The holiday, p.21
The Holiday, page 21
They had eaten at the Chantecler at the Hotel Negresco on the promenade des Anglais where Monsieur Rocard introduced her to a new wine that he had discovered, produced locally only three kilometres from Nice. The wine was pleasant enough but Kimberley drank sparingly. She didn’t have the capacity of a man and thought of herself, anyway, as being on duty. She drank enough to get pleasantly buzzed, but three or possibly four bottles passed across the table and she was fairly confident that the waiter wasn’t drinking any. She reckoned that Alain Rocard had drunk the best part of three bottles himself as he discussed enthusiastically the beautiful love they would make in his ‘flat in Grasse’ and the tremendous success that he was going to have with Andrew Marner when they launched a new national newspaper in Britain. His eagerness and high expectations about these two projects seemed to create a thirst that was a challenge to the French wine industry, and when they walked from the Chantecler to Alain Rocard’s chauffeur-driven Citroën, Kimberley thought that a younger man would by now be under the table.
Rocard, however, was the veteran of a thousand lunch-dates and God knows how many evening assignations, and he conducted himself perfectly. He had no need to grope her in the car; more felicitous surroundings would soon be available.
But he had underestimated the potency of his newly-discovered wine. Deterioration set in soon after they left the restaurant and was well-established by the time they reached his apartment. Unconsciousness loomed as the advertised prospect of unbridled sex receded.
Kimberley Neal, realising his condition with relief, abandons her submissive position on the floor and jumps purposefully to her feet. She tears a sheet from the notebook in her bag and looks for her pen. The important thing, she decides, is not that she goes to bed with Alain Rocard, but that he believes that she did. Alain, she writes, you were wonderful in bed. Love, Kimberley.
To add some verisimilitude to this, she masters the zip that had defeated him and removes his trousers and underpants. As a final telling touch she takes off her pants and drops them on the floor, too. She leaves the note by his side, slips out of the apartment, gets the lift to the ground floor and with the wind blowing round her bare buttocks, begins the long search for a taxi.
18
‘A history lesson,’ says Andrew Marner as he carelessly fills six champagne glasses and beams round the table.
‘Between 1940 and 1944, this hotel was the favourite meeting place for spies and secret agents from both sides of the great unpleasantness. By 1944, the plotting and the conspiring were getting out of hand and the management were so anxious to stay out of trouble that they decided to shut up shop. They locked the hotel in June, and the beach, where you’ve all been lying in the sun, was sealed off and mined. Luckily, this only lasted two months. In August of that year, American troops arrived in Saint-Raphael, and the hotel re-opened to welcome its liberators. Two floors were requisitioned for the officers of the American general staff. Parties and shows were organised to help them forget the war and relax. Maurice Chevalier appeared in a monthly revue, Mistinguett performed in the lobby. August 24 has been a special day in Cannes ever since. As the more observant among you will have noticed, there’s even a street named rue 24 Août.’
‘And that’s why we’re going to watch fireworks tonight?’ says Roger Blake. ‘What fun.’
‘They do it every year,’ says Andrew. ‘The best bloody firework display you’ll ever see, apparently.’
He sits back happily and smiles at his guests. He has invited Roger Blake and Esme, and Bruce and Frances Kerwin, to join him and Kimberley for dinner on the terrace to watch the firework display that will take place this evening, but his celebratory mood has nothing to do with fireworks or the liberation of Cannes: Alain Rocard has come across. His board have endorsed his decision to form a partnership with the Marner Press, with the intention of launching a new national newspaper in Britain, and tomorrow in Nice Andrew and Rocard will sign a formal agreement.
Andrew Marner isn’t sure how much he owes to Kimberley Neal for this sudden, dramatic conclusion to his tortured negotiations, but Rocard has assured him over the phone that she is ‘very sexy’. Whatever her role, the future which now confronts Andrew Marner glitters with promise. Fame, prestige and influence, the natural accessories to owning a national newspaper, await him; the influx of French francs removes the worry over Garnett’s absurd libel; and perhaps best of all, the news makes the knighthood a certainty. He can afford to be generous tonight.
