Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination

by Helen Fielding

  She tiptoed over to the dive shack. It was well ordered: a line of tanks, twenties, in brackets; BCDs and regulator rigs on hooks; masks and fins in neat piles. There was a knife lying on a rough wooden table. She picked it up and slipped it into her clutch, starting at the sound of Feramo’s footsteps returning. She was in danger, she knew, of being overwhelmed by fear. She had to regain control.

  The footsteps were getting closer. Terrified, she cried out, “Pierre?” There was no answer, just the sound of the footsteps, heavy and uneven. Was it some thug or hired hit man? “Pierre. Is that you?”

  She drew the knife out of her bag and held it behind her back, tensed and ready.

  “Yes,” came Pierre’s liquid, accented tones. “Of course it is me.”

  She exhaled, her whole body relaxing. Feramo emerged from the gloom, carrying a clumsy bundle wrapped in black.

  “What are we doing here?” she burst out. “What are you doing bringing me to some isolated place and just dumping me and not answering when I ask if it’s you when you’re making weird footsteps? What is this place? What are you doing?”

  “Weird footsteps?” Feramo laughed, his eyes flashing, then suddenly whipped the black cover from the bundle. Olivia felt as though her legs were going to give way. It was an ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne and two flutes.

  “Look,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead. “This is very nice, but do you have to be so melodramatic?”

  “You do not strike me as the kind of woman who seeks out the predictable.”

  “No, but you don’t have to scare me to death to keep me happy. What is this place?”

  “It is a boat dock. Here,” he said, holding out the black cloth, “in case you are cold. I should perhaps have warned you we would be putting out to sea.”

  “To sea?” she said, trying simultaneously to take the wrap, which turned out to be very soft indeed as if made from the feathers of some rare bird, and hide the knife in it.

  He nodded towards the bay, where the silhouette of a yacht could be seen gliding noiselessly round the headland.

  She was relieved to find that there was a crew aboard. If Feramo was going to kill her, he would, one would have thought, have done it when they were alone. And the champagne would have been a very odd touch.

  She was feeling slightly more relaxed, having managed to stash the dive knife in the Louis Vuitton clutch under cover of the black, ultrafine pashmina. Feramo stood beside her at the stern, as they glided out into the blackness of the open sea.

  “Olivia,” he said, handing her a glass, “shall we drink a toast to our evening? To the beginning.” He clinked his glass against hers and looked at her intently.

  “Of what?” she said.

  “You do not remember our conversation in Miami? On the rooftop? The beginning of our getting to know each other.” He raised his glass, then drained it. She sipped at hers, smiling weakly, wondering if this whole performance was designed to wrong-foot her, making her feel threatened and terrified one moment, and safe and pampered the next, like leg-waxing with a smooth-talking but incompetent beautician.

  “So, tell me. You are a journalist. Why?”

  She thought for a moment. “I like to write. I like to travel. I like to find out what’s going on.”

  “And where have you visited on your travels?”

  “Well, not as many places as I’d like: South America, India, Africa.”

  “Where in Africa?”

  “The Sudan and Kenya.”

  “Really? You have been to the Sudan?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did you find it?”

  “It was extraordinary. It was the most foreign place I’ve ever been. It was like Lawrence of Arabia.”

  “And the people?”

  “I liked the people,” she said quietly.

  “And Los Angeles? How do you find it here?”

  “Deliciously shallow.”

  He laughed. “That is all?”

  “Unexpectedly rural. It’s like the south of France only with shopping.”

  “And this journalism you do, this froth for magazines, it is your speciality?”

  “Froth? I’ve never been so insulted in my life!”

  He laughed again. He had a nice laugh, rather shy, as if it was something he didn’t quite feel allowed to do.

  “I really want to be a proper foreign correspondent,” she said, suddenly serious. “I want to do something that means something.”

  “The OceansApart. Did you do a piece anyway for the Sunday Times?” There was a slight change of tenor in his voice.

  “Yes, kind of. But they put it under someone else’s byline.”

