by Jonathan Coe
‘I’m sorry?’ he said now, conscious that he had not been listening to Pascale as she addressed a direct question to him.
‘I said, are you a fan of this kind of film? Horror films. Fantasy films. I wondered if you felt an affinity with this particular genre.’
William considered his answer carefully. His concern, as always, was not to express any firmly held opinion of his own, but to make sure that he did not give offence, or provoke disagreement; and since he had not yet learned Pascale’s views on the subject, this was difficult.
‘I think that serious artistic statements,’ he said, pompously, ‘can be made within any kind of generic restrictions. It doesn’t do to be snobbish about these things. Horror films don’t tend to be taken seriously by critics but if you look at many of the entries at this festival, you’ll find that they are very finely crafted works of art – the works of real auteurs, real visionaries.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Pascale, smiling at him with a furrowed intensity he already found endearing. ‘And what film do you have to see this afternoon?’
William consulted his festival programme. ‘Mutant Autopsy 3,’ he said, and signalled to the waiter for the bill.
The 14th Annual Festival of Horror and Fantasy Cinema was based in a large, modern, impersonal hotel about two miles from the centre of town. Although it housed a massive cinema auditorium, which would often be filled to capacity even for the most unpromising-sounding films, William soon realized that the hub of the festival was not here but in the bar on the ground floor. This bar was open to members of the public, as well as to the film-makers and critics, so there was always a fair smattering of goths, slasher fans and gorehounds spread around the tables in a sea of black clothing and grey, bloodless complexions. But mainly it was a place where the festival insiders could exchange gossip and do deals. William soon got into the habit of going down there every evening at around half past seven, in the hope of seeing Claudia Remotti for a drink before dinner.
On the fourth night of the festival, just before leaving his room on this errand, William sat on his balcony and flicked idly through the programme to see what delights awaited the jury members during the rest of the week. He was getting tired of rapes, mutilations, ritual slayings, decapitations and chainsaw massacres. Apart from anything else, as the only composer on the jury he was supposed to be looking out for a potential winner of the best-soundtrack award, and had been finding it hard to concentrate on the music that tended to accompany such scenes. He was ready, now, to see something a little more original, more sophisticated.
He did not hold out much hope for tomorrow’s offering, a Spanish movie billed as a ‘hilarious necrophiliac comedy’ called One Corpse at a Time, Please!; nor for the American film they would be seeing the day after that, Vampire Brainsuckers Get Naked. The last entry in the festival, however, looked marginally more interesting. It was a German film, a supernatural love story involving ghosts and out-of-body experiences, the title of which translated as The Haunted Heart. He looked down the credits to see who had written the music, and found a name that he didn’t recognize. Then he looked at the other credits and suddenly saw, in a spasm of wild astonishment, a name that he knew only too well.
Gertrud. Gertrud Keller. It was her screenplay. She had written this film.
William laid the programme aside, not quite sure how to digest this information. Well, she had made it, anyway – she had written something for the movies, just as she always said that she would. That was a cheering thought, wasn’t it?
He realized at once that he needed a drink.
Fortune favoured him, on this occasion, and upon entering the bar the first person he saw was Claudia, sitting at a corner table and sipping champagne, with no more serious rival for his attentions than Michel, the festival administrator. Michel was a small, dapper man, his hair slicked neatly into place, his body giving off a permanent and overpowering aroma of sweet cologne. He was pleased to see William, having some important information to convey to all of the jury members.
‘Tomorrow’s film is from Spain,’ he said, ‘and as you will be aware from the programme, it is being shown in its V.O. format, or “Version Originale”. This means that the print will be in the Spanish language, with French subtitles. So, naturally, we have had to make an arrangement for our non-French-speaking judges.’
This arrangement, it transpired, involved assigning to each of the judges their own personal translator, who would sit beside them in the dark and whisper a rough-and-ready English version of the French subtitles into their ears, while trying not to disturb the members of the paying public seated throughout the rest of the auditorium. It didn’t sound the most satisfactory solution, and Claudia was, as usual, full of complaints as soon as Michel had left.
‘Really,’ she said, ‘this festival is the most badly organized I have ever attended. I don’t think I have ever been treated like this in my life. They put us up in this dreadful hotel, and make us watch these terrible movies all day. The food is shocking, quite shocking. And now they are even going to show us these crappy movies in a language we don’t understand!’
William let her talk on, while his thoughts roamed elsewhere – heading back, against his will, to the news he had just learned from the festival programme, and all the painful recollections that came in its wake. Recently, he had given as little thought as possible to his trip to Berlin, four years ago, when he had been asked to write the incidental music for a new play by a then-unknown dramatist called Gertrud Keller. Almost at once he had struck up an intense, intimate friendship with her, and it continued, by letter and phone, for several months after William’s return to England. He had been so flattered by her attentions, his self-esteem so enhanced by the thought that this beautiful, stimulating and intelligent woman should take an interest in him, that he completely failed to see where the relationship was heading: failed to notice that he had allowed Gertrud – even encouraged her – to fall in love with him. By the time that he did notice, it was too late. Their final letters crossed in the post: his suggesting that they should break off contact, hers announcing that she had left her husband, Jakob, and was ready to start a new life with him either in Germany or England. William had not replied; and they had not seen, spoken or written to each other since.
