Curtain Call

by Graham Hurley

  Malo, meanwhile, appears to be going from strength to strength. He phones me on a near-daily basis, largely to keep me abreast of the latest developments in the Persephone project. His father is giving him a great deal of latitude, which gladdens me no end, and I start to anticipate his calls with something I can only describe as glee. He reminds me of a faithful spaniel, in from the weather, determined to share the spoils of the hunt. As our conversations get longer and longer, I can picture him down in Dorset, his eyes bright, his tail wagging, his coat ever more lustrous as the days spool by.

  To begin with I suspected H’s hand in all this. After what happened to Sayid he wants to make amends, to put the darkness back in its box, to glue our little family together again. No bad thing, I tell myself. Especially if it’s turning my wayward son into someone I barely recognize. Those long-ago days of slagging off his teachers, of not bothering with his homework, of drifting round bits of West London instead of attending school, have gone. This is emphatically a new Malo.

  On the day when Sayid takes his first hesitant steps down the ward to the lavatories at the end, I return home to find a message on the answerphone. Malo sounds breathless, excited.

  ‘Cracked the Pompey end, Mum,’ he reports. ‘Give me a ring.’

  Cracked the Pompey end? I barely have time to get my coat off before the phone rings. It’s Malo. He’s given up waiting for me to call.

  ‘Where have you been all day?’ he says.

  ‘Out.’

  ‘But you’re always out.’

  ‘I know. It’s an actress thing. Never turn a job down.’

  ‘Anything interesting?’

  I invent a small lie about another BBC job. Malo will never listen to radio drama so I don’t think I’ll be caught out.

  ‘Is there a date on this? I need to be sure you’re still on for the cruise.’

  ‘Of course I’m on for the cruise. It’s in the diary. Rosa knows the dates are sacrosanct. Not only that but I’m looking forward to it.’

  This is another lie. I’m not one of the world’s natural sailors and the more I find out about the kind of weather we can expect in mid-November in the English Channel, the more queasy I feel. Googling ‘Brixham trawlers’ was another mistake. Persephone might have survived intact for over a century but these fishing boats were obviously built for men with a high tolerance for primitive living conditions, constant soakings, and the lurking possibility of the rogue wave that might end it all. Sooner rather than later we’re going to have a serious conversation about safety drills and on-board comforts, but in the meantime Malo wants to tell me about Southwick House.

  ‘Southwick what?’

  ‘It’s where they planned for D-Day. It’s not in Portsmouth, not in the city. You drive north. It’s about twenty minutes. General Eisenhower was there. It’s private now. It’s some kind of college. But like I told you, I’ve cracked it.’

  It turns out Malo has been worried about value for money. Five thousand pounds a berth, he says, is a lot, even though most of it is going to charity. He wants people to think they’ve had a proper time of it and so he’s been thinking of ways to make more of the experience. He’s started using phrases like ‘the offer’, and ‘value-added’. This amuses me at first but I quickly realize he means it. Not only that, but he’s very definitely got a point. H, in his blunt way, probably thinks it’s enough to bang six strangers up in a quaint little bit of seafaring history and let them get on with it. Malo, on the other hand, is determined to do a whole lot better than that.

  H has always referred to punters. Malo now calls them guests. They’ll all meet, he says, in a place called the Camber Dock in Old Portsmouth. This will be the day before departure for Normandy. There’s a D-Day museum on Southsea seafront and he’s fixed a late-morning visit once everyone has got to know each other. After lunch at a seafront hotel a minibus will take the guests up to Southwick House on the mainland.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I’m working on a presentation. There’s a guy I’ve found at the university. He’s a historian. He’s really good. He knows all about D-Day, especially what happened at Southwick House. They’ve got a special room there. It was all about the weather. D-Day was supposed to be the fifth of June. They had to hang on for a day because it would have been so rough. Did you know that?’

  I didn’t. But what’s far more interesting for little me is where all these ideas came from. Who dreamed up the visit to the museum? Who got the permission to use the special room at Southwick House? And who knocked on the university’s door and recruited this star academic? The answer, in every case, is Malo. When I tell him how impressed I am he just laughs.

