A Separation

1.

It began with a telephone call from Isabella. She wanted to know where Christopher was, and I was put in the awkward position of having to tell her that I didn’t know. To her this must have sounded incredible. I didn’t tell her that Christopher and I had separated six months earlier, and that I hadn’t spoken to her son in nearly a month.

She found my inability to inform her of Christopher’s whereabouts incomprehensible, and her response was withering but not entirely surprised, which somehow made matters worse. I felt both humiliated and uncomfortable, two sensations that have always characterized my relationship with Isabella and Mark. This despite Christopher often telling me I had precisely the same effect on them, that I should try not to be so reserved, it was too easily interpreted as a form of arrogance.

Didn’t I know, he asked, that some people found me a snob? I didn’t. Our marriage was formed by the things Christopher knew and the things I did not. This was not simply a question of intellect, although in that respect Christopher again had the advantage, he was without doubt a clever man. It was a question of things withheld, information that he had, and that I did not. In short, it was a question of infidelities—betrayal always puts one partner in the position of knowing, and leaves the other in the dark.

Although betrayal was not even, not necessarily, the primary reason for the failure of our marriage. It happened slowly, even once we had agreed to separate, there were practicalities, it was no small thing, dismantling the edifice of a marriage. The prospect was so daunting that I began wondering whether one or the other of us was having second thoughts, if there was hesitation buried deep within the bureaucracy, secreted in the piles of paper and online forms that we were so keen to avoid.

And so it was entirely reasonable of Isabella to call me and ask what had become of Christopher. I’ve left three messages, she said, his mobile goes directly to voice mail, and the last time I rang it was a foreign ringtone—

She pronounced the word foreign with a familiar blend of suspicion, mystification (she could not imagine any reason why her only son would wish to remove himself from her vicinity) and pique. The words returned to me then, phrases spoken over the course of the marriage: you’re foreign, you’ve always been a little foreign, she’s very nice but different to us, we don’t feel as if we know you (and then, finally, what she would surely say if Christopher told her that it was over between us), it’s for the best, darling, in the end she was never really one of us.

—therefore, I would like to know, where exactly is my son?

Immediately, my head began to throb. It had been a month since I had spoken to Christopher. Our last conversation had been on the telephone. Christopher had said that although we were clearly not going to be reconciled, he did not want to begin the process—he used that word, indicative of some continuous and ongoing thing, rather than a decisive and singular act and of course he was right, divorce was more organic, somehow more contingent than it initially appeared—of telling people.

Could we keep it between us? I had hesitated, it wasn’t that I disagreed with the sentiment—the decision was still new at that point, and I imagined Christopher felt much as I did, that we had not yet figured out how to tell the story of our separation. But I disliked the air of complicity, which felt incongruous and without purpose. Regardless, I said yes. Christopher, hearing the hesitation in my voice, asked me to promise. Promise that you won’t tell anyone, at least for the time being, not until we speak again. Irritated, I agreed, and then hung up.

That was the last time we spoke. Now, when I insisted that I did not know where Christopher was, Isabella gave a short laugh before saying, Don’t be ridiculous. I spoke to Christopher three weeks ago and he told me the two of you were going to Greece. I’ve had such difficulty getting hold of him, and given that you are clearly here in England, I can only assume that he has gone to Greece without you.

I was too confused to respond. I could not understand why Christopher would have told her that we were going to Greece together, I had not even known that he was leaving the country. She continued, He’s been working very hard, I know he’s there on research, and—

She lowered her voice in a way that I found difficult to decipher, it might have been genuine hesitation or its mere facsimile, she was not above such manipulations.

—I’m worried about him.

This declaration was not immediately persuasive to me, and I did not take her concern with much seriousness. Isabella believed her relationship with Christopher to be better than it was, a natural mistake for a mother to make, but one that on occasion led to outlandish behavior on her part. Once, this situation might have elicited in me a feeling of triumph—that this woman should turn to me for help in a matter concerning her son might have meant something as little as a year ago, as little as six months ago.

