Read Online Becoming Strangers by Louise Dean - Free Book Online

asked her. She shook her head.
    'I have been bad company these last years. I am sorry.'
    She did not want him to say sorry. It would require her to say the same, surely, that was why people said it, and she felt incapable of that.
    'Don't worry,' she said.
    But, like Bill Moloney, he wanted something from her it seemed, he pressed her.
    'I am not worrying. I have decided not to worry, that is the point, you see I'm going to loosen up.'
    Bill Moloney presented himself at the other side of the bar, elbowing one of the Americans aside, gently and with apologies.
    She laughed with her head back. 'You have drunk too much, Jan-tche, you will be back to your usual self tomorrow!'
    He was hurt by the way she scoffed at him. He said angrily, 'Ah, yes, I forgot, you know how to live.'
    'I make no excuses for myself, I don't pretend to be what I am not.'
    Across the bar, Jan noticed the Moloney fellow withdraw abruptly and he felt sure that they had been observed. He felt it was disgraceful, even though plenty of people did it, to bring such misery on holiday. And then he hated the holiday too.
    'Not so loud,' he said. He noticed she had finished her drink and was passing the empty glass over to the waiter.
    'Not so loud,' she mimicked, not so loud. This is all we have heard in the house. You have become so obsessed with your life in a technical sense that you have not lived it at all.'
    'Happily, the same cannot be said of you. Have you sent De Vries a postcard?'
    She turned towards him and put her hands on his shoulders. She bent her head to get her eyes squared with his. 'Look, Jan, what do you want? It's been a lousy end to a lousy marriage. Do you want me to say something else? Just because you are dying I am supposed to change, to be noble? For six years? I feel young inside. I feel like an eighteen-year-old. I am not dying. You have robbed me of too many years and yes, I resent it and I've had enough. I have always been honest with you.'
    He had heard this before, this last part. It was not the right place, there were people watching and yet she had dashed his hope from him, she judged and categorized his life and now she would do the same with his death. He would speak.
    'Annemieke, your honesty is miserable. It is rude. This honesty of yours does not uncover any truth, it allows you to do as you please.' He stopped because his anger was getting ahead of him, and then he slammed his hand down on the bar making their drinks jump and he said, 'It is convenient!'
    'I'm not a philosopher. How lucky for you that you are capable of seeing the truth. Add another note to your book.'
    He felt outclassed by her, and yet he was still sure even after all these years that good was on his side. He took his glass in his hands and supped the whisky like a mug of soup.
    'This is ... terrible,' he said. He had bags under his eyes; to her he looked both doleful and importunate.
    The very sight of him annoyed her.
    'You know,' he said, 'when I think of you in the early days, I miss you, Annemieke. I knew from the beginning we had our difficulties, our differences. But you were a friend once. Now it seems as if there is nothing, no safe place. I thought...' He put his empty glass down on the counter and it slipped in the wet until he steadied it. Then he closed his mouth and was silent.
    She held her glass between her breasts and looked away. She was thinking about the days after his death, the quiet house, the boxes on the floor, the boys making coffee in the kitchen, touching her back as she knelt, the sudden heart-starting sound of the phone ringing.
    He went on, clearing his throat, muttering miserably, 'Nobody needs to win. Nobody needs to be right. Nobody cares about us, who's winning. I had an idea, you see, how to do it.'
    She heard his voice crack and looked quickly at him, and she saw her younger son, Ben, saw the way he looked after admitting to her he had an overdraft again. In spite of her cold and hard mind, her mother's heart arched