“Well, he’s smitten.” A brisk smile.
“No.” I now spat each word. “I am physically trapped.”
“You went outside before, Liese.” Unimpressed, she was patting herself, searching for her glasses, which were the plainest, wire-rimmed frames one could buy. Having dealt with junkies and other down-and-outs, she had no time for this self-indulgence. “On the surface marriage makes us feel under another’s control, but truly it offers a kind of liberation. For some it can also be a chance to start afresh,” she added pointedly. “I suppose I was nervous too before I was married. It’s only natural.”
Reverend Wendy peered at the row of porcelain ponies lined up along the mantelpiece. “Goodness,” she said, “this must have been Annabel’s room.”
I placed the money back in the suitcase, making no attempt to hide what I was doing.
Tactfully, the minister kept inspecting the figurines. “Anyway, your fiancé is about to make a speech. You’d better come back.”
• • •
Don’t they say that sociopaths can act in minute detail the part they wish to play? Their mimicry is so precise that in the end it’s difficult to be sure whether it is an act. From a particular angle, the man standing by the dining table with his hand upon my shoulder was still attractive, and even, at a stretch, charming. If one believed his speech he appeared the model fiancé and his devotion to me was, as the minister assumed, very moving. If one wasn’t sure whether to believe him—as I was not—it was terrifying.
I stared at the mahogany tabletop: the plates had been cleared, the swan’s carcass moved to a sideboard. Alexander’s hand pressed harder into my flesh.
“What really is romantic love?” he asked, turning philosophical. “Is it a biological imperative? A spiritual state? A form of delusion? Man may have asked himself these questions for millennia, but until recently, I confess, I’d never bothered.
“The idea of ‘true’ love was, I’d always believed, just a fairy story to help people avoid facing how utterly alone we are. We are alone,” he said, straightening, “we are alone—and people, generally, live alienated from nature. Then they fixate on finding the perfect other human half, and attach a lot of mystical qualities to the pursuit.” He gave a bemused sigh. “These people are unable to bear that really we are animals with the same basic needs and desires as those standing with four legs outside in the paddocks.
“So I have been . . .” Pausing, Alexander leaned down and put his fingers underneath my chin, tilting my face to his. A thin line of sweat glistened on his forehead, the candlelight shading, then dazzling, his features. “I have been a bachelor for a long time now, and I’ve always sidled away from the girls who caught the bouquet. However, despite what’s been a very successful year for the farm”—Alexander was staring into my eyes—“many nights I returned to this house knowing something profound was missing. Always one glass and plate and knife and fork drying by the sink, and no one to share one’s thoughts with. Always too many rooms feeling emptier each year.
“Now”—he ducked his head shyly, curls spilling over his forehead—“growing up in this house was not always pleasant. Reverend, I know Annabel’s spoken with you about this, as have I. It wasn’t easy. . . . Nevertheless, I have strong memories of my dear mum almost begging me to find a nice girl and settle down.”
At the mention of her mother, Annabel made a noise like something was burning in her throat. The minister filled her empty wineglass with water.
“Not—and let’s be frank—not that I always felt Mum would have approved of the girls I did bring home. . . .” He paused for laughter. “ ‘And where,’ I asked her in my head, ‘do you think I’ll meet this nice girl?’ ‘Go to Melbourne,’ I heard her advise, ‘take a house for the season, and have a good time.’ So I drove down to the city and on the way made an appointment to look for a pied-à-terre. And who’d have thought she would be right? From the moment I met Liese, I displayed all the symptoms of an animal in love. For yes”—he grinned—“in mating season all species behave differently, even experiencing what could be called ‘the blues.’ When it seemed Liese returned my feelings, my heart soared; when I wasn’t so certain, I’d drive back here to drag myself around for days. Come to me in my dreams, and then/By day I shall be well again!”
With each sweet word I felt the room closing in on me. Locked into his story now, I watched his mouth move, those full lips wet with satisfaction, and I wondered whether for all these months I too had been caught in his gun sight while he decided the best time to bring me down.
“Liese, you are my chance to be well again, my chance at happiness,” Alexander said, his glance adding, If you understand you are the object meant to guarantee my contentment, you will be all right. He smoothed his hands against his trousers. “Please raise your glasses, ladies and gentlemen, and join me in toasting my new life and bride-to-be.”
His cough told the guests they ought to stand.
Numbly I joined them, and taking my shoulders, Alexander pulled me toward him, kissing me on the mouth: a kiss like he needed resuscitation. With it, I tasted the swan, and I was suddenly woken and filled with horror. Was I being kissed by a man deeply in love with me, or by a devil doing a perfect imitation of a man deeply in love with me?
His sister was the only one still seated. “You’re just like he was.”
The minister and Graeme paused, their champagne glasses frozen in the air.
“Even the way you speak, the things you say.”
“Not now, Annabel.”
“Dad would have liked nothing more than to lock her away for good, get her out of his sight. He’d have been proud of how well you managed it.”
Alexander turned to his sister. “Did you want to care for her after the crash?”
