The Engagement (8 page)

“How did your ancestor first find it?”

“An Aboriginal guide was employed to show him.”

“He just took it?”

“What’s your point?”

“Nothing,” I said vaguely.

Why was I provoking him? What did
I
care?

Alexander was already repacking the basket. The half-eaten picnic looked spoiled on the plates—a second meal that had not worked—and scraping the leftovers into a container, he had a private, tight air about him. “Well, here it is,” he said without glancing up. “The bush.”

“Do you know what happened to the Aboriginal guide?” I persisted.

He fixed shut the basket’s clasps. “He lived a long, happy life under the banner of his Lord Jesus. Is that what you want to hear?”

I didn’t answer.

His eyes were bright and hard. “Liese, we’ll go home and have a quiet night, but first I have my surprise for you.” Lifting the basket, he started carrying it toward the truck, walking a few paces ahead. When he reached the dogs they began moving expectantly on their chains. He ignored them and secured the basket again.

I hung behind, contemplating the ground. The nearby trees were twisting, roiling as if trying to break free. At the roots of one of them I noticed a small maroon cylinder. Then I noticed a second cylinder, or rather a second shotgun cartridge; someone had been hunting here, where the animals drank.

Turning, Alexander saw me registering this. He sighed, but the sigh wasn’t tired or unhappy. “I’d come here when I was a child. Camp, catch yabbies, shoot rabbits and ducks—and never once did I ever see a soul.”

“What would someone shoot now?”

“Perhaps kangaroos that jump the fence and eat his crops.”

I nodded.

He waited. “You were right, Liese. This
is
one of those places that’s special to me. If I’m ever under pressure I come here in my thoughts. I want you to be able to do that too. Do you suppose you will?”

“Yes.” Wind played through the leaves of high branches above us. “I expect so.”

He was giving me his blue stare. “The mountains and water are so peaceful. I want you to keep the feeling in your head. To remember it. Okay?”

VI

A
s we drew closer the house was all windows, reflecting the blankness of the darkening sky. Gray clouds rolled over the glass, camouflaging whatever waited behind it. This building sat in the dusk, expectant and watchful, emitting a low piercing sound. Every nearby tree was alive with bird din. Hundreds, thousands of them were seething in the branches. They signaled to each other, the garden vibrating with their calls—although more truly the sound seemed to come from the stone walls of the house, from deep inside one of its rooms.

Nature might be a wonderful thing, but if you’re not used to it, it’s a series of creeping shocks. On the drive back I’d found a cobweb stretching along my seat belt holster, and I kept brushing a crawling sensation off my shoulder. Alexander stopped for me to open and close the gates. A frost was coming down; the steel felt damp to the touch. I tried to resist glancing at my watch. I needed to get away from this man, even for half an hour. I needed to get through the house’s back door, and straight up the stairs so as to lock myself in the ruin of the bathroom until I could stand another night with him.

He parked by the rear of the house. Here, a garden bench was on its side, rotted through; broken terra-cotta pots were stacked against the wall. Briskly he unchained the dogs; they bounded off the truck and followed him, moving like shadows toward the kennels.

“Wait a moment,” Alexander called to me. “I’d like to show you something.”

I stopped.

He secured the dogs in their concrete shelters, bolting shut the mesh doors, then walked slowly over to me, half smiling. “This is my favorite time in the garden, Liese.”

Sensing my hesitation, he reached out and clasped my fingers in his. He led me to a fruit tree, one in a gnarled and lichen-covered row. “So, Exhibit A.” Alexander was trying to sound casual, lighthearted. “The orchard, as you can see, has become very run-down.”

It didn’t seem polite to agree too forcefully. But this was the part of the garden he’d forgotten to mow, and the grass bent double under our shoes, forming footprints of dew.

“Half of the trees had crown gall,” he continued, pointing to gaps between the old plantings where the sick trees had been felled; here the ground was raised or else a sapling jutted out of bulging grass. “My parents were not exactly gardeners. I’ve been trying to replant this patch and bring it back to life. I try to plant old varieties, often from your part of the world: Gravenstein, Lord Lambourne.” He bit at his bottom lip. “Just a few weeks ago I put in a Kentish cherry.”

It seemed that he was saying all this to avoid what was really on his mind.

“Okay, on to the main attraction.”

He steered me further along a narrow path. Even in the dying light, I could see that the adjacent plant beds were now filled with a tangle of shrubs that had survived benign neglect, overgrown succulents, and lush weeds.

We walked down stone steps between a pair of empty urns. On the lawn Alexander came up behind me and placed a hand on each shoulder, restraining me with his long, thick fingers. I could feel his chest moving against my back each time he exhaled.

