Chapter 13

In two weeks we were all as brown and plump as partridges. The days were passed in swimming, sunbathing and eating. The heat was dry and intense, the ocean always an ecstasy, the food delicious.

O blinding, sunbaked days, O beautiful blue water, will I ever enjoy you again? Lobsters broiled in butter, portugaise oysters, tender little octopuses in black sauce, how your memory haunts me in this abode of corned-beef hash and Jell-O!

We were all working, each on his book. Bob, wearing his hairnet almost constantly, was pouring out reams of a book of which he would tell us only the title, Promiscuous Boy; Graeme was still planning The Flying Carpet, whose heroine weighed 250 pounds; and I was trying to write the third chapter of this book and feeling handicapped by the recentness of the events. I could not see Daphne and Angela in any kind of perspective and was reduced to stating just what had happened.

Bob had stopped drinking altogether and was becoming still more handsome; his little paunch had disappeared, the whites of his eyes lost their yellow tinge, and he had stopped talking in his sleep.

Our quarters, we found, belonged on a long lease to an elderly Dutchman who had forbidden Madame Gyp to let anyone use them. But he was not due to return till October, so we had the whole long Mediterranean summer ahead of us. On top of all this, Bob had extracted a large sum of money from his mother-in-law. Everything was going well.

‘Money,’ he said, ‘is not so important as Fitzgerald thinks, but you have to have some. Not too much, though. You’ll notice this when we have lunch with Sally and Terence Marr tomorrow. They’re at the Ruhl, of course. Wonderful people, and they’d be perfectly happy if only she didn’t have so goddamn much money.’

We walked down to the Ruhl next day. It was not the biggest or most ornate hotel in Nice, and not as pretentious as the Negresco, but as soon as we were inside, the aplomb of the doorman revealed everything: this was the abode of quiet millionaires.

Sally and Terence Marr were in a big, high-ceilinged, untidy suite facing the sea. Nothing Bob had told me of Terence could have done justice to his charm. He was not only the best-looking man I had ever seen, but he seemed quite unaware of it; it was not only the perfection of his manners but the natural warmth that radiated from him like sunlight. I especially envied him his nose, curved like a seagull’s: less authoritative than T.S. Eliot’s and less inquisitive than Casanova’s, it was somehow better than either. His eyes were bright blue, his accent curiously Irish.

‘What will you have to dhrink?’ he said to me at once. ‘We’ve sherry, brandy and Scotch.’

Sally Marr was no less attractive. The shape of her head was in the best Egyptian style, her black eyes sparkled with life. Her breathless nasal voice was irresistible.

‘Dora Melrhose,’ said Terence thoughtfully. ‘The name of your pension has the breath of an old English hedgerow. Tell me, does she wear a veil and mittens?’

‘Rats, she died before any of us were born. When are we going to have lunch?’

‘No,’ said Sally. ‘This room’s a mess and the waiter’s such a nasty-looking little man. We’ll have it in the grill.’

We went down to the grill, where Terence ordered an enormous meal of oysters, langoustines with mayonnaise, sweetbreads and green peas, parsley potatoes, a pineapple tart, and a magnum of champagne.

‘We’re looking for a villa to rent this winter,’ said Sally. ‘Where in hell should we go? We don’t care for Monte Carlo, Beaulieu is stuffy, and Cap Ferrat is all up-and-down cliffs. We’d like a nice beach.’

‘What’s wrong with Antibes?’ said Bob. ‘Mary Reynolds and Marcel Duchamp are there. So is Aleister Crowley, in case you want a Black Mass. There’s a nice beach, too.’

‘We saw it yesterday,’ said Terence. ‘Tons of flesh. Bodies laid out like after a battle.’

‘All the world and his misthress,’ said Terence. ‘Sally, what’s wrong with Nice itself? We’ll have lots of good company, what with Bob and his friends. Why not take a suite right here?’

‘No, I want my own garden and servants. This is a nice place, but no privacy. How about Eze?’

The conversation was becoming boring. I understood what Bob had said about people having too much money.

‘All right,’ said Terence when we had finished lunch. ‘Let’s look at Eze. I’ll get the car.’

‘For God’s sake come along with us,’ said Sally when he had gone. ‘You’re not too busy, any of you? Terence just drives past places, he never wants to stop.’

‘He’s been driving past places all his life,’ said Bob. ‘So have I. We’re footloose, that’s all, we don’t like putting down roots.’

‘Just a pair of bums, you mean. Now you,’ she turned to Graeme, ‘you’re not a bum, you have a nice domestic look. I bet you appreciate a home.’

