Charlie reached home as the sun was setting. Jennifer woke as he parked, and he helped her carry in the food and drink they had bought in France, and then settled on the sofa in their drawing room with a stiff scotch and the morning’s Daily Mail. It was part of their standard home-coming routine. He always drove to France, and she always took over on their return. The chandeliers could wait until morning. He felt exhausted, and almost too tired to eat. He was still chewing over his brush with HM Customs and Excise at Dover, for had a feeling that he might well have sailed very close to spending several years of his life as a guest of Her Majesty in an open prison. The Sprinter could go back in the morning, and he would draw a line under what he now judged to have been a rash adventure.
Dinner came cold. Neither of them spoke much as they ate from a table set out with pate, and a terrine, a couple of different kinds of ham, salad, and various cheeses, with a bottle of chilled rose between them. They were both immersed in their own thoughts – Charlie already counting down to leaving, Jennifer brooding on the perils that Charlie had insisted on courting. She had guessed all along that the van represented danger, right from the moment Charlie had talked to a stranger on the boat. Free offers never come free of strings. But Charlie was always Charlie, anything for an adventure. She also wondered whether she done the right thing by allowing him to buy her quite so many chandeliers. She was now burdened with an immense workload, not to mention a sizeable debt to the shop, and it would take some time to start chandeliers rolling off her production line. He would have to help clean them up, and do all the cooking and housework into the bargain. He would have to pull his weight.
She drained her glass. They were virtually at the end of the bottle, and she fancied some cheese. She eyed Charlie hopefully.
Charlie scowled. He had done his work for the day.
Jennifer got reluctantly to her feet. Opening bottles was work for a man. She took a second bottle from the refrigerator, and opened it, ostentatiously refilling her own glass. Charlie could help himself.
He rose to her bait on cue. ‘You’re not very grateful.’
Now it was Jennifer’s turn to scowl. ‘I didn’t nearly run foul of the Customs.’
‘You wanted me to fetch the chandeliers.’
Jennifer smiled grimly. She felt aggressive, because of the risks she had run, and the burden she faced. She shook her head firmly. ‘You wanted to fetch them. You were nosy to find out what that man was all about.’
‘You wanted me to buy the lot.’
‘They’re going to keep me busy for a hell of a long time.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You’re going to have to help me much more.’
Charlie stared at her, and thought for a moment of telling her what the future really held. But he bit his thoughts back. He was going, and she could sort herself out. He poured himself a fresh glass of rose, and for a moment, just a split second, was tempted to violence. But then he nodded submissively. They were playing a game, and shadowboxing, and he would box as expected, and play into her game until the very last possible moment, and then just walk away, and his leaving would be all the sweeter for its surprise.
Jennifer felt her anger rising. Charlie’s cowardice irritated her. He always yielded, always gave in. She took a deep breath. She knew she was about to step over a limit, a line in the sand, but she no longer cared. She had drunk the best part of a bottle, and could say anything she damn well pleased. ‘It’s about time you realised, Charlie. I’m the one who’s earning the money now, and it gives me certain rights. You’re going to have to fit in with that.’
Charlie got to his feet. For a moment he was tempted to slap Jennifer’s face. She seemed to have forgotten that he drove her to France, bought for her, and then did much of the basic restoration, the donkey work. But he drained his glass instead, looking her up and down with total contempt.
‘Screw yourself.’
Then he staggered off to bed.
He woke, exhausted, on Thursday morning. Jennifer was already up and about, and he could smell fresh coffee brewing. It was a good smell. Then she came into their bedroom, padding acrossed their bedroom carpet carrying a tray with coffee, and toast, and the morning paper, and she was dressed to tempt in nothing but a tight t-shirt emblazoned with the single word ‘Yes’. It was plain that she felt guilty, and sought to made amends.
Charlie was bland. He pecked her politely, settling to sip coffee and read the paper. This was going to be his big day, his day of commitment.
Jennifer looked down at him and understood perfectly. She felt a bit of a heel for sounding off the previous evening. Charlie had chosen to gamble, but she could not pretend that she hadd not egged him on. She crept under her duvet to lie at his side, advancing with little mouse movements until she could run the tips of her fingers along his groin. She knew how to turn Charlie on, and she would give him what he wanted, and her giving would tighten her hold on him.
Charlie grunts, and edged closer to the edge of the bed. She was being a pain. This was his day for transformation. He slipped out of bed and pulled on his underpants and trousers. Usually he washed, and shaved, and cleaned his teeth in his pyjamas. But this was going to be a different day. He shaved, and returned to the bedroom to collect a clean shirt, and now the air was frosty.
