I gave him the cup back. ‘I think you qualified for the coffee run.’
Had I crossed the line? Maybe. Halfway to the stairs, Charlie turned around. ‘When I get back, we should talk.’
29
Charlie started our chat on the walk to the village.
‘What are you making of all this?’ he said.
‘Well, the food and wine have been brilliant,’ I said. ‘And the company.’
‘Sex not so great?’
‘You’re married to her. I don’t have to tell you.’
‘I’ll take that as a positive report. Are you in love with her?’
‘Yes, I’m in love with her,’ I said to Angelina’s husband, admitting it to him and myself at the same time. What else could I call the feeling that had come back in the first few seconds of our Skype conversation, hit me again on the platform at Macon and coloured everything since—the emotional dimension that had been strong enough for me to walk away from Claire?
I wasn’t thinking about the consequences of sharing it with Charlie. The words had demanded to be said and I felt some relief in saying them, even to the man who had told me almost nothing about his own feelings.
‘You’ve got two years on me,’ he said. ‘You poor bastard.’
‘I haven’t spent them all pining. And I have to say I’m not feeling like a poor bastard. I’m feeling like I’m being welcomed where I should be thrown out.’
Charlie was looking over the fields as he spoke.
‘So at the end of the week, you’re hoping you’ll walk away with her. Part of you is. At some level, and after a decent period of time and considering et cetera, et cetera. You’re in love with her.’
He looked back towards me.
‘I want her to stay with me. In case you were wondering. But it’s not anything you or I can do much about, unless one of us opts out and denies her the choice.’
He was rating my chances higher than I did, much higher than I had the previous night when I had thought the game was over. If sleeping with me was part of a plan to make Charlie jealous or more appreciative of what he had, then Angelina had surely achieved it. If it was a problem with sex, then Angelina’s outsourcing of it with Charlie’s consent seemed like a civilised approach that should maintain the marriage rather than threaten it. Maybe Charlie had agreed, but couldn’t deal with it. That would sit with his 3 a.m. intervention.
Angelina had said that she did not want a relationship. She had said the same thing in 1989.
‘So we wait and see,’ said Charlie. ‘And enjoy the holiday and the company while we can.’
The runaway train metaphor came to mind again. Eat, drink and be merry, and await the inevitable. On the other hand, this was the man who had invented a lemon tree. I did not see him as a fatalist.
‘Let’s get another coffee,’ he said, and we walked into a bar that could have been out of a 1940s movie: 8.30 in the morning and old men in berets drinking white wine from little glasses.
We ordered petits noirs, which confirmed Charlie’s assessment of the local coffee.
‘Why do you love her?’ said Charlie. ‘She’s not an easy person. And you’re seeing her on holiday. Dressed to impress. You should know that she’s not so relaxed when she comes home after a bad day at work. Or gets a drubbing in the tabloids. Or if I try to serve her Australian chardonnay.’
‘She seems to have got a bit pickier since I knew her,’ I said.
Privately, I blamed Charlie. He indulged her. I suspected that she would readily revert to generic red wine in old Vegemite jars at Jim’s Greek Tavern. Or, for that matter, a pork pie and a pint in an English pub.
‘She’s actually pretty tough,’ said Charlie, half answering my question. ‘We go camping with the kids…’ He stopped. ‘You know we have kids, right?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Three.’ That was all I knew. ‘Who’s looking after them?’
‘Angelina’s niece.’
Presumably the babe in her elder sister’s arms at the family Christmas, who would now be in her early twenties. It had been a long time.
‘Angelina talks to them most days,’ he said, ‘but Stephanie’s almost eighteen, and Samantha’s seventeen. Adam’s fourteen.’
Adam. She called her kid Adam. My reaction must have been written all over my face.
Charlie was laughing. ‘Sorry, mate, sorry—just having a lend. His name’s Doug. Douglas. After my dad.’
His face was dead straight now. Mine could not possibly have been.
