Pink Champagne

by Anne Weale

  Nick shook hands with him. 'Rosie plays her cards very close to her chest. Who knows who she knows? Are you the guy she's going cycling in France with?' He looked down at her. 'Or is that someone else?'

  'It's not me,' said Carl. 'I haven't been on a bike since I left school. A colleague of mine...a former colleague, I should say—' he interpolated in a wry tone' —went with a group of bikers down the west coast of France last summer. There was an interpreter in charge and a van to carry their luggage between the overnight stops. Is that what you're doing, Rosie?'

  'No, her trip is for two people only,' Nick informed him. 'It's time I was getting back. I'm sure Carl will be happy to fix your drink for you, Rosie. Goodnight, Carl. I won't say it was nice meeting you, but it was enlightening.'

  With a brief, arctic glance at her and another clipped, 'Goodnight,' he let himself out. In silence they listened to his footsteps going down the path which no longer led to a gate because, like that of many London houses, what had been a small front garden was now a paved parking area for two cars.

  As the sound of Nick's long-legged stride died away down the street, Carl said, 'Hell, now I've bust up your love-life. I'm sorry about that, Rosie. If I'd known he was here I'd have kept quiet and stayed upstairs. Still, that might have made matters worse. . .if he'd come upstairs and found me lurking in your bedroom.'

  'He wouldn't have come upstairs. You haven't bust up my love-life. All that's happened is that an acquaintance has jumped to a false conclusion. It couldn't matter less,' said Rosie. 'I'll fix you something to eat, Carl.'

  'I've had an Alka Seltzer I found in your bathroom cupboard. That's all my stomach can take at the moment, thanks. I don't know how to apologise for reeling in here like some broken-down wino. I'm sorry...I'm really sorry.'

  'So you keep saying, quite unnecessarily. At least have a cup of coffee while we talk about what you should do next.'

  'My head's still too thick for clear thinking, but a cup of coffee would be good. Then I'll leave you in peace.'

  They were down in the kitchen, drinking coffee and, partly to take her mind off her own problems, Rosie was encouraging him to talk when they heard Clare and Angie come in. Rather surprisingly, they did not come down to the kitchen but went straight up to their flat. About half an hour later, Rosie fetched Carl's coat and tie which he had left in her bedroom where he had undressed before his bath. Then he set out to walk to his flat, saying the exercise would do him good.

  Feeling suddenly very weary, she double-locked the front door and plodded upstairs to bed. But, as she had known it would be, she found it impossible to sleep. What had Nick wanted to talk to her about? Had his goodnight meant goodbye? Would he ask Bury & Poole to cancel their agreement with her and get another agency to handle the promotion of his book?

  The most likely answer to the last two questions was yes. The answer to the first was something she might never find out.

  The only faint gleam of cheer in the situation was that it did seem to scotch her idea that he was interested in Clare. If that were the case, why should he care how many men there were in Rosie's life?

  Very early the following morning, Rosie received a call from the mother of her senior assistant. Her daughter had been taken ill during the night and was not fit to come to work. She appeared to be suffering from food poisoning, perhaps caused by a meal in a restaurant the previous evening. The doctor would be called to see her as soon as the surgery opened.

  'I can handle everything she was going to do today. I'll call you tonight to see how she is. Give her my best and tell her not to worry about a thing except getting better,' said Rosie. Her assistant's commitments included taking an author to Bristol for a couple of women's page interviews and a "down the line' radio interview, which meant that the author would be in a studio in Bristol answering questions from an interviewer in another studio in Bath. It was late in the evening when she got home.

  'Sasha called. They've been basking by the pool all day. She sounded blissfully happy and sent you her love,' said Clare, coming downstairs, having heard the taxi draw up. Tired as she was, Rosie noticed at once that there was something different about her housekeeper. Perhaps she had changed her make-up or it was the new blouse she was wearing which was particularly becoming. Rosie had never seen her looking better.

  'Any other messages?' she asked.

  'Nick came round about five. I said you had planned to work late and gave him the office number. Did he call you?'

