IX
You dressed and went out to buy some Greek take-away food, and when you returned I put on your dressing gown and we sat side by side on the bed, chewing our way through chunky kebabs. I was very happy.
Then you said, “Are you busy at the moment? I mean, do you have a lot of work on?”
“Not really. In fact, there’s hardly anything. Everyone’s away.”
“I’m at a bit of a loose end myself. What I’d planned to do was lounge around for the summer, but I’m getting rather bored. And it’s difficult finding freelance work at the moment.” You had told me earlier why you had given up your job. You said, “There’s something I’ve always wanted to do, an idea I had for a film. I don’t think it’ll amount to anything, because it’s really just an excuse for a trip. I was wondering if you’d like to go with me.”
“A trip?” I said. “When?”
“Whenever you like. We could leave more or less straight away, if you’re not busy.”
“But where would we go?”
“Well, that’s the idea for the film. Have I told you about my postcards?”
“No.”
“I’ll show you.” You left the bed and went into the room you called your study. You returned a few moments later carrying an old shoe box. “I’m not really a collector … I just hoard. I bought most of these a year or two ago, and I’ve added a few since. They’re all prewar. Some of them go back to the last century.”
We pulled some of the cards out and spread them on the bed. They had been sorted into groups by countries and towns, with neat labels for each section. About half of all the cards were British, and these were unsorted. The rest were from Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, a few from Belgium and Holland. Almost all of them were black and white or sepia-tinted. Many of them had handwritten messages on the back, conventional greetings from holidaymakers to people still at home.
“What I’ve often thought I’d like to do is go to some of these places. Try to find the views as they are today, compare them with these old photographs, and see how places change in half a century. As I said, it might be the basis for a film one day, but all I’d really like to do is go and have a look. What about it?”
The cards were fascinating. Frozen moments of a lost age: city centers almost free of traffic, travelers in plus fours parading on foreign seafronts, cathedrals and casinos, beaches with bathers in modest costumes and strollers in straw hats, mountain scenery with funicular railways, palaces and museums and broad deserted plazas.
“You want to go to all of these places?” I said.
“No, just a few. I thought I’d concentrate on France, in the south. I’ve got a lot of cards from there.” You took some of the postcards from me. “It’s really only since the war that the Riviera has been intensively developed for tourism. Most of these cards show the places before that.”
You started going through them, pulling out a few examples to show me. I saw familiar names, unfamiliar views. One of the sets of cards was of the coastline around Saint-Raphael. The coincidence was striking, and my fear of Niall suddenly hit me.
“Couldn’t we go somewhere else, Richard?” I said.
“Of course we could. But this is where I’d like to go.”
“Not France—I don’t want to go to France.”
You looked so disappointed, the cards spread out on the bed around us.
I said, “What about some of the other places? Switzerland, for instance?”
“No, it’s got to be the south of France. Well, we could leave it.”
I found myself going through the same excuses I had used on Niall. “I’d love to go, really I would. But I’m broke at the moment.”
“We’d go in my car … I could pay for everything. I’m not hard up.”
“I haven’t got a passport.”
“We could get you a Visitors’ Passport. You buy those over the counter.”
“No, Richard. I’m sorry.”
You started picking up the postcards, keeping them in their meticulous order. “There’s another reason, isn’t there?”
“Yes.” I could not look at you. “The truth is there’s someone I know, someone I don’t want to see. He’s in France at the moment. Or I think he is, and—”
“Is this the boyfriend you’ve gone out of your way never to mention?”
“Yes. How do you know?”
“I always assumed there must be someone else.” The postcards were all put away now, restored to their neat row in the shoe box. “Are you still seeing him?”
Again, your unconsciously ironic choice of words. I started telling you about Niall, trying to translate the reality into terms you would accept. I described him as a longtime lover, someone I had known since I was young. I said that we had grown away from each other, but that he was reluctant to let go. I characterized him as possessive, childish, violent, manipulative; Niall was all of these, of course, but that was only a part of it.
We discussed the problem for a while, you putting the reasonable case that we were most unlikely to run into him, and anyway if we did that Niall would be forced, by seeing us together, to accept that I had left him. I was adamant, saying that you could not conceive the influence he had over me. I wanted to run no risk of meeting him.
Even as I was saying this I was remembering my own doubts about where Niall might actually be, and the way I knew I had to deal with this. To believe that Niall was anywhere other than Saint-Raphael was to accept the madness.
“But if you’re finished with him,” you said, “he’s going to have to live with the idea sooner or later.”
“I’d rather it was later. I want to be with you. We could go somewhere else.”
“All right. It was just an idea. Any suggestions?”
“What I’d really like is to be out of London for a while. Couldn’t we just get in your car and drive somewhere?”
“In England, you mean?”
“I know it sounds very dull … but I’ve never seen some parts of Britain. We could tour around. Wales, or the West Country, just on our own.”
You seemed surprised, the French Riviera exchanged in favor of Britain, but that was what we agreed. When you took the cards back to your study I went with you, looking at the oddments of film equipment you had bought up. You seemed a little embarrassed about them, saying they took up space and collected dust, but for me they were an insight into you before we met. Your awards were in the study too, half hidden behind a stack of film cans.
“You didn’t say you were famous!” I said, taking down the Prix Italia and reading the inscription.
“Come on … that was luck.”
“… extreme personal danger’,” I read. “What happened?”
“Just the sort of thing news crews get into from time to time.” You took the trophy from me and put it back on the shelf, even farther out of sight. You led me back into the bedroom. “It was a riot in Belfast. The sound recordist was there too. It was nothing special.”
I was intrigued. Suddenly I was seeing you as I had not seen you before: a cameraman with a reputation, a career, awards.
“Please tell me about it,” I said.
You looked uncomfortable. “I don’t often talk about it.”
“Well, tell me.”
“It was just a job—we all took it in turns to go to Northern Ireland. You get paid extra, because it’s fairly difficult work. I don’t mind that sort of thing. Filming is filming, and you get different sorts of problem on every job. Well, there had been a Protestant march during the day and we’d covered that, and in the evening we were back in the hotel having a few drinks. Then word came round that the army were going in to sort out a few kids who were throwing stones in the Falls Road. We talked about whether we should go down there, we were all tired, but in the end we decided to go and have a look. I loaded the camera with night stock, then we hitched a ride with the army. When we got down there it didn’t look like much—about fifty teenagers hurling stuff around. We were behind the troops, fairly well shielded, and nothing much seemed to be about to happen. These things generally fizzle out around midnight. But then suddenly it got worse. A few petrol bombs were thrown, and it was obvious that some older men were joining in. The army decided to break it up, and they fired a few plastic bullets. Instead of scattering the kids carried on, slinging rocks and bombs. A couple of Saracens were called in, and the soldiers charged. Willie and I—Willie was the soundman—went forward with them, because it’s generally the safest place, behind the troops. We ran about a hundred yards and came straight into a sort of ambush. There were snipers in houses, and one of the side streets had a whole gang of people waiting with bombs and rocks. Everything went mad. Willie and I were separated from the reporter and didn’t see him again until later. The soldiers were dashing in every direction, and petrol bombs were going off all around us. I suppose I got a bit carried away, and went on shooting film—right in the middle of it all. Nothing hit us, but a couple of bullets were quite close. We got in among the people who were stoning the troops, and somehow they never seemed to notice us. Then the soldiers started firing plastic bullets again, and this time we were on the receiving end. Well, we got away in the end, but the footage was pretty good.”