‘Might have been better to call him Adam,’ he said. ‘Angelina hated Douglas—the name. Hated it. She started off calling him by his middle name, Anthony. Her dad’s name. And it stuck. Someday he’s going to tell us that being called different names by his father and mother screwed him up in some serious way. It’s the only thing we’d ever really argued about, but my Dad had cancer and I was bloody about it—fucked if I’d call him Anthony. Her old man’s a decent enough bloke, but no balls. If he’d stood up to his wife, the family might have been less of a fuck-up.’
I stayed with Charlie’s family. ‘What sort of cancer?’
‘Liver. It’s a bastard. Three months and gone.’
‘My dad’s was lung. Could as well have been liver with the amount he drank. Same result.’
‘You were close?’
‘He left when I was fourteen, so not really, not as adults. But we both played piano. I don’t know if it makes sense to you, but it was a connection between us.’
‘Makes perfect sense.’
It was hard not to like this self-deprecating guy who could open a bottle of champagne when he discovered his wife with another man and the next day drag her back to bed. But there was one important thing we differed on.
‘How wedded are you to croissants for breakfast?’ I asked.
‘Not specially. It’s more an excuse for a walk to the village. Angelina has fruit and muesli anyway.’ He must have been eating four.
‘How’d you feel about a full English breakfast?’
‘Bring it on.’
On the way out of the bar, I picked up a card for the local taxi company. I wasn’t planning any excursions, but it gave me some independence—and an escape route, if I needed it.
We purchased the makings of breakfast at the boucherie, and I had to move fast to pay ahead of Charlie.
‘What do you think’s going to happen?’ I asked as we walked up the hill.
‘At the end of the week?’
‘Yeah. You’re being amazingly…calm…about it.’
‘Because I think she’s going to stay with me. I’m not saying it’s perfect between us, but we’ve got kids, a house—we’ve got a life together. I try to support her and what she wants to do.’
He stopped, picked a handful of cherries from a tree overhanging the road and tossed them in the shopping bag.
‘If you’re seeing something wrong, I think it’s because we’ve reached a limit. The way we work relies on me pulling rabbits out of the hat for Angelina. Not just rings on her birthday but trips, surprises. For her fortieth birthday, I got everyone from her past together—all the actors, everyone—and we all went to this place in Thailand. I offered to fly you out, but she said no.’
‘So I’m this year’s bunny?’
‘I think rabbit has a certain appropriateness. But you see what I mean. What do you offer after that?’
‘So what does she do for you?’
‘Appreciates it all. I’m not being flippant. Why do you play piano for nothing?’
There was a question that could have provided material for twenty years of psychotherapy—or about five seconds of my mother’s free alternative: You’ve always been a show-off. Perhaps the same applied to Charlie. I let him go on.
‘She does do things for me. For my fiftieth birthday, she booked a studio and made me a recording of “Because the Night” with a band. You know the song? Patti Smith.’
I nodded and didn’t bother to elaborate on the aut
horship.
‘For my forty-fifth, she gave me a portrait of herself by an Archibald Prize winner. Naked. It’s in my study on the wall in front of the computer. Kids never ever use my computer.’ He laughed.
‘I’ve got a room like that,’ I said. ‘Had a room.’
‘Your man-cave?’
‘We inherited Claire’s mother’s house, and one bedroom was set up as a shrine to her sister who’d died when she was three.’
Charlie nodded. He was puffing with the effort of walking and talking.
‘Now it’s my office, but Claire’s never set foot in it. Not to dust, not to get a stamp, not for anything.’
‘Who cleaned it out?’
‘Me. She wouldn’t go into the house before I’d got rid of everything. At that stage we were still trying to have children, so…’
‘Not much fun for you.’
‘I still have nightmares.’
‘You know what they say,’ said Charlie. ‘Who must do the hard thing? He who can.’
We walked for a minute or two in silence until the path levelled and Charlie got his breath back.
