Chapter 6
Oona was in the garden playing with Flo when Ashley Rowe suddenly appeared at ten-thirty the next morning.
He had bicycled from the Chateau Bertigny and looked hesitant when he saw Oona and the dog running down a path with one of Flo’s new toys.
Oona was throwing it for her.
“I’m sorry.
Is it too early? I’m an early riser and I don’t have your number.
I thought I’d drop by to see if you were around, on my way to the village.”
“I’m up early too,”
she said, smiling at him, less at ease with him than she had been the day before now that she had realized who he was.
He was wearing black jeans and a black sweater and running shoes, with his hair in his familiar style.
“The gardens are spectacular,”
he said, admiring them, and then crouched down to pet the dog.
She still looked a little moth-eaten, with the bald spots inflicted by the bush where she’d been trapped, but there was already a light fuzz over them, and her face was so sweet, she was impossible to resist.
She wagged her tail and barked at him and brought her toy over for him to throw.
He obliged her and tossed it a few feet away and she dashed back with it for him to throw again.
He stood up and smiled at Oona.
“She’s adorable.
Is she a puppy?”
Florence was dancing around him trying to get him to throw her toy again, and he did.
“The vet says she’s about a year old.
I just found her recently, tangled up in a bush at a lake not far from here.
I rescued her, and she seems to have moved in.”
“You could do a lot worse,”
he said, and she laughed.
“I have occasionally.
Will you take her home with you when you go back? I assume you’re going back,”
he said.
He stood very tall beside her, and had the body of an athlete.
He was an amazing-looking man, and Oona was trying not to be too visibly in awe of him.
He looked every inch like the star he was.
He was totally at ease and self-confident as he smiled at Oona.
He wasn’t arrogant, just comfortable, and totally natural chatting with her about the dog, as though they were old friends.
“Yes, I am going back to New York,”
she answered his question.
“I don’t know when.
I’m in no hurry.
One of my children is in Kenya, working at a children’s refugee center, and my son is in San Francisco, with Google.
And I’ve been working remotely, but I’m done with that now, and after two months of confinement, I figure I might as well enjoy it while I’m here.
France seems to be safer than New York at the moment, so here I am.”
“That’s how I feel,”
he said seriously.
“L.A.
is out of control.
We’re better off in France.
It’s not a hardship being here.”
He smiled at her.
He wasn’t seductive, he was friendly and warm and open, and he had a dazzling smile.
“I rented the house for a month in February, and I’m still here three months later.
My landlords have been very kind about it.
I think they own the house out of sentiment, but apparently it’s too small for them.
They’re a big Hong Kong family, and they rent it out occasionally, so I’m the lucky winner on this one,”
Oona explained.
“I feel that way too,”
he said, as they strolled slowly toward the house and Florence followed, carrying her little toy in her mouth, waiting to drop it at his feet again.
“An English friend I worked with rented me the chateau for a year, for a dollar.”
He grinned, his gorgeous smile lighting up his face, and she noticed that his eyes seemed to dance when he laughed.
He looked like a happy person and had an upbeat energy about him that was contagious.
“I got the best end of that deal too.
He doesn’t come here anymore.
I came over from L.A.
the day before they locked down and the borders closed.
I figured it was providence and I was meant to be here.”
He looked peaceful as he said it, as they stopped outside the main entrance to the house.
It was an enormous eighteenth-century shiny black door with a brass knocker.
“I was on vacation when the recall came to go back to the States, so I stayed.
Do you want to come in?”
she asked him, and he beamed again.
“I’m dying to.
I feel as though I’ve been here before, I’ve looked at the photographs of it so often.
When I rented Bertigny, I researched the historical buildings and homes in the area, and I read about this one.
La Belle Florence has the most romantic history, and perhaps the most tragic one.
Florence de Montmarrin was sixteen when she became the king’s mistress.
Her father was a viscount and turned a blind eye to the king’s passionate love for his daughter.
She lived at the palace as part of his court, and he built this house for her when she was seventeen.
He spent a great deal of time here with her. His country chateau was a short walk away, and they had underground passageways to connect them so he could visit her easily and safely.”
