‘Nice houses and cheap and plentiful staff.’
‘Always an advantage. Why won’t you stay in London?’
‘London will be drab and dreary. I need change. I need heavenly dullness.’
Cleve leant over and whispered.
‘And these are the people our boys are dying for?’
‘Well, they’re not really representative of—’
Then I saw Charbonneau come into the Grill and stopped talking in mid-sentence. He was in his khaki uniform and was wearing his round gendarme-style hat that he swiftly removed. He was led to a table some distance away against the far wall. My mouth was dry and I felt suddenly faint. Cleve signalled to a waiter for more coffee.
‘Let’s just pay our bill, shall we?’ I said.
‘No, no,’ Cleve said. ‘I don’t want to miss the next chapter. Not for the world.’
On cue, the first old lady said, ‘Do you know, I think Gloria lacks feminine charm.’
Her companion said, ‘She doesn’t have a developed social instinct, that’s the problem.’
I heard no more because at that moment Charbonneau spotted me and our eyes met. For an awful moment I thought I was going to vomit as I saw him rise to his feet and cross the dining room towards us.
‘Hello,’ I managed to say, hoping there was sufficient surprise in my voice. ‘How are you?’
Cleve had switched his attention now. So I made the introduction.
‘Cleveland Finzi, this is — I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’
‘Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau.’ He shook my hand, giving it a surreptitious squeeze, then Cleve’s.
‘I met Miss Clay in New York, she took my photograph.’
‘That’s right,’ Cleve said. ‘We ran a story on you, I remember. You wrote a novel, a bestseller.’
‘For a week or so,’ Charbonneau said, with appealing but untypical modesty. I could see he was enjoying himself, now.
‘What a coincidence,’ I said, more faintly than I meant. ‘And here we all are in the Savoy Grill.’
‘Very good to see you again,’ he said, giving me a little bow. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Finzi,’ he said to Cleve and strolled back to his table.
‘Are you all right?’ Cleve asked.
‘Actually, I feel a bit sick,’ I said. ‘I think I’d better get back to the room.’
Back in the suite I kept up the charade. I went into the bathroom and retched and spat, ran water. It must have been something I ate, I said, better get home, see you tomorrow.
Cleve wanted to call a doctor — I said no, I’d be fine, I insisted. He made me sit down and drink a glass of fizzing Bromo-Seltzer that he had in his bag and I composed myself.
‘Is this good for nausea?’ I asked.
‘It’s good for anything.’
Half an hour later I walked out of Savoy Court on to the Strand to find Charbonneau waiting for me in a shop doorway, smoking a cigarette.
Back in Chelsea — in my new flat on the corner of Oakley Street and the King’s Road — I poured each of us a whisky and water while Charbonneau did his usual prospective-tenant act, opening drawers at random, peering into my small bedroom, flushing the WC.
‘That was him, wasn’t it?’ he said as I handed him his whisky.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your American boyfriend. He’s the one.’
‘Boyfriend is the wrong word. He’s the man I’m in love with, yes.’
‘You don’t love him, it’s obvious.’
‘Wrong, Charbonneau, I do.’
‘I thought you loved me.’
‘Ha-ha. I’m very attached to you. I love Cleve.’
‘Nonsense. Deep down, au fond, you really love me.’
I closed my eyes. I wasn’t going to continue this conversation.
I had never thought of myself as promiscuous, or a ‘loose woman’, as my mother would have put it. I was thirty-six years old and had only made love with three men. It was hardly evidence of nymphomania, but, as I lay awake in bed beside the gently snoring Charbonneau, I found it hard to come to terms with the fact that I had slept with both my lovers in the last twenty-four hours — well under twenty-four hours, in fact. It didn’t feel like me, somehow — and yet it incontrovertibly was the case. What was happening? It hadn’t been planned, so that was some reassurance.
I slipped out of bed and padded through to the kitchen. It was five past five in the morning according to the clock on the shelf by the cooker and a faint citrus light — grapefruit and orange — was beginning to seep into the sky above Chelsea and I could see it was a cloudy blustery day if the darkly tossing crowns of the plane trees in Carlyle Square were any indicator. Where was summer? — it was June, for heaven’s sake. I put the kettle on the gas hob and fetched out the teapot. I’d let Charbonneau sleep on and see if my mind cleared a bit. I had never expected him to re-enter my life with such embarrassing surprise.
He emerged looking for coffee at around nine o’clock, wearing his khaki trousers and my too-small dressing gown, his hairy wrists protruding from the tartan sleeves. I was dressed by this time and had been going over GPW paperwork. I had telephoned into the office saying I still felt ill — I was due to meet Cleve for lunch — impossible with Charbonneau around. He took me in his arms and kissed my neck.
‘You’re the best thing for me, Amory. When I’m not with you, I find I’m thinking about you — not all the time, but enough.’ He smiled. ‘It’s not normal for me.’
‘What is normal for you?’
He ignored me. ‘Have you some coffee? I can’t drink your English tea.’
‘What made you go to the Savoy?’ I asked. ‘It was an incredible coincidence that you should just walk in like that.’
‘No, no. I knew that you were there. I went to your office and your charming secretary said you were in a meeting at the Savoy. So I go to the Savoy, I ask for you at the front desk. No — no Miss Clay. Then I see you — with this man — going into the Grill. I went away, I had a drink in a pub and I thought — no, I must see my Amory, I don’t care who she’s with.’ He spread his hands. ‘And here we are. Aren’t you pleased?’
‘I have some coffee essence.’
‘No, don’t worry. I smoke a cigarette.’
He went to the window and lit up and stood there looking down on the King’s Road. I heard a sudden patter of rain on the glass.
‘No invasion today,’ he said. ‘For sure.’
‘What’re you talking about?’
‘The invasion of France. It will probably be tomorrow.’
Faith knocked on the office door, her double rap that meant it was important. I was interviewing a photographer. Five more were waiting in the club-room — we needed people in Normandy, urgently. GPW had nobody with the invasion fleet and I couldn’t understand why we’d been so remiss or how we’d been overlooked. Cleve had no idea so I had to work fast.
‘It’s your mother,’ Faith said. ‘Says it’s a matter of some urgency.’
I took the telephone at Faith’s desk.
‘Mother, what is it? I’m incredibly busy.’
‘Prepare yourself for sad news, my dear.’
‘What? What sad news?’
‘Your father has died.’
It was 6 June 1944. Le Débarquement. And the day my father died. D-Day. Dead Dad Day.
My father had been sitting in his favourite sheltered spot — a small open wooden gazebo that he’d had constructed at the foot of the garden at Beckburrow, working on one of his two-move checkmate chess problems when my mother had summoned him in for lunch. After lunch he said he was feeling tired and was going to take a nap. She called up to him in his bedroom when supper was ready and when he didn’t appear she went to look for him and found him still asleep, so she thought, and shook him by the shoulder — but he was dead. From a heart attack, seemed to be the likely explanation.