We join the motorway at Chiswick. My iPad lies. All I can see are three lines of traffic inching forward. It’s too late to look for a diversion. We crawl up the feeder lane and barge our way into stalling traffic. My mum, who has an acute instinct for impending disaster, is already convinced that we’ve missed the plane.
‘The Tube,’ she says. ‘Drop me at a station.’
Easier said than done. My knowledge of exits on the M4 is less than perfect but I’ve a feeling I can get off at the next junction and try and find the Piccadilly line at South Ealing. Mum is only too game to take on Heathrow alone but I use the airport a lot and I know the kind of shortcuts that might still get her on to the plane.
The traffic has come to a complete halt. Tension has a way of killing conversation and this is the perfect example. I try and find something on the radio. Sarah Dunant interviewing Rosamunde Pilcher. Steve Wright in the Afternoon. Simon Rattle conducting Poulenc. Anything. My mother isn’t fooled.
‘We should have gone straight to the nearest Tube. This is crazy.’
I can only agree. Mile after mile of traffic seized solid? Mad. All that filth pumping into God’s good air? Fou. The most expensive city on earth moving at less than the speed of a horse and cart? Incroyable. I tell myself to relax, to ignore the growing pressure in my head, to concentrate on that lonely speck of brilliance in the deepness of space. Cassini, I say softly. Cassini.
Like a one-word prayer, it seems to work. Very slowly, stop-start, the traffic is on the move again. By now, my mother has become fixated by the digital clock. She’s winding backwards from the moment when they close the departure gate. She wants to know how often the trains run on the Piccadilly line.
‘All the time,’ I say. ‘One every minute.’
She knows I’m lying but she also knows I’m doing my best. And more than that, she’s begun to blame herself for putting me in this situation. Her hand settles briefly on my arm.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says simply.
Minutes later, we’re off the motorway and heading north. South Ealing station is less than a mile but there’s no parking.
‘How’s the time?’ I ask her.
‘Pas de problème.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ I steal a glance at the clock. Nearly quarter to five already. This is going to be very tight.
I wait for a break in the oncoming traffic and haul my little car into a U-turn. I can’t see a kerb without double yellow lines but this isn’t the moment to lose one’s nerve. I park outside a florist, grab my mother’s heavier bag, and hurry her across the road. The driver of a Polish truck brakes in time to avoid killing us both. Glancing back, I catch him crossing himself.
‘That was God’s doing,’ I tell my mum. ‘Three more Hail Marys and we might make it.’
We do. Just. At Terminal Two, I have a second and a half to plant a kiss on my mum’s cheek and tell her I love her before she’s swallowed by the queue for Departures.
Exhausted, I find a bar. I haven’t popped a Percocet for a couple of days now and I tell myself I’ve earned a drink. My head is thumping but I put that down to stress. When the barman slides into view I wonder what to order. Memories of Saucy tempt me to ask for a margarita but there’s something slightly shameful about a lone woman drinking cocktails at half past five so I settle for a glass of San Miguel and find myself a table with a view out across the concourse. Moments later, I feel a pressure on my shoulder and look up to find an actress friend of mine called Fern. Her flight to Rome has been delayed by an hour and a half. Would I mind if she joined me?
We drink for the best part of an hour. Fern knows nothing about my tumour, about my operation, or even about Cassini. I’m wearing a beret that hides the stitches and I realize at once that I can pretend nothing’s happened. This, believe it or not, is enormously liberating. We talk about a movie part she’s just landed. She tells me a very rude story about a gay director we both adore. And when she enquires what’s next in my busy, busy life I’m more than happy to talk about the radio script.
‘Brilliant,’ she says. ‘No lines to learn. No hanging around. Bosh-bosh. Done.’ She glances at her watch. ‘Shit.’
She takes a quick peek at her make-up mirror and seconds later she’s gone.
‘Addio,’ I whisper, turning to watch her running for the departure gate.
