Strangers (28 page)

‘Red’s better,’ Martin said.

He had turned away when she spoke, and now he was looking in the wardrobe for a clean shirt. Annie watched him in the mirror, thinking of the little nuances of gesture and expression by which they interpreted each other, surprised by her own detachment.

To negotiate the evening, that was the first thing.

‘I’m sorry I was angry when you came in,’ she volunteered.

‘I would have been back earlier if I possibly could.’

‘I know.’ Annie took his shirt out of a drawer and handed it to him, turning her back on their reflections. ‘I was in a flap. I was afraid that the dinner wouldn’t be ready, and that even if it was it would be inedible.’

‘Annie, darling.’ Martin had put the clean shirt on and he came across to her, the buttons still undone. He put his arms around her and Annie felt the shape and the weight of him, perfectly familiar, strangely null. ‘The food you cook is always good. And even if tonight it happened not to be, even if we gave them dry biscuits, do you think it would matter to your friends?’

‘I don’t suppose so,’ Annie said sadly. ‘It’s just that … it’s just that if I’m going to do it at all, I want it to be good, and special.’

Martin laughed and let her go.

‘You know something? In your own way, you’re as much of a perfectionist as Tibby is.’

‘I think I am like her,’ Annie said, very softly. ‘I’ve only just realized it myself.’

She stood for a moment, looking ahead of her with apparently unseeing eyes.

Martin finished dressing and reminded her briskly, ‘Benjy’s in bed. I told him you’d go in and say goodnight.’

Annie jumped, almost guiltily, then said, ‘I’ll go now.’

Benjy was lying under his Superman cover, but Annie knew from the way that his head jerked up that he had been listening, waiting for her. When she sat down on the edge of the bed he turned over, folding his arms comfortably on top of the covers, looking up at her. She felt the sharp, physical pull of love and the weight of unending responsibility that went with it, both sensations conflicting with another, newer feeling. She could have isolated that one, but she turned her thoughts deliberately away. She bent down to kiss Benjy and he put his arms up around her neck, not letting go. He smelt clean and babyish, and his fine, floppy hair was a child’s version of Martin’s.

‘You won’t go away and get hurt again, will you?’ he asked.

Benjy’s fears for her had expressed themselves in nightmares, and in sudden tantrums, and Annie was relieved to hear him put them into words.

‘No.’ She stroked his hair back from his face, soothing him. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here with you.’

‘And Tom, and Dad.’

‘Of course.’

Only she looked at the wall behind the little boy’s head, where he had scribbled in purple crayon, and she thought,
Impossible
. But Annie didn’t know in that minute whether it was impossible to change anything, or impossible for life to go on as it did now.

She settled Benjy’s covers around his shoulders.

‘Goodnight, pumpkin. Sleep tight.’

‘Blow kisses at the door.’ It was his nightly demand, and part of the ritual of letting her go until the morning. Obediently Annie stood in the doorway and blew kisses until, content, he burrowed his head into the pillows. She turned on his night-light and quietly closed the door.

Thomas was in his bath, and she called to him as she passed, ‘Put your dressing gown on when you’ve finished, and come down for half an hour.’

Martin was already in the kitchen, setting out glasses on a tray. They moved around each other, practised, knowing what had to be done. Annie finished preparing the vegetables and then laid the table, polishing the pieces of cutlery hastily as she laid them in place. She took the napkins out of the dresser drawer, frowning at sight of the creases in them. She found the branched pewter candelabrum that had been a wedding present and stuck plain white candles into the holders. There was, as always, satisfaction in making preparations. Annie smiled crookedly as the thought came to her again,
Just like Tibby
. Yet for almost all her adult life she had been gently, amusedly dismissive of her mother’s fondness of guest towels and matching soaps in china shell dishes.

‘How are we doing?’ Martin asked.

‘Ready, now.’

‘There you are,’ he beamed at her, as though the effort had been all his. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

There was no point in renewing the disagreement, Annie thought, if the evening was to be comfortable. She smiled, and went through to sit by Thomas on the sofa. His hair was wet and brushed flat, his face shone, and he was methodically working his way through a bowl of cashew nuts.

