‘Well?’ A tiny edge of impatience has crept into Mitch’s question.
I’m still looking at the photo. Especially the chest.
‘He speaks French? Prentice?’
‘Not a word. Wouldn’t hear of it. Mark of weakness in his book.’
I nod. Sit back. Close my eyes. It’s all coming back, every single detail. Saucy, I think. Fuck.
FIVE
It’s the summer of my first appearance at Cannes, my first glimpse of Berndt Andressen, the summer when I prefaced my film festival moments with a lazy, paid-for month shooting a movie at Antibes. With the budget on its knees, the French production company put us up in a fleapit pension in a back street near the station. According to the director, an ageing faux philosophe still looking for his first major breakthrough, the experience was meant to sharpen our appreciation for the class of criminal around whom his sagging scenario was constructed. We all knew this was an excuse to save a few more precious francs and when the invitation arrived for drinks aboard a newly docked vessel in the marina, we gladly decamped from the cafe-bar which we’d made home.
The boat was clinching proof that no one with any money has any taste. It was big, sleek, and very white. It had the kind of lines a child might have drawn if he wanted to turn a series of waves into a boat. You boarded via a gangplank that looked as box-new as everything else. A uniformed lackey who probably doubled as a bodyguard met you at the other end and when you stepped down into the salon, along with a blast of air-con came gusts of an overpowering perfume I can only describe as emetic. The name of the boat was everywhere: on the bow, on the stern, on the lackey, on the lifebelts, embossed in brass on the bridge controls, even appliquéd on to the thick courtesy towels in the closet. Agincourt. Subtle.
Smirking in French is easy. You put on your brightest smile, shoot a look at your buddies, and murmur that you think the whole thing is impressionnant. In this context impressionnant means merde.
Our host was a man called Dennis who apparently owned a football club along with some huge construction company. He was tall, thin, and rarely smiled. Unlike everyone else, he’d forsworn shorts for a suit. The pastiness of his face was untroubled by the sun and within minutes of our arrival, having muttered instructions to the lackey about the champagne in one of the huge fridges, he made his excuses and left for the airport at Nice.
At this point we were beginning to wonder quite why we’d ever been invited but minutes later the rest of the party arrived. They’d spent most of the afternoon in a harbourside bar and it showed. They were all English, mainly men. They tramped aboard and there was a blizzard of oaths when one of them lost his footing on the deck. This turned out to be Saucy. My first impression was slightly marred by the blood pouring out of a gash on his cheek. In another life I happened to have done a first-aid course.
A woman we hadn’t seen before was already on hand with a towel and a handful of plasters but Saucy ignored her. He liked what I’d had to say about ice cubes. The woman fetched a bucketful from down below while Saucy sprawled on one of the hand-stitched leather banquettes. I had the towel pressed hard against the side of his face. He couldn’t take his eyes off me.
‘I’ve seen you before, ain’t I? Give us a name.’
‘Enora.’
‘I meant the film. The movie. Starts in London. Two dykes in bed. Not you, love.’
‘Kalendar.’
‘That’s it. You were good. You were great. Easy with that ice, eh?’
The bleeding stopped within minutes. I closed the wound, which wasn’t deep, and applied the biggest of the plasters. All the while, Saucy was telling me about the movie, about what happened, as if I’d never heard of it before. Finally he swung himself up into a sitting position, fingering the plaster. By now everyone was up on deck. Drinks had been served and there was a great deal of laughter. When I suggested we join them, Saucy shook his head.
‘You got a bloke with you? One of that lot?’
‘No.’
‘Good. A gal needs looking after. The least I can do.’
Cold on the page this sounds less than enticing, but there was something about him, a cheekiness or maybe a hint of vulnerability that I liked. He was bouncy, like a dog you’d be happy to have around, and when he said he’d fix us a proper drink, not poncey Krug, I said oui.
‘You speak the lingo?’
‘Oui.’
‘Wash your mouth out. Now tell me you like a decent margarita.’
‘Oui.’
