The Engagement (11 page)

The next day I took the train back to London, feeling I’d been marked by a bad fairy. I thought of the Larkin poem we’d studied at school.

 . . . the wedding-days

Were coming to an end. All down the line

Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;

The last confetti and advice were thrown . . .

The crabby poet had once taken an afternoon train on Whit Sunday, an auspicious day to marry, and at each station more newlyweds alighted, traveling to their London honeymoons, giving him a momentary sense of hope and renewal. But as I returned from my sister’s wedding—her “happy funeral,” as Larkin put it—the train rocketing through the gauze light, the view was so blurred and gray it seemed the sky was permanently set to dusk, and I felt the opposite: unhopeful, unrenewed.

Soon after arriving in Liverpool Street I needed to go shopping. It was always like this, the purchase acting as a kind of bloodletting. If I didn’t do it, I’d feel ill; ill or nonexistent. Buying an overpriced handbag promised to restore me to life—the life I wanted. The salesgirl now my true judge as she took the credit card without meeting my eye, possessing a psychic sense it could be declined, recognizing too, somehow, that I had just been back at home helping glue satin rosebuds onto name cards. Knowing all about me in this place meant to hide everything, a customer trap hewn of marble and glass and nothingness.

In the seconds waiting for the transaction to go through I was conscious I could barely afford my glorified Notting Hill bedsit, and that a spate of my possessions had recently gotten together and agreed to break down, and that this purchase would trigger a period of abstemiousness that would end with me again spending money as if I actually had it—how much it cost not to seem poor! But instead I feigned nonchalance, waiting in the shimmering air until the card was miraculously approved—and as the salesgirl passed over the handbag wrapped in the freshest tissue paper, and I walked out into the street, for a moment the world had a special luster.

In this pink bedroom, I’d now stuffed all my clothes into the suitcase. The last thing to pack was the envelope of money.

I took it out from the drawer and again checked the contents—­Australian currency in all its psychedelic colors, the pine-green hundreds like a Nordic acid trip. I decided to put it in the case’s concealed pocket. I closed the lid, zipping the whole thing up. I grabbed the handle and swung it off the bed. It was heavier than I expected. And my grip was wrong. And the case tipped and thudded to the floor.

The whole house tensed.

I closed my eyes, waiting.

Do other people have a room in their heads? Enter it and close the door. Anything can happen and no one will see you. Act as you like and then act it again; slow the scene down or speed it up until each second starts to glow, electrified. . . .

The problem being that I had started acting outside the room as I did inside. “Live the Dream!” “Lifestyle Opportunity” read every real-estate flyer and billboard of every house we entered—and I’d had the idea that I could just flip over into the world of my subconscious and let it rule. Basically, I would make sex pay.

Now I heard Alexander coming up the stairs. I waited, untangling his sounds from those of the house. His footfall heavy, deliberate; last night’s game of silence was over. He approached the door of my room, then hesitated.

Turning off the bedside lamp, I grabbed the ring box.

A knock on the door. “Liese, is your head feeling better now?”

Stretched out on top of the stiff bedclothes, I called back in a voice too cheerful, “Fine, thank you.”

A slither of light as Alexander opened the door. “I heard noise.”

“No.” I tried to breathe regularly; even this pillow smelled sour. “I was just lying here.”

I could not see his face. But on the floor between us my suitcase was visible, exploded with clothes.

When eventually he spoke, he sounded puzzled. “We have a big day tomorrow.”

“I’ll get some rest.”

There was another long pause. “You’ve made me very happy tonight. I want to make you just as happy.”

Was there something else he was debating whether to say?

Moving to close the door, he murmured, “Good night again.”

“Good night.”

I lay still—this darkness had thickness to it, it had weight. My fingers clutched the box.

Alexander was standing on the other side of the door. I just knew he was. He was standing there while I kept my breathing shallow, the air barely traveling to my lungs. Both of us seemed to be waiting for the other to make a move.

He walked away from the door, but not before I heard a scraping. A scratching of metal like a key was turning in the lock.

Cold surged through me—I had invited him into my most private room. Once there, he’d taken my fantasy and bent it out of shape. Bent it until, by the thinnest, finest chance, I found I’d slid somewhere dank, unknown. I was inside the room in
his
head and he had locked the door.

