Becoming Strangers (20 page)

George was very pleased that when the Reverend came up the aisle shaking hands left and right, he had received a firm grasp and a quick chat. The two of them exchanged birthplaces and then regiments, shook hands again and George agreed on all of their behalves to join the old boy for a cup of tea afterwards. He turned to the others and told them what they'd just seen take place. 'He came right up to me, singled me out, as if he knew me, and would you believe he was in North Africa too during the war?' They'd nodded. 'He asked me back for a cuppa. Well, we're all invited, of course. Nice old boy.

'Poor devil looks like he's on his last legs,' he said to Dorothy, turning to watch the Reverend leave. Dorothy remarked that although he walked with a slight hunching of the back he went at a better pace than either of them. 'You always have to gainsay me,' George grumbled.

As Bill, Dorothy and George stepped into the meeting room just off the entry hall, Laurie turned around to say to Jan, who was standing behind her, 'Let's you and I go outside.'

B
Y LUNCHTIME ON
S
UNDAY
, the sun was stretched, angry, shaking. Steve Burns stank. He'd been at the frying pans, dabbing damp on home fries, adding more and more vegetable oil to the pan, sending frozen potatoes to a sizzling hell. Brian, the Rastafarian, had kept up a monologue about the cost of living in a country like theirs.

'We livin' in place with two economies, man. Gots to be cheap labour for the man to make a profit, gots to be expensive in da shops on account of the nothing which we make here ourselves. Man can't live like that. No matter how much he love his country. Gots to fly, fly away.'

Steve had agreed with him without much interest. Money was just a score, that was all, the mark of your ingenuity. And luck. There was no point in complaining. He stacked emptied eggshells, half on half, with a sense of satisfaction. Over a hundred empties. As long as the chickens kept popping them out of their arses, as long as people sat with their knife and fork at the ready for an egg on toast, neither the chicken nor the egg was important, nor which came first, just the appetite of man. That
was all that counted. He took an icing blade to the frying pan and scraped away at the debris, emptying a bird's nest of it into the sink, ignoring Brians cry of distress, and starting a new batch of the oil and potatoes.

'Brian, keep an eye on this lot. Season it for me,' he said and he went out with an open steel tureen of the home fries. In the heat, the sweat dripped from his face into the platter. Salt on salt. He needed a drink, so he stepped down to the Hibiscus Bar and sat there to enjoy a cold beer.

In three or four months' time he'd have built up a Sunday staff. There was no way a manager should be in the kitchen. It looked bad. But he was so keen to report higher profit margins that quarter, he'd have cleaned the toilets himself too if needs be. This was a crazy place to turn a profit. The costs! The only way to make money was to savagely overcharge the punters. Emma was right; he'd have to start 'churning' them, pushing them into additional activities, the profitable ones. It was no good them lazing about, sedated on booze, dead-weight at the pool. It was no good him being their mum, finding the missing ones, keeping them from fighting over each other's toys. He should be more like their personal banker, providing a return of fun, enlightenment, whatever it was they were after directly proportionate to their investments.

He felt a prod on his back and turned round to find himself facing his nemesis. Jason.

'Morning,' he said, 'join me for a beer? Oh, I thought you were off. Can I help with the cases?'

'Not now,' said Jason, looking at the clock. 'We've got an issue.'

Well, fuck me, thought Burns, what a surprise. Did a day go by that this man did not have an issue?

'The Danish lady, she's coming out with us for a brunch cruise.'

His wife put a long-fingered hand on Jason's shoulder. Saronged cannily to reveal an entire long leg and wearing another string bikini top, she interrupted to say, 'Another one of your guests has gone missing.'

'Just a minute, I'm about to explain,' Jason said to her abruptly, as if she were staff. 'She's not picking up, the Danish lady, Mrs De G., her phone's off the hook.'

'Perhaps she doesn't want to go?' he smiled, lifting his shoulders. 'Perhaps she's avoiding you. Perhaps she needs some privacy.' He took a swig of his beer while he still could. He had a feeling it would be a short-lived sensation, the gaseous bitterness and mind-muffling torpor.

'No, she wanted to go, she was enthusiastic last night.'

Wasn't she though, thought Burns. 'Not to put too fine a point on it, but she had drunk a lot last night, perhaps she's feeling a little ropey this morning.'

