Love
in
A Warm Climate
Helena Frith Powell
To my girlfriends, most of whom are not French.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Rule 1: Be careful where you put your (matching) underwear
Rule 2: Affairs are a way to liven up a dull marriage
Rule 3: Pick a lover who has as much to lose as you do
Rule 4: Stay interested in your spouse and family
Rule 5: It is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful without wanting to be – Brigitte Bardot
Rule 6: Be breathtaking, be sexy; but above all be discreet
Rule 7: Know your enemy
Rule 8: Falling in love (or even lust) keeps you young
Rule 9: Mystery plays a large part in any successful affair
Rule 10: Remember that nothing has to last forever, or even for an afternoon
Rule 11: Lip-gloss is part of the armour you need to go into battle
Rule 12: Always be prepared, your next lover could be just around the corner
Rule 13: Sentimentality will cost you; never keep any evidence
Rule 14: Always maintain your dignity
Rule 15: Guilt is a wasted emotion
Rule 16: Anticipation is almost the best part
Rule 17: Remember that nothing tastes as good as thin feels
Rule 18: Body hair is not an option
Rule 19: You are programmed to seduce
Rule 20: Always have a back-up
Rule 21: The end of an affair is the beginning of another
Rule 22: Personal grooming is your only religion
Rule 23: The hours cinq à sept are the most easily hidden
Rule 24: Fidelity is for other people
Rule 25: The fantasy is often better than the reality
Rule 26:: Sex is just like any other sensual pleasure, be it eating or drinking: it is not to be taken too seriously
Rule 27: Know what you want from the affair before you pick your lover
The Sophie Cunningham
Acknowledgements
Also by Helena Frith Powell
Copyright
Rule 1
Be careful where you put your (matching) underwear
The French Art of Having Affairs
“Since when did you start wearing a bra?” I ask my husband as he walks into our bedroom.
This is not typical of our Sunday afternoon conversations, which on any other Sunday might include a discussion about crap articles in the Sunday papers, his latest round of golf (possibly worse than the articles), what to have for dinner or whether or not the children should have a puppy.
But today is different.
Ten minutes ago, dutiful wife that I am, I started to repack his black Mulberry leather bag, a Christmas present from me last year. He is still commuting back to England for work while I stay in our lovely new home in France. Only Nick has clearly been doing more than just working.
Unpacking the bag I found socks, crumpled shirts, boxer shorts; all the usual stuff. I rummaged around to reach the last few bits. Then I touched something that felt somehow unexpected. It felt like lace and silk. I took it out. It was a bra. And it was not for me. Unless he bought it for me eight years and three breastfeeding children ago and just forgot to hand it over.
I dropped it as if it had burned me. It lay there on our blue and white patchwork bedspread, as real as everything else in the room but totally out of place. I wanted to scream, but the sound stuck in my throat, as if someone was trying to throttle me.
I tried to breathe deeply and calm down. Just because there was a bra in his bag didn’t necessarily mean he had been shagging its owner. There might be another, perfectly reasonable, explanation. He might be a cross-dresser. Would that be better or worse?
Or maybe it was a joke. Nick had just been on a business trip to New York. Perhaps one of the other traders thought it would be a good wheeze to liven up his homecoming. But if that were the case, they would have chosen something slightly more garish. A red lace number with tassels, perhaps? Or maybe black PVC in size quadruple D. But not the cream lace and silk item with a delicate floral pattern lying on our bed, which is the kind of bra you buy for a woman you actually like, as well as want to shag.
I picked it up again and turned it over a couple of times. It was a B-cup. It looked new. The label said La Perla. My best friend Sarah has underwear from La Perla; she is the fashion editor of a glossy magazine so gets sent it for free. I picked up some La Perla knickers up once when I strayed into the posh underwear section of Peter Jones. They were over £100, which is more than I would usually spend on a fridge. When the sales assistant asked if she could help me I was worried she might charge me just to hold them.
“So why are you carrying a bra in your bag?”
“Ah,” says my husband and stops dead in his tracks as he spots the bra in my hand. There follows one of those silences that are more noisy than quiet.
“Ah … ‘I’m sorry I forgot to tell you I’m a cross-dresser but I only do it on Sundays and I am getting help’?” I try.
Nick laughs uneasily and tries to flash that cheeky Irish grin of his that never fails to charm people. It’s failing now, however.
“It’s not mine,” he begins.
“You surprise me,” I respond, adding. “And I suppose that’s supposed to make me feel better.”
“I can explain. You see; it’s like this.”
He walks towards me slowly across the wooden floor. I can see he is trying to buy time before he comes up with a good enough excuse for the bra in the bag.
“Is this one of your famous Irish jokes?” I ask. “The one about the Scottish bloke, the English bloke and the…er, expensive bra?”
“No, Soph, I’ll level with you. I’ve been seeing someone, but really it meant nothing. Honest.”
Dear God. Has he been reading The Bastard’s Book of Tired Old Clichés?
“Who is she?” I demand. “Clearly not a French woman or she would have left her knickers in there as well; one is no good without the other as any self-respecting French woman will tell you.”
