The Engagement (9 page)

“Alexander”—I inhaled, wondering how to frame this—“you realize I am not actually a prostitute?”

He grinned at me indulgently. “No?”

“No. Let’s be clear. I haven’t done this sort of thing before.”

He kept smiling. “Really?”

“Really!” I laughed; this was all so ludicrous. “I’ve never done it before in my life—other than with you.”

His expression did not change.

I tried now to flick some switch, to reach him through gravitas. Speaking slowly, as if explaining things to a child: “And even then, it was a game—just a game that we both enjoyed, didn’t we?”

“A game?”

I nodded.

Alexander paused, thinking. “But you took my money, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but that was only to make things more”—I struggled for the right word—“
authentic
.”

“You took my money and I presume you enjoyed spending it? And that enjoyment was also ‘authentic’? Or do you plan to give it back?”

Beyond the hedged walls, each tree was filled with the shrill music of those thousands of birds made invisible by the dusk. Twilight was an encryption. The high walls—like those of a great square box—were now no longer green but the color of lead, and the dimming sky was folding down, closing over us.

My whole body felt worn out, my marrow cold.

“You can’t unmake a whore, Liese. You can’t refund the money and undo what you’ve done.” Alexander winced faintly, lowering himself onto bended knee, his thigh stiff, the thick fabric of his trousers pulling tight. His face was close to my face in the near dark. Firmly he took my hand. He didn’t bother proposing again. “Now,” he said sternly, taking the ring from its box and putting it hard on my finger, “now you are mine.”

PART TWO

I

I
lay in the darkened room. The ring was on my finger. Its little leather box was on the bedside table. How naive I’d been, how ridiculously naive. Of course Alexander would want to save me from my fake past, to exorcise all the different men who hadn’t come before him. Of course he would try to sanctify his own lust by using a wedding dress like whitewash. . . . I waited on the single bed not even knowing what I was waiting for. Light seeped in from under the door, and above me I traced the outline of a cornice, of a plasterwork ceiling rose. Slowly, maneuvering my arm free from the blankets, I felt around on the side table for the ring box. The light in the hallway suddenly faded. I was clasping the hard leather weight in my hand, staring into the dark.

If I gave myself up to this man he could make me whoever he wanted me to be—including no one. As his wife I’d never be allowed to unmake myself a whore. The past he would free me from would be my real past; then he would have no need to bother himself with my likes or dislikes, my opinions, my moods, with who I was. He could talk any way he chose, or not at all; expect me to laugh at his jokes, to listen, fascinated, to all his stories. And he could fuck me on demand, whenever, however, he liked, using my body, every part of it, in any way he desired.

Easing off the ring, I put it back inside the little velvet coffin and snapped the lid shut.

After the proposal we’d come in from the hedged garden, Alexander pulling me through the chill of the entrance hall toward the drawing room. Everything vibrated with the surreal—the room’s dimensions seemed enlarged, and his hand in mine too fleshy, too alive—and then he was taking me in his arms, or rather taking my hand and placing it upon his shoulder, arranging it there while he spread his swollen fingers over the small of my back and held me close. His thinness was stark. I could feel his muscle and bone as we started dancing to the music in his head. The farm’s smell was on his clothes, a sharp, animal musk.
One, two, one, two
: a swaying, slow, nothing dance. As he moved my body around the yellow-walled room with all its spinning finery, I felt my throat constricting.

Once I had seen a documentary about men who have relationships with inflatable dolls. The camera crew arrive at a house, and show, through a bedroom door, an unblinking, poreless, woman-size doll lying in bed, a sheet just covering its plastic breasts. “We’ve had a pretty active morning,” the doll owner says with a swagger. He’s playing at being postcoital: they’ve apparently just been surprised in the act of love, and chivalrously he closes the door on the doll’s openmouthed leer. Later this man carefully dresses this doll in a demure blouse and skirt and then poses it on a deck chair at the top of a cliff to admire him hang-gliding. At one point the film cuts to a dollmaker, or a doll repairer, his house full of plastic body parts with which he fixes the dolls’ various holes. Despite his work, the man seems normal enough, bemused by his obsessive clients, until he turns to the camera, making a confession. Once he’d been fixing an incredibly lifelike doll. This doll kept giving him the eye. It wanted it badly, and eventually he’d broken and taken
her
.

As Alexander shifted me from side to side I felt like that doll. He pressed my head against his chest, and glancing down, I watched his thick woolen socks against the Persian carpet, bunching up around his toes.
One, two, one, two
—how vulnerable people are when they dance badly. He was leading from his groin. Lost in some reverie, he moved to his song while I was waiting, swaying, and waiting. I could hear him breathing, smell his breath; his whiskers brushed my skin as he bent down to kiss my forehead, his warm hand pressing harder on the small of my back.

