Off Script

by Graham Hurley

‘It’s a theme thing, a branding thing. Ask Deko. It was his idea.’

  Deko is riding in the back beside me. He says it has to do with Africa, with a long-ago expedition to find the source of the River Niger. All the real clues, he says, are in the wellness spa. If I can contain my curiosity, Boysie might give me the tour.

  By now I’ve realized that this little expedition is Deko’s way of trying to get my mind off everything else that has gone so catastrophically wrong in my life. Felip has told him about Pavel, and so he’s summoned Boysie to the pub with instructions to cheer me up. And so here we are, rolling to a stop in front of an exquisite confection in warm brick, and mullioned windows, held together by webs of wisteria and ancient vine.

  ‘Come.’ Boysie is holding the door open for me.

  I get out and follow him towards the entrance. I must have been in hundreds of hotels in my life, mainly on location, but never anywhere quite like this. There’s none of the showy bling and bravura that some hoteliers use to bludgeon their clientele. Au contraire, the scale is unabashedly domestic. I might have stepped into someone’s house. It radiates a sense of comfort, of quiet elegance, of people at ease with each other. That this homely space may once have been a rectory comes as no surprise: the scatter of rugs on the polished wooden floorboards, the deeply upholstered armchairs, begging you to take a seat, the low occasional tables with their folded newspapers and piles of magazines, the leaded windows, with glimpses of a lawn and flowerbeds beyond, the smiling waitress delivering a tray of drinks to newly arrived guests. Half-close my eyes, and I could be at Flixcombe Manor, H’s pile in West Dorset, and believe me, that’s a compliment.

  ‘Spa, Boysie?’

  My host leads the way to what must have been a recent extension to the property. I’m half-expecting a more contemporary space, better suited for a thermal suite or two, and a plunge pool, and somewhere you might enjoy a whole-body massage, but once again I’m wrong. The spa is deeply intimate, scored for clever lighting, mosaic tiles, and the kind of bony Arab music that teases your nerve ends. It has a souk-like feel. It reminds me of shadowed parlours I’ve seen and loved in Tangiers and Istanbul, and the walls are hung with beautifully framed pen and ink washes, all – I suspect – the work of the same hand.

  I take a closer look. The face that dominates two of these little masterpieces belongs to a woman. She stands erect, full-breasted, in front of a jaw-dropping landscape that has to be African. There’s a wild extravagance in this setting, a surrender to the towering mountains and billowing clouds beyond the nearby river, and the expression on the woman’s face warns the artist that nothing but his best efforts on the canvas will do.

  ‘The mighty widow Zuma,’ Boysie whispers. ‘It’s 1825. We send four men to West Africa to find out what happens to the River Niger. They end up deep inland where they happen across the widow Zuma. This is the daughter of an Arab trader. She has a thousand slaves she rents as prostitutes. She’s also desperate to marry a white man. The leader of the expedition is a naval officer called Clapperton. He tells his servant, Lander, to do the business. Lander isn’t keen and in any case the widow Zuma has decided on Clapperton. Our hero is horrified and demands a military escort out of town. Already, two of the expedition have died of fever. Clapperton succumbs, too, which leaves his servant, Lander, to bring back this little tale. Deko thinks the widow Zuma was wellness on legs and suspects she’s still alive. You like her? Our mighty Zuma?’

  I take a closer look, amused by Boysie’s playful romp through this episode of our colonial history, and ask what his guests make of a setting like this.

  ‘You want the truth? Some don’t get it. They’ve come for the lotions, the exfoliations, all the other nonsense, and they don’t see the point. But others love it, and they’re the guests who will keep coming back.’

  ‘And you’ve really got a casino?’

  ‘We have. It’s smaller than most. Deko calls it “intimate”. But when I tell you it does the business, you’ll know what I mean. I’d show you round but we’ve got the decorators in. We tried to theme it around Lieutenant Clapperton, but serious gamblers have no interest in history and absolutely no sense of fucking humour, so we gave up. Faux wooden panels and drinks on the house. Never fails.’

