Becoming Strangers (8 page)

She was able to peep inside quite a few of the houses and see into them. Each of them had lace at the windows and many of them had frippery, fabric and lace over the chairs and tables. The houses were painted the colours you found in a box of chalks: solid blues, reds, oranges, pinks and yellows. Inside, the furniture was useful; she saw the very things her own children laughed at her generation for, plastic homewares and useful coverings. She spied the ends of legs or a portion of a back, a head turning, an arm reaching as the lacy curtains blew this way and that. She wished for herself the life that was lived inside them.

Poor! she thought, spitting out the word. They have no televisions, that's it! She tutted and tusked. 'Now
don't go thinking that these people are good, Dorothy,' she warned herself, 'no people is either good or bad, no matter what they have or don't have...' But wasn't it easier to be good when you didn't have so much to worry about, wasn't it just easier? Hadn't people been better once? With their front doors open, small things to celebrate. The girls told her it was rose-tinted nonsense.

'There was still crime back then, Mother,' they told her. The granddaughter would explain to Dorothy how media this-and-that and how the police forces this-and-the-other and how it was all different and yet all the same.

'I wish I could get myself kidnapped,' she said, stopping to rummage around the bottom of her bag for a lone Murray Mint. She found one and stood, sucking on her sweet like a duck gobbling bread.

J
AN WAS AWAKE
. It was the evening, they had gone to bed drunk, before the sunset, agreeing to rise for dinner. His wife slept, silent and solid beside him, the fan causing a small ripple of white sheet to flicker over a freckled shoulder. He had his head on the pillow, but was lying on his side so that he could feel, quite palpably, the pulsing of an artery in his neck. He could hear it too. It sounded like a clock ticking. It did more for him than a solitary thought could do and so he waited there until he had what he needed from it, then
he turned and looked at his wife. A small trickle of saliva lay across her cheek and he knew the smell of it, the dead breath creeping out under cover of liquid.

He really did want an armistice. He had called her, in their time together, fraud, coward, liar, and he knew that these might apply to him also. It was no good calling her these things, when the fact was that he was lying there beside her. They were complicit. He'd spent each day with her amassing evidence to prove himself better than her and dying had served him up another way to be better, to be more right. That was the truth of it. He was a fool.

He got up to smoke a cigarette on the balcony. He had taken up smoking again in the last month. He took a beer from the fridge and sat in the dull black heat of their balcony with the door open, careless of the air conditioning seeping out and the warm air stealing in. He wanted her to smell the smoke; he wanted her to mind him.

He had seen at dinner that George was impressed with Annemieke. As she aged Annemieke's face was decked with excessive emotion, like an old maid's Christmas tree—loaded, angry, ready to let something tumble. Her eyes were strained, mascara weighed heavily on lashes, but she still looked good. She looked better without make-up. Her eyes were the grey of the North Sea she had looked at many times from her mother's apartment in Blankenberge. They used to make him think of a drop of ink on to watercolour paper, dark at first, fading outwards.

Of course, old George liked the way she looked. Men liked her because she looked like she would provide the entertainment. Her fellow Dutch or Belgian women chose to wear stern, forbidding, expensive brands in dark green, brown leather and navy. Annemieke hoarded a mass of clothes, bobbled and baubled, which refused folding and rioted in the wardrobes. From the shelves a sleeve here or there stretched down towards the clothes hanger, dripping with crocheted cherries, too many zips and cuff buttons shaped like anchors or hearts.

He had thought at first that her wearing eye make-up in bed was charming, acquired from some magazine advice column typical in the 1960s—or it might be some slatternly laziness, and this thought appealed to him perhaps more. One evening, in the early days, before the children, he spotted that the colour of the eye shadow had changed from green to a pearlized white shimmer, which matched her nightdress. He had felt cornered. Yet when she ceased to wear it in bed, he was dejected. Accidentally, he found the tubes of cosmetics in her drawer; she kept them still and he became jealous. By then he'd become merely a tenant of her bed-tent, profiteer of her capable circulatory system in wintertime.