By now, I’m pissed. Under normal circumstances a pint and a half of Spanish lager would impart nothing but a cosy glow but something troublesome seems to have happened to my balance. Finding my way back to the Piccadilly line is a lot more difficult than it should be. On the train I pick up a discarded Metro and feign interest in a story about some Brexit deadline. By South Ealing, I’m trying very hard not to throw up. I emerge from the station and look in vain for my precious Peugeot.
Hopeless. It’s gone.
The flower shop, as it happens, is still open. I join the queue of customers selecting blooms for their Friday date. Every transaction takes an age – scissors to trim the stalks, showboat ribbons for the paper, those little sachets of plant food to keep the dream alive after the weekend – and by the time I get to the head of the queue, I’m nearly as exhausted as the owner.
He’s late middle-aged, thickset, heavy foreign accent. When I ask whether he noticed a red Peugeot parked outside his shop, he nods.
‘I phoned the council,’ he says. ‘The guys with the truck took it away an hour ago.’
I find a lavatory in a pub up the road. After throwing up twice I feel a little better. I have neither the energy nor much interest in reclaiming my car, but nor do I trust myself on public transport. There are all kinds of ways of admitting defeat but the truth is I need help. Malo, bless him, would be useless. Instead I call Mitch.
He says he’s at home in Hither Green. I have a feeling he’s probably very busy but the minute he hears my voice – the hint of panic, he says later, not what I’m trying to say – he tells me to stay put. He’ll be there as soon as he can. I give him the name of the pub and mention the Tube station. An Uber brings him to the door within half an hour.
I’m sitting at a table where I know he’ll spot me. He comes across. My glass of Perrier is untouched but I’m feeling better enough to apologize at once for calling him out.
‘It’s not a problem.’ He’s looking around. ‘Do they do food here? And if they do, could you cope with me having something to eat?’
I say yes to both. It turns out he’s eaten virtually nothing all day, the result of an empty fridge and an impossible deadline. He scans the food board and then goes to the bar to order a plate of pasta. By the time he comes back, Donald Trump is on all three TV screens threatening Pyongyang with fire and fury.
Mitch watches for a moment or two. It turns out he was in America this time last year to file copy on the hustings, a couple of weeks he was careful to spend with the less reported parts of the electorate.
‘You had to get away from the cities. Places the media discount. West Virginia. Coal country. South Carolina. The Georgia boondocks. An hour or so off the freeway you couldn’t move for Trump posters. It wasn’t subtle, any of this stuff. People were pissed off, left out, and he scooped them up by the millions.’
None of this is new. I’m no politics junkie but I must have heard the same message dozens of times.
‘You thought he’d win?’
‘Never. But I thought he’d come close … much closer than the East Coast ever gave him credit for.’
‘So how did you feel? When it happened?’
Mitch gives the question some thought. He’d stayed up most of the night, he says, watching the live coverage, bouncing from CNN to Fox to NBC and back again. After AP called Pennsylvania for Trump everyone knew the game was up. Clinton was slow to lift the phone and concede but she and her buddies were in shock.
‘I went to sleep around dawn. By the time I was up again it was gone nine. The paper wanted a day-after piece, America waking up to President Trump, and so I left the hotel and just
walked a block or two, looking for a diner. I was in New York. This is a city I know well, really well, yet it looked completely different. There’s a guy called Sebastian Haffner. He was a German lawyer, wrote a wonderful book about trying to survive in the Third Reich. The day after Hitler came to power, back in 1933, he felt something similar. He happened to be in Berlin but he said exactly the same thing. It’s like you’re walking through some place you’ve never been before. Everything looks different, feels different. The people. The traffic. The cops. The bums on the sidewalk. Even the weather, even the clouds. You’ve shut your eyes, opened them again, and you’re in the world of make-believe. A dream? No. A nightmare? Possibly. But so, so weird.’
I nod. Some place you’ve never been before. I know exactly what he means. This has nothing to do with American politics nor New York but trying to cope with a stranger, a presence, in your own brain takes you to some very strange places. I wait for Trump to leave us in peace and then I try and explain.
