Did she detect the smallest twitch in Reiner’s poker-faced serenity? ‘I know nothing of that,’ he said. ‘It would grieve me to think it was gone forever.’
At that moment Berk hove into their midst, clearing the way for a squat, thickset man with small, glittering eyes and a pugilistic jaw. His short-sleeved shirt revealed muscled forearms so hirsute they almost hid the strap of his gold watch. Freya recognised Harry Pulver and his dark Presley-ish quiff from newspaper photographs. She couldn’t help noticing the mood of obsequiousness that seized everyone in his orbit; everyone but herself and Reiner Werther Kloss. Even Nat stood a little straighter in his presence. Berk was gesturing towards her.
‘And this is Miss Wyley, a journalist – know all about them, eh, Harry?’
Harry’s chin lifted as he said, ‘Which paper?’
‘The Chronicle,’ she replied.
‘Never read it,’ he snapped, implying that because of this it might as well not exist. ‘You people are always tryin’ to get one over on me. Dunno why. Some reporter said I’d been diddlin’ the Revenue. Bare-faced lie. Another called me a tax exile – complete lie.’
‘Ah, so you do read the Chronicle. That was one of ours.’
Harry stared at her for a moment; Freya stared back. ‘They can print what they like. See if I care.’
There followed, for Harry’s benefit, a verbal love-in on the subject of the Thomas Bertram. Berk initiated it, remarking that even in the Hamptons he’d never seen a yacht as lavish as this, while Arno enquired as to the exact dimensions and capacity of the vessel, which Harry droned out in a rich man’s mixture of boastfulness and boredom. There was much oohing and aahing over its magnificence. Freya was amused to see Nat joining in the descant of praise, making a joke about Cleopatra’s barge that nobody quite got. Harry ignored him, in any case; he ignored most people. Having checked on the whereabouts of his mother and his wife, he moved away without another word; Gina, catching a telepathic signal, followed close behind.
The sun had begun to dip as the boat continued westward, the scenery no longer a broken jumble of warehouses and factories but riverside villas and their orderly lawns sloping down to the bank. The pubs and cottages of suburban west London admired it from a distance, while small tugs and skiffs bobbed alongside like sightseers at a royal procession. Dox and his quartet had swung into their second set. Nat, afloat on his sixteenth gin cocktail, had observed his own rule about dancing and was now performing a slow shuffle to their cover of ‘Maiden Voyage’. Slowly, other guests filled the floor, prompted by the loping, laid-back tempo; the tiny shiver of the drummer’s hi-hat sounded like soda water poured over ice. A woman in a skinny-rib sweater and wide floppy hat joined him, and he smiled at her absently: over her shoulder he could see Sonja and Freya, languidly entwined in a mock waltz. How he loved watching Freya move, that tall, loose-limbed sway; he wondered if there’d ever be a time when he wasn’t somewhat in love with her. Sonja, about an inch shorter, had her own provoking sexiness in the androgynous Weimar-cabaret outfit. Together they looked like girlfriend and boyfriend, the one enhancing the other, like Ginger and Fred.
The cruise might have concluded in this sun-buttered haze of drinking and dancing had it not been for an unscheduled eruption of unpleasantness. The landing stage at Richmond was in sight when Freya, retrieving a clutch bag she’d left on a bench, happened to pass an open cabin and overheard a raised voice. Harry Pulver was berating someone: a member of staff, she presumed, such was the savagery of his condescension. Are you fucking deaf? Eh? I’ve just asked you a question. She knew she ought to walk on, it was none of her business, they were about to disembark. But Freya could never resist the whiff of confrontation. She put her head round the door: there was Harry glowering not at a minion but at Gina, her face averted in mute humiliation. Neither of them noticed her until she said, ‘Actually, I believe the lady is deaf. But there’s really no need to shout at her.’
Harry almost jumped. The shock of being interrupted, let alone told off, was apparently so far beyond his experience as to baffle him. ‘What the – who the hell d’you think you are?’ His voice came out a low incredulous growl.
Freya wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, just someone who thinks a deaf person should be treated with a little more consideration. That’s who.’
