“So we have.”
He told me he’d bring down the necessary equipment when he came to the library for his coffee. Fortunately, we wore pretty much the same size in everything—even shoes.
Partially dressed, he now stood beside the bed for a minute, resting his hand on my shoulder.
“Ça va?”
“Ça va,” I said. “Ça va?”
Thankfully—because I wouldn’t have called it all that bright and early—our ‘date’ had been fixed for eleven. We played two sets. Oliver won them both, though not easily; he’d needed to put up a fight. My reaction surprised me. I’d have thought I would care about having lost—care enormously. Especially before an audience.
But, no, I didn’t. Not at all.
Each game had been a good one. Exciting. Exhilarating. I felt satisfied. Victory, I told myself, could come along some other day.
As we left the court he made a suggestion. He offered to ring the shop the following morning, tell Personnel I was ill and would be laid up for about a week—well, at the very least, a week. “You did hand in your notice, I take it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll ask them to send your cards to Gloucester Place.”
I nodded, now feeling far more confident on that score … as well as every other. “But I’m glad it will be you who’s making the call! As you know, little George Washington here finds it so difficult to fib.”
He answered more seriously—although, somehow, it didn’t come out sounding pompous. “Normally I do my best not to tell lies. Yet in this instance I believe I have a good reason.”
I asked what that might be and—despite the fact he didn’t at first respond to this question—was relieved to hear him speak more lightly.
“Henceforward, you’ll be able to write to your heart’s content—occasionally, of course, taking time off to compose effusive dedications to your august and noble patron.”
“All right. I always wanted an august and noble patron.”
“But I warn you: I’ll be a hard taskmaster. I shall expect between two and three thousand words a day.”
“Struth!”
“However,” he added, “for us both to gather enough strength to embark on this enterprise, I thought that tomorrow we might pop off to Biarritz for a short while. I have a friend there. A writer. I feel it could be beneficial for you to meet her.”
“In Biarritz it could be beneficial for me to meet anyone. Who is she?”
“Marnie Stark.”
“Ah, yes! ‘Daisy and Sybella’! Well, now I understand.”
“But it was interesting to put you through your paces. And it gave you a fine chance to show what you were made of. Which, I might add, you grabbed hold of with both hands!”
“Are you meaning to imply that I still came across like a fresh wind? Invigorating?”
“No other word for it! But afterwards I did feel a touch of compunction. Am I forgiven?”
“Totally. To err is human.”
“Thank you. To forgive, divine. I’ll try to bear that in mind.”
“Yes, please do. For all future occasions.”
He laughed.
“But back to our muttons. Marnie’s book. Have you read it?”
I hadn’t. What made this particularly annoying was that I’d meant to skim through it during my lunch hour on Friday. But I’d been caught up in conversation with two of my colleagues, and hadn’t liked to snub them.
“Then you can borrow my copy—perhaps make a start on it this afternoon? As you’re aware, it’s only slim. I’ll also let you have ‘The Moving Staircase’, likewise attractively brief. She’ll feel flattered to know that you’ve read them. You could even let her think it was before we met.”
“Oh, no! That would be such a falsehood!”
He ignored this. “I’m hoping she might give you a private master class. The thing is, if we don’t go tomorrow she won’t be there for a while, and I admit to being impatient. I don’t suppose the bookshop will collapse without you.”
“Oh, don’t you, indeed?”
“And I assume your passport hasn’t expired since all those madcap jollities in Paris?”
“By expired you mean given up the ghost, don’t you? Turned its face to the wall. No, it has not! On the contrary, it sprang into boisterous life simply on account of them.”
“I’ll phone the airport right away. It could be fun.” He gave a wry smile. “Besides, who knows? This time, it might even teach you a little French.”
7
We caught an Air France flight to Paris, and Air Inter for the second leg. On the former we travelled first-class. The stewardess recognized Oliver. “We haven’t seen you lately,” she smiled, handing us champagne.
I asked afterwards: “When was the last time they did see you?”
“There was a fellow I went to Paris with last April. A musician. It didn’t work out. Matt was just the last in a very long line.” He looked at me ironically. “I don’t know if that answers your question?”
“Yes—thank you—all-embracingly. Are you so terribly difficult, then?”
“I’m honestly not sure. Difficult? Demanding? Unlucky? Perhaps a combination … Always, however, optimistic.”
“Careful! The jaded aren’t permitted optimism.”
He sipped his champagne and disregarded small gibes. “On our return we’ll go VIP. I think you might enjoy that. Little men trotting about pretending desperately they’ve heard of you.”
Earlier we’d driven straight from Merriot Park to the Embankment. It was from there that Oliver had phoned the shop. Then we’d taken a taxi to my place, where he’d left me at the front door, saying he’d be back in twenty minutes. Actually it was nearer forty—I began to think we’d miss our flight. But he laughed at this, pointing out that I wasn’t yet a seasoned traveller. He had bought me a suitcase: pigskin, beautiful, fit for a king or a dandy, about half the size of the one I’d taken into Surrey. “We’ll have it initialled when we get back,” he said; brushing aside my appreciation almost before I had started to express it.