‘Yeah? We like that. Stay there. I’ll be back.’
I did what I was told, trying to decide which of the framed sunset shots I loathed most. The margarita, when Saucy finally returned from below, was excellent.
‘So tell me about you,’ I said. ‘You’re a friend of the guy in the suit?’
‘Yeah. Like brothers on a good day, me and Den. Other times it ain’t so sweet, but who’s keeping score?’
‘And this is his boat?’
‘Every nut. Every bolt. Every gold fucking door knob. Hideous, innit?’ Laughter suited his face, even when blood began to seep beneath the plaster. He told me about Den, about the money he’d made, about the way he couldn’t keep his hands off all the gold clobber. He made this obsession with self-advertisement sound like an addiction, which in a way I suppose it was. Finally we got round to the question I really wanted to ask.
‘And what about your football club?’
‘Pompey. Till I die.’
‘Pompey?’
‘Portsmouth.’
‘And you own it? Like Den?’
‘Own it?’ More laughter. ‘Fuck me, I’m just a punter. Tell you the truth, it ain’t going too well just now but disappointment never hurt anyone. We miss Ballie big time though he lost it towards the end.’
Ballie? I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about but it didn’t seem to matter. I’d finished the margarita and my new barman was down below fixing another. By the time he came back, to my slight regret, we had company. The new arrival, a refugee from the drinks party on deck, had yet to introduce himself. Saucy spared me asking.
‘This is Terry,’ he said, ‘And he’s about to fuck off back upstairs. Right, Tel?’
Terry spared me a nod, told me to watch my arse, and did what he’d been told. Saucy and I were back on the banquette. Already the first margarita had gone to my head. When I asked Saucy about his last port of call he described a city that could only have been Nice. A single night tied up alongside a boat full of partying Russians. Total oblivion.
‘You never went ashore?’
‘No point. Vodka’s fucking vodka. Especially when it’s free.’
I couldn’t think of an answer to that but Saucy didn’t want one. Instead, he asked me what it was like to be an actress. This is a question we thesps get less often than you might imagine. Strangers often want to know about a particular performance, or a favourite fellow actor, but what they’re really after is gossip. Saucy wanted something far more interesting.
I remember doing my best. I told him I’d always liked make-believe: reading it, watching it, doing it. Sit in the darkness in the cinema, put yourself into the hands of a good director, and you can find yourself mapping a whole new world. Not just outside but inside.
‘What the fuck does that mean?’
‘It means you can become someone else. Which is what an actress does.’
‘That’s good.’ Saucy appeared to be thinking hard. ‘I never thought of it that way.’
He seemed genuinely impressed. He said he liked movies, make-believe, all that shit, but that nothing could beat real life.
‘Where I come from,’ he said, ‘you get one chance. Either you take it or you spend the rest of your fucking life sat on your arse.’
‘And you?’
‘I took it. Big time.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Back then I was an accountant. Don’t laugh. It’s not what you’re thinking. In life you follow the money and the guys wh
o know the best route up the mountain are people like me. All you need is a bit of nerve, a head for heights, a bit of bottle.’
This wasn’t what I’d been expecting. Saucy came at you with the force of an express train. It wasn’t just his physique, the way he held himself, but there was something in his eyes, a hint of apartness, that I’ve only ever associated with people who’ve made the big time, either through wealth or fame or – more usually – both. Marquee names in showbiz have it. A top French politician who used to fancy my mum had it. These are people who trust their own judgement, who always know which gambles pay off, and who never entertain a moment’s self-doubt.
I don’t know why but I didn’t want this conversation to end. Saucy had swallowed the last of his second margarita.
‘Are you rich?’ I asked him.
‘Yes.’
‘But accountants don’t get rich. Not properly rich. Not drifting-round-the-Côte-d’Azur-getting-pissed rich.’
‘This one does.’ He put the glass to one side and kissed me softly on the lips. Then he stood up and tugged at his shorts. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll have a proper chat.’