The girl, Gina, was eyeing her in cowed amazement, and Freya had a sudden sense that answering back to Harry Pulver was like answering back to the Queen: it simply wasn’t done. Harry had half turned towards the intruder. ‘Consideration? Out of here, hoppit, you fucking – journalist. Now. Unless you want me to throw you out.’
Freya shook her head. ‘Didn’t take long for your mask to slip, did it?’ She lingered a moment in the doorway. Bristling with anger, she considered broadening her field of fire to include his repellent manners, his high-handed entitlement, his bullying of a woman. But instead she made do with two words: ‘Fucking arsehole.’ She slammed the door and walked back towards the deck. That was the problem with parting shots. The pleasure of getting the shot off was blunted by not hanging around to appreciate its effect.
Nat, who by degrees had been getting purchase on the skinny-ribbed girl, saw Freya approach from the corner of his eye. She looked furious. He felt a dread of something nameless as she made a beeline for him; he knew her so well he could have spoken her next utterance himself: ‘You won’t fucking believe what I’ve just seen.’ But a sudden anxious murmuring had risen in her wake. A shadow was right behind her. Harry Pulver had caught up and was jabbing a finger in her back. ‘Oi! Think you can talk to me like that?’
Nat made a point of avoiding physical violence, at least outside the bedroom. He had not been involved in a fight since Oxford, when he was occasionally assaulted on the street for wearing make-up. But an instinct – protective, romantic, he didn’t know what – compelled him to place himself between Pulver’s barrel-chested bulk and Freya. He heard himself saying how it wasn’t really on for a fellow to menace a lady like that, though he didn’t get very far with his defence before he watched, almost in slow motion, Harry’s face bearing down on his own. A starburst of pain shot past his eyes as he felt his nose crumple beneath the momentum of Harry’s meaty forehead. A woman’s shriek pierced the air. Dazed, he staggered back, grasping the rail, while behind him he heard a scuffle break out and voices raised in protest or conciliation.
Nat found Reiner squatting at his side, muttering something in German and holding out a handkerchief, for his nose appeared to be pouring with blood. Then Freya was at his other side, her voice agonised with sympathy. ‘Oh, darling, it’s all down your lovely suit.’ He considered, through watering eyes, his spattered white shirt. The odd thing was, with his nose throbbing and his clothes ruined, he felt his moment of madness worthwhile, if only to feel Freya’s arm hugging his neck.
The incident, having shivered the timbers of the Thomas Bertram, was the talk of the party once they were ashore at Richmond. The guests had resumed their drinking in the garden of the Lord Raglan, overlooking the river, where dinner was to be served. Harry Pulver had been led away by his retinue and seated at a distance from the Eureka crew, and only Berk, mindful of the bankroll, kept up the show of fawning bonhomie for his partner.
Julie the script girl, who had once done a first-aid course, fixed up Nat’s face with some help from the boat’s medicine chest. His nose wasn’t broken, but he still smarted with the pain; he looked a fright with the gauze and cotton wool plastering it like a racehorse’s noseband. It was gratifying nevertheless to find himself the centre of attention, talked of as the man who had ‘taken on’ Harold Pulver in defence of a lady.
‘I didn’t lay a glove on him, I’m afraid,’ he said to Billie, who had missed the whole thing. It amused him to float the implication that at another time he might have given his adversary a damn good biffing.
‘He’s a regular gallant,’ said Freya fondly. ‘Greater love hath no man than to take one on the nose for a friend.’
‘Was he going to hit you?’ Billie asked her, aghast.
‘I think he’d have liked to.’
Ronnie Stiles, passing their table, stopped to stare. ‘Ding-ding!’ he called to Nat, raising his fists and performing a little duck-and-weave. ‘I hear the Thomas A Becket wants ya for a bout next Saturday, mate.’
‘Tell them to contact my agent,’ he fired back, and got an appreciative leer from Ronnie. Christ, how little it took to become popular! He’d had more admiring looks for being nutted by that brute than he’d managed during the entire premiere of his last film. Maybe he should get poleaxed more often.
