Cooking With Fernet Branca

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  No. No. It was nothing like that at all. I reminded myself that the character of Franco the fisherman was one of quiet nobility, in tune with oceanic mysteries and full of respect for the sea, that unpredictable but bounteous cradle of all life. Ironically, he and his young wife represented exactly the clean-limbed, sunburned tradition of outdoor labour that Italian fascism had once venerated and elevated as an ideal. No white telephones in his hovel, though, just the warmth of a good wife and well-earned rest after honest toil. It was enough to make you sick, but it was not the same nausea as the big eel scenario would have provoked.

  And so I sat and wondered, rueful about my suspicions, amazed that they might be measuring a gulf that really did lie between my high hopes of a career and whatever was going on in my bedroom. The shooting must have gone well, at any rate, because by five o’clock they had finished and were packing up. The two actors borrowed my bathroom to shed their war paint and had soon gone off down the hill in one of the cars. From all over the house came sounds of furniture being moved back, of order being restored. Two men staggered out with the burlap mattress, another two with the fishing net.

  Pacini and Filippo joined me at the table for a celebratory glass. I thought the great director looked tired, but when I said as much he denied it and said how well the sessions had gone.

  ‘You must see some of the rushes. I’ll have a selection transferred onto disc for you. After all, it is your home. And I do apologize once again for all the upheaval,’ he added. Evidently his old galanterie had returned, refreshed from its short holiday. ‘You’ve been wonderfully patient and understanding, Marta. Now, unfortunately Filippo and I have to be in Rome tonight. In an hour’s time, actually. We’ve asked to be picked up here. I think we’ll be away three or four days. Bankers. You wouldn’t believe the money problems that go with making a film, my dear. Quite horrendous. So might Filippo leave that slightly absurd car of his here until he can collect it?’

  ‘You do go on, Dad,’ said his son patiently.

  ‘It runs on testosterone, you know, not benzina,’ continued Pacini senior unabashed.

  ‘It’s wonderfully fast,’ I interjected lamely. ‘Anyway, forgive my asking, but what about the house? I mean, all those chunks of plaster knocked out of my bedroom wall, the cobwebs, and my God, the fence? I’d completely forgotten. What about Gerry’s fence?’

  ‘The boys have promised to leave the place as tidy as they can, if you wouldn’t mind roughing it a bit for just one more night? I knew you’d understand, a persona squisita like yourself. Then I’ve told them to come back tomorrow morning first thing and get everything straightened out, including that fence.’

  ‘Well,’ I said doubtfully. ‘OK. It’s just that Gerry might –’ but at that moment with a sudden blast of sound the blue and white helicopter I’d once seen bring Piero to Pisorno Studios appeared around a shoulder of the mountain, reared back like a fiercely reined horse and dropped lightly into the paddock behind my house.

  After it had taken off again and whirled away down the valley I sneaked a glance around my ravaged home. Although it would take some days to get it back to the comfortable squalor that suited me, I could live with how it was. At least my bed had been restored, although the room smelt like underneath a pier at low tide. The men, who clearly had no intention of doing any more work that day, began to drift away in their vans, the one I’d taken to be their foreman reassuring me that he would return next morning.

  ‘With enough men, I hope?’

  ‘Si, si, plenty of men,’ he said, and winked. But the wink was the least part of my unease.

  34

  It was a relief to take possession of my own house again, even if the place retained an unsettling sense of alien occupation. In that respect it reminded me a little of Voynograd after the Russians had finally left. The bathroom in particular looked like a crime scene, dabbled all over with suggestive reddish-brown smears and runnels. It was probably too much to expect actors to have any manners that weren’t called for in a script so I set about clearing up.

  To my surprise a van did arrive next morning with the foreman and three helpers who beneath my proprietorial eye began filling the holes they had artistically hacked in my bedroom wall. As well as a bag of plaster they had brought an immense industrial vacuum cleaner whose blustery howl filled the upper floor of the house as it sucked up cobwebs both real and fake. After a couple of hours’ work the house was, frankly, cleaner than it had ever been since my occupancy began, but I was not about to say so. Instead I made them all coffee and asked them now, please, to address their energies to getting the fence back up.

