Blame It on the Bossa Nova (18 page)

I phoned Frank the next day and told him what had happened. I wanted to get a reaction.

“It’s a dirty game Alex, a dirty game. I never did feel secure in that street.... Something about it.” He made a few cryptic comments about there being no such thing as over-caution and that people who didn’t take precautions could get hurt. He also emphasised the need for absolute trust and how necessary it was for people to feel they weren’t being conned. He didn’t sound like the sort of guy who set up gigs for homicidal maniacs.

“So you don’t think I should worry then?”

“Search your soul SMARTARSE. Only you know what’s inside.”

This wasn’t the reassurance I’d been seeking and the encoding procedure did nothing to improve it. But it was the best I was going to get. I decided to take the episode as a warning from Frank not to fuck him about and I also decided to think very carefully before fucking him about any further. I think that it was about this time that I began to wonder if it was all really worth the effort.

*****

Meanwhile life went on. Frank started talking about getting me and Chris together every time I saw him over the next few weeks. He acted as if he never had hit Pascale across the mouth, never had made me his agent then hunted me down like a dog, that nothing had happened in the weeks since the Cuba crisis had reached its climax.

“You two boys shouldn’t be like this. You should be buddies.”

That was alright as a premise, but did a ‘buddy’ smash his ‘buddy’ in the mouth and then nick and smash up his car? Was that a ‘buddy-like act?’ Would a ‘buddy’ do such a thing to another ‘buddy’? I thought not. But Frank persisted in his theory. Frank kept setting up venues where Chris and I could heal the rift and I kept not turning up to them. After a while I ran out of excuses. There was a gang of them, including Chris, meeting at a restaurant in Beauchamp Place. I asked the taxi to drop me off half way along Pont Street so I could grab a bit of air on the five minute walk to the restaurant. I was glad to let the cold blast of the wind hit my face.

It was a new restaurant in a basement, and I’d walked past it three times before I saw the coyly concealed sign that indicated its presence. Downstairs it was as if the director had clapped his hands and the extras had all gone straight into their instant party routine; the noisy hubbub of waiters shouting and pushing their way through to tables, the feel of anarchy and flexibility as diners walked about, holding conversations at tables other than their own or else merely shouted across the restaurant. I picked out Frank’s huge back at the far end and made my way across to it. He was at the centre of a big party at a table symbolically separated from the others by two structurally gratuitous stone columns.

Once seated, I had the opportunity to have a look at my companions. Round the table I could see a fair sprinkling of fun people, people I’d met on previous sorties with either Chris or Frank - the second-hand racing driver, the interior designer, a couple of models, an antique dealer, a property developer- the dregs of society. Also there were Sandie and Jenny, their good looks alone separating them from the others. Sandie was chatting earnestly with Chris and didn’t notice me. Forsythe and Pascale weren’t there. Frank made a few desultory introductions but his main sport seemed to be to try to attract Chris’s attention and engage him in friendly, in-crowd badinage.

“Hey Chris, I heard tell the guy from William Hickey was outside looking for you, yuk, yuk...” “Hey Chris, why are you still wearing dark glasses, that bruise has gone down now... Yuk, Yuk.” However well intentioned it was serving to amuse no one but Frank himself and Chris didn’t even interrupt his conversation to reply. But all round the table I caught the mood of self-congratulatory smugness in chinks of conversation about the rumours. By then the press were going frantic, hounding down every source of information and buying up all the bit players - even though they daren’t print a word. They were squirrels mindlessly hoarding nuts. I had heard that Sandie had received an undisclosed fee for her insights into the Bryant Set, as we were now called. Not that any of these nonentities were involved. They were just enjoying the reflected glory of being in a crowd that was heading for notoriety, as the word had it.

We left and Frank unceremoniously swept me, Sandie, Jenny and Chris into a taxi and climbed in after us as we pulled away from the kerb. I waved majestically to the lesser breeds without the law as we disappeared into the night. The girls squeezed in next to me and I got to appreciate yet again Sandie’s classy good looks.

