Cocaine Nights

by J. G. Ballard

  'Poor child…' Paula hid her face behind one hand as the other reached for the security of her medical valise. 'She's probably had nothing for weeks except tequila and amphetamines. Can't you get Crawford to help her?'

  'He has. I'm not being callous, Paula. She's doing what she wants, terrible though it is. Crawling towards her own death 'What on earth does that mean? And what happens when he goes? Will he take her with him?'

  'Maybe. I doubt it.'

  'He's used her, letting her degrade herself to excite everyone else.'

  'This isn't her best day-the festival's too much for her. They love her down at the marina. She sings in a jazz bar by the boatyard. Even Andersson's climbed out of his gloomy shell and started to forget Bibi Jansen. She's better off there than lying in some drug-induced coma at the Princess Margaret Clinic. The sad thing is, you're not the only one who doesn't understand that.'

  I pointed to the float as it circled the plaza, the band working itself into a final flourish. Laurie Fox had given up and now sat on the floor among the vomit and dancing feet. Walking abreast of her through the crowd was Dr Sanger, one hand raised in an attempt to touch her shoulder. With a determination that seemed surprising in this slim and diffident man, he pushed the tourists and cameramen out of his way and kept a protective eye on the young woman, calling to her when she seemed to fall asleep. Since her departure from the bungalow he had roamed the streets and cafés of the Residencia, content to catch a glimpse of her shouting from the passenger seat of Crawford's Porsche or shrieking from his speedboat as it sped down the canal to the open sea. I often watched him pacing around his pool and compulsively washing the discarded nightdress. When the float circled the shopping mall I waited for Sanger to leap aboard, but Crawford was unaware of the psychiatrist, his head raised to the sun as he danced through the shower of petals.

  'Poor man… I hate that.' Paula turned her back to the scene and paced around my desk. 'I'm going-you'll be at court tomorrow?'

  'Of course. But we'll meet at the party tonight.'

  'The party?' Paula seemed surprised. 'Where – at your villa?'

  'It starts at nine. Hennessy should have phoned you. It's Bobby Crawford's farewell. We're giving him a special send-off. I'll see you there.'

  'I'm not sure. A party…?' Paula fiddled with her valise, as if unable to cope with the notion. 'Who will be coming?'

  'Everyone. The key Costasol crowd. Betty Shand, Colonel Lindsay, most of his council, the Keswick sisters-all the leading lights. It should be quite a bash. Betty Shand's supplying everything – buffet, champagne, canapés 'And enough Unes of cocaine to burn out my nasal septum?'

  'I dare say. Hennessy says there'll be a special barbecue. Let's hope we don't burn the place down.'

  'And Crawford will be there?'

  'To begin with. Then he'll leave us to it. He has to clear out his things and get off to Calahonda.'

  'So it's a hand-over ceremony…' Paula was nodding to herself, her lower Up clamped between her teeth. Her face was paler, as if her blood had suddenly chilled. 'He'll officially pass his Pan-pipes to you.'

  'In a way. Before the party I'll play a last game of tennis with him.'

  'He'll let you beat him.' She unlocked and closed the valise, then adjusted my inkstand and noticed the set of car keys that I had found in the orchard at the Hollinger house. She picked them up and weighed them in her hand. 'The keys to your kingdom – to all Bobby Crawford's secret places?'

  'No, they're a spare set of car keys. I found them in the… changing rooms at the Club Nautico. I've tried them out on dozens of cars, but none of them match. I ought to give them to Hennessy.'

  'Hang on to them – you never know when they might come in useful.' Carrying the valise, she walked to the door, then turned to stare at me before kissing my cheek. 'Enjoy the tennis match. Perhaps you should tie your hands behind your back – it's the only way you might lose I stepped on to the balcony and watched her drive away, blaring her horn at the tourists who crowded the plaza, as if refusing to acknowledge the festival cheer. Already I looked forward to dancing with her that evening. As she had said, the party was a transfer ceremony, though in many ways I had already taken over the running of Crawford's activities at the Residencia. For weeks he had spent more and more of his time away from the complex, exploring Calahonda and testing out the possibilities of his tonic regime. The administration of his underground imperium he left to me, confident that I now accepted the importance of everything he had achieved. Of my original doubts, all had gone except for those concerning his treatment of Laurie Fox. He had cared for and charmed her, constantly at her side as they roamed the bars and clubs in the evening. But he made no attempt to curb her cocaine and amphetamine hunger, as if this bruised and deteriorating young woman was an exotic creature to be exhibited in all her feral glory.