  I steal a glance at Deko. He’s clearly heard all this stuff before, but I tell him it’s refreshing to find something so different when it comes to hotels. Boysie says he’s hungry and insists on a snack. The snack turns out to be a table laid for three in the Hotel Zuma’s dining room. Guests finishing their supper eye us as we sit down. Boysie doesn’t bother with a menu. Instead, he enquires what – in a perfect world – I’d like to eat. The kitchen, he says, is at my disposal. Anything.

  This, too, is novel. Never have I been faced with unlimited choice. To my surprise, I realize I’m hungry.

  ‘Anything,’ Boysie says again. ‘Just name it. We have free-range pork, if you’re interested. The pigs live up in the woods there.’ He waves a hand towards the window. ‘Eat their weight in acorns, mushrooms, anything. We pen them in and leave them to it, and from time to time we grab the fattest and pop him down to the slaughterhouse. Delicious. And fun, too. Eh, Deko?’

  I shake my head. The image of Boysie and Deko chasing some poor animal to his death does nothing for me, but I’ve realized something else about this relationship that I should have nailed earlier.

  ‘Sea bass?’

  ‘Of course. Chef does a twist on apple butter. It’s dark and a little spicy with a hint of liquorice. It comes from Jersey. Just like him.’

  I say that sounds perfect. New potatoes? Fresh spinach from the garden? Yes, please.

  Boysie summons a waitress and orders a bottle of Chablis, then turns back to me. ‘Don’t think any of this is for free.’ That smile again. ‘We have a proposition.’

  It’s nearly midnight by the time Deko summons a taxi and we ride back to Exmouth. It turns out that he and Boysie have been putting their heads together over the last couple of days. Thanks to Brexit and the general glumness of things, advance bookings for Hotel Zuma are beginning to flag and they’re looking – in Boysie’s phrase – for clever ways of keeping the bank at arm’s length. Deko had mentioned some of the movies I’d done, some of the people I’d met, some of the stories I might be willing to share, and Boysie is now wondering about a themed weekend with yours truly in the chair, and a programme of suitable movies to go with it.

  This is very similar to the idea that H had to brighten our passage to the D-Day beaches on Persephone. At first, to be frank, I doubted whether anyone would part with serious money just to hear little me, but in the event it worked. Not only that but I was quietly flattered by the interest and intelligence that our paying guests brought to the feast. A couple of these people – middle-aged, bookish, serious – knew more about my career than I did, and when Boysie told me to sleep on the proposition and give him a ring in the morning, I shook my head.

  ‘I love what you’ve done with this place,’ I told him. ‘The widow Zuma would never leave.’

  ‘And the sea bass?’

  ‘Exquisite.’

  We parted as friends. Now, driving down into Exmouth, Deko asks me what I made of him.

  ‘He’s in love with you,’ I say. ‘Head-over-heels, totally smitten, probably has been for years. It’s a compliment. He’s a nice man.’

  ‘You’re right. He is.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I think he’s great. We’ve been through a lot. We make each other laugh.’

  ‘That’s not my question.’

  ‘I know it isn’t.’

  ‘Well …?’

  Deko shakes his head. If anything, he seems amused. For a minute or so we drive on in silence. Then he has the tact to ask me where I want to sleep. Four hours ago, I couldn’t wait to get out of the apartment. Now, thanks to a very agreeable evening, I’ve changed my mind.

  ‘Drop me at Pavel’s place,’ I tell him. ‘It’s nothing personal. I just need to ge
t my head back together. You don’t mind?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  The taxi drops me at the marina. I blow Deko a kiss through the back window and head for the apartment. The lights on the third floor are still on, and I know Felip will be waiting up for me.

  I’m right. I make a pot of coffee and we sit in the lounge for the best part of an hour, talking about Pavel. Felip’s admiration for his charge occasionally verged on hero-worship, and it comes as no surprise when he tells me that he spent half the evening at the hospital, trying to make sure Pavel was getting the nursing he deserved. The fact that they wouldn’t let him anywhere near the Stroke Unit didn’t upset him in the least.

  ‘He’s a clever man.’ He taps his head. ‘He’ll know I was around. He’ll sense it. I couldn’t let him down. I had to be there. Even in a different building.’

