The holiday, p.19
The Holiday, page 19
‘Ah, Roger,’ says Bruce. ‘How is he? He’s a lucky man.’ He falls in beside her and they walk together towards the bar.
‘Roger’s fine,’ says Esme. ‘But how about you? You look pale and thin. Was it awful?’
‘It wasn’t good,’ says Bruce.
‘You’ll soon be okay again with a bit of sun and some good food.’
‘No, I won’t,’ says Bruce. ‘I’ve just had a terrible shock.’
‘What was it?’ asks Esme. ‘What’s happened?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ says Bruce. ‘I’m beginning to think that I belong to a peculiarly blighted family.’
Roger Blake sits on his usual stool watching the holiday parade. He is beginning to feel like a kid with his nose up against the shop window of life. Money saunters past, drives past, sails by in the bay. The women look wonderful, even if it has taken a rejuvenation course in a Swiss clinic to achieve it. Money again.
He sips his Heineken and sees Kimberley Neal coming through the door.
‘This is a surprise,’ says Roger. ‘Have you taken up lunchtime drinking?’
‘Kind of you,’ says Kimberley. ‘I’ll have a beer. I’ve been working all morning and deserve a small reward.’
‘How’s Andrew?’
‘It’s always a feast or a fast with that man.’
‘Which is it at the moment?’
‘A fast.’
Roger orders her a beer. He gets excellent service in this bar now and suspects that the barman, having become used to his face, believes him to be a resident who merits more respect than a here-today-gone-tomorrow tourist.
‘I’ve been thinking about detectives,’ says Roger. ‘The Yellow Pages are full of them. I reckon half the people who are thrown out of work start new careers as private dicks.’
‘Detectives?’ says Kimberley.
‘To find our son.’
‘Oh dear, I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ says Kimberley. ‘We don’t want to disturb him at this crucial stage of his development.’
‘I don’t want to disturb him, I want to see him,’ says Roger. ‘I’m curious, and getting curiouser.’
‘You must be patient and control your curiosity,’ says Kimberley firmly. ‘You could end up doing more harm than good.’
Roger is about to dispute this when Esme comes into the bar with Bruce Kerwin.
‘Good God,’ says Roger. ‘It’s the felon.’
‘Hallo, everybody,’ says Bruce Kerwin, looking miserable.
‘It worked then,’ says Kimberley. ‘We got you out.’
‘Somebody got me out,’ says Bruce gloomily. ‘It’s all something of a mystery.’
‘Andrew knew a man with a bit of influence,’ Kimberley tells him.
‘I’d rather you didn’t mention Andrew,’ says Bruce. ‘Can I buy drinks?’
‘Let me,’ offers Roger. ‘I’m getting Esme a bottle of champagne and she may share it.’
‘I certainly will,’ says Esme, kissing Roger’s cheek. ‘The painting looks fine.’
‘Great,’ says Roger. ‘What a brilliant girl I have.’ He orders a bottle of champagne and four glasses. Bruce Kerwin’s disappears instantly and Roger refills his glass. ‘I suppose you got a little thirsty in there,’ he says sympathetically. ‘Was it hell?’
‘I don’t recommend it,’ says Bruce.
‘It’s done wonders for your sartorial tastes,’ says Kimberley. ‘Why don’t you want us to mention Andrew? Not that I want to mention him myself.’
‘He’s had a shock,’ says Esme, ‘but he doesn’t want to talk about it.’
Everybody looks at Bruce Kerwin. The champagne fizzes in his empty stomach. ‘I don’t mind talking about it,’ he says defiantly. ‘I got back to the hotel after nine days in a cell to find Andrew Marner and my wife about to make love.’
‘About to make love?’ Roger looks baffled.
‘Well, he was tearing his trousers off and she was stark naked. What do you imagine they were about to do?’
‘Play doctors?’ says Roger.
‘It doesn’t sound like whist,’ agrees Kimberley. ‘I’ll spay the bastard!’
‘Isn’t that a female operation?’ asks Esme.
‘What the hell,’ says Kimberley. ‘We can’t take any chances.’
