by William Boyd
“It’s a ‘money’ favour…”
“Oh.” Talbot felt a quick sadness envelop him. A falling away, as he suddenly remembered all the remarks Gary had made about money in their short acquaintance, as if assessing him, auditing him. A money favour…
“I won’t mess about,” Gary said, flatly, as if trying to mute his embarrassment. “Cut to the chase, and all that. I need two hundred pound. It would be down payment on a flatbed lorry. I was wondering if I could borrow it off of you.”
Talbot sensed a little keening note of worry start in his ear, a kind of sonic tingle of disappointment. He tried to ignore it. He also thought he detected a change in the tone of Gary’s voice—suddenly a little hoarse, deeper, somehow more insistent and controlling. Was that worry—or nerves—or an implicit threat?…
“I’m sure a bank will lend you two hundred pounds,” Talbot said, lightly, logically.
“I already borrowed from my bank.”
“Right. I see.”
There was a silence that Talbot wasn’t going to break. Gary spoke again—again with that unfamiliar rasp to his voice.
“If you could, you know, see your way to lending me two hundred pound it would make all the difference. I’ll repay with interest, no problems. But I need that lorry—can’t start the business without one.”
“It’s a lot of money, Gary.”
“Of course. I know. It’s a lot of money to me. But—no disrespect—not to you.”
Talbot took this implication in, reluctantly. The easy, complacent assumption provoked a little squirm of anger in him. Talbot “Eastman”—rich man. Rich man for the plucking. The keening note in his ear was growing more shrill. He wasn’t befuddled with wine, or with the unforeseen adrenalin rush of the fall—he knew exactly what was going on. He stood up.
“So you want me to ‘lend’ you two hundred pounds.”
“Exactly. I’d be most grateful. You see, you’re the only person I know who I could ask. You seem like a nice man. You’ve already been very kind to me. So I thought I’d—”
“You thought you’d just try and pressure me into a loan.”
Gary looked baffled. A studied bafflement, Talbot thought.
“What? What ‘pressure’? It’s a simple request.”
“It’s a simple request but it’s the timing of your request that interests me. It won’t work.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Talbot felt his facial muscles tightening. He found it impossible to maintain his smile.
“I know what’s going on, Gary. I’m not a fool. Please don’t take me for a fool. I can read between the lines.”
Gary held up both palms.
“Hey. Talbot, please. Mr. Eastman—it’s just a simple request. You can say no, or you can say yes. Full stop.”
“It’s the opposite of simple. It’s full of nasty little complications. Ifs and buts. Hidden ‘or else’s.’ What if I decide not to lend you the money? What then? Well, what would you do? Mmm? I wonder. Et cetera, et cetera.”
“Et cetera what?” Gary’s voice was rising now. “What’re you going on about?”
“You are trying to make something out of absolutely nothing. It won’t work. Sorry.”
“Talking Chinese, Talbot.”
“Translate it.”
“What are you fucking trying to say?”
They were facing each other now, two feet apart. Talbot was aware of his chest heaving, semi-breathless with the accumulated emotion gathering around this unexpected, unwanted confrontation. He craved oxygen, he almost felt light-headed. How could he have got himself in this situation? Stupid, misguided, tragic old fool.
“I think you’d better go,” he said, as calmly and as neutrally as possible. “You have your fifty pounds. You earned that. I promise I won’t stop the cheque.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do.”
“Is it because you wanted to—”
Gary stopped. He looked at him, his face slightly contorted, clearly disgusted as Talbot’s inferences suddenly became plain to him. Then he took the envelope with the cheque in it from his pocket. He tore it in two, then in four. He threw the pieces up in the air.
“Keep your fucking money. I don’t want it.” He pointed a shaky finger at him, anger making his features flinch and twitch.
“Fucking nutter. Fucking weirdo,” he said, grabbed his jacket and walked out. Now Talbot could breathe. He swallowed. No, he realised immediately, no, he had read this all wrong—this had gone hideously awry, stupendously, mind-bogglingly wrong.
