‘Last night—’
‘We were talking about Claire.’
‘I asked you—’
‘It’s important to me. To what’s happening with us now. You’ve hardly told me anything. Except that you wanted to have children.’
‘That was the plan, and we didn’t really make a new one. I think we just let it go. Grew apart. Did our own things.’
‘Did my being in touch have anything to do with you breaking up?’
I was about to dismiss the question with a quick Of course not, as I had when she emailed me at the time, but she pushed the point.
‘I really need to know.’
‘Why?’
‘Because…it makes me partly responsible. I thought you were a safe option—as safe as it gets—for both of us.’
‘You’re not responsible, beyond reminding me that there was something out there better than the way Claire and I had ended up. I thought, even at this age, that it was worth trying for again.’
‘You’re talking about you and me, back in Melbourne?’
‘What we had back then.’
‘Is that why you came here? After twenty years?’
‘Twenty-two, if you’re counting.’
‘You must have known it was only the remotest chance…I can’t believe you held on to it for so long. I’d stopped being sure it was ever there for you, and now you’re saying it’s been there for twenty…two years.’
‘Of course it was there. I told you I loved you. I meant it. I do now.’
We were out of the village, on the narrow road to the house. Angelina stopped, turned and looked at me. I looked straight back.
For a moment her eyes said I love you too, and then she turned away.
‘Adam. You’re crazy. We had an affair. I loved you too, but…twenty-two years.’
‘I’ve had a life. A pretty good life. I did love Claire. We had a lot of good times. But every time I heard a sad song, it was you I was thinking of.’
It was true, but not something I had said aloud before, possibly because it would have sounded as pathetic as it did to me now.
Angelina started walking again. ‘God, I feel so…’
‘Flattered?’
‘Touched. Guilty. For bringing you here, when you were thinking…More than that.’
‘What you should feel is brassed off that I didn’t make a commitment back in 1989. If that was what you wanted.’
‘Of course it was what I wanted. Remember I wrote to you? I told you, I screwed up. But I was also saying…You knew what I was saying.’
She squeezed my hand and held on to it. We did not speak for the rest of the walk back to the house.
Charlie had apparently done whatever he had to do, with time left to open a bottle of plum liqueur and pour three glasses. The faraway look had gone.
‘Your turn on the entertainment,’ he said.
‘I think I’ll stick to piano.’
‘Sounds wise. I gather you two used to do a dog-and-pony show in Fitzroy.’
‘Not really. Only a few times.’
But I walked to the piano, sat down and started ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, the song I had been playing the night we met. Partway through, Angelina came and stood beside me, and joined in on the sha-la-las. She didn’t touch me; we didn’t exchange glances or say anything beyond the words to a song whose lyrics held no special message, but the mood between us had changed, in the same way that it had changed the night Richard walked into that cheap Chinese restaurant and Angelina began to contemplate, for a time at least, letting him go.
When we had finished she touched my shoulder and said, ‘Do you know “Because the Night” by Patti Smith?’ and I said, ‘and Bruce Springsteen,’ and she said, ‘Loovely,’ and I played the first bars and she sang the first line, then broke off.
‘Then we did “Both Sides Now”, remember?’ I said.
‘Of course I remember.’
Of course she remembered. But what was Charlie making of this recounting of special moments? He was the one who had asked for the recital.
Angelina sang the first line of the Joni Mitchell song, with its reference to angel hair that I had no reason to notice that first time, and I picked up the tune on the piano.
All week there had been a certain equality between Charlie and me. If anything, the power had been with him. He could step in, and had stepped in, at any time, with the bottle of champagne and the 3 a.m. caveman act. I may have been the more active player in the ménage à trois, but Charlie was calling the shots, sitting in his armchair, all but smoking a cigar.
This was different. There was something between us that brooked no interference. Angelina stood so close to me that we were touching as she sang about old friends and change and life’s illusions.
‘Do you remember what you played as we left?’ she said when we had finished.
I launched into ‘You’re Going to Lose that Girl’ and Charlie started laughing.
‘You never told me that,’ he said.
‘If I had, you wouldn’t have found it so funny tonight,’ she said.
‘Can you play “Angie”?’ he said.
No surprise with that one. I was a couple of verses into the Rolling Stones’ song about dreams going up in smoke and it being time to say goodbye, when Angelina knocked my right hand.
‘That’s enough.’
‘What’s the problem?’ said Charlie.
‘Not tonight, okay? We’re having a nice time.’
‘It’s just a song,’ he said. ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist.’
‘Sorry,’ said Angelina, to me. ‘No big thing. Play something else.’
‘One more.’
‘Your call,’ said Angelina.
I knew what I wanted to play, but was not sure I could remember all the words. I had listened to it a few times on the Eurostar.
I played a Freddie Sharp. Somewhere in space, my dad said the black keys play louder, and I sang ‘Angelina’ with his and Bob Dylan’s voices in my head.
I may have missed the verse about the valley of the giants and the milk and honey. But I did not miss the parts about compulsion and loss and vengeance. Nor did I forget that it was this song that had brought me to her door.
