You Are Not A Stranger Here (7 page)

With his handkerchief, Owen wiped sweat from the back of his neck.

His sister, Hillary, stood at the counter sorting strawberries. She'd nearly finished the dinner preparations, though Ben wouldn't arrive for hours yet. She wore a beige linen dress he'd never seen on her before. Her black-and-gray hair, usually kept up in a bun, hung down to her shoulders. For a woman in her mid-fifties, she had a slender, graceful figure.

"You're awfully dressed up," he said.

"The wine," she said. "Why don't you open a bottle of the red? And we'll need the tray from the dining room."

"We're using the silver, are we?"

"Yes, I thought we would."

"We didn't use the silver at Christmas."

He watched Hillary dig for something in the fridge.

"It should be on the right under the carving dish," she said. Raising himself from his chair, Owen walked through into the dining room. From the sideboard he removed the familiar gravy boats and serving dishes until he found the tarnished platter. The china and silver had come from their parents'

when their father died, along with the side tables and sitting chairs and the pictures on the walls.

"It'd take an hour to clean this," he called into the kitchen.

"There's polish in the cabinet."

"We've
five
perfectly good trays in the cupboard."

"It's behind the drink, on the left."

He gritted his teeth. She could be so bloody imperious.

"This is some production," he muttered, seated again at 66

the kitchen table. He daubed a cloth in polish and drew it over the smooth metal. They weren't in the habit of having people in to dinner. Aunt Philippa from Shropshire, their mother's sister, usually came at Christmas and stayed three or four nights. Now and again, Hillary had Miriam Franks, one of her fellow teachers from the comprehensive, in on a Sunday. They'd have coffee in the living room afterward and talk about the students. Occasionally they'd go out if a new restaurant opened on the High Street, but they'd never been gourmets. Most of Owen's partners at the firm had professed to discover wine at a certain age and now took their holidays in Italy. He and Hillary rented a cottage in the Lake District the last two weeks of August. They had been going for years and were perfectly happy with it. A nice little stone house that caught all the afternoon light and had a view of Lake Windermere.

He pressed the cloth harder onto the tray, rubbing at the tarnished corners. Years ago he'd gone to dinners, up in Knightsbridge and Mayfair. Richard Stallybrass, an art dealer, gave private gentlemen's parties, as he called them, at his flat on Belgrave Place. All very civilized. Solicitors, journalists, the odd duke or MP, there with the implicit and, in the 1970s, safe assumption that nothing would be said. Half of them had wives and children. Saul Thompson, an old friend from school, had introduced Owen to this little world and for several years Owen had been quite taken with it. He'd looked at flats in central London, encouraged by Saul to leave the suburbs and enjoy the pleasures of the city. 67

But there had always been Hillary and this house. She and Owen had lost their mother when they were young and it had driven them closer than many siblings were. He couldn't see himself leaving her here in Wimbledon. The idea of his sister's loneliness haunted him. One year to the next he'd put off his plans to move.

Then Saul was dead, one of the first to be claimed by the epidemic. A year later Richard Stallybrass died. Owen's connection to the gay life had always been tenuous. AIDS severed it. His work for the firm went on, work he enjoyed. And despite what an observer might assume, he hadn't been miserable. Not every fate was alike. Not everyone ended up paired off in love.

"The wine, Owen? Aren't you going to open it?"

But then he'd met Ben, and things had changed.

"Sorry?" he said.

"The wine. It's on the sideboard."

Hillary held a glass to the light, checking for smudges.

"We're certainly pulling out all the stops," he said. When she made no reply, he continued. "Believe it or not, I commented on your dress earlier but you didn't hear me. I haven't seen that one before. Have you been shopping?"

"You didn't comment on my dress, Owen. You said I was awfully dressed up."

She looked out the window over the kitchen sink. They both watched another sheet of the
Sunday Times
tumble gently into the flower beds.

"I thought we'd have our salad outside," she said. "Ben might like to see the garden."

