Marrying Up
Page 21
The slump had even touched the previously untouchably glamorous Hotel du Point on the Cap. Jason had heard they were so desperate you could pay for your drinks with book tokens.
He passed a hand through his trademark zinging auburn quiff. Beneath his tanned and frowning brow, his eyes roamed over his desk. Pinned up behind his computer were printouts of his finest hours, of which there had been many. There he was, grinning between Brad and Angelina. Sharing a beer with Piers Morgan. Mugging with Sharon Osbourne, with Paris Hilton, with Katie Price, with Hugh Grant. Were those days really over? His eye caught his collection of long lenses, lined up on the shelf above his computer ready for him to grab and run at the first hint of a story. But would he ever use any of them in anger again?
Meditatively, Jason swigged a warmish bottle of 33 lager and looked out of the window into the broiling Nice street. Nothing much going on out there. Nothing much going on anywhere. His sidekick, Des, his partner in the bureau, was even out taking pictures at a meeting of the Ventimiglia Narrow-Gauge Railway Enthusiasts’ Society. Could business get much worse?
Things weren’t what they had been. It had been years, for instance, since any of the Monaco royals had put a foot wrong, and back in the day they’d been an industry in themselves.
The Sedona royals should, strictly speaking, be filling the gap. Giving him something to snap; wasn’t that what royal families were for? But they kept their noses disgustingly clean; Queen Astrid and King Engelbert were as square as Rubik’s Cubes. Prince Giacomo had had potential – there had been the odd good story – but he was obviously practically kettled these days.
And no new crown princess in sight. The royal press secretary Hippolyte had dragged him in endlessly recently to record various horse-faced no-hopers traipsing in and out of the chateau. Only the Babe from Bergen had been more or less as advertised, except that she’d run away from a Prince Maxim covered from head to toe in cow shit. Now that would have been a picture. But since then, nothing and no one. When were those bloody royals going to come clean and admit that Maxim was gay?
The large black phone on his desk shrilled. Languidly Jason picked it up. Probably the Ladies’ Circle of Menton calling to ask whether he might be interested in covering their annual general meeting. The awful thing was, given the state of the business, he probably was.
‘Yeah?’ Jason snarled, as if he had mere seconds to spare before rushing off, lens in hand, to snap some megastar.
‘It’s Hippolyte.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’ve got a tip-off for you.’
‘Yeah?’ This, disbelievingly.
‘Yeah . . . I mean yes,’ Hippolyte corrected himself.
‘Hope it’s better than the last one,’ Jason grumped. ‘The Babe from Bergen?’
‘Much better,’ Hippolyte promised fervently. ‘Between you and me, Jason, hopes are high that this might be the next Queen of Sedona.’
‘Yeah?’ Jason snapped disbelievingly on his gum. ‘Bloke, is he?’
‘No,’ Hippolyte said nervously. What was that supposed to mean? Did Jason know something about him? he wondered. He had long suspected that Madame Whiplash tipped the press off about some of her clients. ‘Transvestite, then?’ the photographer mocked.
Hippolyte felt nauseous. Transsexuals made up a good proportion of the Madame Whiplash crowd. He strove to keep his head.
‘A girl,’ gasped the private secretary. ‘A lady, in fact. Lady Florence Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe.’
Chapter 41
Queuing at the baggage carousel at Nice airport, Polly’s glance fell on two women. A languid, blonde and very beautiful girl, whose eyes did not lift from her iPhone, was being dragged across the marble concourse by a determined-looking woman Her mother, Polly guessed. A porter dragging an enormous quantity of Vuitton luggage hurried after them. The mother was glamorous, Polly thought, but in a tough sort of way; there was an aggressive chop to her shining auburn hair and a forbiddingly straight line to her magenta-lipsticked mouth. She wore new jeans, zebra-print ballerina flats, and a white shirt turned up at the collar.
Polly found herself in the queue behind them at passport control. The man in the booth held the mother’s passport up to his eyes. ‘Lady Annabel . . . Tre . . . Tre . . .’