“Didn’t she . . . ?” I started clumsily. “I thought your mother had died?”
“That’s what he told you?”
“Well, she is dead now, Annabel.”
“And to think you meant the world to her. When you were a child you’d cry if she went out, and wait on the stairs until she got back.” Annabel’s large eyes, rimmed with tears, settled on her own son, who had clearly heard all this before. “But, Lachlan, after Grandpa died, your Grandma had to live with her injuries for many, many painful years, and your uncle moved her out of here and put her in what was ironically called a home—”
“She was well looked after.”
“Took her from her surroundings where she recognized everything, was comfortable, and put her with every village idiot—”
“I didn’t see you around here volunteering to wipe up her messes.”
“Lachlan, before you ever do that to me, please kill me first!” She’d started crying, leaning her wet and red face against the table. In her mother’s clothes she looked both very old and young.
“It’s difficult,” the minister tried to intervene, “when a parent becomes infirm—”
“Although then,” Annabel spat, “your uncle could bring his little whores around here without anyone bothering him.”
Silence—even the night sounds from the garden cut out.
She turned to Alexander, mouth loose and twisting. “You bring them in and then dump them however it best suits you.”
His features shifted into blankness. “It’s late. I think it might be time for you to go.”
“You need help, can’t you see? You are not well, you need help!”
“Annabel, we don’t have to do this.” He said it almost sadly. Moving to the door, he switched on the light.
The room was sulfuric. Everyone looked their worst. Even the furniture turned faded and dusty.
“And you”—Annabel reached for me, foundation streaking her cheeks—“can’t you see he’s sick? You should leave with us now. You should leave while you still have the chance!”
The minister and Graeme
were on either side of her, trying to coax her from the table. Lachlan, his mouth a thin line of resignation, picked up his mother’s bag of pilfered objects and headed outside.
Annabel lurched past her minders and grabbed my hand. “Come with me!”
Alexander stepped in to pry her off.
“Come on!”
The woman’s raw, wet face was right in mine, chunks of her wild hair in my eyes, my mouth. We were now out in the hallway. No corner was left for my own hysteria. I would have to hide in hers.
“Come on.”
I looked from sister to brother.
“Yes, yes, I will,” I said, nodding. “I will. I’ll come with you.” Putting my hand to her arm I joined with her. The money was still upstairs, but it no longer mattered. “I’m coming, don’t worry. I’ll come.”
She was heading toward the doorway, calmer now that she believed she was saving me. And I was calmer too, despite my savior walking so unevenly that I was holding her up. I brushed her rib cage and felt how starved she was. Graeme stepped in and took her other arm, and the three of us moved a little further along the patterned tiles, navigating the octagons and hexagons bursting underfoot in dusky blue and umber and beige. When we were closer to the door, her son returned and, shifting me out of the way, took his mother’s free arm. The two of them led her outside.
The minister was standing in the doorway, the dark night behind her. “Thank you,” she said, as if I’d just been playing along with Annabel and the trick to get her into the sedan. She nodded to Alexander. “We’ll take it from here. Graeme can come and collect her car in the morning.”
“I think I should still go with you,” I suggested firmly.
“Lachlan’s got her tablets. There’s no need.”
Alexander had put his hand tightly around my arm.
“But I want to leave with you.”
The minister glanced at him. “There’s no room in the car.”
“I’ll squeeze in.” He was holding me the exact way I’d just held his sister. “Please!”
Reverend Wendy cleared her throat and turned to walk down the stone steps. Past her the garden was a chessboard; between the trees were moonlit patches like chances.
“Liese, congratulations again,” she called over her shoulder. “I think you are so lucky, and I look forward to talking over your marriage questions soon.”
And with that, Alexander closed the broad front door. I was screaming to those outside. The sound was echoing, but my fiancé ignored it as he started pulling me slowly up the stairs to the master bedroom.
II
There was only silence and the dripping tap’s to die, to die, to die. On the vanity waited his new envelope. It was A4, a generic mustard color available from any post office or stationery store in any part of the world, but it had not been mailed. by hand was written like a sick joke in neat capitals on the top right-hand corner, and in the same script that usually addressed Alexander was substituted my own name:
Miss Liese Campbell
c/o “Warrowill”
Marshdale
Victoria
I was sitting in the en suite’s bathtub in water so brown it seemed to have been pumped from deep underground. Neither of us moved to turn the tap tighter. I could barely move at all. Each part of my body felt tender and swollen.
Alexander stood by the mirrored cabinet, hunting through old and new beauty products. The room was so cold the mirror had turned opaque, and condensation rolled down the walls’ mauve tiles. But even through the bath’s mist, morning light from the window meant that if he cared to look he could see each part of me: breasts sloping, flesh folding around the midriff, the webbing of cellulite, the veins stretching under my skin.
