My Biggest Lie (11 page)

It was interesting to watch the thought occurring in him that he might have reason to be annoyed with me, to see it develop from a whim to inflame his face as if I had just bragged of cuckolding him.

‘I didn't tell her anything about you. What was there to tell? I saw you talking to a girl.'

He smiled at this and relaxed. ‘That's right. That's all I did. Talk to a girl.'

‘Lizzie and I didn't talk about you at all,' I said; he looked less pleased at this. ‘Not much, I mean – I told her how much I liked your band.'

He looked even less pleased. ‘She never comes to see my band. Perhaps you should say something then about Lucila, a hint, something to make her know there is danger if she is not with me?'

‘I don't think it ever helps to make a woman think she
can't trust you,' I said. ‘Not the women it's nice to go out with. It's best just to be honest.'

He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Do not lie if you are not good at it, if you are an Englishman, yes. Tell me, do you like Buenos Aires?'

I thought about the question. I supposed I did like it, despite the strangeness and crippling homesickness and heartbreak. I had me to blame for that, not Buenos Aires.

‘I do, yes, I do like it here.'

He looked pleased. ‘I'm glad you like it. It is home. But there are many terrible problems.' He told me about them. Lizzie was taking a long time in the toilet. ‘We are different to you English and the same too, but it is hard to know which bits are the same,' he was saying. ‘I don't understand Lizzie. I feel like you do, and I don't like that you do.'

‘She's just free-spirited. There's nothing to understand. Just let her do what she wants, trust her, you'll be fine, she's great.'

‘And you trust Sarah?'

‘Are you still talking about Sarah?' Lizzie said, suddenly sitting back down. ‘Arturo, give poor Liam a break. You see he misses her.'

‘Oh, yes, I see that,' he said.

‘What are you doing on Sunday?' Lizzie said brightly. ‘Arturo's going to the football so I'm free.'

Arturo frowned. ‘Would you like to come with me, Liam? I find out today I have one more ticket.'

‘Liam doesn't like football,' she said.

‘I do like football,' I said.

‘Really?' she said. ‘But you read books. You don't look like you like football.'

‘I'm currently reading the autobiography of Diego Maradona.'

‘I meant you read real books.'

‘
Lizzie
,' said Arturo, shocked. ‘
El Diego
is
obra maestro
, a tragic story of glory and betrayal. Of course,' he said, turning to me, ‘it is a shame he played for Boca.'

‘So it's not Boca you're going to see?'

It wasn't. He was a
millionario
. I avoided making the obvious joke and asking why then did he deliver parcels on a moped every day? He was a sensitive man, I could see, behind the beauty and swagger. He perhaps wasn't best suited to the machismo he felt the city required of him. And I knew, because I clung to football in this country like a life-raft, that by
millionario
he was identifying himself as a River Plate fan, the bitter enemies of Maradona's old club. It hadn't escaped me that he had only offered me a ticket when he heard Lizzie and I were planning to spend another day together without him. It wouldn't have escaped Lizzie either.

‘You should go,' she said to me. ‘If you do like football.' The scepticism in her voice was not directed at me alone.

And at that moment, with Arturo staring malevolently at me, I hated football, but I said the opposite and Arturo and I made arrangements to meet at Aleman's bar in walking distance of the stadium Monumental.

There was a scene when it came to paying the bill. I'd assumed we'd split it three ways but it was incredible to Arturo that he would not pay for Lizzie and as I was on the table that meant he would pay for me too.

‘But I drank most of the wine,' I said. ‘You had one glass. At least let me pay for that.'

He wouldn't. ‘You are my guest here. When I am in England, you will look after me.'

We'd spoken about the peso and the economic crash at the start of the century, the rising inflation today. The
currency, while fine to live well in Buenos Aires, was never enough on his wages to afford international flights or the cost of living in England. It was a sad offer, full of bravado and a proud hospitality. But Lizzie seemed bored with the display and I wondered then how much it was for my benefit.

