Lights Down

ONE

London

Sunday 30 May, 2021

Looking back, I missed all the clues, every single one.

‘You sailed all this way because of me?’

‘Of course.’

I’m on-board Rémy’s yacht, Caspar, a much-loved survivor from the days before plastic took over from – in his words – sweat and seasoned teak. It’s tucked up in a visitor’s berth at a marina near Tower Bridge, and just now Rémy’s hunting for the bottle of Saint-Émilion Grand Cru he promised me on the phone.

‘The world is crazy,’ he’s telling me. ‘France is impossible. Heathrow is worse. Even if I could get a flight, your guys would lock me up for a fortnight in some airport hotel. The food would kill a Frenchman quicker than Covid.’ He glances up, still without the bottle, and gestures at the scene through the cabin window. ‘Fifty boats? More? Who’s looking? Who’s ever going to find me here? I tested negative in Boulogne. I’m double-vaxxed and I can prove it. The guys in the office are happy. I’m paid up for three nights.’

I agree the world has gone mad. This country commits more time and effort to manning the battlements and being nasty to foreigners than anywhere else on earth. Given that he set sail from the French coast late last night, I expect they’ll have tracked him across the Channel every inch of the way.

‘Nonsense.’ He’s found the wine at last. ‘We need to talk about Exocet.’

Exocet is the new TV mini-series he wants to pitch me. Rémy Despret has long been my favourite director and he loves the grand gestures. Saint-Émilion Grand Cru costs a fortune, but he still needs to know I’m not an easy buy. We’ve known each other a long time, Rémy and I, and age gives me mothering rights.

‘The Tower of London is five minutes away.’ I’m nodding at the cabin window. ‘If you’re lucky they might release you in time for Christmas. If they get difficult, it could be much worse. Importing a French virus is a capital offence. Anne Boleyn lost her head for less.’

Rémy rarely smiles but it’s nice when it happens. He’s a big man, six foot three inches in his stonewashed jeans and faded T-shirt, and he holds my gaze for a moment, then sorts out a couple of glasses, leaving me with the view. I’ve never been to the St Katharine Docks marina before and I’m still wondering about the net worth of the yachts and motor cruisers nudging the pontoon when he proposes a toast.

‘To Exocet.’ He pours the wine and hands me a glass. The smile is even broader. ‘À bas les Rosbiffs.’

À bas les Rosbiffs means Stuff the Brits. It’s a phrase that has always played well in certain circles in Rémy’s native Paris, and just now I get the feeling it ties in nicely with the thrust of his new mini-series.

We settle at the table which is covered in navigation charts. I’m to think April, 1982. The Argies have landed on the Falklands and helped themselves to what little remains of the British Empire. Thatcher is outraged and has despatched a task force to reclaim her belongings. As a sizeable chunk of the Royal Navy steams south, the Argies have a couple of weeks to lay a trap or two and for that they’ll need new friends.

‘In Paris?’

‘Of course. These people do things in style. They breed wonderful polo players and they’re in love with speed. Put an Argie pilot in a fast jet and sell him a decent missile, and any navy on earth would be in trouble. This is the South Atlantic in mid-winter. The Brits have been at sea for weeks already, and in any case they’ve never taken foreigners seriously. That might turn out to have been a mistake.’

‘How come?’

‘Because we had an interest in making it hard for the Brits.’

‘We?’

‘Us. Les Français.’

‘Are we talking reality?’ The Grand Cru is delicious. ‘This stuff actually happened?’

‘Of course.’

‘How do I know?’

‘You don’t. First you have to believe me. Then we have to make everyone else believe it, too.’

‘We’re talking audience?’

‘Backers, first.’

‘You haven’t lined up the finance?’

‘Not yet.’

‘And that’s why you’re here? You think me on board will make a difference?’

‘Enora Andressen? The Enora Andressen? I know it will. And by tomorrow, with you attached, I’m meeting a bunch of backers. This town is full of money that doesn’t know what to do with itself. Covid has killed production. The cupboard’s empty.’