They were standing in the front hall when he told her the story in hushed tones, and she listened raptly.
He made the young girl’s story come alive with his deep smooth voice, and his lilting Caribbean accent, which made it sound even more picturesque.
Oona knew the story, but he made Florence seem even more real to her.
She could almost imagine her standing in the hall with them.
“When Florence was twenty, the king took another mistress, a much older married woman, a duchess, who outranked Florence.
He had been with Florence for quite a long time by then, four years, which in those days was an eternity, given how short their life spans were,”
he said, and Oona nodded.
“According to what I read about it, he spent time with both women then, but Florence was his true love.
They say she had the face of an angel, and laughed and smiled all the time, and delighted him.
Apparently, the duchess was a fiercely jealous woman, and Florence died in her sleep in her rooms at the palace.
The king found her himself and was inconsolable.
It was believed that she was poisoned.
She was twenty-one years old.
The king was certain that the duchess had done it. He banished her from court immediately and sent her back to her husband, somewhere in the provinces.
She never returned to court. He kept the house as it had been when Florence was alive, as a sort of shrine to her and how much he loved her. He came here to the house often by himself.
It saved his life—he was here the night the rebels burned his chateau to the ground near here, and he hid in one of the underground passages. The rebels never touched this house.
It remained as perfect as it had been when Florence was alive. She died in 1787, two years before the Revolution. He died in 1793, six years after she did. He was executed.
The locals believed that her ghost was here after she died, because she’d been happy here and loved the house. Perhaps because the king was often here then, the house still seemed inhabited after she died.
According to the history, she was his last mistress until his death in the Revolution. He was the last king, and she was his last love. It’s a beautiful story, isn’t it? This is the charming refuge and love nest he built for her,”
Ashley said, smiling at Oona.
“It makes me happy, and I feel close to them just being here.
She was a beautiful blonde girl, very small and delicate, barely bigger than a child, and she was so young.
It was a great honor when he took her as his mistress.
All the women in the court were jealous, particularly when he built her a country house.
She wanted it to be very simple and rural, with lovely gardens, and that’s what he gave her.
The gardens still look very similar to the way they did then.
He had his own gardeners and arborists design them, and they look almost the same, from some watercolors I’ve seen. I think Florence may have done the paintings herself. I can see why your landlords are sentimental about this house,”
he said nostalgically, glancing around, and he pointed to a detail in the ceiling which Oona hadn’t noticed before, little angels amid garlands of flowers as part of the relief work.
She walked him into the living room and he stood admiring everything, and the way it was furnished with eighteenth-century antiques.
“I think it’s grander than it was then,”
Ashley said, and followed her into the dining room, and the library she had used as an office for the first two months.
He moved closer to the books and examined them closely and then turned to Oona.
“May I touch the books?”
he asked her respectfully, and she nodded, as he removed two books from one shelf and four from the one below it, setting them carefully on the table she had used as a desk.
He reached into the bookcase and pressed a lever, and suddenly an entire panel of books sprang open farther down the wall, revealing a hiding place beyond it.
It was dusty, and they could see a door that had been sealed over.
Oona’s eyes were wide as she examined it with him.
“There are a number of panels like this in the house, so she could hide if she needed to, or maybe he just designed it for fun.
I’ll have to give you the book about them.
There’s a lot in it about the house.
I fell in love with them after I read it. I’m not sure how lovable he was, but she sounded enchanting, like a little elf, and she was very mischievous, which he loved.”
Ashley had brought the house even more alive for Oona, and they went upstairs after that, and found another secret panel in her dressing room.
The little dog backed away when they opened it, and like the other one it had been sealed closed, perhaps by more recent or even the current owners.
“That one led to a staircase, I think, that leads to the basement,”
Ashley explained.
They finished the tour of the house, and Oona made him a cup of coffee, and they sat down at the kitchen table.
It was Saturday and Marie was off, so they were alone.
After spending almost two hours together, Oona felt at ease with him.
There was nothing showy about him, nor anything to suggest that he was a star.