So I hurriedly repacked, and while I did so he glanced around the flat. For fully forty-eight hours (maybe longer; maybe ever since Thursday) I’d felt apprehensive as to what his comments were going to be: he was practically the first person to have seen it, this recently redecorated home of mine, certainly the first person whose reaction I cared about, and for a moment I remembered some of the blemishes.
But after he’d walked all through it (it certainly didn’t extend that far) looking first at the bathroom, then into the kitchen and the sitting room, he came back only to exclaim: “Well, haven’t you finished your packing yet?” My pleasure in my new gift instantly disappeared.
After all, I hadn’t had the Renshaws to do it for me!
“Yes, I’m ready.” I closed the lid and turned round; was about to lift the suitcase off the bed, when suddenly he caught me to him.
“I think it’s magnificent!” he declared. “You’re obviously a highly talented young fellow.”
My pleasure in my new gift—and in everything else—returned full-strength. (I was glad I hadn’t had the Renshaws do it for me.) “I only wish,” I said, “I’d taken photographs of what the place looked like before.”
“I can guess, you braggart, just from looking at the state of the entrance hall.”
“And you see that little yard through the window? It’s not quite the way I want it yet, but it was I who cleaned it up and whitewashed the walls and put that bench out there and all those tubs…”
“You must give me a complete rundown on the way to the airport.”
We went by taxi to Heathrow, had lunch on the flight as well as the champagne, and reached Biarritz (travelling from Bordeaux by self-drive car) early in the evening.
The hotel was tremendous: opulent and heavily rococo. Oliver said it teetered on the brink of vulgarity—and was saved from toppling only by its abundance of period charm.
“So obvio
usly it toppled once,” I remarked, “but somehow, over time, managed to regain its footing?”
Oliver smiled. “I’ve found myself a fool,” he said. “And—I’d bet on it—one a lot more enticing than any Lear acquired!”
Flattered and happy, I retorted that he had delusions of grandeur.
He told me he was already thinking of revoking my licence.
But all that was after we’d gone up to our suite and I had spent a fair while being impressed by its magnificence. As soon as the porter had departed, I first threw myself onto the bed and then tested the comfort of the sofa and the armchairs, and was able to report that appearances weren’t in the least bit deceptive. “One sometimes forgets,” observed Oliver tolerantly, either to the ceiling or, far more likely, to the mildly protesting chandelier, “that he is only eighteen!” Following this, we stood on the balcony and drank white wine; and then we bathed and changed and went to look around the town.
Sunshine, sea, sand and sparkle—even in November and not too long before dusk. White buildings, fresh paint, clean streets. When viewed from the beach, Biarritz truly did resemble a wedding cake.
First, though, when arriving on that beach, we had been struck by something different: by several interestingly shaped rocks a short way out to sea, and by a miniature humpback bridge which connected one of them to the shore.
However, what made this particular rock important was neither the fact of its being central nor the fact of its having a link to the mainland. What made this particular rock important was the statue it provided a base for.
It was a statue of the Virgin Mary.
“My goodness,” I said. “I don’t suppose that’s something one comes across very often.”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“How motherly she looks.”
“Yes, doesn’t she?”
“And how welcoming … to any sailor returning from the sea: some poor, homesick fellow who might have been away for months, if not for years!”
I mentioned the terrifying storms he must have had to face. Possibly, the pirates and the men-of-war.
“Though don’t forget, you romantic old thing, that she’s looking in this direction. Which suggests it was more the mothers, wives and sweethearts who sought her comfort—her protection for their loved ones.”
“I like it,” I said. “Protection for their loved ones.” I glanced at him. “I may have to retitle my novel!”
“And, anyway, in view of all these rocks, that lighthouse over there might have seemed a shade more welcoming, don’t you think? I mean, to your homesick sailor returning from the sea!”
With some reluctance I agreed; but by then he’d turned away and was gazing at the wedding cake.
Shortly afterwards we got back in the car and drove to Fuenterrabia—just across the Spanish border—to have dinner: prawns and squid and ice-cream. Oliver told me it was the custom, on leaving, for a well-bred young man to pinch the waitress’s bottom as a token of respect. She would feel herself slighted if such a courtesy should fail to be observed.
“All right,” I said. “Thank you for warning me.”
While we awaited her next approach I made a show of flexing my thumb and forefinger—we looked at one another seriously.
She arrived. Oliver asked for the bill.
“Now?” I asked.
“When she brings the change,” he said.
She came back with the change.
“Now?”
“When else, for heaven’s sake?”
“Right!”—and my hand was already touching the black material of her skirt when Oliver cried out. “Don’t!” The waitress went away unpinched, all smiling affability and buxom sprightliness.