‘Trevorigus-Whyske-Cleethorpe!’ snapped the woman, as if it were as straightforward as Smith.
Polly stiffened at the name. Where had she heard it before? She racked her brain, digging and delving, and eventually, triumphantly, emerged with the information. The girl in the newspaper story she had read that last evening with Max! She had been Lady someone of that name, was this her? Who had almost married the heir to the throne or something? She observed the shuffling blonde with interest as, in her skin-tight jeans and sequinned flip-flops, she followed Lady Annabel in her high clacking heels through Nothing to Declare. Polly, grasping her battered holdall, followed behind the Vuitton mountain.
In the arrivals hall she watched Lady Annabel head for a driver with a cap sporting the legendary Hotel des Bains. Outside, as Polly waited for the bus in the intense, bright heat, a gleaming black limousine glided by. Lady Annabel was in the back, bolt upright and apparently barking instructions to the driver; Lady Florence, meanwhile, was still slumped over her gadget, texting away. She didn’t seem to have raised her eyes once since her arrival. Did she even know where she was? Polly wondered.
Her own hotel, the Splendido, failed to live up to the pictures on its website. Much less the description. ‘This roomy, light hotel full of old-fashioned charm, offers a traditional Nice welcome in an atmospheric street . . .’ Polly recalled as she stood before the scruffy, peeling building with the broken sign.
There was certainly an atmosphere, if not a particularly encouraging one. The Splendido was in the darkest and most piratical of the many dark and piratical back streets in which Nice Old Town seemed to specialise. As for old-fashioned charm, it had it in spades if you liked shabby, old-fashioned foyers that smelt mustily of food. The traditional Nice welcome, meanwhile, seemed to involve an elderly hotelkeeper who had a grudge against the entire world; Polly lugged her bag herself up a seemingly endless series of cracked and winding wooden stairs to the tiny, smelly top-floor room.
Here there was a narrow, lumpy bed; the view, when one leant out of the high window with the perilously wobbly sill that threatened to detach itself at any moment, was of loaded washing lines protruding from the windows of the building opposite.
And yet Polly couldn’t have minded less about any of it. What did it matter, when tomorrow she would get to Sedona and see Max? She felt almost ridiculously happy. She unpacked her few things and skipped out of the hotel to explore the city, the concierge staring after her in glum amazement.
At the end of the gloomy alleyway containing the Splendido, Polly turned left, under a large archway, and found herself at the edge of a bustling market. Long lines of stalls were heaped with exotica: olives, honey, marzipan fruits, heaps of spices on earthenware, unfamiliar fish and cheese of all sizes, endless variations on species of vegetables: big potatoes, small potatoes, great flapping red peppers. The salad heaped on the wooden stalls still looked to have the dew on it.
Polly sat down at a bar opposite the flower market and ordered a Kir. Sipping it, she gazed happily at the masses of roses, bucket upon bucket of blooms in shades from cream through orange and yellow to a deep, passionate, velvety red.
Afterwards, she continued her exploration. The area around the port, an eighteenth-century rectangle of crumbling arcades, shuttered windows and peeling burgundy walls, seemed to her wildly romantic. There was about it a salty whiff of older, more adventurous and colourful times.
She liked, too, the tin chairs painted an azure blue that stood about the promenade. A group arranged loosely in a four, with one of them pushed untidily back, suggested some earnest discussion, heads close together, laughter, and then disagreement blazing like a sudden flame, one of the group stamping off, offended.
She sat down in one of the chairs. The sea before her swelled thickly, a great spread cape of glittering blue. Seagulls wheeled and called above in the bright air; the sunshine beat down between the palm trees.
Her gaze followed the points of land stretching out into the sea, one after the other. One of those must be below Sedona. No, it wasn’t long now.
