Chapter 21. Voyeurs
So that’s where they went. She felt relieved that he didn’t suggest that they could have coffee just as well at his place; this was all coming at her too fast as it was. They sat in the window looking out on the darkened street. He chose espresso. For her it would always be “café americaine.”
“I liked that man’s helplessness,” she said finally. “It’s the exact opposite of every other movie.”
“Well, he has to trust his girlfriend to do what he can’t do.”
“Trust her not to get herself killed, you mean? They share an unbearable curiosity. Audere scire, that’s my real motto. Dare to know.”
“What a perfect phrase! Family?”
“Hardly,” said Pom. “I think they chose some scrap of boilerplate that meant “Toady like your life depends on it.” Picturing a toad rampant.”
She laughed until his tense face relaxed.
“The camera’s like the wheelchair, in a way,” she suggested.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he’s at one remove from the action. At a distance, always.”
“A voyeur, you mean,” agreed Pom. “That’s what they say about Hitchcock, that he turns us all into voyeurs.”
‘And he wants us to be both intrigued and ashamed.”
“I suppose our hero was so eager to find out if he was right about his neighbor being a killer that he didn’t mind putting Grace Kelly in harm’s way,” Pom suggested. “Pretty unforgiveable, really. They needed three scriptwriters to figure a way out.”
“She was brave, I thought. She really went in without his permission.”
“But knowing she was doing what he wanted.”
“He’s still helpless at the end,” said Scarlet. “Breaking the other leg.”
“He needs a special manager,” Pom agreed.
“And then Hitchcock makes fun of our happy ending by showing she’s already bored by his life before they’re even married.”
“Perhaps he’ll realize he must always find – and film – mysteries that keep her interested. Apparently Hitchcock’s real wife always wrote his screen treatments. He thought in pictures, working the film out in storyboards and then she’d write the first script.”
“What a perfect combination of skills,” said Scarlet. Like our movie tonight – he’ll be curious about the neighbors and she’ll investigate, and that’s what happily ever after is.”
“For their sake I hope so,” said Pom. A little sadly.
Scarlet realized with a start that Pom must always be looking from his lonely life into the brightly lit windows of others’ married bargains. But she couldn’t think of any polite way to broach the subject.
Pom drained his espresso, then effortlessly became very personal indeed. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
She panicked as she realized two things – both that it was possible to have too good evening and secondly that she needed to put a stop to this very agreeable fantasy right now.
“I want to thank you for such a pleasant evening,” she began formally.
“Oh no…” he supplied. “I can feel the disclaimer coming. I brace myself.”
Could she explain, “I’m especially vulnerable right now -“ no, that was a mistake. Putting poor Pom in the wrong. Best come clean. “Ian and I have been having trouble.”
“I hope it’s not the house. I’m afraid I’ve sold you a permanently sinking ship.”
“No. No.” In a way it was, but nothing specific to Pom’s estate. She had assumed the “trigger” was her pregnancy but maybe the truth was even worse. Had Ian always been mistress as well as house shopping? “It’s his – attitude. As a country gentleman.”
“I begin to see,” Pom supplied. “The “girlfriend” thing?”
“Yes. He’s separating himself from us, as if he’s fulfilling some kind of ancient pattern that I thought we’d both rejected. It closes him off to me and to the baby.” Really, this conversation was getting too intimate. It proved that she was desperate for a friend. But could Pom – could any man, much less an Englishman – ever be that?
“Tell me,” she hazarded, “When English men go shopping for a country house are they really looking for an excuse to be unfaithful?”
She was trying to lighten the desperate moment but Pom gave the comment deep consideration.
“I suppose so,” he said finally. “It’s the nest thing. You’re asking, does “nest” mean “harem” to an Englishman?”
“Am I?” She felt stunned. She gave a gasping, nervous laugh but neither that nor her stricken face intimidated him.
“I’m imagining things I haven’t experienced,” he went on. “That’s my voyeurism for you right there. It’s been my perpetual difficulty because I’ve always been considered such an odd duck. Ian blocks you off so you open yourself up to me and I don’t want that to stop because I’m feeling something I’ve never felt before, something that I’d given up expecting to ever feel – something I assumed would always be impossible for me.”
Blood flooded her face; she couldn’t speak. She was grateful for his calm. Was this something adults who’d just met could discuss? He kept his voice level and his eyes serious. “I put a curse on you by selling you that house. Sadly, you can’t have the money back.”
She hadn’t been able to lighten the moment but he certainly could. She laughed to the point of tears.
“In America, we call that “no backsies”, she said.
“No backsies,” he agreed. “I’ve spent most of it anyway.”
When she raised her eyebrows – he shared, “Debts. I bought an annuity with the rest. Keep a little money coming in.”
So he was careful! A cautious, forward planning man. Ian was the one equating masculinity with carelessness, Ian, who enjoyed recklessness for its own sake. To such a man, thoughtful Pom seemed a “poofter.”
Pom said, “So what are your plans, if I may ask?”
“I’m going to confront him with what I’ve found,” she allowed. “We have to start telling each other the truth. So really it’s about what HE will do.”
“Or?”
She pulled away. He was too persistent.
“There is no “or.”
“I’ve got a lot riding on it,” he admitted.
Once again, she was wrong. Pom was, in his own way, a reckless man.
“I can’t go that far. Yet.”
Truthfully, she had imagined so many possible scenarios. She wanted to pray, to hope, even to pretend. Anything rather than dwell upon the ugly possibilities. She knew she couldn’t live with a liar and continue to seek the truth in art. One of those devotions must be sacrificed. She had never imagined Pom stepping in to fill her husband’s place.
He squeezed her hand. “Keep in contact,” he said. He stood up over their empty coffee cups.
Their ride to the hotel was silent. She wondered if his mind was as busy as hers. He seemed to concentrate on the route.
“Don’t come up,” she said at the hotel. “I can only repeat what a wonderful time I’ve had.”
“Are you going back tomorrow?”
She nodded. “First train.”
“I’m driving down tomorrow night and I can give you a lift if you can wait.”
She couldn’t wait. She couldn’t bear to be parted from Nick for an extra moment.
“You won’t cut me off?” he requested anxiously.
She was touched – a little scared – to have so much power over this wonderful man so recently encountered.
“Of course not.”
In the elevator, she reflected on the oddness of their exchange. What kind of man made overtures to a woman who had just borne a baby to another man? It made him sound so awful. She heard herself trying to explain to anybody – India perhaps – that he “wasn’t like that”. But where honesty and directness stopped and fantasy took over in either of their hearts and minds she really couldn’t say. She didn’t know him that well, and it was beginning to seem like she didn’t know herself either.
Alysse Aallyn 
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