Angelina was pressed against me as I sang the final verse, an apocalyptic vision that had nothing and everything to do with how I was feeling: white horses and angels and unknown riders and tell me what you want and it’s yours.
Playing the piano like the percussion instrument it is, I sang the last line of the final chorus with everything in my soul, a soul that only seemed to exist in the presence of the woman beside me.
Oh Angelina.
Charlie had beaten a retreat.
I drew my hand back from the keyboard and put it on top of Angelina’s, on my shoulder.
‘Just tell me what you want,’ she said.
It wasn’t a hard question to answer. ‘I want you.’
33
I folded Angelina into my arms. Tears were streaming down her face and I was almost in tears myself—the tears of release, of finally being able to feel instead of watching, waiting, wondering. As I held her, I felt the anguish that had fuelled my singing dissipate and, in its place, a rising sense of pure joy at the possibility that I might have Angelina again.
Her feelings could not have been so simple. Choosing me over Charlie would mean leaving a long-term relationship and all the memories that went with it. I had done the same a few days earlier, but at least I had a little time and distance, and no children to consider. Charlie was still upstairs.
I took Angelina’s hand and led her to my room, closed the door, and suddenly, desperately wanted to make love to her. She sensed it, and kissed me, and then I was undressing her, with a familiarity that owed more to our time in Australia than the last few days. She wanted it too, perhaps to swamp the pain, perhaps to remind herself that there was substance to what she had chosen, or perhaps just to let go.
We started gently, but ge
ntly was not what either of us needed, and in a minute our clothes were scattered on the floor, and we were falling onto the bed. She rolled me over, too close to the edge, and I managed to knock over not only the table lamp but the entire bedside cabinet.
We both collapsed in giggles, hysterical, unstoppable giggles, which did what the sex was meant to have done. In that moment, Angelina did not feel like the Equal Opportunity Commissioner who couldn’t drink Australian wine: she felt like my partner, my best friend, the twenty-three-year-old I had loved when I was twenty-six. I kissed her all over while she was still laughing, then swung out of bed to right the cabinet.
I put the lamp back, and as I switched it on to check that it was still working, I saw a black iPod nano on the floor. It was running, with the microphone icon on the screen.
‘What are you doing?’ said Angelina.
I put a finger to my lips and showed her the iPod. She took a few moments, as I had, to realise what it meant, then I caught a flash of anger before she turned her head and lay facing away from me, presumably to give herself space to think through what Charlie had done—and why.
It was a gross invasion of privacy, but what privacy were we entitled to? For a few minutes, I fantasised about putting on a show for Charlie, pretending to do all sorts of outrageous things. A day earlier that might have been fun. Now it would only be cruel.
If he wanted to get off on hearing his wife having sex with another man, well, he had already watched us the previous night, and quite likely from the garden the first time on Monday. An audio recording would not add anything new.
Charlie knew of Angelina’s penchant for exhibitionism and had delivered what was probably the definitive version of her fantasy. Angelina had said nothing in bed that would surprise him. The most damning conversation had taken place in the living room.
Maybe he wanted to bottle my accent for future use.
It was probably none of the above: just Charlie’s desire to know what was going on. We had that in common. ‘Do your worst,’ he had said, ‘and see what happens.’
He had expected to win and had played hardball. It was possible that in the joy that was suffusing me there was an ounce of triumph. Charlie would surely have felt it if the outcome had been the other way. I powered off the iPod and felt Angelina shift on the bed behind me. When I turned back, she was facing me, but her eyes were closed.
I watched her as her breathing slowed. After a while I walked to the kitchen for a glass of water, then came back and watched her for a bit longer.
At 5.30 a.m. I touched her shoulder. ‘Do you want to see the dawn?’
‘I want to, but I’m so tired. Watch it for both of us.’
I kissed her, then went outside and climbed the steps to the balcony and watched the sun rise on a new day while Charlie and Angelina slept. My mind began to settle. I thought about what I was facing: moving to Australia, taking on kids, dealing with Charlie. I could do all of this. Angelina knew who I was; I knew who she was; we loved each other. We would make it work. I went back to bed and slept properly for the first time.
I woke a little after 8.30 a.m. Angelina was still asleep. This was only the third day of my life that had started with the woman I wanted to be with forever.
I kissed her eyelids, prompting a flicker of movement, and tried to centre myself in the moment, to block out everything else. It didn’t work. Was I afraid that in the light of day she would reconsider her offer?
A few minutes later, Charlie put his head in, carrying a tray with coffees, orange juices, a croissant, and Angelina’s fruit and muesli. Our clothes were still all over the floor.
‘You gave Angelina a good shake last night,’ he said. ‘I was expecting to hear Gilles thumping on the wall.’
Had we been that loud? Then I realised he was talking about my performance of ‘Angelina’, which he must have heard upstairs, louder than any noises from my room.
‘You know the song?’ I asked.
‘Course I know the fucking song,’ he said. There was a touch of aggression in his voice, not unwarranted for a man who had brought breakfast in bed for his wife and her lover, and then had his knowledge of popular music questioned. I felt Angelina waking.
Charlie reached the door, then turned, looking at a scene that might play out, unseen by him, for the next forty years.
