Fascination: Stories

  ‘Where are you going?’ the painter asked. He gestured at the flat, baking landscape inland. In the enormous sky a fleet of huge, burly white clouds moved slowly along, northwards, pushed by a warm southern breeze. A heavy flight of crows crossed the stubble field beside them. ‘It’s hot out there,’ the painter said.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere in particular,’ Oliver said, feeling unfamiliar tears sting his eyes.

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely.’

  ‘Come home with me,’ the painter said. ‘Have a cold drink.’

  The painter showed Oliver into his studio: it was a large, tidy room with a Persian rug hanging on the wall. On an easel was a sizeable painting of a blue bird shape against a slate-grey sky. On tables and on the floor were rows of cleaned brushes laid on palettes, and others stuffed into ceramic pots. Small tables held neat rows of tubes of oil paint and on these tables were jars of flowers, many of them dried. Oliver was impressed.

  ‘You must have hundreds of brushes,’ he said. ‘Thousands.’

  ‘You may be right,’ said the painter, smiling, placing his small canvas on an empty easel and stepping back to contemplate it. Oliver circled round to stare at it, glancing at the picture of the bird and thinking that he, Oliver Feverall, could paint a better-looking bird than that.

  The small canvas looked like a sodden field beneath winter skies, three uneven stripes of brown, green and grey, the paint thickly smeared, but quite dry.

  ‘I’m having real problems,’ the painter said. ‘I don’t know what to do. I did one like this before and put a plough in it, and it seemed to work.’

  ‘What about a man?’

  ‘No. I don’t want people in these pictures.’

  ‘What about some crows?’

  ‘It’s an idea.’

  As they were going outside to the terrace to have their cold drinks, Oliver heard a woman’s voice call out ‘Georges? Are you back?’ The painter excused himself and went upstairs, returning a minute later.

  ‘It’s my wife,’ he said. ‘She thinks she’s getting flu.’

  They sat outside at a metal table under a small canvas awning which provided a neat square of shade and sipped at their cold drinks, fetched for them by a plump, smiley housekeeper. Oliver was introduced as ‘Monsieur Oliver, my English friend,’ and his hand was shaken. The painter drank mineral water, Oliver an Orangina, and they both sat there silently for a while in the relentless afternoon heat, staring out at the big, solid clouds steaming towards them, northwards. Oliver thought that the painter had a sad face and noticed how the lines that ran from his nose to his face were particularly marked, casting, even in this shade, dark sickle shadows.

  ‘It’s an interesting idea that,’ the painter said, ‘crows.’ He turned to Oliver and continued, ‘So, when’s your birthday?’

  ‘Next week. Wednesday.’

  ‘Come by. We’ll have another drink. I’ll drink your health. No, I mean it, if you’ve nothing better to do.’

  Oliver thanked him. Wednesday was usually a Lucien day – Wednesday and Friday.

  They were silent again for a while, together.

  ‘Do you know what a “love affair” is?’ Oliver asked.

  ‘Yes,’ the painter said, ‘I certainly do.’

  ‘Do you think that if you’re married you should have a love affair with someone else?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the painter said.

  ‘Isn’t it wrong?’

  ‘It depends.’ The painter sipped at his mineral water. He held up his glass as if to look at the sky through it. ‘Sometimes water is the best drink in the world, isn’t it?’

  He walked Oliver to the road and watched him as he crouched to undo the padlock on the chain that Oliver had threaded through the rear wheel as an anti-theft device.

  ‘Do you think someone will steal your bike?’ the painter asked.

  ‘You can’t be too careful. In London I’ve had three bikes stolen.’

  ‘But this is Varengeville, not London. Still it is a splendid machine, isn’t it, wonderfully built.’

  ‘I wish it had drop handlebars,’ Oliver said. ‘I think it looks a bit old-fashioned.’ He kicked up the stand with his left shoe. ‘I’d better get home,’ he said, ‘my mother will be waiting.’

  ‘See you on Wednesday,’ the painter said.

  On his birthday his mother gave Oliver a very crumpled ten-pound note and promised him a proper treat when they returned home. Oliver said he was going to see a friend in Varengeville and set off up the drive a good half hour before Lucien was due.