She knew who he was now, and she had forgotten to tell him her name, and he hadn’t asked.
“That was fascinating, thank you.”
She gazed at him.
“I’ve been dying to come and see the house since I got here.
Bertigny isn’t nearly as interesting.
It’s very serious and straightforward, with beautiful details, but nothing as much fun as this or with as much soul.
I’ll give you the book about La Belle Florence the next time I see you.”
“Have you been to any of the local brocantes yet?”
she asked him, since he seemed to enjoy history.
“I have.”
He smiled at her.
“And all the antique shops between here and Paris, and a couple of auctions.
I collect fascinating old objects.
I’ve got several things I want to take home.”
“Me too,”
she admitted.
“There’s a good one every Saturday about twenty miles from here, near a farmer’s market.
I want to go next weekend.
I think things may be a little slower right now.
I also want to go to the H?tel Drouot in Paris.
I love their auctions.
I’ll call and see if they’re open.”
When they finished their coffee, he put his cup in the sink and they walked outside.
The gardeners were busy.
Ashley and Oona had spent a lovely morning together, which had turned out to be a history lesson for her.
She loved the house even more now.
“There’s a beautiful little chapel near here if you haven’t been there yet, if you like old churches.
Saint-Blaise des Simples—it’s twelfth-century and Jean Cocteau is buried there.”
“I do love old churches,”
she said.
He acted as though they were going to see each other again, as they walked to where he had leaned his bicycle against a tree.
She was still a little awestruck that she had just spent almost two hours with Ashley Rowe, talking as though they were old friends.
“Do you like Cajun food?”
he asked her, and she smiled.
“I do.”
“You’ll have to come to dinner at the house.
I love to cook.
I’ve been trying new recipes during the confinement.
I had my mother send me my favorite ones, and she showed me how to do them on Skype.
Everyone in my family loves to cook.”
“Do you have a big family?”
she asked, curious about him.
He seemed so happy and comfortable in his own skin, with no airs and graces, which made her curious about how he grew up.
“There are seven of us.
I’m the only one who left the islands.
The others are still there.
I try to get home a few times a year.
I’m the oldest, and my youngest sister is sixteen.
My father works for the post office in Port of Spain now, and my mother is a teacher, or was—she just retired.
My father is still working.
We were poor but happy. We lived in Tobago then, and now they live in Trinidad, in the capital. I missed Tobago, so I bought a house there a few years ago. I try to go back as often as I can, but it’s never enough.
My parents saved to send me to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London when I was eighteen. I was a Shakespearean actor in London before I got a part in a series, and then went to Hollywood. I’ve been there for seven years now. It’s a very different life,”
he said.
He looked nostalgic when he spoke of Trinidad and Tobago.
He was by no means the American the locals thought he was, far from it.
If anything, he was more British, and seemed more European than American.
“The house we lived in, in Tobago, didn’t even have electricity when I was growing up.
It sounds crazy, but I miss that sometimes.
It was so simple and happy.”
He swung onto his bicycle then.
It had been an amazing morning with him, and the time had flown.
He was wonderful to talk to, and they were both starving for conversation with other humans, and social contact after the lockdown.
“I’ll let you know when I’m going to a brocante —maybe you’d like to come with me,”
he said, and looked hesitant.
She didn’t have the feeling that he was flirting with her, he was just congenial.
And then he laughed.
“I’ve been very rude.
I was so excited to see the house, I forgot to introduce myself.”
He was used to people knowing who he was.
“Ashley Rowe,”
he said, and smiled at her.
“Oona Kelly,”
she said, dropping Charles’s last name, which she had wanted to do for months, and this seemed like a good time.
He rode down the driveway on his bike, and turned to wave at her, and she felt as though she had a new friend, a fascinating one.
She had never met anyone like him, and she hoped she’d see him again.
He had a joie de vivre and a natural simplicity without artifice or pretension, and a thirst for knowledge and connection with people.
They exchanged phone numbers, and she hoped he would drop by again.
She went back into the house with her new information about its history and secrets, which endeared the place to her even more, and Florence followed her inside.