Now, I listened mostly with trepidation as she continued. He hasn’t been himself, I called to ask if the two of you—the two of you again, it was clear she knew nothing, that Christopher had not confided in her—might like to come and stay in the country, get some fresh air. That’s when Christopher told me that you were going to Greece, that you had a translation to finish and that he was going to do research. But now—and she gave a brief sigh of exasperation—I find that you are in London and he is not answering his phone.

I don’t know where Christopher is.

There was a slight pause before she continued.

In any case you must go and join him at once. You know how powerful my intuition is, I know something is wrong, it’s not like him not to return my calls.

There were outcomes to Isabella’s telephone call that are extraordinary to me, even now. One is that I obeyed this woman and went to Greece, a place I had no desire to visit, for a purpose that was not in the least bit evident to me. True, Christopher had lied to Isabella when he said that we were going to Greece together. If he did not want to tell his mother about the separation, it would have been easy enough to come up with some excuse to explain why he was traveling alone—that I had to go to a conference, that I was spending time with a girlfriend who had three children and was therefore always in need of both help and company.

Or he could have told her half the truth, the start of it at least, that we were taking time off—from what, or where, she might have asked. But he had not done any of this, perhaps because it was easier to lie or maybe because it was easier to let his mother make whatever assumptions she wished to make—although misapprehensions, after the fact, were especially difficult for Isabella. I realized then that we needed to formalize the state of affairs between us. I had already decided to ask Christopher for a divorce, I would simply go to Greece and do the deed in person.

I supposed it would be my last dutiful act as her daughter-in-law. An hour later, Isabella called to tell me which hotel Christopher was staying at—I wondered how she had obtained this information—and the record locator for a ticket she had booked in my name, departing the next day. Beneath the unnecessary flourishes of character and the sheen of idle elegance, she was a supremely capable woman, one reason why she had been a formidable adversary, someone I had reason to fear. But that was all over, and soon, there would be no battleground between us.

Still, I noted that she evidently didn’t trust me—I was not the kind of wife who could be relied upon to locate her husband, not without a ticket in hand and a hotel address. Perhaps it was in response to this patent distrust that I kept my promise to Christopher, the second surprising outcome of Isabella’s call. I did not tell his mother that we were separated, and had been for some time, the one piece of information that would have excused me from going to Greece altogether.

No mother would ask her daughter-in-law to go to Greece in order to ask her son for a divorce. I could have stayed in London and gone about my business. But I did not tell her, and I did not stay in London. If Isabella knew that she had purchased a plane ticket in order for me to ask her son for a divorce, I suppose she would have killed me, actually slain me then and there. Such a thing was not impossible. She was, as I have said, a supremely capable woman. Or perhaps she would have said had she known it was so easy to separate us, to dissolve the terms of our marriage, she would have bought me the ticket long ago. Before she hung up, she advised me to pack a bathing suit. She had been told the hotel had a very nice pool.

In Athens, the city was heavy with traffic and there was some kind of transportation strike. The village where Christopher was staying was a five-hour drive from the capital, at the southernmost tip of the country’s mainland. A car was waiting at the airport: Isabella had thought of everything. I fell asleep during the journey, which began with the traffic, then segued into a series of bleak and anonymous motorways. I was tired. I looked out the window but could not read any of the signs.

I awoke to a hard and repetitive noise. It was black outside, night had fallen while I was asleep. The sound vibrated through the vehicle—thwack thwack thwack—then stopped. The car was moving slowly down a narrow single-lane road. I leaned forward and asked the driver if we were stopping, if we had very far to go. We are here, he said. We have already arrived. The thwacking began again.

Strays, the driver added. Outside, dark shapes moved alongside the car, the tails of the dogs hitting its shell. The driver beeped his horn in an effort to frighten the animals away—they were so close it seemed as if the car might strike them at any moment, despite our decelerated speed—but they were not deterred, they remained close to the vehicle as we moved down the road toward a large stone villa. The driver continued beeping his horn as he rolled down the window and shouted at the strays.