  The housekeeper was watering some pots of geraniums by the front door as Oliver approached.

  ‘He’s not here,’ she said. ‘They had to go back to Paris yesterday. Madame has bronchitis, we think.’

  Oliver pursed his lips and pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. Damn, he thought, bloody damn. He looked about him, hands on his hips, wondering resentfully what he would do for the rest of the day – maybe he should just go to the beach.

  ‘He’s left a present for you,’ the housekeeper said, disappearing back into the house and re-emerging with a long, thin brown paper parcel. ‘He was very insistent you should have this.’

  Oliver sat on the beach below the small cliff and took his shoes and socks off. He looked at his watch – he’d better stay here for a couple of hours at least, to allow Lucien time to leave. It was annoying that the painter had been obliged to go to Paris – he had been looking forward to the visit, it would have solved the problem of the day.

  Oliver allowed himself an audible sigh and looked about him, idly. A stout, dark girl in a yellow bikini sunbathed some feet away, her small Yorkshire terrier at her side huddling under a bunched towel for shade. Further along a group of kids sat in a circle around a transistor radio. Toddlers studiously dug in the wet sand at the gentle surf’s edge. Oliver thought about his birthday – what could he get for ten pounds?… Maybe Dad will call this evening. He’s bound to give me ten pounds too, maybe more… He mentally totalled all the potential fiscal gifts that he might receive from his assorted relatives and came up with a satisfyingly large figure. Not such a bad birthday after all, he thought, and unwrapped the painter’s present.

  It was the wet fields painting, Oliver was not too surprised to discover – and just what was he supposed to do with it, he wondered? It wasn’t particularly well painted, Oliver thought, and also the painter himself had seemed dissatisfied with it. He felt a slight surge of irritation that the painter had given him a picture that even he had been unable to finish properly. What it needed was something else in it, not just fields and sky. Maybe, Oliver thought, he should paint his bike in one of the corners, have it leaning over on its stand…

  The sunbathing girl in the bikini turned over suddenly and rolled on to her small dog, which gave an anguished yelp of pain and surprise. No, Oliver thought, inspired, if he painted the sky blue then the field would look like a beach. Then he could paint the girl lying on the beach with her yellow bikini and her little dog. And then the painting would at least be finished – at least it would be about something. Oliver stared at the plump girl as she fussed and petted her discomfited dog. He found himself grinning, felt the laugh brim in his throat, and quickly covered his mouth with his hand in case she should see.

  Notebook No. 9

  [It had become his habit over the years, whenever he lunched alone, to take a small notebook with him, into which he jotted down his random thoughts and observations, preferring to disguise his solitariness by writing, rather than reading.]

  No crab-cakes today, so I settled with bad grace for a pseudo-salade niçoise (no potatoes). This restaurant is renowned for its crab-cakes – this is why I and most of its clientèle come here – so why not supply crab-cakes on a daily basis? Just seen Slang – interesting thriller, because it all takes place during the course of one night. A clear hommage – which is to say rip-off – to Raupp’s Death Valley but wi
thout its textures, its love of character. Defects: sudden shifts of mood from whimsy to hardboiled; silly plot contrivances (the lap-dancing scenes, the language school); fantastic coincidences – always a sign of waning inspiration. Raupp does this but it sort of works with him. Finally the film is just not true – and as Pierre-Henri Duprez, I think, once said somewhere, you can’t hide anything from an audience. (Which is wrong, actually: look at the garbage in our cinemas that is avidly, unreflectingly, credulously consumed.)

  I think Tanja would hate Slang. Positively loathe it.

  I spotted bad looping, boom-mike shadow and a clumsily inserted repeat shot. I guess all directors have this tic – we can never be simple cinéphiles.

  The lead girl, Michaela Wall, is beguiling (a blonder, rangier Tanja). Ultimately, any genre film is only as good as its characterization.

  There is a woman sitting opposite me who smoked a cigarette in about ninety seconds: small puffs in sequences of three, then a beat, then another three quick small puffs. She didn’t seem to inhale. One wonders what pleasure she derives from smoking.