“Coward,” I said.
He answered: “I really think you’d have done it!”
“Of course I would have done it.”
“You’re dangerous,” he stated, in a tone that seemed to fall midway between amusement and awe.
The next night we had our dinner with Marnie Stark. She wasn’t at all what I’d expected. Far from being the fashionable dresser I’d have thought Oliver only associated with, she was a woman of about fifty who had let her figure run to seed and who slopped about in a down-at-heel pair of Dr Scholl’s sandals and a smock covered in dog’s hairs. Furthermore, she had a coarse laugh and the kind of forthright manner which would have seemed more at home in a smoke-filled London pub than among the tamarisk trees and hydrangeas of a modish French resort. Yet at the same time she gave off a sort of unforced sexuality I had never come across and which—in small doses!—was warm and earthy and endearing.
Although her villa seemed far from small, she still had to push magazines and newspapers off one chair and a Pekinese off another before she could accommodate us in her living room. “Servant problems,” she said.
“What nonsense,” answered Oliver, “I’ve never known you any different! And certainly shouldn’t like it half so much if I did. Have you still the same cook?”
“Of course.”
“That’s all that matters, then. And your martinis are just what they always were. Enough said.”
“So this is the new boyfriend?” observed Mrs Stark. “You were so bloody cagy on the phone I knew he must be special.”
Oliver pulled a face at me. “I deliberately didn’t warn you about Marnie.”
“Just as well,” I said.
“I hear you want to be a writer,” she remarked. “What sort of thing do you hope to write?”
“At the moment I’m working on a love story.”
“Between men?”
I was surprised. It hadn’t occurred to me there could be homosexual love stories.
We talked about writing for the next half-hour. Although I afterwards told Oliver I had found it enlightening, I was glad he didn’t press me to explain how. She several times used the words ‘obsession’ and ‘persistence’—apparently she had completed ten novels before at long last having one published—and counselled me to write solely of the things I knew. (Oh dear. In ‘Where Two Roads Meet’ the plot not only hinged on a kidnapping, half the book was set in Hollywood!) I disagreed with much of what she said—also found it discouraging. But for Oliver’s sake I remained humble and was able to hold my tongue. Annoyingly, it turned out I needn’t have read either of her novellas (which I hadn’t especially liked—although, again, I had hidden this from Oliver). Yet I managed to praise them convincingly and I wasn’t called upon to give examples. Thank God.
After that, we had dinner. As we ate she inquired whether we had known each other long. Long enough, said Oliver, to be very sure we went together well. Then I asked when and where they had met. Marnie Stark gave one of her noisy laughs. “Oh, you tell him, Oliver.”
“About fifteen years ago, at some particularly hideous party. People kept jumping into the pool fully clothed. Marnie’s current beau had just left her. She spent most of the next few days crying on my shoulder.”
“And we’ve been crying on each other’s shoulders,” she asserted, “ever since. Misfits Anonymous! Oh, it’s pathetic. The eternal quest for love!”
Then she stopped looking tragic and took another forkful of paella.
“You see, Oliver would do anything—absolutely anything—to help out a pal! He was sane, wholly non-judgmental, endlessly encouraging! Restful, too: you realized he would never make demands. So whenever one of my little amours was exploding into tiny pieces—probably about once a week!—I knew I could run straight to Oliver for sanctuary.”
This meant apparently—as Oliver told me on the way home—that Marnie Stark had often been attracted to the kind of man who rapidly grew violent. Divorced from a husband who had frequently beaten her, this hadn’t taught her to avoid other such combustible relationships. “What’s the feminine form of Icarus?” I asked. He looked at me and nodded.
Now she patted his arm lovingly.
“And, of course, it wasn’t all one-way, pet? I used to make you look respectable. W
hen all the pure young things—and their mothers!—were chasing one of London’s most eligible bachelors, you could always suggest you were helplessly in love with yours truly. Fifteen years ago,” she turned her head briefly towards myself, “I was at least three stone lighter and could even appear glamorous. So the debutantes sighed and went off searching somewhere else. Now that I’m no longer in Blighty I don’t doubt there are other equally knowing ladies who are happy to fill in for you, Ollie—at all those dinners and parties and functions.”
“Not,” he said, “that one wants to be overly hypocritical about these things.”
“Maybe not, love. But if you go to prison it really needs to be for something worthwhile. And take it from me: no man’s worth going to prison for!”
She gave her usual grating laugh. It was starting to irritate me.
“No man,” I said, “nor woman either.”
“Ah, there speaks the voice of youth,” lamented Oliver. “Just wait until you’ve experienced it, my lad: the feeling that somebody’s actually worth dying for—let alone serving time for!”
I took exception.
“As happens so often, I’m not sure if you’re being serious or not. But, in any case, it’s hardly only the voice of youth that speaks. A couple of seconds ago Mrs Stark made precisely the same comment.”
The Man on the Bridge Page 5