  Rosie shook her head. 'What did he want?'

  'He didn't say.'

  'Did he stay long?'

  'About an hour. I offered him a drink in case you should change your mind and come home from the station instead of going to the office. Then Angie came in and he had quite a long chat with her. She's taken a tremendous shine to him, you know, although he doesn't rate quite as highly in her pan theon of heroes as Robert Southwold.'

  'How was the concert?'

  'Superb,' Clare enthused. 'We had supper afterwards with one of Angie's friends and her parents. It was a really nice evening.'

  'I heard you come in and expected to hear all about it last night,' said Rosie.

  'You don't always want us butting in,' said Clare. 'Your supper's all ready. Shrimp bisque and cottage cheese salad. It won't take long to heat the soup.'

  Rosie's assistant was off sick all that week, which kept her extremely busy. Nick made no further attempt to get in touch with her. She suspected that he hadn't intended to contact her but had made that an excuse to see her housekeeper. During the week he saw Clare again to finalise the arrangements to do with his lending her the money to pay Sasha. Guessing that Marie-Laure would regard it as a lapse of good manners if she did not receive a formal letter from her, Rosie had found time in Bristol to choose an attractive card a reproduction of a painting by Tissot of a young cavalry officer with a waxed moustache and a red stripe down the leg of his tight dress trousers—and to compose a graceful expression of thanks.

  The following Monday, she received a note written, in an ornate but clear hand, on the hotel's writing paper and dated the previous Saturday.

  Ma chere,

  I was delighted with your choice of card. I'm so glad you enjoyed your evening with us. Very few young people take the trouble to write but it is much appreciated by people of my generation. We leave London tomorrow. I hope I shall not regret revisiting Paris for the first time in many years. I hope to see you again before too long although Nicholas tells me that when we return to Spain he must seclude himself until the new book is finished. It seems likely to occupy him until the autumn. He sends his regards.

  Had he really sent his regards or was that a mere politesse added by Marie-Laure? Rosits wondered.

  During the short time between her return from her honeymoon and her departure for Australia, Sasha and Clare signed the papers which made Clare the new co-owner of the house. On their last night in England, Tom took Clare and Angie to the cinema, leaving his wife and her friend to spend the evening alone together.

  'It's funny the way things have turned out. Tom always seemed such a stick-in-the-mud, the last person to go gallivanting off to Australia,' said Sasha, while they were having supper a deux at the table in the kitchen.

  'Australia is getting nearer every year. By the end of the century, they say, it'll only take a few hours to fly from London to Sydney.'

  'But you'll come and see us soon, won't you?'

  'Of course,' said Rosie. 'Probably next winter . . . maybe for Christmas.'

  Thinking of next winter reminded her of Bury & Poole's sales conference in Spain in the autumn. To her personal and professional relief, Nick had not asked for her to be replaced. Only that morning Anna had telephoned to ask her to handle another important book coming out some months after his.

  Evidently he was in Sasha's thoughts too. She said, 'I'm glad that, thanks to Nick, you're not having to share the house with a stranger... not yet anyway.'

  'What do you mean... no
t yet?'

  'I've noticed a definite glow about Clare since we came back. Usually, when a woman suddenly starts buying clothes and trying out new hairstyles, it's because of a man.'

  'Clare isn't going out on dates. She's out tonight and she went to a concert with Angie recently, but otherwise she's always in in the evenings. She goes out by herself during the day but I doubt if she meets a man.'

  'I think she may have fallen for Nick,' said Sasha. 'Would you mind that, Rosie?'

  Mind? It would break my heart, she thought.

  But not even to Sasha could Rosie confide the misery she had been suffering since Nick had walked out of the house.

  She forced herself to say, 'I think Clare is probably the ideal person to run his monastery for him. She would love the garden. Ours is too small to give her much scope.'

  'I'm not so sure Nick is interested in her,' said Sasha. 'With men it's harder to tell.'

  'The fact that he's just lent her a very large sum of money tells you something, doesn't it?'