At least if she is French then I can ruin her week by confiscating one half of her matching underwear set.
“She’s French, from Paris. She’s called Cécile,” he replies. “She’s one of our most important clients. I can’t explain how it happened, but it started with work meetings and then she insisted we go out one evening and…”
He trails off.
“And?” I prompt. “And when you told her all about me and your three young children she said ‘what a lovely bunch they sound. Please take this bra home for them?’”
He sighs. I see the fight go out of those gorgeous green Irish eyes. He has that look he had when Liverpool scored against Chelsea in the 90th minute of the FA Cup Final.
“Oh Soph, she just seemed so determined and to want me so much, in the end I just gave in. Pathetic I know, and there’s no excuse, and I am truly sorry. I suppose I was flattered.”
Yes, he most definitely has been reading The Bastard’s Book of Tired Old Clichés.
Daisy the cat comes in and starts rubbing up against his legs; bloody feline traitor. Does she know the French aren’t big on cat rescue homes? God, I’m angry. Not with Daisy, she doesn’t know any better, but with him, and with this French bitch.
“And how long has this liaison been going on?” I ask, rather impressed with myself that I can come up with such a long word in my darkest hour.
“I met her about five months ago,” he sighs.
“You’ve been seeing her for five MONTHS?” I leap from our bed in shock.
I ca
n’t bloody believe it. He’s been betraying us all for all that time, the total shit. Now I’m not angry, I’m furious, added to which I feel like the most stupid woman alive. How could I not have noticed?
“Well, not really seeing, more, well, sleeping with. It’s more a sex thing Soph, really, but it’s you I love.”
“If it’s me you love what are you doing shagging some flat-chested floozy?”
“Well, you don’t seem to want to sleep with me.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” I shriek. “It’s just that I’m so bloody tired. In case you hadn’t noticed we have three small children and I’ve just been knackered for years.”
I want to punch him but instead, much to my fury, I start to cry, more from rage than anything else. And the more I cry, the angrier I am at myself. Whatever happened to dignity in crisis?
The injustice of it all makes me angrier by the minute. We have been together for ten years, we have had three children and now I am no longer the right bra size. I slump back down onto our bed.
“Sweetheart,” he says, and starts walking towards me again.
Sweetheart? I put my hand up to stop him. “I think you’d better just go,” I say.
Nick looks amazed. “Soph, darling, don’t be silly, we can get through this storm in a B-cup.”
I glare at him. There are times when his humour can take my mind off anything. This is definitely not one of those times.
“Seriously,” he goes on, sitting next to me on our bed, our beautiful mahogany sleigh bed; a romantic wedding present from his parents and my mother and whichever one of her five husbands she was married to at the time. The bed where all our children have been conceived, where I have breastfed and nurtured them, the bed they crawl into when they need comforting and sleep in as a special treat when they’re not well. I never imagined I would be sitting on it with Nick discussing his lover’s bra.
“I thought moving here would be the end of it. I really wanted to make a fresh start. I know you’re knackered, you’ve been brilliant, you’ve looked after everyone so well; you really don’t deserve this. I’m so sorry Soph, I really am. But let’s be honest, you hardly notice I’m around. The last time you were the one to start sex was probably before Edward was born, which is…”
“I know how long ago it was,” I snap at him. It was five years ago. Have I really not initiated sex for FIVE YEARS? I try to think but I can’t focus. Surely that can’t be the case. What about his birthday?
“You didn’t even initiate sex on my birthday,” he says. He has an annoying habit of reading my mind.
I can’t fight back. The walls seem to be moving backwards and forwards. I feel like I’m watching myself in a film. I wish someone would rewind it and take me back to the bit where I see the bag and I decide to let the faithless bastard unpack it himself. Even though I don’t know he’s a faithless bastard.
He takes my hand.
“Please Soph, I made a stupid mistake, she doesn’t mean anything to me. Please give me another chance. I promise I’ll stop seeing her.”
Yeah, right, I think. “Fuck off Nick,” I say. “I hate you.” How trite; but somehow nothing else comes to mind. And it pretty much says it all.
Looking at him, imagining him with someone else, I feel sick. I remove my hand from his. The thought of him with another woman is wrong, it’s repulsive, it’s…not fair.
“Come on Soph, we can work at this, don’t you think? It’s worth it for the sake of the children.”
“And what about for our sake?” I ask. “Is it worth it for our sake?”
Nick sighs and gets up from the bed. He walks around the room for what seems like an age. He looks out of the French windows across the vineyards. I can’t begin to imagine what he’s thinking. I sit there like a nervous schoolgirl in the headmaster’s office waiting for Nick to determine the future of our marriage. He broke it so either he has to fix it or it’s over.
I can hardly allow the thought that it could be over to enter my head. How can it be? We have three lovely children, twin girls and a boy, and ten years of marriage behind us. And a cat, two peacocks plus a stray dog. And we’ve just moved to a new life in France. This is not an ideal time to be splitting up.
Rather as your life is said to flash before your eyes when you’ve had an accident, I see our past: our first date, the little black dress I wore, the kiss goodnight, the butterflies I used to feel every time I thought about him, our first romantic weekend in Paris, meeting Nick’s parents and knowing somehow I would come back to that house outside Dublin often, his proposal in Hyde Park, our beautiful wedding, the twins, Edward, the move to France and then what? The film stops there.