  ‘Remember what the maestro promised,’ I urged. “‘The Englishman will never know the difference.” His very words.’

  ‘It’s always rash to make promises that conflict with the laws of physics,’ observed the foreman, clearly wasted in this job. Presently I could see him and his helpers trying to batter the concrete lumps off the ends of the posts. After much labour they did get the worst off one and, going apprehensively outside, I could see that the wood was bristling with nails. The foreman threw down his hammer disgustedly.

  ‘The bastard’s shot these posts full of nails, see, to give something for the cement to key on to. This’ll take us a month. There are twenty-one of the things.’

  ‘Then you’d better send somebody off to get some new posts.’

  ‘I don’t have any authorization to spend money.’

  ‘I will worry about authorization, you just get the posts. Get them on the Pisorno Studios account, whatever, I don’t care. Just get them. And hurry.’

  Managing to look both surly and startled the foreman whirled crossly away in his van, leaving two of his mates picking over the heap of discarded fence panels. Whether my new-found imperiousness came from anxiety lest Gerry should return suddenly or else from the simple fact of being my father’s daughter, I couldn’t have said. I discovered I was no longer thinking of Gerry as a ludicrous foreign dudi but more as an ally from the good old neighbourly days of barely a week ago, a fellow victim of the Pacini machine. According to tradition one of our national heroes, a Voyde high-school student who had lain down in the path of the Soviet tanks in ‘67, had had to be rolled up like pastry before he would fit into his coffin. Before my time, of course. I was beginning to suspect that a similar fate awaited anyone rash enough to stand in Pacini’s way when he was making one of his films. It was a case of force majeure. Still, life is unfair and I was pretty sure that Gerry would blame me. My memories of dear Pavel Taneyev at Moscow Conservatory were hardly reassuring. Bitchiness is to dudis as mewing is to cats.

  From their appearance Gerry’s precious fence panels could themselves have been victims of a Soviet tank. When hauled upright they sagged wearily like boiled parallelograms, their ends ragged with white splinters. The men set about them listlessly with carpenter’s tools, trying to put some backbone into them. I left them to it and retired indoors with my forebodings.

  These were faithfully borne out within the hour. The foreman returned and announced that the posts would have to be delivered by lorry. But an even more basic problem remained, which was where to plant them when they did arrive. The holes in the ground had been so effectively camouflaged for the filming there was no longer any trace of where the fence had run. Did I know where my boundary was? Of course I didn’t, I told the foreman.

  It was then that I sent the men away and wrote a sharp e-mail to Piero Pacini. By now, though, I had little hope it would have any effect, still less in the time required. My job as the film’s composer was largely finished. I had even been paid for much of it. I no longer had any leverage. Well, was it not for depressed, reflective moments like this that Fernet Branca had been invented? Luckily I was not like poor Gerry, who plainly took refuge in the familiar green bottle to an alarming extent. But whereas he was predominantly interested in the drink’s considerable alcoholic content, it was purely for the herbs that I sipped the infrequent glass. All that
wormwood and gentian and quinine and rue became the essence of bitterness that now complemented my own. There was something soothing about it. We don’t understand the mysterious properties of herbs like these. They have curative powers and can lift the spirits, like the ‘monk’s myrrh’ the huntsmen back home put in their galasiya. Now that really is bitter. But it must have something else because they say only last year a man of ninety-seven became a father under its influence, a story that made me wonder if the mother had herself been entirely sober. I’m ashamed to say I found myself giggling a bit when idly wondering what effect galasiya might have on Gerry.

  Gerald

  35

  There’s nothing like coming home after a successful trip. Just watching Pisa airport dwindle in one’s rearview mirror is fillip enough. Even if one has flown from Munich on an airline less plebeian than Ryanair, one has still been subjected to the same humiliating rituals, streamed and searched and processed before being herded through hideously carpeted corridors in the company of coarse, summer-clad travellers with bouncing body parts.

