The Comfort of Strangers (12 page)

He stood with folded arms and gazed at the banks of unfamiliar names and incomprehensible titles, as though stuck for a choice. The drinkers at the bar now watched him with undisguised curiosity. He dropped a coin into the machine. The configuration of illuminated signs altered drastically, and a rectangle of red light began to pulse, urging him to choose. From behind him by the bar someone spoke loudly a short phrase which could easily have been the title of a song. Colin searched the columns of typewritten tabs, passing and immediately returning to the name of a record which alone among the names had meaning – ‘Ha ha ha’ – and even as he punched out the numbers and the great device vibrated beneath his fingers, he knew it was the virile, sentimental song they had heard last time. As Colin made his way back to his seat, Robert’s manager lifted his head and smiled. The customers called for the volume to be increased and when the first deafening chorus burst across the room, a fresh round of drinks was ordered by a man who slapped the counter in time to the strict, almost martial, rhythm.

Robert came to sit by Colin and studied his documents while the record reached its climax. When the machine clicked off, he smiled broadly and pointed at the empty mineral-water bottle. Colin shook his head. Robert offered a cigarette and, frowning at Colin’s emphatic refusal, lit one for himself and said: ‘Did you understand what I was telling people as we walked here?’ Colin shook his head. ‘Not one single word?’

‘No.’

Robert smiled again in simple delight. ‘Everyone we met, I told them that you are my lover, that Caroline is very jealous, and that we are coming here to drink and forget about her.’

Colin was tucking his T-shirt into his jeans. He ran his fingers through his hair and looked up, blinking. ‘Why?’

Robert laughed and mimicked accurately Colin’s studious hesitancy. ‘Why? Why?’ Then he leaned forwards and
touched Colin’s forearm. ‘We knew you would come back. We were waiting, preparing. We thought you’d come sooner.’

‘Preparing?’ Colin said, withdrawing his arm. Robert folded the papers into his pocket and gazed at him with proprietorial tenderness.

Colin was about to speak, hesitated, and then said quickly, ‘Why did you take that picture of me?’

Robert was all smiles once more. He leaned back, one arm slung over the back of his chair, beaming self-satisfaction. ‘I thought I did not give her enough time. Mary is very quick.’

‘What’s the point,’ Colin insisted, but a newcomer to the bar had crossed to the juke-box and ‘Ha ha ha’ was starting again at even greater volume. Colin folded his arms and Robert stood to greet a group of friends who were passing their table.

On the walk home, this time by the less crowded, descending street that took them, for part of their way, along the seafront, Colin pressed Robert about the photograph again, and what he had meant by preparations, but Robert was buoyantly evasive, pointing out, in reply, the barber shop used by his grandfather, his father and himself, explaining, with an intensity and long-windedness that may have been parodic, how pollution from the city affected the livelihoods of fishermen, and forced them to take jobs as waiters. Mildly exasperated, Colin stopped suddenly but Robert, though he slowed his energetic stride and turned in surprise, sauntered on as though it was a matter of pride with him not to stop too.

Colin was close to the spot where he had sat with Mary on packing cases and watched the early morning sun. Now, in the late afternoon, although the sun was still high, the eastern sky had lost its vivid purple and, fading by degrees through nursery blue to diluted milk, effected, across the precise line of the horizon, the most delicate of transactions with the pale grey of the sea. The island cemetery, its low stone wall, the packed, bright headstones, was picked out clearly by the sun at his back. Colin glanced across his left shoulder along the quay. Robert was fifty yards away, walking unhurriedly towards him. Colin turned round to look behind. A narrow
commercial street, barely more than an alley, broke the line of weatherbeaten houses. It wound under shop awnings and under washing hung like bunting from tiny wrought-iron balconies, and vanished enticingly into shadow. It asked to be explored, but explored alone, without consultations with, or obligations towards, a companion. To step down there now as if completely free, to be released from the arduous states of play of psychological condition, to have leisure to be open and attentive to perception, to the world whose breathtaking, incessant cascade against the senses was so easily and habitually ignored, dinned out, in the interests of unexamined ideals of personal responsibility, efficiency, citizenship, to step down there now, just walk away, melt into the shadow, would be so very easy.