Five minutes later, exactly on time, the doorbell rang.

The evening’s ingredients were exactly the same as for a dozen other evenings over as many years. The six people who came to dinner were all old friends. Martin and Annie had known one couple since their college days, Thomas had been best friends from toddlerhood with the children of the second couple, and the third was Martin’s partner and his wife. Like all long-standing groups of friends they held loosely between them a net of memories and impressions, expressed in private jokes and conversational shorthand, the bric-à-brac of shared weekends and holidays and pleasures and occasional crises. As soon as the eight of them were together, Annie and Martin’s living room filled up with talk and laughter.

All six of their guests had visited Annie in hospital, and they had sent her flowers and brought her presents and offered to take their turn at looking after the boys. She had seen them separately, too, since coming home, but there was a shared sense that tonight was different because it was her proper celebration. She felt their warmth reaching out to her. There was champagne, and Annie drank two glasses, trying to launch herself into her party.

But she knew that she was drifting, smiling but separate.

She watched Tom handing round olives and nuts, and then went into the kitchen to look at the fish. When she came back she was disconcerted by the circle of cheerful, expectant faces all looking up at her.

‘Bedtime, Tom,’ she whispered to him, to cover her unbalance.

He went, with the usual show of reluctance, with the other parents calling out cheerful goodnights. Annie went out with him into the hall and hugged him at the foot of the stairs. The light on the landing was dim and soothing, and Annie looked half-longingly at the darkness beyond the crack of her bedroom door.

When she went back to her seat on the sofa, Martin’s partner Ian was reminiscing about a holiday he and Gail had spent with Martin and Annie in Provence.

‘Ten years ago, can you believe?’

‘Nine,’ Martin said.

It had rained for two weeks, so heavily that when they went to the cottage’s outside lavatory they had had to wear their wellingtons, and shelter under a golf umbrella. They had played bridge, interminable games, unsatisfactory to all of them because Gail and Ian were good players and Annie and Martin weren’t. Annie was a sun-worshipper, and she had sulked at being deprived of her annual sun-tan. They teased her about it good-humouredly now, as they often did, and she did her best to smile back.

‘I’ve got the pictures here, somewhere,’ Martin said. ‘I was looking at them the other day, when Annie was still in hospital.’ He rummaged in a drawer and produced a yellow envelope folder. The photographs passed from hand to hand, bursts of laughter and recollection erupting over each one. When they reached Annie she looked down into her own face, and the others surrounding it, as if she were seeing a group of acquaintances, made long ago and half forgotten.

She gave the photographs back to Martin and went into the kitchen again. She lit the candles in their pewter brackets and watched their reflection in the black glass of the garden windows, little ovals of flame that swayed and spluttered and then burned up bright and clear.

‘It’s ready,’ she called.

They came crowding in and sat down, joking and arguing. Annie decorated the fish mousselines with little feather sprigs of chervil, and handed them round to a chorus of admiration.

‘Annie, you are amazing.’

‘Just look at this, will you? You especially, Gail, my darling.’

Martin walked around the table, pouring more champagne. Annie took her place opposite his, at the foot of the table. The lamb was in the oven, cooking pink inside while the puff pastry case turned gold That much was under control, but with the champagne fizzing in her head Annie frowned, trying to pinpoint another anxiety. Perhaps it had been an unnecessary demonstration to cook a meal like this. Perhaps she was trying to prove that nothing had changed, while all along it really had, irrevocably, and dry biscuits would have been, at least, an honest statement.

Am I lying to them all?
Annie thought wildly. At her right hand David, the father of Tom’s friend, reached for the champagne bottle that Martin had left and filled her glass. He lifted his own and said, ‘Here’s to you, love. And many more dinners.’

‘Many more dinners,’ Annie echoed him, and drank.

The evening went on, in all its jollity, around her. After a while she found that the wine helped, because it took the sharp edges off her perception. She served the lamb and then sat back in her chair, looking at the faces.