‘From my point of view, if she does want out, if I’ve got it wrong, better to do it now. Get it over once and for all, everyone move on.’
For the first time, there was feeling in his voice.
Not many men would be able to match Charlie in the rabbit-out-of-hat stakes. Some might have the money, but few would be prepared to contemplate this week’s indulgence. So what? Most marriages survived without escalating birthday surprises and visits from ex-lovers. Charlie’s indulgence and Angelina’s apparent need for it spoke of some longing, some hole that no amount of 1966 Bordeaux could fill.
As we reached the house, he said, ‘If you’re wondering why I’m so relaxed about having you around, it’s because you’ve always been around. You didn’t have to do anything. It’s better to have you here in person. Do your worst and we’ll see what happens.’
30
The kitchen had everything I needed, and I had three pans on the go. Eggs, tomatoes, champignons, bread, lamb’s fry, bacon and black pudding. Charlie was squeezing oranges.
Angelina came downstairs, empty cereal bowl and mug in hand, just as everything was ready.
‘What are you cooking?’ she said. ‘I could smell it from upstairs.’ Her tone suggested that the charms of cooking bacon were lost on her.
‘Adam’s making breakfast,’ said Charlie. ‘Got room?’
Angelina looked in the pan. ‘What’s the round stuff?’
‘Boudin noir,’ said Charlie with relish. ‘Blood sausage.’
‘Yuck. Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck.’
Charlie was laughing his head off.
‘Bastards,’ she said, as though we had done it deliberately to annoy her. She looked at Charlie. ‘You realise how much cholesterol is in that?’
‘No more than three croissants with butter.’
I was on his side.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Have a tomato or a mushroom.’
‘I’ve had breakfast. I need to Skype the kids,’ she said and walked off.
‘Wooo,’ said Charlie, loudly enough for her to hear.
After breakfast, I set myself up in the living room. Charlie took Gilles’ Renault for a shopping expedition to the Macon hypermarket, calling out a goodbye to Angelina, who had retreated upstairs.
I was deep into the database by the time Charlie returned, with no appearance from the lady. Meanwhile, there had been an email from Mandy.
If you’re thinking of doing something about the situation you’ve created with Claire, you might want to act sooner rather than later. Claire’s inferior (least developed) function is S—under stress she’s likely to turn to the Sensory. BTW, as you should know, yours is F—under stress you are likely to make bad emotional/value decisions.
Even though I was not thinking of going back to Claire, the message got under my skin, a reminder that the world beyond our village was already moving on. Would ‘the Sensory’ translate as an evening listening to music at the pub or a call to Concertina Ray?
Angelina came down while Charlie and I were unpacking the shopping. ‘What’s for lunch?’ she said. Charlie patted his stomach. ‘We just finished brunch. And very good it was too.’
‘You just finished brunch. Don’t worry, I’ll have an apple.’ She walked off without taking anything.
‘PMS,’ said Charlie.
‘I heard that,’ came the reply from the hallway.
‘You were meant to. Come back and get your apple.’
I guessed that if I had not been there, he would have offered to make her a sandwich, but pride prevented him doing so in front of me. It cost him. Angelina disappeared upstairs.
Mid-afternoon, Charlie came over to where I was working. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying to repair the engine on a 767 while it’s in flight,’ I said.
‘Nothing too difficult, then.’
‘No people involved, so no.’
He laughed. ‘Can you take some time out?’
I closed my laptop. ‘I’m at a break point. I skipped lunch, so I can call it quits for the day.’
‘Go a beer?’
‘That’d be brilliant.’
We sat in the courtyard and drank in silence for a while. Storm clouds were forming and something had been brewing in my head.
‘Charlie,’ I started, ‘tell me if I’m way out of line here, but—’
‘Just say what you want to say. I won’t take offence.’ He passed me another Heineken. ‘If there’s one thing you learn in my job, it’s that more information is always better. Always. People think they’ll win a negotiation by holding back stuff, but a lot of the time there are things that you want that the other party is able to give you relatively easily. Sometimes in a way you don’t realise.’
