Shadowplay

by Norman Hartley

  ‘If the old lady was right,’ I said, ‘the clinic is well back from the coast. If they’re following, they’ll have to leave the main traffic stream. If they do, we’d better watch out. Whatever else they’re doing in St. Tropez, they aren’t looking for plastic surgery.’

  But when we found the clinic, I could see no sign of the Citroen. It didn’t turn with us and though Cox paused, then did a complete circuit of the clinic building, it didn’t reappear.

  ‘I’ll meet you at the port,’ Cox said. ‘I’ll take a taxi.’ As he spoke, a teenage French girl on a bicycle, wearing white shorts and a breast-hugging sailor shirt, rang her bell and waved across at him.

  Cox waved back, then looked at me seriously. ‘Don’t worry, Chief, I’ll keep my mind on the job. I happen to agree with Ryder. Starburst is a good missile. I think we need it. I wouldn’t like to see the Soviets or anyone else shove it down the tubes.’

  ‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘This is something I’ll have to get used to.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This sober, patriotic, thoughtful Cox, who turns down passes from sun babies and believes in Western defense.’

  ‘I’ve always believed in it. But don’t worry, I won’t break the code again. Serious without being solemn. The correspondents’ watchword. Anyway, at least this Seagull person has had the good taste not to hide out in Paraguay. Any assignment that brings me to St. Tropez on expenses can’t be all bad, even if there isn’t time to enjoy it.’

  I left Cox at the clinic and drove into the port of St. Tropez and parked the Peugeot by the yacht basin. I hadn’t been there for four or five years but nothing seemed to have changed. The port, even at lunch time, was given over to the same stylized, ritual craziness. It was such a phony town, but I’d always liked it because everyone knew it was phony and never really pretended otherwise. There were more middle-aged tourists than when I’d last been there, but it was still a good people-watching place. The clothes were fun, the women were pretty, and the deep suntans helped along those who weren’t. I couldn’t defend my liking it rationally. Really, I suppose I just liked the sun and the women. I’ve always liked climates you don’t have to defend yourself against and when I want to laze around in the sun, I’d rather be surrounded by beautiful, half-naked women—even if they are posturing and showing off— than by desolate rocks and lonely seascapes.

  By the time I’d walked the length of the yacht basin and chatted with a few of the people who were eating lunch in the wells of the smaller, less fashionable yachts I was feeling almost cheerful, but it didn’t help when I glanced at a magazine rack to pick up something to read while I waited for Cox, and the first face I saw was Nancy’s. She was on the cover of an American women’s magazine over a caption promising, inside, the story of ‘Nancy Sellinger, the country house lady who likes to keep her feet off the ground.’

  I bought a copy, took it to the terrace of the Café de la Marine, and opened it at the article. It consisted mainly of photographs of what the headline called Nancy Sellinger’s twin loves—the English countryside and flying her own plane. The first pictures were the most painful. It showed Nancy standing in the rose garden of Samman’s Farm, the house in Kent halfway between London and the English Channel where she spent much of the year.

  The caption mentioned that the house, which had not been a farm since the seventeenth century, was being lovingly restored under Nancy’s direction—but tactfully didn’t say that the house had once belonged to me. I had inherited it, struggled to keep it up without adequate means, and finally lost it to Nancy in the divorce settlement. Paul, who had been spending as much time as possible in Europe since the merger, attempting to win friends among the World News associates, always used it—not because he liked country life but because he knew how much I hated his being there. Paul understood the importance of personal symbolism. He used the house because for me, Samman’s meant defeat. It reminded me of my last efforts to hold on to Nancy and keep my career and private life in some kind of balance. Having it go to Nancy after the divorce had sealed Sellinger’s victory.

  The other pictures were mostly of Nancy with her Piper Comanche, including one aerial shot of her skimming over the White Cliffs of Dover. Over a subhead which read ‘The Sellinger Lady in a Hurry,’ the article said that Nancy had already broken two flying club records, for the shortest time to go solo and the shortest to reach twin-engined rating. Flying had always fascinated her but when we were married she had not been able to afford it. Now it seemed she was making up for lost time.

