The rest of the week progessed uneventfully. Agatha took Jennifer and Freddie out to lunch, to brief them both fully on the St. Wilfred coffee morning, and Freddie confided rather more selectively in Leticia, but Charlie Tindal learned nothing of the interesting events in Mrs. Hartland’s garden, and it was perhaps for the best. Anyway, he had more pressing things on his mind, for he was already counting down towards his free lunch on Friday.
He worked busily in the garden, for the hot weather held. Jennifer, now at home and working on her chandelier programme, because she and Freddie took turn and turn about at the shop on a three days on, three days off basis – the shop was closed on Sundays - made a fresh attempt to invite herself to lunch as well, or at least send Freddie as a chaperone, but Charlie rejected her suggestions flatly. He had been invited, and he wanted to be the only guest. His mind conjured the most delicious dreams and fantasies as he worked, and his dreaming drove him along.
Friday dawned in another skyblue day. Charlie dressed with care, in a dark blue shirt and matching socks, and light blue cotton chinos, making sure that his shoes were polished to a bright gleam, and set off in the Volvo. His heart fluttered, and he had difficulty in concentrating.
He found Bella’s home out along a wooded lane, in an area of large houses set back from the road and surrounded by gardens large enough to rank as mini-estates, and drove slowly and carefully as he neared his destination. Then he stopped. Bella’s house was white, with a green tiled roof, reminiscent of a Spanish hacienda. A series of pillars carried an arcade running along the front, shading the large ground floor windows, and the drive curved around a manicured lawn running back into a colourful wall of variegated shrubs. It was a wealthy home, even an impressive one. Charlie realised that his mouth had dried out, and felt a moment of sudden panic, an urge to turn about and flee. But he drove the Volvo slowly into the driveway. He was a man, and no coward.
He stopped in front of the house, and saw the front door open as he climbed out of the Volvo. He recognised the slim dark woman in the doorway with a stab of excitement. She was beautiful and elegant, dressed in a pale turquoise silk shirt waister dress and matching shoes, and she came towards him smiling and with her hands held out in greeting.
‘You found the house alright?’
Charlie stammered something that was more of a sound than any intelligent reply. Two soft warm hands had taken his, and he was looking down into two huge dark green eyes set quite wide apart, shadowed a little perhaps by hard times, but also lit by something that might be a quiescent flame, and knew that he was melting inside himself. He stared for a moment, drinking Bella in. She was beautiful, with a generous mouth that smiled up at him tentatively, and hair gleaming with a dark copper shine. He was mesmerised, and could feel himself being drawn down into her until he was almost drowning.
‘You seem a little lost for words.’ Bella’s smile broadened, as though she was moving from doubt to certainty, and she was still holding his fingers. Charlie wondered whether he should gather her up in his arms. But caution, and a kind of timidity, took the upper hand.
‘You’ve got a beautiful house.’
Bella half turned, releasing him. ‘Yes, I like it.’ She looked at the house as though trying to see it with the eyes of a visitor. ‘I’ve been happy here.’
Charlie felt himself losing ground. He must say something to keep her talking. ‘You said on the phone that you wanted to downsize.’
She turned back to him, and now her green eyes were challenging. ‘I want to pick your brains.’ Yet somehow her voice suggested something more.
Now it was Charlie’s turn to beam. ‘Ma’am, for a free lunch you could turn me inside out.’
‘Oh, dear, you make me sound quite dreadful.’ She burst into a peal of laughter, and took Charlie’s hand again to lead him into the house. ‘Let me make you a cup of coffee first, because I need to ask you some questions. Then I’ll show you some of the things that can go, and then I’ll put something tasty on a plate for you.’
She half turned again, shaking her head so that her hair fell away from her face, and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. ‘I thought you might like some salmon and cucumber mousse, and a glass of chablis, with perhaps a mouthful of strawberry tart in short crust pastry to follow.’
