The holiday, p.13
The Holiday, page 13
‘How about a Benedictine?’ says Andrew.
‘Are we back to monks again?’ asks Frances.
‘I was thinking more of a brandy liqueur.’
When they get back to their table he orders two.
‘I thought aftershave lasted two hours,’ says Frances. ‘You haven’t refuelled in mid-evening, have you?’
‘My stuff lasts longer,’ says Andrew.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ says Frances.
The Croisette is on their right now as the boat heads back to port. Their floodlit hotel stands out among the lights on the front. When the bill appears, Frances expects to see a credit card but Andrew produces a wad of real money and counts out notes on the table.
There are so many boats in the port that reaching their berth is a difficult manoeuvre; diners bunch at the exit, waiting to disembark.
‘It’s been a most enjoyable evening,’ says Andrew, putting his crocodile wallet into his pocket. ‘What happens now?’
‘It certainly has,’ says Frances. ‘Thank you for it. What happens now? I suppose the next trick is to get off this boat.’
‘I meant after that,’ says Andrew.
‘Ah,’ says Frances. ‘Difficult, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ asks Andrew.
‘Not really,’ says Frances. ‘Why don’t you come and have a drink in my room?’
10
It is no surprise to Esme Rutherford when her sleep is disturbed by thoughts of Bruce Kerwin, confined by the four walls of a dusty cell. Her concern for other people is something that she could do without, but she seems to be lumbered with it.
What she thinks of as her natural compassion seems at times to be, more accurately, a maudlin and unproductive tendency to focus on the sad and unfortunate at the expense of her own peace of mind; she would be a lot more cheerful if she could fill her head with pictures of success, affluence, brimming health and sunshine. But drawn to losers, she has always signed petitions, lobbied politicians, joined committees and voted Labour. The world’s wrongs alight on her shoulders, demanding action.
The following morning, without giving it a second thought, she leaves Roger with his coffee and a newspaper on the terrace, and sets off for Cannes Central Police Station.
Her sympathy for the prisoner had started before she caught sight of his wife slipping away for an evening with Andrew Marner. She had found his vain attempt to hold back the years and relaunch himself as a somewhat younger man rather poignant. Bruce Kerwin was clearly in need of help even before the French judicial system brusquely took him away and locked him up.
As she hurries along the rue d’Antibes she wonders what little gift he would appreciate. It is the busiest street in Cannes and yet so narrow that there is only room for one-way traffic heading west. The cars here seem to have been shrunk so that they can be accommodated in the cramped conditions: little white mokes, drophead Golfs, Fiat Pandas and Renault Clios. At a loss, she stops to buy him a box of chocolates.
She cannot imagine in what conditions the French detain their prisoners. She has read reports that suggest that the Dark Ages still exist in secret corners of the Republic. Whatever the circumstances, they must have come as a considerable shock to a respectable middle-aged Englishman who thought he was on holiday.
She reaches the Avenue de Grasse and spots the forbidding facade of the police station. When she steps inside, she feels a slight draining of her resolve. The building is presumably full of policemen and villains, and she has never been very fond of either. Her urge to help wanes a little and she acknowledges reluctantly that concern for other people can be taken too far. In America, the home of peculiar causes, they even have Pet Loss Support Groups.
A policeman slides open a window and says, ‘Bonjour.’
‘Je suis anglaise,’ Esme says. ‘Je ne parle pas bien le français.’
The policeman leaves the window and returns with another flic. ‘Hallo,’ he says.
‘A friend of mine is detained here,’ says Esme. ‘I would like to see him.’
‘His name?’
‘Bruce Kerwin.’
‘Ah, Monsieur Kerwin. All the beautiful women come to see Monsieur Kerwin.’
