‘Stalker,’ I said.
‘Alcoholic. You looked plastered. I preferred the accordion player.’ She laughed. ‘I didn’t have to imagine anything. I heard your accent.’
I gave her a sample. ‘Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith. They wrote it together. It’s about two ex-lovers left alone in a French cottage, with the husband only half a mile away.’
‘That’s not helping.’
The house stood some distance from its neighbours, with a garage, a long balcony, and a garden of flowers and fruit trees. The courtyard between the garage and main building was dominated by a blue spruce, with rose bushes in flower, a substantial herb garden and wisteria climbing the walls. Angelina’s email had implied that they owned the place. Charlie’s lawyering—or whatever Angelina was now doing—must pay well. Or they didn’t invest in lotto syndicates.
I did not get a chance to explore the interior of the house. The moment we were through the front door, Angelina tossed her bag and sunglasses onto a side table and put her arms around my neck. I had just a few moments to study her face at close quarters, to notice that the make-up covered some fine lines around her eyes, before touch took over from sight.
I don’t think either of us intended more than a kiss, but things escalated. I slid my hands down and she pushed into me. It was the scenario that had fuelled a hundred fantasies, but none of them had featured skin-tight jeans and strappy shoes.
‘I’ll get them,’ she said as I bent down to undo the buckles.
‘It’s okay, I’ve got this one.’
‘No, it’s easier for me. Just steady me.’
‘Try the chair.’
‘I know how to take my shoes off.’
Then the jeans: Angelina sitting in the middle of the floor, pulling on one leg, until my efforts with the other leg unbalanced her so she fell back with both legs in the air and jeans around her knees. Finally, walking backwards, and ignoring her protestations, I managed to get them off—and burst out laughing.
It was not so much the physical comedy as the sense of familiarity. I could see the same scene playing out twenty-two years earlier, with Angelina behaving exactly the same way. Against all reasonable expectations, I had her back.
She sat up, still wearing her top. ‘What are you laughing at?’
It might have been a circuit breaker, but the build-up to this moment had gone on half the afternoon, or for three months. It was not the smoothest segue, but neither of us cared. I kissed her, and a few seconds later was backing her against the front door.
She broke our kiss to let out something between a moan and a scream, surely as much a release of tension as anything. In response, there was a loud knock at the door, which was being held closed by our bodies.
Panic and farce: Angelina on the floor again pulling her jeans back on and me trying to perform the same manoeuvre while leaning hard against the door. When I stepped back, decent but mentally dishevelled, the door stayed closed but the knock was repeated.
Angelina pushed past me and opened the door. It was not Charlie but Gilles, the caretaker, who had seen us arrive. He was about sixty-five, short with a neat grey moustache and a smile that suggested he had worked out the reason for the delay. Angelina’s shoes were on their sides, several metres apart.
She did introductions and listened while he explained, slowly in French, that he was sorry to disturb us but wanted to check that the heating had been working the previous night and that it was not too warm, but cooler weather was forecast and a number of steps were necessary to activate the system, and it was better to be prepared but with the thermostat—did Angelina understand thermostat?—set to a low temperature until such time as the weather actually cooled.
By the time Angelina had sent him on his way, the moment had gone. We were in no state to seize it anyway.
Angelina looked around the room. ‘Oh my God. Are you okay? Do you think Gilles…?’
‘Probably. Will he say anything?’
‘I don’t think so. Not in his interests to cause trouble. I’ll see if the woman at the supermarket looks at me differently next time I see her.’
She was talking herself through it, but she looked shaken.
‘Your room’s at the end of the hall. Are you okay if I go upstairs? Tell Charlie I’m having a shower if he asks.’ She took a deep breath and exhaled. ‘Oh. My. God.’
Then she picked up her shoes and headed upstairs.
The hallway passed the kitchen and bathroom before leading into a large and bright bedroom. It had a double bed and simple wooden furniture, including a bookcase stocked with contemporary fiction and popular science. The floor was tiled, with a modern rug, and Georgian-style windows looked onto the garden on one side and the courtyard on the other. There was a vanity unit, but no shower.
