The Engagement (18 page)

Slowly I started walking around the house’s perimeter, my hand pressed against the cold bluestone walls. The rear of this place was like the back of a stage set. There were pipes and exposed wiring and small, dark windows.

I passed a corner and stepped through rectangles of light coming from the dining room’s glass doors onto the veranda. I stared in at the room, all lit up with money and perversion. Alexander and his guests were sitting around the table, talking among themselves as though nothing had happened.

That’s my engagement party, I thought.

I was hurt: this sick part of me had almost enjoyed playing the bride-to-be. It was akin to telling oneself an old, old fairy tale that included bridesmaids carrying posies of wildflowers, a veil blowing in the breeze, confetti and rose petals raining down. . . . How could I have known that all the soothing stories of girlhood would spring up like so many seeds waiting for a fire to germinate them?

Even now, I could half picture putting tables under the trees—­covering them in white cloths, with all the table settings white too, but for place cards in an Edwardian-style font. We could find a caterer who specialized in slow food. There would be a wedding cake frosted with ivory icing and sugar flowers—gardenias, roses, lily of the valley—and I’d arrange candles throughout the trees, hanging them from branches with white satin ribbon. . . .

I turned, disgusted again, and with the light from the dining room made out in the darkness the shape of a car—a station wagon. Across the gravel I walked toward it. I could just read the insignia stenciled on the side, “Colquhoun’s Roses of Distinction,” circling the image of a bud. As I opened the door it made an aching noise, as though bending the wrong way: low bucket seats with ripped upholstery, the overwhelming smell of manure, of blood and bone. I immediately shut the door, gagging.

Some way down the driveway I spied another car, a silver sedan. Shaking now, I went to it.

If I just hid here on the backseat, if I just lay down and waited, then the minister and Graeme would have to take me away from this place. I’d demand they drive me to a hospital or a police station, and I’d wait there until a bus came traveling to Melbourne.

The car had central locking, and when I pressed down one lock, every door clicked. Leaning my head against the headrest, I swallowed hard. So close to safety, I needed it immediately. A deodorizer hung from the rearview mirror, and next to me on the seat there was a box of tissues, a safety kit, the Bible—I took hold of it.

On school excursions we’d visit Norwich Cathedral and wheel a mirror-topped cart over the vaulted floors to look at the wooden carvings on the ceilings. All the stories, from the Fall of Man to the Resurrection of Jesus, blended together: there was Noah on his ark surrounded by animals; a wounded doubting Thomas; the pharaoh drowning in the Red Sea with his followers’ naive faces only just bobbing out of the water; Adam and Eve smooth and naked, kneeling under a tree of golden apples, the serpent waiting . . .

If Alexander
had
written the letters I could truly say that in some strange way he knew me. I’d told him true things and he’d extrapolated. I’d told him false things, but parts of his letters were still true. That was what was unnerving: among the madness there was insight.

My own desire could make me feel obscene. It could make me feel sluttish and out of control. And as the letters pointed out, the money seemed a way to manage this. It gave my vast and clumsy longings a neater shape, a strategic purpose. This was functional shame. But, of course, shame can only be resized like this for so long before it bursts out. Shame had been built into the very act of taking his money; it washed over me each time I was paid, brief but extra potent. It was the deeper for being in someone else’s house. The sex itself drove the feeling back for a while, but I suppose doing ever wilder things to avoid shame was bound to bring more of it.

Reading the letters had taken me inside my own head. I recognized all the murky, half-hidden parts—the feeling of being indecently different, and the old yearning to be someone else. On those cathedral excursions the other children are playing and I am the big girl who lurks at the side, watching. Standing under the great limestone arches is like being in the shell
and
the wave. And a switch turns on and I find I can sleepwalk through this day, while in my alternative, secret world, magic possibilities roll out before me . . . I’d left home and remade myself as best I could—but now, sitting in a stranger’s car, there was horror in these layers of invention. The letters made me feel deeply that I had no secrets left. Even their lies seemed to show me for who I really was. Did getting close to another always mean discovering you were a fraud?