‘You start to doubt your own body,’ I tell him. ‘You think you know it and you don’t because it’s let you down, big time. Is that treason? Betrayal? Have you insulted it? Too many margaritas? Too much sunshine? That may be true. You have to admit it. But in that case, what is your body? And what is the you that is you? And where, exactly, is the line between them? I can think of no good reason why I’ve bred a tumour, given it house room, but there it was, making itself at home, and I’d be mad to assume it might not be back. And that changes everything, believe me.’
Mitch has lost interest in the news feed. ‘You sound angry,’ he says.
‘I am. Take now. How come I’m throwing up? How come I can’t trust myself to make it back home? How come I have to drag you halfway across London to sort me out?’
‘You’ve had major brain surgery. That makes a difference.’
‘Of course it does. I should never have left home in the first place. I understand that.’
Briefly I explain about taking my mum to Heathrow. Given the circumstances, I’m still telling myself I had no choice. A couple of drinks afterwards was probably foolish but it felt very all right at the time. When I mention the car, Mitch says he’ll sort it tomorrow. All he’ll need is my driving licence and registration documents.
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘You’re right. But I want to.’
‘Why?’
This turns out to be a question he’s not prepared to answer. Instead, as the barman signals that his meal is ready, he gets to his feet.
‘Life’s always on loan,’ he says. ‘It’s just that none of us know it.’
I watch him eat. I’m starting to wonder whether he’s had some kind of encounter with cancer himself. He seems so empathetic, so prescient. Then I tell myself that these are talents that any good journalist needs. They have to listen, to understand, to be able to clamber into someone else’s heart, or – God help them – head. And I know this because acting, if you want to do it right, is very similar.
No harm in asking the question, though. Cancer? Mitch looks surprised.
‘No way,’ he says.
‘You think you’re immune?’
‘I think I’m lucky.’ He stabs at a curl of calamari. ‘You told me no radiotherapy in hospital. And no chemo.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And that’s still the case?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘So your hair …?’ He’s looking at my beret.
‘It should grow back pretty quickly. I’ve been bald before. I did a film in Syria before it all kicked off out there. It was set in Palmyra, way out in the desert. The place is truly ancient. Ruins everywhere. Me included.’
Mitch wants to know more and while he finishes the pasta I tell him about the script. I played a fast-rising French business executive caught at a key moment of her convalescence. One of my buddies to make the trip from Paris to offer spiritual nourishment was an ageing leftie with whom I had unfinished business. Scenes towards the end of the movie called for us to chew the philosophical cud in the ever-lengthening shadows of an ancient Greek temple.
The film bombed and looking back I can understand why. Too wordy. Too ambitious. And too bloody long. But this was the first time I’d been to the Middle East and I had a soft spot for the desert. It was winter, freezing at night but delicious for most of the day, and I came away convinced that three weeks among the ruins of an ancient civilization were the perfect antidote to most of society’s ills.
‘Convalescence from what?’
‘Cancer.’ I touch my left breast. ‘Aggressive and sadly inoperable. Hence the heavy chemo and the loss of hair. I died a beautiful death in a fifth-floor flat on the Beirut corniche. By which time most of the audience had wisely left.’
‘Was the part useful? Looking back?’
‘Sadly not. It sounds harsh but I never really took cancer seriously at the time. I was twenty-six. At that age you know you’re immortal.’
The waitress arrives to take Mitch’s plate away. We stare at each other for a long moment and then – as if by some strange biochemical accident – we both laugh.
‘Well?’ I say. ‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘About Prentice?’
‘About Saucy, yes.’
‘Only if you’re sure I should.’
‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘It means we both have responsibilities here. And the first is to you getting better.’
‘Isn’t that my business?’
‘Of course. But I’d like to think I’m here to help you.’
‘You are. So tell me more about Saucy.’
He holds my gaze and then shrugs. In a way I suspect this is a gesture of surrender. I get the feeling he’d spend the rest of the evening quite happily talking about something else but time, as I keep telling him, may no longer be on my side.
