Don has kindly offered to equip one of the outhouses with a treadmill, but I told him that there’s no one here to be in shape for. Certainly Myra doesn’t mind what I look like. Besides, in this area of the world there’s all the walking anyone would need, for miles around. He and I have really only disagreed about one thing since I came to live in Cornwall, and it was not about the plot of a book.
The fact is that early on in my time here at Manderley I tried to kill myself. Overcome with solitude I bought a length of good nylon rope from a ship’s chandler in Fowey and, one midsummer morning, I tried to hang myself in the apple orchard. But as I was hanging there I learned two things: one was that strangling to death is a poor way to die; the other was that the boughs of apple trees are not sturdy enough to take a man’s weight and, eventually, the one I’d chosen broke and I fell to the ground, spraining my ankle quite badly. It was Mr Twigg who found me and called an ambulance which took me to a hospital in Plymouth. It was Mr Twigg who called Don, who was very cross about what I’d done but came down straight away, and when I was feeling better we argued about it.
‘I didn’t save your fucking neck just so as you could put a rope around it and try to do yourself in,’ he said. ‘That was bloody selfish of you after all that effort I went to. What the hell were you thinking of?’
‘I was thinking that life here in Cornwall seemed like a piece of shit. Will that do? I used to drive an Aston Martin and now I drive an old Fiesta. I had a mistress who belonged in the pages of a men’s magazine. She and I used to drink Dom Pérignon at the Hôtel Negresco. Now I visit an ageing prostitute in Padstow and after seeing her I get fish and chips from Rick Stein’s. In the morning I used to speak French to order a coffee and a croissant in the Café de Paris; but now, when I go to the village shop in the morning to fetch a newspaper and a loaf of bread, I could be speaking French for all the fucking conversation I get. They look at me like I’m a bloody alien. I know I said I wanted to live in England again but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind. I feel like I’m living in Middle Earth. Besides, I rather think that it’s my neck to wring, don’t you?’
‘Perhaps. But did you stop and think about what might happen to me if you killed yourself?’
‘Oddly enough, I didn’t.’
‘Perhaps you should have done. You might have considered the job I’d have explaining to Plod just how it is that a man who everyone thought to be dead happens to be hanging in my bloody orchard like a Cox’s Orange Pippin? No, I thought not. They’d have fucking nicked me for sure. I’d be in Vine Street Magistrates Court right now, facing extradition.’
‘I can think of worse fates than a nice prison cell in Monaco.’
‘Don’t forget, two of those homicides occurred on the Côte d’Azur, so for helping you to escape justice the French police could probably claim priority for my extradition over the Monégasques. And I bet the Monty cops would be quite glad to yield authority to the French cops. It would save them the problem of having an embarrassing trial. I may not be nearly as famous as you, but the death of your wife still generates a lot of press. And while a cell in Monty might sound okay to you, the one at Les Baumettes isn’t quite so appealing.’
‘Les Baumettes?’
‘It’s a prison near Marseille. According to the Daily Telegraph, the EU justice minister has described it as a living hell and the most repugnant prison in Europe. The next time you feel like sending yourself to heaven, just remember that at the same time you’ll be sending me to hell.’
‘Point taken.’
‘Look, old sport, it’s bound to seem a little quiet down here at first. But things will get better.’
‘You mean I’ll get used to it being shit here.’
‘Yes. If you like. Please, John. Promise me you won’t try anything like that again.’
‘Yeah, all right. Anyway, it’s not something I want to try again. Hanging myself, I mean. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.’
‘Thanks.’ Don nodded. ‘It’s difficult enough keeping you a secret as it is. But now the fucking hospital is wondering just how it is that you have no medical records.’ He grinned. ‘Next time pull the bung out of your boat while you’re out at sea. Like Maxim de Winter. No body means no awkward fucking questions.’
‘It didn’t exactly work out for him, did it?’
‘No. But he was an amateur. And besides, Rebecca left a note. I trust you won’t be so careless.’
‘Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind.’
What is especially touching in retrospect is the way Don was so upset about my wish to die; indeed, he took it very personally, almost as if he had become my guardian, and I realized just what a true friend he is. Anyway, I’m over that now. I hardly ever think about suicide and I’m settling into life down here, like the rain.
Tonight I shall probably listen to Little Dorrit again on CD. There are passages in that book I can never hear without the temptation to weep.
Don Irvine’s story
Part three
It’s a tiny apartment I have in Monaco — about the size of a postage stamp — but that’s okay. You don’t own an apartment in Monaco to live large but to save millions in tax. There’s just a bedroom, a sitting room (which serves as my office), a bathroom and a kitchen area. It’s nicely decorated though; Le Point magazine are going to do a little spread on it, and me. It’s a far cry from the sort of penthouse that John used to own in the Tour Odéon, but this apartment cost less than a tenth as much as that one did and does me for now. The pre-war, cream stucco building occupies the corner of the Rue des Violettes, and my apartment is on the second floor, above a chicken and pizza restaurant, which sounds awful but is actually quite handy given the size of my kitchen. From my bedroom window you can see across a picturesque series of steps that lead up onto Rue des Roses, and straight into the sitting room of the apartment opposite. It’s not very private but at this price I can’t really complain. Not when I consider how much money I’ll be saving when, eventually, I move out of London and live here permanently. The apartment opposite is owned by a woman who I think must be a prostitute; she spends ages getting ready to go out and all sorts of men seem to visit her at various times of the day and night. People-watching: it’s one of the things that make Monaco so fascinating. At night the delivery motorcycles for the chicken and pizza restaurant can get a bit noisy as they rev up like angry mosquitoes; and the electrical wholesaler next door to the chicken and pizza place seems to open pretty early in the morning when several white vans collect outside to load up with various bits and pieces; but that’s just the penalty you pay for living in an interesting part of town. Other than that, everything is working out just fine.
Whenever I’m in Monaco I’m always up early to catch the best of the day; so, most mornings at around six o’clock, I put on a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones and start writing on my iMac. I work through until midday, when I go to Le Neptune Plage, which is a private beach on Larvotto. In the summer Le Neptune is always busy and it’s usually advisable to reserve a sunbed, which costs about twenty euros a day. That’s where I eat my lunch. I have the set menu, which is about forty euros. They know me there and I like that. The water is nice but right now it’s best not to swim at all because of the many jellyfish. I stay at Le Neptune until about four, when I go and do another five hours at my desk before going out again to have dinner somewhere. Usually I go to the Hôtel Columbus, which is a pleasant half-hour walk — if you don’t mind all the tourists. You get used to them — even the large coaches that deliver them in their hundreds just outside Casino Square. Anyway I’m not really here often enough to mind them very much. My books are already published in forty-seven languages, so I’m frequently touring a new title abroad. It’s a rare month when I don’t have to go to another country to promote something; this year I have a book being published somewhere, in translation, every week.