Up ahead, a porter opened the gates to the property. As the car moved forward through the gates, the dogs fell behind. When I turned to look through the rear window, they stood in a ring before the gates, their eyes as yellow as the beams from the taillights. The hotel was at the far end of a small bay and I heard the sound of water as soon as I stepped out of the car. I carried my purse and a small overnight bag, the porter asked if I had any luggage and I said I had none, I had packed for a night, at worst for a weekend, although I did not phrase it in that way.

The driver said something about a return journey; I took his card and said I would call him, perhaps tomorrow. He nodded, and I asked if he would now return to Athens, it was already very late. He shrugged and got back into the car.

Inside, the lobby was empty. I checked the time—it was nearly eleven. Isabella had not booked me a room, I was a woman joining her husband, there should have been no need. I asked for a single room for the night. The man behind the desk said there were plenty of rooms available, he announced with surprising candor that the hotel was nearly empty. It was the end of September, the season was over. Unfortunately, the sea was now too cold for swimming, he added, but the hotel swimming pool was heated to a very comfortable temperature.

I waited until he had finished taking my details and handed me the key before I asked about Christopher.

Would you like me to call his room?

His expression was alert but his hands remained still behind the desk, he did not move to pick up the phone, it was after all very late.

No, I shook my head. I’ll try him in the morning.

The man nodded sympathetically. His eyes had become more watchful, perhaps he saw many relationships in similar disarray, or perhaps he thought nothing of it and had a naturally sympathetic face, a trait that was no doubt useful in his occupation. He did not say anything further about the matter. I took the key and he told me about breakfast and insisted on taking my bag as he ushered me to the elevator. Thank you, I said. Did I want a wake-up call? A newspaper in the morning? It can wait, I told him. All of it can wait.

When I woke, sunlight had flooded the room. I reached for my phone, there were no messages and it was already nine. Breakfast would be ending soon, I would need to hurry if I wanted to eat. Still, I stood in the shower longer than was necessary. Until that moment—standing in the hotel room shower, the water blurring my vision as it streamed into my eyes—I had not stopped to consider or imagine how Christopher would feel, what he would think, when he saw me, or was confronted by me, in the hotel. I imagined his first thought would be simple enough, he would assume that I wanted him back.

Why else would a woman follow her estranged husband to another country, other than to bring an end to their separation? It was an extravagant gesture, and extravagant gestures between a man and a woman are generally understood to be romantic, even in the context of a failed marriage. I would appear before him and he would—would he be filled with apprehension, would his heart sink, would he wonder what it was that I wanted? Would he feel caught, would he worry that there had been a disaster, that something had happened to his mother, he should have returned her phone calls?

Or would he be filled with hope, would he think that after all a reconciliation was in the cards (was this hope at the root of the promise he had extracted from me, and was it even a shared hope then, after all I had agreed to it), and would he then be disappointed, even more affronted than he might otherwise have been, by my petition for a divorce, which I nonetheless intended to make? I felt at once mortified for him and for myself, above all for the situation. I assumed—I had no prior experience to go on—that asking for a divorce was always discomfiting, but I could not believe it was always this awkward, the setting and the circumstances so ambiguous.

Downstairs, the lobby was empty. Breakfast was served on a terrace overlooking the sea. There was no sign of Christopher, the restaurant was also deserted. Below, the village was without shadow and so quiet as to be motionless, a collection of small buildings lined along a stone embankment. A large cliff formed one side of the bay, it was bare and without vegetation and cast a bright white light onto the water, the vista from the terrace was therefore both tranquil and dramatic. At the base of the cliff there were remnants of what looked like charred brush and grass, as if there had recently been a fire.

I drank my coffee. When he set down the cup, the waiter had informed me that the hotel was the only place where I would get my cappuccino, my latte, everywhere else it was Greek coffee or Nescafé. The setting here was romantic—Christopher liked luxurious accommodation, and luxury and romance were virtually synonyms for a certain class of people—and therefore made me uneasy. I imagined Christopher here, alone among a resort full of couples, it was the kind of hotel that was booked for honeymoons, for anniversaries. I felt another twinge of embarrassment, I wondered what he had been up to, the place was an absurdity.