We joined the revellers on deck. More bottles of champagne. More stories traded back and forth. More extravagant toasts to passing strangers on the marina pontoon. Then, as the sun set, the arrival of a mountain of take-out from a resto on the quayside. By now, we were all royally pissed. Thick wedges of anchovy, olive, and tomato pizza made little difference. By this time, Saucy had abandoned an Italian actress who was part of our little equipe and was back at my side. Some of my buddies were trying to negotiate the gangplank. In the warm darkness, totally blitzed, they looked like battlefield casualties and when Saucy suggested I stay the night and spare myself the embarrassment of following them it seemed like a totally reasonable proposition.
He was occupying a stateroom next to his mate Dennis. I remember giggling when Saucy confirmed that the sheets were silk and I think there may have been mirrors on the ceiling overhead. Either way, Saucy was a considerate lover and didn’t seem to mind when I went to sleep on him. By the time I awoke, nursing the grandmother of all hangovers, it was daylight again and he’d gone.
SIX
Mitch is impressed by my recall.
‘Word perfect,’ he says. ‘So why didn’t you recognize him?’
There are more photos on my lap. Saucy snapped on a busy street of what looks like London. Saucy at the wheel of a rally car. Saucy blowing out the candles on a huge cake. I count them, still thinking about Mitch’s question.
‘He’s really fifty?’
‘Yes. Last month. He was abroad at the time so the big party’s still to come.’
‘He lives in London?’
‘Dorset. He bought a pile a couple of years back and spent a fortune doing it up.’
‘You’ve been there? Seen it?’
‘Not personally but someone I trust got an invite down. She says he’s done it beautifully. Bought the right interior design talent. Got the décor spot-on.’
Mitch produces another photo, this time scissored from a copy of Country Life. The house – Flixcombe Manor – looks comfortably Georgian. Seven bedrooms. Two reception rooms. Sauna. Inner courtyard. Heated indoor swimming pool in adjacent stable block. Self-contained guest cottage. Timber-framed barn. Sherborne six miles.
I look at the house again, trying to imagine it at the hands of the man I met so briefly all those years ago in Antibes. Mitch, I suspect, is wrong. Saucy would have masterminded the job himself.
‘It was eighteen years ago,’ I tell Mitch. ‘We were different people, both of us. That’s why I needed the name.’
‘I get the impression you liked him.’
‘I did. You’re right. He was real. In those kinds of circles that’s rare.’
‘You saw him again?’
‘No.’
‘Never tried to make contact? Never went back to the boat?’
‘There was no time. They’d finished the re-write on the script and I was back to work. The next day I went along the coast to Cannes. By that time, if you want the truth, I’d forgotten about Saucy. It was an interlude. An amusement. I met someone else at Cannes and that was completely different.’
Mitch nods. So far I’ve never mentioned my ex-husband and I sense this isn’t the place to start. Instead, I ask how Mitch had made the link between me and Saucy.
‘I’m writing a book about him,’ he says, ‘and I’ve been talking to loads of people. Some of them were on that boat and a couple remembered you.’
‘There’s a book in Saucy?’ I’m staring at him.
‘Yes. Saucy and one or two friends of his. Like-minded folk.’
‘How come?’
He won’t answer the question, not yet. My phone is ringing. I fetch it out and check the caller.
‘You want to take that?’
It’s my agent, Rosa. She checks I’m OK – a question that has suddenly become more than a courtesy – and then says I’m up for a BBC radio play. She names a writer she knows I admire. It’s a one-off, an hour long. Rehearsals are scheduled for a couple of weeks’ time. Might I be interested? I say yes without really thinking. She sounds pleased. She’ll put the script in the post.
‘Head OK, sweetness?’
‘Head’s perfect.’
Rosa hangs up and I’m back with Mitch. He’s found yet another image. This time it’s on his iPad. He passes it across. I blink, look harder. This has nothing to do with Saucy or two-million-pound properties in rural Dorset. The segment of a black orb, delicately edged in silver, pushes in from the top left-hand corner. It looks both sinister and beautiful. Beyond it, the curve flatter, is a biscuit-coloured girdle that seems to act as a shield or a fence against the infinite blue-black background. Look harder, and this yawning void is faintly pricked with tiny points of light.