Two floors above, Bruce Kerwin is lying on a small bed in a tiny cell, staring at a grey ceiling which has a single light in it protected by a shield of bars. He has declined the breakfast he was offered – a breadstick and lukewarm coffee – and is regretting that petulance. Any food or liquid would be welcome now. He is lying on a single grey blanket which he reluctantly gets under at night when his dreams are uniformly hostile. Enemies lurk, violence threatens. Strange creatures thwart his wishes and walls that can talk restrict his freedom. The distant memory of a black desk in an insurance office which he had only recently convinced himself was a misguided martyrdom, has now, in his present situation, assumed the status of a pleasure centre for the uniquely fortunate.
He gets off the bed and looks down at his dirty clothes. He feels grimy all over. He pulls something from his nose which is so solid that when he drops it he hears it hit the floor. His fingernails are black. He is thinking that he would be doing exercises if he had eaten enough food to provide the energy, when footsteps approach. A policeman opens the door and beckons him out.
‘Visiteuse,’ he says.
The man walks behind him as they march along the corridor and down stone stairs. His wife, he imagines, has finally managed to find the time to buy him soap. But when he is shown into the familiar room it is Esme Rutherford who is sitting on the other side of the table.
‘Bruce,’ she says. ‘I thought I’d come and see how you are.’ She is shocked by the appearance of this man. His face is white and unshaven, his hair is unkempt. His new jeans are creased and marked and he must have been sleeping in his T-shirt.
Bruce Kerwin sits down self-consciously. He is not dressed to greet anybody, let alone this girl.
‘Kind of you,’ he says. ‘You heard what happened?’
‘Kimberley Neal told me they found cannabis in your pocket,’ says Esme. ‘I can hardly believe it.’
‘I met a man,’ says Bruce.
‘What sort of man?’
‘A cool one.’
‘Cool like a toad,’ says Esme. ‘What can I do to help? This is ridiculous!’
‘If you’re a miracle-worker you can get me out of here,’ says Bruce, sounding as depressed as he looks. ‘Short of that, there’s not much you can do.’
‘I brought you some chocolates,’ Esme remembers, and pushes the box across the table. ‘The gentleman in the uniform has had a look at them and says it’s okay for me to give them to you.’
To her surprise Bruce Kerwin opens the box and eats three.
‘Don’t they feed you?’ she asks.
‘I’ve had nothing today,’ says Bruce. ‘I can’t wash or shave and now I seem to have given up eating.’ He munches the chocolates greedily. ‘Have you seen Frances? How is she bearing up?’
‘Quite well, I think,’ says Esme. ‘She seems to be handling it.’
‘I worry about her,’ says Bruce. ‘You know what women are.’
‘I’ve heard about them,’ says Esme. ‘Listen, what are your conditions like? I’m quite good at writing letters.’
‘Letters?’ says Bruce. ‘To whom?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Your MP? The Times?’
‘I don’t think their writ runs this far,’ says Bruce. ‘You’ve done enough for me just by coming up here. The chocolates were a bonus.’
‘Have you had it before?’ asks Esme.
‘Chocolate?’ asks Bruce, who is tired and confused.
‘Cannabis,’ says Esme.
‘Good God, no. I’d never even seen it before.’
‘And have you told the police that?’
‘Several times,’ says Bruce. ‘Of course they don’t believe me.’ The chocolates, eaten hastily, have made him feel slightly sick. ‘They think I’m at the centre of some drugs ring. I should have stayed in my insurance office.’
‘You’re beginning to think that middle age is safer after all? That’s sad.’
‘Well, isn’t it? I hadn’t spoken to a policeman for ten years until I came here.’
‘I thought the way that you were fighting the years was rather wonderful,’ says Esme. ‘Most people of your age become reactionary bores who hate everyone under twenty-five. You were knocking down the fences.’
‘Well, now they’ve put them up again,’ says Bruce, ‘and I can’t get out.’
Esme smiles at him across the table. She has seldom seen anyone quite so pitiable. ‘How can I help?’ she asks.
‘What I really want,’ says Bruce, ‘is soap.’