That was Thursday. As soon as I got back to the hostel I went online to book a ticket and the next morning I caught a flight to Sao Paulo to find Sarah.

PART TWO: MY LIE

Chapter 13

A
n extract from
My Biggest Lie
by Craig Bennett, published October 2009 (Eliot, Quinn)

Amy was still filming. Craig chose a seat with his back to the bar's door; he didn't want to spend hours watching for Amy to appear in it.

After an hour, he had a sore neck and moved to the other side of the table to stare more easily at the door. He attempted and failed to read, to write, to drink slowly. All he had managed was to rehearse speeches.

He had tried a ‘remember the good times?' speech. Sad, manipulative and true. They had been the best times.

He had tried an ‘I will overwhelm you with the strength and eloquence of my emotions and convictions' speech.

He had tried an ‘I have wronged you but less than you think' speech.

A ‘let's go back in time' speech.

An ‘I forgive you for wronging me' speech.

He had tried an ‘if you had suffered what I have suffered' speech. A mitigating circumstances defence. A mendacious plot device in literary novels: the warping past.

An ‘open your eyes and see' speech.

A ‘he's a fat old bastard' speech.

A ‘you need to respect yourself more' speech.

The ‘I will make it easy for you to forget why you loved me' speech.

There was nothing he could say and then she came in.

By then, he had abandoned his attempts to look busy. When she stepped through the door she bumped straight into his gaze, his yearning, his hope. She hadn't had time to prepare her face for seeing him and, before she made herself calm, he watched her flinch and show the panic she was feeling. Her curls were falling out of the band she'd used to tie her hair back. That's what they did, what I expect they still do. He recognised the black dress she was wearing. Looking at her in it was feeling her against his skin. Her sandals, they were new. They were nice sandals. It had only been a month since she'd waved goodbye to him at Ezeiza airport but already he could spot the small things that had changed. She smiled at him the brilliance of her smile. She changed her mind and made herself look serious. And that made him smile and made her struggle not to.

When he stood up to embrace her the beers he had drunk surprised him and tipped him into her arms.

‘Craig,' she said, holding him there. ‘What the fuck are you doing here in Madrid, really?'

‘I've come to tell you I love you.'

‘That's not the issue. I know you love me. This isn't fucking Hollywood.'

‘I know, it's independent Spanish cinema. But love, you are Hollywood.'

She tipped him back upright and set him on his feet. ‘That's very sweet of you to say so, Craig. I presume you're complimenting my looks rather than my vacuousness.'

‘It was a glib metaphor. You're actually too beautiful for Hollywood.'

‘And you're too cheesy, even for Spain. I need a drink. I need three drinks. How many have you had?'

‘Fewer than necessary. But give me a second and I'll fix that.'

He brought her back two drinks: a brimming rum and coke and a bottle of beer. They had fallen in love being drunk and impulsive. They had remained in love when they were sober. He didn't want to believe that events had changed this, that any decisions were necessary or unalterable.

She looked at the drinks he placed in front of her and narrowed her eyes at him to let him know she knew what he was up to.

‘How's the filming going?' he asked.

Her face lit up. ‘It's the most fun I've ever had, I think.'

He tried to look as if he was as happy at hearing this news as he would have been if they were still together. But it was a stupid thing to feign, this ambivalence to what was most important to him. Love had never been about altruism. He wanted her triumphs for his own and he wanted his own for her.

‘I'm really happy, I really am,' he said, reaching out and putting his hand on hers.

‘Thank you.' She smiled a sad smile and pulled her hand away.

‘Nothing that's changed is necessary,' he said.

‘I'm sorry I haven't said this earlier,' he said.

‘We can go back to the way things were,' he said.

He had said much more than this. She smiled sadly throughout all of it and by the end she had taken his hand back and was holding it.

‘We can't go back,' she said. ‘I prefer it like this.'