68

S TA N D I N G I N S T O C K I N G E D feet before the open door of his wardrobe, Owen pushed aside the row of gray pinstripe suits, looking for a green summer blazer he remembered wearing the year before to a garden party the firm had given out in Surrey. Brushing the dust off the shoulders, he put it on over his white shirt.

On the shelf above the suits was a boater hat--he couldn't imagine what he'd worn that to--and just behind it, barely visible, the shoe box. He paused a moment, staring at the corner of it. Ben would be here in a few hours. His first visit since he'd gone back to the States, fifteen years ago. Why now? Owen had asked himself all weekend.

"I'll be over for a conference," he'd said when Owen took the call Thursday. And yet he could so easily have come and gone from London with no word to them.

As he had each of the last three nights, Owen reached behind the boater hat and took down the shoe box. Fourteen years it had sat there untouched. Now the dust on the lid showed his fingerprints again. He listened for the sound of Hillary downstairs, then crossed the room and closed the door. Perching on the edge of the side chair, he removed the lid of the box and unfolded the last of the four letters. 69

November 4, 1985

Boston

Dear Hillary,

It's awkward writing when I haven't heard back

from my other letters. I suppose I'll get the message soon enough. Right now I'm still bewildered. My only thought is you've decided my leaving was my own choice and not the
Globe
's, that I have no intention of trying to get back there. I'm not sure what more I can say to convince you. I've told my editor I'll give him six months to get me reassigned to London or I'm quitting. I've been talking to people there, trying to see what might be available. It would be a lot easier if I thought this all had some purpose.

I know things got started late, that we didn't have much time before I had to leave. Owen kept you a secret for too long. But for me those were great months. I feel like a romantic clown to say I live on the memory of them, but it's not altogether untrue. I can't settle here again. I feel like I'm on a leash, everything so depressingly familiar. I'm tempted to write out all my recollections of our weekends, our evenings together, just so I can linger on them a bit more, but that would be maudlin, and you wouldn't like that--which is, of course, why I love you. If this is over, for heaven's sake just let me know. Yours,

Ben

70

Owen slid the paper back into its envelope and replaced it in the box on his lap. Dust floated in the light by the window. The rectangle of sun on the floor crept over the red pile carpet.

For most of his life he'd hated Sundays. Their gnawing stillness, the faint memories of religion. A day loneliness won. But in these last years that quiet little dread had faded. He and Hillary made a point of cooking a big breakfast and taking a walk on the common afterward. In winter they read the paper together by the fire in the front room and often walked into the town for a film in the evening. In spring and summer they spent hours in the garden. They weren't unhappy people.

From the pack on his bedside table he took a cigarette. He rolled it idly between thumb and forefinger. Would it be taken away, this life of theirs? Was Ben coming here for an answer? He smoked the cigarette down to the filter, then returned the shoe box to its shelf and closed the door of his wardrobe. Ben was married now, had two children. That's what he'd said on the phone; they'd spoken only a minute or two. Did he still wonder why he'd never heard?

Through the window Owen could see his sister clearing their tea mugs from the garden table. There had been other men she'd gone out to dinner with over the years. A Mr. Kreske, the divorced father of a sixth-form student, who'd driven down from Putney. The maths teacher, Mr. Hamilton, had taken her to several plays in the city before returning to Scotland. Owen had tried to say encouraging things about 71

these evenings of hers, but then the tone of her voice had always made it clear that that's all they were, evenings. I N T H E K I T C H E N , Hillary stood by the sink, arranging roses in a vase.

"I see you made up the guest room," he said.

She looked directly at him, failing to register the comment. He could tell she was trying to remember something. They did that: rested their eyes on each other in moments of distraction, as you might stare at a ring on your finger.

"The guest bed. You made it up."

"Oh, yes. I did," she said, drawn back into the room. "I thought if dinner goes late and he doesn't feel like taking a train . . ."

"Of course."

Sitting again at the table, Owen picked up the tray. In it he could see his reflection, his graying hair. What would Ben look like now? he wondered.

"Chives," she said. "I forgot the chives."