Rémy’s right. The week the BBC started to run repeats of repeats of repeats of Dad’s Army was the week the nation rediscovered reading.

‘So what happens in this series of yours?’

‘Happened, chérie. Fact. The Argies have representation in Paris. They fly French aircraft, have done for a while. They think the world of the Super Étendard, and they adore the Mirage III. Strap on a French missile, a surface skimmer, and no Brit matelot will ever lay eyes on them. We’re talking fire-and-forget. You’re an Argie pilot heading for the task force. You’re flying low. You release at seventy kilometres out, and then turn for home. The Brit radar sets see nothing, no trace, until our little Exocet baby’s six thousand metres away. At those speeds, you’ve got less than a minute to react. Bam’ – he drives his big fist into his open palm – ‘sweet dreams.’

I was born in 1977 and I have the dimmest memory of watching news footage as a child on our family TV in Brittany. A British warship was wallowing somewhere in the South Atlantic, her hull blackened and torn open, smoke curling out of the wound. At the time, it was my mother who turned the set off. When I asked why, she said that lots of men had died.

‘HMS Sheffield,’ Rémy confirms. ‘An Exocet did that and a couple more sank a big container ship, which cost the Brits most of their helicopter lift. Later, the Argies fired one at a destroyer, big hole towards the stern. By then, the Brits knew they had a problem.’

‘And the French? Us?’

‘We loved it. This was the first time the skimmers had been used in anger. Half the world was watching. You can’t buy an advert like that.’

‘Horrible.’ I reach for my wine glass. ‘So where do I belong in all this?’

Rémy fingers his glass for a moment, then gestures me closer as if someone might be listening. I’ve been aware since I stepped aboard that something is different about him, and now I realize what it is. He’s obviously tired, as he should be after sailing single-handed through the night, but he’s nervous, too, a little brittle round the edges. I’ve never known him bite his nails before, just the lightest damage around both broad thumbs, and the battered Nike Air Zoom on his left foot appears to have developed a life of its own. Rémy, for me, has always been nerveless, the embodiment of directorial calme, but something, or someone, has got at him. I can see it in his eyes, in the way he keeps checking the pontoon through the window. This is a man, I tell myself, who’s expecting bad company.

‘Well?’ I’m still waiting for an answer.

‘The Brit task force is at sea. Buenos Aires has sent a small team to Paris. They only have so many Exocets, and they badly need more.’

‘So?’

Rémy’s looking at me again, impatient this time, as if I should be reading his mind, and when I insist on at least the outlines of the plot and just a clue or two about the character he has in mind for yours truly, he offers a slightly stagey sigh. The Brits, he says, have wised up about the Exocets. They’ve despatched Special Forces to neighbouring Chile to wreak havoc amongst various tucked-away Argie assets, and in Paris they’ve located the one French politician powerful enough to OK the delivery of more French missiles.

‘This is the president?’

‘No. But nearly.’

‘This guy is real?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you’re going to name him?’

‘No way. We’re calling him Alain. He’s youngish, mid-forties, a high-flyer, a family man, a staunch Catholic. He’s full of ambition, and the public love him, and even better he has a family debt to settle. A debt of blood.’

‘Against whom?’

‘The Brits. His grandfather died at Mers-el-Kébir. That’s back in 1940. It’s complicated Vichy stuff but he was blown up on a battleship called the Dunkerque. The Brits killed more than a thousand French sailors that day and he’s never forgiven them.’

Rémy nods, and studies his big hands as if he, too, had taken the infamy of Mers-el-Kébir personally. Then he glances up at me and begins to explain young Alain’s single weakness, a flaw that Brit Intelligence are determined to exploit.

‘He likes middle-aged women with baggage,’ I say lightly, ‘which I’m guessing might be Enora’s cue.’

