Towards the end of 1998 Charlotte and Thérèse were discussing their plans for Christmas and the New Year. Charlotte and Michel were going to Bali with Johnny and Ayida Mendes in January. Thérèse restrained herself from commenting, believing she had made her thoughts clear enough on that subject. Charlotte was concerned that her sister Sandrine, Philippe Bouvet’s ex-wife, now widow, was currently steeped in more misfortune. After the loss of Philippe in the previous autumn, her new partner had been taken into hospital for intensive treatment of a serious kidney disease, and was not expected to recover. His family didn’t want Sandrine around, understandably detesting her because her partner had left his wife and two children to live with her, so she and her teenage son Christian were faced with a miserable year-end at home. Charlotte left the idea dangling that someone might like to invite them for a short break. Thérèse and George were planning to spend Christmas at home in Ireland and had invited Charlotte’s youngest daughter Lydia to join them in mid-December. After Christmas, they would travel to Branne, where they had invited an older aunt, Fleur Rocha, to be with them for the New Year.
Knowing something of Sandrine’s past depravities, Thérèse was not excited by the prospect of inviting her to spend the New Year at Branne and exposing George to the charms of a woman with such a reputation. But she relented, and after sharing the news with Fleur Rocha, who knew almost nothing about Sandrine’s tumultuous past, invited Sandrine and Christian to spend a few days at Branne.
When Sandrine arrived in an elderly, battered lime green Renault Twingo, George was surprised to observe that she had nothing of a sex bomb about her. She was poorly, probably cheaply dressed, in an ill-fitting cardigan and large dark-coloured skirt. She looked about six to ten kilos overweight. Her face was pale and pudgy, and once elegant features were now less distinct. Her short unkempt dark hair, now with some grey flecks, hung in untidy strands around her plain features. To cap it all she had a bad cold, giving her a red nose and streaming eyes. George found the transition from topless bathing belle to this hapless character in eighteen months hard to believe, and reflected that Sandrine was unlikely to take her clothes off now.
Years earlier, this woman had been a middle-ranking executive with the Europe Number One radio station and subsequently moved to television to head up a department responsible for liaison between artists and programme directors. That was where she had introduced Johnny and Ayida Mendes’s erotic dance routine to a television programme planner. But Sandrine was still only in her early thirties when her career began to unravel under the influence of alcohol and drugs and the pressure of life in the sleaze lane, both at work and extramurally with Michel Bodin, Johnny and Ayida actively promoting further debauchery in her leisure time.
As the holiday progressed and passed through the period of condolences and sympathy with Sandrine’s misfortunes, the Miltons discovered her to be a more interesting, cultured and observant person than they anticipated. One afternoon as the daylight began to fade early and they sat by the wood-burning stove after a late and lingering lunch, the Miltons asked Sandrine about her career and shared other thoughts about French life and culture that drove Fleur Rocha to take a siesta and Christian to take Fleur’s dog for a walk, leaving the three others alone to talk.
Although Sandrine was never at a policy-making level, she had a lot to say about the relationships between the media and politicians. Thérèse commented that there were more women journalists and senior media executives nowadays. Sandrine explained, “That’s because most politicians are men and it was a matter of policy to use attractive young women journalists to develop relationships with potential sources of information and opinion. Paris is sexualised to a point of depravity, so that’s how the media gets closer to power. In France you haven’t got the same powerful media blocs that command attention, as in the UK, so we have to do things differently here.”
“What do journalists and media people do about that position then?” asked George. “They are not noted for their compliance with authority.”
“Most of them are controlled by indecent levels of entertaining and presents.”
“And what does the French public think of that?” ventured George.
“You would think they are easily angered when you see street demonstrations against the government, but those are mainly set pieces orchestrated by interest groups such as trade unions, who believe they look after their own interests by fighting change and above all, to win further favourable concessions. No, the majority of the French public have only crushing apathy as their reaction, even when something smells rotten. Let me give you an example of something you know about. Do you remember the sinking of the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, in New Zealand by the French Intelligence Service?” The pair of listeners nodded.
Sandrine went on, “Back in 1985, Greenpeace had been trying to disrupt French nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific, so the French government sent a covert operations team to blow up their ship while it was in port at Auckland, which they did, killing one man who happened to be aboard. As a result, two of the French team were caught and sentenced to ten years in prison in New Zealand, but only served two. Why? Because the French government threatened a trade embargo on New Zealand. The rest of the team escaped to Australia and because the Australian government invoked rules of limitation they were released after a short period of detention. The French Defence Minister, Charles Hernu, and the Head of Security, Admiral Pierre Lacoste, were fired, probably more for incompetence and being caught than for acting illegally, and Mitterrand ordered his Prime Minister Laurent Fabius to carry out an enquiry. Who knows what that revealed? It certainly didn’t dig into the widely held view that the order for the attack came directly from the President. There were no other consequences; no pressure from the French public for Mitterrand’s rotten government to resign. The journalists who tried to open up the debate were made to look like traitors.” Sandrine sighed deeply. “There are lots more cases where journalists and others who reported abuses were simply not backed by public opinion or by the judiciary. They don’t take to the streets for that kind of injustice.”