Back at Pavilion Road, I scrounged a cigarette off Sandie, took a couple of deep drags, then set off in search of Chris to do my penance. Frank was explaining what hominy grits were to Jenny and Chris and I didn’t find it hard to detach him, we had all of us heard Frank explain what hominy grits were at least three times before. Chris deflected his body slightly to one side, as if by its juxtaposition with armchairs and other furniture he was creating a new zone in his living room. He had a receptive air of one about to be interviewed.

“How’s it going then, Chris?”

“Fine Alex, fine. Luckily taxis are no problem in central London.”

“You were insured weren’t you?”

“Insured?”

“Against theft... joy riders, that sort of thing.”

“Is that what you were Alex? - A joy rider? It’s a consolation to know you were enjoying yourself. I wouldn’t like to see you in a bad mood.”

My abject apology wasn’t coming out right. I could think up the sentences easily enough. I just couldn’t force them through my teeth and between my lips.

“Look, I’m sorry. It wasn’t personal.” And that was the closest I got to it. To a lesser man it would have been insufficient. I doubt if I would have found it recompense if the roles had been reversed. But Chris had the class that I lacked. By the time we returned to the others we weren’t yet the best of mates but some sort of band-aid had been dressed over the wound. Frank beamed as he saw the outcome, for once his hominy grits lecture had served a useful purpose.

Coffee was served and Chris started engaging Frank in some heavy conversation about the purpose of the talks that were coming up in the Bahamas between Macmillan and Kennedy. Frank obviously knew what it was all about and we all had a pretty good idea. By that time the news had broken on the Skybolt failures and Kennedy was as embarrassed as Macmillan - You should never make promises to children if you can’t keep them. Frank, for once, was taciturn, and all of us except Chris sensed it was his awkward position over Pascale, who had been as prominent as anyone in the rumours. But Chris was oblivious. The conversation eventually ground to a halt as Chris at last got the message, but by then a gloom had settled on the proceedings.

Frank couldn’t rouse himself, he moped. Jenny tried to flirt with him but he wasn’t having any, he was becoming a bore. Chris and Sandie continued their running battle over a range of subjects. It seemed to be their way of confirming their relationship. Then suddenly Frank broke his silence.

“That’s it,” he shouted. “... We’ve got to get her out of the country. Right out... of the country. All the time she’s here the press are gonna be on her back - And my back. Once she’s outta the way they’ll forget about her.”

This sounded very optimistic to me, but then I couldn’t understand his predicament anyway. He’d known the situation before he’d got involved. His handling of Pascale at my flat had shown no uncertainties. Surely such ruthlessness had been born of confidence in his ability to handle her, not desperation. What had happened since then? But the more he repeated the proposition the more attractive it became to him.

“You’re close to her Alex, you could get her out,” said Frank.

“Where to?”

“France. That’s where she comes from isn’t it. Why, she could go back and visit her folks for Christmas. All families should be together at Christmas.”

“How do I make her go?”

“You go with her.”

“Love to old boy, but I haven’t got a bean. Nor has she, come to think of it.” This was a lie, a calculated one. I was sure Pascale had money.

“Is that the only problem? How much d’you need?”

I thought hard. “... Five hundred.” Before the words were out of my mouth he had started reaching for his wallet, “... each.”

“You greedy bastard, Alex. Here Chris, have you got a chequebook? I’ll cover you in the morning.” Chris looked pissed off but he got up and took a chequebook from a drawer.

“There’ll be a cheque in your bank tomorrow – a.m. Chris... Alex, don’t cash this ‘til tomorrow afternoon.” He handed me a cheque for seven hundred and fifty pounds. Suddenly his laugh erupted and enveloped the room: “Aint that what they call British Compromise!”

*****

The icy gusts of wind had driven most of our fellow passengers below decks but Pascale and I remained huddled together on one of those timber benches that can be converted into a life raft, watching the cliffs of Dover slip slowly by and then watching them recede. I was reminded of Maddox Brown’s painting of Woolner and his wife, The Last of England. Due to the cold our looks matched the melodramatic mood of the picture.

