You Are Not A Stranger Here (8 page)

"Peter plays opposite an Australian girl. Can't quite imagine it done in that accent, but there we are. I sense he's fond of her, though he doesn't admit it in his letters."

By the portrait of their parents over the mantel, a fly buzzed. Owen sat motionless on the couch, staring over Mrs. Giles's shoulder.

His sister had always been an early riser. Up at five-thirty or six for breakfast and to prepare for class. At seven-thirty she'd leave the house in time for morning assembly. As a partner, he never had to be at the firm until well after nine. He read the
Financial Times
with his coffee and looked over whatever had come in the post. There had been no elaborate operation, no fretting over things. A circumstance had presented itself. The letters from Ben arrived. He took them up to his room. That's all there was to it.

"More tea?"

"No, thank you," Owen said.

The local council had decided on a one-way system for the town center and Mrs. Giles believed it would only make things worse. "They've done it down in Winchester. My sister says it's a terrible mess."

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"Right," Owen said.

They had kissed only once, in the small hours of an August night, on the sofa in Ben's flat, light from the streetlamps coming through the high windows. Earlier, strolling back over the bridge from Battersea, Owen had told him the story of him and Hillary being sent to look for their mother: walking out across the fields to a wood where she sometimes went in the mornings; the rain starting up and soaking them before they arrived under the canopy of oaks, and looked up to see their mother's slender frame wrapped in her beige overcoat, her face lifeless, her body turning in the wind. And he'd told Ben how his sister--twelve years old--had taken him in her arms right then and there, sheltering his eyes from the awful sight, and whispered in his ear, "We will survive this, we will survive this." A story he'd never told anyone before. And when he and Ben had finished another bottle of wine, reclining there on the sofa, they'd hugged, and then they'd kissed, their hands running through each other's hair.

"I can't do this," Ben had whispered as Owen rested his head against Ben's chest.

"Smells wonderful, whatever it is you're cooking," Mrs. Giles said. Hillary nodded.

For that moment before Ben had spoken, as he lay in his arms, Owen had believed in the fantasy of love as the creator, your life clay in its hands.

"I should check the food. Owen, why don't you show Mrs. Giles a bit of the garden. She hasn't seen the delphiniums, I'm sure."

"Of course," he said, looking into his sister's taut smile. 77

"I suspect I've mistreated my garden," Mrs. Giles said as the two of them reached the bottom of the lawn. "John it was who had the green thumb. I'm just a bungler really."

The skin of her hands was mottled and soft looking. The gold ring she still wore hung rather loosely on her finger.

"I think Ben and I might have a weekend away," Hillary had said one evening in the front room as they watched the evening news. The two of them had only met a few weeks before. An accident really, Hillary in the city on an errand, coming to drop something by for Owen, deciding at the last minute to join them for dinner. When the office phoned the restaurant in the middle of the meal, Owen had to leave the two of them alone.

A weekend at the cottage on Lake Windermere is what they had.

Owen had always thought of himself as a rational person, capable of perspective. As a school boy, he'd read
Othello. O,
beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which
doth mock the meat it feeds on.
What paltry aid literature turned out to be when the feelings were yours and not others'.

"Funny, I miss him in the most peculiar ways," Mrs. Giles said. "We'd always kept the chutney over the stove, and as we only ever had it in the evenings, he'd be there to fetch it. Ridiculous to use a stepladder for the chutney, if you think about it. Does just as well on the counter."

"Yes," Owen said.

They stared together into the blue flowers.

"I expect it won't be long before I join him," she said.

"No, you're in fine shape, surely."

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"Doesn't upset me--the idea. It used to, but not anymore. I've been very lucky. He was a good person."

Owen could hear the telephone ringing in the house.

"Could you get that?" Hillary called from the kitchen.

"I apologize, I--"

"No, please, carry on," Mrs. Giles said.

He left her there and passing through the dining room, crossed the hall to the phone.

"Owen, it's Ben Hansen."

"Ben."

"Look, I feel terrible about this, but I'm not going to be able to make it out there tonight."