Jennifer scowled. ‘You don’t have to turn all bloody-minded just because I told you a few home truths last night.’
Charlie shrugged without speaking. He had no plans to fight.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Why don’t you bloody grow up?’ Jennifer’s voice was bitter. Charlie was being rebellious, just when she most needed helpfulness and co-operation.
Charlie pushed his shirt inside his slacks. He was impassive, and for all purposes deaf and dumb. He would help Jennifer unload the Sprinter, drive it to London, and then he would leave.
It was too much. Suddenly Jennifer swung out of bed, and now she was really angry. ‘All right, you can take the van back to London on your own. I’m going to start on the chandeliers, and you cand find your own bloody way home.’
Charlie smiled slightly. Suddenly she had opened a door. ‘All right, that’s fine. Help me unload, and I’ll push off.’
They worked together in silence. The sky was overcast after a couple of weeks of sunshine, and black clouds loomed on the horizon. Charlie carried the chandeliers one by one into the extension at the back of their house, and Jennifer set them out in rows so that she see which ones could be cleaned up most quickly, and which should be pushed to the back of the queue. Then she laid out Adbdulrahman’s boxes of drops and chandelier parts, until she had covered the whole extension floor, and the table they used for meals in the summer, and had begun piling chandeliers in the kitchen as well.
Finally she stood back to admire what she had bought. The chandeliers really made a most impressive sight, and she knew she would clean up in spades, possibly grossing twenty thousand or more. She waited for Charlie to come in. She would make him a cup of coffee, and patch things up, because they worked really well together, and partners should not really fight. But Charlie did not appear. After a moment she walked to the front door. But the Sprinter was gone, and it had begun to rain. Jennifer shrugged. Charlie had plainly gone off in a sulk. It would serve him right to get wet: he would have to learn better manners, if he wanted her to keep on feeding him.
Charlie was already on his way to London. He had drawn a line, and a new life stretched out in front of him. He listened to Heart FM as he cruised along the M4 and had a strange lightheaded feeling, as though he had floated free from an enormous burden. It was raining, but he did not care. He would have to pop back to the house to collect his passport and computer disks and maybe some clothes. But after that he would never, ever go back. He tooks the Sprinter into the mews, and the same black man stood tinkering with the same Transit. However this time the man nodded affably.
Charlie’s namesake was waiting in his office, seated behind his big desk. He beamed. ‘How did it go?’
Charlie scowled. ‘I was stopped at Dover going out, and stopped again coming back.’
Charlie the Sprinter looked concerned, and then frowned. ‘But you still brought the van back.’ It was a statement, and a concealed question. Charlie had returned, and could not therefore have been detained.
‘The Customs seemed very interested.’
‘But they didn’t have dogs…’
‘No dogs.’ Now Charlie knew why he travelled to Roubaix, and had a fair idea of the risks he had run. Dogs hunted drugs, and he wanted to know no more.
‘You wouldn’t like to made another trip?’ His namesake looked as though he was asking formally, just for the sake of asking, and could already hear Charlie’s refusal.
Charlie shook his head. ‘Once was enough. I think next time they will have dogs.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’ Charlie the Sprinter got to his feet, and picked up an envelope. ‘We’ll find another way.’ He held the envelope out. ‘This is for you.’
Charlie pocketed it unopened. He had done what he said he would do, and now he just wanted to forget the whole episode. The pavement of the street outside the mews glistened, but the rain had settled back, and he hailed a taxi. He would find a telephone and call Bella. Then he remembered the envelope, and tore it open. It held twenty fifties, a thousand pounds. He grinned. Sometimes fate could be very friendly indeed.
The telephone in the booth at Marylebone station seemed to ring interminably. Charlie heard a woman’s voice and pushed some money home. The voice told him to wait, and then he heard Bella, and poured out a summary.
Bella sounded faintly amused. ‘Do you want to come here?’
Charlie felt a rush of emotion, and could barely murmur his assent.
‘Do you want to stay?’
‘Forever.’
The phone was silent for a moment. Then Bella spoke again, and her voice was a caress. ‘Je t’aime.’
Charlie echoed her words, and they were both silent for a moment, because they were sealing a pact and setting out together on a great adventure, and their silence was a silence of communion. Then Bella switched to English. ‘Catch the next train to Beaconsfield. I’ll wait for you.’
