“How do you know I’m free?”
“I don’t.”
He waited for her to open the door before he turned to leave. She was slightly concerned that she liked what he had said as much as she did.
The following evening as they returned from a late dinner at Harry’s Bar, he held his hand out for her key, opened the door, took a step back, and then followed her in. There was no question between them about whether he would spend the night. The slow and deliberate way he moved his hands over her body made her feel as if he had been waiting a long time for her. “Are you okay with this?” She nodded and he unbuttoned his shirt. She liked his sense of calm. She would remember thinking that he could do whatever he wanted with her. He kissed her slowly—underneath her neck, across her face, making her wait. She kissed him back. They were on her bed now and he could feel how nervous she was. He outlined her lips with his fingers and traced a line from her mouth down to the dip of her waist to the rise of her hip, his hand moving as if asking questions only her body could answer. He shifted her underneath him and he remembered thinking how light she was—as if all her bones were hollow. She pushed closer into him, he moved through and across her, and she held on and stayed with him. Everything inside her pulled toward the middle, she felt as if she would dissolve completely—but he was holding her together.
Chapter Five
London
In the morning, she wanted to stay asleep or at least pretend to be asleep until he left, but he woke her up to say good-bye.
“Oh, God,” she said, covering her eyes. “I’ve never done that before.”
He looked at her with doubt and amusement.
“No, not that. I mean on the second date.”
“Well, I’m glad you did, and for what it’s worth, it was our third. Besides, I feel as if I’ve known you for a long time.” He leaned down and kissed her.
He collected his watch from the bedside table. “I have an appointment with an estate agent in an hour to look at flats. Want to come?”
She said she had to finish her article on the Foundling Hospital. Her editor was expecting it by three P.M.
“I’m flying to Paris tonight for a meeting tomorrow, back Wednesday, Thursday at the—Helen, look at me.” He held her face in his hands. “I’m not going away.” He seemed to know what she was thinking before she did.
He took her phone off the bedside table and added his number to her contacts. “Call me if you finish early. My flight’s not until seven.”
She already had his number, he had called her. After he left, she looked at her phone. He had replaced Christopher with “Boyfriend” in the contact list and moved it to Favorites.
* * *
As Christopher walked down Sloane Avenue, he remembered, in his last year of boarding school, a Russian violin teacher telling him to play a phrase of music as if asking a question and then answering it. In an oblique way, Helen seemed to answer his questions. He had not known what the questions were or even if there were any. Maybe she made the questions unnecessary, like an echo that changed form on its return.
Helen spent the early afternoon fiddling with her article. David had liked what she had written and had agreed to give her the extra space. She sent it off to him and waited for him to give comments. When he emailed back “All set,” she was free.
She dressed to go running to prevent herself from calling Christopher. She ran down to Cheyne Walk, across Chelsea Bridge, and around Battersea Park until she could coax herself to run no farther. Exhausted, she turned to walk back to her flat. Thoughts of Christopher seeped back like a slow-moving tide. He was comfortable with himself—maybe because he was older or maybe because he knew where he was going, unlike most of her past boyfriends. Boyfriend? Still, it was more than early days. As she recrossed Chelsea Bridge, she watched the low winter sun glisten the tops of houses before fading down into a dark evening mist. It would be dark by four thirty. He would be on his way to Heathrow.
* * *
In Paris, Christopher met with Édouard Beaumont to discuss the textile company that had been owned and run by his family for six generations. Édouard had no heirs, and he was worried that the company was losing market share to Asian imports. He felt it was just a matter of time before the Indians and Chinese would make lace and embroidery almost as well, if not as well, as his company at a quarter of the price. For two days, he had met with bankers and investors from different firms. No one was willing to tell him what Christopher had advised—that he should sell his business, preferably to a high-end French company with a stable of luxury consumer brands.
Christopher understood that most owners knew where they were, they just didn’t always know how to make a change or what that change should be. Rarely did anyone understand a business better than the owner, especially those who had grown up in the company. Christopher ran through the scenarios with Édouard. The benefits to being held by a larger French company were many, including a broader marketing platform and financial support in case of a downturn. Not only was Édouard impressed with the cool rationality Christopher offered, but he also liked the expansive way he thought about the business. Most of the other bankers and advisors had recommended bringing in a strategic financial partner, but Édouard knew that a one-time infusion of capital might only delay a decline, not prevent it. Édouard felt that some of the bankers he had interviewed were telling him what they thought he wanted to hear in order to get his business. In the end, he decided to hire the investment professional no one had ever heard of. Christopher stayed an extra day to introduce himself to Édouard’s lawyers and accountants.
All the reasons Helen had assembled about her relationship (could she even call it that?) with Christopher not working out—he was nine years older, she had never gone out with anyone remotely connected to business, she didn’t fit into his world of high finance, she wasn’t fashionable enough—evaporated when she heard his voice. She reversed her position entirely. Mirages of doubt and disbelief that appeared in his absence were dispelled by the sound of his voice saying her name. Why did she feel so safe? He took her on her own terms. He didn’t take anything away from her. Didn’t look for her to be someone she wasn’t. But she didn’t even know where he lived. And while it was her nature not to second-guess herself, she understood she had fallen so completely for him that she had no control over what would happen anyway. Besides, when they slept together, they seemed to know each other’s bodies before they knew each other. That had to count for something.