‘As long as it’s not my own,’ he said. ‘I mean, I like other people’s homes.’

‘I see. A parasite. Somebody else makes the home and you move in. What about you?’ she turned to me.

‘I ran away from home last winter and so far I’m not sorry. I don’t want another one right away.’

She gave me a long penetrating look. ‘Just now, young man, you think you’ve got the world by the tail. But do you know what you’re going to be thirty years from now? A nasty old man.’

The power of her black eyes was for a moment frightening; her words were like a judge’s sentence. Then she laughed her curious dry, nasal laugh. ‘Don’t worry, it’s a long way off. I’ll be a witch myself by then.’

As we got up to go the waiter presented the bill with a discreet murmur. Would Madame sign?

Terence was waiting beside the car, talking in Proven÷al to the chasseur. Terence, I was to learn, had the gift of tongues as well as the ability to charm all kinds of functionaries—barmen, porters, waiters, taxi-drivers, cashiers and chambermaids.

The car was a stunning open Hispano-Suiza, with a body of natural wood, like a yacht, yards of aluminum hood, and a metal heraldic bird swooping above the radiator. It was a thing of surpassing beauty, and Bob, Graeme and I sank into the rich leather cushions of the back seat with a luxurious sensation. For me, however, the trip was a nightmare. Terence drove like a madman. There was no question of his skill as a driver, but I found his habit of passing other cars at blind corners and the tops of hills so disturbing that I began to wish I could get out. Graeme and Bob, who had never driven a car themselves, were enjoying the scenery; and at last, reflecting that we are all in the hands of God, I did the same.

We reached Eze in a matter of minutes. Sally had a list of properties to rent and I admired her rapid evaluation of each from the outside.

‘Slow down here,’ she told Terence every now and then. ‘Villa Juanita, yes. No, it’s lousy. Go on ... Villa Mancini: no, too small ... Villa Bella Vista: I wouldn’t be found dead in a place with a name like that ... Villa Montrésor: just a roadside dump ... Château des Arbalêtriers. Stop! This isn’t too bad.’

Terence skidded to a stop beside a pair of ten-foot-high stone gateposts surmounted by snarling gardant lions holding shields in front of them.

‘Do you really want to go in?’ he asked. ‘It looks dreadful to me. It must be owned by a Ghreek.’

We careered around a number of stately curves and came out in front of a tremendous imitation castle complete with battlements, machicolations and towers with slits for the crossbowmen.

‘It’s marvellous,’ said Sally, clasping her hands. ‘Unbelievably absurd. There’s everything but a drawbridge. Let’s take it.’

‘No, dear. I can tell what it’s like inside. Stamped-leather chairs, refectory tables, whitewash, tapestry and bad pictures. It’s just what I want—big and impersonal.’

But going through Cimiez she suddenly said as we lurched around a bend, ‘There’s Frank Harris’s place. I’d almost forgotten the old boy. Stop and we’ll see if he’s in.’

Terence drew up outside a small ugly house with a weathered slate sign lettered VILLA EDOUARD VII. ‘Perhaps he’s taking a nap,’ he said hopefully.

But to me the prospect of seeing the most celebrated English scoundrel of the last fifty years was exciting. I had read nothing of his except a few short stories and the first four volumes of My Life and Loves; but I thought the latter was the best mixture of adventure, documentation and sheer nastiness ever written. It was as vivid as a newsreel, as informative as a police report. The pictures of New York, the Far West, equatorial Africa and fin-de-siécle London were wonderfully alive: one saw and felt a vanished Broadway, plains covered with cattle and cowboys, jungles and native villages, and a great shining city of hansomcabs, political intrigue and plushy champagne-suppers, as if one were walking through them oneself in the company of a superb raconteur and inspired liar. The book had such life it already breathed immortality.

She got out and pulled a bell-rope hanging from a cement pillar, producing a hideous distant clang from inside. We waited for a few minutes and at last a shifty-looking butler in a red-striped vest came to the gate and looked at Sally suspiciously.

‘Of course he’s at home,’ said Sally. ‘Tell him it’s Mrs Sally Marr, and be quick about it. Frank’s worried about duns,’ she said as the butler went away. ‘And the police too, I think. They’re all after him for that funny book.’

‘And give him time to cook up some fancy scheme for getting money out of me? Not on your life.’

The butler came back smiling. ‘Monsieur Arriss will be delighted to receive Mrs Marr and her company. Please enter.’