  Cheerfully I set the nose of my trusty Toyota towards the mountains and reflect that Munich was an odd experience. I can’t pretend I greatly enjoyed Freewayz’ last concert in the Olympiahalle. Never having been to a boy-band gig, I suppose I’d been bracing myself for sheer aural assault. I need not have worried, though. The teen screams were louder than the music, which was anodyne stuff indeed. Just occasionally Nanty’s words rose above his juvenile audience’s ecstasy – ‘… missin’ you … kissin’ you …’ – but that was it. I’d hardly been expecting Rossini but I must say I was astonished by the lack of even a slightly memorable tune. It was obviously not about music, though; it was about celebrity, which requires no talent of any kind. Sheer boredom soon obliged me to begin the long, painful process of worming my way towards the nearest exit. Through throngs of throbbing teenagers I caught glimpses of a tall saturnine man who looked for all the world like Christopher Lee playing Count Dracula. He was wearing a first-aid uniform with red-cross armbands: not the most reassuring first sight for a teenaged girl coming round from a fainting fit but as a landmark he was wonderful. I kept heading towards him across a heaving floor slippery with hormones. Once I had reached him I could afford to catch my breath and glance back across the immense arena to the stage where Nanty in his teen-dream livery as Brill was wailing and prancing most professionally, tossing his blond mane. It was amazing: in his wig and war paint he managed to look about fifteen. I suddenly saw how his public mistook him for one of them. Zig, Sput, Petey and Johnny were variously whacking and strumming. For all I knew their drum kit was a cardboard mock-up and their guitars strung with twine. It seemed to this cynic that the whole thing might well be mimed, the boys cavorting silently before a billion-watt barrage of pre-pubescent girl power, mouthing into dead mikes. But it looked good and was wildly popular, no question.

  Once outside the hall I found the incessant screaming had left me slightly deaf – and that after a mere three numbers. Still, I had done my duty and seen the boys in action. I – but you’re much more curious about the naughty scene in my bedroom in the Hotel Rafael, I can tell. You mean when I came down from the roof in the small hours and found Nanty’s alleged wife Mel asleep in my bed? Well, I too am curious. The fact is, I have no further memory of anything until we both awoke at ten o’clock the next morning with headaches intense enough to take precedence over all enquiry. How had she got into my room? Had I lent her my key? Did Nanty mind? Had he even arranged it? Who knew?

  But I have long learned not to ask these sorts of question. Being Luc Bailly’s amanuensis taught me much about the etiquette of waking beneath a heap of partygoers on a floor in Klosters. That, of course, is how I can vouch for those famous twenty-five centimetres which for a while constituted a sort of informal Swiss national monument. I would have made all this clear earlier but I didn’t think you were quite ready for it. Although I occasionally make a fuss about the tedium of my profession I have to admit that ghost writing does introduce one to sights one might otherwise not see.

  Motorway exit coming up, Gerry, if you wouldn’t mind concentrating this time … Excellent. The familiar peaks of Monte Prana and Monte Matanna are now squarely in my windscreen.

  Nanty stayed on in Munich for a couple of days after the concert and I was at last able to find out more about the sort of book he wanted. Old Frankie hadn’t been far wrong: it’s McCartney’s Syndrome all right. The man’s already rotten with loot and fame but he wants much, much more. He wants serious respect for his art, his opinions, his philosophy. Here I’m afraid my incredulity must have been showing because Nanty felt obliged to explain. Really, it’s so awful it’s touching. ‘Philosophy’ to him is not the late Mr Hegel writing his runaway bestseller The Phenomenology of Mind and pronouncing ‘He who is not a father is not a man’ (he never partied in Klosters). To Nanty, as to most businessmen, ‘philosophy’ is something that companies have as part of their public image. It’s full of aims and goals and overviews, with a few tear-off calendar mottoes thrown in for added depth. To dignify a commonplace like ‘The customer is always right’ or ‘We aspire to be always at the cutting edge of innovative design’ with the name of philosophy is a bit like … no, it’s exactly like calling Freewayz’ noise music.

