Eastthorpe
Eastthorpe Hall was, as Fiona had described it, a grand estate built in the late 1700s, which sat in the middle of twelve thousand acres. The drive dipped and turned to give glimpses and teases of the Grade I listed house until, three hundred yards from the house, it straightened out into a beech-lined avenue that ran directly on axis with a walled driving court.
“I think I should tell Eric that the driveway is not long enough,” Christopher said. “I’m guessing we might make housefall by midnight.”
Helen laughed. “It is ridiculously long.”
“Seriously, what will you give me if I make that suggestion? I should get extra credit if I can do it with a straight face.”
“I’m not going to encourage your bad behavior.”
Their arrival had been announced. As they pulled up to the house, Eric and Charlotte were followed by a staff of twelve lined up to greet them. Oh, God, Helen thought. They are going to unpack for us. She regretted how hastily she had thrown everything into their cases. She leaned toward Christopher and whispered, “Someone needs to tell them hardly anyone—maybe even no one—in England does this anymore.”
Charlotte showed them to their large room, furnished with a four-poster bed with a sagging mattress, a sofa, a pair of chairs, and a skirted dressing table, all covered in the same floral chintz.
“Are these the original furnishings?” Helen asked.
“Well, at least original to the Bolton family.”
Helen walked over to the window and looked closely at the fabric. The small sprigs and butterflies reminded her of a piece of cloth she had seen in the Foundling Hospital binders. She thought she had seen the room before. “Wasn’t this house featured . . .”
“On the cover of The World of Interiors—May of last year. Of course, we will change everything once Mario develops his plan—but don’t tell poor Anthony. He thinks we intend to keep everything as it is.”
Charlotte encouraged them to hurry. Everyone was already gathering in the library for drinks. Dinner would be served at nine.
When Charlotte left, Christopher stretched out on the bed, his hands locked beneath his head. “Certainly seen better days. I may end up crippled by morning.”
“Shh.” Helen laughed, partly amused and partly irritated. “Get up. Charlotte made it clear everyone is waiting for us.”
He looked mournfully at her. “Fair to say they’ve been watching too many episodes of that television series on English country life.”
“They really are trying to out-English the English.”
“Someone needs to tell them to stop. I wonder if they will get dogs. That will be the real test, but it only counts if the dogs are allowed inside the house.”
Helen was surprised and delighted to see Solange and Anthony. She told Solange about her visit with William Pauling. Her piece would be out soon. Charlotte introduced Christopher and Helen to an American couple who now lived in Geneva; a South American businessman, Carlos Muñoz; a Canadian couple who lived in London, whom Helen recognized from society page photographs; Mario, the interior designer, and Jasper, a young man plucked from the Sotheby’s training program to serve as Charlotte and Eric’s curator.
The assembled group were discussing Venice and Florence. The American, who, as Helen observed over the course of the evening, held only immutable opinions, said that he loved Venice and that his wife loved Florence, and it was his experience with married couples that one was always a lover of Florence, the other a lover of Venice. One loved order and kept everything neat while the other loved romance and disorder. When the Canadian woman said that both she and her husband loved Venice, he pronounced that their offspring would not genetically progress.
Helen noticed that Christopher spent dinner listening to the businessman seated to his left and ignored the custom of turning after each course. As the man who loved Venice bombarded her with strong declarative statements, Helen partially listened to Christopher and Carlos’s conversation about business and attractive deals in South America, all involving some form of monopoly. She was reminded of Édouard Beaumont’s comment about Christopher being good at listening.
At the end of dinner, Eric led all the men into the library to smoke cigars, and Charlotte rescued the decorator and asked him to give the ladies a tour of the ground floor.
When the tour ended, Charlotte led everyone back to the library. Eric, pleased with his Cuban cigars and even more pleased that everyone was enjoying themselves so much, waved Charlotte good night. The “boys” were going to stay up late and have another glass of port.
Helen was angry Christopher decided not to come to bed with her. Did he ever put them first? She had imagined that they would have time to themselves. She had wanted to tell him how happy she had been to learn she was pregnant, and she wanted his reassurance that he had wanted this, too. She wanted to tell him how she had felt when the heartbeat could not be found. She wanted to tell him everything for the first time. She waited up for him, but the longer she waited, the more resolved she became that she would never bring the subject up. Absolutes were fortifications—she understood that—but still she would not let this go. She tried to shift her mind to other topics, but she was unable to sleep, and when Christopher returned just before two A.M. she was still awake, but she did not acknowledge his presence. She carried her anger with her to the next morning.
“Would you ever want to live like this?” Christopher asked, feeling her coolness as they dressed for breakfast. He knew she would not be able to resist answering.
“Zero interest—possessions possess. Charlotte didn’t grow up like this, did she?”
“Not at all. I think money was quite tight, which is probably why she likes all this so much.”
“At times she seems almost giddy with it. She was going on and on about how difficult customs officials can be about private—”
“Did you happen to speak at all to Carlos?”
Helen was irritated he had cut her off. “The South American? No, why? Weren’t you sitting next to him in the library last night?”