Oona felt a little guilty now for naming the dog after the king’s lovely ill-fated young mistress.
She made a salad for lunch, with lettuce fresh from the vegetable garden, and tomatoes grown there too, and she realized again how lucky she was to be there, instead of lonely in her apartment in New York.
She wouldn’t have met Ashley Rowe if she was in New York.
She would think of his visit that morning and all she had learned about him when she saw his movies now.
He was a wonderful actor, with depth to his performances, and now she knew how well trained he was, and why he was such a great actor.
There was a “realness”
to him.
He was a whole person, with an interesting history, a real life, and a family he was close to.
She went to the village herself that afternoon, to buy a chicken for dinner, and more cheese at the cheese shop.
She wondered when she’d see Ashley again and if he’d really invite her to a meal he cooked himself.
He was very down-to-earth, which made him appealing and genuine.
She knew he was younger than she was, but she couldn’t remember exactly how old he was, and looked him up on Google when she got back to the house.
He was thirty-nine years old, but he looked even younger, and she read that he was divorced and had two children, a son and a daughter, and that his English ex-wife was an actress who had also attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, so Oona guessed they must have met at school.
They had been married for seven years and divorced for six.
There were photos of him with various famous actresses.
He had won a Golden Globe award, and had been nominated for an Oscar, but hadn’t won. He’d had a very impressive career so far. Oona recognized all the women he had dated. They were all stars. And though his beautiful ex-wife wasn’t as big a star as he was, she looked familiar to Oona.
Oona was watching a movie on her computer when Meghan called her that night.
She was at a village near the refugee camp to buy supplies, where she could get cell phone service, so she called her mother.
It was a nice surprise for Oona, and Meghan told her all the news from the camp.
The incidence of Covid was still very low in the area and she felt safe there.
Then Oona teased her with her own news.
“You’ll never guess who I met in the village yesterday.
He’s living here, at the chateau.
I didn’t recognize him at first.”
Meghan went down a list of possible subjects, and finally ran out of names.
“Ashley Rowe,”
Oona said nonchalantly, as though meeting him was a common occurrence.
Meghan let out a scream, vastly impressed.
“Did you talk to him?”
Meghan was curious about him.
He was a very handsome, impeccably groomed man, and a great actor with charisma and a style all his own.
“Yes, he came to the house and knew the whole history.
He even showed me some secret panels that probably lead to the tunnels that are sealed off.”
“I’m a huge fan.
Is he nice? I think he’s from Jamaica or something.”
“Trinidad, or Tobago more exactly,”
her mother said knowledgably.
“I wish I’d been there.
I’ve seen all his movies and watched the series he was in.
He’s a huge deal, Mom.”
“I know.”
“Do you think you’ll see him again?”
“I don’t know.
Maybe.
He said he’d invite me to the chateau for a home-cooked meal.”
It was what she loved about being deconfined now—you could see people, talk to them, meet new ones, go to stores and go wherever you wanted.
The two-month lockdown had seemed endless and was a severe deprivation of human contact.
She was in an extremely comfortable situation, but had no one to talk to.
“You have to go if he invites you, Mom.
Promise me.
I’d love to meet him one day.”
“I don’t know if he’ll call me or see me again.
I’m sure he has better things to do than hang out with me.”
“Would you date him?”
Meghan was curious.
The subject of her mother dating hadn’t come up so far, but sooner or later it would.
Oona was still a beautiful woman, only in her forties, and had a long life ahead of her.
She wasn’t going to spend it alone.
But she didn’t want to think about it now.
She wasn’t ready.
“No, of course not, he’s eight years younger than I am.
That’s way too much to date.
I’d feel ridiculous, and I don’t want to date anyone for now.
I’m married to your father,”
she said firmly.
She was still getting over the blow Charles had dealt her and wasn’t sure what the future held.
“Besides, he wasn’t trying to pick me up.
It was just friendly.
You can tell he likes people.
He’s full of life.”
“I can’t believe you met him.”
Meghan was in awe of her mother’s new friend.
“And you’re free to do whatever you want, Mom, given what Dad is doing in Buenos Aires.