Charlie thought he might be ready to die for salmon and cucumber mousse and chablis, not to mention strawberries in short crust pastry. But he had also begun busily noting the house’s interior. The front door opened into a large white hall with a balustered staircase climbing away at the back, and a floor laid out in a chequerboard pattern of black and white tiles. A really pretty little oil of a riverbank scene hung above a Victorian hall table with a Victorian chair positioned to either side. More paintings climbed with the staircase, and he glimpsed a long, well-polished dining table with places laid for two through a doorway on his left. Then he was in a large drawingroom, stretching away to a set of open french windows, elegant in gold and pale green, with two small silk-covered sofas either side of a low table inlaid with some kind of mosaic, a couple of elegant little armchairs and a small mahogany coffeetable, some interesting large oils on the walls, and a pair of pretty figurines on a mantelpiece that looked like Meissen from a distance. The room was well-chosen, and seemed rather wealthier than any room in the Tindal home.
Bella was already leading the way out through the french windows. ‘I thought we might have coffee out here on the terrace.’
She stopped at a white-painted wrought iron table and two chairs, and a middleaged woman came bustling out of the house with a tray, and there were little cakes to accompany the coffee, and Charlie imagined that he might be in some kind of heaven.
‘We can look at the bits that I want to sell in a minute.’ Bella smiled. ‘Someone told me you worked for American Securities. My husband said they were top flight.’
Charlie tried to look modest. He had always considered himself top flight as well. But then New York had sent in some hard young Americans to run European operations, and cultures had clashed. He was not a man to be bossed about, except perhaps by Jennifer. He had not taken kindly to clashing cultures. But he also had a feeling that he was being scrutinised in some sort of way, because it was plain that Bella knew rather more about him than he knew about her. ‘It must have been tough for you as well.’
‘He was a bastard.’ Bella despatched an errant husband with a flick of the wrist. ‘Somebody told me they changed all the people round.’
Charlie shrugged. New York had parachuted some favourite sons into London with smart new ideas, and they had sharpened knives on Charlie’s jugular. He had been angry at the time, but it was all now in the past: he had taken his severance and now cleaned up French furniture in his garden. Things might have been worse.
‘You’re not bitter?’
He looked up, to see green eyes watching him intently, and shook his head. ‘Not my style.’ But he felt uncomfortable at her questions. They were a little too probing. He counterattacked. ‘Being ditched is being ditched.’
It was a true blow, and he saw Bella’s green eyes cloud a little. ‘I wept buckets at the time.’
‘And now?’
‘Now?’ She was thoughtful for a moment. ‘I suppose time numbs the pain.’
‘But you know that you’ve been …’ He let his words hang in the air. They had something in common, if only in their sense of defeat. But defeat makes no bonds.
‘I know I have been screwed.’ She spoke in a hard, flat voice. They were two people who had both been dealt bad hands, but neither had been defeated.
Charlie held out his hand in a gesture of comradeship. They understood each other.
Bella smiled wryly, and got to her feet. ‘Can I call you Charlie?’
Charlie stood as well, and she stepped closer to him, and touched the side of his face with the palm of her hand, and suddenly they were embracing, with her mouth full and soft and moist under his. He felt her heart beating against his shirt, and filled with a fire of desire. She pulled away again, just as his blood began to boil, but their faces were still very close.
‘I fancied you dreadfully, when I saw you at The Stag.’ Bella’s voice was little more than a whisper. ‘It was one of those lightning things. I wanted to bundle you up and take you home with me. Then your wife came and chased me away.’
Charlie kissed her again, and suddenly he was young again. He slipped his arm around her, and he had a free hand, and it followed the line of her shoulder, intent on finding its way to the buttons fastening the front of her dress, but she twisted her body away from him deftly. ‘No, you must look at my things first.’
She broke away, making for the french windows, and then stopped and held out her hand. ‘I’ll take you on a guided tour.’
She crossed her drawinroom quickly, and pushed at a door. ‘This used to be my husband’s study.’
They stood in a large room, with a tall mahogany breakfront bookcase positioned behind a big mahogany partner’s desk and matching swivel chair. A computer screen and keyboard sat a little incongruously on the corner of the desk. Somone had laid out a collection of silver and china on a long mahogany table in front of a window. The bookcase and desk both looked to be Victorian, whilst the table might have been Regency. The silver included a Victorian service for twelve, complete with a mahogany canteen, and a matching tea set of teapot, milk jug, water jug and sugar bowl. The china was a complete Sevres dinner service for twelve.