  “Did that distress you?”

  “Pretty trivial thing in that context. What about you? Do you like LA?”

  “I am interested in what it produces.”

  “What? Beautiful girls with giant fake breasts?”

  He laughed. “Why don’t you come inside?”

  “Are you trying to get fresh?”

  “No, no. For dinner, I mean.”

  A deckhand in a white uniform held out his hand to help her as she stepped down the stairs. The interior was breathtaking, if just a tiny bit naff. It was paneled in shiny wood with beige, deep-pile carpets and lots of brassware. It was like a proper room, not a cabin on a boat. The table was laid for two, with a white cloth, flowers and very shiny glassware and cutlery, which, disappointingly, was not gold-plated. The cabin was decorated with a Hollywood theme, and there were some interesting old photographs of stolen moments on set: Alfred Hitchcock playing chess with Grace Kelly, Ava Gardner soaking her feet in an ice bucket, Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole playing cricket in the desert. There was a glass case with memorabilia inside: an Oscar statuette, an Egyptian headdress, a four-stranded pearl necklace with a picture of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s behind it.

  “This is my passion,” he said. “The movies. I watched so many with my mother, so many of the great old movies. Some day I will make a picture which will be remembered long after I am dead. If I can fight my way through the stupidity and prejudice of Hollywood.”

  “But you’ve made movies already.”

  “Small movies, in France. You would not know these films.”

  “I might. Try me.”

  Was that a fleeting look of panic?

  “Look,” he said, “this is a headdress worn by Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra.”

  “Is that a real Oscar?”

  “Yes, but I am afraid not the most distinguished one. My dream is to obtain one of the statuettes awarded for Lawrence of Arabia in 1962. But for the moment I am having to make do with this, which is an award for best sound editing in the late sixties that I managed to find on eBay.”

  Olivia laughed. “Tell me more about your work. I might have seen something. I see quite a lot of French films in—”

  “And look. These are the pearls that Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

  “The real ones?”

  “Of course. You would like to wear them for dinner?”

  “No, no. I’d look ridiculous.”

  He took them out of the case and placed them round her neck, fastening them with the dexterity of a surgeon. She bowed her head, feeling his fingers against her neck.

  He stood back to appraise the effect of the necklace. “You are beautiful,” he whispered. “And what makes it all the more attractive is that you do not know it.”

  She met his eyes for a second, caught herself feeling a stab of Cinderella syndrome and was furious. Dammit, she was impressed with the bloody yacht and the apartments, the pearls and the helicopter, the beauty and the charm. She knew she was one in a long line of girls who had been wooed with this lot, and she didn’t want to be. The ridiculous, delusional feelings which can afflict a girl in such situations were bubbling up. She was thinking: I’m different; I don’t like him for his money, I like him for himself. I can change him, while simultaneously im
agining herself installed on the yacht, an adored creature, slipping into the water for unlimited scuba diving with no additional charge for equipment rental, then emerging from the shower and fastening Audrey Hepburn’s pearls around her neck.

  Stop it, she told herself. Stop it, you total sad act. Do what you’re here to do. “Pierre bin Feramo,” she felt like yelling, “can we get this straight? Are you wooing me, or are you trying to bump me off? Are you a terrorist or a playboy? Do you think I tried to put the FBI onto you or not?” Right, she was bloody well going to tackle him.

  She stood looking at the Oscar and the Egyptian headdress in the case, trying to calm herself.

  “Why did you lie to me?” she said without turning round.

  He didn’t reply. She turned to face him. “Why did you tell me you were French? I knew you were an Arab.”

  “You did?” He looked very cool about it all, even slightly amused. “Might I enquire as to why?”

  “Well, number one, your accent. Number two, I heard you say shukran.”

  A second’s pause. “You speak Arabic?”

  “Like I told you, I’ve been in the Sudan.”

  “Was that a mosque in your apartment?”