I stopped the waiter when he brought my toast.

It’s very quiet. Am I the last to come down for breakfast?

The hotel is empty. It is the off-season.

But there must be other guests.

The fires, he said, shrugging. They have discouraged people.

I don’t know about the fires.

There have been wildfires all over the country. Fires all summer. The hills between here and Athens are black. If you go outside the village, up to the hills, you will see, the earth is still hot from the fire. It was in the newspapers. All around the world. There were photographers—he mimed the click of a camera—all summer.

He tucked the tray under his arm and continued. They shot photographs for a fashion magazine here, at the hotel. The fire had spread to the cliff, you can still see the black—look. He gestured to the black-scarred surface of the rock. They put the models by the pool and the fire behind them and the sea—he sucked in his breath—it was very dramatic.

I nodded. He drifted away when I didn’t say anything further. Unbidden, the image of Christopher in the midst of this photo shoot rose up. It was implausible, he stood between the models and the makeup artists and the stylist with a wry expression, as if he could not possibly begin to explain what he was doing in this circus. He looked even more like a stranger. I gazed around the terrace uneasily. It was nearing ten, evidently I had missed him at breakfast, he must have eaten early, perhaps he had already left the hotel for the day.

I rose and went into the lobby. The man who had checked me in the night before had been replaced by a young woman with heavy features, she wore her hair scraped back in a manner that did not suit her, the style was too severe for her soft, full face. I asked her if Christopher had been down that morning. She frowned, I sensed that she did not want to tell me. I asked if she could call his room. She kept her eyes on my face as she dialed the number, I listened to the pulse of the bell, beneath her professional hairline, her expression was openly sullen.

She hung up.

He’s not in his room. Would you like to leave a message?

I need to speak with him urgently.

Who are you?

The question was blunt, almost hostile.

I’m his wife.

She looked startled, at once I understood—Christopher was a careless flirt, he did it without thinking, as a reflex, the way people said hello, thank you, you’re welcome, the way a man held open a door for a woman. He was too liberal in this regard, he risked spreading his charm thin. Once you perceived the patches where it had worn through, it was hard to see the charm—hard to see the man himself, if you were in any way wary of charisma—entirely whole again. But most people did not stay in his orbit long enough for this to happen, most people were like this young girl, I could see that she was protective of him, still in his thrall.

Him, Him, as if he belonged to her. I stepped back from the counter.

Please tell him that his wife is looking for him.

She nodded.

As soon as he returns. It’s important.

She muttered something below her breath as I left, cursing me no doubt. The wife is always the subject of cursing, never more so than in such a situation.

I’d like to go for a walk.

She looked up, she could not believe that I was still there, she was waiting for me to leave, my presence was clearly unpleasant to her. But I found myself lingering, it was true that I wanted to go for a walk and I did not know where to go. She gave me directions to the quay, she said the village was small and I would not get lost. I nodded and went outside. Although it was September it was still hot and the light was very bright. For a moment I was almost blinded, I thought I could smell the faint whiff of char in the air, as if the land was still burning: a moment of synesthesia.

Almost as soon as I stepped past the hotel gates, the stray dogs appeared. They approached me with their tails fanning through the air in a manner that was neither friendly nor hostile. I liked dogs. I would have even gotten a dog, once upon a time, but Christopher was against it, he said we traveled too much, which was true. I reached out to touch the nearest dog. His hair was thin and short, the surface so sleek that it was more like touching skin than fur. His right eye was milky with blindness but the gaze was both intelligent and desolate, its animal blankness unmitigated.

The other dogs writhed around me, their bodies momentarily rubbing against my sides, my hands and fingers, before falling away. They accompanied me as I made my way down to the embankment, running forward and then circling back again in a slow spiral of movement. Only the dog with the milky eye remained fixed at my side. It was nearing noon. The water in the bay was clear and blue. A few solitary boats dotted its surface.