They'd met through the firm, of all places. The
Globe
had Ben working on a story about differences between British and American lawyers. They went to lunch and somehow the conversation wandered. "You ask all sorts of questions,"

Owen could remember saying to him. And it was true. Ben had no hesitation about inquiring into Owen's private life, where he lived, how he spent his time. All in the most guileless manner, as though such questions were part of his beat. 72

"I hope he hasn't become allergic to anything," Hillary said, setting the chives down on the cutting board. Though Ben had been in London nearly a year, he hadn't seen much of the place. Owen offered himself as a guide. On weekends they traveled up to Hampstead or Camden Town, or out to the East End, taking long walks, getting lunch along the way. They talked about all sorts of things. It turned out Ben too had lost a parent at a young age. When Owen heard that, he understood why he'd been drawn to Ben: he seemed to comprehend a certain register of sadness intuitively. Other than Hillary, Owen had never spoken to anyone about the death of his mother.

"I come up with lots of analogies for it," he could remember Ben saying. "Like I was burned and can't feel anything again until the flame gets that hot. Or like people's lives are over and I'm just wandering through an abandoned house. None of them really work. But you have to think the problem somehow."

Not the sort of conversation Owen had with colleagues at the office.

He picked up the cloth and wiped it again over the reflective center of the tray. Owen and his sister were so alike. Everyone said that. From the clipped tone of their voice, their gestures, right down into the byways of thought, the way they considered before speaking, said only what was needed. That she too had been attracted to Ben made perfect sense. Hillary crossed the room and stood with her hands on 73

Owen's shoulders. He could feel the warmth of her palms through his cotton blazer. Unusual, this: the two of them touching.

"It'll be curious, won't it?" she said. "To see him so briefly after all this time."

"Yes."

Twenty-five years ago he and Hillary had moved into this house together. They'd thought of it as a temporary arrangement. Hillary was doing her student teaching; he'd just started with the firm and had yet to settle on a place. It seemed like the beginning of something.

"I suppose his wife couldn't come because of the children." Her thumbs rested against his collar. She was the only person who knew of his preference for men, now that Saul and the others were gone. She'd never judged him, never raised an eyebrow.

"Interesting he should get in touch after such a gap,"

Owen said.

She removed her hands from his shoulders. "It strikes you as odd, does it?"

"A bit."

"I think it's thoughtful of him," she said.

"Indeed."

In the front hall, the doorbell rang.

"Goodness," Hillary said, "he's awfully early."

He listened to her footsteps as she left the room, listened as they stopped in front of the hall mirror.

"I've been with a man once myself," Ben had said on the 74

night Owen finally spoke to him of his feelings. Like a prayer answered, those words were. Was it such a crime he'd fallen in love?

A few more steps and then the turning of the latch.

"Oh," he heard his sister say. "Mrs. Giles. Hello."

Owen closed his eyes, relieved for the moment. Her son lived in Australia; she'd been widowed the year before. After that she'd begun stopping by on the weekends, first with the excuse of borrowing a cup of something but later just for the company.

"You're doing all right in the heat, are you?" she asked.

"Yes, we're managing," Hillary said.

Owen joined them in the hall. He could tell from the look on his sister's face she was trying to steel her courage to say they had company on the way.

"Hello there, Owen," Mrs. Giles said. "Saw your firm in the paper today."

"Did you?"

"Yes, something about the law courts. There's always news of the courts. So much of it on the telly now. Old Rumpole."

"Right," he said.

"Well . . . I was just on my way by . . . but you're occupied, I'm sure."

"No, no," Hillary said, glancing at Owen. "Someone's coming later . . . but I was just putting a kettle on."

"Really, you don't have to," Mrs. Giles said.

"Not at all."

75

T H E Y S AT I N the front room, Hillary glancing now and again at her watch. A production of
Les Miserables
had reached Perth, and Peter Giles had a leading role.

"Amazing story, don't you think?" Mrs. Giles said, sipping her tea. The air in the room was close and Owen could feel sweat soaking the back of his shirt.