***
When Frances Kerwin gets out of bed that morning, she feels as if she has spent an uninhibited night with the Foreign Legion. As she walks cautiously to the bathroom, her body seems to vibrate. The physical demands of a shower ask too much and she sinks gratefully into a bath that she fills almost to the brim. It is half an hour before she can bring herself to look for soap.
Twenty years of marriage to Bruce Kerwin have not prepared her for the sexual banquet which she has enjoyed and she lies in the water with a mystical smile on her face, wondering whether it will be repeated.
Andrew Marner had arrived in her room with a bottle of Krug, a box of ice cream and a packet of ribbed condoms ‘for heightened pleasure’. He is a man with protean talents, judicious discernment and the sexual proclivities of a Barbary ape on speed. The champagne is barely breached before Frances is spreadeagled naked across the bed with lumps of ice cream placed on various parts of her body, and it is an hour before Andrew feels the need to unpack his ribbed condoms. By the time he rolls one on to a granite-like erection, ice cream still on his mouth, Frances is beginning to wonder whether this is a wise way for a middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow lady from the provinces to be passing the time on a Saturday night. It is a doubt that is instantly dispelled. There is something about Frances Kerwin that inspires Andrew Marner in a way that Kimberley Neal does not. Gasping beneath him, Frances doesn’t know whether it is the ribbed condom or Andrew Marner or, possibly, the ice cream or champagne, but she has the definite feeling at one stage that she has become separated from her mind.
When the storm subsides and a lull descends on the room, Andrew leans across the bed and refills their glasses with champagne. Frances lies there, hardly able to believe that she is participating in all this. When she first removed her clothes at his quiet request she had felt embarrassed to be with a strange man. She was never promiscuous before her marriage and has been faithful since. But the boat trip or the champagne or perhaps her displeasure at her husband has transformed her into another woman.
‘What is Kimberley?’ she asks.
‘Available,’ says Andrew. ‘She should have a bar code on her forehead.’
‘I meant to you.’
‘I told you,’ says Andrew. ‘An employee. Why do you ask?’
‘I don’t want her knocking on my door with her nails out.’
‘You won’t have,’ says Andrew, stroking her.
The champagne that he has poured, it emerges, is the equivalent of a rugby player’s half-time lemon. Refreshed and quite obviously replenished, he replaces one condom with another. He has a hard, fit body that he clearly spends time on.
Now, lying in the warm water, Frances admires the way that she was able to walk from her bed to her bath without the use of a Zimmer frame. But the water has curative powers and when she climbs out of the bath she feels younger, not older. She studies herself in the full-length mirror and decides that she looks nearer twenty-eight than thirty-eight. And by the time that she has dried and dressed herself, some more decisions have followed that one.
An hour later she is sitting in a beauty salon on the rue d’Antibes having a facial. She has already had her hair cut much shorter, an event which she thinks has taken five years off her age, and now she is at work on her face. She is told that she has a nice skin and should wear less make-up, but the shape of her eyebrows could be improved. For the first time in her life she has a manicure.
The woman who comes out of the beauty salon later that morning bears little resemblance to the Frances Kerwin who arrived in Nice a week ago, and the way that men look at her tells her that the changes have been a success.
She steps into a boutique and is soon examining a row of dresses. No more loose clothes, she tells herself. Something chic, something figure-hugging, but not too short or tarty. She takes a long time in the boutique but it is worth it. There are three new dresses in the large fancy bags that she carries when she comes out and crosses the street in search of a shoe shop.
She is aware as she slips on a pair of Charles Jourdans that she is imitating the youthful dreams that she had criticised in her husband, but she feels that in her case there is sober justification. If she is about to spend two years alone she had better look the best she can.
Thinking about her husband, she remembers that she is supposed to be consulting a lawyer, but it is Saturday and the lawyers are not at work.