‘I read that the Americans brought some lasting fashions with them,’ says Esme, who has studied far more local history than Andrew during this holiday. ‘Bikinis, chewing gum, sunbathing, whisky, Coca-Cola and cocktails. Tick the harmful ones.’
‘They all sound good to me,’ says Roger, ‘but I’m a child of the American age.’
‘Even if you’ve never been there,’ says Esme.
‘He doesn’t need to go there,’ says Frances. ‘He’s got a television set.’
‘Travel broadens the mind, television broadens the arse,’ says Esme.
She is striking a slightly churlish note this evening, she realises, and wonders why. Certainly she is not in quite the lighthearted mood that the occasion requires. A trip with Roger that afternoon to the Matisse Museum at Cimiez has tired her more than she expected, and there are other physical signals that are not conducive to good humour. She has felt tired and slightly sick for two or three days, her breasts are sore and she has missed a period. She can see where this leads and she can scarcely believe it, but she remembers a spell in the spring when she was on antibiotics and didn’t take the Pill. Perhaps tomorrow she will try to find one of those do-it-yourself pregnancy tests in a pharmacie.
Printed menus for dîner du 24 août are passed round the table. Bruce Kerwin takes his and reads Chartreuse de légumes et saumon frais aux capres, huile d’olive du moulin. As the menus in London are in French he feels that it would be only equitable for them to be in English here. He has come to this table with some reluctance, but has capitulated to his wife’s wishes.
‘Forget Andrew. It will be a wonderful evening and we don’t have to pay,’ Frances pleaded. ‘It would be stupid of us to miss it.’
So Bruce has dressed up smartly in his best suit, new shirt and new tiepin and cuff-links, and is trying tonight to reveal a more congenial side of his nature. After all, he tells himself, I have got Frances and Andrew Marner hasn’t.
It is a thought that has crossed Andrew Marner’s mind too, along with the fact that in a few days they are all due to go home and Frances Kerwin will become difficult to find. Andrew Marner has a plan to deal with this problem, as with most others.
Beside him, Kimberley Neal, having largely shunned the alcohol last night, sees no reason to hold back now. Everything is falling into place and it has required remarkably little effort from her. She had a nasty moment earlier when she suddenly remembered the expensive camera equipment that was concealed not very efficiently on the walls of Alain Rocard’s apartment. The thought of him returning sober today to watch hours of video recordings that would reveal the shocking innocence of their encounter gave her palpitations, but then she remembered that he was too drunk when they arrived to switch them on. She refills her champagne glass and hiccups gaily.
‘In two days’ time there’s a firework display at Juanles-Pins which presumably means that the Americans took two days to get from here to there,’ she tells everybody. ‘They must have been having a good time in Cannes.’
‘Who doesn’t?’ says Roger, as their food arrives. He has relaxed for the first time in his life and doesn’t want the holiday to end. The thought that this pleasurable stay in the sun is about to be followed by an English winter with six hours of daylight and eighteen of darkness is one that he tries to push from his mind.
A man is talking into a microphone on the other side of the Croisette, and a waiter tells them that he is the Mayor of Cannes, paying tribute to the Americans who liberated the town. When he has finished, the lights go out and they are all sitting in darkness. Suddenly the fireworks begin. Rockets, or fireworks that behave like rockets, soar into the sky from boats in the bay. They rise not in twos or threes but in tens or twelves, exploding in a shower of iridescent lights that must surely be visible in Italy and Toulon. They fall gracefully like spring rain while the rockets themselves plummet seaward trailing fire. Most of the hotel’s clientèle, boosted today by a convention of cardiologists, have come out to the front to watch these pyrotechnics. Huge bangs resound along the street, creating an impression of seafront warfare that reminds people of Beirut, and in the sky there are always different colours, different patterns that light up the whole Croisette and pick out the black silhouette of the palm trees in the middle of the road. It is a firework display that only a city could afford, and people watch fascinated, never having seen money burnt on this scale.