When he kissed my forehead again, he glanced sideways.

I realized Alexander had us dancing in front of the room’s tall gilt mirror. Everything caught within its frame was too splendid; all the antiques seemed inlaid with exotic woods and wreathes of brass, their lines curving, swirling, as if the very purpose was to disorientate. And he was watching us in the treasure’s midst, posing us. As he turned me, I saw a glaze of pleasure cross his face; here was a child given something he’d felt beyond his reach.

It had hardened, not softened him, and I recalled suddenly the feeling of being pinned underneath his body so I couldn’t move and couldn’t breathe. It had happened once, perhaps twice, and when finally he’d released me, I rolled to the side, hungry for air, as he lay watching. Now he swung me around so I was facing the mirror, looking like a creature about to be swallowed.

I broke away.

Alexander ran his fingers through his hair, glancing up from downcast eyes. “I’ve shocked you.”

My voice barely worked. “A little.”

“I’m surprised you are surprised. You must have known how I felt?”

I half nodded—it was all I could manage.
Do I play along with this?
I wondered.
Is that why I’m here?

“Liese, are you floating?” he whispered.

“In a way.”

“I feel so light.” Still partly in his dance, he was completely unguarded. “So relieved, I suppose . . .”

“Could I please have a drink?”

“. . . it’s like a dream.” He glanced at me again, and to my relief there was a flicker of humor. “Oh, of course, the champagne.”

Alexander left the room and I sat down on the couch, checking first for its edge. This must be some fetish he has—
à
la hookers dressed as schoolgirls, I reasoned. The engagement ring was just on loan while he played out his bridal fantasy;
that
was why he was paying me so much.

For those wanting to extend the Girlfriend Experience presumably one could upgrade to the Fiancée Experience and feel giddy with the promise of a new life without the inconvenience of an actual marriage. Maybe he thought it was safe to indulge in this with me because soon I’d be leaving the country.

He returned with two long-stemmed glasses and the bottle of Australian
méthode champenoise
from our picnic; there was the slightest strut to his walk.

“This is a nice drop, very smooth.” Peeling the foil from the cork, opening it, he grinned. “Let’s drink to your happiness.”

Not knowing how far to take the act, I acted poorly. “No, to
our
happiness.” I drank too quickly.

“It’s good.” He rocked slightly on the balls of his feet, staring into his glass with a sly look of pride. “I wanted this to be perfect. All of it.”

Holding out my glass for a refill, I wondered, Will I need to keep this up for another two whole days?

“I’ve thought many times of how it would happen.”

Trying to smile: “Have you really?”

“Do you know when I fell for you?” He raised his eyebrows. “It was the first time we met and you were trying to find the right door key. I could see into your handbag and there was a copy of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
.” He was chuckling, remembering. “And that’s when I had a premonition you were for me. She must be very smart, I thought. She must read all the time. That book’s one people always refer to, don’t they?”

Alexander straightened. “With the demands of the farm, and, of course, the children, it will be difficult to get away to Melbourne as often as we might want.” He glanced at me, subtly checking his words’ effect. “So I’m pleased you like books. There’s also the piano,” indicating the upright in the corner. “I’ve been thinking, perhaps I could get you lessons. . . . No, really! You think I’m joking, but piano music’s very soothing.” He nodded, for a moment suitably bashful. “You could play to the baby while he is, you know, inside you. And then, when he’s older, he can learn himself.”

Alexander grinned again, acknowledging his own indulgence. He put his hand to his heart. “I will solemnly promise from the outset to do most of the cooking, because you’ll have your hands full, Liese.” He focused on the middle distance. “I want my kids raised very differently to the way I was. My parents were nineteenth-century, essentially. Brought up themselves by nannies, and born to people raised the same way. My mother probably had postnatal depression, although the doctors and hospitals didn’t know what it was then, and God knows, my father gave her no support.”

He took a box of matches from behind a vase on the mantelpiece, and returning to bended knee, adjusted the kindling in the grate. “My father preferred it when Mum
was
locked up. No, neither of them was able to show love. I’ve forgiven my parents for that—one has to—but my children will have it from me. None of this just getting some teenager to watch over the kids while slavishly keeping up appearances.” Alexander shook his head, turning back to me. “Do you know what I mean?”

I coughed. “You seem to have put a lot of thought into this.”

“Other people’s opinions don’t matter to me.”

