On the train to Paris, I waited for the ache of the farewell to subside and be replaced by some sort of relief at closure.
The week had woken something in me, but it had come with a hard lesson. There was a place for lost love, and it was not in a French farmhouse with a married couple struggling to get through a crisis. Lost love belongs in a three-minute song, pulling back feelings from a time when they came unbidden, recalling the infatuation, the walking on sunshine that cannot last and the pain of its loss, whether through parting or the passage of time, reminding us that we are emotional beings.
The countryside and villages rushed past, we pulled into Paris and I changed trains, but the ache did not go away. Instead I felt unsettled. Something didn’t fit: the feeling, as I held Angelina on the platform, that she was still hoping I might change my mind.
I did not believe she loved me as much as she loved Charlie. Twenty years ago, maybe. But not now, even after his affair. My sense of unease began to turn into a conviction that she was not going back to Charlie at all, that the Douglas fight had been terminal. She would not have told me, because that would be acknowledging that I was second choice.
A line from the Killers’ song I had played in my room the previous night, about shining in the hearts of others, was running around in my head, trying to reassure me that after all these things I had done I could hold my head up.
At the Gare du Nord, waiting for the Eurostar to leave, I found myself thinking about Claire. I would have only myself to blame if the next time I heard a sad song I was transported to a moment with her that I had failed to appreciate. Or to one that I had appreciated: the evening at the Buddha Bar after the lotto debacle, when she had somehow understood that the biggest threat to our relationship was not her own anger but my shame—that I was ready to leave so as not to have to face her again.
The penny dropped.
I was on the train. I had transited Paris, bypassed the baby grand in the waiting area, checked in, queued for security, formally exited France, cleared UK immigration, shuffled with the crowd onto the platform, boarded the train, and found a place for my bag. I was as good as home. I had only one question to answer: How much did I love Angelina?
I had likened the day that Angelina reconnected with me to my father turning over a 45 of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” to play the flip side, with the simple clarity of the piano giving way to the fuzz and confusion and excitement of electric guitars. Ask anyone about “Revolution” and that’s what they’ll remember—the guitars. But listen to it again and you’ll hear the electric piano of Nicky Hopkins, the ring-in, low in the mix for a while, but in the end resurgent, bringing it home.
I raced back through immigration, officially reentered France, crossed Paris to the Gare de Lyon, and bought a ticket on the TGV to Mâcon, back to where I had come from.
I had an hour and forty-five minutes on the train to think. It was long enough to work out what had been going on, or near enough. The key to negotiation, as the man at the center of it all said, is to know the other party’s goals.
I had known the first of Charlie’s goals within minutes of meeting him. He needed to be liked. By everyone, even me. He also wanted to keep his marriage, but I had relied too much on that goal. Now I knew another, perhaps related to the first: he needed to escape his shame.
Charlie’s marriage, his persona, had been built on his worshiping Angelina, and she in turn idolizing him for that. He had slipped up in the worst possible way. My guilt about losing twenty thousand pounds to a bad investment must have been nothing to what Charlie felt when Angelina looked at him.
The week now made more sense. Charlie had acceded to us being together, knowing that his affair had made Angelina vulnerable. She didn’t have Claire’s superhuman capacity to put her emotions aside and make the right call for everyone. Then, after trying to bring Angelina down to his level, pushing her as far as she could be pushed, he had found his shame was still there and had then done everything to make Angelina leave—including encouraging her backup option. Without ever dropping the good-guy persona.
All of the above.
He wanted his marriage to survive. But only if he could get past the shame. And no forgiveness, no matter how complete, could do that for him.
What about Angelina? She knew Charlie. She knew what was going on. She had tried to put aside her own anger to rebuild his ego. His ego. All those stories about what a hero he was. She had bought into his game of bringing her down. Then she had taken the huge step of forgiving him.
But before she had had a chance to recover from the emotional toll of doing that, Charlie had asked her, through the Smoke Till You’re Sick sing-along, to violate her memories. And finally the insult of the Gilbert and Sullivan bet.
Maybe Angelina’s forgiveness was a two-edged sword: in the act of forgiving him, she was showing herself to be a better person. What Angelina did in an attempt to get the marriage back together could not be equated with Charlie’s self-serving fling. Charlie may not have processed this—just realized he could not win and lashed out.
Whatever the reason, Angelina had lashed back. Your father may have died with no regrets, but will you?
That would have done it. It cut to the core of his problem. Charlie had an even bigger need to be liked—admired—than I did. His only option was escape. Angelina knew it.
Dooglas gave him a final, wretched chance to seize the high moral ground on his way out.
Which left the third party. I was supposed to be the catalyst who would, by sleeping with Angelina, square the ledger and serve as a peace offering—a gift—from Charlie, in line with tradition. And walk away unchanged.
Angelina and I were never meant to fall in love again. But I had been primed to do so from the moment I decided to leave Claire. In the face of Angelina’s crumbling marriage, and the convoluted games it had descended to, our shared memories and the support I had offered must have seemed like a breath of fresh air—and a way out.
I remembered what Angelina had asked me the previous day and had tried to remind me of on the platform: If Charlie was not around, would you be there for me?
I had said yes. She had not held me to it. She had let me think that they would sort it out.
Their marriage was over. Angelina and I loved each other. She was waiting for me to work it out and step up. Again.
* * *
I jumped off the train in Mâcon, headed down the platform to find a taxi, and almost ran into Charlie, waiting at the first-class end of the train for the last of the passengers to alight. He had two big suitcases and was alone.
I stepped between him and the train. It’s fair to say he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
“I have to catch this train. Angelina’s still at the house.”
“You’ve left her?”
“You’re free to see her. As you’ve been for the last week. Now, I need to get on the train.”
Given our respective physiques, if Charlie insisted on getting on the train I was not going to be able to stop him, short of doing something that got us both arrested. That was my Plan B.
I started with Plan A. “If you don’t talk to me, I’m going to broadcast your affair all over the Internet.”
I wasn’t going to need Plan B, though we might end up getting arrested anyway.
“You fucker. You little fucker. She told you? Texted you? Bitch. That’s why you came back. Fucking—”
He was furious with everyone except the person who had created the problem. I had not made the journey on a false premise.
I stepped back as the train was about to leave. He had a choice: get on board or grab me. He chose the latter, but there is only so much you can do in view of a platform full of staring passengers and the railway attendant. He must also have realized that the first thing I would do after waking up in the hospital with both arms missing was dictate a message about his infidelity.
He put me down. “You’re not happy with wrecking our marriage? You want to humiliate me as well? And her, you know. It doesn’t reflect well on her.”
“I don’t want to humiliate you or Angelina,” I said. “I’m here because I want to tell you something relevant to both of us. I’ll see you in the coffee shop in fifteen minutes. When we’re both in a mood to negotiate.”
I was not planning any negotiations. But I needed his professional persona. Mr. Safe Hands. Mr. Win-Win. Mr. Incredible.