  'He could have done that for your sake?'

  'Mine? How do you work that out?'

  'To save you having to find a replacement for me. Finding a house partner is almost as tricky as finding a life partner.'

  'I think his motive was to secure a problem-free pied-a-terre for himself,' said Rosie, refilling their wine glasses. 'Anyway, if something develops between those two, I hope they'll be very happy. Clare is very maternal. It wouldn't be impossible for her to have a couple of babies, or they could adopt. As for me, I'm planning to expand the agency. I think I might take Carl on. Advertising and PR are close relations and I've known and liked him a long time, on a purely platonic basis.'

  'He was married once, wasn't he?'

  'A long time ago. One of those very young marriages which so often don't work out because the people involved haven't found out who they are, let alone the sort of partner they need.'

  'Mm, if Tom had persuaded me to marry him before I had spread my wings, I think we'd have split up. There's a lot to be said for staying single until you're our age. Although I confess there were nights, before Tom came back into my life, when I lay awake wondering if I would ever find the man for me.'

  As if realising this might be a tactless thing to say to someone who was still on her own, Sasha added, rather too quickly, 'But I was much happier single than a lot of women are married.'

  'And the great thing about your career is that you can take it with you, selling Australian features to your markets here and working up new markets there. I couldn't transplant myself nearly so easily,' said Rosie.

  The following morning they parted with hugs and kisses and bright smiles. But that night, the knowledge that Sasha was not away for a few days but had gone for good and by now was well on the way to the other side of the world where, if all went well with them, she was likely to remain for the rest of her life, made Rosie feel deeply depressed. She went to bed early and, when she had put out the light, curled up on her side and, as she had ten years ago on the night of the farewell party when Nick left his job on the News, wept, both for the loss of her friend as well as the collapse of her hope that, this time, her love for Nick would not end in heartbreak.

  The first desolate days after Sasha's departure stretched into weeks and then months and the intervals between her letters describing life in Australia gradually grew longer. Rosie had wondered if, after the novelty of life Down Under had worn off, her friend might begin to feel homesick. But as, in England, the long summer evenings began to shorten, Sasha's enthusiasm for her new environment, where the weather was hotting up, showed no sign of diminishing.

  She loved the better climate, the beauty of the Blue Mountains where she and Tom spent their weekends, the view of Sydney harbour from their top-floor apartment, their mainly outdoor social life of barbecues and parties on boats, in fact every aspect of life in a country which she now considered 'makes Europe seem tired and grey by comparison'. Clare, after reading this comment at the end of Sasha's latest letter which Rosie had passed across the breakfast table on a morning when the drizzle descending from a sky the colour of grey flannel looked likely to continue all day, said, 'It's nice that she's settled down so well. I shouldn't want to move so far away myself, but on a day like this one can't help envying Nick. He's probably floating in his swimming pool under a sky as blue as his marvellous eyes.'

  Having said this, she jumped up and began to clear the table, clearly embarrassed by her unguarded remark. It confirmed Rosie's intuition that Nick was often in her housekeeper's thoughts.

  She herself tried never to think of him except when she was forced to do so by matters to do with Crusade.

  So far he had not made use of the now empty flat at the top of the house. She had been told by Anna, who had heard it from Carolyn, that he was working flat-out on his second book which he wanted to finish before the first one was published and he was involved in its promotion. After that, according to Anna, he was planning to take off for six months. It seemed there were parts of the world his job had not taken him to which he wanted to see. Rosie did not go to Spain for the sales conference which Bury & Poole held there that autumn. But she was told about it by Anna, who said that Nick's talk to the reps had been one of the most brilliant author's talks she had ever heard.

  Apparently from the pay-off line of his opening anecdote he had kept them in stitches.

  'Clean funny stories, what's more,' said Anna. 'Nothing even vaguely smutty. All true behind-the-scenes stories from his time in TV.

  He'll have them falling off their chairs at the Foyle's and Yorkshire Post luncheons. Taking him round the country is going to be a piece of cake for you.'