  ‘It’s easy,’ he says. ‘Dad says you just turn up and be nice to people. Having Front Line on board is good. People love all that. And me being so young is a massive help as well. It’s like as soon as they see you, they want to make it happen.’

  ‘And your guests? Is anyone confirmed yet?’

  ‘Three, so far. There’s a couple from London, Alex and Cassie. He’s just retired. Dad said he was some kind of top civil servant. His wife is really nice. I’ve talked to her on the phone and guess what? She’s a really big fan.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘You. That’s why they’re coming. It’s her birthday. Like a present thing.’

  ‘So what is she expecting? Apart from yours truly?’

  ‘That’s something else Dad says we need to talk about. There’s a brand-new place in the Camber Dock, a huge building, really cool. I had a tour with Dad the other day. They built it for the America’s Cup, the sailing thing, and I’ve managed to blag a little presentation suite they’ve got. So the night before we leave we have drinks and eats and stuff in a pub down there and then watch one of your movies. Just to get in the mood. We thought you might have an idea which one. Dad’s favourite is The Hour of Our Passing.’

  This doesn’t surprise me. The Hour of Our Passing is a period piece set in Nantes during the wartime occupation. A couple of Resistance fighters gun down the top Nazi in the city. Berlin demands retribution and a hundred hostages are taken on pain of death unless the killers are delivered to justice. I play a Resistance heroine trying to keep the peace between the headbangers – all communists – and the gentler souls. There’s an important love interest and the script called for a scene towards the end when I and the male lead are together for the last time. It was my first taste of sustained on-screen nudity and according to Malo it made a big impact on his dad. Would I mind if he got hold of a copy to show the guests on the eve of departure?

  A moment’s thought prompts a yes on my part. I made the movie nearly fifteen years ago and I remember parking Malo with my mum in Brittany while I was doing the location shoots down in Nantes. I had a decent body in those days, firm in all the right places, and I’m genuinely curious to see how I made out in the scene. My recent tussle with the Grim Reaper has stirred many memories and I’m more than happy to make room for one more.

  ‘And the other guest?’

  ‘Sadie Devine. She’s a journalist on the Daily Telegraph. She wants to write a piece about what people will do for Front Line and Dad thinks that’s cool. She kicked up about the money but Dad wouldn’t budge. He’s happy to have her along but only if she pays up. Dad says the Telegraph is rolling in it. No freebies.’

  I’m smiling. Sometimes my son can be so transparent, so guileless. Just now I can hear H in every phrase.

  ‘Three down,’ I say. ‘Three to go.’

  ‘No problem. Easy. We’re spoiled for choice.’ He says the first mailing produced over a hundred expressions of interest, of which he reckoned at least half were ready with a deposit.

  ‘So what do you do? Audition? Score them out of ten?’

  ‘Sort of. Dad and I met this Sadie woman when we were up in London. Dad has met the MoD man, too. He thinks it’s all going to be down to the chemistry on board. All it takes is one bad apple, he says. Do you think he’s right?’

&nb
sp; I do, but this emphasis on careful vetting comes as another surprise. H’s interest in inter-personal chemistry normally boils down to people doing what they’re told. I saw him in action over the party weekend down at Flixcombe. This is not a man well-versed in the nuances of human behaviour. What H says, goes. End of.

  ‘So your dad’s happy with the way things are coming together?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  ‘And you’re getting on OK?’

  ‘Massively. We’ve put in for my driving test. If I pass, and this whole thing goes OK, he’ll get me a car.’

  ‘That’s good to know,’ I say lightly. ‘You can be my chauffeur, drive me around.’

  Malo laughs but says nothing. Then he mentions another trip he’s planning to London.

  ‘When’s this?’

  ‘Next week. There’s a guy Dad wants me to go and see. He’s an Indian businessmen. You know the Hot chain? That’s him.’