‘I want to sell everything in here.’ Now Bella’s voice was hard and flat again, and she was holding his hand as though clinging to an anchor. ‘My husband paid a lot of money for the bookcase and the desk and chair, and he was very fond of the table as well. They were his things.’
Charlie touched the mahogany canteen. ‘And the silver?’
She shook her head. ‘We were given both the silver and the china for our wedding. My father was French – he came to England during the war and married an English girl, and sent me to school here. My parents lived on both sides of the Channel.’
‘It’s all nice stuff.’
‘Too many memories.’
Charlie thought of his Sunday buying trips. He had always wanted to live in France after spending his childhood summers across the Channel, staying with distant relatives to learn the language. ‘You could live there.’
‘Perhaps I will.’ Bella suddenly smiled. ‘I think I’d fit in well. People say I look French.’ She turned, swirling her turquoise dress out around her, and the movement made Charlie burn. ‘I speak the language, and I’ve got the right shape, nice in front and behind.’ She pressed his hand. ‘You’re not thinking furniture.’
True. Charlie was thinking green eyes and copper hair. But he had been invited for a purpose, and he had advice to give. He took a deep breath, because nobody had ever asked him to value furniture before, and walked to the desk. ‘I think you might get three or four for the desk, another thousand for the chair, and perhaps two to three for the table. You ought to put them in a London sale, take them to Christies.’
‘Not the shop?’
He shook his head. He had no intention of sharing Bella.
‘And the bookcase?’
Another deep breath, because he was uncertain. He had seen pieces like it at London shows, but not very often, and they had always been expensive. ‘I don’t know.’ He was silent again for a moment, and then spoke slowly, with care and thought. ‘I think you might get more than ten, maybe a lot more than ten. You’d have to ask an expert. It’s got to be worth a lot of money.’
‘And the silver and china?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘Maybe another five or six. Christies will give you a far better guide than I ever could.’
‘Maybe twenty to thirty thousand overall?’
‘Maybe more.’ He paused. ‘You’ve got a nice diningtable as well.’
‘True.’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘And all the bits and pieces. Who would they pay?’
Charlie shrugged again. ‘Whoever.’ He judged that she wanted to keep the proceeds out of her husband’s hands. But bank accounts can sprout overnight, and money can melt and flow as anonymously as snowflakes in spring sunshine.
‘And the house?’
‘Whose name?’
‘Mine.’ She smiled again. ‘He was always very particular about keeping one step ahead of the taxman.’
Charlie nodded thoughtfully. Taxman might be a portmanteau word for all kinds of pursuers. But it was not his concern.
‘I’ll be quite rich.’ Her words were both statement and question.
He took a deep breath. Rich was an understatement: she would probably be very comfortable indeed, if she collected the full proceeds from selling the house. It was worth at least a million. He began to lose heart. A woman in Bella’s position could pick and choose men, and he was not much of a choice.
‘We must have some lunch.’
Salmon and cucumber mousse melted on his tongue, and the chablis was cool. They talked as they ate, and Charlie realised that Bella knew a great deal about him, about the shop, about his weekend trips to France, about Jennifer and Freddie, and even about a long forgotten period when he had worked in Fleet Street many years before.
‘I fancied you.’ She smiled at him across her diningroom table. ‘So I asked around. Everyone here knows everyone else, it wasn’t difficult.’
Charlie waited, and she shrugged. ‘I’m that sort of person. I like to know things. I asked about the shop first, because of your wife’s lecture, and everyone told me she was knowledgeable and very straight. But somebody said they felt rather sorry for you. They thought you did most of the work, whilst she took all the credit. They told me you’d lost your job in the City, and that you drove her to France every Sunday. I found that very interesting.’
Charlie leaned forward a little. Chablis was a wine to sweep away reserve. ‘Sometimes I think my heart is in France.’
Bella stared at him for a moment. ‘Sometimes I think that too.’ She smiled, and pushed back her chair, taking his empty plate. ‘You must tell me what you think of my strawberry tarts.’
The strawberries were small and sweet and wild, what the French call fraises des bois, and the pastry might have been fashioned from the wings of angels. Bella poured Charlie a small glass of sweet yellow wine, and beamed at his pleasure.