Charlie felt as though he stepped onto a cloud bound for heaven. He spied a flower stand, remembered the Sprinter owners’ donation, and filled his arms with roses. The flower seller was impressed, because Charlie spent a straight hundred, but Charlie was in a dream, and the roses were only a symbol. He bought himself a ticket and found an empty corner seat, fanning the roses out in front of him, beaming at them as the train rumbled out through the suburbs of West London. A woman settled diagonally from him, across the open space between the rows of seats, and made eyes at him. She was not bad looking, with dark hair to her shoulders and nice legs. Perhaps the same sort of age as Bella, but he ignored her. He had found the woman of his dreams and he needed no other.
Beaconsfield was a long damp platform. Charlie paused as he left the station: he could see a couple of taxis and a white van, another white Mercedes van, but suddenly realised that he had no idea what kind of vehicle to look for. He also realised that he knew nothing of Bella beyond two lunches and two passionate afternoons, and his elation was sapped momentarily by doubt. He was about to throw himself into the arms of a woman he fancied past all understanding, but barely knew; hewas about to throw himself at her feet, and burn all his bridges. He took a deep breath.
The white Mercedes van pulled away from the kerb as he stood waiting, and slowed to stop beside him. Itwas a big van, an Explorer, and Bella was driving. She got out of the van, and stood looking at him: she was wearing a shiny, almost transparent green plastic mac over her dress, and had the same hopeful uncertainty in her eyes that Charlie could feel in his own.
He held out his armful of roses, and suddenly saw that she was crying. She took the roses to place them carefully in the back of the van, and turned to face him, and her tears made small trails of mascara down her cheeks.
‘I’ll try and made you happy, Charlie.’
He took her in his arms and held her close. He knew that he was making a good choice.
Later they sat side by side on a sofa in Bella’s drawingroom, with two glasses of milky green pastis on the mosaic table between them. Bella was businesslike, and her efficiency impressed Charlie, because he sensed that she wanted now to move quickly to made a complete break with her life in England.
‘The van came this morning. It belongs to the business, and Tony, the managing director, says I can have it as long as I like. I think he feels sorry for me.’ She sipped at her glass. ‘I just want to leave here.’
‘What about Christies?’
‘My solicitor is doing everything.’
‘Can you go so fast?’
She smiled, covering his hand with her own, and he could see that she no longer wore a wedding ring. ‘No, Charlie. You’re using the wrong word. You mean can we go so fast?’
He nodded wordlessly. Everything had begun to move at such a pace that he was no longer sure he was in the real world and not in a dream.
‘I’ve spoken to Graham - Graham Rappaport, my solicitor - and he’s going to handle the house. He sees no problems about selling it, it’s in my name and this kind of place changes hands pretty quickly around here. Christies have changed their mind: I called them yesterday morning, when you were in France, and said I had to go abroad suddenly. A charming gentleman called Rafe came to tea, cooed over everything, and said they’d hold a sale here.’ Bella dimpled. ‘I had a bit of job getting rid of him – I think he wanted to stay for dinner.’
Charlie grinned. ‘Not breakfast?’
‘Not breakfast.’ Bella squeezed his hand. ‘I’ve found my man, and I only want one.’
They kissed. But she pulled back as Charlie began to grow passionate. ‘We can go on Sunday – the roads won’t be so crowded, and my house in France is motorway nearly all the way.’
Charlie tried to explore the neckline of her dress. ‘Where is it?’
‘Close to a small town called Mondain-sur-Cher, just south-east of Tours.’ She pushed him away playfully. ‘Wait. I have lots of things to tell you, and you must wait. You can hunt for butterflies again when I have told you everything.’ She waited for him to disengage, and backed into the corner of the sofa, placing a cushion between them. She patted it decisively. ‘This is the border. We can load the van tomorrow and Saturday, because I have so many things to sort out, and it will keep you busy. I can pack up, and you can look at Alan’s computer and tell me if you find anything interesting in it.’
‘Interesting?’
Bella waved a vague hand. ‘Perhaps hidden bank acounts, that sort of thing.’
Charlie remembered his passport.
Bella drew a deep breath. ‘Can I come with you?’
‘Will you?’ Charlie feared to confront Jennifer. He knew she would shout and scream, and he would have to face one of the most unpleasant moments of his life, possibly the worst of all unpleasant moments.
‘I’ll drive you there.’
Charlie thought back to the Sprinter. ‘Not in a white Mercedes van.’
Bella looked roguish. ‘I’ve got a Mercedes saloon as well. Will that do?’
This time they kissed hard, and the cushion was no barrier at all, and a moment later they were climbing Bella’s stairs, to gather courage for a confrontation.