II

T
he next morning the handle turned easily. I found myself in the hallway surrounded by closed doors, all of them painted the color of sour milk. Had my door been locked in the first place?

Downstairs in the kitchen, Alexander was leaning forward at the table, closely reading a newspaper: a model of angular rectitude on the day of rest. Even unshaven as he was, his features appeared neat and regular. Here was the most ordinary of men. The table before him seemed ordinary too: jam in a willow-pattern bowl, fresh butter on its dish, triangles of toast in their silver holder. And propped beside my bread plate, an envelope. It looked like one of those I’d seen in his desk drawer the day before.

Mr. Alexander Colquhoun

“Warrowill”

Marshdale

Victoria

He folded the newspaper crisply, giving a mild, tight smile. “How did you sleep?”

“Fine,” I lied.

“The dogs didn’t wake you?”

“No.” Although I’d heard them answering birdcalls as I watched the walls turn blue then gold then back to pink as eventually the sun rose.

“I don’t know what you like for breakfast,” Alexander noted. “Generally I have toast and tea.”

“Perfect.” I tried to stay upbeat, daylight making this situation appear manageable.

He gestured that I should help myself, and without ceremony resumed his position with the newspaper.

I took a slice of toast and ate quietly. If he’d noticed that I wasn’t wearing the engagement ring, he did not mention it. No reference was made to his proposal, to the plans for our bright future. In fact, Alexander seemed almost uninterested in me. He turned the pages slowly, as though reading every paragraph, every word in every line.

I waited.

I’d heard of men who liked to take hookers in white dresses, feeling the crisp rustling tulle, the smooth satin, while pretending the women were debutantes or brides. This must have been the same style of thing. He had some fetish, some script he wanted to role-play, but I’d evidently been something of a disappointment, and now it was over. I hadn’t wept with him about the strangers who’d abused my body, nor prostrated myself in gratitude at his saving me from the abuse. That, I guessed, was why I was receiving this silent treatment. Alexander may have been sulking but I hoped he might also be relieved when he took me to the railway station; he could simply put the ring back in a drawer and go about his business. I wondered why I had lain in bed rigid with fear.

The kitchen was chilled and perfectly still. Its walls had been painted long ago—everything white was now gray. Out the window were the bare trees of the orchard.

“What fruit do you grow?” I asked to stop the silence.

“Apples, quince, plums . . .” He did not look up.

“When did the gardener, all the gardeners, leave?”

“The sixties.”

I waited for a moment. “What happened then?”

“Not one thing. Overheads, markets, exchange rates, exhausted soil—you name it. My father’s bloody incompetence.”

“You didn’t like him much, did you?”

He looked up from the paper. “It doesn’t matter whether one ‘likes’ one’s parents. It’s juvenile to expect one should.”

He kept reading, and as I waited I began to sense
his
strange impatience. I had a sudden feeling he’d been in the kitchen with this scene set, expecting each element—myself included—to conform to the script in his head:
Sitting at the table having breakfast.

“Perhaps you’d like the arts pages?”

“No, I’m fine— Oh, thank you.” I took them from his outstretched hand, and I saw today’s date. “Do you have this delivered?”

“Out here? No. I picked it up in town.”

“So you’ve driven in? Already?”

“You were quite safe here.”

Safe? Because he’d locked the door of my room? “I would’ve liked to come. How long does the drive take?”

“Half an hour each way.” He leaned back. “So, will I read you the ‘Odd Spot’?” Affability: he strained for it. “That’s the little whimsical piece on the front page.”

“I know.”

“All right, so: ‘A British Columbia woman called police after mistaking her neighbor’s noisy toilet efforts for a violent disturbance. The woman heard yelling and shouting and believed that . . . ’ ”

I wondered whether I could catch a bus from this town back to Melbourne, if it would be easier than the train.

Alexander did his closed-mouth chuckle. “Sorry. Did that offend you?”

I looked up, realizing I had been meant to join him. “Not at all.”

“You didn’t find it amusing?”