Chapter 14

I
flew back into Jorge Newbery on Saturday afternoon. The horror I had experienced in Sao Paulo had not happened to me yet; it was a cinema dream, a flicker in a dark place. As I stepped out of the airport, the sun was up, a cold breeze coming in from La Plata. I was an implausible character in this landscape but I blinked my eyes and didn't wake up. Too drained to defend myself from a taxi driver, I waited for a bus. My first trip to Brazil had lasted less than twenty-four hours. I was in no hurry to go back.

I found one comfort that day: when I stepped off the bus in Palermo I recognised it for what it was:
home
. So this was it, this was where I lived now.

It would be worth narrating if I
hadn't
made a mess of myself that Saturday night. As it was, when I headed to meet Arturo in Aleman's bar – Achtung! – on Sunday afternoon, I was shaking, the sun was glaring and I was thinking what a relief it would be to sit down at the side
of the road and weep. I didn't do that; I trudged on, tripped over a cracked paving stone and scraped my hands on the pavement as I broke my fall. I was consumed by
bronca
. I kicked a brick wall and hurt my foot. A man passing shouted something too fast for me to understand but it sounded comradely. I'm with you, brother! Capitalist dogs! Kick down the walls!

I was in this furious mood when I arrived at the bar, forty-five minutes late, unreasonably so even here; but Arturo was unfazed, sipping a coke at the bar, chatting to Aleman. I suspected he'd just walked in. ‘How are you?' he asked, glancing at his watch when I sat down next to him.

‘Fucking awful. This fucking place,' I said, showing him my skinned hands. ‘Fucking pavements.'

Arturo looked at Aleman and they laughed.

‘I'm glad you both think it's fucking funny,' I said. ‘
Una cerveza muy grande por favor.
'

They laughed again. ‘
La bronca
,' said Aleman, nodding at me.

‘Liam,
felicidades
,' said Arturo. ‘You are now a
porteño
.'

‘Fuck off,' I said.

He reached over and put his arm round me. ‘Would you like for me to recommend to you the psychoanalyst of my aunt?' I shrugged him off. Aleman and he were delighted by my bad mood. I had become real to them.

I drank half of my beer down in a couple of gulps and felt a bit better. It was a proper bar, just a small wooden counter with glasses hanging upside down above it. There was an old-fashioned TV on a high shelf in the corner of the room, a pool table on the other side, Arturo, Aleman and me and an old guy reading the paper underneath the TV.

‘How long before we leave for the game?' I asked.

Arturo looked away for a second. ‘A change of plan. We watch it here.'

‘Sorry?'

‘We watch it here. But you tell Lizzie we went to the game.'

He explained that he had never had another ticket, just his own. He had tried to get another for me but it had been trickier than he expected, and in the end he decided it would be easiest to watch the game in Aleman's bar. We could not let Lizzie know that because it would confirm to her that he had lied to prevent us spending the day together on our own. ‘It is not that I don't trust you,
ché
,' he said, ‘or I don't trust her, but this is the right thing. You and me, watching the football on a Sunday afternoon, no? This is what we men do.
I
take my girlfriend out, not you.'

Arturo spoke so casually I could not take what he said as a threat. But I was annoyed. I would have much preferred to spend time with Lizzie than with the machos who were beginning to fill the bar. It was a day when I wanted to admit my weakness instead of laughing about it to show how strong I was. I like to think I would have told Lizzie the truth about Sarah that day, and then we would not have fallen out so badly.

River Plate were playing Banfield, a Buenos Aires derby, but this was strictly a pub for the
millionarios
, the red and white flag of River now pinned across the window. The bar filled up as we got close to kick-off. Arturo was talking to everyone, introducing me, and I was
Lo siento, hablo solo un poquito Castellano
-ing away, smiling
broadly and occasionally managing to understand and make myself understood. The more beer I drank, the less language mattered.

The game kicked off. Hernán arrived and sat next to us at the bar after kissing and embracing Arturo. All I got was a nod. Arturo and Hernán began to talk to each other intensely in rapid tongue-rolling Spargie I could not hope to follow. Nevertheless, I strained to catch words, trying to work out if Lizzie had anything to worry about.