  I always hated seeing her referred to as Nancy Sellinger, and seeing her in the glossy magazines, as I often did now, only underlined how far she had moved away from me.

  Her wealth seemed to seal the gap between us. She had been born well-off—her father was a New York insurance broker with a house in Manhattan and a summer place in New England—but when we had married, she had slipped easily into my own modest life-style. She had never made any formal renunciation of her money; she simply hadn’t used it, or talked about it, but when the marriage had begun to falter, I had measured her alienation by her gradual return to it. There had been trips first—back to her parents, who had retired to Maine—with no bill for the ticket, then longer trips, and clothes I could not have afforded. Now she had gone all the way, leapfrogging over her upper-middle-class upbringing into the Sellinger world of conspicuous ease.

  The article said Nancy flew almost every day, often across the Channel to France. Nancy had always hated the French after some bad experiences during her student days, but of course, I was reading about another woman now: Nancy Sellinger, not Nancy Railton. If she were to come to St. Tropez now, she would have no contact with the French. It would be to one of the ungainly rich men’s toy boats moored in the main harbor—the ones with carpets and mock-Regency furnishings which could never actually put to sea because the salt spray would kill all the plants twining around the salon.

  I stood up suddenly and walked to the edge of the café terrace and threw the magazine into a trash can on the edge of the road. I knew too well where that line of thought would lead and it was too destructive and depressing.

  It was time to concentrate on Seagull and to pray that ‘the consolation prize I’d won in a sleeping bag’ hadn’t really turned sour, as Sellinger had taunted.

  I ordered another gin and sat mindlessly watching the passing parade until Cox came back, looking pleased.

  ‘Didn’t think it would be that easy,’ he said. ‘Seems Guerard is a creature of habit. Doesn’t sound very overworked. I gather his father’s a professor at the Paris Medical Faculty. Yves is the clinic golden boy. Condescends to put in a few hours each morning, then lunch, then beach. Always the same place—Le Windsurf Club near a village called Gigaro.’

  Cox paused. ‘And always apparently with his girl friend, the lady Seagull.’ He smiled. ‘Incidentally, if we ever need to swear in any deputies to get Seagull away from Dr. Guerard, there are a couple of nurses in there who’d really put their backs into it.’

  ‘So it’s the beach then,’ I said. ‘Could be a good place, if we’re careful. Do you have the right clothes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll buy something now,’ I said. ‘These tropical suits are too conspicuous. In St. Tropez, you might as well be wearing a morning coat.’

  When we got back on the coast road, we watched for several kilometers for any sign of the Citroen but neither of us could spot it. To play doubly safe, we went twice around all the major traffic islands and did a further check at the La Croix hypermarket complex, where we stopped to buy bathing suits and T-shirts and beach trousers to put over them. By the time we had changed and checked yet again for the Citroen, we had wasted another half hour, and it was past three o’clock when we reached Gigaro.

  It was the prettiest of several beaches we’d passed on the way and it was also the most popular; the after-lunch crowd had already slotted themselves between the all-day sun worshippers and the sand ha
d more or less disappeared under a uniform layer of bronzed bodies. Unlike the earlier beaches, almost ninety percent of the women were topless and though there were still plenty of families—including a good number of English and German tourists—it seemed to be mainly a young people’s gathering ground.

  The Windsurf Club was at one end, separated from the public beach by a high windbreak made of laths and green reeds. We scouted it first without getting out of the car, but we ended up blocking traffic on the narrow beach esplanade, so we parked and walked back and sat in a café terrace within sight of the club.

  Judging from the cars in its private parking lot, the Windsurf Club was an expensive place to work on a tan, but it wasn’t immediately obvious what the members got for their money. The scrappy laurel hedge didn’t provide much privacy, and there wasn’t much in the way of club buildings either—just a beach bar with a thatched awning, a restaurant which was now deserted, and a row of hut-like structures which were presumably showers and changing rooms. The sand was slightly less crowded than on the public beach but the club didn’t have its own stretch of water and the wind-surfers merged in among the hundreds of sails crisscrossing the bay as soon as they left the shoreline.