  Behind her, a mother and daughter with two screaming kids. The din! Quite middle-class too, judging by their accents. They just let the children wail, really – everyone in the café very pissed-off but not saying anything in true English fashion.

  Tanja is forty-three minutes late.

  Fascinating-looking girl serving in the Syndicate today. Russian? East-European certainly. Long ballet-dancer’s back. Moley – mole on her cheek, moles on her neck. She’s tall with a thin, patrician face, hair pulled back in a tight bun. What’s she doing here? What’s her story, her parcours? There’s a sustained, slightly contemptuous expression on her face as she goes about her business serving drinks, clearing tables.

  Just back from lunch at the Garrick with Leo Winteringham. Everyone in the place seemed to be over fifty, male – naturally – overweight, raddled-looking. Cigars and booze: the slightly louche end of the British establishment. Leo W. volunteered to fund any film I cared to direct – he must have made me that offer a dozen times, now. Strange figure, Leo: irreducibly American despite all his years in England. Lean, saurian, brusque – a curious player in this privileged English world (he was greeted warmly by everyone) admitted only because he has money.

  As we were gossiping about the business (who’s in, who’s out, who’s hot, who’s cold) he mentioned that Tanja Baiocchi had left her husband. I managed to hide my massive shock and said that I didn’t know she was married. Wasn’t she in your last film, he asked? I said she was but there had never been any talk of a husband. Well, perhaps, not husband, he said – boyfriend, then, that French director, Duprez. Oh, I said, I know all about that, oh yes, and could confirm that the rupture, entre nous, was true – absolute and final.

  3.30. The bar at the Syndicate is quiet but the people in it are still drinking steadily, as if reluctant to let the afternoon and the afternoon cafard begin. I should call Janet and see how the invitations are going for the cast and crew screening and get her to book me into the hotel in New York.

  Drink: I had a glass of champagne before I went to the Garrick, a glass of white wine in the bar, two glasses w/wine at lunch and a port (Leo doesn’t drink) and am now on my second glass of white wine at the Syndicate: effectively a bottle of wine. More than a bottle of wine: I must stop now. I never drink nearly as much when I’m with Tanja.

  New York. Carlyle Hotel. Sitting here having my pre-pre-prandial drink (a bloody mary) – a new bad habit which is explained by the fact that I am just a few hours away from the screening of The Sleep Thief. I feel unusually apprehensive (this is my ninth film, for God’s sake) and I know why: I’m expecting too much. Because I know the worth and merit of the film I’m expecting it to experience no problems – Cannes, a US distributor, a prize or two: no worries. I should just be patient – look at the slow burn of appreciation that delivered the success of Escapade. The film is finished, it is good work, we had fun, what more can you ask? (And I met Tanja, of course.) So let’s see how the dice roll. Nothing may come of this screening – we may have to wait until Cannes, or even the UK release – we may have to wait longer, until Venice or Berlin.

  I wish Tanja were arriving today so she could be here for the screening. Why does she have to come tomorrow?

  Vague worries about the quality of the print, about the projector, about the sound level. But what can I do?

  Sitting in F.O.O.D. on Lexington. Tanja has postponed her visit – another three days to wait. It would have been good if she’d made the screening (thin crowd – disappointing – but it seemed to go down all right. No offers yet. The print was appalling).

  Two very groomed women sit beside me, talking to each other, with gratifying volume and clarity. Clearly they don’t know each other very well.

  ‘Where do you live?’ one asks.

  ‘Mexico.’

  ‘Even further away than me – Vermont.’ Pause.

  ‘Where in Mexico?’

  ‘San Miguel. It’s very beautiful.’

  ‘Oh, there are a lot of expatriates, there.’

  ‘There are a few of us.’

  ‘I hear you can get a very cheap face-lift.’

  ‘Cheap face-lifts, cheap domestic staff. It has its advantages.’

  Men have more boring conversations than women, I find, speaking as a professional eavesdropper. Tanja was once in a movie shot in Mexico. She met Duprez there. I think.

  ‘You may not have a drinking problem but I have a problem with your drinking.’ Overheard in Bemelmans.