  On the page, this sounds a bit wacky, but I know exactly what he means. People in comas may not be as lost as we imagine. Hearing, they say, is always the last sense to go and after Felip has drained his mug and said goodnight, I steal into Pavel’s room.

  Ndeye must have tidied up before she left because there are fresh sheets on the bed, and even a single rose in a vase on the chest of drawers where we keep all the items Pavel’s care demands. I spend a minute or two just gazing at that rose. As a down payment on Pavel’s future, maybe all our futures, I find this little gesture deeply touching. Then I remember what I’d come for.

  The Ernst Jünger diaries are still on Pavel’s bedside table. I carry the book back to the lounge and curl up on the sofa. I know that Carrie marked particular passages and I want to find an entry that might spark Pavel back to life. Tomorrow, I think, I can take the book to the hospital and read it to him. He might or might not hear me. Either way, throwing a lifeline like this is the very least I can do.

  I begin to thumb through the book, page after page as the months, and then years, spool by. Guided by Carrie’s marks, lines pencilled lightly beside the text, I pause and read. Jünger reflecting on Proust: the gloves, the fingernails, the noises off, the ever-closed windows, his occasional visits to the local slaughterhouse. Might this touch a nerve deep in Pavel’s brain?

  Then, eight months on, I find another entry, simpler this time. Jünger is in Paris. It’s late September, 1942, and the push into Russia has begun to run out of steam. Beset by doubts, Jünger remembers a day he once spent climbing a mountain in the Canary Islands. He feels the spray of a heavy, warm rain and he pauses to study a fennel plant. The passage, beautifully written, has earned a double mark from Carrie, and thus – presumably – from Pavel. Tomorrow, I think, I will buy fennel before I get on the bus. The scent, and the words to go with it. Two doors into whatever Pavel has left.

  I glance at my watch. Nearly two in the morning. I leaf quickly through to the end of the book and then I pause. Beside one of the final entries, in Carrie’s loopy handwriting, is a telephone number. I stare at it, then reach for a pen and a scrap of paper to jot it down.

  Tomorrow, I think.

  TWENTY-THREE

  To the hospital, again.

  It’s Easter Sunday and I’m heading for a ten o’clock bus. The town centre is dead except for an untidy huddle of street people on a bench near the war memorial. I’d like to think they’re talking about Moonie, but they’re not. Yesterday’s weather was clearly a nightmare. The oldest among them, a skeletal figure with wild eyes and a greasy-looking tangle of beard, got soaked to the skin. The rain had stopped by dusk but it was an evil night, the wind from the north, freeze your nuts off. I give them what small change I can muster and run for the bus.

  There’s not much traffic on the road, and I sit on the top deck, listening to Carrie’s Walkman. I found it a couple of days after her death, lying on a shelf in Pavel’s bedroom. It’s got Bluetooth, no wires, and the little buds sit nicely in my ears. Strictly speaking, I should be giving this back to whoever is responsible for sorting out her affairs, but we still have no idea who that person might be, and in the meantime, I’ve been curious to know what kind of music she listened to. It’s definitely classical, scored for a full orchestra, and the slower passages carry an edge of sadness or maybe regret. Pavel, I suspect, would have recommended the piece and the more I listen, the more I like it.

  The Stroke Unit at the hospital is upstairs on the second floor. An orderly directs me to the nursing station where I enquire where I might find Mr Stukeley. The fact that they don’t know him as Pavel adds to the strangeness of this place. It’s quiet up here, like a movie without a soundtrack, and most of the patients appear to be asleep. There are flowers everywhere, and I’m admiring a spectacular bunch of dwarf daffodils when a male nurse appears. He’s wearing a nose ring and he has the stub of a pencil tucked behind his ear.

  ‘Mr Stukeley?’ I enquire again.

  He nods and leads the way to a side room. Pavel is lying in the single bed and I hesitate for a moment in the doorway. It’s warm in the unit and the single sheet is folded neatly below his chin. His head lies at the centre of the pillow. The absence of his usual glasses gives his bony face a special vulnerability I’ve never seen before. His eyes are open, staring up at the ceiling, and his lips are slightly parted. There’s absolutely no sign of life, no movement, nothing. He might have been laid out for inspection, an object of curiosity for anyone with more than a passing interest.