Chapter 42
At either side of the throne room entrance stood a herald in red tights, a red feathered bonnet and a short, stiff tabard embroidered with the Sedona royal coat of arms. Their backs were rigid, their eyes were rigid, the long silver instruments from which the royal standard descended were rigid, ready to play the welcoming fanfare as the new princess-to-be arrived.
In her ermine-trimmed robes of state, Queen Astrid eyed a large fly that was buzzing irritatingly about her crown. It was hot, even hotter than the day the Babe from Bergen had visited. Hopefully Lady Florence was not the fainting sort. Stonker had assured her she was as tough as old boots. Or had that been the mother?
Stonker, who always spoke in terms of horse flesh, had proclaimed Lady Florence to be a deuced fine filly. And as Max obviously preferred animals to women, a filly would probably suit him.
Although of course it wouldn’t really. Astrid knotted her fingers and tried to hold back the sickening guilt that every day seemed to press more heavily upon her. The situation was becoming unbearable. At least the confrontations at lunch and dinner were over. These days Max rarely came down for meals. He shut himself in his room and ate from trays. Nor did he seek her out in private any longer. He had, she suspected, completely given up on her.
Engelbert sat beside her, positively radiating heat. As a nod to their English guest, the green satin sash of the Ancient Order of Lancashire Clogmakers was strapped over his generous stomach. Astrid herself sported the blue and white striped riband of the Fellowship of Cheese Rollers. She had no idea what cheese rolling actually was. Perhaps Lady Florence, when she arrived, which should be any moment now, might explain.
Engelbert was shifting and squinting at his watch. ‘I thought English people were punctual,’ he grumbled.
He stared, irritated, at his sons. Giacomo was practically supine in his chair, fiddling with a lock of unsuitably long blond hair. At least Max, whom Engelbert had practically frogmarched to the throne room, was here this time. He slumped against his gilt-framed damask seat, the image of misery. Engelbert, who hated his sons to look sulky, leant over.
‘Cheer up, Max,’ he ordered.
As her elder son raised his head and swept both her and her husband with a single resentful glance, misery almost overwhelmed Astrid.
Hippolyte, proud and upright beside the throne room entrance, was savouring a feeling of blissful relief. Rich, pretty, titled; Lady Florence ticked every box. At last he would be able to relax. And in a manner that did not involve large middle-aged men dressed in tight leather.
All she had to do was arrive. Hippolyte breathed out carefully in his restricting morning suit and ran a finger round the sweaty inside of his collar. How much longer would she be? He had warned her somewhat forceful mother Lady Annabel that being fashionably late was frowned on in Sedona, where the convention was to be royally early. It seemed unlikely they had been held up anywhere; Hippolyte himself had organised the limousine. Lady Annabel had wanted to come by helicopter, and had been nonplussed to be told that there was nowhere in Sedona to land one.
There was a flurry at the throne room’s gilded entrance and everyone sat up. The footmen strained even straighter to attention.
One of the household servants was whispering in Monsieur Hippolyte’s ear. Max watched the private secretary’s red face pale, and Hippolyte reel across the doorway to where the Lord Chamberlain stood sentinel on the other side. As he received the tidings, the old man started, then went grey in the face. A yellowed hand shot up to his throat, as if freeing constricted breathing passages.
‘What’s the matter?’ snapped Engelbert, watching this dumb show with annoyance.
Hippolyte was sweating even more profusely than usual. His face, as he walked towards the thrones, wringing his fat hands, was almost purple.
‘Your Majesties, your Royal Highnesses . . .’ He was practically in tears, the Queen saw.
‘What?’ snapped the King.
‘I’m afraid . . . I’m very much afraid . . .’
Actually, he was terrified.
‘Out with it, Hippolyte.’
‘It appears there’s been a slight confusion about dates and times,’ the trembling private secretary stammered.
‘Confusion about times?’ The King looked outraged. There was never confusion about time in Sedona. Unpunctuality was against the law – well, it would have been had he been able to get it on to the statute books. ‘What on earth do you mean, man?’
‘Lady Florence will unfortunately be unable to join us this morning.’