Over the weekend, Christopher showed her the townhouse on Birdcage Walk with views of St. James’s Park that he and his partner had leased for their office. He was living in the small flat at the top of the building, but he would have to move out soon. The space was needed for the firm’s back office and computer equipment. He took her with him the following Sunday to look at more flats. When the real estate agent, to whom he had introduced Helen as his girlfriend, turned her back to silence an alarm, Helen had mouthed, “I’m not your girlfriend,” and he had whispered back, “Yes you are,” and then had added in a normal voice, “You’ll realize this sooner or later.”
The flats were either too big or too formal or downright dreary, and Helen suggested that he might want to look at a mews house. The agent knew of one that had just come on the market. It had formerly been part of a stable and was around the corner from Hyde Park. It was small but charming, with an open plan, a bed and bath in what had been the hayloft, and a small garden. Underneath the loft was a small kitchen with stall partitions restored from the original that separated the kitchen from the rest of the ground floor. A second bedroom or study was at the opposite end. It was furnished with pieces that could have been designed by Andrée Putman. Christopher could go for a run in the park every morning and walk to work in less than twenty minutes. He made an offer that included the furniture, with the condition that he be given an answer by the end of the day.
Chapter Six
London
After
a few weeks of seeing each other, Christopher introduced Helen to his business partner. She discovered she had met Marc six months earlier at a drinks party given by her managing editor, David, and his wife, Fernanda. Just as Helen had arrived at 7 Onslow Gardens, a taxi had pulled up and Marc jumped out with a young woman who was thin and petite with long sun-streaked hair. Helen would learn later that her name was Celine and that she and Fernanda had attended art school together. Marc was wearing a European suit without a tie, a starched blue-and-white-striped shirt unbuttoned one more button than any Ivy Leaguer would allow, dark suede driving shoes without socks. Celine was holding a flower in her hand and looked bored.
The party was being held on the second floor and a number of guests had spilled through French doors onto the balcony facing the street. As they waited underneath the portico, Marc got impatient that no one was answering the door. Either someone had mistakenly locked the ground-floor door or the noise of the party was so loud that the buzzer could not be heard. He hurried to the sidewalk and yelled up to the guests on the balcony. His brash and arrogant behavior, behavior that Helen had come across and disliked in most of the American investment bankers she had met in London, had more to do with theatrics than self-absorption. When someone finally did appear, Helen was unable to hold her prejudice for long because, as Marc held the door open for her, he swept his arm sideways and bowed to “m’lady.” And she would remember the way he reached for his girlfriend’s hand—as if he always knew where it would be. Helen never got a chance to see her again. Marc told her that a month after the drinks party, Celine had returned from Brussels wearing a man’s watch that wasn’t his.
In the first six months, Christopher and Marc’s business was harder to get started than they had imagined. They had met in New York, first on opposite sides of a deal and then on the same side. Christopher was a junior partner at one of the top law firms specializing in corporate finance, and Marc was a vice president at one of the major investment banks. When Marc had decided to set up his own firm, Christopher was the first person he had approached about joining him. He was impressed with Christopher and thought they would complement each other. And they did. Marc hustled for new business and brought Christopher in when the client wanted to be convinced further. They began with advisory work, and once they were established, planned to expand into principal investing and fund management.
But in the early days they fought hard for each piece of new business, and they lost more than they won. Corporations were risk averse and hiring their firm was judged riskier than working with Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan. Entrepreneurs who were comfortable with risk hired them first. They understood that Christopher and Marc went to sleep worrying about their deal—a disposition rare among bankers at the established firms, where lists of transactions were always waiting to be done. Unlike their competitors, Christopher and Marc did not have the luxury of losing.
With a few deals behind them, they had started building the track record they needed. For Christopher, work was the thing he could lose himself in but never lose any part of himself. If a deal or negotiation got off track, it could never cripple him, never pull him under. He had an ability to see how a negotiation would play out with a skill that was rare. Marc had his own talent for getting business. Entrepreneurs, especially the ones who had learned to create their own opportunities, liked him. They saw something of themselves in him, and they had a softness for the young man who was a little too brash and a little too unpolished, but whose energy for what he was doing was irresistible. He literally hurled himself against any opportunity, as if he were trying to break down a door.
In the beginning, it was just the two of them, a shared secretary, and a young Brit with a doctorate in computer sciences, too brilliant and too rough for an established firm, who doubled as researcher and IT architect. Christopher and Marc went after business, chased down leads, asked for introductions, made cold calls. The energy spent during the day was sustained through the evening. It was as if those laid-back days in Bermeja had never existed. Helen often met Christopher at his office on Birdcage Walk for a late dinner after work. On the evenings she waited for him, she could not tell the hour by the level of activity. The buzz of the office was nonstop. After less than a year, the firm had grown to fifteen professionals plus support staff. Somewhere a phone was always ringing. The associates ran, never walked, down corridors. Helen watched what the Financial Times had called the hottest financial advisory boutique in Europe grow as if a slow-speed camera had been put on fast-forward.