Rémy has an acute ear for nuance, and he senses – quite rightly – that I’m not taking him entirely seriously. The Exocet missile, I can buy. Some of the historical stuff is genuinely interesting, especially when Rémy talks about the black-and-white footage of the Brits bombarding the French fleet anchored up at Mers-el-Kébir. This, he promises me, will launch the series, pictures of smoke boiling over the ruined hulls of French warships, images later echoed in news footage from the South Atlantic. So far, so good. But is there really space in this bloodfest for a middle-aged femme fatale, tasked with compromising the one screen-ready French politician who – in 1982 – can bring the Brits to their knees?

This is bullshit, and I hope we both know it.

‘You’re wrong.’ Rémy is looking genuinely shocked. ‘Your screen name is Honore. You’re very close to Alain’s wife. You know the family inside out. You’ve known them forever. Holidays? Saints’ days?’

‘And am I married?’

‘Only to your job. You’re a political journalist. National reputation. That’s how the pair of you first hooked up.’

‘Me and Alain?’

‘Of course. You were the first to spot his potential.’

‘And you’re telling me this man is married?’

‘Yes. To the comely Agnès.’

‘Comely’ puts a smile on my face. Rémy, who has a gift for languages, especially film, has always treated English like a hot bath. He wallows in it. He loves a splash or two of the more arcane words. Comely. Winsome. He once introduced me to a fellow thesp as ‘reliably vulpine’, and it took me a beat or two to realize he meant it as a compliment.

Now I want to know more about Agnès.

‘She’s become your best friend. You spend a lot of time together. Girlie weekends in Venice. She’s having problems just now, and you’re only too happy to help.’

‘Problems?’

‘She’s menopausal. She doesn’t recognize herself anymore. Vulnerable doesn’t begin to cut it.’

‘And me?’

‘You’re her rock. Tough love would come close.’

‘Am I still working?’

‘You are. You write for Le Point. Have done for a while. That’s what took you to Alain in the first place.’

‘Centre-right?’

‘Exactly. A meeting of minds. What could be sweeter?’

I nod. Despite everything, Honore is beginning to come together in my imagination. I can picture her. I can hear her. She’d live somewhere interesting, somewhere off the beaten Parisian track. She might have a rural bolthole at the end of some TGV line. She’d swim, or run, or maybe both. She’d keep herself fit. When she had time, she’d worry about the planet. She might even abandon offal.

‘And do I have any kids?’

‘One. A boy. Louen.’

‘That’s a Breton name.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You named him with me in mind?’

‘I did.’

‘Isn’t that …’ I’m frowning now, ‘… a little presumptuous?’

‘Not at all. The part is made for you, and so is Louen.’

‘Age?’

‘Twenty-two. And you know what he’s done with his life? He’s a fighter pilot. Just now he’s based in Corsica, flying the Mirage. And you know what’s best of all? The Ministry of Defence have offered all the help we’re going to need. Whatever aerial sequences we script, they’ll supply virtually unlimited access. That way, running the subplot, we can mirror the Argie pilots. They were flying the Mirage, too.’

‘So what’s in it for the Ministry of Defence?’

‘À bas les Rosbiffs.’ Another smile. ‘One of the Air Corps generals has read the script. Total buy-in.’

I reach for my glass. The wine is truly wonderful, lingering on the back of the tongue, a series of delicious surprises in keeping with the best film scripts.

‘This Louen carries the series?’

‘No.’ Rémy shakes his head. ‘You do. Enora Andressen does, aka Honore. But the boy helps.’

‘Describe him.’

‘Short. Stocky. Gunfighter eyes.’ He pauses. ‘His friends call him Rouquin.’

‘He’s a redhead?’

‘Sure. Just like Alain.’

I hold Rémy’s gaze for a long moment. Alas, we’re back in the pages of pulp fiction.

‘He’s Alain’s boy?’

‘Of course. He comes from the affair the pair of you had way back.’

‘And now?’

‘You live alone in the Tenth. You’ll love the apartment I’ve found. It’s a walk-up, no lift, with a view of Quai de Jemmapes. You and Alain still meet.’ He shrugs. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘Only if you’re thinking anyone in France would care. If this is our big reveal, we’re in trouble.’