The room was cosy in the candlelight, and full of the scent of food. One of the other women was wearing long, glittery earrings and as she leaned forward across the table, telling a story, the earrings swung and shot points of coloured light. As she delivered the story’s punchline there was a burst of laughter, and Annie joined in.

‘Not like our Annie,’ David said, in answer to someone else’s remark, and squeezed her hand warmly.

Annie’s gaze moved on around the table. They were all pleasant, good-humoured people, she thought, well-fed and lubricated, sitting together in a warm, comfortable place. Through the nimbus of the candles she looked at Martin, and his face meant no more or less to her than the others. Equally familiar, and just as remote from her. Annie was cold, suddenly, so cold that she shivered in her red shirt. They were all strangers, even Martin. Chillingly she knew that the only person who was real was Steve. She felt his closeness to her, and at the nape of her neck the fine hairs prickled as if his hand reached out to stroke her. Very clearly she saw the hospital ward, with the lights already dimmed for the night, and Steve’s face in the defined circle of light over his bed. She knew that he was thinking about her, and the thoughts were like a bridge, linking them. She longed for him so desperately that she clenched her fists in her lap, digging her nails into her palms to contain the pain of it.

The dinner party seemed to be taking place a long way off, and she was seeing it across a cold and empty space.

‘Annie, are you all right?’

She saw the earrings sparkle again and she focused her smile on them, willing herself to sound normal.

‘Yes, I’m fine. Do you think we should have pudding or cheese next?’

She pushed her chair back and went unsteadily to the refrigerator, glad of the chance to turn her back until her face was controllable again. She stared into the white interior, and at the lemon syllabub in its glass bowl amongst the humdrum family provisions. None of this was real. The only real experience she had ever had was in the darkness she had shared with Steve. The only real feeling was this, that she felt for him now.

‘I’ll carry it,’ Martin said. He reached from behind her and lifted the pudding out, and he kissed her cheek as he eased past her. ‘That was a wonderful dinner.’

‘I’m glad,’ Annie whispered. ‘I wanted it to be.’

It was, and miraculously no one had seen or guessed how little she belonged to it. She was sitting in her place again, spooning out the creamy foam, when Gail leaned across the table. With her eyes wide open in fascinated dismay she said, ‘I knew I had something to tell you. Has anyone else heard that the Frobishers are splitting up?’

There was a frisson of shocked surprise, and then of clear relief.
Not us. So far, so good
.

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘It’s true. She told me. He’s moving out as soon as he’s found a flat. She said that they hadn’t really been getting along for years, and it was better now that it had finally happened.’

‘How odd. They always seemed so keen on each other. Holding hands, and dancing together at parties.’

Martin held up another bottle of wine. ‘Anyone for this? Have I told you my theory?’

‘A thousand times, probably.’

‘
My
theory is that it’s just those people who are at pains to look so wonderfully happy with one another who are, in fact, right on the rocks. Witness the Frobishers.’

‘Whereas people like us …’

‘Forever nagging each other, and arguing about money, and about who promised not to be late home, are the ones who are happy. The ones who couldn’t live without each other.’

He looked through the candles’ glow at Annie. He had begun lightly, but as he spoke he had been reaching out to her, trying to ask the question. Unspoken, it had been growing louder inside him ever since Annie had come home. He couldn’t make himself deliver it when they were alone, and so he had wrapped it up and pushed it delicately across the table to her, under their friends’ eyes.

Do you still love me?
It was banal, of course.
But you don’t really care about him, do you? Except for what you went through, together
…

Annie’s face was a colourless oval, too far away from him, and her eyes were opaque.

In that moment, Martin knew for sure.

Annie had gone away, and he would have to fight to get her back.

He heard his own voice, talking, joking with their friends around the table to hide his fear, and suddenly their whole life was a similar pretence.

Martin emptied his glass, refilled it and then drank again.

No, Annie was thinking, still listening to Martin’s words inside her head. It isn’t like that at all. Not as safe and as comfortable as Martin makes it sound. We were happy, the two of us, weren’t we? And then in a day, in an hour, everything changes. How has it happened, all this, and what can I do now?