He was on a roll, and I let him go.
‘Like Claire, selling her business. I had a company out of Silicon Valley wanting to buy a consultancy run by this charismatic—and egotistical—guy, and it was all about how much they had to pay him to stay on. Which he was equating with how much he was valued. Truth was, they wanted him to go. So did he. Turned the whole deal around when I found out.’
‘They tell you these things? They trust you?’
I shouldn’t have bothered to ask. It was only a few hours since I’d told him I was in love with his wife.
‘Most of the time.’ He paused. ‘I’ll deny this with my hand on a Bible, but a couple of times I’ve left my iPod in the room while I went to the gents. With the voice-record function on. Only ever used it in the cause of a mutually satisfactory outcome.’ He sipped his beer. ‘So, what can you tell me to help us out?’
‘I was thinking. If what you said this morning happens not to be the way things turn out…I mean, you’ve got kids at home, right? I’d be happy to talk about…finding the best way forward. For all of us.’
It didn’t come out the way I had planned, but there was probably no good way of saying it. I was expecting Charlie to come back with something sarcastic, but instead he said, ‘Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.’ Then he laughed. ‘We’re doing our best. When you do mergers and acquisitions you often come in at a point where the writing’s on the wall, even if neither party realises it. Our job is to help everyone see it. And then make it work.’ Then: ‘Tell me a bit more about Claire. If you want to.’
‘We’ve only just split—a few days ago.’
‘That was the ostensible reason for you coming here—to debrief, cry on the shoulder of an old friend. Don’t worry, I wasn’t fooled. But you and Claire have broken up?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You both okay with it?’
‘To tell the truth, I haven’t had much time to think about it.’
It sounded callous, put that way. I added, ‘It had been winding down for a long time. For both of us.’
‘And you said, no kids?’
‘We tried. She’s a great person, not le
ast for putting up with me. We used to work together. No bad days, no tantrums, always looking ahead.’
‘So?’
‘I didn’t put in enough. It wasn’t hearts and flowers. Or rings and birthday vintages.’
‘Because you couldn’t let go of someone you once loved. Right?’
I said nothing. Was he right? Had my nostalgia for Angelina been a cause rather than an effect of our declining relationship? Maybe Charlie was just projecting his own fear of having to live without her.
‘You poor bastard,’ he said, again, apparently taking my silence as agreement.
‘If it was true, then it’d be poor Claire,’ I said.
‘Who loves you so much she’d rather you left her if that makes you happier.’
It may have been true, once, but the reason for our parting had been the opposite: putting our individual interests ahead of our relationship.
‘I want to share a bit of personal philosophy,’ said Charlie, now two beers in. ‘In this world there are givers and takers. I’m going to guess that Claire’s a giver.’
‘Which would make me a taker.’
‘That was my starting point. But it’s not a bad thing. Givers and takers need each other. For some of us, giving genuinely feels better than receiving. So we need appreciative recipients. I get as much of a kick from the look on Angie’s face when I give her something as she gets from getting it.’
He may have been thinking of the look of relief when he poured pink champagne instead of murdering her and her lover.
Charlie’s philosophising was interrupted by the appearance of the taker.
‘Sorry I was grumpy before. I’ve got an article due. Can I get you some wine or anything?’
‘Sit down and I’ll make you a margarita,’ said Charlie.
‘Just a weak one. I’m not finished yet.’
Charlie went to the kitchen and returned a couple of minutes later with the margarita and two more beers. ‘You want to hear a joke about a Frenchman, an Australian and a Pom?’ he said.
‘No, no jokes—I hate jokes,’ said Angelina.
She stayed anyway, and Charlie told the sangfroid joke—complete with accents and embellishments. I laughed, but Charlie was watching Angelina. He had managed to bring up the topic without giving anything away.