Rémy likes ‘we’, I can tell. He thinks I’m on the edge of saying yes to this new baby of his, and until the latest feeble plot twist he might have been right.

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No? You won’t do it? Won’t even read it?’

‘No, you’ve told me enough. This will be shot in France, am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many episodes?’

‘Seven.’

In my head, I tally the location commitment, the pre-shoot script conferences, the read-throughs, the post-production demands.

‘That’s a big chunk of time. Six months at least. I need to share something with you. Maybe I should have mentioned this before.’

‘Before what?’

‘Before you opened the bottle.’ I’m trying to lighten the conversation. I’ve always had difficulty reading this man but now his disappointment is all too evident. No one ever says no to Rémy Despret. Especially me.

‘Well?’ He wants to know where this thing of ours has gone so badly wrong.

I gather my thoughts for a moment, wondering quite where to start, then I hear voices on the pontoon beside the yacht. Rémy is already on his feet, heading for the wooden steps that will take him out of the saloon. Through the open door I watch him steady himself beside the wheel. It’s started to rain and the two figures on the pontoon want to come aboard. Rémy starts to argue, then shrugs and steps back as they clamber into the cockpit. Moments later, all three of them are down in the cabin. One of the visitors, an older man, is wearing a dark blue anorak with a smart St Katharine Docks logo. The other, much younger, has a yellow gilet and terrible hair and a lanyard with an ID I can’t quite read. He appears to be in charge.

‘And you are?’

I introduce myself. A friend of Monsieur Despret’s. When he asks for ID, I query why that might be necessary.

‘You sailed in with him?’

‘Not at all.’ I gesture at the bottle. ‘We’re having a chat.’

‘Local, then? London?’

‘Yes.’

He nods, produces a smartphone, taps in my name, waits to see what happens. Evidently satisfied, he turns to Rémy. He wants to know about Newhaven.

‘You quarantined in the marina there. Have I got that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you left when?’

‘Last night.’

Rémy is plainly uncomfortable, largely – I suspect – because of me. He raises a QR code on his phone and passes it across. Our new friend scans it, grunts something to the older man, and then asks for Rémy’s passport. A brief flick through, and he’s done. He even says thank you and makes a joke about the weather before clambering back up the steps and returning to the pontoon. Through the cabin window, we watch him taking shots of the yacht, fore and aft, kneeling briefly to capture a close-up of the name.

‘Why Caspar?’ I murmur. ‘I’ve always meant to ask.’

‘Caspar Friedrich? German artist? Big on Baltic landscapes? Google Das Monch am Meer. It’ll change your life.’

‘And why Newhaven?’

He doesn’t answer me. He’s still watching the figures on the pontoon and doesn’t relax until they’ve gone. Only then does he turn back into the cabin. Rémy, to my knowledge, has never done guilt. Until now.

‘You told me you sailed from Boulogne last night,’ I point out quietly.

‘I did.’

‘Was that a lie?’

‘Yes. I came straight from Newhaven.’

‘So why not tell me?’

He gives me a look, then shrugs.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘Just business. The border people at the marina let me sit it out on board. There’s CCTV everywhere in these places. They had me banged up.’

‘And the business?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Meaning you won’t tell me?’

‘Meaning you don’t want to know.’ He manages to summon the faintest smile, then gestures at the bottle. ‘You were telling me what a shit screenplay I’d written. There’s enough left for a glass each.’

‘Have I upset you? Be honest.’

‘Not at all. These are very strange times. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that.’

‘You’re right, I don’t.’ I take a step closer to him and put my hand on his arm. ‘It’s not the script. A couple of days and I’m sure we could put things right.’

‘You’re very kind.’

‘I mean it.’

‘So what’s the problem? Why can’t you sign on?’