'Sure, it's possible. But your barman told us he'd seen her this morning, at the bar here, having a drink.'

Benjamin, the barman, smiled nervously and shrugged, 'It's the truth.'

'And then she went off with your buddy, the one
who likes to mess with the female guests when he's not doing the floors and toilets.'

'He tell her he gonna give her help home, she come over all sick looking,' said Benjamin, wiping the inside of a glass.

'It's really none of our business,' said Burns, signalling with a flick of his head that Benjamin should desist.

Benjamin stood still. He had a smile like an angel; in its warmth his tomato cheeks ripened. His eyes closed for a moment behind his glasses. Only the spectacles broke the sleek beauty of his face. They drank maybe two, maybe three Bloody Marys each one of them. Asking me for doubles to go in. I'm putting a little touch of sherry in these days. This is what makes a good Bloody Mary great.'

'So what do you think, Burns? Maybe even you can add two and two together?'

'I can, Sir, but I'm not keen to do so. I like to uphold the privacy of my clientele.'

'Yes. I'm sure Mr and Mrs Davis were glad of their privacy the night the old woman was lost.'

How had this man become his keeper? The beer shook in Burns's glass.

'Any-who...' said Missy as if to start a new subject. She flashed a dollar smile at each of them in turn, stepping between them. 'Let's just leave them to it, Jason, I'm sure Mrs De Groot can handle herself.'

'I don't think so,' said Jason. 'She's weak right now. She's easy prey. Her husband is dying...'

'Dying,' Burns repeated, looking peeved, his eyes elsewhere.

'He's got terminal cancer. Weeks to live. Maybe days, she told us, no one knows. He pops morphine by the handful every morning...'

Burns swallowed, 'I had no idea.'

'Yeah, she's a target, you know. Easy meat.'

'Where is her husband?'

'He's gone out for the day,' said Missy, 'with Mr Moloney and Mr and Mrs Davis, to church.'

'I see.'

'I think we ought to know that she's safe before we leave for the day, sweets,' said Jason, turning to his wife, who nodded and raised her hands in submission.

'It can't hurt,' she said.

Burns looked at the many pendants that hung in the soft valley of her chest, like rock-climbers attached to thin golden ropes. He glanced down at Jason's wrist and saw the man was wearing the very Rolex that he had promised to buy himself one day, when he had the money. He nodded. His beer was all gone.

'No, it can't hurt,' he sighed, relinquishing the empty glass.

'S
O RUN ME THROUGH THIS ONE MORE TIME
,' said Adam, holding down the 'close doors' button on the elevator as they entered it. 'You are going to pay me for sex.'

'Yes.'

'A hundred and fifty dollars.'

'Yes.'

'Okay.' Hunching his brow he felt his pony tail lift. The elevator stopped and the doors opened, 'But no, no, no, no, no,' he said, shaking his head and putting out his arm to stop her getting out, 'this is a wind-up!'

She was holding out her room card.

'Do you want to do this or not?' she asked.

'You're nuts,' he said.

'Why? To pay for sex or to pay for sex with you? For the latter, yes, you may have a point. We shall see,' a wild devilment shone in her eyes. 'I have never done this before,' she said, 'but I'm sure the less we speak about it, the better it is. For me.'

A-non-y-mity,' he said, enunciating the word she had stressed at the bar as they sank their Bloody Marys.

'I want anonymity,' she'd said, 'but more importantly I want to be in charge. I want to have sex with someone that I don't know very well, and I want to order it the way I like.'

'O-kay,' he said slowly.

'I'm entitled to a change. I have always had to have sex with people I knew.'

He feared that she was going to get garrulous. And he struggled with himself, thinking, you sad bitch, on the one hand, but he also thought, this is a story, this is something to tell, she is a real character. There weren't enough weirdos in the world. And he saw too that he could also use this story with other more attractive
younger women, to some advantage. He could make it a sort of confession, could claim to have been a male prostitute, women liked that kind of thing. So he started to laugh along with her. They would both be other people, desirable to themselves.

'All right,' he said, 'your wish is my command,' and he stood behind her as she opened the door and he glanced up and down the corridor.