Maybe you’ll meet someone nice in France.”
She didn’t approve of the way her father had treated her mother, running off with someone else, whether male or female.
Oona never talked to her children about it and didn’t want to create a wedge between them and their father, but Meghan knew that she was deeply hurt, and both she and Will were totally sympathetic to her and angry at their father.
And now she was alone in France in the pandemic while he played in Buenos Aires.
It seemed completely irresponsible and unkind to Meghan, and selfish of him.
She had seen her father in a new very unflattering light.
“You should call Ashley Rowe and invite him to dinner, Mom.
Don’t wait for him to call you.
Maybe he’s shy. And he’s probably lonely too. All my friends I hear from are isolated and sound depressed.”
The situation was depressing worldwide.
Oona smiled at her daughter’s aspirations for her and was touched.
“He doesn’t look lonely or depressed, and I don’t want him to think I’m chasing him.
Women must pursue him all the time.”
It was obvious from his striking good looks.
And she had gotten no sexual or courting vibe from him, which was a relief.
She wasn’t open to it, and didn’t want to think about it, which made Ashley Rowe even more appealing as a friend, because nothing romantic would ever happen between them.
Their difference in age, history, and lifestyle made her ineligible, even if she wanted a romance with him, which she didn’t.
Race didn’t enter into it, it was irrelevant.
And no matter how unassuming he was, he was a huge star and she was a mere mortal.
She wasn’t narcissistic enough, or at all, to think he was attracted to her.
He could date any woman he wanted, and had dated many famous women. And she was an unemployed book editor; she was no one at all compared to him.
As it turned out, Ashley didn’t call her, and Oona didn’t call him either.
She didn’t need to.
She ran into him at the cheese store in town.
He looked surprised and happy to see her.
It had been a week since they’d met, everything was in full bloom, and the weather was balmy.
He smiled as soon as he saw her.
“Do you want to go to a brocante with me tomorrow?”
he asked her after they chatted for a few minutes.
“I’d love it,”
she said easily.
Her eyes and face came to life when she saw him.
He was the only person she knew in France.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come by last week.
My agent sent me a script after I saw you, and I’ve been studying it and making notes, trying to figure out if I want to do it.
I was supposed to be working on a new series right now.
It got postponed because of Covid, and it looks like it will fall apart and get canceled.
The female lead and the director are sick, and the investors are getting cold feet.
The one I’ve been reading might be a good replacement for it.
I have a shot at a part in a British series too, and I’m trying to figure out if I want to be in L.A.
or here in Europe. It’s a nice problem to have, a choice of projects, with so many people out of work.”
He smiled sheepishly.
“Acting is a weird business.
One day you’re on top, and the next day, you can be out on your ear and it’s all over.
I try to remember that.
Nothing is sure in this business.”
But he was so well established now, and so talented, that Oona couldn’t imagine him being out of favor.
He was too famous to be forgotten, and was in high demand, but he seemed very modest about it.
They chatted for a few minutes and then went their separate ways.
She had a long list of emails to answer that she hadn’t been in the mood to deal with before, including an inquiry from a real estate broker about renting the house in the Hamptons since it was standing empty, but if she went home before the summer she’d want to use it, and Charles said the same when she asked him via email.
He said that if Roberto got his papers in order before the summer, he might want to alternate with her to use the house.
His response was a sharp reminder that Roberto was firmly planted between them, and a reality she had to deal with.
It was a wake-up call that her marriage was over, no matter how she liked to pretend otherwise to herself occasionally.
Charles was clearly more attached to Roberto than he was to her, and yet he had the audacity to say again that he missed her.
In what capacity? As housekeeper and executive assistant to run his home, or to cover for him and make him look good to his children, whom he was only minimally in touch with, between fashionable vacations in Uruguay with Roberto, and trips to Brazil? There was an unreal quality to Charles’s life now, and to her own as well, living in the exquisite luxury and history of La Belle Florence in France.
There was nothing that she recognized about her life now, nothing familiar about it, and her only local friend was a famous movie star she had only met recently and would probably never see again when they left France.