‘It must have been a terrible surprise for you,’ says Esme, who is not at all surprised by Bruce’s news. He is holding an empty glass out for Roger to fill. The drink empties the bottle, and Roger orders another.
‘I’m astounded,’ says Bruce, ‘but something had happened to her. She had her hair cut shorter and bought younger clothes. She changed dramatically while I was locked up. Apparently she was doing exercises.’
‘That is disturbing,’ says Roger. ‘Perhaps the sun had got to her.’
‘Perhaps she went to pieces in your absence,’ says Esme hopefully.
‘It didn’t look as if she’d gone to pieces to me,’ says Kimberley, savage now. ‘She’d turned into a right little tart.’
‘I don’t think you should speak about Mrs Kerwin like that,’ says Roger. ‘At least, not while Mr Kerwin is here. Of course, when Bruce has gone it will be open season and you can lob in your two bits.’
‘She’s trying to steal my man,’ says Kimberley. ‘She’s screwing my meal ticket. What am I supposed to do?’
‘That’s all right,’ says Bruce. ‘It seems a fair description to me. I just can’t work out what’s got into her.’
‘Anyway, Andrew isn’t your man,’ says Esme. ‘Doesn’t he have a wife at home?’
‘Bertha,’ says Kimberley. ‘Big Bertha.’
‘The man has obviously got the sexual drive of a guillemot.’
‘Intermittently,’ agrees Kimberley.
Roger holds up the new bottle of champagne and they all offer him their empty glasses. He fills them and then puts his arm round Bruce Kerwin’s shoulders.
‘Anyway, Bruce, old mate,’ he says. ‘What are you going to do about it all?’
Bruce removes the refilled glass from his lips. ‘Do about it all?’ he says. ‘I’m going to have a few drinks.’
Week 3
The trouble with many travellers is that they take themselves along.
Joseph Prescott Aphorisms and Other Observations
16
In a Georgian mansion hidden in the rolling Berkshire countryside, Bertha Marner is making herself a cup of tea – camomile with honey – using her favourite Villeroy & Boch crockery. She is a tall, heavily-built lady who dominates any room she enters, which is useful because she is accustomed to organising things.
On this Sunday morning there is a temporary respite in her busy social calendar and she is relaxing amid the various luxuries that are part of the Marners’ endlessly converted home: wood-panelled walls and marble fireplaces; hand-tufted carpets. In the white French stone entrance hall, a quarter-ton crystal chandelier is powered by an electric motor that enables it to be lowered for cleaning.
These things and more have flowed remorselessly from Andrew’s success, and Bertha is proud of the part that she has played, advising, comforting, supporting, encouraging, through good moments and bad. And there have been bad moments. Just after the terminal hubris of Mrs Thatcher, his whole enterprise seemed on the verge of collapse but Bertha refused to let it happen. Bank support was obtained, the death rattle turned out to be a cough, and business revived.
She is proud, too, of the way that she has handled their marriage, steering it away from the emotional disturbances and rancorous abuse that seemed to beset less thoughtful liaisons. Bertha is fifty, the same age as her husband, but while she seems older than fifty, he seems younger. She can see now that men should be older than their wives but she has handled the disparity with some skill and the proof of her success is that Andrew is still here, and shows no desire to move out. His frequent absences suit them both: he loves to travel and gets bored at home; she hates abroad and loves golf.
The phone rings as she is drinking her tea in the spacious Marner kitchen. She takes the extension off the wall. Her friend Jane, whose husband is dove shooting in Maryland, wants an afternoon on the golf course, but the kitchen television, left on from an earlier programme, is transmitting a church service which makes Jane difficult to hear.
‘Just a minute, my dear,’ says Bertha. ‘There’s some geriatric twerp on the telly giving us some garbage about life after death.’
‘A bit of life before death would be more to the point,’ says Jane. Bertha thinks that Jane has every chance of receiving the attention that she craves if she can find a half-drunk paratrooper trapped in a blindfold, but she omits to mention this and puts the phone down while she turns off the television.