  I knew that he was punishing Sanger for the sins of those psychiatrists who had failed to help him when he was a child. During the film sessions at the villa, when Laurie had sex in my bed with Yuri Mirikov, Betty Shand's Russian Adonis, Crawford would sometimes remove the black shrouds from the windows, taunting Sanger as the film lights blazed over the bungalow compound. She had slept with Sanger, he seemed to say, and perhaps with her father, and now with any man whom Crawford picked out during their tour of the evening bars.

  I took no part in these ugly sessions, which had grown out of the film club I founded, just as I tried not to involve myself too closely in the criminal conspiracy that underpinned the life of the Residencia – the drugs supplied by Mahoud and Sonny Gardner to the network of dealers, the massage and escort services which had recruited so many bored widows and a few adventurous wives, the 'creative' cabarets that entertained the more corrupt parties, and the muscle squad of two former British Airways executives who quietly burgled and vandalized their way across the Residencia, damaging cars and fouling swimming pools in the cause of civic virtue.

  Sitting at my desk, I listened to the strains of Iolanthe and thought of Paula Hamilton. Once Crawford had left the Residencia the creative tension he had imposed would begin to relax. I would see more of her again, play tennis with her and perhaps share the costs of a small yacht. I imagined us sailing along the coast, secure in our private world, as the cutwater clicked and the bottles of white Burgundy cooled in our wake…

  Spray struck the awning of the poolside bar. A sudden uproar had broken out on the terrace, the sounds of overturned furniture and angry voices, followed by a woman's hysterical cries somewhere between laughter and pain. Drawn by the clamour, tourists were crossing the car park and firing the last of their plastic streamers towards the pool. Cheering each other on, they scrambled over the waist-high perimeter fence and climbed the grass verge to the open-air bar.

  I left my office and quickly made my way down to the petal-strewn terrace. The members around the pool had left their sun-loungers and were gathering up their towels and magazines. Some laughed uneasily, but most seemed dismayed, hands shielding their faces from the spray. Elizabeth Shand had retreated behind the counter of the bar, and was snapping at the waiters and urging them towards the water. She shouted to Bobby Crawford, who stood on the diving board, calmly observing the spectacle in the pool.

  'Bobby, for heaven's sake, this is too much! Can't you stop them? Charles, where are you? Speak to him!'

  I stepped through the tourists crowding against the tables. Laurie Fox was swimming naked in the pool, thrashing the waves with her arms while the blood streamed from her nose. Her thighs were clasped around Mirikov's waist as she tried to have sex with him in the water. Screaming at the sky, she pressed her bloodied breasts to his mouth, then turned and began to shout at the watching tourists. One hand fumbled for the Russian's crotch as the other beat the surface, dashing the bloodied water against the legs of the appalled onlookers.

  Then a silver-haired man forced himself past me, drops of spray on his clenched lips. Ignoring Crawford, who stood at ease on the diving board, Sanger pushed th
rough the hooting tourists and kicked aside the tables. Without removing his shoes, he leapt into the shallow end and waded strongly through the waist-deep water. He pulled the embarrassed Mirikov on to his back, dunking the Russian's blond head. As Laurie Fox screamed in her demented way, spitting out the blood she had sucked into her mouth, Sanger seized her around the waist. He lost his footing in the deeper water, and they rolled together in the carmine waves. Silver hair now flecked with blood, Sanger held the young woman to his chest and carried her to the shallow end.

  Everyone moved away as I knelt down and lifted her from his arms. Together we laid her on the verge among the sodden petals and confetti. I took a towel from a nearby sun-lounger and draped it over her shoulders, trying to staunch the blood from her nose. Sanger sat beside her, too exhausted to take her hand, water streaming from his silk jacket. He seemed blanched and shrunken, as if emerging from a bath of formaldehyde, but his eyes were steady and unevasive as he stared across the bloodied pool at Bobby Crawford.