He went to the window and fumbled like a dotard with the captain’s hook on the shutters, his hands were trembling so badly he could hardly perform the elementary operation. He flung them apart and looked down into the garden to see Gary striding across the patch of lawn to the door and wresting it open.
He knocked on the glass. Rapped his knuckles hard on the pane.
“Gary!” he shouted. “Wait! Please! Wait a second!”
But Gary didn’t look back and was gone in an instant.
9
It was after she left Angoulême that Anny became aware of the car following her. Two cars, in fact: one was black and the other was silver. They were taking it in turns to keep her in view—keeping quite far back, hoping she wouldn’t notice. She turned off the Route Nationale and waited an hour in a village before returning to the RN and continuing on to Bordeaux. But there, twenty minutes later, in her rear mirror, were the cars interchanging, staying back, keeping their distance. Black car, silver car.
She tried to keep her panic at bay, thinking that Alphonse—that piece of shit—must have told Jacques. But Jacques wouldn’t have alerted the police, no. Therefore it must be the FBI or—what was the French version?—the Sûreté. She remembered the name from some script she’d read. But how would they know? They had come to the apartment, yes, Alphonse’s apartment. Maybe the phone was bugged—and then if they heard Alphonse’s call to Jacques it wouldn’t be difficult to track down the details of Alphonse’s car, its type, its colour, its number plate.
She felt sick. How could they be following her so soon? What would they do if they caught her? They couldn’t arrest her—she was untouchable in France. And then thinking on, she realised that what she needed was a lawyer in France. She’d been relying too much on Jacques—but, as her father used to tell her—the only person you can really rely on is yourself. Yes, she thought, once she was secure in Spain she would call her lawyer in the States, get him to find someone in Paris, or Madrid, someone who could handle her case in Europe. She’d need money for that but Troy would send her money until she could unlock her own funds. She was rich—she had plenty of money—money wasn’t a problem. The problem was trust. She trusted Troy—she realised that she could rely on Troy—and the thought made her sad. Only Troy.
Then she saw a sign for Bordeaux airport—Mérignac—and she had a sudden idea. A good idea, she thought. Dump Alphonse’s Renault and hire a new car. That would buy her more time. They would figure it out eventually but by then she’d be across the Spanish border and out of harm’s way for as long as she wanted. She waited until the next sign indicating the exit to Bordeaux airport and, at the very last moment, turned sharply off the Route Nationale and accelerated away.
At the airport she parked the Renault in a long-term car park and walked to the arrivals hall, where the car-hire firms were. She chose one of the smaller ones, S-O-L, Sud-Ouest-Locations, and she hired a Simca 1000 from them. She felt a little apprehensive as she handed over her passport but the girl behind the counter made no reaction as she noted down her details. Anny was given the keys and told where her car was parked but, as she turned away with relief, she realised that she’d left her big map of France in the Renault. She hurried off, striding quickly ba
ck to the car park. However, as she approached the Renault she saw two men standing by the car, peering in and talking, gesturing to each other. They were both wearing leather jackets and were young, with short hair. She turned around without lingering further, her throat tight, feeling a sudden weakness invade her, making her think she’d fall over, hadn’t the strength to stay standing. What should she do? They were closer than she had imagined. She returned to S-O-L and was given a map of the Bordeaux area. Anny decided to wait this out for a day or so and see if by staying still—by not running—she could confuse them further. And it would give her time to think and plan. She was finding that harder, thinking clearly. Maybe she should cut down on the Obetral…
So she sat in the Simca for a good half-hour, telling herself to calm down, forcing herself to think logically. They would assume, first, that she’d caught a plane—the abandoned car at the airport would suggest that, and that would be their initial check, looking for any passengers called Anny Viklund. Or maybe they might think she’d met someone—an agreed rendezvous with a friend, an accomplice—and not even think of a hired car. She swallowed hard, coaxing saliva into her mouth. What should she do? She needed time. Stay still, don’t move. If you don’t move they can’t follow you.