‘Balls,’ he said from the car. ‘I’m not interested in that old Victorian poop.’

We were shown into a long cool room with English-style furniture. A little grey-faced, grey-haired man strode forward, bowed jerkily from the waist and held out a large palm to Sally. He didn’t look like Frank Harris at all.

Where were the wig-like hair, the glaring eyes, the duck-like snout and comic moustache of the portraits? This man was extremely good-looking. His light-brown eyes were especially fine; his mouth was wide, roguish, and now that the prodigious moustache had been trimmed to a decent size, it looked sensitive and even surprisingly weak. But what surprised me most were the handsome straight thick grey eyebrows which now softened his whole face. They were certainly not the thin threatening lines of the portraits and photographs, and as they were clearly not false ones I suddenly realized that in the days of his grandeur he must have, in order to make his small eyes more prominent and compelling, deliberately plucked and shaped them into those hypnotic Mephistophelean angles that Rothenstein and Beerbohm had reproduced.

The only thing unchanged was his costume—a black, high-lapelled Edwardian jacket, light waistcoat, enormous striped cravat barred with an ornamental clip, and the famous stiff winged collar, at least three inches high, which was obviously and successfully designed to conceal a reedy and over-long neck. His hands were extraordinarily strong and ugly, his ears like cabbage-leaves.

‘Me dear Sally, Terence,’ he said briskly. But the famous booming voice, which had at one time been able to dominate dinner-parties of forty people, as well as the entire lounge of the Café Royal, had become little more than a vibrant wheeze. ‘Sit down. Join me in a vermouth, all of you. Fran÷ois, glasses—ice—lemon!’

He shot a swift look at Graeme and me that was frightening in its intensity. He had the ability of looking straight through one, and his extremely short stature—even with the well-made lifts in his boot-heels—seemed somehow to make him more impressive: he had the actor’s gift of projecting his personality with such force that one felt annihilated. It was easy to see how he had been able to knock editors, cabinet members, millionaires and women over like ninepins.

All his attention was focused on Sally, and he became amusing as he spoke of his difficulties with the police.

‘The beggars are still after me for me old L. and Ls. Hard to believe in a country like France, ain’t it?’

‘Overtly, yes. Covertly, no. A damn surreptitious lot they are. That book has nearly been the death of me. Times I almost wish I’d never written it.’

‘Don’t say that, Frank,’ said Sally. ‘Someone was just telling me it’s better than Rousseau.’

‘Who? Not Shaw anyway, I’ll be bound. Rousseau, eh? He got into a peck of trouble with his book too, poor beggar. But nothing like I have. By the way, G.B.S. is over at Antibes right now, he’s coming to call. I’m expecting him any time. He’s just written another bad play, I understand. Well, none of us can keep it up forever.’

He suddenly looked tired and old, but he was not a man to court sympathy. When he flagged it was obviously only to withdraw into himself, to some inner source of energy; he could receive no strength from others.

As we left he shook hands with us all in a cordial manner. At the last minute he drew Sally aside, and Terence, Graeme and I went back to the car.

‘Very well for three score and ten,’ said Terence. ‘But he’s almost lost his voice.’

We roared back to the Ruhl. ‘I’m going to the agent about the castle now. Meet us in the Perroquet tonight at ten,’ Sally said to Bob. ‘All of you. I feel like dancing.’

‘We’ll call for you in the car,’ said Terence. ‘At the Dora Melrhose. Around ten.’

The Perroquet was patronized by all the wealthy scum of the Riviera. Why Sally had chosen it I could not make out. The decoration was tasteless, the prices exorbitant, the staff of criminal appearance, the orchestra beneath contempt; but it was crowded to bursting. Terence had reserved the best table in the room, and there was a magnum of bad champagne waiting in an icebucket.

Our entrance caused a minor sensation. Sally was wearing a tiara and a white dinner-dress covered with sequins, and Terence a suit of pale apple-green Egyptian linen. Bob, Graeme and I in our dark clothes provided a good background for them.

‘No. As soon as they heard who I was the owner jumped the rent. Sickening. Well, it was probably impossible to heat anyway.’

We got up to dance. The band was playing a jerky paso doble and the floor was so crowded it was difficult to move.

After a half-hour in the Perroquet we left and went to the Cicogne, then to the Cacatoés, then to the Flamingo: that was the year (as Scott Fitzgerald would have said) when they were calling the cabarets after birds. All these places were identical. The crowds were heavy, the music bad, the heat withering, the champagne spurious. But Sally became steadily gayer. Her eyes shone, her laughter came in little cascades, she danced continually. Terence was obviously bored but did not say so; Graeme and Bob simply drank heavily; and I began to get a headache. As we came out of the Toucan at one o’clock, Bob announced he was going to walk home.