  Bizarre sight in Going Loco (East Village). A young mother (twenty-one? twenty-two?), suckling her child in the corner of the café, receives a call on her cell-phone. She answers it, rises to her feet and walks to the window of the café chatting on the phone, the baby still at her breast. The unconcern, the utter absence of pudeur was entirely admirable – made me feel old, crabbed and confined by my upbringing and the received wisdom of my attitudes and values – as hard to remove as a tattoo. I like the atmosphere in this place – rackety, worldly – I am eating a pungent, garlicky gazpacho at the bar. Very smoky. Tanja flies in tomorrow.

  4.00 p.m. Bemelmans. Drinking beer and eating cashew nuts. The place is full of older people: that generation of New Yorkers who like a cocktail mid-afternoon. There is a man beside me who has just ordered a second dry martini.

  I lunched with Tanja. I went to her suite in the Plaza and to my astonishment there was a young boy there, about six or seven. ‘This is Pascal,’ she said as if his presence were the most natural thing in the world. Then Pascal said something to her in French and referred to her as ‘Maman’. What on earth does he mean by that? I asked. He’s my son, she said, looking at me as if I were a crazy fool, that’s what he calls me. A nanny came to take him away but I had lost my appetite. During lunch I managed to ask if Duprez was the father and Tanja reassured me he wasn’t. Throughout our eight weeks of filming together on The Sleep Thief she never once referred to Pascal. Is this normal for a mother? Was she hiding the fact from me in case it interfered with our affair? Maybe she thought I knew and because I never brought his name up she felt it more discreet to do the same? She’s coming to the hotel tonight once the boy has been put to bed.

  Curious: I seem only to drink beer in France or the US. Never touch a drop in England.

  In the pub, The Duke of Kent, Monday lunch. No food in the flat so I came here. An empty fridge in an empty apartment – how depressing is that? I was about to call Janet and have her order in a take-away when I remembered she was working on another film in Malta. Janet and my two assistants, gone. A film director, when a film is finally over, has to return to the unfamiliar state of actually doing mundane things for himself – like going to the bank, fetching clothes from the dry-cleaners, buying food and provisions. Strange to be self-reliant again, strange to be back in London after New York. Missing Tanja desperately, achingly – she flew to L.A. to meet her agent. She promised she would be in Ca
nnes… I’m obsessed by her nervous, mobile beauty. She’s never still – agitée, they would call her in France.

  Opposite me three fat guys – heavy, enormous men. Eating pork sausage and mash, brown bread and butter. Two with pints of lager on the go, plus a bottle of red wine on the table between the three of them. I must start thinking about my next film, but I can’t let The Sleep Thief go. While I still dream about Tanja all the time – the film, our film, lives on, as if we’re playing out the lost, last reel. They’ve just ordered puddings and more beer. I try to imagine myself as Pascal’s step-father: I have to come to terms with the fact that there would be three of us in any future arrangement. Perhaps we could find him a place in a boarding school. Benji and Max went away at his age and seemed perfectly happy all those years at Farnham Hall – which reminds me: where are they now? What’re they doing? My salmon-caesar has arrived: scant sign of any salmon.

  Café Méridien, Cannes. I ate here when I first came to Cannes with Two-and-a-Half Grand. I remember this little bistro so well, remember the surging, irrepressible confidence of my mood – my first film and selected for ‘Un Certain Regard’ – nothing could stop me. I remember walking past this place one early morning and pausing to watch as the patron hosed down the pavement and began setting out the tables. I saw a saturnine man performing the very same routine this morning and had the odd sensation of being aware that all those years ago I had stood on this exact spot and watched the same ritual – that here one’s life had, for once, come a genuine full circle. Flash back: I was twenty-nine years old. Benji was two, Max was on the way… To think Annie and I were happy then…

  Tanja called from Prague, where she’s filming. They’re overrunning, she doesn’t think she can make the screening. It’s in her fucking contract, for Christ’s sake: she has to be released for publicity. I have to call the studio: a screening of The Sleep Thief at the Cannes Film Festival and no Tanja Baiocchi – what’s that going to look like? What signal will it send?