Looking into the room, he saw her turn a little, kicking at the sheets. Her feet suffered too, along with her eyes. She stuffed them into too tight too high heels, put plasters over blisters and sloughed away red patches to leave raw patches. Finding the dry skin razor in their
bathroom, the foot carpaccio in the bidet, had turned his stomach. She could not abide sheets over her feet, so those red paddles of pain turned in the night-time air.

He extinguished his cigarette and went back into the room. He put on the lamp by his side of the bed and picked up his book. He had known the light would wake her. She was roused and frowned at him, lifting her head.

'It smells of smoke in here.'

'Sorry.'

'Can't you sleep?'

'No. Insomnia.'

'Why don't you take something?'

She turned and nestled her head once more into the pillow and he saw her shoulders slacken. Before she was quite asleep again, he put his lips between her shoulder blades and kissed her there.

The phone rang. It was George.

I
T WAS THE MANAGER'S
first serious hotel. Steve Burns was thirty-five, he was single; he was committed to his new job. The resort was one of a chain of luxury re-sorts that were marketing themselves as 'taste and refinement in unexpected locations.' 'Taste and refinement' meant dark teakwood and uniformly white furnishings. The 'unexpected locations' were a result of
the prime real estate in any popular resort area having been long since snapped up.

The manager's job description was rather alternative, rather New Age. In bold letters he was instructed to 'deliver an experience that enables our customers to re-connect with his or her inner self in luxurious surroundings.' He was, however, from Manchester. Steve Burns. Down to earth. He'd laughed about the job title: 'Total Experience Manager.' He'd shown it to his friends down at the local that lunchtime after it came in the post, red-cheeked no longer from pride, but from the several beers and the stuffy public bar on the solitary hot day of the year. His friends quizzed him. He'd been a hotel manager, but now he was to be a guru, it was a promotion, surely. Like going from baker to bishop.

'Look,' he said, 'you park seventy-odd middle class fat-arses round a swimming pool in the blazing heat, you get them up to pour booze down their necks, and then you drag them off to sweat it out on the massage table and they'll find their selves all right. I don't doubt they'll find that their true self, their inner child, is just what it was before they left home; a right greedy bast'd.'

'Half your chance,' his friends had moaned and gone on to ask him about discount rates. Time to leave.

Now he was sat, in khaki trousers and a white shirt, a silver chain round his neck, hairy ankles peeping out of brown leather boat shoes, on the corner of the big dark wood desk he'd been given. A dark wood fan, brass details, a colonial era reproduction, turned above him. Here he was presented as part Werner Erhard,
part Ernest Hemingway. And essentially, he was perfect for all of it, the clammy-handed Mancunian grateful for the chance to rub shoulders with the moneyed classes.

He'd already had his daily team briefing with senior members of staff, and now, last job at nine in the evening, he was running through one or two of the same points with Abner and Emma, the Catering Manager and Domestic Staff Manager. He found the Caribbean staff quite proper in a way, he'd expected more of the rum-swigging, pot-smoking,
'Here com' de Lilt', mon,'
stereotype. But this particular island was one of the most religious places on the earth. It was almost impossible to get staffing for Sunday mornings. In a cunning pact with the forces of darkness, he held a weekly Saturday Night Fever party, dedicated to fond memories of school discos, and he worked the crowd hard to make sure there'd be no early risers. That way breakfast would be less of an issue and lunch an eggs-and-potato-settle-my-stomach-before-I-shit-myself sort of affair which could be managed by a line of just two or three in the kitchen.

He was explaining to Abner and Emma that their jobs emanated from his own, which under his interpretation meant that they were 'alcohol facilitators.'

'They're no trouble when they're passed out round the pool, are they?' he was saying. But Emma had been to college and was talking about increasing their captive spending—spa packages, tours—and even tipping.

'Your Brits won't tip,' he said, matter-of-factly, turning over her other suggestions in his mind. He liked to
present himself as someone on the side of the common man—and his drinking. He liked a pint himself. He persuaded himself that it was best not to milk the customers, but to make sure they came back.