Forcing herself to look at the map she saw that there was a long promontory near Bordeaux, a thin spit of land that formed the ocean-side of a large bay. The promontory, the cape, was called Cap Ferret and looked thinly populated, with just a few small villages situated here and there. Somewhat remote, then, and with only one road in or out. Using a kind of inverse logic, she supposed that no one would expect anyone running away to deliberately choose a dead end as a place to hide. No. That would fool them. Maybe that was the ideal spot to hole up, she thought to herself, free of pursuit and its attendant panic. It would give her time to figure out what to do—time, that’s what she needed—time to choose her moment to slip into Spain and safety.
It was late afternoon as she motored through the pine forests of Cap Ferret and encountered the first of the chain of little villages that dotted the headland, moving down towards the tip of the cape itself and its lighthouse. She recognised their names from the map she’d studied—Le Petit Piquey, Piraillan, Le Canon, L’Herbe. After L’Herbe the road turned west to skirt the Atlantic side of the headland. She stopped the car at a picnic area, stepped out, stretched and decided to follow a sandy path through the aromatic pines that led her to the dunes and the ocean. She wanted to see the ocean, for some reason.
But here, she was a little stunned to see vast grey concrete blockhouses set squarely in the dunes overlooking the wide beach. Gun emplacements from the Second World War, she realised, now emptied of their weapons and scribbled over with graffiti. This must be the remnant of Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall,” she remembered. She wandered down a path between two of the bunkers to find herself on the immense, immaculate beach. On the beach she could count the blockhouses, looking south and north as far as the eye could see, still menacing somehow, almost a quarter of a century later, permanent reminders of the conflict, ugly and awful monuments, she thought.
The tide was on the turn and the foaming breakers were crashing and spreading themselves higher up the sand. The evening was warm and there were still a few families and sunbathers reluctant to admit that their day was ending. A fisherman sat on a folding canvas chair, four rods planted in the sand in front of him, their lines stretching far out beyond the ranks of rolling waves. Anny walked down to the surf’s edge, feeling the ocean breeze fresh on her face and, for a moment, experienced a powerful urge to strip off her clothes and rush into the battering, exhilarating embrace of the breakers. She stepped back from the final fizzing, lazy spill of the waves as they smoothed the sand in front of her. She couldn’t linger—she knew she had to find somewhere secure to settle down for the night. Jesus, what was happening? How was this happening to her? She looked out to the horizon, the sun beginning to go down, the light burning soft and gilded. Next stop the U.S. of A., she thought. And thought further—how could she ever go back?
In the village of Cap Ferret itself she stopped at a shop and bought some more cookies, water and two packs of cigarettes. She drove down to a small ferry port with a sturdy wooden jetty. There were a good few cars parked here and she reckoned one more Simca wouldn’t be noticed. She saw the tracks of a narrow-gauge railway and soon the little train duly appeared, arriving at the jetty, trundling tourists and bathers between the beaches and the ferry point. There was a lot of activity—perfect. She pulled into a gap between a Peugeot van and a Fiat 500. This would be her base until it was time to drive to Spain.
She sat in her car and smoked cigarettes and ate cookies until it grew dark. She urged herself to run through the various options that she thought she had available to her, but the arrival of night affected her mood and the hopelessness of her situation began to seem more and more overwhelming. Options. Plan B. Plan C. Should she go back to Paris, to Jacques? What about his crazy idea of a press conference? She couldn’t go through with that, she knew. Or maybe she should just turn herself in and take her chances. Or could she ask Troy to come and rescue her and take her back to England? She knew he would come if she asked him. But what about those men following her? And the men peering into her car at the airport? Who were they and what was their agenda? How far away were they? And what would they do if they ever found her?…
She stepped out of the Simca. The warmth of the day was disappearing and a cooler breeze was evident from the ocean side of the promontory. She could hear the heavy slap of water on the piles of the jetty as the tide came in and a thin, jaunty sound of music carried from a bar in the town. Suddenly, as she stood there, she realised that she had no idea what to do next. No idea where to go or who to turn to. Jacques? Troy?…Her brain wasn’t working. Maybe she should have listened to Talbot. But that was way too late now. If she could have gone back…She stopped herself. It had been a mistake to come to Cap Ferret, this dead-end promontory with no way out. She was at a dead end, that was it. And what did you do when you were at a dead end? An answer came to her suddenly and she thought about it. She acknowledged its rationale and with that acknowledgement came a sense of absolute calm. What she would do, in this instance, was entirely within her power and would solve every problem she faced. She could defy all the potential unhappy futures that fate had waiting in store for her.