When they were inside the room, he was a little depressed to see items of Jans about the place, a heavy book on the coffee table, a pair of khaki shorts on the back of a chair.

'I shall go into the bathroom,' she said, 'and have a quick shower, then I would like you to do the same.'

'Fair enough,' he smiled, taking the elastic band from around his hair. She looked at him critically.

'Okay,' she said, 'okay,' and then she slipped into the bathroom.

He looked at himself in the mirror and gave an apish grin in order to remind himself of who he was. Jauntily, he stepped out to the balcony to have a cigarette. It crossed his mind that he ought not to smoke, now the clock was ticking, he was on someone else's time. 'Ah, bollocks to it,' he said, propping himself up on the railing, with one foot swinging, the other supporting him. He squinted down below to the rhododendrons in the shade and tipped little bits of ash downwards. Jans book, open, resting upside down on the glass table near the balcony, looked like the roof to a Roman temple. Stepping forward, but keeping his cigarette-holding
hand outside, he peeped down to read the back of it:
500 years of Western Cultural Life
the cover read. He nodded. 'Good choice,' he said to himself. He noticed that the cover hung over the sides of the book, and with a single finger he poked the cover back, to make it neat. As soon as he did that, he caused the excess cover on the other side of the book to dimple and scuff a little, so with both hands, the cigarette gingerly held between two fingers, he attempted to turn it over and straighten it up. As soon as he turned it, he saw that the print was bold and black and minute and the pages almost transparent. A Bible. How weird is that?' Fumbling with the weight of it, he dropped some ash on to the page and leapt outside to blow it off the pages. It had made a mark, smudged the print, but it had not burnt. 'Bollocks,' he said to himself, closing the Bible, with the cover just about attached to it. He flung it back on the table as soon as he heard the bathroom door open.

Annemieke was wearing a white towelling robe. Her hair was dry. She's probably just given her muff a wash, he thought.

'Your turn,' she said, indicating the bathroom, and in he went, passing her between the bed and the dresser, saying, 'Sorry,' as he almost bumped against her and hearing her make some faint noise in return.

In the mirror of the bedroom, Annemieke opened her mouth wide to check her teeth. She raised her arms to check that her armpits were smooth, and then she dropped her robe to look at her body. Glancing back up at her face, she saw she had the hang-mouth expression of
a carp, her lips flaccid and glum. She shook it off and assumed a haughty air. She rubbed a hand across her breasts and stood sturdily with her feet apart. 'I can have whatever I want,' she said, and then she went to the balcony, naked, stood there briefly and pulled the curtains to.

'Should I wash my hair?' Adam called from the bathroom.

As you like,' she replied, hearing her voice ringing out in the empty room.

'Shall I use the hotel shampoo or yours?'

'I don't care,' she said.

'Shall I do my teeth?'

'Of course,' she said, about to mount the bed on all fours, wanting to stretch her back and legs a little.

'Which one?'

'What?'

'Which toothbrush?'

'Mine.'

'Which is that?'

'Oh, for God's sake,' she said to herself, as she pushed her arms out in front of her, lowering her chest and head to the bed. She sat up, 'I don't care. It doesn't matter.'

'All right, all right,' he said with comic inflection.

A German would have been perfect, she said to herself, all performance, no personality. A BMW Let's hope this man's not a Mini Cooper. She turned her head to look in the mirror past her rear. 'I'm like Cleopatra,' she said to herself, 'like a queen.' Reaching across the bed, she took the phone off the hook.

Adam emerged with dark wet curls, and a towel around his waist. He ran a hand through his hair to stop the dripping on his face and chest. Here was the moment of truth, he told himself with forced bravado, dropping the towel.

'Well,' said Annemieke, a single eyebrow aloft, 'we can work on it.'

'Can I have a drink?'

'Yes. Open some wine. There are some half bottles in the fridge.'

She watched him walk over to the fridge, and bending over, select a bottle. At first he exposed his rear insouciantly and she saw the slightly spotty cheeks and the dark furrow between them. The muscles in his flanks twitched once or twice as he lowered his knees.

'Red or white?'

'Red.'

'Okay. Here's the fellow.' All of this jolly repartee was to make him feel more at ease but it made her feel uncomfortable. They were not what the English called 'mates'.