“No, it’s amusing.” A featherless dead goose was lying on a tray near the sink. “But . . . I-I’m not good with jokes.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

I shrugged, blocking any picture of the bird’s end. Until this weekend, I must have seemed permanently on heat.
But this is what I’m really like,
I wanted to say,
uptight, dull.

Alexander regarded me closely. “Humor isn’t everything, Liese, but I think it’s important to be able to laugh at the world.”

Usually I could. Usually I could do nothing but laugh.

He followed my gaze to the bird. “Well”—he flexed his fingers—“I’ve stocked up on supplies, and it’s a perfect day to cook a feast.” Standing, coming behind me, he carefully placed a hand on my head.

“Unfortunately I have to go back to Melbourne this afternoon.”

“But you’re staying until tomorrow.”

Had he forgotten last night, my telling him I was leaving? I could not see his face, whether he was testing me. “It turns out I’ve got work. Real-estate work,” I added stupidly. “An emergency has just come up at the office.”

“How did you find out?” His fingers spread, pressing into my scalp.

“My uncle . . . his assistant’s been sick . . .”

“I wouldn’t have thought your phone would have reception here.”

When I had no answer, Alexander said, “Wear your hair down like this; it suits you.” He moved away me, keeping his face neutral. His little victory hung in the air between us as he took an apron from a hook on the back of the door and tied it around himself. He rolled up his sleeves.

The goose’s torso was a strange, amputated thing, the stumps of its feet and wings and head still bloodied.

“Now,” he chuckled again, “have you ever gutted such a damned big bird?”

I shook my head at my own foolishness.

“Neither have I, but I promised I would cook for you.”

“Don’t trouble yourself.”

“But I want to. Liese, this is what normal couples do.” He spoke almost sweetly, although as if giving instructions. “One person has interests and the other tries to be interested in those interests. The two of them then find things to do in common.”

He was so much taller than I even without shoes, and sliding over the red linoleum in his thick woolen socks, slouching just slightly, he took a book down from a shelf:
Home Butchery & Meat Preservation
. His pelvis tilted against the kitchen bench, he straightened the book’s spine on the Formica. He licked his index finger and flipped through the pages. Each move he made reminded me of sex with him. And now the memories weren’t so pleasing.

Perching one foot against his ankle, he absentmindedly scratched at his shin. His socks had a crest on them—rows of tiny royal lions and stars. Were they school socks? I felt repulsion. I felt it even for his toes that I’d once had inside my mouth. It was horrible that I had ever desired him.

The book was open to a diagram of a bird in X-ray.

Picking up a steel, he casually sharpened his knife. “When I was a child Warrowill did all its own butchering, but my father thought it too time-consuming. A steer can take two men the best part of a day. He stopped it, although he wasn’t often around to check. The men took cows that couldn’t get in calf and butchered them on their days off.”

Tentatively Alexander put his hand on the goose and made the first incision, a long, deep cut, his face locking in a frown as his wrist then went into the hole, this nightmare creature like his puppet.

He wanted me to be scared, and I resented it. “Now butchery’s terribly fashionable, of course,” I said coolly.

“Is that right?”

“Yes.”

The organic café near my studio in Notting Hill advertised classes in venison butchery. The beau monde couldn’t get enough of evisceration—it made them feel their lives weren’t just about accounting.

“Can you cook?” he asked after a silence.

I grimaced. His hand—the one that had just stroked my hair—was now a raspberry color, a deep slime-pink. “Not really. It’s not my thing.”

“No, the English, I forget . . .”

Outside the dogs barked as though they could sense his work.

“You should see your expression—it’s a cartoon of disapproval,” Alexander said, tugging at something dense and entwined. One or two grabs and the intestines emerged, wrapped around other oozing, complicated, vermilion parts. He threw the tangle into a yellow bucket, picking out the heart and liver and putting them to one side. “But perhaps you will think of learning? Learning to cook?”

Now he began hacking at the carcass—at the windpipe, perhaps. I can’t believe he’s holding an actual cleaver, I was thinking. How melodramatic, how desperate, and yet my hand went to my mouth: the sight, the smell, were overwhelming.