She slipped back into the car and opened her grip. In her sponge bag she found all her pills—the tranquillisers, the sleeping pills, the diet pills—her Equanil, Seconal and Obetral. She emptied them into her lap and began to swallow them all, in small handfuls, taking big draughts of water to wash them down. When she’d finished, she clambered into the back seat, locked all the doors of the car and lay down, pulling her tartan rug around her. She settled there, blinking slowly in the darkness, contemplating this course of action that she had initiated and feeling, as she thought about it, an intense, overpowering relief. All her troubles would soon be over. It would just be like going to sleep, she told herself. And then, as she began to feel very strange, and she sensed her grip on consciousness begin to slip and slide, tilt and turn, she thought she heard hushed voices. Was she imagining them? Were the drugs making her hallucinate? But, no, she was sure there were men talking quietly, standing by her car. And then someone tried to open the door. Please leave me alone, she said out loud, leave me alone! And she pulled the rug over her head, shutting out the world and its agitations forever.
10
An ordinary Monday morning in high summer, Talbot thought, strolling along Great Marlborough Street towards YSK’s offices. Monday morning and the last day of principal photography on Emily Bracegirdle’s Extremely Useful Ladder to the Moon. Today they would film a weeping Ben inside the car with Emily’s dead body alongside him in the passenger seat, and then, once that was in the can, three cameras would be positioned to capture the one-time-only shot of the windscreen-less Mini
being catapulted off the cliff at Beachy Head. There was even a fourth camera on a boat offshore to record the impact as it landed in the sea.
Talbot supposed that he really should have been there but more urgent matters claimed his time this morning. If all went well—if all passed off as he hoped—then perhaps he might make it down to Beachy Head in time for the Mini’s launch out into the blue in the late afternoon. He paused at the door to the YSK building and lit a calming cigarette. The reverberations of the appalling debacle yesterday with Gary still rocked and disturbed him. Gary had walked out and had left him feeling—what? Vulnerable and shamefaced, was the answer, stupefied by his own idiocy and bothered by a persistent unease—not so much guilt, but self-reproach of the most severe and unforgiving sort. He wouldn’t quickly forget the expression on Gary’s face as he ripped up the £50 cheque. As rebukes went it was devastating, not to say adamantine. However, one of the consequences of the grotesque misunderstanding was that it had somehow sharpened his focus.
Later, as he sat in his gallery with his whisky after Gary had left, trying to calm down—looking at his portraits of his models, male and female, at their shadowed faces and the guileless, classic nudes—he rebuked and cursed himself for hours. He remembered how, once, some clever person—some screenwriter or film director he was talking to—had said to him that, as an adult, all the emotions you experienced were unconsciously measured against their adolescent equivalents—and found wanting. Desire, longing, hatred, revenge, love, shame, frustration, jealousy, yearning, and so on—all your adult emotions failed to equal or come close to the intensity of those emotions that you experienced as an adolescent. Which was why, the argument continued, adults were always searching for a repeat of that level of experience, that emotional truth, because they already had a touchstone, a template, that they remembered vividly. But they searched in vain, because the original experience—the vivid, heartfelt one—was always out of their reach, buried deep in their past, unrecoverable. And this was why they fucked up their lives. This vain search applied to both men and women, so this clever person had said, offering this argument as a defence of the adolescent spirit, much maligned for its selfishness, illogic, irritations, inadequacies and frustrations. In this displacement, in this unbridgeable disconnect between adolescence and adulthood, all our emotional, personal, sexual problems lay, so it was claimed.