I sat on the bed and tried to compose myself. Everything was okay. We had just had a close shave. Gilles hadn’t seen anything.
It seemed that the reality of our reunion—the intensity of it—had caught Angelina by surprise, as it had me. The encounter against the door might have been a one-off, an unconsidered moment of recklessness in response to that feeling. If not, was she looking for an affair, if only for a week? Or was I witnessing the end of a marriage, possibly unbeknownst to Charlie?
And what about Charlie, my host, who had been shopping for my dinner while I was tearing his wife’s clothes off?
There was not much I could do now, beyond being an appreciative guest and going with the flow. Anything out of order would raise suspicions, which would have greater consequences for Angelina than for me.
I gave myself a quick splash and a blast of deodorant, composed myself in the mirror and walked back to the living room. This time I had a chance to look around.
Two sofas, a couple of armchairs, dining table and eight chairs, sideboard, a fireplace and framed menus on the wall. A stereo but no television. No family pictures, perhaps because they rented it out. At one end was an upright piano, a Yamaha that I had not noticed while I was busy with other things. I remembered Shanksy telling me that Angelina had accompanied herself when she sang ‘I Will Survive’ on that last night.
Charlie came in carrying two full shopping bags.
‘Need a hand?’ I asked.
‘Help me unpack, if you like,’ he said, and I followed him to the kitchen.
‘Nice place,’ I said.
It had a good dose of rustic charm, in keeping with the age of the building, but things seemed square and solid, and the kitchen was kitted out with the sort of appliances that Randall and Mandy might have bought in their California foodie heyday.
‘Somewhere back in time there were plans to run it as a bed and breakfast,’ said Charlie. ‘The bedrooms have vanity units, but there’s only one shower, upstairs, so we’ll be a bit chummy.’
I had surely exceeded the bounds of chumminess with the hostess already.
Around 6.30 p.m., bag unpacked, internet connection established and mind as straight as it could be under the circumstances, I emerged from my room to find Charlie still at work in the kitchen.
‘What do you drink?’ he asked.
‘Not fussy.’
‘Beer?’
‘Sounds perfect.’
‘Happy to have it cold?’
‘However it comes.’
Charlie opened two bottles of Heineken—little European quarter-litres. He raised his and we clinked them in a toast. We could have drunk to all sorts of things, but not many that were in our mutual interest.
‘Santé. Good health,’ he said, then put his beer down and began zesting lemons.
24
Charlie told me a bit about the recent history of the house (bought six years ago, the kitchen since refurbished), its maintenance (Gilles was retired and living in the apartment above the garage), and business in Australia and around the world (keeping him busy).
As he spoke, he emptied lemon juice into a cocktail shaker, poured slugs of Cointreau and tequila from bottles in the fre
ezer, added ice cubes, salted the rim of a pink-stemmed cocktail glass, then shook and upended the shaker to deliver a frothing margarita that exactly filled the glass.
‘Back in a minute,’ he said, and disappeared upstairs. He had not touched his beer.
I went to my room and grabbed the premium gin that I had brought as a gift. No point bringing wine to France.
Angelina joined us for pre-dinner snacks in white jeans, white singlet and silver coils for earrings. Bare feet. Glasses, which she had not worn in her twenties. The locket was gone, replaced by an enamel medallion with browns and reds on a white background. The perfume was different, too, though only subtly so.
The evening was warm and we sat on the gallerie Maconnais, the long balcony on the upper level. It was too narrow for us to face each other, so we were lined up looking out over rolling green and brown fields dotted with white cattle. Angelina sat in the middle, her knee bumping mine from time to time. There was no traffic beyond a tractor pulling haymaking equipment and an elderly woman walking her bicycle.