  ‘Well?’ I said, when we had both finished examining the terrain.

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be any control on the gate,’ Cox said. ‘There’s no shade for the watchman’s booth. He’s probably in the water, if he’s got any sense.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure we’ll get in all right. Problem is getting Seagull away from Guerard.’

  ‘We could wait until he’s at the clinic tomorrow.’

  ‘We can’t afford the time,’ I said. ‘I must try and get this over with in time to get to Rome. If I miss many more engagements, Sellinger will start making noises about WN needing an interim president.’

  Cox got up from the table. ‘I’ll go in first,’ he said, ‘but before I go, do me a favor.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Smile.’

  ‘About what, for God’s sake?’

  ‘About anything. I know you’re angry and I know you’re uptight about seeing Jennifer—Seagull—again. But if you approach her looking like that, you’ll scare her shitless.’

  ‘Even if she’s a trained Soviet agent?’

  ‘Don’t prejudge,’ he said. ‘Be gentle. You’re an old lover who’s come back to talk to her because you’re worried about the scandal and you want to coordinate stories in case the News of the World cowboys start getting in touch with her.’

  I grinned. ‘You mean I’m not supposed to stride up to her and seize her by the throat and say, ‘Madam, are you now or have you ever been an agent of the Soviet intelligence services?’ ‘

  Cox grinned back. ‘That’s better,’ He pointed across the road to the public beach. ‘Just relax. Enjoy the scenery. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve found out if she’s there.’

  The scenery he was pointing at consisted of two whitish-looking teenagers in matching G strings, who were smearing barrier cream around each other’s nipples to protect the newly exposed areas.

  When they’d moved on, I watched a group of English people: a family commanded by a fearsome-looking matron who, though topless, looked oddly overdressed in the ample bottom half of a two-piece made for more inhibited beaches.

  The thought made me wonder about my own clothing. I’d bought a pair of white drill trousers and a blue T-shirt which, with the rope-soled canvas shoes, were fine on the esplanade, but, not surprisingly in the baking heat, I couldn’t see a single man on the beach wearing anything but swimming trunks. There were several with shirts on—obviously as a protection against blistered shoulders, but if I wanted to remain even moderately inconspicuous, I would have to get rid of the trousers.

  I was just wondering where best to leave them when I saw Cox sprinting out of the club. He’d obviously had the same idea as he had stripped to his bathing suit and was having trouble in bare feet on the hot concrete of the esplanade.

  He signaled me urgently to come and I paid and ran across the road.

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Cox said. ‘A bit of luck. They’re both out windsurfing but she’s coming in without him. If you move it, you may be able to catch her while he’s right out in the bay.’

  Cox ran ahead, guiding me through a narrow passageway beside the restaurant away from the immediate area of the clubhouse, and as soon as we were on the sand, I saw Seagull. She was right by the water’s edge, with one foot on her surfboard, guiding it through the small tidal undertow. She was completely absorbed in controlling the sail so that it didn’t become waterlogged as it lay flat on the surface of the sea.

  Once I had spotted her, Cox stopped and I hurried on, slowing down just enough not to kick sand over the rows of sun-bathers.

  There wasn’t time to rehearse a greeting. I simply walked up to her and said, ‘Hello,’ then added spontaneously, ‘You look incredible. A seagull dipped in chocolate.’

  She was wearing two tiny triangles of lilac fabric linked by a plaited thong and she was uniformly tanned a deep resident’s bronze.

  ‘John. What in heaven’s name are you doing here?’

  There was no point in pretending it was an accidental meeting. My skin color would tell her I’d been on the coast only a few hours.

  ‘I came to find you.’ I said.

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Not quite. I need to talk to you.’

  ‘You didn’t pick a very good time.’ She glanced out to sea. ‘I’m not alone.’

  ‘I presumed not,’ I said. I gave her a little smile. ‘A seagull would need a barbed-wire barricade to stay alone in St. Tropez.’