On Saturdays, Christopher and Helen spent the day together, going to exhibits, running errands, occasionally meeting one of his colleagues or clients for dinner. If she had to finish an article, he would make her coffee and wait for her. Only once or twice did they have dinner with one of his friends from boarding school or university. He brought little forward from the past. Sometimes he stayed with her, but mostly she stayed with him. When she heard from an old school friend that her sister’s young daughter needed open-heart surgery in London, Christopher suggested that Helen give the sister her flat.
“You said she needed a place to stay in London and money is an issue, so why don’t you move in with me? If you want to move back in a month, I promise I will release you,” he said. “But as you and I both know, unlike in Cinderella, around here, all the great things take place after midnight.” She threw a pillow at him but followed his plan.
Chapter Seven
Sussex
With three older brothers who rarely thought much about their younger sister until she had a boyfriend, bringing a date to one of her mother’s Sunday lunches was something Helen rarely looked forward to—the subtle and not-so-subtle questions and then the aftermath of inquiry when her relationship faltered or hit a bad patch or just simply crashed. But most of all, she dreaded her three sisters-in-law, who always felt it was their duty to assist in the recovery efforts, which they interpreted as setting her up with a friend’s brother or cousin. This time, however, would be different. It would be the first time she had brought a boyfriend who was neither a journalist nor a “between assignments” photographer and who was more accomplished than her brothers. There would not be the awkward spaces as there were last time when her mother and Celia, her middle brother’s wife, tried to understand what interest her last boyfriend had in photographs of crime scenes overlaid with Gerhard Richter–like wavy lines of paint. She knew the minute she and this photographer left, the question for anyone who remained was “Where does Helen find them?” And when these short-lived romantic attachments were over, even Helen found herself wondering about her propensity for miscalculation.
“So you grew up in Sussex?” Christopher asked as he unlocked her car and opened the door for her.
“Are you sure you want to drive? We’re going on the M3. Right-hand drive is not as easy as it looks.”
“Remember, I went to school here.”
“I know, but presumably—”
“You’ll be okay. Promise. So always West Sussex?”
“Yes, I was born there. Both Theo and I were. Louis and Max were born in London at Guy’s and St. Thomas’, where—little-known fact—Keats trained as a surgeon. When my mother was expecting Theo, my parents moved to the country.”
Willow Brook was a lovely eighteenth-century manor house set in the South Downs several miles west of the village of Petworth. When Christopher and Helen arrived, her parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces, and nephews were sitting in the garden. It was one of those rare and glorious sunny days in early June. As they approached, Helen’s concerns reversed themselves. She became anxious about what Christopher would think of her family. Would he find her brothers, two of whom worked in the country, too English and provincial?
Christopher had no such worries, nor did he feel he needed to know anything more about Helen. Rather, it was the abnormally normal setting that absorbed his attention. No matter how many times he encountered family gatherings, the thought
So this is how families unbroken by deaths and divorces behave recurred like an unwelcome refrain.
Helen introduced Christopher to her mother and father and then to her three brothers and their wives—Henrietta, Celia, and Emma. The children who were playing on the lawn by the pool were called over to give Aunt Helen a kiss and to shake hands with Christopher. Louis offered them a Pimm’s Cup. Helen’s mother was keen to know about Christopher’s family, and he explained that his mother had grown up in the States but had lived in Europe most of her life. His father was French and had died in a skiing accident when he was young. His mother had moved to London for the years he and his sister attended English boarding schools but then moved back to France once they were at university. When the conversation shifted to questions about his work, Helen’s mother left with Celia, who went to check on her sleeping baby. Mrs. Gibbs promised to return after she checked on the roast chickens.
At lunch, Christopher was seated between Helen’s mother and her middle brother, Max. Helen was seated at the other end of the table with two of her sisters-in-law, who were commiserating over nursery schools. Her father sat quietly and spoke to his eldest son about his recent trip to Beijing, where his firm was setting up an office. Helen glanced at Christopher, who was listening to her mother describe how Petworth House, along with a few other grand Grade I properties in the surrounding area, had been turned into a school during World War II. He caught her eye and smiled in a way that told her all was calm. When lunch was over, everyone moved to the library for coffee. Louis and her father approached Christopher and asked if he’d had any dealings with the Chinese. She overheard him saying something about having worked on the sale of a minority interest to a Chinese conglomerate when he was practicing law in New York.
From across the room, Christopher could feel Helen’s edginess. Her family had never lived past the borders of England. Her father was a partner in a small law firm specializing in trusts and estates, her mother occupied herself with her garden and her grandchildren. Christopher knew they would have concerns about their daughter bringing home a boyfriend who was half American, half French, almost ten years older, and whom they would be unable to place in any category. He knew that her brothers—a lawyer, a chartered accountant, and an estate manager—were expecting the stereotypical investment banker—arrogant, smug, taken with himself. He was safe from these charges. Maybe because he had moved around so much, he had learned to listen—to understand where he was before he offered much.
A Theory of Love Page 3
