Strangers, page 27
Steve drove smoothly away from Annie’s immediate neighbourhood. As they left the streets behind she began to relax. She let her head fall back against her seat, passively watching the shop windows as they rolled by. She felt somehow that now she had left the house and come with Steve, the first of a long chain of decisions had been made, irrevocably, and that was a kind of comfort.
It was a short drive to the north side of Hampstead Heath. Annie noticed that Steve seemed well-acquainted with the belt of expensive housing immediately surrounding the Heath. He turned briskly into an unmarked side-road that led directly to the open space. He raised his eyebrows at her and she nodded her assent. Steve took his stick from the back of the car and they crossed on to the grass, walking slowly, shoulder to shoulder.
Annie glanced back at the large houses standing half-hidden behind their high fences. ‘Are you a regular in places like this?’
Steve shrugged and laughed. ‘Here? Film-producer country? Not exactly. I’ve been asked to one or two private functions in houses around and about. And they are functions, believe me. There was a very stiff party, I remember, in one of those houses over there. The green-tiled one, I think. I walked across here afterwards, in the very early hours of the morning, talking to someone. It was so quiet,’ he recalled. ‘Like somewhere very remote, an island or a stretch of moorland. Not London at all.’
Annie wondered whether he had been with Cass, or Vicky, or someone else altogether. She knew that her retrospective jealousy was inappropriate, but it took a moment to overcome it. She put her hands in the pockets of her jeans, dismissing the image of some film woman in a Dynasty dress. She concentrated on their path over the short, tussocky grass.
‘Are you all right to walk like this?’
‘Perfectly, if we don’t go too far or too fast. If we do, I shall have to lean on your arm.’
‘My pleasure,’ she whispered.
They smiled at each other, suddenly warmed by happiness that was stronger than the sunshine, and Annie forgot her jealousy again.
‘Why do you come to film-producer functions?’ Annie asked. ‘I don’t know anything about what you do, do I?’
‘I can tell you, if you really want.’
The open heath dipping in front of them was deserted except for stray joggers in their tracksuits and one or two solitary walkers whose dogs sniffed at the dead leaves still lying in the hollows: for Steve and Annie their isolation here in the empty space under the blue sky was comforting.
‘I do want. Tell me everything.’
They walked on, absorbed in one another, talking about little things as they had done in the long hours in hospital.
It was Steve who looked at his watch and reminded Annie at last that they must turn back to the car. Their steps were heavier as they retraced them, and they drove back through the streets towards Annie’s home in deepening silence.
Two streets away from the nursery Annie said abruptly, ‘Could you let me out here?’
‘Of course not,’ Steve answered, unthinking. ‘I’ll take you right to the door.’
‘No,’ she said sharply. ‘I …’ She was thinking of the group of mothers on the church hall steps, watching her.
Steve glanced at her face and then he drew in to the side of the road. His hands stayed gripping the steering wheel.
‘I’m sorry,’ Annie said softly.
Steve was silent, looking out at the suburban street. Annie wanted to whisper his name, to lay her head against his shoulder, but she made herself sit rigid.
‘When will I see you again?’ he asked her.
‘I don’t know. As soon as I possibly can. Will … the daytime be all right?’
‘Come at any time you want, my darling.’
‘I’ll … come to you, this time.’ She said the words very quietly, almost with distaste. She was thinking, then we’ll be committed to the lies. Or else to making all the hurtful steps towards the truth.
Oh, Steve, don’t go and leave me.
Go now, why don’t you, and leave us in peace?
She felt herself torn, the pain from all the ragged pieces as severe as any of the physical hurt she had felt in the darkness.
‘All right, then,’ Annie said wearily.
Steve took a little square of pasteboard from his wallet and gave it to her.
‘That’s my address. And my number. You can always reach me there.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. She opened her handbag and slipped the card without looking at it through a tear in the lining, where it could lie safely hidden.
