Super-Cannes. Ali Smith

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       3 The Brainstorm

      A GIANT CYCAD threw its yellow fronds across the tiled pathway to a lacquered front door, past a chromium statue of a leaping dolphin. Beyond the bougainvillaea that climbed the perimeter wall I could see the streamlined balconies and scalloped roof of a large art-deco villa, its powder-blue awnings like reefed sails. The ocean-liner windows and porthole skylights seemed to open onto the 1930s, a vanished world of Cole Porter and beach pyjamas, morphine lesbians and the swagger portraits of Tamara de Lempicka. The entire structure had recently been repainted, and a phosphor in the white pigment gave its surface an almost luminescent finish, as if this elegant villa was an astronomical instrument that set the secret time of Eden-Olympia.

      Even Jane was impressed, smoothing the travel creases from her trousers when we stepped from the dusty Jaguar. The house was silent, but somewhere in the garden was a swimming pool filled with unsettled water. Reflections from its disturbed surface seemed to bruise the smooth walls of the house. The light drummed against Jane’s sunglasses, giving her the edgy and vulnerable look of a studio visitor who had strayed into the wrong film set. Almost without thinking, Penrose stepped forward, took the glasses from Jane’s face and placed them firmly in her hands.

      A concrete apron sloped from the road to the aluminium shutters of a three-car garage. Parked on the ramp was an olive-green Range Rover of the Eden-Olympia security force. A uniformed guard leaned against the driver’s door, a slim, light-skinned black with refined and almost east African features, a narrow nose and steep forehead. He picked the dust from the buttons of his mobile phone with a pocket knife, and watched without comment as we surveyed the house.

      Penrose introduced us, his back to the guard, speaking over his shoulder like a district commissioner with a village headman.

      ‘Jane, this is Frank Halder. He’ll be within radio call whenever you need him. Frank, help Dr Sinclair with her luggage …’

      The guard was about to step into his Range Rover. When he opened the door I noticed a copy of Tender is the Night on the passenger seat. He avoided my eyes, but his manner was cool and self-possessed as he turned to face the psychiatrist.

      ‘Dr Penrose? I’m due in at the bureau. Mr Nagamatzu needs me to drive him to Nice airport.’

      ‘Frank …’ Penrose held his fingernails up to the sun and examined the ragged crescents. ‘Mr Nagamatzu can wait for five minutes.’

      ‘Five minutes?’ Halder seemed baffled by the notion, as if Penrose had suggested that he wait for five hours, or five years. ‘Security, doctor, it’s like a Swiss watch. Everything’s laid down in the machinery. It’s high-class time, you can’t just stop the system when you feel like it.’

      ‘I know, Frank. And the human mind is like this wonderful old Jaguar, as I keep trying to explain. Mr Sinclair is still convalescing from a serious accident. And we can’t have Dr Jane too tired to deal with her important patients.’

      ‘Dr Penrose …’ Jane was trying to unlock the Jaguar’s boot, hiding her embarrassment over this trivial dispute. ‘I’m strong enough to carry my own suitcases. And Paul’s.’

      ‘No. Frank is keen to help.’ Penrose raised a hand to silence Jane. He sauntered over to Halder, flexing his shoulders inside his linen jacket and squaring up to the guard like a boxer at a weigh-in. ‘Besides, Mr Sinclair is a pilot.’

      ‘A pilot?’ Halder ran his eyes over me, pinching his sharp nostrils as if tuning out the sweat of travel that clung to my stale shirt. ‘Gliders?’

      ‘Powered aircraft. I flew with the RAF. Back in England I have an old Harvard.’

      ‘Well, a pilot …’ Halder took the car keys from Jane and opened the boot. ‘That could be another story.’

      We left Halder to carry the suitcases and set off towards the house. Penrose unlocked a wrought-iron gate and we stepped into the silent garden, following a pathway that led to the sun lounge.

      ‘Decent of him,’ I commented to Penrose. ‘Is humping luggage one of his duties?’

      ‘Definitely not. He could report me if he wanted to.’ Enjoying his small triumph, Penrose said to Jane: ‘I like to stir things up, keep the adrenalin flowing. The more they hate you, the more they stay on their toes.’

      Jane looked back at Halder, who was steering the suitcases past the gate. ‘I don’t think he does hate you. He seems rather intelligent.’

      ‘You’re right. Halder is far too superior to hate anyone. Don’t let that mislead you.’

      A spacious garden lay beside the house, furnished with a tennis court, rose pergola and swimming pool. A suite of beach chairs sat by the disturbed water, damp cushions steaming in the sun. I wondered if Halder, tired of waiting for us, had stripped off for a quick dip. Then I noticed a red beach ball on the diving board, the last water dripping from its plastic skin. Suddenly I imagined the moody young guard roaming like a baseline tennis player along the edge of the pool, hurling the ball at the surface and catching it as it rebounded from the far side, driving the water into a state of panic.

      Penrose and Jane walked on ahead of me, and by the time I reached the sun lounge Halder had overtaken me. He moved aside as I climbed the steps.

      ‘Thanks for the cases,’ I told him. ‘I couldn’t have managed them.’

      He paused to stare at me in his appraising way, neither sympathetic nor hostile. ‘It’s my job, Mr Sinclair.’

      ‘It’s not your job – but thanks. I had a small flying accident.’

      ‘You broke your knees. That’s tough.’ He spoke with an American accent, but one learned in Europe, perhaps working as a security guard for a local subsidiary of Mobil or Exxon. ‘You have a commercial licence?’

      ‘Private. Or did have, until they took it away from me. I publish aviation books.’

      ‘Now you’ll have time to write one yourself. Some people might envy you.’

      He stood with his back to the pool, the trembling light reflected in the beads of water on the holster of his pistol. He was strong but light-footed, with the lithe step of a professional dancer, a tango specialist who read Scott Fitzgerald and took out his frustrations on swimming pools. For a moment I saw a strange image of him washing his gun in the pool, rinsing away David Greenwood’s blood.

      ‘Keep flying speed …’ He saluted and strode away. As he passed the pool he leaned over and spat into the water.

      We sat on the terrace beneath the awning, listening to the gentle flap of canvas and the swish of lawn sprinklers from nearby gardens. Far below were the streets of Cannes, dominated by the twin domes of the Carlton Hotel, a nexus of noise and traffic that crowded the beach. The sun had moved beyond La Napoule and now lit the porphyry rocks of the Esterel, exposing valleys filled with lavender dust like the flats of a forgotten stage production. To СКАЧАТЬ