I woke to light filtering through my window and Charlie knocking on the door.
“Tea or coffee, mate?”
“Thanks, I’ll have a shower first.”
“Can I come in?”
Why not? Everybody else does. “Yeah. I’m still in bed.”
Charlie opened the door, wearing slacks and an untucked shirt, and I enjoyed a moment of relief that circumstances, if not self-control, had kept me from having sex with his wife. He gave me a quick rundown on the bathroom protocol—plenty of hot water for ordinary mortals, but get in before The Princess uses it all.
It was strange, and intimate, sharing a bathroom with Angelina again. I could not help myself—I browsed the cabinet, and found nothing surprising. They let the house out to others, so this was a communal cupboard, but there were a couple of hair ties on the vanity unit. I picked one up and twirled it between my fingers. I had almost taken Angelina against the door the previous day, kissed her virtually naked that night, and here I was fetishising a bobble. I was careful to go easy on the hot water.
When I joined Charlie in the kitchen, he was working the espresso machine.
“Have to bring the beans from Melbourne,” he said. “Local stuff’s crap.”
He fashioned a Starbucks-style confection with frothed milk, cinnamon, and a sprinkling of chocolate and took it upstairs.
“Got time for a stroll to the village?” he asked when he returned.
There were advantages in saying no. Angelina seemed intent on consummating our cyber relationship, and I guessed that the previous evening’s visit was to have been the moment, until Charlie’s detour to the shops had presented an earlier opportunity. After two near misses, I had little doubt about what would happen if I passed up the walk.
But I wanted to make my own decision and Charlie was part of that. I needed to know what was happening between him and Angelina. It was one thing to rescue her from a broken marriage, as I had failed to do before. It was another to be the cause of it.
* * *
It was a pleasant downhill walk along the narrow road in the early-morning sunshine, past concrete water troughs, freshly mown fields with hay bales scattered around, and a couple of donkeys sticking their heads over the rock wall. The village was less prissily perfect than its English counterpart would have been: a few houses in ruins; blackberry vines tangled over rock walls; shutters painted in loud pinks, purples, and greens.
Charlie filled the time with a story about tenants who had incurred the wrath of the locals through various transgressions, the most serious of which was not that they had put glass in the general waste bin but that the bottles were from Bordeaux.
On a Monday in rural France, only the supermarket was open. Charlie bought croissants, a baguette, and a small wooden box of oysters, using rudimentary French. I had done an exchange program at school, and my French was stronger, but the middle-aged woman behind the counter, who gave me a careful appraisal before attending to Charlie, seemed to be able to follow what he was saying.
“Gilles’s girlfriend,” said Charlie when we were out the door.
He puffed a bit going up the hill. He was carrying a lot of weight, and apparently had no intention of losing it. He had bought five “pure butter” croissants, each as big as a woman’s size-six shoe, for three people.
“I always walk to the village unless it’s raining,” he said. “Sometimes even then. Got to keep in shape.” He laughed.
* * *
I spent a quiet morning in my bedroom setting up a database restructure via an adequate Internet link, sitting against the pillows with my computer on my lap. Angelina put her head in a couple of times and made a fuss about getting me a coffee. I could hear Charlie doing the actual barista work.
When she came back with the coffee I smiled, and she said, “What?”
I let her answer her own question.
“You think I’m a prima donna because Charlie made the coffee.”
“Now that you mention it…”
“Two things: first, I’m on holiday, and second, Charlie loves doing it. Try touching the coffee machine and you’ll find out. And if he wants to show you that I expect to have everything done for me…” She shrugged her shoulders.
“He doesn’t always do the shopping?”
She laughed. “Food only.”
Then, from the doorway: “I don’t want to keep going on, but … what I said last night. You can trust me. I mean, if that’s what you want. You won’t be doing anything terrible.”
“It’d help if you elaborated a bit. So I could make my own decision.”
“I know.”
“One question. Simple question. Are you and Charlie in trouble? Your marriage?”
She hesitated before answering. “We’ve got some issues. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I’m not looking for a new relationship.”
I just wanted someone in my corner. We’re trying to work it out. No relationship, no falling in love, nobody getting hurt.
* * *
Around noon, I walked to the living room to find Charlie and Angelina both doing what I had been doing—typing away on laptops.
“What are you working on?” I asked Angelina.
“Just work.”
It seemed strange after four months of recent communication and an evening of being a guest in her house to ask, “What do you do?”
“At the moment, I’m writing an article. I do a newspaper column—mainly women’s issues. I’m a human rights lawyer. For the last three years I’ve been an equal opportunity commissioner.”
Right. Charlie Acheson is on the Internet for scoring a try against New Zealand. Angelina Brown is an equal opportunity commissioner. I could only hope that the Elephant and Castle had put up last week’s win.
After lunch, a mercifully light smoked salmon omelet, I joined them in the living room, working from one of the leather armchairs as they sat at right angles to each other at the dining table. I had a pleasant and distracting view of Angelina, who was in blue jeans, a loose knitted top that fell off one shoulder, and bare feet. She caught me looking a couple of times and smiled.