  The hooded eyes gave nothing away. “It is actually a panic room. And it seemed an ideal place for privacy and contemplation. And as for the slight, shall we say, inaccuracy about my nationality, I was trying to do away with the encumbrance of racial stereotyping. Not everyone has your positive attitude towards our culture and religion.”

  “Isn’t that like politicians pretending not to be gay—the pretending in itself has the effect of suggesting there’s something wrong with being gay?”

  “You are suggesting I am ashamed of being an Arab?”

  His voice was terrifying: calm, pleasant, violent anger surging below.

  “I’m interested in why you lied about it.”

  He fixed his dark, soulful eyes on hers. “I am proud of being an Arab. Our culture is the oldest in the world and the wisest. Our laws are spiritual laws and our traditions rooted in the wisdom of our ancestors. When I am in Hollywood I am ashamed—not of my ancestry, but of the world I see around me: the arrogance, the ignorance, the vanity, the stupidity, the greed, the salivating worship of flesh and youth, the flaunting of sexuality for fame and financial gain, the lust for the new in the absence of respect for the old. This shallowness you joke of finding delicious is not sweetness but the very spores of rot within the ripe fruit.”

  Olivia held herself motionless, gripping her clutch, thinking of the knife inside it. She sensed that the slightest misjudged word or move would trip the wire of his carefully controlled rage.

  “Why are the richest nations on earth the unhappiest? Do you know?” he continued.

  “That’s a rather odd generalization,” she said lightly, trying to shift the mood. “I mean some of the richest nations in the world are Arab nations. Saudi Arabia’s rather well off, isn’t it?”

  “Saudi Arabia, pah!”

  He seemed to be having some kind of private battle. He turned away, then looked back, composed now.

  “I am sorry, Olivia,” he said in a gentler tone. “But spending time in America, as I do, I am often . . . hurt . . . by the ignorance and prejudice with which we are pigeonholed and insulted. Come. Enough. This is not the evening for this discussion. It is a beautiful night, and it is time to eat.”

  21

  God, Pierre Feramo could drink. One martini, a bottle of Cristal, an ’82 Pomerol and the best part of a ’96 Chassagne-Montrachet later, he was calling for a Recioto della Valpolicella to go with dessert. In most men, it would have seemed as though there was a problem. In a Muslim, it seemed downright bizarre. But then, Olivia found herself thinking, just say for most of his life Feramo never drank a drop of alcohol. Just say he’d only started drinking recently, as a smoke screen. How would he know he had a problem? How would he know that everyone didn’t drink like that?

  “Aren’t Muslims supposed not to drink alcohol?” she ventured. She was feeling rather full. The food was superb: scallops on pureed spring peas with white truffle oil, sea bass in a lightly curried sauce with pumpkin ravioli, peaches stewed in red wine with mascarpone ice cream.

  “Ah, that depends, that depends,” he said vaguely, filling up his glass. “There are different interpretations.”

  “Do you dive from this boat?” she asked.

  “What, scuba dive? Yes. Well, actually, no, not from here, not personally. It is too cold. I prefer to dive in the Caribbean, on the reef off Belize and Honduras, and in the Red Sea. You dive yourself?” He moved to fill her glass, not noticing that it was already full.

  “Yes, I love diving. Actually, I was thinking before I came of suggesting a diving story to Elan: diving off the beaten track. I was thinking of the Red Sea coast of the Sudan as well.”

  “But, Olivia,” he said, raising his hands expansively, “you must come to my hotel in Honduras. I insist. The diving off the Bay Islands is unsurpassed. We have walls which fall for a thousand feet, intricate tunnels, the rarest of marine life. You must ask your magazine to let you cover it. And then go on to the Sudan. It is wonderful there, the visibility is the best in the world. It is totally untouched. You must do it. You must do it at once. I am leaving for Honduras tomorrow. You must telephone your magazine and join me there as my guest.”

  “Well, there’s a problem,” she said.

  “A problem?”

  “They’ve fired me.”

  “They’ve fired you?”

  She watched him carefully for signs of bluffing. “Yes. Someone from your PR office called the editor and complained that I’d called the FBI to suggest they check you out.”

