Rancid Pansies

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  On awakening with a slight headache I find a note waiting for me downstairs. It is from Benedetti, who begs to inform me that he is in a position to show me a property that, he humbly ventures to suggest, might satisfy my exacting requirements for a domicile. I believe it’s the first written message I’ve ever received from the mustelje, as Marta called him, and it’s nice to see his written communications are as florid as his speech. There’s much to be said for consistency of manners, even when we both know it’s based on amused contempt. I’m perfectly certain he doesn’t affect this sort of language with any other client. I suppose in a quaint fashion it amounts to a kind of intimacy. Once again I find myself wondering about his home life. As with his dumbfounding revelation a little over a year ago that he was a keen amateur plane-spotter, I feel sure there are aspects of Benedetti’s private life that would readily incite both pity and terror.

  Instead of immediately replying, I take myself off to the Farmacia for a packet of paracetámolo tablets. This late winter weather of early chill mists and brilliant sunshine seems to be having a slightly headachy effect on me. Then I go to my favourite bar to give the whole question of Whither Samper? some serious consideration. The problem of buying a house that is not merely a holiday home is it throws into question the whole business of why one chooses to live in any particular place. Most people can answer this by saying they want to be not too far from where they were brought up, or they need to be near their work and their children’s schools, or else they understandably require a minimum distance of several hundred miles from their in-laws or ex-partners. In short, there are usually compelling circumstantial reasons why the average person is pretty much tied to a particular area. This makes house-hunting both simpler and more difficult, especially if everyone else wants to live in the same place.

  I, however, can do my work anywhere. I have no relatives whom I wish to live near, nor any relationship that crucially depends on geography for its future. I am a free spirit, which makes house-hunting both more difficult and simpler. Theoretically, I could live just about anywhere I choose, and this constitutes a real problem. If like me you happened to read English Literature at a proper university – i.e. one founded before 1600 that does not offer online dating or origami as special subjects – you will doubtless recall having to study things with titles like Sir Gawain and the White Night: dreary mediaeval texts where knights and ploughmen alike lie awake in the small hours wondering whether their souls are sufficiently shriven (answer: no). If so, you may be surprised to learn that although he entirely lacks a soul, even G. Samper has the occasional white night in which a chef’s panic about running out of thyme somehow takes on a disproportionate and dismal urgency. I’m also reduced to compulsively playing with words, which appear in my fevered mind as large white letters on a blackboard that re-shuffle themselves unstoppably. The anagrams take on an aura of spurious significance that fades even as dawn strengthens outside. Thus Lyme Regis is turned to Grey Slime, just as it has reduced my life to that of a Sly Emigré; while Lyme Regis Cobb cries ‘Come, grisly ebb!’ and ‘Go, sly ebb crime!’ or simply remains for ever a chill Iceberg Symbol of my past.

  It’s exactly in these small-hours moods that one wrestles with the question of where to live. The imagination proposes locations in copious variety. Each has advantages, each drawbacks. At the end, in fretful impatience with my irresolution, the white-night questions come: ‘Why live anywhere in particular? Why live at all?’ And suddenly the simple, practical problem of buying a house takes on existential proportions and swamps the mind with desolation. This may be connected with eating Gorgonzola before going to bed. Certainly the utter futility is overwhelming once we have truly seen ourselves in the hours of darkness as plankton adrift in an ocean of time, each microscopic organism pathetically calling ‘Remember me!’ before winking out. I review all this from my bogus marble table in the bar, drinking coffee with a Fernet chaser, both of which cast a deep umber pall over my mood. I can see Nico the owner occasionally giving me a sardonic head shake. I can read him like a bad paperback. He thinks I’m brooding over the loss of my house at Le Roccie. He can’t imagine why I should be sitting glumly alone when I’m a local celebrity whose life was saved by a vision. Any Italian who had had such a sensational write-up in Il Tirreno would long since have worked out a way of capitalising on it, even if only to get other people to pay his bar bills. It would be a complete waste of time trying to explain to Nico that yes, the loss of Le Roccie was grim; but equally though differently grim was the confirmation in Crendlesham Hall that I ought never again to think seriously about returning to the land of my birth. It seems that even crafty old travellers manage to shut themselves out of places without a key to get back in. Does it matter? Maybe just occasionally, when I recall some vivid childhood pleasure such as the deep reassurance of a particular food or the associations that the seasons (four of them in those days) carried with them. People never hear me saying this, of course. I assume a scoffy radicalism in company but I’m often nostalgic when by myself. Nostalgia is my private default position.