Finally he comes back and stands in front of me. He runs his fingers through his dark hair, something he does when he’s either nervous or trying to look good. I assume it’s not the latter.
“To be honest Soph, sometimes I feel like we’re no longer a couple,” he begins slowly. “We’re just two people who happen to live in the same house.”
“I don’t see you making a huge effort to change things,” I retort, getting more bitter by the second. “I mean when did you last do something romantic, like buy ME a bra? Oh no, you save that sort of chivalry for your slutty girlfriend. Well why don’t you just run off with her? I hope you and her perfectly small breasts live happily ever after. But don’t expect the children and me to be around when she chucks you out and finds another floppy-haired Irish lover boy to tickle her French fancy.”
Nick looks like I’ve slapped him. “Oh fine, just hurl abuse. Look, I didn’t mean for the Cécile thing to happen and I’m not trying to justify it but I guess if I had been happy at home I wouldn’t have been looking for anything else. I suppose what I’m trying to say is, it’s all very well shutting up shop, but then don’t expect your customers to hang around.”
“Shutting up shop? This isn’t Tescos we’re talking about; I’m not open 24 hours and you certainly won’t be getting a loyalty card.”
“Fact is you’re not open any hours,” he snaps back. “Do you have any idea how nice it has been over the past few months to hang out with a woman who lusts after me and can think of nothing nicer than giving me a blow-job? Have you any idea what a contrast that is to the woman waiting for me at home who practically cringes when I touch her and for whom sex has just become another household chore?”
In front of us on the floor lies the bra, which I threw there in a hissy fit, hoping it would spontaneously combust. It hasn’t, but I feel that I might.
Suddenly, Edward our son bursts into the room, followed by the twins Charlotte and Emily.
“Daddy, quick, you have to come,” they all shout at once, vying to be the first with the news. “Frank and Lampard are having a fight.”
Nick rushes off to deal with the animal crisis and I stand up, preparing to follow downstairs mechanically. The bra lies in front of me. I pick it up and wonder for a moment what to do with it. Should I use it to make a voodoo doll? Flush it down the loo? Not with French plumbing. Wear it on my head as a sign of protest? I throw it into the wardrobe. Then I walk downstairs.
I feel like a zombie, or rather like a zombie with a terrible hangover who’s been hit over the head with a cricket bat. But the children need to be fed and put to bed. It’s Sunday today and they have their first day of French school tomorrow. I put on some water for some pasta and get out a ready-made sauce. I don’t have the brainpower to come up with anything else.
On autopilot I start grating Parmesan like my life depends on it. All of my mind is taken up with the extraordinary news that Nick has been unfaithful to me, that it’s been going on for five months, that she’s called Cécile and has small breasts.
After ten minutes or, quite possibly, ten hours – I have no grasp on time – they all come charging back inside. I realise I haven’t stopped grating. We have enough grated Parmesan to fill one of MY bras. Anyone for cheese with some pasta sprinkled on top?
“Frank and L
ampard are fine,” says Nick. “They were playing or possibly mating. Whatever it was, they’re friends now.”
Great, so now we have gay peacocks. We sit down to dinner. I don’t eat anything and Nick and I don’t speak to each other, but the children don’t seem to notice. They chat and argue and behave like they normally do, totally oblivious to the parental drama. Nick eats a couple of mouthfuls of food and when the kids have finished he takes them off to the bath.
After fifteen minutes he comes back to tell me they’re all getting into their pyjamas. He stands nervously at the door, unsure whether to come in or not.
“Soph?” he says.
I stop clearing away and look at him. “I think if it had been a one-night-stand, Nick, it might have been different,” I start shakily. “But yours is a proper relationship; it’s been going on for several months, for God’s sake. I don’t think there’s any point in you staying around here, you’re obviously happier elsewhere.”
There is no other option, I can’t see how we can just go back to being Nick and Sophie after this. His infidelity is there and it always will be, like an unpaid debt. Or like someone else’s bra in my wardrobe.
I walk past him upstairs to say goodnight to our children. He doesn’t try to stop me.
“Hey baby,” I say to Edward, my usual way of greeting him as I walk into his bedroom.
“Hey mummy,” comes his usual response. I lean over him and breathe in his newly bathed squeaky clean five-year-old smell. If I could bottle that I could make a fortune. I kiss the girls goodnight. They go through the usual ritual of making me come back when I have kissed them goodnight so they can kiss me goodnight. I can see them hiding torches under their pillows, ready for nighttime chatting as soon as I have gone, but I let it slide for once.
I pass our bedroom where Nick is repacking THE bag. Briefly, I consider hiding a pair of my smalls in there, but the thought turns to ash as I remember that everything in my knicker drawer, rather like me, has seen better days.
As soon as I get back to the kitchen I start shaking all over. I go to put the kettle on, an instinctive reaction in times of crisis; I’m not sure I could eat or drink anything at all. Still, it feels better to keep moving.
Love in a Warm Climate Page 1