Charlie opened a bottle of champagne, and passed around a plate of lobster medallions topped with guacamole. It was a step up from the packet of crisps I would have eaten at home if I couldn’t hold out for dinner.
‘Not quite French,’ he said, ‘but I made them to go with the margarita.’
He looked pointedly at Angelina, who had finished her cocktail before joining us. The lobster was followed by a selection of charcuterie as the light began to fade.
‘You’re being excessive, Charlie,’ said Angelina. She was not touching the pig snouts and ears, which were actually pretty good.
The champagne disappeared and Charlie opened a bottle of red. ‘I know I’m taking a risk, serving Beaujolais to an Englishman, but this is something different.’
I have swilled my share of Beaujolais Nouveau, but even my uneducated palate could tell that Charlie’s wine was in another class.
‘You’re kidding me. This is Beaujolais?’ I said.
Charlie smiled and topped up my glass. I was wondering if I would have room for the main course, but he had prepared a light meal of spaghetti with black olives, prosciutto, olive oil, the lemon zest and heaps of thyme from the garden, with a green salad on the side.
We talked a bit about the house and its history. All of the windows were barred, creating an effect that I had romantically interpreted as Georgian. The rooms had individual locks and they had found a cache of old video recording and editing equipment—worth nothing today but a fortune in its time.
Angelina’s theory was that a previous owner had been a pornographer. My bedroom, with light from all sides, including a frosted glass door, had surely been the studio. It was fanciful stuff with no connection to our own present and past lives, except perhaps Angelina’s exhibitionist fantasies.
The wine was helping me slip into the setting and hospitality and easy conversation. As for the rest of it, there was not much I could do until Angelina and I had a chance to talk. But something had connected regarding Charlie.
‘Ever played rugby?’ I asked him.
‘What makes you think that?’
We all laughed. I was thinking about the Charles Acheson on the internet who scored a legendary try against the All Blacks. Charlie was of a size to do it.
‘I hope you didn’t play against our guys,’ I said.
‘Never got past the state team. Too much like hard work. Not to mention lack of talent.’
‘Go on, tell him,’ said Angelina. She turned to me. ‘You’re not going to leave here without hearing the story, so let’s get it over with.’
‘We can go the whole week without telling the story if you don’t mention it,’ said Charlie.
‘Hey,’ said Angelina. ‘Don’t get tetchy. It’s a good story. Charlie scored a try against New Zealand.’
This was, by any measure, pretty impressive, the more so as he would have been playing out of his league, in a state team against the finest Test team in the world.
Charlie laughed. ‘You have to get it in perspective. I was playing for Tasmania and we got a fixture against the touring All Blacks. They fielded their fifth-string line-up, gave everyone except the water boy a run, and beat us by about seventy points. But they got a bit careless in defence and I picked up the loose ball and fell over the line.’
‘Right,’ said Angelina. ‘You just fell across the line with it.’
‘I had to brush off a couple of little Kiwis,’ he said. ‘Missed the conversion too, I was so amazed at myself. Very unprofessional.’
Despite the self-deprecation, it was obvious that he loved the story. This might be the moment that defined the man, the big guy grabbing the chance and not worrying about the reputation of the opposition, just doing it—only to be overcome with awe at what he had pulled off.
‘Bloody fantastic,’ I said. ‘Great story.’
‘Tell us about the walk,’ said Angelina. ‘Adam went walking in the Lake District a few weeks ago.’
‘Just a couple of days in the rain,’ I said.
‘Better than us,’ she said. ‘We haven’t been walking since the Overland Track in Tasmania. Tell Adam the story.’
They told the story together, in married-couple fashion, complete with arguments about the details. With a couple of other hikers—bushwalkers—they had carried out a teenager who had become ill. One bloke on each of the front stretcher handles, Charlie holding both rear handles. Snow coming in.
Angelina: ‘So this girl is dry retching constantly, and the ranger meets us—he’s walked in with this enormous pack and coffee and a medical kit, and the girlfriend of one of the guys carrying the stretcher is a nurse. She tells Charlie that the girl should have some injection—’
Charlie: ‘Maxolon—had to inject it or she’d throw it up.’