Including, I noticed, mine on marriage or procreation. Sitting on the couch, I watched him light the fire, taking in his every movement, waiting for some slip to reveal he was only playing a role.

“Inevitably the au pairs were miserable out here anyway. These girls would come, foreigners more often than not—don’t ask me how my mother found them—and after a month, they’d try to leave any way they could. Once, during shearing season, one lass ran off with a shearer in the middle of the night—at least we assumed that’s what happened,” he recalled, grinning. “Poor me! Age five, I’d fall for some nineteen-year-old who’d very soon disappear. . . . Give me the old days: when servants escaped they were hunted down and brought back.”

“Like slaves,” I said softly.

He turned around again. “Exactly like slaves.”

We stared at each other.

He picked up a poker, playing with his fire. “I don’t think we should wait too long before trying to conceive. We won’t be the youngest parents, but that means there are certain advantages we’ll bring to the job. Wisdom, a degree of patience. As for how many, it’s up to you, largely.” He turned again. “You’re thirty-three? Thirty-four?”

Slowly I nodded. “We could have at least half a dozen babies, potentially. . . .” I was acting along to test if this
was
still an act. “If you can, wonderful. And definitely no nannies. I’d prefer to do all of it without any help.”

Standing, brushing off his trousers, he looked pleased, immune now to irony.

“It will just be you and me and the children alone in this house . . .” My voice trailed off. By some trick of perspective the mirror had shrunk us, turning the whole room into a diorama; the woman behind the glass playing me sat tensely on the couch, hands clenched in her lap, as the man, uncoiling with his plans, set himself free.

Glancing into the mirror, Alexander met my gaze. “You don’t look happy.” His voice was sharp.

Should I earn my fee and play along, I wondered, or end this before it goes any further?

“There’s no need to be frightened.” He said this like it was a stage direction.

“Everything’s happened so fast, that’s all.”

Reaching down, Alexander touched my neck, stroked it. “Tell me, Liese, what is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Is someone holding something over you?”

“What sort of thing?”

“Perhaps compromising information?” His stubbled face was leaning right over mine, and with his fingers on my throat it felt as though he were taking my pulse. The way he touched me now was careful. He was making clear he respected—
what
was it, my personal space? my honor? Sex had been our breathing line, and without it we were down too deep and dangerous. “Perhaps,” his voice was soft, coaxing, “perhaps you owe people money?”

Any reflex to laugh had gone. “Only Mr. Visa.”

He did not seem to hear me. “I could help you pay them off.” Oblivious to the fact that he had been, he picked up his glass and sat next to me, leaning back into the sofa’s cushions. “Truly, just tell me the amount. How bad can it be, Liese? I’ll write a check and all this will be over.

“Look, I don’t want to spoil this by turning to business, but in my letter inviting you here, I promised a percentage of your fee would be paid into your account at the end of the weekend. Despite our engagement I will stay true to my word.” Clearing his throat, he almost looked shy. “If it’s not presumptuous of me, I’d like you to think of this as your dowry.”

“My
dowry
?”

“Exactly. I don’t want you to worry about money, about”—he hesitated—“the discrepancies between our financial situations. So I propose paying you an allowance.” He reached for the champagne bottle to refill both our glasses. “As long as everything is progressing in a satisfactory manner.”

The fire was stirring my memory of heat.

“What do you mean by ‘satisfactory’?”

Alexander’s face twisted slightly. “I think it’s pretty clear.”

“Yes?”

“I would expect—no,” he caught himself, nodding, “no, I would
appreciate
your continuing to provide the current services, plus maintaining the household, and supervising the care of our children.”

“I see.”

“Good.” He stood, wiping his palms on his trousers.

“So marriage is an arrangement where you can have sex with the babysitter?”

Exhaling: “Potentially, it can be a lot more than that.”

“Alexander,” I said carefully—my claim to any higher ground was average at best—“I would never be happy in a marriage that’s just a glorified business deal.”

“I’ve told you I love you,” he flared, exasperated. “What more do you want?”

“You don’t even know me!”

He’d moved to a bureau on the other side of the room. “I do, and what I don’t know I will learn. We’ll learn together.” He opened one drawer after the other, searching for something. “I realize you’ve seen the world, that you’ve met all kinds of . . . people, which for your sake and mine I won’t dwell on here. But despite that, despite the
situations
”—his expression again contorted—“in which you’ve found yourself, you’ve retained a certain self-possession, even an innocence that I admire.”

Slamming closed the last drawer, irritated, he turned further from me, his hand now shielding his face. “Besides”—his back gave the slightest quiver—“I know more about you than you think. More, quite frankly, than I really want to know.”