  I nod. Hot is a mega-successful bid to scoop up the younger generation and give them a life-long passion for Kashmiri cooking. Hot as in bird’s-eye chillies. Hot as in eye-watering interior decor schemes, designer Mumbai lagers, and a soaring share price. The week before my tumour was diagnosed, Rosa took me to the branch in Covent Garden. Pas mal.

  I wonder aloud whether Malo might find time in his busy schedule for a coffee and a proper chat.

  ‘Yeah, Mum, and that’s the point. Dad’s bunged me a wad of money. He wants me to take you somewhere nice. This Indian guy has an office off the Tottenham Court Road.’ He gives me an address and hangs on while I find something to write with. Then I’m back on the phone.

  ‘Half twelve OK? Next Friday?’ he says. And then he’s gone.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Over the days to come I spend most of the morning at the hospital. Sayid has an aversion to television. He doesn’t much like what’s on screen and despite my offer to pay the exorbitant fees to give him access to any channel he fancies, he much prefers to read a book. The physical act of reading, he says, gives him headaches just now. This appears to be a consequence of what he’s been through but his consultant says the headaches will resolve themselves as the brain settles down.

  This is good news but has still left Sayid without a book. I offer to sort out some audio recordings but he shakes his head. What he really wants is for me to read to him. Might I do that? This is clever on his part because a longish book will bring me back to his bedside again and again, but by now I know I’m as dependent on our time together as he is and so I say yes. Watching his face recover day after day does wonderful things to my self-esteem. It was me, after all, who helped get him into this mess and the knowledge that I might be playing some small part in getting him better is a real tonic.

  I’ve left the choice of book to Sayid. He settles on Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity, partly because I’ve been raving about it, and partly because he likes the title. He’s been through a great deal in his life, especially over the past few years, and he’s had to learn the difference between practical charity – money, visas, clean water – and the hand-wringing ministrations of what Berndt once called the grief-porn lobby. The latter, according to Sayid, want to share your misery, to feel your pain, but not too much, and certainly not too often.

  And so I’ve started the book all over again, an interesting exercise in its own right because knowing it well already has given me an insight into the more important characters, something I can carry into the way I read it aloud. The story itself is very simple. A young soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army, just months before the outbreak of the First World War, finds himself posted to a small provincial town. There he finds himself invited to the local castle for dinner. Afterwards there is to be dancing. The owner has two daughters. The voluptuous Ilona and her crippled sister, Edith. A little tipsy, and ignoring all the clues, our hero asks Edith whether she would care for a dance, an invitation which sparks a reaction of some violence. In one sense, the entire book is pre-figured in this single incident. The soldier blames himself for the crassness of his mistake and resolves to do whatever he can to make amends. This commitment, over the hundreds of pages to come, proves catastrophic on a number of levels. Hence the title.

  This narrative device, of course, has parallels to my own presence at Sayid’s bedside, though mercifully only I’m aware of it, and as the days go by, and the comforting beat of Zweig’s prose takes us deeper into the soldier’s quandary, a smallish knot of other patients enquire whether they, too, might draw up a chair and listen.

  By now, Sayid is occupying a bed in a general ward and for his sake I’m delighted that Stefan Zweig has brought him new friends. One of them, slowly recovering from complications after an operation on her lower gut, takes a shine to Sayid. Formerly, in another of life’s little ironies, she’s been dead set against anyone foreign but the more glimpses she gets of Sayid’s inner grace, the more she begins to change her views on immigration.

  ‘If we had that referendum again,’ she confides to me one afternoon, ‘I’d be a bleeding Remainer.’

  I carry this thought home and wonder about sharing it with Mitch. I know he’s been going to the hospital most evenings because one of the nurses has told me so, but when I try and imagine the reality of even a phone conversation I know it wouldn’t be fun for either of us. It’s not that I dislike the man. On the contrary, I have some very fond memories of how generous and how kind he was. It’s just that his single-mindedness, once glimpsed, has left a very deep impression. Beware of Causes, I tell myself. No matter how worthy.

