So I drove my kid guest back down the mountain. His spirits visibly lifted the further we descended until he became apologetic with relief on the motorway to Pisa. I don’t do cliché so I didn’t actually grind my teeth but I was aware of a private, clenched sensation familiar from a lifetime’s social disasters.
‘I mean, sorry,’ Nanty was blithering on, ‘but, like, that was my very first UFO. What a blast! I knew Timothy Good was right all along. They really are among us. Really.’ (And on and on.) He was gazing happily towards the range of hills now safely away to our left. ‘This changes everything.’
‘Too right,’ I thought to myself.
‘From now on the group’s re-born. Bye-bye Freewayz, hello … What?’
‘I didn’t speak.’
‘No, I mean what are we going to call the group? We’re going to have a makeover.’
I winced. ‘I’m not sorry you’re getting rid of that awful name.’
He glanced at me. ‘You’re not fifteen,’ he said sagely.
‘Bits of me are, but obviously not the right bits. Anyway, when you’re choosing your new name, nothing with the word “encounter” in it is my advice, Nanty.’
‘What about “meeting” then? “Strange meeting”, that’s kinda … Yeah, “Strange Meeting”.’
‘It’s the title of a poem by Wilfred Owen.’
‘Who? No copyright on titles, is there? And anyway, Wilfred? Can’t be serious.’
How long, O Lord? I thought to myself and was answered by a sign for Pisa airport saying 11 km. Certainly the whole gruesome episode demanded to be commemorated in a special culinary creation, something that would capture last night’s flavours and associations. Alien pie, perhaps. There would have to be a place in it for smoked cat as well as for potatoes and beetroot in memory of Nanty’s vegan guru. Maybe if –
‘Go on, what are you thinking?’
‘I was thinking about alien pie, actually.’
‘That’s a great name, Gerry.’
‘I meant as a dish.’
‘Great name for a group. “Alien Pie”. Oh yeah, I can see that. I’ll try it on the boys first but maybe we’ll go with that. You’ll get an acknowledgement, promise. You can do the liner notes for our next album. So what about this project of ours?’
‘The book, you mean?’ I was hoping he’d forgotten about that. How awkward. On the other hand, turning down work can be less embarrassing in the long run than taking it on. As far as I was concerned this spurious juvenile fidgeting in the passenger seat wasn’t mildly dotty, he was moon-baying crazed. ‘You know, Nanty, on second thoughts I don’t think it’s going to work.’ Ah, that British diffidence! It was exactly the tone one uses for fending off unwelcome sexual liaisons. Or would use.
‘What do you mean, “not going to work”? I told you, I really dig the way you write.’
‘I think the world you move in is too different from my own,’ I heard myself say primly.
‘Nah, nothing but the odd detail. Fix that, easy.’
‘You do want the airport, I assume?’ I changed the topic with my tone. ‘You were in such a hurry to leave you haven’t got a flight booked today, have you? Point being, there’s a motorway exit coming up and I shall have to commit. If you want a hotel in Pisa proper for the night instead of the airport, now’s the time to say.’
‘Make it the airport,’ said Nanty, adding confidently ‘I never have problems getting a flight.’ Also sprach Brill.
As we swung down towards the terminal I told him I would talk it over with Frankie. ‘My agent, you’ll remember. And I’ll give it some thought of my own in the next day or two.’
‘You’re not narked that I shan’t be staying, are you? A UFO, man, I mean, for Chrissake, who could ever have foreseen that?’ Somewhere between the buildings on our right the jocularly painted tail fin of a newly landed BA aircraft was slicing towards its allotted stand. ‘Not to worry. Next time we’ll go somewhere more … You know what I mean: less …’
‘Remote? Scary?’
‘In town, anyway. London. Amsterdam. New York. LA. Who knows? But soon. I’ll be in touch, don’t worry. Been great. And thanks again for “Alien Pie”. Well random.’
