A sliver of concern shows through at last, Gabriel thought. “Are any of us sleeping?”
“We’ve been invited out this evening. Dinner with friends,” she said. “I accepted on your behalf.”
Annie was slight, always had been. Pale of complexion, with short brown hair and livid blue eyes (unlike either of her brown-eyed brothers), she looked younger than she was—gamine; more like twenty-two than twenty-eight. Her long spindly fingers, like spiders’ legs, were never still—as now—rolling bits of torn-off bread between her fingertips. She kept her eyes on her hands when she went on, “There isn’t much in the way of nightlife. The Intercontinental, mostly. So we socialize a lot in one another’s houses. . . . Anyway, our friends are keen to meet you.”
“I’ll bet.”
She looked up. “You don’t think I’ve told them? Good God, why would I do that?”
“You haven’t said anything?”
“No. I didn’t feel I had much choice. Anyway, it’s bad enough that my friends at home are gossiping about us over their coffee-breaks.” She rubbed her hands together in an abstracted way. “Still, the story’s losing its legs now.”
“Who told you that?”
“Aunt Gertie. She’s been great. Writing every week. She’s the only person who seems to realize what it’s like for me over here, out of the loop.”
“You’re far better off.”
“Oh, am I? Away from Mam, at a time like this? Have you any idea how hard it was to come back last month? Only I had no choice, had I? Because you needed somewhere to run away to!”
This was not it, not it at all. Gabriel had believed he was coming to Muscat to be comforted by someone who loved him unconditionally, and therefore forgave him. Instead, she was hissing and spitting and twisted with hurt. There would be no reprieve here.
“It’s so hard at times like this,” she said, her voice breaking, “being away.”
“I suppose.” It seemed fair that she too should be allowed to believe that this was worse for her than for anyone else in the family. There had been a lot of that going on.
“But as far as our friends here are concerned,” she continued, “you’re on holiday, so perk up. Make an effort, please.”
Dinner with friends, Gabriel thought, going upstairs to rest. The prospect made him sweat, but at least they wouldn’t have to sit across a dining table, just the three of them, trying to duck the elephant.
It was difficult for Annie. She loved Gabriel; adored him. Sometimes she wondered about that, about whom she loved most and to whom she owed the greatest loyalty. Gabriel was a part of her, an extension. He had come the same way with her; they had come the same way together until he’d delivered her into Rolf’s safe hands. Into contentment. Initially, she had worried about finding love enough for both men, but had discovered room in her heart to accommodate her brother and her husband in comfort. Neither pushed the other aside; they could remain shoulder to shoulder, it seemed, and her loyalties need never be truly strained. As for their older brother, Max, well, everyone loved Max, and so did she, but when they were growing up, he wasn’t affectionate, cuddly, or approachable, and he’d always had work to do. By the time she was a teenager, she’d found him irritating, even embarrassing, and he was no fun; the grooves in his forehead were deep by the time he’d turned thirteen. Gabriel was the soft one, amenable. He and Annie looked out at the world from the same point of reference.
Annie had suspected, when she was younger, that it was on account of her partiality toward Gabriel that she believed him to be so much more talented than Max, but this was fact, not affection. Everyone knew it. Gabriel was hugely, instinctively gifted. He never had to work as hard as Max, but because his focus could meander, the gift eventually became limp. Where Max had passion, Gabriel had fun. Where Max was competitive, Gabriel was laissez-faire. If his big brother had outperformed him, if he had achieved greater things, it would have been because Gabriel allowed it. But for all his work, all his hours on the piano stool, Max’s playing had none of the edge of Gabriel’s sharp, intuitive expression. His interpretation, one teacher had said, was close to perfection. And yet, although applause and admiration were heaped upon him, he had had enough by the time he turned sixteen. He wanted a life, he had told his devastated parents, not the career of the concert pianist for which they, and the School of Music, had been grooming him since he was four. And so Max went after the laurels that everyone—teachers, examiners, and relatives—knew were rightfully Gabriel’s. But Gabriel, Annie used to tell her frustrated parents, had another gift—for living and giving, for friendship and humor.
They valued that not at all. Perhaps they were right.
Max had only his work, and they all admired him for it. They loved his peculiarities, his stooped frame hanging over the keyboard come what may, and the way he forgot to eat, sometimes even to wash. They loved him for his poor attempts at telling jokes, though he had no timing, except when he played, of course, and even that had been acquired through hard work. Perfection was the only mistress Max had ever sought.
Recently he had almost, almost, found her.
“This is my brother, Gabriel.”
Annie waved in his direction as they stepped into a square hallway, and a tall, dark-haired Frenchwoman reached out. “Gabriel, how lovely,” she said, shaking his hand. She looked like a long black pencil. “I’m Stéphanie. Come and meet the others.”
In a broad living room, two other couples stood up as they came in. He didn’t take in their names, but tried hard, for Annie, to adopt some kind of great-to-be-here expression. Keen. He had to seem keen, to appear as though he had come of his own volition, but the assembled guests, it turned out, weren’t particularly interested in him. Small talk rushed in behind the introductions. Expat gossip. He sat mute, feeling like a prize idiot. Baksheesh. Ignorant bastard. Books about Oman had been thin on the ground in Cork, but Annie had left a couple behind, which Gabriel had read while waiting to leave, so he knew about the Portuguese, the British, and the battle of Dhofar. He knew to expect desert and mountains and longed to learn something of Bedouin ways. These had been his expectations of Oman—rudimentary, perhaps, but not unreasonable—and yet the first word he had assigned to this culture was “baksheesh,” which came from he knew not what preconceived notion. He still felt the sharp sting of his worldly brother-in-law’s rebuke.
He turned his attention to the assembled company: Stéphanie’s husband, Mark, was a dapper Englishman, even sporting a silk cravat; Joan, a woman in her forties probably, wore a long skirt and cheesecloth top, and looked as if she had fallen off the hippie wagon, keeping the clothes, but rejecting the lifestyle, to live in air-conditioned comfort in the Gulf. Her husband wore pristine whites and had such highly arched eyebrows that he looked like he was about to take off. Marie, clearly a good friend of Annie, and her husband, Jasper, also English, were warm and engaging.
It wasn’t until they were seated at the dining-table that they turned their attention to Gabriel, with a rush of questions. How long would he be staying? What did he hope to do during his holiday? How was he finding Muscat? He had little to say on that score—all he had seen of Muscat was a small airport with two huge sabers over the entrance, some gray-gold hills and a short stretch of seafront, where he had walked with Annie in the late afternoon.
Joan, leaning her forearms on the edge of the table, said, “Annie was telling us that you’re a musician.”
“A teacher, actually. I teach piano.” They all looked at him, expecting more. “At the School of Music in Cork.”
“So are you in between terms right now?” Stéphanie asked, perplexed.
Fair question, since it was mid-March, but how was it, he wondered, that people sniffed out the holes in any story without even knowing there were any to be filled? “No,” he said. “I’ve taken a leave of absence.”
That