The concentration that the show demands enables Andrew to whisper unseen to Frances: ‘Do you think Bruce would come and work for me? The Marner Press is about to expand in a very big way.’
‘So that we could continue to see each other?’ says Frances. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’
‘I thought he lost his job,’ says Andrew. ‘Well, I’m going to have plenty of jobs.’
‘Tell me something,’ says Frances. They are eating now by the light of the fireworks. ‘Who got Bruce out – you, or Kimberley?’
‘Well, it was my contact,’ Andrew hedges.
‘But Kimberley asked him?’
‘I believe she did.’
‘You haven’t been quite honest with me, Andrew,’ says Frances. ‘You led me to believe that you were responsible for his release.’
Andrew smiles innocently. ‘That’s because I yearn for you, Frances. I crave you with a desire that makes me feel quite ill.’
‘Terrific,’ says Frances.
‘A man in the grip of a terrible passion is capable of doing foolish things.’
‘I’m surrounded by men who do foolish things,’ Frances tells him. ‘I’m getting tired of it.’
Andrew takes this rebuff with a tolerant smile. He has to allow women their little displays of petulance; it gives them satisfaction and is only a pinprick to him. Anyway, he decides, plotting and planning, he can circumvent the indignation of Frances by approaching Bruce direct.
Fireworks still illuminate the night sky and people are reluctant to turn their eyes away in case they miss a four-second spectacle costing hundreds of pounds that will not be repeated. It is hard to see how many people and boats out there in the dark are responsible for the display, but the organisation is breathtaking – one star-spangled explosion follows another with hardly a gap.
‘It makes my Catherine wheels look pretty poxy,’ says Roger. ‘Guy Fawkes night will never be the same.’
‘The colour kaleidoscope is extraordinary,’ says Esme. ‘I’m going to try to paint it.’
‘Hey, Bruce,’ says Andrew. ‘Do you want a job?’
‘Why would I want a job?’ asks Bruce. ‘I’ve got all that redundancy money to spend.’
The waiters are taking a break during the fireworks. It is too dark for them to collect crockery, take orders and deliver fresh courses, and so they wait in the shadows leaving guests with their empty plates.
‘What did Bruce say?’ asks Frances. The little booms and the big bangs have left a ringing in her ears. The milder bursts have sounded like the limited explosions that blow a door in, but the bigger ones are like a terrorist outrage that devastates a street.
‘He says he doesn’t need a job.’ Andrew looks hurt. ‘He has enough money already, lucky man.’
‘It would be a bizarre thing if he went to work for a man he found in bed with his wife,’ says Frances. ‘You expect a lot of him.’
‘Most people would forget that for fifty grand a year,’ says Andrew.
‘How many grand?’ says Frances.
‘Fifty,’ says Andrew. ‘Plus a car.’
‘You pay peanuts, you get monkeys,’ says Frances for a joke. She waits to see whether an improved offer will arrive but suddenly the lights are switched on again and people can be seen. The fireworks are over.
Andrew, a busy host and master of sociability now, beckons waiters, distributes menus, orders more champagne. At the corner of the terrace three musicians are assembling their equipment: a middle-aged lady is going to sing.
‘I’ll have sorbet au jasmin,’ says Esme, who still feels a little sick. ‘Have you got any more jobs going, Andrew, at fifty grand a year? Roger is embarrassingly available.’
‘What is his expertise?’ asks Andrew.
‘Well,’ says Esme. ‘He’s good in bed.’
‘We already have people who can handle that,’ says Andrew.
‘You?’ says Esme.
‘I take a personal interest in that side of things,’ says Andrew. ‘Yes.’
The lady on a rostrum in the corner launches herself into an old Lorenz Hart number as various puddings arrive. Looking around the terrace, Roger decides that the Carlton Hotel should have a Joan Collins lookalike competition in the same way that more downmarket establishments have wet T-shirt contests. He notices something else: rich customers leave their drinks in a way that the poor would never do. He finishes his and Andrew promptly refills it.
‘What’s this all about, Andrew?’ he asks. ‘Some scheme in the offing to make you even richer?’