  But this will never do. I am surely not the sort of person who falls easy prey to introspection. My present task is to recognise that I wish to go on living here: here in hospitable Italy, right here in Versilia, even though a house in this area is going to cost me an arm, a leg and probably even a kidney if it’s to be somewhere acceptable that I shan’t need to renovate with my own two hands. Well, so be it. But even if re-establishing Samper in a house that befits his superior style will mean some years of having to eat fried grass and woodlouse paste, I am not going back to Champions Press. As I keep telling myself, never again will I ghost the biography of Millie Cleat’s successor or the next Formula One pin-up goof or anybody else wearing a baseball cap and making those learned-from-TV gestures of punching the air and snarling. They are unfit company. Nor will I extend my range, as the nicotine-pickled Frankie has suggested, and write the life story of one of those celebs-for-fifteen-minutes or TV cheffies. He defends himself by saying it would have given me the opportunity to write a comic masterpiece. That’s all very well, except that Gerald Samper is destined to write a serious masterpiece and it’s time Frankie knew it. I don’t need to be sidetracked by daft suggstions, all the less so now that I’m moderately affluent. There’s a grand opera waiting to be written, and despite our slightly weird relationship I think Marta might actually be the right person to do the music. Her score for Piero Pacini’s aborted last film, Arrazzato, did genuinely surprise me by its originality and skill, although it costs me something to admit this because of the brutal way in which she used it to lampoon my singing. I personally feel that a cruel musical parody whose target is instantly recognisable constitutes a kind of libel, although Little, Gidding LLP of Lincoln’s Inn have advised me otherwise. It has taken almost two years for the pain of this betrayal to diminish to a dull ache, but over this period my scrupulous sense of fairness has enabled me to appreciate how good the rest of her score is. The film itself was never completed and, since the great Piero Pacini’s untimely death, is destined to remain a torso that will only ever be watched by dedicated cinéastes. Marta was well paid for her work but I gather she has cannily retained the copyright. It strikes me that some of the music could well be adapted for an opera. God knows it’s melodramatic enough, but it also has a neo-Prokoviev astringency that is brilliant for portraying sleaze. I think with her avowed romantic leanings tempered with her instinct for down-and-dirty, Marta would produce a sensational score for my Princess Diana libretto. The libretto I have yet to write, that is. I shall try to keep the whippings to a bare minimum.

  However, I can’t do anything without somewhere of my own to work in. That means finding a suitable house as quickly as possible. So with a sigh I pay Nico for sundry coffees and walk down the Corso to Benedetti’s office. This turns out to be in the sole charge of a love-bitten teenager who tells me his boss is out with a client and won’t be back until six-thirty. So I leave the
weasel a message suggesting we look at this property of his in the morning. Back at the hotel I find I have been asked to call a London number which turns out to be the Global Eyeball office. I am speaking to somebody named – what else? – Saffron. In Marlborough tones she tells me Leo Wolstenholme is delighted I’ve agreed to be interviewed because it would be impossible to make the programme without me. (Like hell it would. These people are ready for all contingencies. They would cheerfully cobble the entire thing together out of library footage if they had to.) Unfortunately Leo’s not in the office just now but she does want to know if I can suggest someone they could contact about Millie’s seamanship skills, especially somebody who knew her personally. This, too, is standard procedure: to use a patsy who has already agreed to be interviewed to do some unpaid research. For a moment I contemplate sending them off to Salcombe to track down an ancient salt who might remember Millie on holiday there at the age of six messing about in boats, as she had once claimed, the lying cow. As her husband Clifford remarked to me, she hadn’t put bum to thwart in so much as a funfair rowing boat until she learned to sail on Ruislip Lido as an adult. But instead of maliciously proposing this fool’s errand to Saffron I really try to think of somebody useful.

  ‘It’s hard to come up with a suitable name at a moment’s notice,’ I tell her apologetically.

  ‘It is,’ she agrees (although what she actually says is ‘i’ is’, with two rapid glottal stops).