A flash of silver—dangling in the ignition, the car keys were reflecting the moonlight. Crawling straight over to the driver’s seat, I sat and laughed. So this was how it ended: I would go howling into the dark night! I’d worry about changing my life later. For now, adjusting the car seat, I turned the key in the ignition and I was blazing with victory! I pressed down on the accelerator and the engine roared—nothing happened. The car was manual. I did not know how to drive a manual. I pushed the gearshift and heard crunching. When I pushed it harder, it was worse.

“Liese!” Alexander’s voice, calling from a distance.

I got out of the car and picked up a rock from the ground.

“Liese!” Alexander again, then other voices, the guests’: “Lee-ease!”

Dogs were barking. Someone had a flashlight.

Dropping the rock, I charted my path through the darkness toward the back of the house. Each step was over hard earth, but listening to the guests’ calls felt dreamlike
.
Had this happened before? And if so, to whom? Whose déjà vu was I experiencing?

Lachlan was standing by the back door, smoking.

I grabbed his slender arm. “Do you know how to drive a manual?”

Already he was stubbing out the cigarette, coughing. “Yeah.”

“I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you get me to a bus station.”

“Jesus!” He sounded tempted, but he hesitated.

“I’ll make it worth your while,” I found myself saying. “
Really
worth it.”

I moved closer to him. My hand drifted from his arm to his chest. Even in the dark I could tell he was trembling.

His voice was higher now. “Let me ask Mum to borrow the keys.”

“No need.” I tried for an impression of calm. “Reverend Wendy’s car has the keys in it.”

Lachlan was bending down, burying his cigarette butt and covering its grave in another layer of soil. “Umm, I don’t actually have my license.”

I turned and walked through the back door. This nightmare was such a perfect fit that I didn’t know how to step out of it, how to shake it off my back. In Alexander’s study, I checked to see if he had replaced the letters. I wanted each one. I needed to take them with me when I left as evidence. Evidence of how he’d tapped into the part of my brain that ran a hate campaign against me. Opening one drawer of his desk after another, I pulled out the contents and dumped all of it on the floor. The letters were gone.

Out the window I could hear Alexander and the others still calling my name.

I crept from the study down the hallway and ran up the stairs to the pink bedroom. I’d planned to take the envelope of money and stash it somewhere before leaving. (If nothing else, it could pay for therapy.) But staring at the notes, I now felt myself shudder. For all these months his cash had seemed to have magical properties, to be some elixir that could clear my debts and every other ill. It was only cash, though. Rectangles of plastic in gaudy colors. Didn’t Freud compare it to excrement?

The door swung open.

The minister: her features at first mirroring my fright before bright eyes betrayed a stern satisfaction.

“Found her!” she called out. “We’ll be back down in a minute!” Reverend Wendy shut the door carefully so as not to startle her prey.

I spoke first: “Help me!”

“Of course.”

“I am not who he thinks I am,” I urged through clenched teeth. “Who you think I am.”

Reverend Wendy composed her face as if she understood exactly. “My dear, let me say this: a lot of girls these days have a past.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” In my right hand I held the envelope of cash tightly to my hip.

The minister half shrugged, uncomfortable at the need to spell it out.

“Look, I am not a sex worker, okay?”

“No, no.” She glanced at the envelope as I moved it further behind my back. “No one’s saying you are, dear, but early in a partnership carnal relations are central to men’s self-identity. Later, you know, with children, et cetera, everyone’s tired. . . .”

I stared at her in disbelief. “Did you see what he did to the swan?”

“You mustn’t be so sensitive,” she said harshly.

“He killed it as a warning. He did it to frighten me!”

“Not at all.” The minister was straining to appear sympathetic. “Swans have been discreetly culled around here for decades.” Visibly she shifted to a lower gear, treating me as though I’d just thrown a tantrum. “Alexander lives off the land, or that’s his plan. He’s a gourmand who strives to use totally local ingredients, and I personally feel it should be commended.”

“Reverend, you don’t seem to understand—I
am
trapped
here.”

She regarded me without comprehending.

My God, I thought, was it possible this woman had a crush on him?