‘People tell me I make good pastry.’ She held out her hand, flexing her fingers. ‘It’s something to do with keeping cool.’
Charlie put his own hand on hers, and she smiled at him quickly. But then she pulled away, and was gone, to return a moment later carrying a silver tray with a coffeepot and two cups. Charlie realised that she had unfastened the top button of her dress, and saw the curve of her breasts cupped into a brassiere as she bent to fill his cup. Perhaps choice was not just a matter of prosperity.
He drank, and got to his feet, and Bella stood beside him. He was a little taller than her as he stood, and she looked up at him as though waiting. He laid his hands gently on her shoulders, and she pressed up against him, and he kissed her, and then they were kissing passionately, their bodies pressing together in a common need. They paused to draw breath, and he searched her eyes, and now her quiescent fire in her eyes flickered as a fierce emerald flame.
‘Would you like me to show you the rest of my house?’
She took Charlie’s hand, but he tugged her to a standstill as they reached the doorway from the diningroom into the hall, because he sought renewal. Bella half turned, looking at him questioningly, and he was embracing her again. She smiled up at him, as though he had asked an unspoken question, and she had prepared a reply. ‘Come upstairs with me.’
She stopped as she reached an open landing like a small gallery, lit by a tall window. Charlie took her hand again, drawing her against him, and his free hand was now cupping up under her bra. They paused to kiss again, but then she pushed his hand away gently, half turning to open a door behind her.
The door opened onto a large bedroom with big windows shielded by heavy gathered curtains at the far end. The room was filled with early afternoon sunshine, golden on the pale primrose wallpaper. The big double bed had been turned down, as though in waiting.
Bella smiled at Charlie again, standing facing him with her hands quiet against the silk of her dress. She was looking up at him, and it was as though she was offering herself. He touched her shoulders again gently. He held a gift in his hands, and he must take it as a prize. He kissed her, mastering his desire in his gentleness, and drew back a little to unfasten the buttons securing her dress, parting it gently so that he could see the shadowy roundels of her nipples beneath the material of her bra. She shivered, like a nervous racehorse, lifting her dress over her head, and let it slide to the floor. He kissed her again, and she lifted her arms a little so that he could reach the catch fastening her bra, and it fell away so that her breasts stood out towards him. Her nipples had hardened in their roundels, and he bent forward to kiss each in turn, and felt her hands running lightly up and down his back. He felt Bella’s hands tugging his shirt gently free from his chinos, and then her fingers were unbuttoning his shirt, and unfastening his belt, and pushing down on his chinos and underpants, and they were wholly naked against other, and his manhood was like a rod before him, and she backed onto her bed, falling before him and parting her legs, and he felt himself slide into her, and they were entwined, and their movement was a dance of angels, moving and turning with infinite grace as they searched each other in their embracing and in their bodies and in their hearts to the very depths of their souls.
Then they were spent, but they still lay locked together, caressing each other gently. Bella nibbled at Charlie’s ear, and spoke dreamily. ‘Now you are my lover, and I am your mistress.’
Charlie raised himself on one elbow, and Bella’s eyes mirrored him on a surface of smouldering green fire. ‘You’re wonderful.’
‘Am I?’ She smiled up at him. ‘Better than wild strawberries?’
He kissed her quickly. ‘Nothing can measure you.’
‘Ah.’ She smiled again, her voice a purr of reassurance. ‘You wouldn’t dump me for a beauty queen?’
‘I wouldn’t dump you, ever.’ Charlie wished his life, and his whole destiny, into his words. But he was also afraid, for there are reservations, even in passion, and he knew that a man could only dump a woman when he possessed her, and he was not sure that a single encounter counted as possession.
Bella pulled him down towards her, and kissed him as though kisses might represent the magic words of a spell, an incantation to bind him, and she spoke very softly in French. ‘For me you are a sorcerer, possessed of a power capable of giving me a new future.’
Charlie replied in the same language. ‘The future is a dream, that a sorcerer may transform into reality.’
She giggled, and began to move again under him, her hands running like soft-winged butterflies across his shoulderblades. ‘Are you equal to your dreams?’
He rested on his elbows, kissing her ear, because now heat was mounting in him again, and soon he would enter a state where there would be no more speaking. ‘With all my heart.’