‘I’m going to the Autun market,’ he said. ‘Might get lunch in Beaune.’
‘Do you want us to come?’ said Angelina, still full of sleep.
‘I owe Adam one. For the other night.’
I guessed he was referring to his caveman effort. He hardly owed me for that. But maybe for the lemon tree. And the iPod bug. And recruiting me as a rabbit.
‘Don’t forget we’re leaving tomorrow afternoon,’ he said. The message was clear enough. You’d better get this thing sorted before then. For all of our sakes.
A few minutes later we heard the front door close. I opened the bedroom door to let some fresh air through. It was warming up again.
We finished our breakfast, and Angelina lay back. ‘No hurry,’ she said.
I took her soft naked body in my arms, she nuzzled into my shoulder and my hand slipped down her back.
As morning light filtered through the window, we made love, slowly, exquisitely slowly, for maybe forty minutes, something I had not done for years. We were both in some suspended place, close to the edge, but not so close that we had to consciously hold back.
We could choose to finish any time we wanted, but we were just rocking softly. I say we because I was so connected with Angelina that I could anticipate every movement. It’s a cliché about two becoming one, but this was as close as I had ever got. When I wasn’t kissing her, she was making noises, soft in tone but loud enough to have bothered anyone in the house. When we both started to ramp up the intensity, it was simply the best sex I had ever had, Angelina screaming, from her gut rather than her throat. And me, uninhibited for once by the possibility of Charlie hearing, matching her in volume.
I fell asleep again for a few minutes, and when I woke, I asked the question. Did she mean what she said before we went to bed? And all that it entailed?
She kissed me. ‘I can’t talk without another coffee.’
I ambled into the kitchen, naked, and Charlie was sitting at the table. He saw me and I instinctively covered myself for both modesty and defence.
‘Gilles took the car,’ he said.
‘I’ll get something for dinner,’ I said, keeping the conversation focused on the practical.
‘If you want. Ta.’
‘I’ll head out anyway,’ he said and his voice cracked. The big happy guy who had scored a try against the All Blacks was fighting back tears. I had to give him credit for knowing his wife better than I did: he must have read the decision in her face when he delivered breakfast.
I wanted to put an arm around him, but being naked and the source of his problem militated against it.
Angelina was sitting up when I returned to my bedroom. Instead of commenting on the absence of coffee, she waited until I reached the bed, then said, ‘I love you.’
It was the first time for twenty-two years. It was all she needed to say. I had what I wanted, what I had ostensibly come to reclaim, but had not dared to believe was attainable. Despite fantasising about the idea, despite the undeniable reality of our rekindled love, in the depths of my being I had not expected Angelina would be prepared to leave Charlie for me.
I kissed her, over and over, and we might have spent the rest of the day in bed had it not been for Charlie’s presence. Angelina wrapped herself in my towel and went upstairs to shower.
As I shaved over the vanity unit, a song came into my head unbidden, the song I had sung to give me the confidence to do what I had now done. ‘For Once in My Life’. A song of joy, of celebration, of triumph.
My mouth had begun to form the words when I caught myself in the mirror. It was only a glimpse, just for a moment, and maybe something every man experienc
es at some time in his life.
I saw my father.
My face had thinned with the loss of weight and beard, and age was doing its work. I was four years younger than he had been when he died, eight years older than he was when he walked out on my mother and me. I had been fourteen—the same age as Angelina and Charlie’s son was now—when my father decided to put his own interests ahead of ours.
I looked hard for a while. At myself, not the flash of my father. There was something unpleasant in my eyes, a coldness that didn’t fit with the way I saw myself. I was looking at a man who was destroying a twenty-year marriage with three kids who were oblivious to it but who would be sat down by their parents in a couple of weeks and told the bad news. I doubted they would be making fine distinctions about the responsibility of third parties. At some point I would need to look them in the eyes, too.
I trailed the razor in a long stroke down my cheek as I felt the energy drain out of me.
The garage door made its opening noise. A few moments later, the kitchen door slammed and the car drove away.
I walked down the hallway to the living room and checked the kitchen on the way. Charlie had indeed left. Angelina must still be upstairs. I sat at the piano and let my unconscious mind choose the song and take me to that place where I could feel something other than emptiness.
When I was thirteen, dad had collared me after school while my mother was still at work.
‘Been drinking, have we?’
How the hell did he know that a few of us had sampled some bag-in-box red wine the evening before? He had not been around when I came home, a little bevvied but by no means drunk, and I had managed to avoid my mother.
He laughed. ‘Bit of advice for you, lad. Think about what you sing in the shower. Didn’t have you picked for a Dean Martin fan.’
I realised, with some embarrassment, that I had begun my day singing ‘Little Old Wine Drinker Me’.
‘It’s like requests,’ he said. ‘You give away more than you bargained for. Hope you’ve learned your lesson.’
It wasn’t clear if he was referring to the drinking or the injudicious song choice.
Now I wanted to give voice to my feelings, or at least tease them out, as I had when I listened to ‘Angelina’ the night I left Claire. I noodled around and found myself playing a Jackson Browne song.