Gerolimenas was a small fishing village, I came upon a handful of shops—a newsstand, a tobacconist, a pharmacy—all of which were shuttered. As I walked and the dogs eventually dispersed, I looked for Christopher among the scant faces seated outside the taverna, most of which were lined and well weathered, much darkened by the sun. They bore nothing in common with Christopher’s smooth and pampered countenance, which would have stood out in contrast. He had been attractive—to women, to people in general—his entire life and that could not help but have an effect.

Nor was Christopher to be found among the figures on the embankment, idle men and women, a couple of fishermen. The small beach itself was empty. I stood by the water and looked back at the hotel, which had become entirely incongruous in the ten minutes it had taken to walk here. Within the grounds of the hotel you could have been anywhere, luxury was by and large anonymous, but once you passed beyond its carefully guarded confines, you were forcibly in this particular setting and place. I was aware that the villagers were watching me—it was their right, I was the intruder here—and I lowered my head and retreated in the direction of the hotel.

When I returned, less than an hour had passed. In the lobby, I saw that the young woman had disappeared and the man from the previous evening had returned. He looked up, then stepped from behind his desk and hurried in my direction.

I’m sorry to bother you—

What is it?

My colleague has told me that you are the wife of Mr. Wallace.

Yes?

Your husband was due to check out this morning. But he has not checked out.

I looked at my watch.

It’s only just noon.

The fact is, we have not seen him for several days. He went on a trip, and hasn’t returned.

I shook my head.

Where has he gone?

He hired a car, a driver, but that is all we know. He had already paid for the room in advance, he said that he would keep it while he was gone.

For a long moment, we stared at each other in silence. Then the man cleared his throat, politely.

You see, his room is needed.

Excuse me?

The persons who have reserved that room are arriving today.

But the hotel is empty.

He shrugged apologetically.

Yes, I know. But people are absurd. A wedding anniversary, I think. The room has special meaning to them, they passed their honeymoon in it. They are due to arrive in the afternoon, and so you see . . .

He trailed off.

We would like to move his belongings from one room to another.

That seems reasonable.

Or perhaps we should pack them up, if he intends to leave with you today?

I don’t know how long he plans to stay.

Yes, I see.

He is doing research.

The man held his hands up, as if I had said something unnecessary.

We will need to begin packing his room now. Perhaps you could accompany me?

I waited as he returned to the desk to retrieve a key. Together, we walked to Christopher’s room, which was located at the opposite end of the hotel, on the top floor, the man—whose name was Kostas, according to the badge that was pinned to his jacket—explained to me that Christopher had been staying in a suite. The room had wonderful views of the bay, should I decide to extend my stay, he could recommend it wholeheartedly, it would become available once the honeymoon couple left, perhaps by that point my husband would have returned.

When we reached the room at last, Kostas knocked on the door with the discreet but somehow still peremptory gesture common to hotel staff, his hand already on the knob—for a moment, I hallucinated a vision of the door opening and Christopher standing before us, surprised but not entirely displeased—and then Kostas unlocked the door and we entered.

The room was unrecognizable to me. Christopher was not fastidious by any means, but he was not slovenly and he rarely inhabited a space that was not clean (it was not that he tidied the space himself, he had people who did that for him—the cleaning lady, for a time it had been me). The room—although large, with a separate sitting area and a remarkable view, Kostas was right, it was an excellent room and must have been one of the more expensive at the hotel—was entirely disordered.

The floor was strewn with discarded clothes, at least several days’ worth, the desk was covered in books and papers, by the side of the bed there was a tangle of electrical cords, headphones, a camera, his laptop lay on the floor with the lid open at an oblique angle. There were remnants of room service trays, pots of coffee and half-empty bottles of water, even a plate covered in crumbs—I could not understand why the maid had not at least taken away the dirty dishes. Meanwhile the bed sat in the center of the room, unmade and covered in newspapers and notebooks.