In the dark the night before, he’d worked his fingers underneath my clothes, between skin and flesh. Then, not just his fingers, his fists, to get more leverage, his touch so rough it felt like he wore gloves, as if a hide protected him from any sensitivity to another. It had not bothered him that I was unresponsive, barely moving, barely breathing. And now this intercourse—or whatever our strange overnight battle had been—meant I felt him on my body, in my body, and it wiped out any will. Thoughts of surrendering came and they were sweet.
“Just try to relax,” Alexander said.
He selected a grimy-necked bottle of bath oil and knelt beside the bath on a matching mauve mat so as not to wet his good trousers. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up, and leaning forward, he poured the thick liquid onto my back, my shuddering back. He replaced the bottle’s cap and started moving a flannel over my skin, rubbing very gently.
“Not enough,” he told himself, unscrewing the cap again and tipping more oil onto his palm, washing my arm, arranging me so his hand slipped under my armpit, touching the side of my breast.
“Relax,” he ordered again.
I did not move.
Taking my shoulders, Alexander positioned me so my neck was against the bath’s rim. “There, like that.” His face was very close. I could see the color of his teeth and smell the night’s drinking on his breath. His hands, muscular knots, wrung out the flannel in the brown water. He started on my legs and bottom. He seemed to be feeling for where the muscle was, the bone and tendons, which parts were best and most tender—the prime cuts.
Keeping the flannel between my legs, his hand began to contract. “You didn’t tell me this person has been writing to you too.”
“This person has not been.”
“It’s the first time? Is that what you’re claiming?”
I wanted him to take his hand away. “Yes.”
“So he has written this and delivered it all the way out here?” Alexander waited. “And not even to the door, right inside the house and straight to my desk?” When I didn’t answer he took the cloth from my sore skin, passing it to me. “Perhaps you should clean yourself.”
Drying his hands, he picked up the envelope and, making a play at nonchalance, studied it. He was angrier than I had realized—or angry again, or angry still—his face gaunt and dark, like someone had sketched it in pencil, then forgotten to erase the lines. He turned the envelope over, examining it, and the acting out of this—his ignorance as to its origins, his futile search for some clue—was almost camp. The visit from his sister must have brought too much reality, forcing him further into this game.
“How, Liese, do you figure this courier got in without starting up the dogs?”
Breathing very shallowly so the bathwater did not move: “I couldn’t tell you.”
“Could you have put it there when you looked through my desk drawers?”
“No.”
“But you were in my study last night.” Exhaling, he made a hissing noise. “I found papers all over the floor; the room was ransacked.”
I shook my head, trying to keep the water calm.
It was true that after my failed escape in the car I had entered his study. I’d wanted to take the letters as proof. Proof of what he’d done to me. Alexander’s refusal to acknowledge that they were his creations made me think he wasn’t so much lying as splitting. It was Alexander who sat down at his desk, but it was someone else, a stranger, who started writing—and this stranger seemed to know Alexander’s fantasies better than he did. Each new dispatch was a more dire self-provocation. Each revealed desires he could evidently express no other way: I was to be just a catalog of body parts, serving or servicing some man’s needs. What sane person would dream about another becoming less than an animal, a lump of meat, a thing?
“Are there signs that anyone broke into the house?” I asked quietly.
“None.”
“What if it was one of the guests who left it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well.” I was ready to give up. “Perhaps it was a ghost.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
&n
bsp; “One of your ancestors.”
He said nothing.
“Your father, maybe?”
His father had often been absent and yet he’d never written to his son, not even a postcard, Alexander had said. As a boy, did he sometimes write to himself, as if from his father? Did he still? The letters seemed to belong to a voice in Alexander’s head, a voice with power over him. And I wondered if he would obey it.
He remained silent.
“Or are the letters from your mother?”
It seemed obvious enough; too obvious, really: I was lying in her bath after all, surrounded by her effects; one set of makeup from before her accident, another for afterward. If he felt guilty about turning his mother out, putting her in a home, was his remedy to keep me, the poor substitute, here and unable to leave? The letters were full of old-fashioned misogyny. The sort of thoughts a mother who does not want her son to marry might have, the thoughts a loyal son might imagine his mother would write to him anonymously.
“No, I don’t think that’s correct either.”
Then the letters must be from you, I wanted to say. But why?
At the beginning of this weekend Alexander had claimed, “I just want to know who you are, who you really are.” Had he orchestrated all of this, each mad installment, to see me behave in every possible way, to witness my whole range—and to prove how much of it he could control?
Both of us were staring at the envelope. That was the sick thing: despite my fear, my terror really, it was tempting to unseal it.
He passed it to me.
“I don’t want to.”
“There isn’t a choice.”
Slipping my fingernail underneath the edge, I pulled out the contents.
The first photograph was so out of focus it looked like the two figures—the man and the woman—were hovering in space, their outlines trembling. Where were they? There was something familiar about the room, I’ll admit that, perhaps because the space was so generic. I studied it closely in case the dark parts of the image surrendered some secret: the shape of a vase, a corner of furniture. I was focusing on anything but the couple in the picture. The man—a stranger—and the woman a stranger too, although she shared my features. Or the features I’d once had.
The Engagement Page 18