“I want you to picture this: Warrowill’s garden used to cover eight acres, requiring ten full-time gardeners. Eight acres, Liese, and to your left”—his words slid down my neck—“say, two hundred yards, were greenhouses growing rare fruits and flowers. To your right”—he moved me suddenly—“to your right was a lake, man-made, for which my great-great-grandfather imported white swans to replace the native specimen you so admired.”

He had the key to this magic kingdom, and I supposed he was deciding whether I was worthy enough to gain entry. “Peacocks also roamed the lawns upon which my great-grandfather, when he took over, added a polo ground and—wait for it—Japanese fish ponds. Can you imagine?” His voice was lovelorn but laced with a subtle anger. “Wouldn’t you give anything to have seen it in its glory?”

I was staring at the unkempt lawn, the ragged hedge.

“It must have been quite something,” I said sincerely.

“It was easier in those days. After the land had been
assumed
 . . .”
Alexander paused. “I mean, the old man did pay a fee, of course.”

A pattern seemed to be emerging. “Of course.”

“And in return for the fee he was also assigned convicts, which meant free labor.”

“The convicts built the greenhouses?”

“No. In the early days they cleared the land of rocks, erected fences with them. Probably later ex-convicts did the construction. It started to fall away in my grandfather’s time—the garden, I mean—with crown gall, et cetera. As I’ve told you, he was a waste of space by all accounts.”

Alexander had taken his hands from my shoulders, but standing beside me he wouldn’t meet my eyes. We were under a cypress pine, and he was still deciding how best to deal with me. He wiped something off his boot. “Sometimes I linger in this spot and picture how it would have been.”

“Amazing.” I made myself smile, pulling the coat closer.

Above us, birds rearranged themselves in the dark foliage.

“It’s getting quite chilly, Alexander.”

“Then we’ll walk faster.” Tilting his head deferentially, he took my hand again and held it tighter. “Over there, you had the croquet lawn.” He gestured toward more empty grass, another acre of unkempt garden. “And the tennis court.” He pointed in another direction and I could see there was indeed still a court surrounded by a drooping wire fence. It had no net; in the corner, half covered by a creeper, was an old roller.

“It used to be my ambition to restore this garden to its former glory. Now I think, Fuck it!”

I was as shocked as I would have been at ten: I’d never heard him swear before.

“I think, Spare yourself the heartache,” he continued, “and replant with natives that won’t need water. Let it all go natural. Because will anyone even notice all the effort? I could spend years getting everything just right, and who’d actually be here to appreciate the achievement?” He fixed on me in a way I didn’t like. “And you? Do you enjoy gardening?”

“No. I’m denatured, remember.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion about my garden.”

“It’s very nice.” I wanted him to let go of my hand.

He stopped, blocked by my indifference. “Liese, I feel you’re not really enjoying yourself.”

Untangling my fingers from his. “I’m just cold.”

“No, you seem bored.” He shook his head; perhaps he thought he was being tested more than was fair. “Your other clients must be better company. What do they ask of you?”

It was puzzling but I will admit I felt my temperature rise.

He knew very well what “they” asked, because I’d told him in detail about a stable of imaginary clients and their varied requirements. It was fine if my stories aroused him—
At first I didn’t know what to do. The other twins took turns teaching me
—but it was better not to get into too much detail about the logistics, how the hell these scenarios could ever have happened. Our game worked when neither acknowledged it was a game.

“So tell me what the others
really
ask of you,” he now demanded.

I stared down at the lawn: was I supposed to guess his current fantasy or extend my own? “A lot of men just want to talk,” I said eventually. It sounded dubious to me, but it was what people always claimed. “You’d be surprised how many are more lonely than randy . . .” The unfinished sentence might have described him.

“What do they talk about?”

“Their families, their wives,” I added quickly.

Alexander paused, considering this. “And me? Are you listening to me for the same reason?”

“It’s different with you.”

He started walking again, in quick strides. His chest out, he was heating up, although not as I had. “How many other clients have you been seeing alongside me?”

I followed him, uncertain for the first time of the right response.

If he was only playing at being possessive I could confess now to a variety of lovers, making him extract the details very, very slowly while in this darkening garden I acted breathless and ashamed. If he was serious, I needed to prove my relative chastity as soon as possible.

“I won’t be angry. I just need to know.”

“Alexander, it’s sort of confidential.”

“Did any of them try to see you more regularly?”

“Everyone had regulars,” I answered automatically, and despite myself, I smiled slightly, as though I could remember the clients of whom I’d been fond.

“Was there ever a man who became too attached to you? I mean, more than is usual?”

“I suppose some did . . .” I was shivering, and not just from the cold.

“Did they try to see you after hours?”