  But at this moment I do think of somebody: the redoubtable Joan Nugent. Joan is a hard-bitten ex-Royal Navy lady with a penchant for gaspers and pink gin who was a splendid ally to me when Millie was being drawn into the wacky world of marine mysticism. She was an old sailing chum of Millie’s who lived near her somewhere between Chichester and Portsmouth and was distressed to see her friend sucked into a form of extreme environmentalism that was only ever going to make her look a total idiot. Indeed, Britain’s national heroine barely scraped out of it with her reputation intact. I now think Joan will be the ideal person for this Global Eyeball malarkey. To counteract the inevitable sentimentality her rasping, down-to-earth assessments will be exactly what the programme needs.

  ‘I can think of someone,’ I now say. ‘She and her friends used to sail with Millie in the old days. Believe me, she’s just what you’re looking for. She’ll provide an alternative view.’

  ‘Oh wow! Sounds great. Who is she?’

  ‘I think I’ll contact her first, if you don’t mind,’ I tell the eager Saffron firmly. ‘It’ll be better if it comes from me.’

  So I sit on the edge of the bed and call up Joan. I realise I haven’t spoken to her since Millie’s death; but although I’ve known her for less than a year she already feels like one of those rare people with whom one can be out of touch for ages without it having the least effect on the friendship. She’d been an instant ally last year when we first met aboard a yacht at a dinner thrown by Millie’s Australian partner, Lew Buschfeuer. Hitherto whenever I’ve rung Joan she has answered from a maelstrom of yapping dogs at the other end. For once, her nicotine-pickled rasp comes unaccompanied by canine bedlam.

  ‘Gerry!’ she cries when I’ve identified myself. ‘What makes you call this ancient mariner in her time of woe?’

  ‘Why woe? Poor Joan, are you still grieving for Millie?’ Well, they were old friends.

  ‘Not right now, no. But last night I had to do away with the Bo’sun, poor old sod.’

  I remember the Bo’sun as ringleader of the doggy chorus that usually accompanied Joan’s phone calls. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say insincerely.

  ‘Don’t be. He was twelve. Good age for them. Kidneys packing up. Could happen to any of us and probably will.’ A mirthless, deep ochre chuckle.

  ‘Unfortunately no one’s going to take us to the vet for a quick, merciful end.’

  ‘Huh, I certainly didn’t take the Bo’sun to any vet. What do you think I am? Disgraceful idea, handing someone you love over to a total stranger to be executed. Any pet owner worth her salt ought to do it herself, and if she hasn’t the guts she oughtn’t to keep an animal. It’s the least you can do for an old friend.’

  ‘I see.’ I picture Joan’s stocky figure swinging a baseball bat or pouring barbiturates down the animal’s throat through a funnel.

  ‘Shot him with a flare pistol. A distress shell to the head, instant death, just like that. The old boy went out in a glorious blaze of red, you should have seen it. Twenty-five thousand candelas.’

  ‘You surely didn’t do it at sea?’ I imagine Joan and her yacht being impounded by coastguards for sending out a marine false alarm.

  ‘Christ no. Did it right here in the back yard. Ha, it lit things up, I can tell you, but only for five seconds. Grand show while it lasted. God knows what the neighbours thought, but sod ’em. I gave the old Bo’sun a nautical burial this morning. Sank him off Hayling Island with a fathom of chain. We’d done a lot of trips together, he was a proper shipmate, bless him. A real old sea dog. Now, what can I do for you?’

  I explain about Global Eyeball’s forthcoming documentary about Millie and ask whether I could put Joan’s name forward. There is a silence.

  ‘Oh fuck it, why not?’ she says at length. ‘They may as well have someone on the programme who knew her and can cut through some of the crap.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I told them. Without naming you, of course.’