  ‘I’d rather not pick up any old threads,’ she said. ‘It’s never a good idea.’

  I’d expected some awkwardness, but there wasn’t quite enough surprise in her voice to be convincing. I was sure she had been at least half-expecting me and the thought wasn’t reassuring.

  ‘John, I don’t want to talk,’ she said, turning slightly away on the pretext of maneuvering the sail.

  ‘It’s important.’

  ‘To you perhaps. For me the past is past. I don’t want to reopen it.’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ I said. ‘It isn’t a matter of just deciding you don’t want to.’

  ‘Yes, it is easy,’ she said. ‘It’s very easy. I just get on my surfboard and while I’m out in the bay, you catch a plane to London, or New York, or Hong Kong, or wherever you’re going next.’

  Considering that she gave me a cue line, I should have moved more quickly, but I hesitated just a fraction too long as she hauled up the sail. Though the mast was flat on the water, there was no water on the canvas to weigh it down and she was at just the right angle, too, for the wind to help it rise. She caught the guiding ring smoothly and the board was several yards offshore before the sail had reached forty-five degrees. I lunged after her but I missed the back of the board by a foot and ended up soaking and floundering ridiculously in the low broken surf along the waterline. By the time I’d got my footing, she was twenty yards out; the sail was high and she was preparing to run tight with the wind. She was completely at ease on the board and the maneuver she’d used to get away from me told me there was no chance she would fall. Once she got out of the shelter of the promontory she would catch a stiff breeze which was making whitecaps on the dark-blue water in the middle of the bay. Nor was she even limited to the bay of Gigaro. She could go around the headland and come ashore in any three or four smaller beaches up the coast. After that, she could simply disappear and I’d have no hope of tracing her in time.

  I looked around desperately. There were wind-surfers for hire, but I wouldn’t have lasted ten yards and there were no other boats inside the club. But just beyond the windbreak there was a jetty and I could see two inboard speedboats, rigged for towing water-skiers. There wasn’t time to go around by the road. I stripped off my trousers, grabbed my wallet and keys in
one hand, and plunged into the water. I needed to go only up to my knees, but even that depth of water made running ungainly and it took me three or four minutes to make it to the jetty.

  The boatman had watched me coming, and there was no point in trying to hide the fact that I wanted a boat at all costs. But as he started to bargain, I snapped in French: ‘Don’t be stupid, you haven’t had more than one water-skier all day.’ I was only guessing but I knew wind-surfing had almost killed water-skiing as a vacation sport and the price I offered in the next breath was big enough to settle the argument.

  I pointed toward the club beach but the boatman shook his head, indicating a line of buoys marking the inshore limit for boats. ‘Go around,’ I said. ‘Stay parallel with the shore. I want to catch that board—the one by the point. With the blue sail.’

  The boatman headed straight out to sea at ninety degrees to the shore, then swung in a dramatic, heeling arc and put the boat into high gear. The marker buoys lasted less than a quarter of a mile, then we were in open water and closing on Seagull fast.

  I wondered if Guerard had been watching, but for the moment it didn’t matter. If we could just get alongside, I knew I could get her into the boat.

  I had no intention of hurting her, but I was quite prepared to play rough; there was too much at stake for niceties and her lack of surprise at seeing me had shocked me out of any tender desire to relive old times.

  But I hadn’t counted on her determination either. I gave instructions to the boatman to approach her astern, on the windward side, so I’d have room to reach out and grab her if she refused to drop the sail. When she heard the roar of the engine, she turned and glanced over her shoulder, then she started to look around. I could guess what was in her mind. If she went out farther into open water I might not get her immediately, but I had only to circle and wait until she gave up. If she headed around the promontory, I could reach the shore as quickly as she could and there were no inlets small enough to keep the speedboat from following. Her only chance was to head back the way she had come and try to play tag among the other wind-surfers where the speedboat would lose its edge, even supposing I could persuade the boatman to risk losing his license by getting dangerously close to shore.