Angelina: ‘But the ranger won’t let her do it because he needs a doctor’s authorisation.’
Charlie: ‘We’d worked that out already.’
Angelina: ‘So Charlie says he’s a doctor, signs all the forms. As Dr Charlie.’
Charlie: ‘Dr Charles.’
Angelina: ‘And gives the syringe to the nurse to inject. Like, you do this—it’s beneath me.’
Charlie: ‘They were never going to check.’
Angelina: ‘You were a lawyer. It was misrepresentation.’
And so on. Were these stories intended to remind me that they had a shared history, or to remind themselves? Charlie had been the hero on both occasions.
We finished the wine with cheese and then put a dent in a bottle of Sauternes, which Angelina did not touch. Charlie reminded me that the only white wines Angelina drank were Chablis and champagne. It was news to me. She and I had drunk all sorts.
He opened another red for her, and poured a small quantity into her big glass. There was a bit of non-verbal communication (surely only non-verbal because of my presence) about the size of the serve that resulted in him pouring her about a third of the bottle.
I had never thought of drinking Sauternes with cheese. In fact, I had never thought of drinking Sauternes, but Charlie was right. It went well with the Roquefort.
‘Château Rieussec, 1983,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s nice to have someone to share it with.’
‘You’re throwing me in the deep end with the wine,’ I said. ‘Don’t waste anything too good on me.’ I took another sip. ‘But thank you.’
‘You can thank Charlie’s ex,’ said Angelina.
I waited for her to say, ‘Tell Adam the story.’
‘Tell Adam the story.’
‘We’ve told enough stories.’
‘I’ll tell the story. It’s okay, I’ll tell it nicely.’
‘I’ll tell it. You ever been divorced, Adam?’ said Charlie. ‘Angelina and I have that in common.’
‘No,’ I said, before remembering that I was facing my own in all but name. ‘My parents were divorced. Does that count?’
‘Ugly? Sorry, none of my business. Let me just assume
it was. It always is, and all we can do is try to be as civilised as we can and not give everything to the lawyers.’
I nodded. No argument there. I was getting a long way ahead of myself, but Charlie having a non-combative approach to divorce could only be a good thing.
‘We were both lawyers. She’d decided she was going to live in Italy. Don’t bother asking. I put all our stuff into two piles: tokens for the house, the two cars, the wine, the mortgage and other bits and pieces. Used the Monopoly set. And I said, “You pick which pile you want.” My sister and I used to do it as kids: I’ll cut the cake, you choose the piece.’
‘Nice technique,’ I said. ‘If you can get the other party to co-operate.’ My mother would have had none of this tricksy stuff.
‘Well, she’d agreed to it and she swept one of the piles towards her. The one with the wine in it, incidentally. Then she pulled out a photo of our daughter and put it on top.’
‘Shit.’
‘Obviously that wasn’t part of the deal. We were only supposed to be settling the property. First rule of decent behaviour: leave children out of your games.’
And conversation, apparently. Over three hours, they had said nothing about the children they had had together.
‘So what did you do?’ I asked.
‘I took back the wine bottle that represented my collection, put it in my pile and said, “If you’re happy with that, we have an agreement.” So I got the wine and she took my daughter, who I only see when I come over here.’
‘Jesus.’
What would he have said to Randall and Mandy? Take a twin each and get over yourselves?
‘Before you say, “He swapped his daughter for a wine cellar,” think what other outcome there could have been. None. Or none better. Eloise was set on going to Italy.’
Eloise.
I had seen Charlie before, slimmer, with a full head of brown hair, sorting through a bunch of betting slips to find the one that would make his wife the star of the marquee at the Melbourne Cup. Eloise Ditta, the divorce lawyer: If you’re bitter, get Ditta. Charlie couldn’t be accused of taking advantage of a weak opponent.