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 frying 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 realize 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’s Renault for a shopping expedition to the Macon hypermarket, calling out a good-bye 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 e-mail 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.
* * *
Midafternoon, 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 offense.” 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 realize.”
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 realizes 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 least 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 might 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 philosophizing 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.
“I’ve got a question for you,” she said. “How many people are there in the story?” Luckily the question was directed at Charlie, because my instant response would have been three.
Charlie paused and nodded. “Fair point. I’ve got a better one.”
“Enough,” said Angelina. “You guys drinking beer together and telling jokes, it’s a bit bizarre.”
“One more,” said Charlie. “There’s this New Zealander…”
“Tell me this doesn’t involve sheep,” said Angelina.
“It involves sheep. Otherwise, I’d have made him a Pom. So this Kiwi is being interviewed…”
Charlie told a long version, complete with New Zealand accent, which sounded to me much the same as his Australian accent.
“‘… and those sheds out there, I built all of them. But do they call me Murray the Shed Builder? No. And those wood piles. Do they call me Murray the Woodcutter? No.’”
I finished it for him. “‘You screw one sheep…’”
Angelina got up and walked away.
Without our audience, we reverted to our discussion of givers and takers.
“I think you’re being simplistic,” I said. “I do—did—the cooking; I earned as much as Claire did…”
“But pleasing her wasn’t the central motivation of your life, was it?”
“Not of hers, either,” I said.
“I don’t know her,” he said, “but you might be surprised.”
Charlie was right: he didn’t know Claire. She would have been the first to admit that her software baby had dominated her life—and overshadowed our relationship—for the past four years. More to the point, I wondered at his characterization of Angelina. Had she become a taker only to accommodate Charlie?
Angelina returned and asked us to tell another joke. Really.
“There’s some riddle about men not knowing where to find the clitoris. Right?”
“What’s the difference…?” Charlie and I began in unison.
“You go,” said Charlie.
“What’s the difference between a pub and a clitoris?” I said.
“Every man knows where to find a pub,” said Charlie.
“That’s the one I was thinking of. I just couldn’t remember how it went,” said Angelina, and turned away.
“Hey, hey,” said Charlie. “Explanation.”
“I interviewed a surgeon—a urologist—about discrimination in the surgical training program, and it turns out she’s done this amazing research on the clitoris and I thought I’d do a separate column on it. Where do you think the clitoris is?”
This was, on the face of it, a curious question to ask her husband and lover. If either of us did not know how to find it, she would have been aware of the problem.
Charlie took up the challenge. “Most people think it’s just a little nub, but it’s actually quite big, and effectively surrounds the vagina. That’s why women have so-called vaginal orgasms. Freud was wrong to differentiate them from clitoral orgasms.”
“How did you know that?” said Angelina.
“Wide reading.”
“Well, most gynecologists and surgeons—who are predominantly male—don’t know it,” said Angelina. “So I can start my column with your joke.”
“We’re expecting an acknowledgment,” said Charlie. “This column would not have been possible without the help of two men.”
“Screw you both,” said Angelina, and waited for a moment, as if daring either of us to respond, before walking away.
“Angie’s got a bit to do, so dinner at eight,” said Charlie. “I’m in charge of food. She’s in charge of entertainment.”
“What do I do?” I asked.
“Whatever she wants you to.”