‘Let’s all walk around in a circle,’ said Terence. ‘At any rate we’ll get some air.’

We walked, rather unsteadily, through a public garden that was all palm-trees and rhododendrons. The air was heavy with scent, the sky full of stars. A short thickset man in black approached us. ‘Good evening, lady and gentlemen,’ he said in French in a rich Provençal baritone, taking off his hat and sweeping it low. ‘Would you care for a little amusement? Some good movies? Blue, very blue. The show will commence in a few minutes. Just around the corner, in our beautiful old town.’

‘Splendid,’ said Terence. ‘Sally, we haven’t seen a good bad movie for a long time. Come on.’

‘A hundred francs! Listen, we’ll pay two hundred for the five of us. Take it or leave it.’

‘Three hundred francs, madame. These movies cost a lot of money to buy. They are really charming. The cast of characters does everything. There are some trained animals too.’

We followed him back across a square. In a few minutes we were in the old town, walking through the narrow winding streets and between high buildings like the sets in Dr Caligari.

The thickset man turned off down a small black passage and opened a heavy wooden door. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Two hundred francs, I beg you.’

Terence gave him two bills and we went into a small pitchdark theatre where the lighted screen was a blank white. The place seemed to be almost full.

‘Begin, begin!’ a man in the audience growled as we sat down. ‘This is an outrage! We do not come here to sit in the dark.’

Everyone else began calling for action; there were almost as many women as men. At last a gramophone began playing a Strauss waltz and the title of the first film was flashed on the screen in German, French and English: Der Zeitvertreib Rajahs, Les Délassements du Rajah, The Rajah’s Recreations.

It started in rather slowly, with the turbaned and jewelled Rajah lying among cushions talking with a fat Negro eunuch and eating some sweetmeats proffered him by a small boy wearing nothing but a woman’s wig; the candies, it turned out, were of an aphrodisiac nature, and the Rajah, at last throwing off a coverlet, sat up and displayed himself in all his valliance. The eunuch smote his hands together and two rather elderly women in loose trousers and boleros ran in and prostrated themselves before the Rajah, who smiled and stroked his handlebar moustache. After a while the eunuch removed their trousers and the Rajah caressed them in a regal and absentminded way while the boy did a little dance. Nobody seemed to be enjoying himself but the Rajah.

‘What an arhtist,’ whispered Terence. ‘But it’s not fair, he’s carrying the whole scene.’

‘I wish to God they’d play something else besides those damn Viennese waltzes,’ said Sally. ‘Haven’t they got Song of India or Dardanella or something?’

The eunuch had clapped his hands again and two more heavily built women, both nude, ran in and placed themselves before the Rajah, where they began gesturing, rolling their eyes and shaking their breasts. There were close-ups of these gestures, interspersed with views of the Rajah’s tout ensemble and grinning face. The camera then switched to the eunuch, who parted his robe and, shrugging sadly, showed how indifferent he was to it all. At last the Rajah rose, seized one of the women, and threw her on the couch while the gramophone went into The Gipsy Baron. Towards the end his turban fell off, but by this time the camera was switching from one close-up to another with such speed that the whole performance became almost surrealistic before the screen went black, the projector whirred and the word finis appeared for an instant.

‘Here, my love,’ said Terence, handing her a flask. ‘Obviously there’s no bar here. Quite a good turnout,’ he said, looking around at the audience who were now faintly visible in the light coming from the luminous white screen. The Gipsy Baron was still scraping away on the gramophone. Most of the women, I noticed, were wearing masks.

‘This is a neglected art-form, don’t you think?’ Terence said to me. ‘Every time I see one of these films I have the ambition to produce something really good. I could write a better scenario than what we’ve just seen, to begin with.’

‘I suppose one would have to comb the underworhld. One thing, though, I’d get an option on the Rajah. He’s a real trouper.’

‘I’ve had enough,’ said Sally suddenly. ‘We all need a drink too. Give the man his fifty francs, will you, Terence?’

We came out into the velvety Mediterranean night and Terence led the way back to the square where we had left the car. Graeme was supporting Bob, who was still half asleep.

‘I don’t think I want a drink after all,’ said Sally. ‘We’ll take the boys home and call it a day.’ Her eyes were glowing as she got into the car and moved close to Terence.