There was a small commotion outside the frosted glass double doors to his office and an old man burst in, wearing a string vest, trousers and braces.

'Hello-hello, mate,' he said, 'can I help you, Sir?'

'I've lost my wife,' the old man said.

'Not entirely bad news, then,' he said, smiling broadly. Abner and Emma looked at him, both shocked and afraid. (Oh, the old girl would turn up; she'd be in the spa more than likely.)

'Mr Davis, isn't it?' he said. He did his homework; he read the names and profiles of all his guests for the week. He'd remembered this couple, on account of their ages. He might have known there would be 'issues.' In his experience the geriatric punter was more hassle than he was worth. That and the new parent, terrible pains in the arse, expected everyone else to suffer along with them, couldn't get over their indignation that God or biology had done this to them, inflicted them with rheumatoid arthritis/a kid.

'So, when did you last see Mrs Davis?'

George was rubbing his jowls left and right with his big hand, 'Not since the morning.'

'Did she go off for the day then, off on a tour or something?'

'No,' said George and his face was suddenly
wretched, 'I left her in the room and I got a bit carried away with the day's events, sat out having lunch with a new acquaintance, had a few drinks, went back to the room in the afternoon, late, and I must have fallen asleep.'

Steve checked his watch again; it was just after nine-thirty.

'I just woke up,' said the old fellow.

'Right. That's quite a while she could have been missing, then, Sir,' said Steve.

'Yes. That's what I've been saying to your receptionist and the bellboys. Have they seen her, I've been asking them, and they keep telling me to come and see you. Why can't they just answer me?'

The entire staffing shift had changed at five, thought Steve. He'd have to call some people. Lots of people. But first they should check the premises.

'Now you're not to worry, Sir, we're going to sort this out, we're going to make a full search and concurrently,' he paused over the word, hesitant for a moment, but it held good, 'we'll make inquiries of all the staff here today.' Abner and Emma remained open-mouthed in shock and fear.

'How old is she?' Emma asked George, turning in her seat.

'Eighty-two.'

Emma shook her head and made a moaning sound, 'So old and it's been so hot today.'

'Thank you, Emma,' said Steve. 'Now, Mr Davis,
let's get on with the plan of action. I think it would be best if you waited by the bar, had some supper, a bowl of soup or something.'

'Don't manage me, son. Just get your arse in gear and make sure you get the police called in right away.'

I
T WAS
A
DAM
who put his hand on Jan's shoulder in the dining room. The Belgian couple sat at a table for four, on their own, near the door. Seeing Adam's eyes alert and quick about the room, Jan wiped his lips and put his napkin on his plate, pushing it aside. Annemieke laid her knife and fork to rest and put her hands to her face as Adam explained that he'd just heard George's wife had gone missing.

'Yes, George, he has told me this already.'

Adam shook his head. 'Poor old boy, he's got to be worried sick. I thought maybe you and I could see if we could help him.'

'But of course,' said Jan pushing his chair back from the table, 'I am waiting for him to meet me here after he has seen the manager. He has been some time now.'

'Terrible!' said Annemieke with a loud voice. One or two of the other guests looked over at the group. 'She is an old woman. It's already the evening! It's getting late! They need to find her.'

Jan put his finger to his lips.

'But the more people who know, the more can help look for her,' she said, looking about her.

Adam looked at Annemieke and shrugged. Jan stood up.

'Let me go and find out what we can do.'

'I'll wait for you both at the bar,' she said, rising also.

There was something comic about the members of the kitchen staff, wandering around the grounds of the hotel, looking in places that a human being could quite plainly not be, saying in stage whispers, 'Mrs Davis, are you there?' They had been advised not to alarm the other guests. A group of three of them came out of the sauna and one of them, in chef's pants, turned the key in the lock as they exited, shaking his head and pointing out the tool sheds for their next inspection.

George was standing by the poolside, surveying the troops in action, a finger pushing his lower lip into his mouth, chewing.

When Jan and Adam came up alongside him, he shook his head and said, 'Where the hell is she?'

'Have they searched the beach?' asked Jan.