But supposing – the possibility suddenly exploded in his mind, like a flash insert popping up on screen – supposing Gertrud was going to be attending the festival herself? It was normal for the stars, the director or other members of the production team to be invited when they had a film in competition. Had Michel asked her to come? William would have to find out, immediately. Michel had muttered something about going to the festival office. He would follow him there. There was no time to lose.
‘William!’ Claudia called after him, baffled, as he abandoned her in mid-flow, leaving his glass of champagne almost untouched. But he didn’t seem to hear.
Michel proved elusive. William was unable to track him down until the next morning, when they met in the lobby of the hotel shortly before the screening of One Corpse at a Time, Please! Michel was at pains to assure him – rather impatiently – that Gertrud Keller would not be attending the festival, and swiftly moved on to the more pressing business of introducing him to Henri – the man who would be working as his personal translator.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said William.
‘What ho, old chap,’ said Henri. ‘Ripping weather we’re having today, what?’
Henri, it seemed, was a local translator who was busily engaged upon an as yet unpublished French edition of the complete works of P. G. Wodehouse. While everyone else at the festival sported shorts, plimsolls and brightly coloured T-shirts, he was wearing a three-piece, double-breasted tweed suit and was smoking a shockingly pungent meerschaum pipe. He shook William warmly by the hand and said, ‘Tell me, old bean, what news from Blighty?’ in an accent that would once have guaranteed him a lifetime’s employment on the BBC Home Service.
<
br /> Today’s film turned out to be a black comedy in the amoral, nihilistic mould popularized by Quentin Tarantino and his followers, and concerned a gang of necrophiliac bank robbers with a penchant not simply for killing their victims but for having sex with them afterwards. Most of the dialogue was not really germane to the plot at all, but consisted of cynical wisecracks traded by the characters while they indulged absent-mindedly in the most grotesque and appalling acts of violence. During an early scene, for instance, there was an argument over the distribution of some loot, prompting one of the crooks to shove a pistol into his colleague’s mouth and snarl a few words in rasping Spanish. William could catch little of what he was saying even from the French subtitles, and it was left to Henri to furnish him with an adequate translation.
‘The gentleman with the scar,’ he explained, in his plummy English drawl, ‘says, “Suck on this, you tight-arsed motherfucker.” Then he adds, “I don’t know how the fuck you got involved in this shit-brained scheme, but the closest you’re ever going to get to that fucking money is when I shove it up your bony fucking arse.” ’ He sighed at the infelicities of this version. ‘I’m giving you the merest gist of it, I’m afraid. Do forgive me, old fellow. It’s a jolly poor show on my part.’
As the week went by, William became more and more aware of the presence of Pascale. She had developed an unerring knack for turning up at his elbow when he was least expecting it: at the bar, at the hotel’s buffet lunches, on his daily promenades through the town and along the seafront. She told him about a small, little-visited beach she had discovered, ten minutes’ walk from the hotel along a rocky cliff path, and for the last three mornings they had gone there together for a swim before breakfast. He liked her, there was no denying that. He liked her solemn eyes and her almost comical earnestness; he liked (of course) the fact that she considered him famous, and was so clearly in awe of him; he liked her doleful eyebrows and thick black hair; and he liked her body, or what he had seen of it on their swimming trips. But it was an odd feature of their blossoming friendship that they talked so little about their lives back home. Once or twice Pascale would bring up the subject of her feckless boyfriend in Paris, who had been seeing her for more than five years but still refused to move into her apartment; yet William did not return these confidences. He never once mentioned Alice’s name – or, for that matter, ever referred to himself in anything but the first-person singular. After all, it would be a mistake to let himself get too close to Pascale; to offer her anything like the intimacy that had proved so disastrous when he had shared it with Gertrud Keller. That, at any rate, was how he justified his reticence to himself.
On Thursday night, the penultimate night of the festival, someone suggested dinner away from the hotel, at a small restaurant down by the marina, and William found himself joining a party which also included Henri, Pascale and Claudia Remotti. Claudia was accompanied, on this occasion, by Stephen Manners, the young American star of Vampire Brainsuckers Get Naked – a film which, earlier that day, had been greeted with a standing ovation by the largely teenage audience. Stephen was muscular and over-tanned, with a mane of shoulder-length blond hair which gave him something of the look of a high-class male stripper. Buoyed up by the success of his film, he proved to be noisy, cheerful company, and his exhilaration soon infected the other diners. But a slight pall was cast over the meal when Henri hastily excused himself, just before dessert, and disappeared off to the toilets clutching his stomach. He had been the only person to order moules, and when he returned to the table his face was pale and sweaty.
‘Frightfully sorry,’ he explained. ‘This is a blasted nuisance, but I’m having a spot of gyp with the old tummy, wouldn’t you know. I think I’d better be popping off to bed – best place for me, eh what? Toodle-pip, old beans.’