Week 2
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
Will Rogers
11
One of the little jobs that Andrew Marner has given himself on this holiday is to write his chairman’s message for the annual report. The accountants have been quietly probing the finances of The Marner Press for some weeks and the figures that they have now produced look good in a recession and would not look bad in more congenial times. Andrew sits at the window, a large pad on his lap, and watches brown female bodies on the beach.
‘Nobody ever gets anywhere standing still and the aim of The Marner Press in the months and years to come is expansion,’ he writes. ‘This is not commercial vanity but common sense. It is not so much that we want to become larger but that the world is getting smaller. Foreign money pours into Britain, especially from Europe, and alongside this competition we must grow to survive. Plans to launch a new national newspaper in Britain are proceeding smoothly. The Marner Press is in negotiation with a leading French publisher to see whether a joint venture is a practicable possibility. At the same time we intend to increase our list of titles. All our publications except one are making money and there are gaps in the market which we are supremely equipped to fill. Our only loss-making title, World Review is, of course, in its infancy and not expected to show a profit before the end of next year. But it is establishing itself successfully in a difficult corner of the market and I am proud of the way in which it is developing. Our other publications are warmly received by the audiences that they are intended for, and advertising, the first casualty in a recession, has held up remarkably well. Our staff are to be congratulated on their efforts at a difficult time. My thanks to them all.’
He puts down his pen and gazes at the beach. At the table a few feet away, Kimberley Neal is also writing although her prose resounds to a different beat.
‘Belinda lay panting on the bed,’ she writes, ‘transfixed like a rabbit before a snake as she contemplated the glistening black giant’s throbbing extremity. This was not what she had expected when she was sent to the Reform Club to interview the Mozambique ambassador.’
Reading her words, Kimberley begins to chuckle; but she is annoyed that she is laughing. The sexy bits that are supposed to be at the heart of her novel should attract and arouse the readers, not reduce them to helpless giggles. She had always imagined that writing this porno stuff was easy. The only problem, she had always said, was actually finding the time to produce 300 pages. But now that she has launched herself on the genre, she finds it elusive and difficult to treat.
Belinda, with her dead parents (victims of a ‘flu epidemic), her sadistic aunt, and her brutal and unhappy childhood, has not adapted to the sensual life that Kimberley has planned for her. The seismic shift from squalid schooldays to media success has left her aloof and reserved, impervious to love and affection. The liberating effect of sex, the theme of the novel, is failing to work for the ambitious orphan, and the story is more bathos than pathos. Hilarity, not heavy breathing, greets the removal of her pants.
Kimberley throws her pen on the table and swears.
‘How’s the filth coming along?’ asks Andrew, curious about her anger.
‘It’s not as easy as you might think,’ says Kimberley. ‘Comedy keeps getting in the way of the copulation.’
‘Well, sex was always funny,’ says Andrew.
‘Not in a pornographic novel it’s not,’ says Kimberley, shutting her notebook. ‘It’s supposed to be a serious business. What I’m writing won’t arouse anybody.’
‘You ought to be good at it,’ says Andrew. ‘You write well and you’ve got the mind of a cockroach.’
‘But when I write it, it seems to get away from me,’ Kimberley complains. ‘It goes off and becomes something else. It doesn’t correspond to life.’
‘In what way doesn’t it correspond to life?’ asks Andrew.
‘In real life I’ve always found a naked man an attractive proposition, but on the page he’s a comic figure.’
‘Well, make it comedy then,’ says Andrew sensibly. ‘What are you calling it?’
Kimberley has compiled a long list of titles, exotic, salacious, cryptic and marketable. But the one that she favours now, having studied advertisements for books and discovered a fashion for one-word titles, is Belinda. Belinda is Kimberley Neal with a few minor alterations to her history and antecedents. Writing about herself had seemed an easy introduction to the agreeable waters of fiction: she could hardly make her hero a nuclear scientist from Peru. But Belinda is failing to comply with her wishes.