"Oh."

"Yeah, the meetings are running late here and I'm supposed to give this talk, it's all been pushed back. Horrible timing, I'm afraid."

Owen could hear his sister closing the oven door, the water coming on in the sink.

"I'm sorry about that. It's a great pity. I know Hillary was looking forward to seeing you. We both were."

"I was looking forward to it myself, I really was," he said.

"Have you been well?"

Owen laughed. "Me? Yes. I've been fine. Everything's very much the same on this end . . . It does seem awfully long ago you were here."

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Standing there in the hall, Owen felt a sudden longing. He imagined Ben as he often saw him in his mind's eye, tall and thin, half a step ahead on the Battersea Bridge, hands scrunched 79

into his pockets. And he pictured the men he sometimes saw holding hands in Soho or Piccadilly. In June, perhaps on this very Sunday, thousands marched. He wanted to tell Ben what it felt like to pass two men on the street like that, how he had always in a sense been afraid.

"You're still with the firm?"

"Yes," Owen said. "That's right." And he wanted to say how frightened he'd been watching his friend Saul's ravaged body die, how the specter of disease had made him timid. How he, Ben, had seemed a refuge.

"And with you, things have been well?"

He listened as Ben described his life--columnist now for the paper, the children beginning school; he heard the easy, slightly weary tone in his voice--a parent's fatigue. And he wondered how Ben remembered them. Were Hillary and Owen Simpson just two people he'd met on a year abroad ages ago? Had he been coming here for answers, or did he just have a free evening and a curiosity about what had become of them? What did it matter now? There would be no revelation tonight. He was safe again.

"Might you be back over at some point?" he asked. He sensed their conversation about to end and felt on the edge of panic.

"Definitely. It's one of the things I wanted to ask you about. Judy and I were thinking of bringing the kids--maybe next summer--and I remembered you rented that place up north. Is there a person to call about getting one of those?"

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"The cottages? . . . Yes, of course."

"Yeah, that would be great. I'll try to give you a call when we're ready to firm up some plans."

"And Judy? She's well?"

"Sure, she's heard all about you, wants to meet you both sometime."

"That would be terrific," Owen said, the longing there again.

"Ben?"

"Yes?"

"Who is it?" Hillary asked, stepping into the hall, drying her hands with a dishcloth. A red amulet their mother had worn hung round her neck, resting against the front of her linen dress.

"Ben," he mouthed.

Her face stiffened slightly.

"Hillary's just here," he said into the phone. "Why don't you have a word?" He held the receiver out to her.

"He can't make it."

"Is that right?" she said, staring straight through him. She took the phone. Owen walked back into the dining room; by the sideboard, he paused.

"No, no, don't be silly," he heard his sister say. "It's quite all right."

" A B E A U T I F U L E V E N I N G , isn't it?" Mrs. Giles said as he stepped back onto the terrace. The air was mild now, the sun 81

beginning to shade into the trees. Clouds like distant mountains had appeared on the horizon.

"Yes," he said, imagining the evening view of the lake from the garden of their cottage, the way they checked the progress of the days by which dip in the hills the sun disappeared behind. Mrs. Giles stood from the bench. "I should be getting along."

He walked her down the side of the house and out the gate. Though the sky was still bright, the streetlamps had begun to flicker on. Farther up the street a neighbor watered her lawn.

"Thank you for the tea."

"Not at all," he said.

"It wasn't bad news just now, I hope."

"No, no," he said. "Just a friend calling."

"That's good, then." She hesitated by the low brick wall that separated their front gardens. "Owen, there was just one thing I wanted to mention. In my sitting room, the desk over in the corner, in the top drawer there. I've put a letter in. You understand. I wanted to make sure someone would know where to look. Nothing to worry about, of course, nothing dramatic . . . but in the event . . . you see?"