“Is it worse here than anywhere else?” asked Thérèse.
“From what I have seen on business trips and read about the UK and the USA, sure, there are cases of abuse and dishonesty there too, Nixon and Clinton for example. Nobody’s perfect, but the difference is that they are more likely to be exposed, and when they are there is a massive public debate, judicial proceedings follow and heads roll, and there is a rush to tighten the rules. Here there is no fuss and although we have mostly the same rules as you do, the first requirement is that the hierarchy should follow them, but there is no will at the top to do so. When the judiciary could no longer ignore his abuses, Mitterrand got the members of parliament to vote an amnesty for themselves against prosecution, ‘in the national interest’. That vote was easy to secure because so many deputies had their snouts in the trough. Control of press by government is deemed normal here. There is strong centralised power and control of the media. When I was in television, the most important jobs went to trusted friends rather than more competent, but lesser known alternatives. By trusted, I mean they could be relied upon not to spill the beans on crooked dealings. If you consider that most senior people in politics, political journalists and judges all come from the same educational background, you can guess that they come with an existing network of people who have the same shared ethics and culture. That may simply sound like good personal marketing and it is up to a point, but here, journalists and judges are influenced by the need to act within their cultural mould and they are careful about what they say and don’t say. It’s a closed shop, so you don’t comment adversely on those you rely on for your livelihood or do something that will surely stop your career in its tracks.
“There are a few critical newspapers; Le Canard Enchainé is always entertaining and satirical, and L’Express, and maybe Le Monde, and there are a few brave independent journalists, like
Jean Montaldo, but they have unusual courage and systems of protection that shelter them to some extent from threats, and they are tough enough to withstand the nasty personal attacks that come from little nobodies who have probably been paid by others who remain concealed, but it’s not easy when family and friends’ interests can be threatened. France is not a good place to be a victim, hence the expression, ‘better to be a wolf than a sheep’.”
“So are you saying that the French public will never be entitled to challenge government and openly discuss the sort of questions you hear in the American and British media without that kind of hostile treatment?” queried George.
“I’m not saying it’s impossible. I hope and pray that one day soon there will be such an awareness of what is happening that the public will force government and the judiciary to act differently, but at this time, and as things are today, the media, with a few exceptions, will only attack a severely wounded animal; otherwise no, never. These people are all mates. Leading journalists who use ‘tu’ in normal conversation with a minister as you do with your mates and family, revert to ‘vous’ when they try to take some distance in a televised interview. It’s all an act.”
The subject of discussion moved to the role of women in the media and the fact that several top women journalists and political news show presenters were wives or partners of senior politicians. Was there no conflict of interests there? Sandrine smiled weakly. “The words ‘conflict of interests’ have no currency here. When moral turpitude is an acceptable habit and improper relationships are part of doing business, there is no way out. The people in places of power believe that what they want to achieve takes precedence over the law. I know. I’ve been there and lived in that community. Although I was only an observer at first, it sucked me in and wrecked my life. My husband Philippe was a decent man and I could still be living a decent life, with a decent family and a decent job, but I found rubbing shoulders with powerful people to be exciting and eventually got drawn into their lifestyle. God, I’m not going to tell you about that, but I immersed myself in the culture of immorality up to my neck and lost everything in the belief that I could do anything I pleased without consequences.”
Sandrine sniffed loudly, wiped her nose and contemplated what she had said before continuing, “Actually, it’s not true that I would still be in a good job. The number of journalists and the number of media people supporting them has fallen considerably, so I probably wouldn’t still have a job there. A lot of that work has been taken over by government media generators who cook up news and serve it, ready to eat, to journalists who gobble it up without question. Those people are absolutely barefaced about manipulating the news and using so-called experts to distort public opinion. For example, they will describe a commentator on the economy as an independent financial advisor, when he is actually a director of a bank. I’ve been present in conversations where they had to recreate the description of somebody as part of programme preparation, to increase the credibility of what they wanted to say. Then you have weak interviewers failing to penetrate the defences of criminals who are protected by their status as ministers or senior government or party officials.”
“Doesn’t that happen elsewhere, though?” queried George.
“Not to the same extent. For example, I’ve watched a BBC television interviewer put a British Prime Minister on the spot and press him to answer difficult personal questions about his honesty and good judgement. Viewers were left to decide for themselves how credible his answers were.”
As usual, it was Thérèse who asked the penetrating question. George thought she would have made a good investigative journalist. She leaned back and looked at Sandrine. “What changed for you exactly, and why?”
Sandrine thought for a moment, uncertain as to how to summarise the complexities of how her life had decomposed and how much she could reveal.