As the adrenalin started to wear off he felt a vicious throbbing not just in his nose but his whole head. Alcohol might be the remedy, only he was already up to his waist in gin from the boat. He caught Freya’s eye and made a coded gesture with his fingers. With a nod she announced that she was taking Nat for a walk ‘to clear his head’. On the way they happened to pass Dox Walbrook, sitting calm as a Buddha with a glass of neat Scotch. Freya decided to introduce herself.
‘I loved your version of “Lazy Afternoon”. Actually, I loved it all.’
Dox, eyeing her from beneath his porkpie hat, nodded courteously. ‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘I’m Freya. This is Nat.’
He offered them his hand, squinting at Nat. ‘Man, you musta got someone mad.’ His Georgia accent was smoky and relaxed, like his playing.
Nat’s laugh was snuffly beneath the plaster. ‘Yeah. But he looks worse than I do.’
Dox twitched a smile at this bravado. Freya asked him if he’d like to join them for a smoke, and he ambled alongside them to the edge of the pub’s low garden wall. Night had set on; a scimitar moon hung in the purplish sky. The Thames was an inky blue-black, gleaming here and there from the lights of small boats. Along the path the pale outline of the Thomas Bertram could be seen, a whale among the minnows. Freya had rolled one of her large ‘prison’ spliffs and lit it. She took a couple of long drags and handed it on to Dox. Soon the air around them was scented with the ropey smell of pot.
Nat, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, felt the first hit like a mallet to his cerebral cortex. He staggered a moment, and felt Dox’s quick steadying hand at his back. ‘Easy, brother.’ After a minute or so his balance seemed to correct itself, and his head felt pleasantly aswim.
‘First time I ever smoked this stuff was with Jerry Dicks. He used to bring it back from Morocco.’
Freya nodded. ‘Me too. Poor old Jerry.’ She turned to Dox. ‘A photographer we used to knock about with.’
Nat was frowning with the effort of recall. ‘That music-hall monologue he was always doing. I’m subject to colds and they make me quite deaf / And then I can’t hear what you say / A feller once asked me if I’d have a drink / I heard that with a cold by the way … How does the rest of it go?’
‘I don’t remember. He knew hundreds of them. He was a great performer – and smoker,’ she added.
‘This dude still around?’ Dox asked politely.
Freya shook her head. ‘They found him dead in his bed at a Brighton hotel. A couple of years ago. Never quite sure what did for him in the end – emphysema, TB, pneumonia …’
‘God, I miss him,’ muttered Nat.
Freya missed him too, but she felt it wasn’t the right time to be mourning in the company of an outsider – an illustrious one at that. Instead she asked Dox about his forthcoming work on Eureka. It transpired that a couple of the pieces they’d played this afternoon were for the score. The talk moved on to jazz greats, then to his contemporaries, the ones he’d played with, the ones he’d have liked to play with. When she asked who, he returned a wistful look.
‘Coltrane.’ He had died a few weeks ago.
While they were yarning away Nat’s stoned gaze surveyed the moon, the jetty, the campfire. He paused on this last. Strange to have it so near to the boats. He refocused, and saw that it was a fire all right, but with no one attending it. It seemed to be coming from a boat – the big one. He shut his eyes, then opened them wide again, trying to take it in. He took a few steps forward. There was no doubting it now. The Thomas Bertram, the eighty-footer, Harold Pulver’s pride and joy, was in trouble. Flames were rippling hungrily over its deck.
He turned back to Freya and Dox, absorbed in talk. ‘Er, I don’t want to alarm you, but our ride home appears to be on fire.’
Freya followed his gaze. ‘Oh God. We’d better raise the alarm.’
‘Or we could just let it burn.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Nat. There might be someone on board.’
‘Shit,’ murmured Dox, who stared for a moment before heading towards the blaze. ‘My fuckin’ horn’s in there!’ He broke into a run.
They were fifty yards away when an explosion rocked the boat and sent debris raining across the jetty. Dox had pulled up, a hand shielding his eyes from the conflagration. In the distance they heard the droning siren of a fire engine. People had emerged from the pub to gawp. The yacht, wreathed in leaping flames, wore the mournful and magnificent aspect of a Viking funeral ship. It already looked beyond saving.
EXT. COURTYARD OF VILLA, PORTOFINO – DAY.