“Liese, sometimes I can’t get away from the farm until late,” Alexander’s face was also strained, “and I’d like it if you knew how to prepare something other than pasta.”

Standing now, I leaned against the table. “No one at home is much of a cook,” I admitted cautiously. I’d never told him about my family, sensing this wasn’t what he wished to hear. “Mum does okay, but Dad can’t even open a can of soup.”

Alexander scowled with surprise. “Mum and Dad?”

“Yes.”

“I assumed you’d lost contact with them, or that they were both—” He stopped himself, using his sleeve to move a curl from his eyes. “What do these parents of yours do?”

“Before retirement, an engineer and a . . . homemaker.”

“A homemaker?” He put down the cleaver, assessing my candor. “You mean a housewife?” He repeated the word, trying to convince himself. “And they don’t know about your . . .
profession
?”

My packed suitcase was waiting upstairs. I’d put it back together before coming down to breakfast. There was nothing I’d left in the bathroom. I could just pick up the case and leave.

“What is your father’s name?”

I hesitated. “It’s Robert.”

“
Robert
—and his surname?”

“Campbell.”

“All right then,” he almost rolled his eyes, “I suppose I should call Mr. Campbell and ask him officially for your hand in marriage.” This complication annoyed him. “And may I ask if Liese is your actual name?”

I nodded.

“So Robert Campbell will presumably know who I’m talking about?” Alexander went to the sink and began washing his hands, then his wrists, now also covered in the bird’s liquids. He turned off the tap, the pipes creaking, and started riffling impatiently through a drawer, pulling out a pad and a thin silver pencil. “Why don’t you write down the number for me.”

“Of course.” I went over and took the pencil, pivoting my body so he would not see my hands tremble. If I could get to the telephone I would call for a taxi. This situation was now beyond my realm of expertise: perhaps I could handle this man, but no longer did I wish to try. “Do you think I could quickly ring my parents and let them know you’ll be in touch?”

He didn’t answer.

“I’ll reverse the charges,” I said, keeping my voice light. “The thing is, I haven’t yet mentioned that we’ve been seeing each other.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Giggling weakly, “But I should think they’ll be thrilled. . . . Alexander, where is the phone?”

Picking up his knife again, he started cutting at something in the bird’s open cavity. “It’s the middle of the night over there.”

“My parents won’t mind!” That was the irony: even if I
were
trapped miles from anywhere with a sociopath, my mother would be delighted I was finally engaged.

“It’s not the sort of first impression I want to make. I’ll call tonight. Fuck!”

“What is it?”

“I haven’t unhooked the gallbladder properly, and now there’s bile on the bird’s meat.” He seemed to feel this was my fault. Agitated, glancing around, he grabbed a cloth, then another knife, and tried to wipe and cut away the problem. “Liese, before you start calling Robert and . . . ?”

“Sue.”

“Robert and Sue,” he nodded, “with your happy news, can I ask you why you chose this career?”

“Please don’t start that again.”

His neck was strained with irritation. “Well, if you’re not actually a whore, then I want my money back.”

There was no point trying to convince him that this was a case of mistaken identity, because surely Alexander knew the precise nature of the mistake.

“I’ve told you I’m prepared to put your past behind us,” he went on, “but I’m just trying to understand, okay? I’m just trying to understand because you seem very normal, very sensible. Why did you get into prostitution so young? You were only a teenager, still in school.”

“I’ve never told you that.”

“You didn’t need to.” Pursing his mouth, his expression turned skeptical. “Your father, Robert, was he a drunk, or violent?”

I shook my head, hating that he now knew my father’s name.

“I mean, did he, did he
do
something
to you?”

“No!” I found myself shouting.

Alexander held out a flattened palm. “Don’t get so defensive.”

He went back to studying his book, and through my rage came a sudden clear thought: This man is punishing me for not loving him. Our relationship was meant to be devoid of love. That was its whole point. Yet part of him despised me for being in it for the money. Did it always come down to this? The client deciding: You are only a whore, how dare you not genuinely want exactly what I want you to want? Do as I say—love me as I desire, of your own free will. Not that I believed Alexander actually loved me. He didn’t even know me. My body was a stand-in for whoever hadn’t returned his real devotion.