Whatever they were talking about stopped as River Plate went one–nil down and the bar erupted into a mixture of outrage and delight; a crowd delighted at being outraged. The goal was incredible. A Banfield player had rounded five players and the goalkeeper in an astonishing run. When he side-footed it towards the open goal a defender dived at full length and tipped it around the post with his fingers. I had never seen such an audacious foul, such a sublime affirmation of cheating. The defender was immediately sent off.

I remembered Arturo's theory about why the English don't win football matches and asked him, ‘Was that a good foul? Do you approve?'

He thought for a moment. ‘Only if he misses the penalty. No, is not a good foul so early in the game. Last minute,
viveza Criolla
; first half, fucking stupid.'

Banfield scored the penalty.

The bar swore loudly, beautifully.

Hernán and Arturo were disappearing to the toilet at regular intervals and soon we were all chatting away at full speed in a mixture of broken English and Spanish, each of us trying to provide the definitive analysis of the game we were barely watching. River Plate came back in the second half with a goal from a corner and it ended
one–all. The
millionario
crowd complained bitterly and half of the bar left. We carried on drinking.

At one point, I returned to the bar from my own visit to the toilet to find Hernán leaning in to Arturo, his hand on his arm, speaking close to his ear. Both looked at me suspiciously as I sat back down.

‘What are you talking about?' I asked.

‘Lizzie,' said Arturo, and they both stared at me. ‘Why she is angry at me.'

‘
Olvidate!
' said Hernán.

‘You will tell her we went to the game?' Arturo asked me.

‘Yes,' I said wearily.

‘You said on Thursday you will not lie any more,' he pressed.

‘I was lying,' I said.

He seemed happier with that. Hernán continued to glare at me before he left to talk to a friend on the other side of the bar.

‘What's he saying about Lizzie?' I asked Arturo.

‘Nothing.'

‘Really?'

‘I should not say. You are her friend. He is saying that he thinks he sees her in clubs talking to other men, you know, more than talking.'

I laughed. ‘She's not like that.'

‘It is not funny,' scowled Arturo.

‘No, it's not. She's a friendly woman who talks to other human beings. So what? Don't fuck it up, Arturo.'

‘Fuck you. How do I fuck it up?'

‘By listening to rubbish like this.'

‘You people. “Friendly.” You do not care about each other.'

‘Us people?'

‘Look at you: you leave your girlfriend on the other side of the world. Why? Why are you here when she is not?'

‘
Us people?
Do you want to know where I woke up yesterday morning?'

He shrugged.

‘I'm getting out of here. See you later, Arturo.'

‘Where, then?'

‘Fuck you, Arturo. Really, fuck
you
.'

He looked up at me and saw the expression on my face. His anger softened and he put his arm on my shoulder. ‘Liam, where?'

So I told him.

I saw her first. I found the lecture theatre and there was no one stopping to ask for my name so I walked straight through. I arrived just as she was giving her paper, watching her through a glass porthole in the door. She stood, shuffling her papers, bookish in her reading glasses, sexy in a black curator's dress that I had bought her last Christmas. It was the most money I'd ever spent on an item of clothing. I'd imagined her wearing it in interviews or at the openings where she'd meet the people who would make her career and our life what it would become. The room held about fifty students, all looking intently at her. She had once come home to me. The dress had been a bit too tight when I bought it for her. Not too tight, but it couldn't have got any tighter without it being too tight. Now there was give to it. She looked different. She looked the same. The straight drops of the black dress skimmed her hips and I could feel the fabric and the curve of her between my fingers, in my throat, in my lungs. She pressed
a button on the laptop; a line drawing covered in stamps was projected behind her, and she began with the words ‘In presenting my paper here I was interested why that . . .' And I, the idiot who had driven her away, not only by lying to her, wondered if I should improve her grammar later.