Crane shot of the ivy-creepered courtyard as CHAS enters, to be greeted by GEORGE, looking tanned and relaxed. Jazz plays over the scene as we watch them talk.
EXT. COURTYARD, GROUND LEVEL – DAY.
CHAS and GEORGE seated at a table with drinks. CHAS looks rather tense and shifty.
GEORGE
So what news from home? How did Gwen seem to you?
CHAS
Oh, a bit distracted. Of course she really wanted to come, but her mother –
GEORGE
I know. Another relapse.
CHAS
It looks quite serious …
GEORGE
It always does. Then she’s back! That woman’s made more farewell appearances than Nellie Melba.
CHAS
(lowering his voice)
Talking of farewells, how’s our patient?
GEORGE
I spoke to his doctor yesterday. He said there’s not much to be done other than make him comfortable. It was quite a thing – what Hugh himself would have called a coup de vieux.
CHAS
Poor man. (He pauses.) Looks like you arrived just in time, though …
GEORGE
Hmm? Oh, yes, I see.
At that moment JANE enters, looking pale and drawn. She sits at the table, sensing the mute enquiries of the men.
JANE
He’s sleeping. I managed to have a few words with him before he went off. (To CHAS.) He knows that you’re here.
CHAS
He can speak?
JANE
No. But he understands. And he has a little notepad he writes on. The doctor thinks he may still –
CUT TO: CHAS and GEORGE glance at one another. They understand that such optimism is almost certainly misplaced.
EXT. HARBOUR CAFE – DAY.
CHAS is drinking black coffee and smoking as GEORGE approaches his table. He sits down, shaking his head.
GEORGE
This is going to hit her hard. She’s more like a daughter to him than a friend. How long have they known each other?
CHAS
Years. ‘Daughter’ isn’t wide of the mark. Jane was an orphan from three. Vereker never had any children – for obvious reasons. I dare say she’ll inherit everything.
GEORGE
Will she be his literary executor?
CHAS
I’m not sure she’d care for the job.
GEORGE
I wonder if I should – God, sorry. The fellow isn’t even in his grave yet.
CHAS
You never know, she might appreciate the offer. Maybe I could ask her for you.
GEORGE
Would you do that?
CHAS
When there’s an appropriate moment …
GEORGE
Quite. I wouldn’
t dream of bringing it up before he’s –
A long beat as CHAS shifts in his seat, waiting for his own moment.
CHAS
I can’t deny that I’m hoping for something from you in return. Gwen told me about your ‘revelation’.
GEORGE
Yes … it was quite an experience. I should tell you that these last few months I’ve been hanging out with people who drop a fair amount of … substances.
CHAS
You mean –
GEORGE
‘Turn on, tune in, drop out.’ Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a drug fiend! – but when in Rome … So I’ve dropped a tab occasionally.
CHAS
But what has this to do with Vereker?
GEORGE
I’ll tell you.
CUT TO: In flashback, GEORGE is asleep in bed. An alarm clock rings and he wakes blearily.
GEORGE (V.O.)
It seemed a morning like any other. I felt a bit hung-over from a party I’d been at the night before.
CUT TO: GEORGE in his dressing gown, yawning and making coffee in his kitchen. He lights a cigarette and skims the newspaper. A glance at the clock on the wall tells him he’s running late.
GEORGE (V.O.)
I threw on some clothes and went out to get the bus.
CUT TO: A street in Rome, GEORGE hurrying along as a bus pulls into a stop. He steps on – it’s crowded – and takes a seat near the back.
GEORGE (V.O.)
So I was sitting there, not noticing much, when I heard this voice say something.
CHAS (V.O.)
In Italian?
GEORGE (V.O.)
Possibly. I don’t remember. But the voice triggered some brainstorm. I suppose I must have been tripping still from the party, only it wasn’t like any trip I’d had before. It was more like a fugue.
CUT TO: GEORGE wandering through a field of summer flowers, sunbeams bouncing off the camera lens. He is wearing the same clothes – his office suit and tie – but his expression is beatific, serene, enraptured. A jazz piano and drum play out a seductive figure, repeating it over and over. As GEORGE advances into the field the flowers seem to perform a woozy, languid dance in time to the music.
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