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘Poorly, I’m afraid, but still with us. Can I fetch you a chair?’

  I nod, stepping into the room. As I approach the bed, I’m half-expecting Pavel to acknowledge my presence but I tell myself that things are bad with him, that he’s fighting demons in that vast head of his, that he must conserve what little energy he has.

  The nurse returns with a chair and asks me whether I’d like a cup of tea. I sense he wants to know more about this new arrival, and I’m right.

  ‘You know Mr Stukeley well?’

  ‘Pavel. His name’s Pavel. And the answer’s yes.’

  I tell him a little about Pavel: the scripts he’s written, the awards he’s won, the name he’s made for himself.

  ‘You’re telling me he’s famous?’

  ‘Yes. Not big-name famous. Not up-there-with-the-stars famous. Not that. But well known, certainly.’ I name a couple of TV series authored by Pavel. The nurse hasn’t heard of either of them.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t watch much telly,’ he says. ‘You take sugar?’

  I settle in the chair beside Pavel, gazing at the emptiness of his face. A blank sheet of paper, I think, after a lifetime of furious typing. If I bring my cheek very close to his mouth, I can feel the faintest warmth when he breathes, but his flesh is cold to the touch. I stroke his hand for a moment or two longer and then delve in my bag. I’ve brought the book, the Ernst Jünger diaries, but only now do I remember about the fennel. I should have gone to the farm shop in the town centre. Tant pis.

  I start with an entry from early spring, 1942. Jünger has had a visit from an old friend, back from the Eastern Front. This man happens to be a Prussian aristocrat and has witnessed death on a scale unimaginable before the First World War. The trenches were bad enough, but out on the limitless horizons of the steppe, whole armies are grinding each other to pieces like some surreal bone mill, and Jünger finds himself listening to his friend’s longing for something he calls ‘the old death’. I’ve positioned my chair very close to the bed. I’m leaning towards the pillow, my mouth very close to Pavel’s ear, the book open on my lap, and I don’t hear the nurse when he returns. He’s staring down at me, the cup and saucer in his hand.

  ‘The old death?’ he asks. ‘What are you trying to do to the poor man?’

  This turns reading into a health and safety issue and I’m in the process of trying to explain Pavel’s admiration for these diaries when an alarm sounds out in the ward. The nurse mumbles an apology and leaves. Moments later, consulting my list of page numbers, I try another entry.

  Nothing happens. For the next
hour or so, using Carrie’s markings as a guide, I hopscotch through the middle years of the war, hoping against hope that Pavel will follow me. All it needs, I tell myself, is a line, or an image, or a sentiment that will reignite all the loose fragments of memory that litter his subconscious. And once that happens, the Pavel I’ve known and loved might surface again.

  I’m beginning to run out of marked passages when another figure appears at the door. He’s an older man, lean, balding. He’s abandoned his jacket and his sleeves are rolled up.

  ‘Miles Kennaway.’ He extends a hand. ‘I’m the consultant here. I gather you and Mr Stukeley were friends.’

  Were? The choice of tense is slightly alarming, but to his credit Mr Kennaway apologizes at once. Mr Stukeley is undoubtedly on the upper reaches of the scale when it comes to nursing challenges, but he thinks he has a fighting chance.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of regaining consciousness. In the world of strokes, we talk about a gross insult to the brain. At first, we thought he’d had a TIA, which is a junior version, but it’s turned out rather more serious than that. An MRI scan will tell us more.’

  I know a great deal about MRI scans but now isn’t the time to own up. This is about Pavel, not me.

  ‘What makes you so sure he’ll come round?’

  ‘Sure isn’t a word I’d use, but age is on his side. The rest of his body is obviously compromised, and being blind doesn’t help, but his vascular system should be in working order. Assuming we can tempt him back, we’ll put him on blood thinners for the rest of his life and keep our fingers crossed. You’d be amazed how resilient the human body can be.’

  In any other set of circumstances, this would be another cue for a more personal conversation, but once again I resist the temptation. The consultant has spotted the book. He knows about Ernst Jünger. He’s even read Storm of Steel.

  I explain my attempt to coax just a flicker of recognition from the face on the pillow.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing.’