Robert cleared his throat softly. He was standing a couple of paces to Colin’s left. Colin turned back to look at the sea again and said lightly, companionably, ‘The thing about a successful holiday is that it makes you want to go home.’

It was a full minute before Robert spoke, and when he did there was a trace of regret in his voice. ‘It’s time to go,’ he said.

The gallery, as Mary stepped inside and Caroline closed the door firmly behind her, appeared to have doubled in size. Practically all the furniture, and all the pictures, rugs, chandeliers and wall hangings had vanished. Where the great, polished table had stood were three boxes supporting a thick plywood board on which were spread the remains of a lunch. Around this makeshift table were four chairs. The floor was an open plain of marble, and Mary’s sandals flopped and echoed loudly as she advanced a few paces into the room. All that remained of significance was Robert’s sideboard, his shrine. Behind Mary, just inside the door, were two suitcases. The balcony was still profuse with plants, but the furniture had gone from there too.

Caroline, who was still standing by the door, smoothed her dress with the palms of her hands. ‘I don’t usually dress like a ward sister,’ she said, ‘but with so many things to arrange, I feel more efficient in white.’

Mary smiled. ‘I’m inefficient in any colour.’

Out of context, it might have been difficult to recognize Caroline. The hair, so tightly drawn back before, was slightly awry; loose strands softened her face which in the intervening days had lost its anonymity. The lips especially, previously so thin and bloodless, were full, almost sensual. The long straight line of her nose, where formerly it had appeared no more than the least acceptable solution to a problem of design, now conferred dignity. The eyes had shed their hard, mad shine and seemed more communicative, sympathetic. Only her skin remained unchanged, without colour, without even pallor, a toneless grey.

‘You look well,’ Mary said.

Caroline came forward, the same painful, awkward gait, and took Mary’s hands in hers. ‘I’m glad you came,’ she said, urgently hospitable, squeezing tight on ‘glad’ and ‘came’. ‘We knew Colin would keep his promise.’

She went to withdraw her hands but Mary kept hold. ‘We didn’t exactly plan to come, but it wasn’t completely accidental either. I wanted to talk to you.’ Caroline sustained her smile, but her hands were heavy in Mary’s, who still would not let go. She nodded as Mary spoke and directed her gaze at the floor. ‘I’ve been wondering about you. There are some things I wanted to ask you.’

‘Ah well,’ Caroline said after a pause, ‘let’s go in the kitchen. I’ll make some herb tea.’ She pulled her hands free, this time a decisive tug, and, resuming the intent manner of the serious hostess, beamed at Mary before she turned briskly and limped away.

The kitchen was at the same end of the gallery as the entrance to the apartment. It was small, but immaculately neat, with many cupboards and drawers, and surfaces coated in white plastic. The lighting was fluorescent, and there was no sign of food. From a cupboard under the sink Caroline produced a stool of tubular steel and gave it to Mary to sit on. The cooker was supported by a worn card table and was of the kind found in caravans, with two rings, no oven, and a length of rubber hose which ran into a gas bottle on the floor. Caroline put a kettle on to boil and reached, with great
difficulty and a curt refusal of help, into a cupboard for a teapot. She stood still for a moment, one hand resting on the refrigerator, the other on her hip, and appeared to be waiting for a pain to pass. Immediately behind her was another door, slightly ajar, through which Mary could see the corner of a bed.

When Caroline had recovered and was spooning small, dried flowers from a jar into the teapot, Mary said lightly, ‘What did you do to your back?’

Once again there flashed the ready smile, hardly more than a baring of teeth and a rapid forward movement of the jaw, the kind of smile offered to mirrors, all the stranger here in this confined, bright space. ‘It’s been like this a long time now,’ she said, and busied herself with cups and saucers. She began to tell Mary of her travel plans; she and Robert were flying to Canada and there they would stay with her parents for three months. When they returned they would buy another house, a ground-floor apartment, perhaps, somewhere with no stairs. She had filled two cups and was slicing a lemon.

Mary agreed that the journey sounded exciting and the plan sensible. ‘But what about the pain,’ she said. ‘Is it your spine, or your hip? Have you seen anyone about it?’ Caroline had turned her back on Mary and was putting the lemon slices into the tea. At the clink of a teaspoon Mary added, ‘No sugar for me.’