  When he was strong enough to stand, I helped him to his feet. Still dazed, he stared at the barely conscious young woman, brusquely waving away the now silent tourists who crowded the tables.

  'We'll carry her to my car,' I told him. 'I'll give you a lift home. It's best if she stays with you from now on…'

  26 The Last Party

  Leaving the bedroom door ajar, Sanger watched the sleeping young woman for a few moments before turning to me. He gestured with the kidney dish and hypodermic that he held in his hand, as if ready to offer me a sedative dose, and touched the dark stains on his jacket, reminding himself that the blood was not his own. His usually pallid cheeks and forehead were flushed with anger, and he gazed in a disoriented way at the books on his shelves, putting a past phase of his life, with its too-thoughtful dependencies, for ever behind him.

  'She'll sleep for a few hours. We'll go on to the terrace. You probably need to rest.'

  I expected him to change, but he was scarcely aware of his still-dripping clothes and the wet prints that his leaking shoes left on the tiled floor. He led the way to the umbrella and chairs beside the pool. Taking my seat, I noticed the upstairs windows of my villa and realized how close they were to the bungalow compound, and that he would have heard every sound during our boisterous parties.

  'It's very quiet here,' I told him, and pointed to the calm surface of the pool, disturbed only by a small insect that struggled with the jelly-like meniscus clasping its wings. 'Your tenants have gone.'

  'The Frenchwoman and her daughter? They flew back to Paris. In some ways the ambience wasn't suitable for the child.'

  Sanger drew a hand across his eyes in an attempt to clear his mind. 'Thank you for the lift. I couldn't have carried her here.'

  'I'm sorry she… collapsed.' I tried to think of a word that would better describe the nightmarish descent of the past weeks. Concerned for Sanger, I added: 'She shouldn't have left you. In her way she was happy here.'

  'Laurie never wanted to be happy.' Sanger ran a hand through his damp hair, and then stared at the clots of blood left on his fingers. But he made no attempt to smooth the dishevelled mane that he had once tended so carefully. 'She's one of those people who flinch from the very idea of happiness-in her mind nothing could be more boring or bourgeois. I helped her a little, as I helped Bibi Jansen. Doing absolutely nothing is a kind of therapy in itself.'

  'What about the nosebleed?' It occurred to me that she might be bleeding to death in her drugged sleep. 'Are you sure it's stopped?'

  'I cauterized the septum. It seems that Crawford punched her – another of his Zen statements, so he said.'

  'Dr Sanger…' I wanted to pacify this unsettled man, whose eyes were fixed on the bedroom door. 'It's hard to believe, but Bobby Crawford was fond of Laurie.'

  'Of course. In his own deranged way. He wanted her to find her true self, as he would call it-like everyone else at the Residencia Costasol. I'm sorry he took against me.'

  'You're one of the very few people he personally resents. You're a psychiatrist 'And not the first one he's met.' Sanger noticed the water streaming from his shoes. 'I must change – do wait here and I'll bring something to drink. As a friend of Crawford's, it's important that you hear of the decision I've made.'

  He returned ten minutes later, wearing sandals and a floor-length towelling robe. He had washed the blood from his hands and hair, but the careful grooming and dilettante manner now belonged to the past.

  'Thank you again for your help,' he told me, as he set a tray of brandies and soda on the table. 'Laurie is sleeping, I'm glad to say. I've been anxious about her for months. It's difficult to know what to tell her father, though the poor man is scarcely in a frame of mind to care.'

  'I feel the same way,' I assured him. 'It's not something I've enjoyed seeing.'

  'Of course not.' Sanger nodded to me. 'Mr Prentice, I distinguish you completely from Bobby Crawford-and from Mrs Shand and Hennessy. My position here is ambiguous. Technically I've retired, but in fact I still practise, and Laurie Fox is one of my patients. I can put up with a certain amount of harassment from Crawford, but the time has come to speak out. Crawford must be stopped-I know you agree with me.'

