Page 48 of The Bordeaux Book Club
‘Shallow pool?’ Camille ventured.
‘As in, there aren’t many of them. Not much water in the lake,’ Grace explained.
‘Ah yes! Like the fish in the sea. There are not enough,’ Camille said, nodding.
‘I think Bingley and Jane are probably alright,’ said Leah. ‘He seems like quite a fun guy, they’ve got £5,000 and Jane seems smitten. Perhaps they’re the real winners here?’
George set his empty glass on the coffee table, making sure there was a coaster underneath it first. Monica leant forward and refilled it and a look of horror flickered across his face. ‘Sorry?’ she said. ‘Are you driving?’
‘No, it’s great,’ he said, picking up the glass and eyeing it, clearly just terrified to spill red on all the endless white.
‘What about poor Charlotte?’ said Monica. ‘You know, Elizabeth’s friend. She’s the one I feel most sorry for. The most desperate of the lot! Mr Collins sounds dreadful! She makes no secret of the fact that she just marries him because she’s out of options,’ she shuddered.
‘At least she knew what she was getting into, though,’ Alfie said. ‘The way I see it, she treats it more like a business transaction. She wants a secure future and it’s the only decision she can make. We kind of feel sorry for her, but maybe she’s the one who actually gets it. The rest of them think they’re in love, and that’s the real problem. She’s literally making the best of a bad situation.’
‘Gawd, that’s a depressing view!’ Grace said. ‘Surely there’s a little romance here too? Not for Charlotte obviously. But at least, I think Austen wants us to believe that Elizabeth and Darcy are a good match.’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Leah. ‘Perhaps our definition of what a happy ending means has changed, in modern times.’
‘You have to have hope,’ Grace said. ‘You have to hope that there’s happiness, love, moments of joy for them all.’
Leah looked at Grace’s earnest face. ‘Definitely,’ she said. It was curious hearing Grace talk that way – she had never presented herself as anything but single and happily so – not someone who yearned for romance, but someone in love instead with her own company, her own carefully crafted life.
‘Yes, there must be love, of course. But for Charlotte, not with her twenty-seven years,’ said Camille sadly. ‘She is too old for the happiness by now, eh?’ She smiled and they all laughed in acknowledgement.
‘Horrible to be considered an old maid at twenty-seven! Wonder what that would make me!’ said Grace.
‘I don’t know,’ George said. ‘Never too old.’ He gave Grace a look and Leah noticed her friend’s face flush slightly.
‘But then, life expectancy was so low in those days,’ Leah ventured. ‘I googled it – women only lived to about forty-nine years! Obviously, the figure’s a bit skewed by infant mortality rates and there would have probably been a big divide between rich and poor, but still. Twenty-seven would have been beyond middle-aged.’
‘I sometimes wonder how anyone achieved anything in those times,’ George said. ‘I only just got myself figured out by that age. I feel like I’m just starting out sometimes.’
‘Ah, but we are lucky now, of course,’ Camille said, laughing. ‘Now we can make love at any age and it is good.’
‘Fall inlove,’ Alfie corrected.
She looked at him. ‘It is wrong, making love? It is not what you say?’
‘Well, we do say it,’ said Alfie, getting redder by the second. ‘But we… it’s what we say for sex, not falling in love, relationships, that sort of thing.’
Camille shrugged. ‘It is all one, no? We fall in love, we make love… and we are never too old to make love.’ She seemed completely unembarrassed. They all studiously sipped their wine. ‘Perhaps Mr Collins, later, he take a lover. And Charlotte, she take a lover too. And they are all happy,’ said Camille.
‘What? Cheating on each other!’ Grace spluttered, taking a sideways glance at Leah. ‘But that’s not… marriage is…’
Camille shrugged. ‘But if she does not want the sex with him, perhaps he find it somewhere else.’
It was getting too close to the bone. Leah found herself thinking of Nathan. Their life that had fallen into a monotonous pattern. They still had sex, occasionally. But were often too tired from the manual labour, or too stressed, or just… It was as if sometimes they forgot to make the time, make the effort. She’dthought it was a mutual thing. Perhaps it was normal for the sex part to peter out a bit after a decade and a half? Suddenly, she wondered if the petering out had all been one-sided.
‘Leah!’ The voice was sharp, brought her back into the room. ‘Watch out!’
It was too late; her hand had relaxed and the glass she’d been cradling had spilled its contents generously onto the white sofa, the rug and Monica’s perfect, expensive, white trainers.
19
It wasn’t like her to cry.
Monica had been more than understanding – even blasé – about the spillage. ‘Honestly,’ she said. ‘Bella will be crawling soon and we’ll have to change the décor anyway.’
