‘When will you go back?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘The funeral’s Friday. We’ll go back the day after.’
‘Oh.’ Grace’s face fell. ‘I hoped we could stay longer.’
‘I’m meant to be rehearsing. You know that.’
‘I wanted to spend a bit of time with Mum and Dad.’
‘You’ve already had a week with them, babe.’
That word – ‘babe’ – sounded both patronising and faintly menacing. ‘Is there anything else you need?’ he asked us, his mind clearly elsewhere. ‘I don’t see how I can really help you. I told everything I know to the police and, to be honest with you, their investigation seems to be moving in a completely different direction. Losing Mum is bad enough but having to go over what happened in Deal really sucks.’
Hawthorne grimaced, as if it genuinely upset him to continue with this line of enquiry. It didn’t stop him though. ‘Did you know your mother had planned her funeral?’ he demanded.
‘No. She didn’t tell me.’
‘Do you have any idea why she might have decided to do that?’
‘Not really. She was someone who was very organised. That was part of her character. The funeral, the will, all of that …’
‘You know about the will?’
When Damian was angry, two little pinpricks of red, almost like light bulbs, appeared in his cheeks. ‘I’ve always known about the will,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to discuss it with you.’
‘I imagine she left everything to you.’
‘As I said, that’s private.’
Hawthorne stood up. ‘I’ll see you at the funeral. I understand you’re going to be performing.’
‘Actually, that’s not what I’d call it. Mum left instructions for me to say a few words. And Grace is going to read a poem.’
‘Sylvia Plath,’ Grace said.
‘I didn’t know she liked Plath. But I had a call from the undertaker, a woman called Irene Laws. Apparently, everything was written down.’
‘You don’t think it’s a bit strange that she made all these arrangements the same day she died?’
The question seemed to annoy him. ‘I think it was a coincidence.’
‘A funny coincidence.’
‘I don’t see anything funny in it at all.’ Damian walked over to the front door and opened it for us. ‘It’s been nice meeting you,’ he said.
He hadn’t even tried to make that sound sincere. We left and went down the single flight of stairs and out into the busy street.
Once we got there, Hawthorne stopped. He looked back, deep in thought. ‘I missed something,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I don’t know what. It was when you asked him about the text that Diana Cowper sent. After what I told you, why couldn’t you keep your mouth shut?’
‘The hell with you, Hawthorne!’ Right then, I’d really had enough. ‘Don’t you ever talk to me like that. I’m listening to you. I’m taking notes. But if you think I’m going to follow you around London like some kind of pet dog, you can forget it. I’m not stupid. What was wrong with asking him about the text? It’s obviously relevant.’
Hawthorne glared at me. ‘You think!’
‘Well, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know! Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But there was something he’d just told me that was important. You broke my train of thought and I haven’t picked up on it. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘You can ask him at the funeral.’ I walked away. ‘Let me know what he says.’
‘It’s eleven o’clock on Friday!’ he called after me. ‘Brompton Cemetery.’
I stopped and turned round. ‘I can’t come. I’m busy.’
He stalked after me. ‘You’ve got to be there. It’s a big deal. That’s what this is all about, remember? She wanted a funeral.’
‘And I’ve got an important meeting. I’m sorry. You’ll just have to take notes and tell me about it afterwards. I’m sure you’ll be more accurate than me anyway.’
I saw a taxi and flagged it down. This time, Hawthorne didn’t try to stop me. I was careful not to turn round but I saw him reflected in the mirror – standing there, lighting another cigarette as we accelerated round a corner.
Ten
Script Conference
There was a reason why I couldn’t attend the funeral. The day before, I’d finally had a phone call from Steven Spielberg’s office. Both he and Peter Jackson had arrived in London and wanted to meet me to discuss the first draft of the Tintin script at the Soho Hotel in Richmond Mews, just off Dean Street.
I know the hotel well. Although it’s hard to believe, it was once an NCP car park (the low ceilings and the lack of windows are the only clues) but has now become something of a focal point for the British film industry. It’s surrounded by production houses and post-production facilities and has two screening rooms of its own. Once or twice I’ve had lunch in its busy, ground-floor restaurant, Refuel. It’s almost impossible not to spot someone you know and the very fact that you’re meeting there can make you feel that, somehow, you’ve arrived. In this respect, it’s London’s own little corner of Los Angeles.
I forgot all about Damian Cowper and his mother for the next couple of days. Instead, I immersed myself in the script, going through it line by line, trying to remember the thought processes that had got me this far. I was convinced that there were lots of good things in it but I still had to be prepared to fight my corner if need be. I wasn’t sure how either Jackson as director or Spielberg as producer was going to respond to my work.
This was the problem.
Tintin is a European phenomenon and one that has never been particularly popular across the Atlantic. Part of the reason for this may be historical. The 1932 album, Tintin in America, is a ruthless satire on the United States, showing Americans to be vicious, corrupt and insatiable: the very first panel shows a policeman saluting a masked bandit who is walking past with a smoking gun – and no sooner has Tintin arrived in New York and climbed into a taxi than he finds himself being kidnapped by the Mob. The entire history of Native Americans is brilliantly told in five panels. Oil is discovered on a reservation. Cigar-smoking businessmen move in. Soldiers drive the crying Native American children off their land. Builders and bankers arrive. Just one day later, a policeman tells Tintin to get out of the way of a major traffic intersection. ‘Where do you think you are – the Wild West?’
There’s a total cultural disconnect too. What would the Americans make of the bizarre relationships that seem quite normal in the world of Tintin? There are his friendships with the not entirely reformed drunk, Captain Haddock, and with the stone-deaf Professor Calculus (who was given no part in the first film). There is a talking dog. There are the idiotic, one-joke detectives, Thompson and Thomson, who can only be told apart by the shapes of their moustaches. But most of all there is the inconsequentiality of the adventures. Marvel and DC comics dealt with fantastical characters but at least they sent them on recognisable journeys, providing them with origin stories, personal tragedies (the villain Magneto was revealed to be a Holocaust survivor), love affairs, psychological issues, political awakenings and all the rest of it. Very few of the Tintin albums have anything that comes close to a proper narrative shape and one of them – The Castafiore Emerald – was deliberately designed to have no story at all.
Tintin has no girlfriend. Although he is supposedly a journalist, he is hardly ever seen to work. His age is indeterminate. He could actually be a child, a grown-up Boy Scout. His dress sense and hairstyle are ridiculous. Unlike all the other characters, who are carefully delineated, he is deliberately drawn as a cipher. His face is made up of three dots for his eyes and mouth and a small letter c which is his nose. Although presumably Belgian, he has no national characteristic that might make him a foreigner abroad. He has no parents, no real home (until he moves into Marlinspike Hall with Captain Haddock), no emotions beyond a desire to travel and have adventures. How could he possibly be the hero of a $135-million Hollywood film?