  'I'm not sure if I do.' I played with the brandy tumbler, aware that Sanger was watching the open windows of my villa. 'Some of his methods are a little too… aggressive, but on the whole he's a force for good.'

  'Good?' Sanger took the tumbler from my hand. 'He uses violence quite openly, against Paula Hamilton and Laurie and anyone else who stands in his way. The Residencia Costasol is awash with cut-price drugs that he force-feeds into almost every house and apartment.'

  'Dr Sanger… to Crawford's generation cocaine and amphetamines are no more than mood-enhancers, like brandy or Scotch. The drugs he loathes are the ones you prescribe-the tranquillizers, especially. Perhaps he was sedated for a long period as a boy, or by the army psychiatrists who had him cashiered. He told me once that they tried to steal his soul. He's not a corrupt man. In many ways he's an idealist. Look at what he's achieved in the Residencia Costasol. He's done so much good.'

  'Even more frightening.' Sanger lowered his eyes from my villa, satisfied that no one was observing us. 'This man is a danger to everyone he meets. He travels from place to place along the coast with his tennis racket and his message of hope, but his vision is as toxic as snake venom. All this ceaseless activity, these art festivals and town councils are a form of social Parkinsonism. The so-called renaissance everyone sings about is bought at a price. Crawford is like L-dopa. Cataleptic patients wake up and begin to dance. They laugh, cry, speak and seem to recover their real selves. But the dosage must be increased, to the point where it will kill. We know what medicine Crawford prescribes. This is a social economy based on drug-dealing, theft, pornography and escort services – from top to bottom a condominium of crime.'

  'But no one thinks of it as crime. Neither the victims nor the people who take part. There's a different set of social conventions, as there is in the boxing ring or the bull-fight arena. Theft and prostitution exist here, but everyone sees them as "good works" of a new kind. No one at the Residencia Costasol has reported a single crime.'

  'The most telling fact of all.' Sanger brusquely pushed away a lock of hair that tried to intrude across his field of vision. 'The ultimate crime-based society is one where everyone is criminal and no one is aware of the fact. Mr Prentice, this will change.'

  'You're going to the police?' I watched Sanger's jutting jaw, an unexpected strain of pugnacity. 'If you bring in the Spanish authorities you'll destroy everything that's good here. Besides, we already have our own volunteer police force.'

  'The kind of police who enforce a rule of crime. Your retired stockbrokers and accountants are remarkably adept in the role of small-town criminals. One could almost assume that their professions were designed for just such a contingency.'

  'Cabrera and his detectives have been here. They've found nothing. No one has ever been charge
d.'

  'Except for your brother.' Sanger had softened his harsh tone. 'His trial starts tomorrow. How will he plead?'

  'Guilty. It's a nightmarish kind of irony. He's the one man here who's completely innocent.'

  'Then Crawford should take his place.' Sanger rose to his feet, ready for me to leave, his ears listening for any sounds from the bedroom. 'Go back to London, before you join Crawford in Zarzuella jail. He's changed you, Mr Prentice. You now accept his logic without understanding where it will lead. Remind yourself of the Hollinger fire and all those tragic deaths…'

  Hearing a murmur from the bedroom, Sanger fastened his dressing-gown and left the terrace. When I let myself through the front door he was sitting on the bed beside Laurie Fox, a hand stroking her damp hair, a father and lover waiting for this wounded child to meet him once again in her waking sleep.

  Delivery vans were parked in front of my gates, and workmen unloaded the chairs and trestle tables for the party that evening. The drinks and canapés would arrive later, ordered by Elizabeth Shand from one of the Keswick sisters' restaurants in the plaza. The party would begin at nine o'clock, giving me ample time to change after an hour's tennis with Crawford, our first and last game together.

  As the workmen carried the chairs to the terrace I stood in the centre of the tennis court, my hand on the barrel of the practice machine. The conversation with Sanger had unsettled me. The once venial and effeminate psychiatrist had found a second, more determined self. He was working himself up into a confrontation with Crawford, probably fearing that he would try to abduct Laurie Fox when he set off for Calahonda. With a little help from Sanger, Inspector Cabrera would soon unearth the depots of drugs and pornography, and expose the car thieving and the dubious escort services.