She lifted her head to look at him then. His face was soft, and his eyes were clouded with sympathy. Not a despoiler at all, Annie thought. Why was I thinking that of him? She leant forward very slowly and touched the corner of his mouth with her own. For a second they held together, burning, motionless. Then, as stiffly as an old woman, she sat back again.
‘Goodbye,’ Annie said.
He nodded, his eyes fixed on her face.
Annie fumbled for the door catch and stepped out on to the kerb. She raised her arm in an awkward wave and then she began to walk, too fast, heading for the church hall nursery.
Steve watched her until she was out of sight, but she never turned to look back.
‘Can I do this puzzle?’ Benjy asked. He was sitting at the kitchen table, already tipping the pieces out of their box.
Annie glanced briefly over her shoulder. She was standing at the sink, peeling potatoes.
‘All right. Remember that there isn’t much time before bed.’
‘I want to.’
‘I said yes, Ben. Just don’t get cross if it isn’t finished before you have to go upstairs.’ Annie’s response was patient, automatic. She wasn’t listening, because her thoughts were busy elsewhere. Benjy spread the pieces out over the table and stared fiercely at them.
‘I want you to help me.’
‘I can’t, love. I’m busy now. You do it.’
Benjy reached out across the table and with a lazy sweep of his arm he tipped the puzzle pieces over the edge and on to the floor. They fell with a satisfying clatter.
Annie threw down her potato peeler, the second clatter like an echo. ‘What did you do that for, Ben?’
The little boy gazed at her, his face a pucker of defiance. Then he asked, ‘Why are you always busy?’
Annie stood still, holding on to the sink edge, staring at her children.
Thomas lifted his head from his drawing. He said, as if he were stating the obvious for his brother’s benefit, ‘Because she’s a grown-up.’
They watched her, the two of them, accusing and vulnerable at the same time, their uncertainty clear for her to see.
‘Oh, Thomas,’ she said.
Annie went to them. Benjy slid off his chair and wrapped his arms around her legs. Thomas stood up awkwardly, his shoulders hunched, feeling that he was too old to run into his mother’s arms. She held them out to him and then she hugged them both, burying their faces against her so that they wouldn’t see her own expression.
‘I’m sorry,’ she managed to say. ‘I’m sorry that I haven’t been very much fun, lately.’
I’m doing this all wrong, Annie thought. I’m thinking about myself, and Steve, every minute of the day. Instead of my kids. It would be better for them if I weren’t here. If I just went, and left them, would they be happier in the end, than if I took them away from their home and their father, to a stranger? Suddenly, she was almost overcome by the physical pull of her love for them. She drew them closer, smelling their warm, grubby scent, her cheek against Thomas’s hair.
I can’t leave them, she thought. If I go, they must come with me.
‘I love you both,’ she whispered. ‘You know that.’
She hugged them one last time, and then let them go. The button on her cuff caught against Thomas’s ear and he clapped his hand to it, yelling, ‘Ow!’
‘Baby,’ Benjamin said sternly and then the three of them were laughing, the tension breaking up like mist.
‘Come on,’ Annie said. ‘It’s bath time.’
Another day negotiated, she thought, as they went up the stairs.
The boys were asleep before Martin came home. He was tired after a meeting with a particularly exigent client, and he came into the kitchen wearily rubbing his hand over his eyes.
‘Was it a bad day, then?’ Annie asked.
Martin pecked her cheek, reaching past her for the wine bottle at the same time. ‘Mmm? Only fairly bad. Dinner smells good. How was your day?’
‘Oh. Usual,’ Annie said carefully.
Martin poured himself a drink and took the evening paper over to the sofa at the far end of the room. He cleared a pile of clean washing out of the way and sank down with a sigh of relief.
‘Thank God for peace and quite,’ Annie heard him murmur.
She stood at the stove, poking unnecessarily at a saucepan with her wooden spoon. She was thinking, If I say something now, will it sound as if I haven’t been able to hold it back? If I don’t mention it till later, will it come out sounding contrived? Annie frowned down into the bubbling casserole. Lying didn’t come easily.