When her afternoon on the golf course has been arranged and she has finished her tea, she busies herself with the tidying-up that falls to her at weekends when her cleaning lady doesn’t appear. The week’s post, collected off the mat and left mostly in the kitchen, is rounded up and taken to Andrew’s study to be left on his desk. As usual, she flips through the envelopes without opening them to see whether there are any which look urgent or interesting, and one immediately stands out. She holds it for a moment, wondering whether this is a letter that she can justify opening, and then, consumed by curiosity, she does. It is a long time since anything has surprised Bertha Marner, and much longer since she was impressed, but she reads this beautifully typed letter in open-mouthed stupefaction.
Andrew Marner,
Berkeley Stowe,
Near Lambourn,
Berkshire,
Dear Sir,
I am directed by the Prime Minister to inform you that he proposes on the occasion of the forthcoming New Year Honours List to submit your name to the Queen with a recommendation that the honour of Knight Bachelor be conferred on you.
I am to request that you will be good enough to inform me as soon as possible whether this honour would be agreeable to you and at the same time furnish me with your full Christian names, surname and permanent address.
I must further ask you to treat this matter as entirely confidential until such time as the Honours List is published.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient servant
Bertha Marner has no time to admire the flamboyant signature of the Prime Minister’s obedient servant. She has hurled the letter into the air and released a deep-throated whoop which would have intimidated a professionally-active pitbull terrier. Her mind is racing, and before the letter can float to the floor, she has scooped it up with an athletic gesture which belies her build, and reached with her other hand for the telephone on her husband’s desk.
She realises then with a little flutter of frustration that the telephone number that she wants is downstairs, scribbled on one of those loose-leaf wall pads in the kitchen where the week’s grocery requirements are dutifully listed. She goes down in a hurry to find it.
It is there, two pages back, superseded now by a need for ground nutmeg, Schwartz lamb seasoning, cocktail onions in vinegar, capers and Camembert. Carlton Hotel, it says in Andrew’s writing. 58 La Croisette, BP 155, 06406 Cannes Cedex. Telephone: 93 689168. Fax: 93 382090.
She goes now into the dining room where there is a phone that she can sit down with. Through the windows she can see her beautifully laid out garden which drops gently for more than a hundred yards towards a decorative duck pond. She has forgotten, if she ever knew, the digits that she needs to dial direct and calls instead Directory Enquiries. But as she sits there waiting for a helpful voice she suddenly regrets her impetuosity. She replaces the phone quickly before anybody can speak and gives herself time to think.
This news is much too important to be relayed over a telephone. She needs to be there to celebrate with him. She wants to see his face when he hears the news! She gets up, smiles to herself, and returns to her tidying-up duties.
First thing in the morning she will ring the travel agent.
A discreet silence prevails that morning in the Kerwins’ comfortable second-floor room at the Carlton Hotel. The discretion is being exercised by Frances Kerwin, who is cautiously carrying out in silence those little tasks that occupy a person between bed and breakfast. Wardrobe doors are opened, but gently; taps are turned on, but not too much. One function, however, does not permit a diminution of decibels and it is the flushing of the lavatory that eventually stirs the recumbent figure who has shared her bed.
Bruce Kerwin and his wife have not spoken since his abrupt departure from the room. Indeed, they have not seen each other. Bruce, encouraged by midday champagne, went on to try other intoxicating refreshments available for holidaymakers with time on their hands. He sobered himself by enjoying his first proper meal for a week in the middle of the afternoon and then devoted the evening to an unhurried assessment of the local beers. This took him beyond the port and up to the old town, Le Suquet, where, he can quite clearly remember, nobody understood a word that he said. Whether this was because the native tongue was not English, or whether it was due to the extent of the research he had conducted into the local brews, he doesn’t know, but what he does know is that the evening thereafter is full of memory gaps. He certainly didn’t make a conscious decision to rejoin his wife at the Carlton Hotel. By that time he was on some sort of automatic pilot, operating on instinct, and returning to the bed that he knew.
Frances Kerwin had a miserable day. What should have been a joyful celebration of her husband’s release had been destroyed at the moment of his arrival. She spent the day in her room, meals delivered, wrestling with her guilt and wondering what had happened to her husband. At midnight she turned off the television and went to bed; and when she woke up he was beside her.