The revelation of her professional persona, unexpected as it was, had only enhanced her appeal. I was enjoying the feeling: the beautiful, successful woman I once knew is still a beautiful, successful woman—and she still wants me.
Around six P.M. the legendary sportsman, barista, and occasional physician packed up his laptop and adjourned to the kitchen. I had finished my own work, and as soon as Charlie left the room Angelina was over by my chair, bending down to kiss me. It was going to be hard to survive a week of this.
Charlie called from the kitchen. “What happened to the lemons?”
“Margarita,” Angelina shouted back. “Remember?”
“I thought there were a couple left.”
“I haven’t touched them.”
“No worries. I’ll go out and get some.”
This was going to be my last chance to say no. Angelina kissing me did nothing for rational decision-making, but my gut told me to trust her. She had given me no reason not to.
It took about fifteen seconds for the outside door to click closed, about five to run to my bedroom, and about ten for Angelina to have her jeans and top off. After two frustrated attempts in the space of twenty-four hours, desire had gone up to eleven. I pushed her back onto the unmade bed, forcefully enough to shift it a couple of feet across the floor. She was tugging at the buttons of my shirt, and I was kicking my shoes off with the laces still done up. It was going to be over in about a minute. Awopbopaloobop alopbamboom.
I managed to pull back. We were not in our twenties anymore, at a party in someone else’s bedroom. There was no rush.
I kissed Angelina softly, on her lips and then her neck, moving down her body, taking my time as the late-afternoon sunshine bathed the room.
Long ago, I listened to Billie Holiday singing “Summertime”—not once but many times—and I thought it was as close to a perfect rendition as could be imagined: Lady Day laying out the melody in all its languid easy-living elegance, the restraint of her delivery only accentuating the feeling behind it.
Years later, I listened to Janis Joplin’s live performance. It’s a screaming, primal blues, the melody no more than a point of departure, but still, unmistakably, the same song. My familiarity with Billie Holiday’s version only made Joplin’s reinterpretation more powerful and in turn opened my mind to nuances I had missed in the original. Having experienced both versions, I knew the song in a way I could never have if I had heard only one.
Making love to Angelina felt different and familiar at the same time. Her body had changed, as had mine. She was leaner and softer and stronger—and less inhibited, turning me onto my back, then rolling us over again, urging me on, digging her fingers into me as she hovered on the brink of an orgasm she couldn’t quite reach.
Finally, I picked her up, stood in the middle of the room with her legs wrapped around me, and said—in her ear but not in a whisper—“You nearly got caught yesterday. The door was unlocked and he could have opened it … he did open it … he walked in…” and she half moaned and half screamed, and everything fell away—the room, the fantasy, time—and it was just the two of us.
I lowered her onto the bed, both of us slippery with sweat. As we separated and I became aware of my surroundings again, there was a sound—half pop, half hiss—from behind me. I turned my head and saw Charlie, his frame filling the doorway.
How long had he been standing there? I was flooded with a feeling I had not had since I was a kid: I’ve done something really stupid and I’m going to pay for it. I thought there was a real chance he was about to kill me.
He was wearing an apron that read Welcome to My Kitchen. Now Get the Hell Out. But instead of a kitchen knife, he was holding an open champagne bottle in one hand and three glasses in the other.
Clearly savoring his advantage, he filled a glass, ambled over, and handed it to me. I had no choice but to take it. Naked. He poured a second and gave it to his wife, who had risen from the bed, picked up her top, and sat down again behind me.
Angelina found her voice and made a feeble attempt to wrest back the initiative. “You said you were going to get lemons.”
“I did. The lemon tree’s not a long walk.”
Charlie poured a glass of champagne for himself.
“Drappier Grande Sendrée rosé 2002,” he said, smiling. “Sendrée spelled with an S, an historical error that found its way into the land register. Means cinders. You probably know that. Quite distinct notes of cherry and spice. Not much made, but we know the winemaker.”
It was the cheeseburger scene from Pulp Fiction. When he’s finished discussing the champagne, he’s going to kill me.
“So,” he continued, “dinner will be at seven. We’re having Belon oysters, with the essential squeeze of lemon, followed by foie gras and guinea fowl with wild mushrooms.” He looked at Angelina. “And for dessert, tarte aux pommes.”
He took a sip of champagne, surveying the room—clothes on the floor, the bed askew, his wife and her lover.
“And now you’ll both be able to concentrate on the food and wine.”
He turned and walked out, leaving the door open behind him.
Angelina looked at me. I looked at Angelina, naked and holding a glass of pink champagne. As was I, though my shaking hand had spilled half of it.
Was there a trace of sadness in her eyes, an echo of that night in the upstairs bedroom almost a quarter of a century ago? If there was, it disappeared quickly.
She stood up, collected her clothes into a bundle, then clinked her glass against mine.
“See you at seven,” she said.