“It started with alcohol, to be honest.” She breathed in deeply. “I drank too much free alcohol at receptions and functions with people who drank buckets as a matter of habit. I thought I could handle it, but alcohol blurs common sense and morals and eventually alters your identity. Your inner conscience may be in conflict with the changes that occur to you, and you may even think you are coping, but the changes are relentless. You only find out where you are going, and who you are becoming, when you arrive. Then you discover you have no identity, no substance, so you attach to something that gives you identity – whatever is available. You have no character, no principles, and no modesty,” she went on, “you don’t always live life the way you want to – destiny has a hand. I knew inside that I didn’t want to participate in the mad life that my colleagues were leading, but I already had one foot in it. I had already cast off and the boat was moving away from the quay. There comes a final point where you can decide whether to jump in it or not, and I jumped.
“You can always regret something afterward, but that has to be balanced with the desire at the time to feel real and be admired. You end up with no clear plans, but you can see your life as a changing image. Nothing you have learned helps you to find a way out or find a moral base that tells you when to stop. I couldn’t. I just kept on till I fell over and was picked up and put back on my feet, but not where I started. My old life had been destroyed for ever, but at least it gave me a chance to survive and start again.”
“So what did you do then?” pursued Thérèse.
“Hah,” laughed Sandrine bitterly, “I started again, but this time with drugs.” She paused, raising her head with her eyes closed and breathed in deeply. “The first time you take drugs you think, that’s OK. I can handle that. At first I thought I was really happy – nothing bothered me anymore. Then one day you are found walking naked in the street or being used for sex by a group of men and sometimes women in a hotel room. Drugs are like dying; they cut you off from every earthly constraint, yet they give you the means to live life more freely than you would ever dare to do without them.” Emotion stopped her talking for a while. Thérèse couldn’t prevent herself from getting up from her chair and putting her arms around Sandrine.
“You survived. You’re still here and you have Christian to think about, so that’s something worth fighting for, isn’t it?”
Sandrine sniffed loudly and wiped her nose again with a tissue. “It’s like being shut in a prison that you know you have to escape from, but you haven’t got the strength to break out. Meanwhile, life goes on outside as if nothing had happened.”
At that moment, Fleur Rocha came back into the room with a big smile. “So you are having a nice siesta by the fire,” she beamed brightly. They all nodded.
The conversation turned to the next meal and how it would be prepared.
Chapter Sixteen
An Employment Law Virtuoso
George Milton and Johnny Mendes were drinking together at one of the Bodins’ gatherings in a Paris hotel. The discussion turned to the reasons why Michel had sold the house on the Cote d’Azur. Was it was all about Mohammed or was there a more obscure reason? They discussed the general difficulty of legitimately finding staff to take care of secondary homes in France because of heavy taxes on employment and the flourishing black labour market that is their by-product. George expressed some puzzlement about the affair and suggested that having a live-in caretaker must present another set of administrative and employment problems for the owners. Johnny leaned towards George, holding his glass of Champagne closer. “Can I share something with you in absolute confidence?”
In George’s experience, that usually meant that the speaker had previously been lying or was telling only part of the story. He nodded to Johnny, put down his glass and nudged it forward on the table like a chess piece.
“Seriously, I don’t want you to discuss what I am about to tell you with Michel or Charlotte. It would cause big trouble if you did.” George offered his hand to Johnny and they shook on it with sly smiles.
According to Johnny, Michel’s problems began when one day Mohammed went to
get some gardening tools from the work-shop; a spacious shed nearly fifty metres from the main house. As he approached the door, he saw that the padlock had been opened and he thought he could hear a faint humming noise and gasping sounds. When he partially opened the door, he saw the resplendent back end of Catherine, Charlotte’s sister. She was naked and kneeling on a workbench, arching her back, while being enthusiastically serviced from behind by Michel Bodin using an electrical device. Mohammed closed the door gently and slipped away silently. He was shocked at the sacrilege he had just seen, but not so shocked that he failed to identify an opportunity to ask Michel the next day for a pay increase to ensure his silence. Once Mohammed’s powers of observation were made incontestably clear to Michel, he agreed to the deal.
Having thought it over, Mohammed was so shocked by what he had seen that he came to a realisation that for religious reasons he could not work for Michel anymore, so the next rung on the tactical ladder was Mohammed’s new proposal that he should continue to live in the cottage with his family and be paid as usual, but without doing any work. Michel would have to hire contractors to maintain the estate. Michel found this imbroglio difficult to accept and furthermore, impossible to justify in accounting terms to Charlotte, so there was a stand-off between the two men. For several months they didn’t speak and Mohammed didn’t work, resulting in the pipes being neglected that winter.
Michel tried to dismiss Mohammed, but the Moroccan knew about employment tribunals in France and put the case to his boss that as he was a poor immigrant with a family, the tribunal would probably find in his favour whatever the circumstances, and in any event French law prevented landlords from ejecting tenants between mid-October and March. There was also the question as to what Mohamed might reveal to a public tribunal about what he had seen and heard that drew down such vindictiveness from his employer. Michel could find no alternative but to ask how much Mohammed would accept to leave, so that he could sell the place.
A Clean Pair of Hands Page 11