Caroline turned and gave her her cup. ‘Just stirring in the lemon,’ she said, ‘to make it taste.’ They carried their cups out of the kitchen. ‘I’ll tell you about my back,’ Caroline said as she led the way on to the balcony, ‘when you’ve told me how good you think this tea is. Orange blossom.’

Mary rested her cup on the balcony wall and fetched two chairs from indoors. They sat as before, though less comfortably and without a table between them, facing out to sea and the nearby island. Because these chairs were higher, Mary had a view of that part of the quay from which she and Colin had caught sight of Caroline, who was now raising her cup as though to propose a toast. Mary swallowed, and though its tartness caused her to purse her lips, she said it was
refreshing. They drank in silence, Mary watching Caroline steadily, expectantly, and Caroline glancing up from her lap every so often to smile nervously at Mary. When both cups were empty Caroline began abruptly.

‘Robert said he told you about his childhood. He exaggerates a lot, and turns his past into stories to tell at the bar, but all the same it was weird. My childhood was happy and dull. I was an only child, and my father, who was very kind, doted on me, and I did everything he said. I was very close to my mother, we were almost like sisters, and between us we worked hard looking after Dad, “backing up the ambassador” my mother used to say. I was twenty when I married Robert and I knew nothing about sex. Until that time, as far as I can remember, I hadn’t had any sexual feelings at all. Robert had been about a bit, so after a bad start it began to come alive for me. Everything was fine. I was trying to get pregnant. Robert was desperate to be a father, desperate to have sons, but nothing came of it. For a long time the doctors thought it was me, but in the end it turned out to be Robert, something wrong with his sperm. He’s very sensitive about it. The doctors said we should keep on trying. But then, something started to happen. You’re the first person I’ve told. I can’t even remember the first time now, or what we thought was going on at the time. We must have talked about it, but just possibly we didn’t. I can’t remember. Robert started to hurt me when we made love. Not a lot, but enough to make me cry out. I think I tried hard to stop him. One night I got really angry at him, but he went on doing it, and I had to admit, though it took a long time, that I liked it. Perhaps you find that hard to understand. It’s not the pain itself, it’s the fact of the pain, of being helpless before it, and being reduced to nothing by it. It’s pain in a particular context, being punished and therefore being guilty. We both liked what was happening. I was ashamed of myself, and before I knew it, my shame too was a source of pleasure. It was as if I was discovering something that had been with me all my life. I wanted it more and more. I needed it. Robert began to really hurt me. He used a whip. He beat me with his fists as he made love to me. I was terrified, but the terror and the pleasure
were all one. Instead of saying loving things into my ear, he whispered pure hatred, and though I was sick with humiliation, I thrilled to the point of passing out. I didn’t doubt Robert’s hatred for me. It wasn’t theatre. He made love to me out of deep loathing, and I couldn’t resist. I loved being punished.

‘We went on like this for some time. My body was covered in bruises, cuts, weals. Three of my ribs were cracked. Robert knocked out one of my teeth. I had a broken finger. I didn’t dare visit my parents and as soon as Robert’s grandfather died we moved here. To Robert’s friends I was just another beaten wife, which was exactly what I was. Nobody noticed. It gave Robert some status round the places where he drank. When I was alone for long enough, or when I was out with ordinary people doing ordinary things, the madness of what we were doing, and my own acquiescence in it, terrified me. I kept telling myself I had to get away. And then, as soon as we were back together again, what had seemed mad became inevitable, even logical, once more. Neither of us could resist it. Quite often I was the one to initiate it, and that was never difficult. Robert was longing to pound my body to a pulp. We had arrived at the point we had been heading towards all the time. Robert confessed one night that there was only one thing he really wanted. He wanted to kill me, as we made love. He was absolutely serious. I remember the next day we went to a restaurant and tried to laugh it off. But the idea kept coming back. Because of that possibility hanging over us, we made love like never before.

‘One night Robert came in from an evening of drinking, just as I was falling asleep. He got into bed and took me from behind. He whispered he was going to kill me, but he’d said that many times before. He had his forearm round my neck, and then he began to push into the small of my back. At the same time he pulled my head backwards. I blacked out with the pain, but even before I went I remember thinking: it’s going to happen. I can’t go back on it now. Of course, I wanted to be destroyed.