The surfaces had been wiped and the floor vacuumed but it was almost as though the maid had worked around the mess, in order to preserve it. He told the maid not to touch anything, Kostas said. He shrugged. People make requests, we just follow orders. But you see—

He stepped to the wardrobe and opened the doors. More soiled laundry lay on the floor inside. Above, a selection of shirts and trousers, all of which I recognized—the patterns and fabrics, the minutely frayed hem on one of the cuffs. The sensation of being in the room remained one of severe dissociation and yet here—and here—and here—in these objects, which I had lived with for many years, there was a stab of recognition, the recollection of the owner, the man, who was here and also not here.

Kostas clapped his hands together.

So. We’ll pack it up? This is fine with you?

I nodded as I looked down at the papers and books. They were uniformly about Greece, there was even a Greek phrase book among them. I opened a notebook, but I could not decipher Christopher’s tight, messy script. I had never been able to read it. Kostas used the room phone to call the front desk and request a chambermaid, who appeared several minutes later and began packing the clothes. He apologized, but it was now nearly one, the new guests would be arriving at any moment and I could see there was a great deal to be done before the room would be ready.

My phone was ringing. I reached inside my pocket. It was Isabella, she had impeccable timing. I answered, a little short, but she didn’t notice, she didn’t even bother to say hello before she asked where Christopher was and if she could speak to him.

I could hear a recording of Britten’s Billy Budd playing in the background. Isabella and Mark were opera fanatics and had once taken us to see a production of this particular opera at Glyndebourne. It had been an unhappy expedition. By that point, the cracks in our marriage were beginning to show. Christopher and I were barely on speaking terms, but Isabella and Mark were blithely, almost aggressively unaware of the tension between us. There was something single-minded about their interest in opera, and never more so than on that evening.

I remembered sitting in the theater in a state of numbed contemplation—of the music, the awkwardness of the situation, I was not a fan of Britten, which did nothing to endear me to Christopher’s parents. Now, as I heard the familiar strains of music, I thought how integral distance was to the story, which takes place almost entirely at sea. Without that distance, even the basic mechanics of the plot would be impossible—no threat of mutiny, no reliance on martial law, no death of Billy Budd. If I did not care for the opera—the music was too dense, like staring at a stone wall—the story was still compelling, it offered the opportunity to peer into the world of men, in a different time, when men went away, to war or to sea.

Now, they no longer went away—there was not, at least for most of them, a sea to roam or a desert to cross, there was nothing but the floors of an office tower, the morning commute, a familiar and monotonous landscape, in which life became something secondhand, not something a man could own for himself. It was only on the shores of infidelity that they achieved a little privacy, a little inner life, it was only in the domain of their faithlessness that they became, once again, strangers to their wives, capable of anything.

Abruptly, the music cut off and Isabella repeated her question, Where is Christopher? After a brief pause as I stared at the room’s wreckage, I told her that I hadn’t found him. But you are there? You are in Mani? Yes. But Christopher isn’t here, he isn’t at the hotel. Then where is he? I don’t know, I said. He’s taken a trip somewhere, he hired a driver. His phone isn’t ringing, probably he left his charger—as I spoke, my eyes fell on the device’s cord, hanging limp in the socket by the bed—here at the hotel.

I’ll wait, I told her. You won’t come back until you find him, she said. You must find him. I will, I said. But I’m not sure I am the person who should be looking for him.

If she had listened, if she had stopped to ask what I meant, I would have told her, standing in this hotel room, the secret of our separation no longer felt valid—but she did not pause or even appear to hear me. You won’t come back until you find him, she repeated, you must bring him back. She sounded unhinged, it was essentially a terrible relationship. It was no wonder Christopher had been running away from her the whole of his life, or since he had become an adult man—he was always running away before he was running toward anything.

I lowered the phone. I told Kostas that they could pack the rest of Christopher’s things into his cases and when he returned he could tell them what to do himself. Kostas nodded and then I turned and left the room. I was free to go.