Now she comes out of the bathroom, dressed and ready for breakfast, and confronts her husband who is lying on his back in bed, his eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling.
‘My head says I’ve been drinking,’ he tells her.
‘My nose agrees with that,’ says Frances. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I shouldn’t be here,’ says Bruce. ‘I meant to end up somewhere else.’
‘That would be rather silly, given the price you are paying for this room,’ says Frances. ‘You’ve already wasted nine nights. Why don’t you get up and come down to the terrace for some breakfast?’
She is struggling to impose some normality on the scene and is determined not to give way to embarrassment. After all, he was in the wrong before she was, and anyway, it is far too early for serious conversations. Bruce Kerwin, lying in bed with the memories flooding back, is not quite ready for a serious conversation either.
He leaves his bed gingerly and walks slowly to the bathroom where he discovers that he doesn’t feel too bad. By the time he has washed, shaved and dressed he is astonished at his own resilience. They take the lift down in silence, and Frances wonders when he will speak. With his suit and tie and brushed-back hair he looks like the husband she used to know. But she, with her short hair and short skirt, knows that she is strange to him. The position of ten days ago has been reversed. She now looks like his daughter.
Morning sun fills the terrace as they sit at a table facing the sea. They order coffee and scrambled eggs and watch a cruise liner on the horizon ploughing an eastward path towards Nice. Early morning promenaders stroll along the Croisette as if not a moment of their holidays can be wasted in the shadows of indoors.
When the food arrives and Bruce Kerwin has drunk some coffee he looks at his wife and says: ‘Something has happened to you, Frances, and I don’t know what it is.’
‘Nothing has happened, Bruce,’ says Frances. ‘A change of clothes, a change of hairstyle. Women do it every day.’
‘A change of man, from what I see of it,’ says Bruce. ‘I don’t know what the mechanics of divorce are but we can find out when we get home.’
‘The mechanics of what?’ says Frances.
‘Divorce,’ Bruce repeats. ‘The legal dissolution of a marriage.’
‘Isn’t that a little drastic?’ Frances feels mildly alarmed. ‘Nothing happened with Andrew Marner. He left the room just after you.’
‘What was he doing there in the first place is what I’d like to know,’ says Bruce, forking scrambled eggs. Of all the things that he has missed in the last week, a decent breakfast is high on the list.
‘He fancies me, Bruce, and I owed him something. He got you out. You would be going off to prison for a couple of years now but for him.’
‘Owe him?’ says Bruce. ‘Is sex the currency we use these days? I go through hell and come out to discover that!’
Backed against the ropes, ostensibly defenceless, Frances feels the need to hit back. The man coming forward presents targets that are easier to reach than those of a man in retreat.
‘Don’t over-egg the pudding, Bruce. You haven’t spent five years chained to a radiator. Nor were you wrongfully locked up. You brought it on yourself, and Andrew saved you. Should I tell him to sod off?’
‘Incredible,’ says Bruce. ‘Incredible. Getting laid is now an expression of gratitude, is it?’
‘I didn’t get laid,’ says Frances. ‘Your timely arrival preserved my honour.’ She pours herself more coffee and refills Bruce’s cup as an afterthought. The talk of divorce has surprised her and she is trying to get used to it. Better a divorce, with its financial compensations, than the prospect that faced her two days ago – a husband in a foreign prison, endless expense and loneliness without freedom. And yet the word unsettles her. She is not sure that she would welcome the upheaval. ‘You could see me as a heroine if you weren’t so obtuse,’ she tells him. ‘Prepared to give myself to save my husband. I deserve a medal.’
This flippant approach to a serious matter irritates Bruce Kerwin. ‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘Acclaimed for her adultery: Woman of the Year.’
‘There was no adultery, Bruce,’ says Frances with such force that she begins to believe it herself. ‘Whatever I did it wasn’t enough to get me arrested and locked up for a week. If we’re talking about crazy behaviour, you want to look at yourself.’