  Why should I be at all touched by this and not driven into a downward depressive spiral from which there is little hope of rescue? – and here I snatch a glance at the seat beside me where fresh supplies of Fernet nestle clinkingly in their carrier bag. I’m not sure ‘touched’ is the right word. ‘Intrigued’ would be better. I’m intrigued as a writer by the extraordinary composite figure of Nanty-Brill, the bald boy who is half cynic and half mystic, half beady businessman and half rock orgiast, four halves that make him two people. When he started talking about boy bands as an enterprise he unconsciously lapsed into business-speak and sounded like one of those men in suits who can be overheard in bars talking about horses for courses and things going belly up or pear-shaped. I remembered the tales I’d heard about this same pin-striped side of Mick Jagger, who would discuss investments with his Swiss bankers in a way that coexisted quaintly with the Stones rebel, the police busts, the minor drug charges and the jail sentences quashed because he’d been with the Queen of England’s sister at the time. But there, that’s showbiz: lots of noisy show tacked on to even more steely business.

  On the other hand Nanty’s brief outline of a Harpenden childhood had quite touched me. It turned out that he and I had something in common after all. His mother had also died when he was young and he had similarly acquired a stepmother whom he disliked on sight. Unlike mine, his had tried to seduce him when he was thirteen, causing him to run away from home for six months and ever afterwards to refer to her as his ‘shtupmother’. Why had he ever gone home? Because of Julie his younger sister, who had Down’s syndrome and of whom he was extremely fond.

  ‘No matter what happens, Julie’ll never want for anything,’ Nanty had told me with the fierce satisfaction of someone who has at last done something unquestionably right. ‘I’ve made sure she’s got more than enough of everything.’

  ‘Including three copies of chromosome 21,’ I didn’t say. That famous Samper delicatezza. But it was splendid news. A Down’s sister, a dead mother, alopecia at the age of twenty and a Druidical beating-up at the University of Hampton: Nanty’s life had been scarred to exactly the right degree for a pop biographer. He was such a refreshing contrast to those one-dimensional runners, skiers and racing drivers I was used to. With skilful manipulation on my part (such as playing down the New Age tomfoolery and the UFOs) Nanty’s character could acquire real gravitas. He had explained to me that he saw this book as merely one part, although a vital one, of his life’s campaign. I told him it was time to start work on the other parts as well. He needed some influential friends in the world of the serious arts whom he could wow by flying them to louche parties in his private jet or woo with tickets to Glyndebour
ne. He also should be known to be working on a weighty large-scale project of his own. What did he fancy? Painting? Sculpture? Architecture? Music? Or there were always prestige projects of national significance, like Sam Wanamaker’s replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in oak and thatch. He thought for a moment.

  ‘Stonehenge!’ he cried. ‘That’s it! Re-create it as it originally was, with all those earthworks and stuff and twice the size, like you can see from the air. But – and get this, Gerry – align it to coincide with the heavens as they are now. The stars have shifted,’ he explained vaguely. ‘Bring it up to date and teach people how to use it as an observatory.’

  ‘Mm. That sort of thing. And don’t forget film. Remember David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. You might even turn out to be rather a good actor, Nanty. A heavyweight director could improve your standing no end.’

  ‘Yeah, so he could. I’ve often thought I’d like to do a film … Or perhaps something musical? You know, big.’

  ‘Missa Harpendensis? Double choir, organ, orchestra, rock group, electronics. Or how about An AIDS Requiem? Same instruments but with bongos. The African dimension, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s got legs. Or … or maybe something more democratic. How about somewhere ordinary folk can have a real laugh? A humungous amusement zone in Hyde Park, sort of thing.’