‘Richer and more powerful, Roger,’ Andrew says. ‘One day you will tell people that Sir Andrew Marner once bought you dinner.’
‘Blimey,’ says Roger. ‘What are you going to do? Open a dirty video shop?’
‘A video shop?’ says Andrew, perplexed. ‘No. Tomorrow in Nice I’m going to sign a contract with a French publisher and then, one fine morning, you will wake up to discover that Britain has a new daily newspaper, a newspaper for the twenty-first century, a paper that doesn’t believe that its readers are morons, bores or snobs.’
‘How interesting,’ says Esme. ‘And where will this newspaper stand, politically?’
‘We’re going to fly by the seat of our pants,’ says Andrew. ‘We’ll find out where public opinion is going and squat down in the middle of it.’
‘Brave stuff,’ says Esme. ‘Not stand up to be counted, more lie down and count them.’
‘No point in alienating half the electorate,’ Andrew tells her sagely. ‘We need readers, not enemies.’
‘What do you make of him, Frances?’ asks Esme.
‘Andrew?’ says Frances. ‘He’s a rogue. I suppose his heart is in the right place: it’s the whereabouts of his trousers that causes scandal and concern.’
‘And you reckon this little venture is going to make you a knight?’ asks Roger.
‘When this newspaper gets going I’ll probably be offered a peerage,’ says Andrew. ‘It goes with the territory.’
‘Lord Libertine of Leg-over,’ says Frances to Esme. ‘A new virile image for the Upper House.’
‘You’d better give me your phone number, Roger,’ says Andrew, ignoring them. ‘There’ll be new premises and much work to do. I seem to remember that you are in the business of providing teams of reliable men?’
‘Builders, painters, carpenters, joiners,’ says Roger. It seems a long time since he organised anybody.
‘That’s what I’ll need,’ says Andrew. ‘The future starts now.’
In the corner the singer is telling them why the lady is a tramp, and part of the terrace has been given over to dancing. Couples move sedately through the hot evening air, as waiters struggle to deliver coffee.
Kimberley Neal turns to Bruce Kerwin, who seems to have said so little this evening. ‘You’ve changed, Bruce,’ she tells him. ‘Captivity has matured you.’ She wonders whether he realises how many women got laid, or nearly got laid, in the noble cause of obtaining his freedom.
‘I was only an old man with go-faster stripes,’ says Bruce. ‘I’m learning to act my age.’
The irony, thinks Kimberley, is that the only person not to benefit in the sexual stock exchange was Bruce himself, but he looks like a man who has spent his life relentlessly preoccupied with matters of no importance while everybody else was queueing up for the world’s pleasures. To Kimberley he seems a somewhat irascible person, dazed by failure, but she feels no wave of sympathy. She believes that, one way or another, you make your own luck.
‘What are you going to do about work when you get home?’ she asks.
‘I’ll get a job,’ says Bruce. ‘Recessions end. All the firms who were ruthlessly laying off people a year or so ago will soon be looking for staff. It’s happening in the City already.’
‘You should have taken up Andrew’s kind offer,’ says Kimberley. ‘Mr Marner is going places.’
‘I’d sooner stand on my head in a bucket of cow dung,’ says Bruce. ‘The last thing I want on this earth is that man for a boss.’
‘Well,’ says Kimberley, surprised at the venom, ‘his pay is good.’
‘I don’t want his pay,’ says Bruce. ‘All I want where Andrew Marner is concerned is revenge. It wasn’t even him, apparently, who got me out of that cell. It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘It was, Bruce,’ says Kimberley.
‘I’m very grateful. What can I buy you?’
‘A Roller?’ says Kimberley. ‘A Picasso? How are you going to get your revenge on poor old Andrew then? Do tell!’
‘I don’t know,’ says Bruce, ‘but something will turn up.’
19
Abroad has never held much interest for Bertha Marner but she feels a mild exhilaration as her British Airways Airbus bounces on to the runway at Nice. The news that she is bringing will make this journey memorable and easily justify the hours that she is losing on the golf course. It will certainly produce a celebration that she couldn’t miss.
