Rosie Thomas - Strangers

Martin’s hand covered hers. There were paint splashes on his fingers. She could feel the set of his shoulders easing with relief.

‘I won’t worry, then.’ He squeezed her hand and let it go, and then picked up his brush to start work again.

‘What is it?’ he asked after a moment. ‘Pre-marital itch?’

‘I suppose so,’ she said dully. She despised herself for reducing Matthew to that, even for Martin’s sake.

The time trickled by. It was the hottest summer for years, and every day that passed seemed burnt into her memory by the blistering heat of the pavements and the hard blue light of the sky. Matthew finished his carpentry work at the shop and he moved out of the grubby little room. He was staying with another friend now, unrolling his sleeping bag on yet another sofa. Annie wouldn’t let him come to her flat because Martin had a key to it too. They met when and where they could, and she was amazed by his ability to make her forget everything else that was happening. He made her feel irresponsibly happy. When she was with him, she knew that this was reality, and the other half of her life, the half that was occupied with shopping for clothes for her honeymoon and choosing flowers for her bouquet, was the dreamworld.

Then, only a week before the wedding, Matthew asked her again.

They were at yet another friend’s home, but the house was empty for the weekend this time and so Matthew automatically made it his own. They were in bed, and Annie was lying with her hair spread out over the pillow. She was thinking exhaustedly, This must be the last time .

‘Annie, will you marry me?’

Traffic noises from the street outside, and evening birds twittering in the trees in the square. She had a taste of her future with Martin as she lay there. There would be evenings like this in a house that was really theirs. Peace, and comfort, cooking smells and simple domestic rhythms, and Martin who she knew, and understood, and loved. She closed her eyes so as not to see Matthew’s face, because what she felt for him went deeper than love.

‘I can’t jilt him,’ she whispered. ‘I can’t marry you.’

‘Those are two quite distinct and separate incapabilities,’ he told her gently. ‘Which is the real one?’

What would it be like to be married to Matthew?

There would be a succession of rented rooms, and Matthew would manage to make her feel that they were palaces. There would be the wild swings from penury to extravagance and back again, and no two days would ever follow each other in the same way. She was sure that they would be happy. Ever since she had known him he had made happiness blaze like fire inside her. What she didn’t know was how long that could last.

She was afraid that a day would come when the discomforts would begin to matter, and pleasure would fade into resentment. The shortcomings were her own. She was cautious and predictable and careful, and Matthew was none of those things. She longed to be like him, to cut herself loose and sail with him, but she couldn’t do it. She would live her life with Martin and it would be tranquil, and sunny, and safe. The peaks of joy would be out of her reach, but she didn’t think that there were troughs of despair waiting for her either.

She made herself meet Matthew’s steady grey stare.

‘I’m a coward,’ she said. ‘I can’t marry you.’

He bent his head. Their fingers were locked together and the knuckles of both hands were white. Then he looked up again.

‘I know why you think you can’t. You believe that married men have mortgages and salaries to meet them, and prospects and some kind of security to offer you. You’re afraid that after a while you’ll begin to resent me because I haven’t. That’s true, isn’t it?’

She nodded miserably. There was more than that, but that was the stupid, pedestrian nub of it.

‘Well. I went to see my father today. I asked him for a job in the company. There was a long lecture about having to start at the bottom like everyone else. Learn the business. Not expect any quarter just because I’m the boss’s son. Work hard and prove my worth.’ Matthew’s face was a picture of resigned boredom. It made her laugh in the midst of everything, and he beamed back at her. ‘I nearly threw one of his onyx inlaid executive toys at him, but I restrained myself for your sake. After the lecture he told me that he was glad I’d decided to pull myself up by my boot-straps … boot-straps , I promise you … and I could certainly have some simple tasks allotted to me within the corporate structure. So there, now.’ His smile was dazzling. ‘I’ll be so exactly like everyone else that only experts like you will be able to tell the difference. I’ll be able to buy you a diamond ring, and a three-piece suite and a Kenwood Chef, if that’s what you really want.’

He was trying to make her laugh because he didn’t want her to guess the magnitude of what he was really offering. He was holding out everything he valued, his freedom and his independence, for her to take and dispose of. Annie felt the tears like needles behind her eyes.

‘I don’t want you to do anything for my sake. I don’t want to see you go off every morning in a suit. Thank you for offering to do it, but I’m not worth it.’

She hadn’t meant to let him see her crying, but the tears came anyway. Matthew made a little, bitter noise.

‘I can’t win, can I? You won’t marry me when I have no prospects. You won’t marry me when I do, because Matthew with prospects isn’t Matthew.’

A space had opened between them, mocking their physical closeness, and Annie knew that they would never bridge it again.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said hopelessly. She felt smaller, and more selfish and more ashamed, than she had ever done in her life.

‘Tell me one thing,’ he said. ‘Tell me that it isn’t just because you haven’t the guts to cancel your wedding and send back the horrible presents and shock all your mother’s friends.’

Annie lifted her chin to look straight at him. ‘If I was courageous enough to marry you, I would be courageous enough to do all that.’

Matthew let go of her hand. He slid away from her across the bed and lay looking through the window into the trees in the square.

‘All the time,’ he said softly, almost to himself, ‘all the time until tonight I was sure that I could win.’

There was nothing else to say. Heavy with the knowledge that she had disappointed him Annie slid out of bed and put her clothes on. When she was dressed she went to the bedroom door and stood for a moment looking at him, but Matthew never turned his gaze from the trees outside the window. She closed the bedroom door and went downstairs, and out into the square where the day’s heat still hung lifelessly over the paving stones.

She never saw Matthew again.

She went home to her flat, and found Martin sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her.

‘I’m back,’ she said simply. Her face still felt stiff with dried tears.

Martin stood up and came across the room to her, then put his arms around her and held her against him.

‘I’m glad, Annie.’

They were married a week later on a brilliantly bright July day. Their approving families were there, and the dozens of friends they had accumulated over the years of knowing one another, and they had walked out under the rainbow hail of confetti to smile at the photographer who was waiting to capture their memories for them. The photograph stood in a silver frame on the bow-fronted mahogany chest in their bedroom. Eleven years later, when she picked the photograph up to dust it and glanced down into her own face, Annie had forgotten how painful that smile had been.

‘I had forgotten,’ she said. ‘But it’s so vivid now. I can see his face so clearly.’