‘Martin?’ she said, too loudly.
‘Yes?’
‘I thought I might go shopping tomorrow. Down to the West End. The boys need some things, and so do I. Benjy’s going out to play for the afternoon, and Audrey will come in at tea-time …’
Martin looked up from the paper. It was a good sign that she felt safe enough to go into crowded stores again. He smiled at her, trying to gauge if it was anxiety or the effort of concealment that made her voice sound strained.
‘Good idea. Look, shall I come with you? I couldn’t manage all day, but I might take a couple of hours after lunch.’
‘There’s no need.’ Look down into the saucepan. Stir in one direction, then the other, take a deep breath. ‘It’s boring things, like a new duffel coat for Tom.’
I hate lying to him.
Martin watched her averted profile for a moment. And then he said lightly, ‘Okay. If you’re sure you’ll be all right. Take the joint account chequebook. There’s a couple of hundred pounds in that account.’
‘Thanks,’ Annie said. And so, she thought, she would have to rush into John Lewis’s on the way home, and buy things to make her husband believe that she had been shopping all day long. Annie realized that the sight of the food was making her feel sick. She wondered bleakly whether it was her love affair itself that was sordid, or whether it was the lying and the subterfuge that made it seem so.
She had telephoned Steve two days ago, when she knew that she couldn’t go any longer without seeing him. Her hands shook as she dialled the number, but they steadied again as soon as he answered. His voice sounded very warm and confident.
‘I can arrange for a whole day. Until the children’s suppertime, that is,’ she said.
‘When?’
‘On Thursday. Is that all right?’
‘Of course it is. I’ll take you to lunch somewhere.’
And so it had been arranged. Annie dropped the wooden spoon into the sink with the rest of the washing up.
‘Dinner’s ready, Martin.’
‘Wonderful.’
Another ordinary evening. Annie slept badly that night, restlessly turning between guilt and happiness.
In the morning, when the house was empty and quiet after the rush of work and school, she walked dreamily through the cluttered rooms. She put the cushions straight on the old chesterfield, and wound up the pretty little French clock that stood on the mantelpiece. Then she went upstairs. She touched the bottle of body lotion on her dressing table, then opened one of the drawers and looked at her underwear neatly folded inside. Annie owned an expensive set of cream lace and silk underthings, but Martin had given them to her for her birthday a year ago. Annie took out her plain, everyday things and slammed the drawer shut again. She lifted a blue corduroy dress off its hanger and put that on too, defiantly not looking at herself in the wardrobe mirror. When she was dressed she went into the bathroom and combed her hair into waves around her face. Almost as an afterthought she took out a pair of jet combs that Tibby had given her, saying, ‘I won’t need these now that my hair’s so thin.’ She pinned the waves of hair back, and stared into her own eyes. They seemed very bright, and there were spots of colour on her high cheekbones. She looked, Annie thought, as if she were about to do something very dangerous, and desperate.
At midday she put her grey coat on, bought to replace the blue one she had worn to go Christmas shopping, how long ago? She picked up the chequebook that Martin had left for her on the dresser in the kitchen, and put it into her bag. For a moment she stood looking at the telephone, thinking, I could still ring. I could tell him that I can’t come, after all. And then she thought of Steve, waiting in his empty flat for her to come to him. I must go. I can’t not do it, not now.
She left the house. She was going to slam the front door, but in the end she closed it behind her with a tiny, final click.
Steve lived at the top of an anonymous block not far from Harrods. Annie rode up in the mirrored lift, turning away from the unwelcome sight of her repeated reflection. When the doors opened on the top floor she stepped out into a long carpeted corridor. She hesitated, caught a last glimpse of her desperate, defiant expression, turned and marched smartly down the length of deep pile. She rang his bell and he opened the door immediately.
Steve kissed her cheek, his hand briefly lifting her hair from the nape of her neck. ‘Come in.’