He retrieved his bag from the back seat, settled his dark glasses on his nose by way of disguise and disappeared into Departures, blending without difficulty into that afternoon’s collection of British mums and dads and Crispins. I had a feeling he was about to forgo the anonymity of the Ryanair common herd, and with it the inconvenience of Stansted, and instead would produce a platinum credit card and ensure himself a First Class seat to Heathrow on BA. But then I realized he’d most likely given one of his gofers a call and told him to fix a flight. That was probably what he’d been doing in his bedroom in the middle of the night. Beam me up, Scotty. I drove away, subdued. No question, my instinct was to blame Marta. None of this could have happened had her house either been empty (as that shifty little agent Benedetti had led me to believe) or lived in by a normal member of the human race. Who but a Fernet-swigging sloven – or maybe Slovene? – would have a late-night rendezvous with a helicopter? And then, mark you, lie in her teeth and deny it even though the machine had practically stripped the leaves from an entire hillside and made a noise like Farnborough air show.
On the way back along the motorway I admit I allowed rising antipathy to displace onto Marta’s dandruff-speckled shoulders the responsibility for what I secretly recognized as a narrow escape. Really, I ought to have been feeling grateful that her amorous midnight liaison with a parcels courier had revealed my guest’s true self before it was too late. Instead, I began indulging in luxurious indignation that she had finally crossed the line of mere colourful eccentricity and was now actively jeopardizing my professional life. By frightening off a prospective client she was making it impossible for me to earn a living … It was too much. Drastic steps would have to be taken.
But what steps, exactly? That’s the worst of having the Samper imagination. The mind comes up with various scenarios for dealing with impossible neighbours but races ahead all too easily to see the inevitable outcome: escalating warfare with both parties becoming steadily more entrenched in the conviction of their own righteousness and with ever more aggro and distraction. Ought I to do some pre-emptive fence mending – even though I was manifestly the wronged party – and confess that I and my house guest had actually watched her greet the helicopter pilot? True, this would expose her as a liar; but if it were done with the right degree of manly openness and with apologies for what might seem to have been our snooping, surely Marta would come clean (an outstandingly inappropriate image)? I saw her suddenly opening up … Well, no. To be frank, what I saw her opening up was a bottle from her bottomless Fernet Branca cellar, albeit in a convivial spirit of neighbourliness. ‘Ah, Gerree, I cannot ‘ide it from you, you wicked boy! Zat was my lovaire!’ No: wrong accent. Far too Brigitte Bardot. What she really does is lapse shockingly into fluent American. ‘OK Gerry, let’s cut the crap. I work for the CIA. Right – that composer act was just a cover. Trust my luck to get someone for a neighbour who really knows about music, but it was a risk we had to take. There wasn’t time. I’m gonna have to trust you. I guess you’ve heard of Al Qaeda …?’
With a start I realized I was even then overshooting the Viareggio exit. Goddamn it! Not being Italian I unfortunately lacked the nerve to stop and back up along the hard shoulder and have another go. Now I should have to go all the way to Forti dei Marmi and come off at the Pietrasanta exit and it was all Marta’s fault. Only she had the power to cause me such upset and distraction. Did I mention fence mending? Can this be the last of the Sampers talking? Fence building is what I needed to be doing. That had to be the answer: ten-foot high beech panels topped with razor wire. Actual electrification would be going too far as yet, but a good solid fence between us would solve a lot of problems. A pity to inject precisely the suburban note one had moved to the mountains to avoid, but there seemed to be little choice. Where was the nearest garden centre or DIY place? I could order the fence right away and have them deliver the panels and posts the following day. Plus some gravel and cement to bed them in. Question: would it be worth hiring one of those two-stroke hole borers that look like motorized corkscrews? A lot easier than –
That can’t have … That was the sodding exit! God’s buttocks and earlobes, at this rate I would be in Monaco for dinner. I couldn’t believe what that woman was doing to me. Now I would have to come off at Massa. But that did it. My mind was made up. One good stout fence, and a phone call next morning to Frankie to tell him the Nanty Riah project was a non-starter. He could call the kid celebrity and tell him so in person. That was what one paid an agent for.