema-ridden Lachie slouching in after her. Shrunken and confused by long exposure to the embarrassment of his mother, he greeted his uncle awkwardly, and answered the minister’s predictable questions in monosyllables slurred through the stud on his tongue.
Would the last hours in this house be spent enduring a family dinner? With me now zoning out, fixing on the particles of dust floating on the surface of the champagne, and the carpet’s thousand knots blurred through the bottom of the glass? The siblings’ skirmishes made my former terror seem so foolish.
“Darling? My love?”
I realized Alexander was talking to me.
“Will you show our guests to the table?”
In candlelight the dining room felt cavelike. Even with the various portable heaters switched on, the room was still crosshatched with drafts. On the table, my outsize floral arrangement was central.
His sister stood at the door, holding the ashtray. “Where do you want us?”
“Annabel, will you sit to Alexander’s right, and Reverend Wendy to his left. Graeme and Lachie, if you’ll come next to me.” Impersonating the ideal fiancée, I was all the while thinking, This is the moment to say something; with him in the kitchen, this is the moment to act. As the guests arranged themselves around the table, my half-open mouth was trying to form the right words: Please, you have to help me. He’s been holding me captive. . . . But had Alexander been holding me captive? I could now no longer tell. One moment he seemed close enough to reasonable, restoring an orchard, caring for his animals in need, the next a madman who’d written a guide on ways to molest me.
The clock in the hallway struck nine o’clock. I started, and caught my stricken face reflected in the glass of the French doors. Past this, the moon was in a mean phase.
“Well, you’re a brave woman.” It was his sister.
“How is that?”
“We just never expected Alexander to marry. He has rather enjoyed his freedom, that’s all.” She was staring down, her scratched fingers rearranging the cutlery. “Whenever he’s seemed close to walking down the aisle . . . we don’t know, something’s always happened.”
The Engagement Page 16