I watched her speak for the next half hour. I watched the way her lips moved, the way her nervous pauses disappeared quickly, the way she looked up to the back row as she made the room laugh with a joke, looking down at her feet shyly then back up, the way her eyes kept returning to one spot where her smile grew bigger. I didn't want to follow her eyes to that spot. I found his name out later, from her Facebook page. He was the first to ask a question when she had finished. It was in English but I didn't understand it; the speaker was Latin but there was nothing wrong with his English. I hadn't listened properly to her words either, too enraptured by the fact that Sarah had spoken them, too terrified of the way she was looking at the asker of the question, an older man, perhaps forty-five, with tightly-cropped silver hair and a serious expression. He was not the Don Juan I had feared, a macho cocksman, a stereotype, a holiday Casanova. He looked intelligent, serious, slightly overweight, a man, and I feared him more because of it. He was real. He was different to me.

She didn't see me until the questions had finished and she had left the front to sit back down. When she glanced up and saw my face in the window she staggered. The whole room was still watching her and the woman nearest to her called to ask if she was all right. Sarah composed herself, took a cold look to reassure herself that I was not a ghost, or perhaps to reassure herself that I
was
a ghost,
then she shook her head and sat back down, next to the man I would learn later was named Fernando Salvatierra, the man who put his hand around her shoulder and pulled her into him. A supportive hug of congratulation, that's what I told myself it looked like. I watched her whisper something in his ear before quickly writing something down and passing it to him. He looked up sharply and I side-stepped away from the window. I had a chance then, I realised, to turn and walk down the corridor, out of the building and away. But I didn't. I sat down in the corridor instead with my copy of
Hopscotch
, pretending to enjoy it. I was here in the spirit of fun and affection, not desperation. I had to look like I believed this when she came out. I wanted her to think we could still be an adventure.

Fernando was out of the door before her. He strode down the corridor, looking directly at me. What did he see? A threat, I hope, a threat disguised as a pale Englishman, hiding behind a scruffy beard and a paperback.

‘Hello,' he said, as he passed.

‘Hello,' I said, turning around to watch him walk away, and then back to the throng of people leaving the room. At the back, catching my eyes and looking purposefully away, was Sarah, walking towards me. I stood up and put my book away. She made as if to walk past me and I thought for a moment she was going to manage it, but she turned back, telling the woman she was talking to that she'd be back in a few minutes. And then she looked at me.

‘Liam,' she said.

‘Just someone who looks like him.'

‘Liam,' she repeated as I stepped towards her. We hugged each other.

‘You were brilliant,' I said.

‘Thank God I didn't see you before I was brilliant. What are you doing here?'

‘Making a grand gesture. Do you remember? This is what I used to do.'

We were still hugging.

‘Your grand gestures are getting grander. And less effective. You're going to have to let go of me soon, you know.'

‘Is it me holding onto you?'

‘Not only.'

She let go. I held on. Then I let go.

‘I'm really cross with you,' she said. ‘You shouldn't be here. I've got stuff to do here all weekend.'

‘You're not pleased to see me at all.'

‘I'm dismayed to see you. I'm dismayed that part of me is pleased.' Her smile went serious. ‘This is just a ten-minute coffee break. There's stuff happening all night too. I've got no time to see you.'

‘That's all right,' I said.

She looked at my face and relented. ‘There's a bar across the road. Wait there for me. I'll be out about six, we can get an hour or two. This is fucking awful timing, Liam.'

‘I heard you were here.'

‘You stupid fool.'

We hugged again and then walked together down the corridor and some stairs to where she was taking her coffee break. Once the weekend was over, she was travelling to another city, Recife, for a month, to catalogue an eccentric artist's private archive. In just two months our lives resembled nothing like our lives.

When we went downstairs, Fernando was leaning against a wall, waiting for her. I knew for certain then. ‘Er, this is Fernando,' she told me when he stepped towards me. ‘This is Liam.' We nodded at each other, no handshake,
no fucking kiss. ‘I'll see you later,' she said, and I walked away from her as she walked into the canteen with him. As I opened the door to leave I turned around at the same time as she turned and looked at me. Our eyes met and an awful punch of hope hit me in the stomach.