  'It looks like it, yes,' said Rosie, inwardly dreading it.

  The first time Nick used the flat, he rang Clare a few days beforehand so that Rosie had time to cook up a reason to be out of town while he was in London. She felt that he would be pleased to find her away, and although she would have to face him eventually she wanted to postpone that uncomfortable moment as long as possible.

  On the morning of his arrival and her departure for Yorkshire, she was packing her suitcase when she heard singing in the room overhead.

  Clare had already spent a day spring-cleaning the flat and now she was upstairs making up the bed. It was obvious that she was delighted Nick was coming to stay. At first Rosie thought she had the radio with her. Then she realised it was Clare who was singing. It must be a spontaneous expression of her eagerness to see his 'marvellous bine eyes' again. In Yorkshire, with north-country bluntness, almost everyone she met told her she was looking peaky.

  'You haven't gone and got that disease, have you?' her mother asked anxiously, when Rosie was unable to finish a huge helping of apple pudding and whipped cream.

  'Anorexia? No, of course not, Mum. Look what I had for breakfast: two eggs, bacon, a sausage, a fried tomato and a fried potato.'

  'But you didn't have any cereal or toast an d marmalade and you've been out in the fresh air all morning.'

  Her family's concern about what they considered her thinness and lack of appetite made it a relief to return to her own home.

  Clare, to whom she had spoken before setting out, wanting to be sure that Nick had left according to plan, was out when she arrived. But there was a note on the table by the door saying that she would be back in tinn to get Rosie's supper.

  The living-room was full of flowers which had not been there when Rosie left. There was al s o a new hardback novel by Clare's favourite author on the coffee-table. Rosie opened it at the fly-leaf, but although it was obviously a present from Nick he had not inscribed it. She had unpacked and changed her clothes but was still in her bedroom when she heard th e front door being unlocked. A few moments later Clare came running up the stairs. When she appeared in the doorway, her eyes had a sparkle Rosie had never seen in them before. Instead of asking about Rosie's visit and the drive back, which was how she usually greeted her after an absence, she said ea
gerly, 'I'm so glad you're back. I've got something to tell you.'

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  'IT'S ALL rather complicated,' said Clare, 'And I'll tell you the whole story later. The important thing is—' she paused, her eyes filling with tears even though she was smiling

  ' — I'm going to be married.'

  The hardest thing Rosie had ever had to do was to jump up and put her arms round her and say, while her heart was breaking, 'That's wonderful news, Clare. You deserve to be happy.'

  'You don't seem at all surprised,' Clare said, when they drew apart.

  'Hardly. I've seen it coming. The only surprise is that Nick has gone back to Spain.'

  'Nick?' said Clare, looking puzzled. 'Why shouldn't he go back?'

  'I'd have thought he wouldn't want to let you out of his sight... or vice versa.'

  'You didn't think I was talking about Nick, did you?' Clare exclaimed. With a catch in her throat, Rosie said, 'Weren't you?'

  'Of course not, you silly girl. You're the one Nick is in love with. I'm going to marry Robert.'

  'Robert?' Rosie said faintly.

  'Robert South wold... Angie's father.'

  'Oh... oh, well, that's wonderful.' Rosie sat down on her bed, feeling strangely weak at the knees, which she had always thought a mere figure of speech and now found was not.

  ' W hat in the world makes you think Nick is in love with me?'

  'His visible disappointment on finding that you'd gone away and wouldn't be back until after he'd left. The way he questioned me about you. The fact that he looks as fed up as you have lately.'

  'That's all supposition,' said Rosie.

  'Am I wrong in thinking that you love him?'

  Rosie bent her head while trying to swallow the lump in her throat. Suddenly her emotions were too strong to be contained. She bowed her back, buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

  Clare came and sat beside her and put a comforting arm round her heaving shoulders. Presently, when the tears were abating, she said gently, 'I knew I was right. You do love him... and I'm certain he feels the same way about you. I'll get the tissues—' this as Rosie began to wipe her eyes with her fingers.