Ashley picked her up in a battered Citro?n Deux Chevaux he had found at the chateau, a car every college student in France had owned at some point in their lives.
He swept her an elegant bow, worthy of his early Shakespearean acting career, and helped her into the tiny car, and they drove off to Nemours, twenty-six kilometers away, with a medieval castle.
He’d been told there was an excellent brocante, and they weren’t disappointed.
They combed the stalls for hours, and they both found treasures.
Ashley had a fondness for antique military uniforms, although most of them were too small for his large frame and broad shoulders, but he found two that fit, with a Napoleonic general’s hat that suited him and made them laugh.
Oona found a beautiful lace tablecloth, and an elegant parasol in perfect condition in the palest pink silk that reminded them both of Florence, and Ashley insisted on buying it for her as a gift.
They found more recent assorted items to their liking as well, including some 45 rpm records from the sixties, and after packing the spoils of their adventure into the car, they went to the farmer’s market nearby to buy produce they didn’t have in their gardens.
Ashley had planted a vegetable garden of his own at the chateau during the lockdown and offered to plant one for Oona with her favorite vegetables at La Belle Florence.
They were both hungry for friendship, and were surprised to find that despite their different backgrounds—Ashley’s on a tiny island in the Caribbean, with no electricity, surrounded by his large, loving family, and Oona brought up by her widowed mother in New York, going to fancy private schools, and orphaned at an early age in college—they had much in common about their views of life, and how they related to their own children and what was important to them now as adults.
Even the eight years between them seemed to make no difference, and the seeds of friendship they planted blossomed quickly into a warm bond of mutual respect that nourished both of them, far from their loved ones and familiar lives in L.A.
and New York, despite very different life experiences and careers.
Oona was more traditional and Ashley more adventurous, and somehow their differences complemented each other.
Ashley was leery of the glittering superficial life of a star, resisted being pulled into it too deeply, and was realistic about how empty it could be if one trusted it completely or craved it.
He had his feet firmly planted on the ground.
In time, Oona opened up to him about getting fired from her job of twenty-five years because her less lucrative imprint was being shut down, and over dinner one night, after a few glasses of wine, she told him about Charles falling in love with Roberto, and leaving for Argentina with him, where he was now spending the months of the pandemic while on sabbatical.
She trusted Ashley enough to be honest with him, and he didn’t disappoint her.
He was startled, and sympathetic, and sad for her when she told him the story.
“And you never suspected that he was gay before that?”
Ashley looked at her seriously, and she shook her head.
“That must have been a hell of a jolt,”
he said, and she looked pensive, remembering how stunned she had been.
“Maybe I missed the signs, maybe they were there and I didn’t want to see them.
Looking back, I realize that we started to drift apart a long time ago.
We were busy with our careers, and distracted by the kids and what they needed.
It’s easy to get sidetracked in a marriage after a long time.
After a while, we were more friends than lovers, and I’m not even sure exactly when that started.
We never had a lot of arguments, we just weren’t close, he was always with clients.
I was torn between my job and my kids, and I was always running to keep up.
We used to have dinner once a week to find out what the other was doing. I guess the dinners were more like debriefings, or scheduling meetings.”
Ashley didn’t feel he knew her well enough to ask her if they still made love, but it was the obvious question, and the answer would have been very rarely.
It just didn’t have much appeal anymore.
She realized now that they were no longer attracted to each other, but she would never have guessed that he would fill that need with a man.
She had never asked herself before if he cheated on her and assumed he didn’t.
“Maybe it’s my fault for not noticing.
It’s hard to feel sexy when you’re always running between your office and your family, or maybe that was just the excuse we used for no longer feeling any attraction to the person we lived with.
I thought it was normal after being married for so long.
You can’t go around asking other people how often they make love, or if they still do, no one I know anyway.”
“And now?”
Ashley asked her.
They were having dinner at the chateau, accompanied by an excellent bottle of wine Ashley had bought them.
Neither of them was drunk, but they were relaxed and more open with each other than usual.
“Who do you have now? Is there a man at home in New York?”
She looked him in the eye before she answered.