Then they moved together again, and their bodies sang together again in a single song, and their passion was one, until they lay with each other, once more exhausted and spent, in an exhaustion that was but a fresh aftermath of joy.
Yet Charlie still needed reassurance. He raised himself on his elbows again, looking down into Bella’s eyes, her body warm under his, with her arms a garland around his neck. ‘Why?’
‘Lunch?’
He nodded.
Her green eyes suddenly burned mischievously. ‘I wanted you. I saw you at that lecture, and I fancied you. It was a physical thing. I wanted to have you.’
‘Just like that?’
She smiled. ‘I’m an impetuous girl. Your wife chased me away, and that made me more determined. I thought about you, and asked people about you, and they told me you were a good man, and you grew in my mind, and I knew that I had to have you. I wanted you to be with me. I am alone now, and I need a man. I wanted…’ She hesitated. ‘I wanted to know.’
‘Know?’ Charlie echoed her word.
‘If you would love me, and be the man of my dreams.’
Fear touched Charlie’s heart again. ‘Will I?’
‘You are. I think you are. I think you might be.’ She pushed upwards at him, rolling away from under his body, and she was standing naked at the side of her bed, her body both dream and reality. She stared at him, and her eyes held the hard edge that can sometimes encompass tenderness, as a shell encompasses an oyster, and now – as she spoke – she sought a decision. ‘I’m going back to France, and I’m not coming back. I’ll ask you to come with me, if you want to come. But there won’t be a return ticket. Let me clear out the house, and find a buyer, and I’ll ask you again. I’ll give you my heart, if you want it. But you must also give me yours, if you take mine. It will be your choice.’
‘Forever?’
‘Forever.’
Charlie wanted to reach out to her, and hold her, to burn every bridge possible, and never return to Fulmer. But our lives fill with obligations, and obligations need closing. He faced a choice, that was really no choice at all, but he needed conviction. He had chosen, once, to marry Jennifer, and his choice had betrayed him. This time he wanted to create happiness, and be certain. He caught sight of a small carriage clock on a table at the side of the bed and suddenly realised that it was past five o’clock.
Bella smiled slightly. ‘You see? Now you have to think of an excuse, to explain away the time you were gone. I could not live with that, being part of a deceit. I have been deceived. It’s going to be the only time.’
Charlie dressed in a dream. Bella was asking him to leave everything he had, everything he possessed, and sail with her into the unknown, and he could only hope that he was the man for it. He was certain that he had found his destiny, and he must hope that his resolve would hold.
Then they were standing at the door to the house, face to face, and Bella’s green eyes searched his. She reached up to touch the side of his face with her palm, her eyes gazing deep into him.
‘I love you, Charlie, and I want you to come with me. We will speak again soon, and then you will know.’ She raised herself quickly on her toes to kiss him, and turned, and then ran quickly back to the front door, closing it behind her.
She had spoken firmly. But her mind was a whirl of uncertainty as she moved to a window to watch the Volvo drive away. She might have a new man, and the thought filled her with mounting excitement. And yet she was unsure. England had played her false, and she feared that Charlie might prove no more more than a facet of this falsehood. She wanted him, she knew that for certain. She had seen him at his wife’s lecture, and felt a quick breath of desire enflame her: she had seen a man, a stranger, and felt a need for him. She knew that he was a good man, because she had spoken discreetly to several friends, and they had all praised him as prudent and dependable. She knew that he dreamed of living in France. Now they had lain together, and tasted the first fruits of love, and she knew that lying with him had strengthened her desire. But she was still not sure. Alan’s betrayal still lived as a knife within her. A man had abandoned her because she had been incapable of giving him children, and betrayal and barrenness had combined to kill something inside her.
Perhaps fortune was now choosing to offer her a fresh chance. Charlie might be a man to rebuild happiness in her, and make her laugh once more. Charlie might put her back on her feet. Bella clenched her fists, because now she could feel tears welling up within her, and she knew that she was going to weep. She must not give way to self-pity. She must hope, and be strong, and hope might well lead to salvation. A tear broke loose and she wiped it quickly away, and knelt, almost without thinking, and began to pray in French, with words that she thought long since forgotten, and her prayer framed both a plea and an engagement.