“If they asked to see me outside work, I’d say no, usually.”

“Usually?”

What was I meant to reply?

“Liese, I know how other men fell for you.” His laugh was bitter. “I know precisely how they couldn’t think or work or sleep.”

I hoped we were both now acting. “No you don’t—”

“I
do
,” he said sharply. “Really, I do.”

A narrow entrance had been cut in the hedge. I followed him through the opening—the privet so old it was yards thick—into another garden, set out in a perfect square, planted with rosebushes, perhaps twelve rows by twelve, with violets growing underneath. The roses had all recently been pruned hard, as if the point were really to harvest thorns, and the stubby root of each bush sent out twisting, arthritic shoots, like crossed fingers.

Twice my height, the hedge obscured the trees outside. I felt I was in the center of a maze. Being here was thrilling. Then, just as quickly it was not: I had a sense—a flash of sense—that I was trapped.

Without speaking, Alexander sat on a garden bench placed along one wall. Behind him, the soft hedge had the uneven sheen of an animal’s fur. He was leaning back into the brush, it was giving way to him, and he was staring at me, suddenly beholding a great truth.

“Come and sit,” he called.

“This must be incredible when the roses are in bloom.” I stretched and yawned, trying now to defuse the situation with a little banality. “It must smell incredible.”

He gestured to the space beside him on the bench.

Past the rows of stunted bushes, I walked toward him.

He was looking up at me with an expression of peculiar intensity. “Do you have something to tell me?”

Alexander knew before I knew that I was going to call this weekend off, and my reasons spilled out in a sudden, disorganized mess.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I started, taking a seat, “I just can’t do this anymore. It’s beginning to warp.”

“What is?”

“What was good before.”

“Am I warping, Liese?”

“No, of course not.” Although he was more mercurial than I had realized—and what did it say about me that for four months I’d gotten off on avoiding the discovery?

I couldn’t look him in the eye. “It’s more that I need to stop—how to put this?—selling you myself !” That is actually what this is, I understood sharply, I’ve been dressing it up as just some erotic escapade, but it
is
a kind of prostitution, accidental prostitution.

“It could be dangerous!” I blurted out. “I mean, there are consequences to doing this that aren’t good for either of us. What I’m trying to say, I know clumsily, is it’s gone too far. And that’s my fault, Alexander, I’ve taken it too far. . . .” Shaking my head. “We’ll still be friends, hopefully,” I said, wishing those lines did not always sound so insincere, wiping at my nose with the back of my hand. I was prepared to give him a fair refund, taking into account the time we’d already spent together, and perhaps then he could just take me to a railway station.

Behind us the privet had that cloying, almost sweet smell of menthol and piss. “I’m just so sorry,” I said, sniffling, “but I have to give this job away.”

Alexander’s smile was almost innocent. “Believe it or not, I’ve been waiting for you to say that.” He was nodding in relieved disbelief. “Your timing’s perfect.”

Only when I saw the small black leather box did I understand.

He handed it to me, and asserting each word, said, “I don’t care about your past.”

Inside the box’s velvet lining, the ring was antique: a thin platinum band balancing a square-cut diamond. Light: the stone held so much of it, even in the dusk, whole rooms of light.

I glanced up, checking if Alexander was joking, if I could trace any irony, but his face was flushed with a stunned kind of tenderness. The box shook in my hand. Did raising the stakes of this game still constitute play?

“Do you like it?”

I could hardly breathe. “It’s beautiful.”

“Then why not try it on?” He gave an awkward chuckle. “Check if it fits.”

The ease of slipping this ring on my finger, the ease that would follow: my debts taken care of, my family off my back, friends no longer emitting their low vibration of pity, and the grand house—I could renovate it, I could knock down walls and bring it back to life. . . . A part of me wanted to slip on that magic ring very much.

“I can’t.”

“I think you can.”

Overhead, a skein of birds wavered and then the hedge blocked them. It occurred to me that declining his offer would be easier somewhere it was possible to hail a taxi.

“Put the past behind you,” Alexander said.

I could not tell if he was trying to be funny.

“Liese, let me take it away from you.”

Smiling tightly: “I don’t think I can ask you to do that.”

“Please, stop fighting and put the ring on your finger!” Cheerfully impatient, Alexander now cleared his throat, hushing me despite my silence. “Don’t you see? You don’t have to keep running anymore.” He was speaking as though to someone else, someone just over my shoulder. As he gazed at this stranger he looked handsome, incredibly handsome—how close a nightmare can be to an exquisite dream. I almost wished I was not so filled with horror.

He said to this stranger, “I love you. You are not who I would have imagined loving, or who I’d have chosen to love. And yet I find I do.”