“No.
It all happened so fast, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, and then they left for Argentina a few days later.
I spent the next six weeks just trying to understand what had happened and get back on my feet mentally and emotionally.
I was in no condition to date anyone and didn’t want to.
And then they announced the merger at work right after the New Year, and everyone was upset.
I was worried about my job, but they told me it was secure.
Then a month ago, they told me they’re closing the small publishing imprint I ran, and now my husband is in Argentina with his boyfriend, so I guess I’m out of that job too. It’s hard not to feel like a total flop, but losing the job really isn’t my fault—they want to focus on commercial fiction now, and Charles wants to focus on Roberto. I’m not sure if that’s my fault or not. It must be in part, since I’m half of the marriage that ran aground. Maybe I treated it more like a job. I was so busy scheduling everyone and everything, I never noticed that he didn’t love me anymore. And I didn’t love him either, not the way I did in the beginning, and once that’s gone, the feeling never comes back again. The relationship changes too much to repair. I was so busy trying to be the most efficient wife and mother in the world, I forgot all about the tenderness of loving someone.”
She looked sad as she said it, and Ashley felt sorry for her.
She was a good person, and a kind woman, and he suspected that she had been a good wife, but with the wrong person, and she was taking a lot of the blame on herself.
“Do you think he had relationships with other men all along?”
Ashley found it hard to believe that Charles had only discovered that about himself at fifty-nine.
“He says he didn’t, except once in college, but he thought it was an anomaly of some kind, or so he says.
At this point, I don’t know what to believe—he lied to me for the last year—and maybe it doesn’t matter.
It is what it is now, and I’ll have to deal with it when I go back.
As long as I’m away, all of that seems unreal and like it’s not happening.
At times, I’m really happy here,”
she admitted, as though there was something wrong with it, “and here, I can pretend that my life won’t be completely different when I go home.
No job, no husband, my kids thousands of miles away.
They have their own lives now, as they should.
And so does Charles.
The one who has to start from the bottom up again is me.
I don’t even know where to begin.
With a divorce, I guess.”
She smiled at him ruefully.
“Since my kids aren’t in New York, I’d rather stay here at La Belle Florence.
For now anyway.”
Oona and Ashley had a warm, cozy evening together, which led to their baring their souls to each other, and he reached across the table and held her hand for a minute.
He hadn’t done anything like that before, but he was touched by what she told him and how brave and honest she was.
“It’s not your fault, Oona.
Things happen, people change.
You can’t blame yourself for his being gay because you were too organized, or worked hard or loved your job, or missed the signals.
He must have suspected before Roberto came along.
I have a hard time believing he didn’t know.
And you’re a beautiful woman.
The fact that you stopped having sex is as much on him as it is on you, maybe more so.
Most men wouldn’t have let that go. We all make mistakes in our relationships, but I’ll bet you made very few. I was the opposite in our marriage. I was too immature to get married. I was twenty-six. Claire and I got involved when we were in drama school together. It was a stormy relationship, off and on after we graduated. I was never faithful to her in the beginning. We were young, we broke up a bunch of times—I was the original bad boy then, and she put up with me. She’s a good woman, she just wasn’t my woman, and we were too different to ever make it work. My brother told me that before I married her. She hated Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean. She’s a typical English girl, from a working-class family in Liverpool, and London was as far as she wanted to go. She’s actually done very well—she’s had parts in a few good movies, and now she’s working in TV in England and she’s happy. She thought we’d both be doing Shakespeare forever. When I got the part in the first series, she was terrified it would lead to more and it did. She came to L.A. with me and hated it, and everything my life became after that. Doors opened to me, I got some great parts, and terrific films. She went home to England after a year, and took Alana, my daughter, with her. Claire didn’t want her to grow up in L.A. She was pregnant again when she left—I think she did it on purpose, and she thought that would force me to give up L.A. I went back to London with her for a while. I was faithful to her by then and tried to be a decent husband. But we had too much bad history between us, too much to overcome. She was angry at me for the eight years before that and she couldn’t let it go. I don’t blame her, but we shouldn’t have gotten married. Marriage doesn’t fix a shaky relationship. It makes it worse. It’s the great magnifier of whatever is there. It doesn’t change it. When she had Simon, my son, I wanted her to come back with the kids to L.A., and she refused. I wanted the career L.A. could give me. I wanted both my family and the career I had. I wanted it all. I wanted to work in England and L.A. and have my wife and kids with me. She wouldn’t do it—she hated it when my career took off, and she filed for divorce. Maybe I should have stayed in England, but I would have resented forever what I had to give up. Just working in England wouldn’t have been enough for me, once I got a taste for the kind of work I could get in L.A. I had so many great opportunities. It was too much to give up for her. She basically divorced me because of my success. Her boyfriend now owns a restaurant in Notting Hill, and she’s as happy as can be. She hated what my career turned into, so now I fly back to London to see my kids, and have them come to me, and visit my family in Trinidad when I can, and I’m happy. I wanted to seize the opportunities I was given, but I feel bad when I can’t be there for my kids. I try to see them as much as I can.”