He nodded, and she smiled back at him, her eyes beginning to water. Owen watched her small figure as she turned and passed through her gate, up the steps, and into her house. He stayed awhile on the sidewalk, gazing onto the common: the expanse of lawn, white goalposts on the football pitch set against the trees. A long shadow, cast by their house 82

and the others along this bit of street, fell over the playing field. He watched it stretching slowly to the chestnut trees, the darkness slowly climbing their trunks, beginning to shade the leaves of the lower branches.

In the house, he found Hillary at the kitchen table, hands folded in her lap. She sat perfectly still, staring into the garden. For a few minutes they remained like that, Owen at the counter, neither of them saying a word. Then his sister got up and passing him as though he weren't there, opened the oven door.

"Right," she said. "It's done."

They ate in the dining room, in the fading light, with the silver and the crystal. Roses, pink and white, stood in a vase at the center of the table. As the plates were already out, Hillary served her chicken marsala on their mother's china. The candles remained unlit in the silver candlesticks.

"He'll be over again," Owen said. Hillary nodded. They finished their dinner in silence. Afterward, neither had the appetite for the strawberries set out on the polished tray.

"I'll do these," he said when they'd stacked the dishes on the counter. He squeezed the green liquid detergent into the baking dish and watched it fill with water. "I could pour you a brandy if you like," he said over his shoulder. But when he turned he saw his sister had left the room.

He rinsed the bowls and plates and arranged them neatly in the rows of the dishwasher. Under the warm running water, he sponged the wineglasses clean and set them to dry on the rack. When he'd finished, he turned the taps off, and then the kitchen was quiet.

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He poured himself a scotch and took a seat at the table. The door to the garden had been left open and in the shadows he could make out the azalea bush and the cluster of rhododendron. Up the lane from where they'd lived as children, there was a manor with elaborate gardens and a moat around the house. An old woman they called Mrs. Montague lived there and she let them play on the rolling lawns and in the labyrinth of the topiary hedge. They would play for hours in the summer, chasing each other along the embankments, pretending to fish in the moat with a stick and string. He won their games of hide-and-go-seek because he never closed his eyes completely, and could see which way she ran. He could still remember the peculiar anger and frustration he used to feel after he followed her to her hiding place and tapped her on the head. He imagined that garden now, the blossoms of its flowers drinking in the cooler night air, the branches of its trees rejuvenating in the darkness.

From the front room, he heard a small sound--a moan let out in little breaths--and realized it was the sound of his sister crying. He had ruined her life. He knew that now in a way he'd always tried not to know it--with certainty. For years he'd allowed himself to imagine she had forgotten Ben, or at least stopped remembering. He stood up from the table and crossed the room but stopped at the entrance to the hall. What consolation could he give her now?

Standing there, listening to her tears, he remembered the last time he'd heard them, so long ago it seemed like the 84

memory of a former life: a summer morning when she'd returned from university, and they'd walked together over the fields in a brilliant sunshine and come to the oak trees, their green leaves shining, their branches heavy with acorns. She'd wept then for the first time in all the years since their mother had taken herself away. And Owen had been there to comfort her--his turn at last, after all she had done to protect him. At the sound of his footsteps entering the hall, Hillary went quiet. He stopped again by the door to the front room. Sitting at the breakfast table, reading those letters from America, it wasn't only Ben's affection he'd envied. Being replaced. That was the fear. The one he'd been too weak to master.

Holding on to the banister, he slowly climbed the stairs, his feet pressing against the worn patches of the carpet. They might live in this silence the rest of their lives, he thought. In his room, he walked to the window and looked again over the common.

When they were little they'd gone to the village on Sundays to hear the minister talk. Of charity and sacrifice. A Norman church with hollows worked into the stones of the floor by centuries of parishioners. He could still hear the congregation singing,
Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my
arrows of desire!
Their mother had sung with them. Plaintive voices rising.
And did those feet in ancient time walk upon
England's mountains green?
Owen could remember wanting to believe something about it all, if not the words of the Book perhaps the sorrow he heard in the music, the longing of peo85 ple's song. He hadn't been in a church since his mother's funeral. Over the years, views from the train or the sight of this common in evening had become his religion, absorbing the impulse to imagine larger things.