‘Saturn.’ I look up. ‘Has to be.’
‘You’re right.’
‘Taken from Cassini?’
‘Right again. But that’s not the point.’ He gets up and crouches beside me. His finger finds one of the bigger points of light. ‘That’s us,’ he says. ‘That’s Earth.’
For a second or two I don’t believe him. Then I remember the stats I’ve picked up from the various websites: twenty years in ever-deeper space, a journey of three and a half billion kilometres. No wonder we’ve reduced ourselves to just another twinkle, one among trillions.
I shake my head. Little Cassini has given us a truth we’ve all found so hard to grasp, or even imagine. Our own planet, our own teeming world, is – in truth – nothing more than a speck of bluish light: small, frail, lonely, steeped in darkness. For a split second, madly, I’m tempted to relate all this to the cellular vastness of my own brain, equally frail, equally vulnerable. In both dimensions, inner and outer space, we never get the real picture. We kid ourselves we’re unique. We tell ourselves we’re important. We even pretend we’re somehow in charge. When all the time we’re the merest smidge from oblivion.
Just now, just here in this small moment of wonderment and revelation, I owe little Cassini everything.
‘When are they putting her to death?’ I ask.
‘Next week.’
‘We should hold a wake. Raise a glass or two. Thank her from the bottom of our feeble hearts.’
There’s alarm in Mitch’s face, as well as puzzlement. He asks my agent’s question.
‘You OK?’
‘I’m good.’ I nod at the iPad. ‘And I’m serious about the wake.’
It’s at this point that I realize how seriously Mitch is taking my welfare. He’s collecting the shots of Saucy and returning them to the file. When I ask why, he says my getting better is way more important than anything he might have in mind. When I realize he means it, that he’s acting as a kind of guardian, this becomes a real piss-off. I’m hooked on Saucy. I want to know more. I want to know what he’s done to merit an entire book and I want to know what role Mitch might have in mind for you
rs truly in whatever happens next.
Mitch has ignored every one of my questions. He’s busy with his iPad. He lifts his head and checks my email address. Then he squints at the screen and hits Send.
‘Take a proper look when you get home,’ he says. ‘And have the rest of the day off.’
I don’t move. If this is my cue to leave it has to be on my own terms.
‘Just tell me one thing,’ I say. ‘Tell me why you’ve put the word “Cassini” on the file.’
Mitch nods, like he’s been half expecting the question. Those long fingers return the image to the screen. He seems to brood for a while. Then he smiles.
‘Some said the mission was impossible,’ he murmurs. ‘Saturn up close and personal? A robot parked on one of her moons? Clues to what made the universe in the first place? Turns out they were wrong.’
SEVEN
I show Malo the Cassini image when I get home. My mum is packed and ready for the airport. Evelyn, who’d volunteered to drive us, has been called to some kind of emergency meeting and so it’s going to be me behind the wheel. This is exactly what I shouldn’t be doing, not if I’m paying attention to my neurosurgeon, but I haven’t shared his sensible advice about not driving with either my mother or my son, and in any case Cassini’s take on little us has revised my view of more or less everything.
‘Neat.’ Malo has spared the image a glance on my iPad. ‘Cool.’
My mum, in her practical French way, finds the stats difficult to grasp. She’s also a devout Catholic. God created the universe and she believes we unpick its mysteries at our peril. She’s also worried about missing the flight.
‘You don’t think that’s incredible?’ I’m still looking at my iPad.
‘I don’t think anything, cherie. It’s Friday night. The traffic will be penible.’
She’s right. Her flight leaves at 18.35. It’s already nearly four. At the airport, thanks to the latest terrorist attack, we should add an extra hour for the queues at security but a check on my iPad tells me that traffic on the M4 is moving sweetly west.
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