  Friday arrives. I limit myself to ten pages at Sayid’s bedside and take a bus to Trafalgar Square. The Indian entrepreneur, whose name is Amit Iyengar, has a walk-up suite of offices in a narrow street off the Tottenham Court Road. There’s no plaque on the door downstairs, no sign of the distinctive Hot logo, just an entry phone that connects to a woman with a heavy cold.

  I give my name and wait for her to open the door. In keeping with his restaurants I was rather expecting something a little edgier from Mr Iyengar, certainly a lot grander, and while I wait for my son in the dingy cubbyhole that serves as a reception area I wonder why he hides himself away like this.

  Malo, as ever, has the answer. This is a guy, he tells me over lunch, whose working day rarely starts without a death threat. For whatever reason, people out there hate success, especially when it comes in the shape of a great deal of money, and most especially if the lucky recipient happens to be foreign. ‘Out there’ is an interesting phrase, one I’ve not heard Malo use before, and I wonder if he’s acquiring the same sense of embattlement I sometimes associate with his father. Either way, it certainly explains Mr Iyengar’s interest in keeping his head down.

  ‘So have you signed him up?’

  ‘Big time. He thinks it’s a great idea.’ Malo pats the front of his leather jacket. ‘He wrote us a cheque on the spot. When I looked at it properly I told him he’d got it wrong. It’s five thousand, not ten, but he said it didn’t matter, we could keep the change. He also offered me a job if I ever fancied it.’

  ‘Deliveries? Like Clemenza?’

  ‘Business development. He wants to open big in France.’

  ‘But the French hate spicy food.’

  ‘That’s what I told him. When he realized I could speak the language he said I was wasting my time doing all this charity crap. If I was smart I’d work for him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I took the cheque and said thank you.’

  I’m looking hard at the leather jacket. It’s obviously brand new because I can tell from the smell but it also has that deceptive slightly rumpled pre-aged quality that comes with top-end leather. Hundreds of pounds, I think. Another little present from his doting father. Along with the off-white Nikes and the rather nice CR7 skinny jeans. Is this gangster chic? Or a look that Malo has conjured for himself?

  I ask him about the rest of the guests. He tells me, with a hint of pride, that every berth is now taken and paid f
or. Alex and Cassie, the recently retired couple from London, and Sadie, the journalist, I already know about. Next to make the cut is Ruth, a young lawyer with the Crown Prosecution Service. She works down in Bristol and she wants to make the trip in homage to her grandfather who died on one of the invasion beaches back in 1944.

  ‘She wants to visit his grave, too, so that’s something else we have to fit in.’

  ‘You know where it is?’

  ‘She does. She’s been there before. She gave me the details.’

  ‘Is she nice?’

  ‘She’s awesome. Quite pretty. But you wouldn’t fuck with her. She even managed to keep Dad quiet. Impressive or what?’

  ‘You both went to see her?’

  ‘Yeah. That was Dad’s idea. Two pairs of eyes. Two minds.’

  ‘So why isn’t he here today? Scoping out your new Indian friend?’

  ‘I think they’ve talked on the phone a lot. Dad sussed he might be up for paying over the odds. I’m just here to collect the cheque.’

  We’re in The Ivy, one of my favourite restaurants, and I’m picking at my champagne and wild mushroom risotto. Malo, in keeping with his new jacket, is wolfing his Ivy hamburger. I’ve been keeping score as far as the passenger list is concerned and we’re still short of a body.

  ‘Rhys,’ Malo says. ‘He’s Welsh and he’s been around a bit. This time last year he was working on a shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico. He knows all the really cool places to go in New Orleans. Top bloke. Dad loves him.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Seriously. We met him in this pub in Plymouth. He told us to come down by train and I never realized why until they started drinking. I had trouble getting Dad into the taxi afterwards. He’d have stayed there all night.’

  I nod, watching Malo tidy the remains of his pommes allumettes and dill relish into a neat pile at the side of his plate. Not just a tour organizer. Not just a well-turned-out youth who knows how to sweet-talk the big money. Not just an instant expert on D-Day and the ins and outs of Brixham trawlers. But a mate and carer when his Dad hits the rocks.