  “But how ridiculous.”

  “Exactly. I didn’t. But someone bugged my room and was listening to me talking to myself.”

  “Talking to yourself? Suggesting to yourself that I should be checked out by the FBI?”

  He looked genuinely hurt. She was growing increasingly confused. He was plausible. He seemed like a man with integrity. She could see why he might fudge his racial identity in such a climate.

  “Look,” she said, leaning forward, “Pierre, I’ll be honest. I did wonder about you after what happened in Miami. When we were together on your roof deck, you seemed so determined I shouldn’t go down to the OceansApart the next morning. And after it was blown up you immediately left town. You told me you were French, and then I heard you speaking Arabic. I do get a bit carried away and talk to myself—imaginary conversations, I guess, because I spend so much time alone. But I can’t understand who would have bugged my room.”

  “You are certain the room was bugged?”

  “I found a device in the phone jack.”

  His nostrils flared.

  “My dear Olivia,” he said eventually, “I am so sorry that this has happened. I had no idea. I cannot imagine who would have done this, but as you know, we live in paranoid times.”

  “Yes. And you can see how—”

  “Oh yes, yes. Of course. You are a journalist and a linguist. You have an enquiring mind. I would probably have been suspicious myself. But, then, I assume that had you retained these suspicions, you would not be here.”

  “It would have been a bit daft to come,” said Olivia, carefully avoiding the lie.

  “And now you have lost your job.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly a job. But apparently your PR people called them in a fury.”

  “I will put this right immediately. You must write down the contact details of your editor and I will make a phone call in the morning.”

  He took her hand, his brown eyes melting into hers. “I am so sorry that this has happened.” He really was the most beautiful man: gentle, charming, gracious, kind.

  Don’t fall in love with him, stop it, stop it, pull yourself together, she told herself. I’m like one of those female aid workers who falls for the leader of the rebel army or gets kidnapped and falls for her kidnapper. I�
�ve got Stockholm Syndrome.

  “You will come? To Honduras?’ he said. ‘I shall organize a plane for you, and you must be my guest.”

  She steeled herself. “No, no. You’re too kind, but I never accept hospitality when I’m writing a story. It interferes with the impartiality. I might find a cockroach in the soup and then where would we be?”

  “Then this invitation to dinner must also interfere with your impartiality?”

  “Only if I were writing a story about you.”

  “And you are not? Ms. Joules, you disappoint me. I thought you were about to make me into a star.”

  “I’m sure you’re the one person in LA who’s not looking for stardom.”

  “Not in this life, anyway,” he said. “I will save stardom for the afterlife and my seventy virgins.”

  As she laughed, he reached out and ran his hand delicately across her cheekbone. The touch of his lips on hers sent shock waves through her system.

  “Ms. Joules,” he murmured, “you are so wonderfully, irrepressibly . . . English.”

  He stood up, took her hand, raised her to her feet and led her up to the deck.

  “You will stay here with me tonight?” he said, looking down at her.

  “It’s too soon,” she murmured, giving in as he brought her head against his chest, putting his arms protectively around her, his hand moving to stroke her hair.

  “I understand,” he said. The only sound was the soft lap of the waves against the side of the boat. “But you will join me in Honduras?”

  “I’ll think about it,” she whispered weakly.

  22 LOS ANGELES

  “Weesh tuminall?’ yelled the cab driver.

  Olivia was heading for Los Angeles airport. They were passing the Los Angeles oil field where nodding donkeys bobbed up and down improbably as if they were in southern Iraq, not southern California.

  “Weesh tuminall?” yelled the driver again. “Tuminall? Internassyunall? Or domestic fly? Weesh airline?”

  “Oh, oh, er,” she stalled, having no idea where she was going. “International.”

  The sun was setting among the clouds with the detail and splendor of an oil painting, the tangle of telegraph wires silhouetted against it. She felt a stirring of premature nostalgia for Los Angeles and America: the America of deserts, gas stations, road trips, and reinvention.