‘Unable?’ repeated the King, surprise temporarily suspending his anger. Then his anger kicked in. ‘Unable?’ He glared at the private secretary. No one had ever before been unable to ‘join’, as that fool Hippolyte put it, the royal family at a state levee. To be invited as Lady Florence had been was a royal command.
Hippolyte’s expression was a mixture of sickly ingratiation mixed with mortal fear. On top of the already outraged Lady Annabel, he was now about to experience the full ire of the enraged King, following which he would face the fury of a Jason Snort denied his special-access pictures.
‘It seems,’ Hippolyte stuttered, wondering if his heart was about to give way, ‘that Lady Florence has disappeared.’
Chapter 43
The direct way to Sedona was by bus, Polly discovered. A bus that, by the time she had acquainted herself with its existence and location, she had almost missed. She clambered on board to discover that, besides her, it contained a great number of middle-aged tourists brandishing guide books with pictures of a fairytale castle on the front. She felt a surge of excitement. Max’s home!
It was blisteringly hot on the bus – the tourists had immediately bagged the shade and left Polly the frying-pan side. But she was too happy to notice.
As a route to bliss, it was an unlikely one. Having chugged through the city back streets, they crossed a ring road and began climbing a wide motorway leading into the hills. A series of orange-lit concrete tunnels led to more motorway, then suddenly they turned off and the landscape changed beyond all recognition.
It was wild, stony and sun-blasted territory, a land of dry, rocky, steep-sided mountains. They were, Polly saw, travelling along the sorts of roads that cars veered off in Bond films before exploding into a fireball at the bottom. Bends twisted, steeply and suddenly, above yawning ravines. She had not realised the countryside behind the Cote d’Azur was so wild and elemental.
By the time they had reached the highest point of the road, Polly had counted fifteen hairpin bends offering heartstopping views of dizzying chasms. From here the road wound gradually down beneath thin ash trees and turkey oaks. The panorama of mountain peaks spread around them like the waves of a choppy sea; grey, green and, in the near distance, white-tipped: the snow on the Alps.
Far, far below was the bottom of the valley. Trees grew out of the living rock at right angles, stunted and twisted affairs for which life seemed in every sense an upward struggle.
If the bus driver miscalculated a bend, Polly thought, awed, there was a vertical plunge of hundreds of feet into the ravine. Would she reach Max alive? She closed her eyes as another hairpin approached. The driver twisted the wheel and they went into the switchback. At the back of the bend he forced the accel
erator down to lift them out of it and the bus roared up on to the straight again. Polly let out a groan of relief. The worst was over and they were still alive.
None of the tourists were taking the slightest notice of the view. The men seemed to be looking at each other’s cameras and the women chatting to each other and consulting their guide books: Le Chateau de Sedona, Der Schloss von Sedona.
Polly had put her sunglasses on by now, but they made little difference. The light was so white and bright, it was difficult to see anything properly, which was why, at first, she thought the dark shapes standing on an approaching bend were trees. It was only as the bus ground closer and the trees could be seen to be moving, waving, even, that Polly realised that they were in fact people.
It was a young blond couple. They were flagging the bus down frantically, possibly desperately. Had they, Polly wondered, set off for a walk in this hot mountain landscape and suddenly realised what trouble they were in?
Neither of them, she saw as the vehicle slowed, seemed particularly well equipped for walking. The bus driver stopped and opened the doors; without even waiting to be asked they leapt aboard. The girl had high heels on; her very short dress was flashing and glittering in the brilliant light. Her make-up, Polly saw, was smudged and her very long pale hair tousled. She looked as if she had just stumbled out of an all-night party.
The boy was strikingly good-looking, with large pale eyes and full lips. He had shoulder-length blond hair and wore skinny black leather jeans, pointed black boots and a silver shirt open almost to the waist. His self-confidence was striking; he grinned as he walked up the bus, pulling himself along by means of the seat tops as the French and German matrons looked on admiringly.