‘Think of this as a movie,’ I say. ‘So far you’ve given me the trailer. It’s a good trailer. I’m intrigued. I’m hooked. So what’s all this really about?’
Another shrug. He plaits his fingers, leans forward, changes his mind, shifts in his seat, tries to relax.
‘Back in the day at Antibes, you say he told you about Pompey, about Portsmouth. Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK. So we have the young Prentice. He’s a grammar-school boy, believe it or not, but he’s a tearaway as well. No patience. Bright as you like but a rebel. The last place he ever wants to go is university, which is a bit of a shame from his parents’ point of view. No one in the family has ever got further than school-leaving age. Sending young Hayden to the Pompey Grammar has cost them a lot of money. According to his year tutor, university is well within his grasp, even Oxford or Cambridge, yet here he is, running with the wrong crowd, pissing it all away.’
I press for more details. The wrong crowd turns out to be a bunch of football hooligans who call themselves the 6.57 crew, a witty homage to the train they take every other Saturday morning to follow their beloved club to the four corners of the kingdom.
‘He’s mad about football?’
‘He’s mad about violence. Him and his mates go for the ruck, not the match. Before, during, afterwards, it makes no difference. The fights are pre-arranged. Pompey are playing away at Liverpool, right? That puts them on the concourse at Waterloo around quarter past nine. A bunch of thugs from Millwall are waiting for them. Before Prentice and his mates get the Tube to Euston there’s debts to settle. It sounds medieval and in a way it is. This is the language of ambush, of facing impossible odds, of mateship and of never losing your bottle. Think the Hundred Years War. Think the Alamo. This is serious stuff. Chains, belts, hammers, knuckledusters. The chances of never making it to Anfield aren’t low.’
‘Anfield?’
‘Liverpool. It’s the football ground. Their destination.’
‘And what then?’
‘Another ruck if you’re lucky, and maybe something tasty on the way home, too.
Like I say, his parents were at their wits’ end. This little journey was supposed to end at Oxford or Cambridge, not the magistrates’ court.’
I nod, trying to associate this fierce little pageant with the man I’d so briefly shared a bed with.
‘This went on for a while?’
‘Yes and no. Prentice turned out to have a keen sense of where his best interests really lay. No one ever questioned his bottle. This wasn’t the biggest guy you’ve ever met but he was mixing it with some real animals. At the same time he wasn’t stupid. He knew exactly what was really going down and he was determined to be part of it.’
‘Part of what?’
‘Drugs, chiefly dealing. It was ecstasy to begin with but the real money was in cocaine. The six-five-seven was a gift for someone like Prentice. Put all those crews together, hooligans or otherwise, and you’ve got a ready-made distribution network. They fought most of the time but they still got to know each other. All it took was for some of them to get properly organized, and they did.’
‘And Saucy was part of that?’
‘Big time. Not the number one. Not even the number two. But Prentice took it to another level because Prentice was ahead of the game and had the foresight to ask the key question. You sort out the wholesale side. You lay your hands on industrial quantities of cocaine. This stuff was shipped out from the Dutch Antilles, Aruba in particular. You build your supply chain, your client base, and – bingo – the money starts rolling in. We’re not talking thousands or even tens of thousands. Before very long, couple of years max, we’re talking millions. So what happens to all that dosh? You can’t drink it all. You can only drive one Bentley at a time. No, somebody has to play the magician. Someone has to wave the wand and convert all that loot into legitimate profits. On one level it’s called money-laundering. The likes of Prentice would call it investment.’
‘Saucy became a businessman?’
‘An accountant to begin with. He did the training, passed the exams, got himself articled, sussed the way it all worked, but all the time he was looking for likely propositions, ways he could wash all the drugs money and turn yet more profit. We’re talking legitimate investments here. Taxi firms. Nail salons. Cafe-bars. Nursing homes. Even a security consultancy.’
Curtain Call Page 6