“He won’t let me go, he won’t let me leave.”

“Well, he’s smitten.” A brisk smile.

“No.” I now spat each word.
“I am physically trapped.”

“You went outside before, Liese.” Unimpressed, she was patting herself, searching for her glasses, which were the plainest, wire-rimmed frames one could buy. Having dealt with junkies and other down-and-outs, she had no time for this self-indulgence. “On the surface marriage makes us feel under another’s control, but truly it offers a kind of liberation. For some it can also be a chance to start afresh,” she added pointedly. “I suppose I was nervous too before I was married. It’s only natural.”

Reverend Wendy peered at the row of porcelain ponies lined up along the mantelpiece. “Goodness,” she said, “this must have been Annabel’s room.”

I placed the money back in the suitcase, making no attempt to hide what I was doing.

Tactfully, the minister kept inspecting the figurines. “Anyway, your fiancé is about to make a speech. You’d better come back.”

 • • • 

Don’t they say that sociopaths can act in minute detail the part they wish to play? Their mimicry is so precise that in the end it’s difficult to be sure whether it is an act. From a particular angle, the man standing by the dining table with his hand upon my shoulder was still attractive, and even, at a stretch, charming. If one believed his speech he appeared the model fiancé and his devotion to me was, as the minister assumed, very moving. If one wasn’t sure whether to believe him—as I was not—it was terrifying.

I stared at the mahogany tabletop: the plates had been cleared, the swan’s carcass moved to a sideboard. Alexander’s hand pressed harder into my flesh.

“What really is romantic love?” he asked, turning philosophical. “Is it a biological imperative? A spiritual state? A form of delusion? Man may have asked himself these questions for millennia, but until recently, I confess, I’d never bothered.

“The idea of ‘true’ love was, I’d always believed, just a fairy story to help people avoid facing how utterly alone we are. We are alone,” he said, straightening, “we are alone—and people, generally, live alienated from nature. Then they fixate on finding the perfect other human half, and attach a lot of mystical qualities to the pursuit.” He gave a bemused sigh. “These people are unable to bear that really we are animals with the same basic needs and desires as those standing with four legs outside in the paddocks.

“So I have been . . .” Pausing, Alexander leaned down and put his fingers underneath my chin, tilting my face to his. A thin line of sweat glistened on his forehead, the candlelight shading, then dazzling, his features. “I have been a bachelor for a long time now, and I’ve always sidled away from the girls who caught the bouquet. However, despite what’s been a very successful year for the farm”—Alexander was staring into my eyes—“many nights I returned to this house knowing something profound was missing. Always one glass and plate and knife and fork drying by the sink, and no one to share one’s thoughts with. Always too many rooms feeling emptier each year.

“Now”—he ducked his head shyly, curls spilling over his forehead—“growing up in this house was not always pleasant. Reverend, I know Annabel’s spoken with you about this, as have I. It wasn’t easy. . . . Nevertheless, I have strong memories of my dear mum almost begging me to find a nice girl and settle down.”

At the mention of her mother, Annabel made a noise like something was burning in her throat. The minister filled her empty wineglass with water.

“Not—and let’s be frank—not that I always felt Mum would have approved of the girls I did bring home. . . .” He paused for laughter. “ ‘And where,’ I asked her in my head, ‘do you think I’ll meet this nice girl?’ ‘Go to Melbourne,’ I heard her advise, ‘take a house for the season, and have a good time.’ So I drove down to the city and on the way made an appointment to look for a pied-à-terre. And who’d have thought she would be right? From the moment I met Liese, I displayed all the symptoms of an animal in love. For yes”—he grinned—“in mating season all species behave differently, even experiencing what could be called ‘the blues.’ When it seemed Liese returned my feelings, my heart soared; when I wasn’t so certain, I’d drive back here to drag myself around for days.
Come to me in my dreams, and then/By day I shall be well again!
”

With each sweet word I felt the room closing in on me. Locked into his story now, I watched his mouth move, those full lips wet with satisfaction, and I wondered whether for all these months I too had been caught in his gun sight while he decided the best time to bring me down.