Not long after he’d gone, Stephen also looked at his watch and started to yawn ostentatiously.
‘Press conference first thing in the morning,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’d better be turning in.’
‘Oh, is that the time?’ said Claudia. ‘I didn’t realize it was so late already.’
It was half past nine.
‘I’ll walk you back to the hotel if you like,’ said Stephen.
‘Thank you,’ said Claudia; whereupon they both rose to their feet with startling abruptness, said a cursory ‘Goodnight’ and promptly set off together at a resolute pace, the white of his shirt and the cream of her dress finally blurring into one bobbing dot of light, far in the distance.
‘Hmm,’ said William, once they had gone.
‘Not exactly subtle,’ Pascale agreed.
William tried to meet her eyes for a few seconds, then looked away. He found their steadiness unnerving.
‘And then there were two,’ he murmured, half to himself.
The night was alive with a delicate soundtrack of creaks and tinkles from the huddle of yachts moored at the marina, while the ocean itself lapped gently at the seaboard only a few yards from their table. Otherwise, all was quiet.
‘Perhaps we should be getting back as well,’ said William. But Stephen and Claudia had left them with a full bottle of white wine, and they could not let it go to waste.
It was almost midnight when they returned to the hotel, and curious things appeared to have happened along the way. There must have come a point when they stopped walking separately, and linked arms, leaning heavily into each other. And there must have come another point, shortly afterwards, when it seemed like a good idea to kiss, open-mouthed and at some length, beneath the whispering leaves of a restless palm tree. Once again, William could not have said when either of these things happened, with any certainty.
His mind fuzzy with alcohol, he could scarcely remember how they skirted the hotel bar – still throbbing with activity at this hour – and rode up to the third floor together in the glass-bottomed lift. His next moment of clarity came inside his room, when he realized that he was sitting on the bed and Pascale was kneeling in front of him, between his legs, her body pressed tightly against his. She had taken off her blouse and was naked from the waist up.
‘I’m glad,’ she was saying. ‘I’m glad we decided not to do it that way.’
William frowned, even as he caressed the smoothness of her back.
‘What way?’
‘Like Stephen and Claudia. Going to bed together the moment they met. This way is better.’ She kissed him tenderly. ‘I can’t separate sex from emotion. Can you?’
‘You mean –’ he drew away from her, very slightly ‘– you mean that you have to be in love with someone, before you can sleep with them?’
‘Maybe not in love …’ She kissed him again, and reached her hands beneath his T-shirt. ‘But there has to be trust. Don’t you agree?’
Panic – a sudden sense of dread – began to seize him.
‘Pascale, have you –?’ He took hold of her arms and stilled their motion. ‘Why … Why haven’t you asked anything about me, all week? About my … home life?’
She looked at him gravely now, confusion in her eyes.
‘Because – well, because from the way you’ve been behaving, it’s obvious that … there’s nothing to say.’
The silence between them, at this point, seemed endless, and immense.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ Pascale said at last, louder now, and with a catch in her voice.
‘I’m married,’ William told her. ‘I’m married and I have a child.’
He buried his face in his hands, partly out of remorse, partly to shield her now-shameful nudity from his gaze. He sat there for a minute or more, not moving, not saying anything; and in that time, he heard her slip on her clothes, and go.
As it turned out, he did not have to wait long before seeing Pascale again. At the entrance to the cinema the next morning Michel was looking out for him, and Pascale was standing by his side. They both welcomed him with a smile: hers enigmatic, his pleased and self-congratulatory.
‘We had quite a little crisi
s this morning,’ Michel explained, ‘when your translator phoned to say that he was sick in bed with food poisoning, and would not be able to attend the screening of today’s film. But as it turns out, this delightful young lady – who tells me that you are already well acquainted – has kindly volunteered to step into the breach.’
‘That’s very good of her,’ said William, and shook the hand that Pascale, rather dumbfoundingly, held out to him.
They took their seats together in the half-empty auditorium: it seemed that if anything could keep the festival’s horror enthusiasts at bay, it was the prospect of a romantic German ghost story, shown in its original language, shot partly in black and white and targeted firmly at an art-house audience. William was disappointed, and hoped that this didn’t provide an omen for the commercial fortunes of Gertrud’s first venture into the cinema.
Then the lights went down, and the film began.
The following ninety minutes were among the strangest and most disconcerting of William’s life.
The Haunted Heart told the story of a love triangle. The story of a married couple – both working in the theatre – who enjoy a quarrelsome but stable home life, until one day, a young painter encounters the woman in a café, and becomes her lover. Their affair, which consumes the woman entirely, comes to an end only when the painter dies in a boating accident while on holiday with his own wife and daughter. After a period of intense, almost unbearable mourning, the woman returns to her forgiving husband; and finally, having lived through months of terrible distress, she discovers that she is, at heart, relieved that her lover is gone. The affair had brought much unhappiness in its wake, and she now realizes that she is married to a kind and understanding man. All is well, until one day the painter’s ghost appears at her home, and it dawns on her that, even now, the relationship is not quite over …