“Carlos said he had met me in Bermeja last Christmas but I don’t remember him. Do you?”
“No, but maybe he was at one of the drinks parties we went to.”
“He said he had invested with our firm, and he fully expected me to know that. I don’t even recognize his name. If he’s such a prominent client as he indicated, it’s very strange Marc has never mentioned him. I was just with Marc going over all the new accounts, and the name Carlos Muñoz never came up. There’s something about him that doesn’t add up.”
“Did you ask him how he knows Eric?”
“He was vague, said something about investing with him in Mexico or that they’d looked at some investments together.” Christopher would speak to Carlos at breakfast and press further.
When they arrived at breakfast, Charlotte informed Christopher that Carlos had flown back to London early in the morning and had asked Charlotte to give Christopher his regards. After breakfast, Eric led everyone on a walk to see the stables and pastures that were the planned site of his soon-to-be-built private golf course. A very English lunch was followed by a tour of the operations behind Eastthorpe’s shoot. Eric arrived in a brand-new, unmuddied black supercharged Range Rover and asked Christopher to drive with him. Helen thought he looked like a little boy who had just stolen his parents’ car. Doesn’t he know he can raise the seat? she thought to herself. Does he even know how to shoot?
Later, Christopher confirmed that Eric did not know how to shoot. But he was certain that Eric would learn quickly, assuming, of course, he didn’t get shot first. “His instinctive will to kill, assuming he has any kind of eye at all, will be harnessed in no time at all.” Christopher also told Helen there was a reason Eric had wanted to drive with him. “He told me if we ever wanted to sell our firm, I should come to him first. I thought a weekend just for pleasure was unusual for him.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him we weren’t interested in making any changes now, but if anything were to change, I would let him know.”
“You wouldn’t . . .”
“No, of course not. I was just being polite. He thinks the entire world is for sale. But the best news of the weekend—Eric said that Bermeja was too primitive for him.”
“How could he say that?”
“Doubted they would ever go back. Much better for us that he needs to work on his aim.” Christopher had gotten Helen to laugh, and her laughter pushed them forward.
The evening was an American barbecue with a pig and a lamb on a spit. A number of couples invited from neighboring estates came to meet the American who had paid the highest price ever for a shooting estate. Eric had flown over a U.S. line-dancing champion, who stood in the ballroom and offered to give guests slow and simple instructions. Eric “borrowed” Christopher to discuss some matter, Charlotte declared herself too uncoordinated, and the other guests were afraid of embarrassing themselves. Helen felt badly for the instructor, who stood alone, so she gathered up Solange and Anthony and a couple from a neighboring estate and told them it was fun, like a Scottish reel. Soon the instructor had two lines of five following her lead. Solange and Helen took a break and left Anthony on his fourth attempt to follow the simple steps of “Achy Breaky Heart.”
“Much more fun than Scottish reeling,” Solange declared. She asked Helen how Christopher had liked Marrakech, and Helen said that he had been unable to go—something had come up. “My dear, when do the two of you ever spend time together?” She did not know how to take Solange’s words—were they an innocent observation or an indirect warning?
Chapter Twenty-Five
London
Solange’s question still echoed in Helen’s mind months later as she walked down the King’s Road. She tried to answer the question in ways that satisfied her, but they all fell short. Too often, when they went out in the evening, the dinners were business related and she would find herself seated next to a chief executive or finance director with whom she had nothing in common. The American businessmen were the worst. They described their multiple homes—apartments on Fifth or Park Avenue in New York City, beach houses in the Hamptons, seaside villas in St. Barts, ranches in Wyoming—she doubted if they even knew their way around a horse. It was as if they were playing some grown-up version of King of the Castle. They spoke about their art collections as if pieces of sports equipment. Worse still were their discussions of their private planes. Helen learned early that as long as the conversation remained solely focused on them, they would tell Christopher after dinner what a charming wife he had. The conversations were all variations of the one she’d had one evening at an exhibit of contemporary artists at the Tate. She had sat between the treasurer of a U.K. publishing company and the chief executive of a well-known hedge fund.
“I have a great way of explaining numbers to children,” the chief executive said. “For example, I tell them the way to think about one million and one billion. One million represents twelve days, and one billion represents thirty-three years.” His wife was keen for him to write a children’s book so that other children could benefit from his explanations. He asked Helen if she knew any good writers. He said he knew there would be plenty who would appreciate the “extra dough.”
Thinking about writers, Helen remembered some reviews of novels that had sounded interesting and thought she would pick out a few for the summer holiday. It was a late April day, and the King’s Road was crowded with people shopping and running errands. She cut down an alleyway to John Sandoe Books to escape the crammed sidewalks. She liked the slow-tapping-castanets sound of her boot heels on the pavement. Édouard Beaumont had offered them La Mandala for a second summer, and Christopher had taken it without asking her. And even though she resented his not asking her, she was looking forward to going. She made her selection and then found a small café to have a coffee and examine her purchases. The friends Helen could meet for lunch or a coffee on Saturday were evaporating, as many of them now had small children, and Saturdays were exhausted with errands and children’s activities.