She followed him inside. The room was bare, surprisingly high, decorated in shades of grey and cream. The few pieces of furniture were black, or glass and chrome. A long black table at the far end was piled with papers.
‘Have you been working?’ Annie asked. In this environment, Steve suddenly seemed a formidable stranger.
Then he smiled crookedly at her. ‘Trying to,’ he said, acknowledging the longing and the apprehensiveness that they both felt.
‘Would you like a drink?’
Annie remembered the conversation that they had had in hospital. Steve had said, ‘We’ve never met for a clandestine drink. I don’t know whether you like vodka martinis or white wine spritzers.’ This is clandestine enough, she thought. Why didn’t we understand before that it would come to this?
‘Just white wine,’ Annie said. ‘No soda.’
Steve nodded. She knew that he remembered too.
He went into the kitchen and Annie walked across the room to the black sofa, looking at the chic emptiness. He poured her wine and she drank it, tasting the gooseberry richness.
‘Why aren’t there any things?’ she asked suddenly. ‘No ornaments, or mementoes.’
Steve looked around, seeing the room afresh. ‘There aren’t, are there?’
‘It looks as if it came all together, in a package. Do you mind my saying that?’
Steve laughed. ‘Not a bid. It did. An interior decorator’s package. I suppose I haven’t wanted to remember anything in particular.’ His face softened. ‘Until now.’
‘Come and sit here,’ Annie asked, turning her face up to his. They sat side by side, their heads almost touching.
‘It isn’t very like your house, is it? Your house is full of memories.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s easier to be here.’
They drank again in silence, and when Steve spoke again it was in a light, deliberately cheerful voice, about something quite different.
When they had finished their wine Steve said, ‘I told you I was going to take you out for lunch. You’d better know that I can’t cook a thing.’
‘I thought you must have one minor failing,’ she answered, on the same cheerful note.
But under the bright surface they were both thinking that they knew all the big things about one another, the momentous things that made them who they were. Yet they knew none of the little, everyday ones that would have marked them out to their acquaintances. It was strange to have everything, and nothing, to learn.
It was a short walk to the restaurant. Steve seemed to be moving more quickly, leaning less heavily on his stick.
‘The leg will always be slightly stiff,’ he told her. ‘But otherwise as good as new. Look at us.’ They stopped for a moment on the crowded pavement and the shoppers streamed past them in the sunlight. ‘We’re lucky. Remember?’
Annie looked at the light and the colours, and at the reassuring roaring traffic, and at Steve’s face, and uncomplicated joy flooded through her. Their eyes met for a moment, and then they began to walk towards the restaurant again.
It was a small, discreet place, with tables occupied by prosperous-looking lunchers well-separated from each other so that conversation was no more than a low hum. One waiter pulled out Annie’s chair, another unfolded her napkin for her. The menu was placed in her hands by the head waiter. She glanced at it and saw that it was very short and very distinguished.
After they had ordered, Annie sat back in her chair with a sigh, looking around the room. ‘I like it here.’
Steve raised his glass to her. ‘I like it because you are here.’
It was a meal that Annie always remembered.
She forgot the details of the food, but she never forgot the sense of being wrapped in calm, unshakable luxury, or the way that the exquisite food and wine went together, or the happiness of being with Steve. She knew that her skin was glowing and her eyes were shining, and she knew that she was beautiful and clever. Everything that was good and important had come together, as it had only ever done before in dreams. As they ate and talked and looked at one another Annie stepped outside her ordinary self and became somebody magical, and superhuman; a woman in love.
Steve sat across the table from her, oblivious of everything but her face and voice, his own face reflecting his happiness and his pride in her.
Nothing could go wrong. Nothing must go wrong.
And then, so quickly, their coffee cups were empty for the last time, and Annie had eaten the last of the tiny, exotic sweetmeats that had come arranged in their dish like jewels in a casket. She blinked, and looked around the restaurant, and saw that it was empty except for themselves.