We’d been meaning to get an early boat and had slept together at the flat and arranged for the operator to give us a five o’clock call - alarm clocks have always been anathema to me, the tension and fear of being jarred from sleep by them generally leads me to wake at ten minute intervals. This time I thanked the operator politely, put the phone back on the hook, and then went back to sleep. We didn’t arrive at Victoria until half past twelve, and by the time the boat cast off from Dover the light was fast fading. Still, we had no deadlines, no one to meet us, just a destination to arrive at, preferably by Christmas Day.

An amplified voice announced that duty free cigarettes and alcohol were now on sale somewhere in the soul of the ship, and a handful of travellers walked purposefully to the door that led below leaving Pascale and I alone. At last, I felt, I was leaving all the shit of the past few months behind. I looked up at a star that had just appeared in the sky and nodded to it in relaxed recognition. I felt good. And this was the way to get away - by boat. The only way to experience the true sensations of quitting an island. From an aeroplane, land and sea take on the homogeneous texture they have on a paper map. At eye level, with the ship rolling and the waves sending advance scouts over the bows and then retrieving them instantly, you know something’s happening. The anachronistic rituals involved in pulling alongside the quay, the old customs houses, lugging one’s cases to the guy with the green chalk, all this is the mood music of travel. I was glad to be on a boat, wiping spray from my face. It told me I was still alive, and I had begun to doubt that.

By the time we docked in Calais the rain had set in; a steady self-confident rain that didn’t have to prove anything by chucking it down in buckets. It knew it was going to be around for a long time, there was no hurry. At the station bar I started drinking calvados. I had decided to make it the theme drink of the trip and to start the moment we set foot in France. I watched Pascale speaking French to the guy behind the bar and it hit me like a shock wave to be reminded that English was not her native tongue. Sure, she had an accent, but I’d got so used to it that it didn’t register any more. I let my imagination off the leash to explore the mythical empathy she was experiencing with the guy, the linguistic structures that released charges that no superficial fluency in a foreign tongue could generate. They spoke and he looked at me briefly: the alien, the unknowing one. And this was just Calais.

We took a taxi from the Gare Du Nord to Austerlitz. The rain was persisting and it was freezing cold. She was wearing the black corduroy slacks that she’d worn that first time at Toby’s flat, and a white raincoat. I realized now just how specifically French were her looks. She was of a kind with the beautiful Parisian girls I’d been noticing since we arrived in the city; in my imagination, their thoughts were full of Sartre, existentialism, and sex.

We found ourselves a carriage on a slow train. What with our late start and the drinks at Calais we’d messed things up and missed the train that would have got us into Limoges at a reasonable time. This one left at ten, called at every station on the line and arrived at Limoges very early in the morning. We had thirty minutes to wait before it pulled out and had got ourselves nicely settled in the window seats of a second class compartment, with all our pitiful possessions spread around us, when a soldier wearing the red beret of the parachute regiment came in and sat down. I turned away to look out of the window but Pascale jumped and started collecting our stuff together.

“What are you doing?” I said. She didn’t answer but as she picked up the magazines and papers she never once took her eyes off the Para. She had an expression of hatred on her face that I’d never seen in her before. It wasn’t even hatred, it was something deep inside her that surfaced on her face in the form of hatred.

“Get the bags,” she said. I murmured dissent. “.. Get the fucking bags.”

The soldier had noticed her attentions and didn’t know how to react. His first move was to light a cigarette, apparently unconcerned, but as we made our ungainly exit he said something to her that I didn’t catch. She threw a stream of screaming abuse at him that was over inside ten seconds. He pretended to laugh and to take it as a come-on, and shouted back as if on the pick up. When I got to the end of the corridor with the bags Pascale was standing there shaking. She couldn’t even light herself a fag. I did it for her and passed it over. I didn’t say anything, I’d got no idea what was going on inside her head. By the time she’d calmed down the train had pulled out. I went and found us a couple of seats in a half-full compartment. I made sure it hadn’t got a member of the armed forces inside.