Becoming Strangers Read Online Free PDF Page A

a game he himself plays. She saw it all in terms of the hours worked, as if it were her own arms that were doused in pineapple juice, as if there were cheese under her fingernails, flour on her slippers.
    A sherry,' she said hastily, wishing she could think of the name of a cold drink she liked.
    A beer, thank you,' said George with a courteous but clipped smile. She knew he was afraid of waiters. To him, it might have been Saint Peter standing there, judging him.
    'You look nice,' he told her.
    She was wearing a long-sleeved, long-skirted dress she'd bought for their fiftieth wedding anniversary.
    'Oh, this. You remember this. Bought it in Eastbourne with the girls. It's washed up all right, hasn't it,' she smiled, adding, 'you look all poshed up yourself.'
    He had his polka-dot braces on over a brown checked shirt and was wearing a lightweight beige jacket he'd needed to get dry-cleaned before they came. He was drumming his fingers on the table, making the fragile vase of flowers skip a little, and craning his head at the double doors.
    'I wonder if I should give their room a call,' he said, looking at his watch.
    'It's only just gone seven.'
    'He wanted to eat at eight, see. But I said, the wife and I prefer to get going at seven if that suits. And he said, all right, but you never know if they've understood, do you?'
    'Doesn't he speak English then?' said Dorothy, her lip trembling.
    'Oh, yes. He's got a proper accent too, none of the old "zis" and "zat" nonsense.'
    'How about his wife?'
    'I don't know, haven't met her. She was getting herself a treatment at the spa, he said.'
    'Is she young then?'
    'He didn't say.'
    'Well, how old is he?'
    'Don't know. Middle-aged, I suppose.'
    'Oh.'
    Jan and Annemieke rounded the double doors, side by side, Annemieke placing her hand on his arm as if to guide him. The Belgian man was wearing a sports jacket and chino-type pants, and his wife a waisted dress with beads at the hem and a low-cut flounced neckline. She had been at her make-up palette with fury, put green on her eyelids, dark brown over the sockets of her eyes, a shimmer blush along her pronounced cheekbones. She wore a tawny glittery lipstick, like marmalade congealing.
    An old woman!' thought Annemieke, taking a look at Dorothy and turning her face to Jan, hoping to catch his eye so that she could let him know she was not impressed. If she wanted to have supper with old ladies on her holiday she could have gone to see her own mother. 'This is my holiday,' she started to say to herself, preparing a conversation she would be having later.
    George was delighted, and stood to pull a chair back for his friend's wife, at the same time nodding at the waiter to come over.
    'Drink,' he was saying, making a cup shape with his hand and raising it to his lip, 'thirsty....'
    'Campari and soda,' said Annemieke, quick as a flash, resting her face on a manicured hand.
    'Now that's a drink,' said George, widening his eyes and nodding at their waiter.
    The room was a large clean arena, pillared and marble-floored with heavy round tables, draped with three tablecloths each and large matching napkins.
There were three glasses at each place. The paned glass windows reflected the glare of too many table lamps and hanging chandeliers, but in places there were empty dark spaces where the windows were open. It was to these spaces that one's eyes wandered for comfort. At a table by an open window there was a woman in her sixties, sat opposite a young black man. He wiped his mouth delicately, and his eyes moved like white doves startled by unexpected noise. But she brought them back with her big soft hands moving in the air. The old girl, with badly shaved chins and sagging breasts, was pushing bits and pieces on to his plate with her knife and fork, and shaking her head with insistence. Feeding him up.
    The waiter came and indicated the seafood buffet, pink and bulbous, glistening, intermingled with scrunched lettuce offerings on trays of ice cubes