Yet all good things must pass, and they could not made love forever, with so much to do. Bella made lunch, and Charlie played experimentally with her husband’s computer. He began to check folders and sub-folders and files methodically. But lunch intervened and Bella was brisk.
‘You can spend tomorrow rummaging around in there. Come and eat.’
They shared an omelette and a tossed salad, and a couple of glasses of chilled rose, and Charlie gritted his teeth. He must gird himself for a battle ahead, but it would be none of his choosing.
Bella watched him and smiled. Everything had begun to fall into place like pieces in a complex jigsaw. She had put the house on the market, but need do nothing about selling it, for Graham would handle the lot. The contents would look after themselves, and her dreams were about to come true: she could now go back to France, to a house smiling with happy memories, and have a man for her heart, with the best of both countries in him. She knew Charlie would take her back full circle to happiness. He was a nice Englishman, with a joie de vivre that would come fully to life in France. He would be her destiny, and her joy.
She made coffee in small cups, and they looked at each other. Charlie drained his cup and got to his feet. ‘Ok, let’s get it over with.’
Bella led him out of her house, and stopped to kiss him suddenly. Charlie was going into battle with a rose flowering from the barrel of his gun. He would walk with nonchalance, and bullets would bounce off him.
Neither of them spoke as she drove to Fulmer. She steered the Mercedes into Charlie’s entrance, inspecting his home quickly. It was the kind of house she had seen many, many times, a four-bedroom detached epitome of an English middle class dream. Once she would have sniffed at it, because Alan had been richer, more successful. But now she viewed it as a prison, and she had come to release her captive, and would be Florestan to Fidelio.
Charlie leaned towards her, and touched her hand. He was too embarrassed to kiss her in front of his own home.
Bella smiled. ‘Be quick.’ She raised her fingertips to her lips.
Charlie entered the house with a deep sense of foreboding, and made for the room he used as an office – he needed his computer disks, and Jennifer kept his passport and driving licence in a bag for France. He nervously rehearsed an explanation, a self-justification. He was leaving because he had found another woman, he was leaving because he wanted to live in France. He was leaving because he was fed up with being pushed about. Words poured through his mind as he stuffed the discs into his pockets and scrabbled into the bag to remove his papers. He just wanted to go.
Jennifer found him as hewas tucking his passport and driving licence inside his suede jacket. She beamed cheerfully, because she felt in a forgiving mood. The morning had long since passed, and Charlie was back.
‘Welcome, stranger. Did you have a nice time in London?’
Charlie did not look at her. He just wanted to get out of the house and as far away as he could, as quickly as possible.
Jennifer noted his reticence, but pushed a wayward suspicion about his movements into the back of her mind. He might have strayed, but she would be magnaminous. She had a great deal of work to do. ‘I’ve sorted out some of the best chandeliers, and we can start on those. They won’t take long, and they’ll bring in some ready cash. We’re going to make our fortune.’
She moved closer to Charlie to kiss him, because she was above all forgiving. But Charlie pulled away from her. She eyed him questioningly, but Charlie was now retreating towards the front door, and suddenly she realised that something was dreadfully wrong.
‘Charlie, what’s up?’ She followed him to the front door, and saw a big black Mercedes in her driveway, and a woman in a tarty plastic raincoat behind the wheel, and suddenly everything fell horribly into place. She stopped dead in her tracks, because he was betraying her. Then her anger welled up, and it was a force of rage, and something that she could not control, and she ran after him, snatching at his jacket. ‘Charlie?’ Her voice climbed shrilly. ‘Where are you going?’
Charlie stopped and turned to look at his wife, and his eyes were dead. ‘I’m leaving.’
Jennifer stared at him for a moment in shocked disbelief. Then her anger forced its way out in disbelieving fury. ‘You bastard.’ She spat out the words out as though they were poisoned.
Charlie shrugged. The time for words had passed. He walked towards the Mercedes, and Bella was impassive behind the wheel, as though she had heard nothing.
Jennifer snatched at his arm. ‘You’re a bastard. A stupid fucking bastard.’ They were words she had not used many times in her life. She stared at him, at this man with whom she had lived and shared her life, and he was now a stranger, and an object of hate, and now she was cold, and calm and collected, and icy in her rage. ‘Go, and take your whore with you, and never, ever fucking come back.’
Charlie walked around the Mercedes to the passenger side and got in without a word, and Bella drove off, and neither of them spoke. But Bella held out her hand to him as she stopped for the traffic light at the junction with the Slough road, and her gesture symbolised trust and hope.