Lovesong by Alex Miller

than I used to. And I read too much. I hid in my reading. I still do that.’ He laughed. ‘When I climbed into bed beside Sabiha one night after I’d been drinking she told me my smell made me unattractive to her. It was a shock. We were both under a lot of pressure. I felt disgusted with myself for drinking but I was angry with her for saying it to me. I was hurt.’ He looked at me to see if I was listening. He didn’t say anything for a while but sat looking at me, an apologetic smile in his eyes.‘I didn’t understand Sabiha then. I had no idea really. But that was me
then,’
he said. ‘It’s not me
now
.’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course it’s not.’
    ‘The next day I said something really stupid and hurtful to her. And that one stupid remark seemed to determine the rest of our lives.’ He searched my eyes. ‘Do you know what I mean? Has that ever happened to you? Something like that?’
    ‘What did you say to her?’ I asked.
    My question seemed to make him anxious and he didn’t speak for a while. Then he drew a deep breath. ‘I suppose we’d both reached a point of crisis without realising it. I felt as if I was never going to get home to Australia. I resented her insistence that she had to present her child to her father before we could move on. I didn’t say it to get my own back. I wasn’t trying to hurt her. The pressures on us were all under the surface. We’d stopped talking about what was important to us. Everything had become subterranean and unspoken. It didn’t seem like that to us at the time, of course. It just seemed like one day was following another. But looking back now I can see that’s what happened to us. We still loved each other. We’ve never stopped loving each other. We continued to be gentle and kind to each other. We still wanted to make each other happy.’
    He stopped talking suddenly and looked down at his hands, which he spread on the table in front of him, palms down. They were youthful hands. Strong and well shaped and without blemishes. The hands of a younger man. He sat examining them, as if he was proud of his hands. I didn’t prompt him in case he decided to say no more. Confession, after all, even to a relative stranger, such as I was to John, is not always the easiest strategy for absolving ourselves.
    He said, ‘It was one of those things we just blurt out without thinking.’ He looked up at me. ‘Sometimes you shift just one small rock and the whole mountain falls on you.’

Chapter Twelve
    O ne Tuesday, a few moments after the last lunchtime customer had left the café, Sabiha came into the dining room from the kitchen carrying her own and John’s lunches. So far there was nothing to distinguish this Tuesday from any other Tuesday in the routine of their lives. Sabiha backed through the bead curtain, pausing to let it slide over her shoulders, then turned and walked across to the table by the window, where John was sitting reading a book. Sabiha stood a moment while John set aside his book, then she put his midday meal on the table in front of him.
    John pulled his chair in closer to the table. He looked up. ‘Thank you, darling,’ he said. ‘It smells great.’
    She sat across from him, her own meal in front of her.
    They began to eat the seared lamb and vegetables, taking a sip of the red wine and reaching for a piece of bread from the bowl in the centre of the table. The delicious smell of a subtle blending of spices rose from the food. Under Houria’s tuition Sabiha had long ago mastered the art of spices. Seated at their usual table by the window, she and John were able to enjoy the distraction of the passing traffic and pedestrians along the narrow confines of rue des Esclaves.
    Outside, the autumn day was fine and warm, the street noisy and busy at this time of the day. Across the road, ancient Arnoul Fort was standing in the sunlight in the doorway of his shop as he often did, smoking a cigarette and watching the comings and goings. In