Oona could tell he loved his children deeply and felt guilty for the time he missed with them, but he had a fabulous career too.
He’d had chances no one would turn down, and was still a good person, and a kind, honorable man.
“It sounds like you’re doing a good job of having both, the kids and your work.
It would have been a shame to give up the career you have.
You’re an amazing actor, Ashley.
You can’t keep a talent like that hidden or chained to the wall.
You’d have been miserable if you gave that up.
The older your kids get, the more time they’ll probably spend with you.
How old are they?”
“Simon’s six, and a little devil”—he grinned when he said it—“and Alana is almost a lady now, she’s twelve.
Her mother got pregnant as soon as we got married.
I think she thought that would tie me down and anchor me, and apparently nothing does.”
He smiled and she laughed.
He was like a big, beautiful bird who needed to fly away at times, but always came back to his nest, and his family, in the end.
But he couldn’t be caged.
She could sense that about him.
“I’d love you to meet my kids sometime,”
he added.
They were truly friends now.
The stresses of the pandemic had strengthened their bond and they had no distractions from each other.
Ashley spoke to his agent almost daily, but he wasn’t present with her in Milly-la-Forêt.
“I’d love you to meet mine.
Will goes down to L.A.
a lot, but Meghan is a long way from home now, loving what she does.
I don’t know when she’ll come home.
Will is much more of a homebody than she is.
She needs big skies, like you.”
She smiled at him, and he could see that she understood.
They were very accepting of each other.
Oona suspected it was because they were just friends.
The moment there was more involved, in the high-stakes game of love, when all the chips were on the table, when you risked everything, that was when the heavy losses happened.
“Do you want to get married again?”
he asked her, curious, and she shook her head.
“I put in twenty-five years and got fired,”
she said with a rueful smile.
“I don’t want to go through that ever again.”
“You didn’t get fired,”
he corrected her, “you got laid off, the firm went out of business.
It sounds to me like your husband was emotionally bankrupt.
Maybe you just outgrew each other.
That happens.
Twenty-five years is a damn good run.
It’s awfully hard to find someone who will suit you twenty-five years later.
You grow up and things change.
You don’t always grow in the same direction as the person you live with—in fact it’s extremely rare.”
“I realize that now,”
she said.
“Charles and I outgrew each other years ago.
We don’t like any of the same things today.
Sometimes I miss the man he used to be, but I don’t miss who he is now.”
Ashley nodded, he understood.
He felt the same way about his ex-wife.
“When I see Claire now, I wonder how we were ever together.
We have nothing in common either.
We have nothing to talk about now, except the kids.”
“That sounds like the last fifteen years of my marriage,” she said.
Ashley took her home after dinner and they went to stroll in the gardens.
Oona loved thinking about the king and his beloved mistress, walking the same path centuries before.
It was so easy talking to Ashley, and just being with him.
She was so grateful to have him as a friend.
She hoped they would stay friends when they left France, but the one thing the last seven months had taught her, and especially the pandemic, was that nothing was predictable anymore.
You could never guess what the future had in store.