Someone dropped a backpack in the seat across from her. She looked up. It was Nick van Asten.
“Long time no see.”
“Nick.” She stood up and kissed him hello.
Helen and Nick had briefly overlapped at the paper. Within a year after she started, he went off on his own as a freelance photographer. His decision had worked out well for him, and he was now represented by a Chelsea gallery. He said he had just gotten back from two weeks in Calais and before that three weeks in Tanzania. He said he was looking forward to being around London for a while. He asked Helen what she had been up to. He had heard she had gotten married. She told him she had seen his image of the man trying to catch a ride on the back of a truck. “Refugee camps are becoming my specialty,” he laughed. “Everyone is pretending it’s not a problem, but there’s a shanty town developing. It’s rough and these immigrants are desperate. When the trucks are in slow lines, they crawl under the trucks and hold on to the underbelly and stay there if they can until the truck crosses into England. Do you know how dangerous that is?” She remembered now that Nick always seemed to speak as if he were running down a hill.
“Hey, want another coffee?” Nick asked, standing up.
“Why don’t we work on something together?” he said as he sat back down. “You could write an article for the Times on the situation in Calais. It’s getting worse, not better. I’ll go with you and show you around. That is, as long as you agree to use my images.” He smiled to acknowledge he already had his answer. “People need to start thinking about these people. They have a desperateness that you and I will never know.” He said he was making another trip in August. Why didn’t she come with him? She said she would bring it up with her editor, but even if he liked the idea, the only time Christopher could take off was August, when all his clients were on holiday. And it wasn’t as if she would be in Calais for the entire month. “Just for a few days,” he said as they were leaving the coffee shop. She could do the research before and after the trip.
“Come over and I’ll show you what I have. Here,” he said, turning her wrist over and writing his number. “Don’t worry”—he spoke with the cap of his pen between his teeth. “Everything about me washes off.”
When she was halfway down the block he called to her, “Helen, don’t forget to call me.”
God, was he a flirt, she thought as she walked home. She looked at the numbers he had written on the inside of her wrist. Running into Nick had felt strangely luxurious, and she had done nothing to discourage him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Saint-Tropez
David was blunt with Helen. He was not going to send her—no matter who the photographer was. “It’s like sending you to a war zone, and you’re not a journalist who covers conflicts. You have no idea how dangerous it can get—it can turn in a minute. Some of the refugees have been brutally murdered, and a student journalist was savagely raped two months ago. Besides, I hear the Guardian may have a large piece coming out. Find something else to do with Nick. On second thought, don’t—it’s double danger—he sleeps with every female journalist he works with.”
“Oh, come on, David.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about. I’ve been thinking about assigning a piece on Cuba. Any interest? You could take Christopher. I’d feel better if you were with someone.”
“Sure, just let me know.” She wasn’t getting her hopes up, about either the article or Christopher, but as she walked out of David’s office she remembered the small book Christopher had given her on the circus performer. On the last pages was an account of the cities, listed by year, where he had spent each New Year’s Day, Fourth of July, and Christmas over a forty-year span. He had spent considerable time in Cuba.
* * *
Christopher canceled all but one and a half weeks of their holiday in Saint-Tropez. He had to go to Hon
g Kong for a board meeting. He explained to Helen that the Chinese, unlike the rest of Europe, did not take August off. He also had planned a trip to New York City to meet with Dan O’Connor, a former classmate from Oxford, a Rhodes scholar who had recently left his job as an assistant U.S. attorney and was about to join a top New York City law firm as a litigator. Christopher remained concerned about Marc’s trading activities. He couldn’t point to anything specific, it was just a feeling he had. And Carlos Muñoz’s comments had intensified his suspicions. He wanted to discuss his concerns with Dan before he started with his new law firm to avoid any possible conflicts of interest.
Christopher insisted there was no reason for Helen to cut her holiday short. She should stay at La Mandala and invite friends or family. He was certain her brothers and their wives would enjoy coming down. Since her miscarriage, being around her nieces and nephews made her wonder if she would ever have children, and she did not like the feelings that crept in around that question. But she could not tell him this. As time had passed, the significance of her not telling him had expanded. Distance had taken on a weight of its own and she did not want to acknowledge it. And yet the idea of being at La Mandala without him made her feel desolate. She would come with him to New York, she could find things to do during the day. Willie’s new play was now in rehearsal, and she wanted to see it. Christopher warned her that New York in August was the last place most people wanted to be.
The second summer in Saint-Tropez was more fun than she had imagined—partly because there were no houseguests and partly because Édouard left them his Riva. For those eleven days, they only traveled by foot or boat. In the mornings they took day trips, west to explore the islands of Porquerolles, Port-Cros, and the Île du Levant and east to the Lérins Islands.
“I’m surprised more people aren’t here,” Helen said when they had anchored on the south side of Île Sainte-Marguerite and walked across the narrow island to Fort Royal.
A Theory of Love Page 12