  ‘I really miss the old girl, you know. I didn’t say it before, Gerry, but I think you did her proud in that book of yours, even the cheeky bits. I know you never took to her much but you didn’t know her in the early days when she was so happy to get away from that family of hers in wherever it was, Pinner. Believe me, she was a different person then. We were all sailors together, used to have some smashing nosh-ups out there in the harbour, just us girls. All that success did go to her head a bit, though. Mind you, it’d be a pretty rare person who wouldn’t have her head turned. Talk about national adulation. It was ridiculous, really. I’m afraid she did go a bit potty towards the end, poor old girl, but of course you know that better than most. Still, what a way to go, eh? Prime-time Christmas TV, a rogue hoist and bingo! Strangled at her own masthead. By the way, did you hear the Aussies have nailed the company responsible?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Turns out it wasn’t the boatyard’s fault. There was a defective batch of hoists with gears the wrong way round or something. The others were recalled. Curtains for that particular marine supply company, I’d think.’

  ‘Right.’ I’ve had enough of this boating backchat. There is a delicate Samper agenda to pursue. While Joan has been talking I’ve suddenly seen how she is exactly the person I need for some practical help. The truth is, I’m daunted by the horrid and arduous prospect of unearthing the contents of my house. It’s too much for a refined English aesthete to do on his own, no matter how sprightly and resourceful he is. Adrian can’t come because he’s apparently up to his eyes in some panic at BOIS. So I’m wondering …

  ‘Joan?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I suppose you wouldn’t fancy a trip out to Italy would you?’

  ‘Italy? Why, when are you leaving?’

  ‘I’m here already. This is where I’m phoning from. This Leo Wolstenholme says she’ll come out here to film an interview with me, and it just struck me that if you were here too they could do us at the same time, maybe even both together for some of the bits. I’m sure we can wangle your air fare and expenses. A programme like Global Eyeball will have an exes account dribbling at the seams with cash. But also … I hardly like to ask this of you since I don’t really know you that well, but I’d be awfully grateful for a hand.’

  I explain the problem, during which I can hear the unmistakable sound of Joan lighting up one of her high-tar gaspers with a Swan Vesta. She thinks lighters are effete. How is it I know all these hard-core smokers? At least she doesn’t cough like Frankie.

  ‘I remember now,’ she says. ‘Of course, it was all in the new
spapers before Christmas, wasn’t it? About that famous conductor nearly getting killed in an Italian earthquake but you all got out of the house in the nick of time? You mean that’s your house still buried out there, Gerry? You poor bugger. Well, why not? We Service pensioners don’t get much fun. I’ll need to do some arranging, though. The dogs’ll have to go into kennels and I booked Navy Lark to have her hull cleaned next week. But she’ll keep.’

  ‘You’re a star. All your costs will be on me, of course. Meaning anything I can’t induce these TV people to pay.’

  *

  The next morning dawns grey but dry. After elaborate pleasantries in which Benedetti and I each vie for the preference of not being driven by the other, I find myself sitting fatalistically in the passenger seat of his late model Range Rover being whirled through ever-narrowing lanes above the town. He has not driven me since I was negotiating to buy my late lamented house many moons ago but I haven’t forgotten his distinctive combination of competence and lack of imagination. It is not really the devilish élan that is so Italian as much as the absence of apprehensiveness. Whereas I know that when I hurtle around a blind corner there will be a tractor with a huge trailer full of logs chugging in the opposite direction, Benedetti is equally certain that the road will be empty. It simply doesn’t occur to him that it could be otherwise. Presumably he is right in at least nine cases out of ten. One’s disinclination to be with him on the tenth occasion is what is keeping my knees locked and my fingerprints imprinted in the leather of the armrest. In the breeze from his half-open window his borrowed tresses wave like weeds on a river bed. Strange to think that hanks of hair from the same Chinese peasant girl who grew them will be waving on heads all around the world at this very moment. Today, possibly in my honour, Benedetti is dressed in what the clothes shop in the centre of town calls ‘stile English gentle-mans’ in its window displays: brushed cotton shirt with a discreet check pattern, grey slacks and a light tweed sports jacket with an ivory silk handkerchief tucked into the top pocket. By his own lights he undoubtedly looks convincingly ‘snob’, which in these parts connotes a fashionable retro Englishness vaguely associated with old leather, horses and monocles. To me the overall effect – by no means discounting the wig – is that of a slightly caddish prep-school master of forty years ago who will soon be leaving the school under a cloud. But what the hell, I’m hoping to buy a house from him, not staying behind after class. At this rate, with his refulgent brown brogue pressed so firmly on the accelerator, we may neither of us live to see the compromesso stage.