‘It’s H. You’ve never met him, Rémy, but he’s the father of my only child, and last year Covid nearly killed him. He’s still ill, still suffering. They call it Long Covid, and in some respects it’s worse because it doesn’t go away.’ I manage to summon a smile. ‘Six months would be out of the question, I’m afraid, much though I like the idea of Honore.’

‘You’re looking after him? This H?’

‘Helping to, yes.’

‘Here? In London?’

‘In Dorset. It’s miles away. Flixcombe Manor.’

‘Flixcombe?’ Something has changed in his face. He’s suddenly animated again. Flixcombe. He revolves the word in his mouth, enjoying it, tasting it, like a chocolate truffle he wants to last forever. Then he frowns. ‘Flixcombe or Vlixcombe?’

‘Flixcombe.’

‘Wrong. It’s Vlixcombe.’

‘It’s not.’

‘It is, I promise you, and one day I’ll explain why.’

‘Tell me now.’

‘No time. This afternoon’s a wrap. Ma chérie, you’re lovelier than ever.’

He’s back in charge now, dependable, decisive, quite the old Rémy. He returns the cork to the bottle, puts the glasses in the tiny sink, checks his watch, and then gives me a brief hug before accompanying me into the cockpit and helping me onto the pontoon. This farewell, after our elaborate pas-de-deux over the script, feels unnecessarily brisk. Slightly hurt, I button my coat against the rain but when I lift my head to wave goodbye, he’s gone.

TWO

It now gets complicated. I make my way home from St Katharine Docks, trying to work out why I feel so disturbed by Rémy. We’ve all lived through the last fourteen months, and I know only too well that Covid has put its smell on everyone, but the change in someone I always took for granted is deeply worrying. The old Rémy, the imperturbable presence on set, that acute master of dialogue and delivery who always teased the very best out of any casual on-screen exchange, the action director who could make a single perfectly framed camera movement do the work of half a dozen shots, the scruffy maestro we were all half in love with, appears to have downed tools and left for the big empty rehearsal hall in the sky. In his place is someone I barely recognize: clumsy, uncertain, nervous, prepared to settle for the dumbest of clichés in lieu of a grown-up script. Something’s happened to a man I used to revere, and I need to find out more.

By the time I’ve made it to Holland Park, the rain is even heavier. I’ve been down in Flixcombe since the back end of last year, trying to spare H the worst of Covid’s long reach, and London – like Rémy – feels like a presence I barely recognize. Lockdown, according to the good folk in charge, appears to be virtually over but old habits die hard. Strangers still carefully avoid each other on the street. Women, especially, are still wearing masks. And when I ride the 205 bus west, I have the entire front of the top deck to myself. Elements of this dreary urban shuffle are strangely agreeable because I happen to enjoy my own company, but I suspect that the government’s breezy assumption that we’ll all be partying by the weekend might be wide of the mark.

My apartment feels damp and abandoned. Malo has been making regular visits to sort the post, in search of anything pressing, but I’ve yet to get round to going through the rest. My lovely son, bless him, has been working for a food bank run by the Trussell Trust in one of the needier corners of south-west London. This, I suspect, was Clem’s idea, but Malo’s been honest enough to admit that it came as a relief after his post-Christmas week with H and me at Flixcombe. Coping with the unfed, he tells me, is a stroll in the park compared to the long, long days with the ghost that was once his father.

H stands for Hayden Prentice. Nearly two decades ago, we shared a bed on a superyacht in Antibes where I was on location. That night, both drunk, we conceived Malo and the following day I went down the coast to the Cannes Film Festival where I was up for an award. I never made it to the dais but I did meet a beguiling Scandi scriptwriter called Berndt Andressen. We were married within months, and when Malo arrived we both assumed that Berndt was the natural father. That turned out to be wrong and thanks to a DNA test Hayden – or ‘H’ – was able to claim paternity. By then, after years of ugliness, Berndt and I were in the midst of a messy divorce. By now I knew that H owed his wealth to the Pompey cocaine trade but we became friends. We’ve never slept together again, and we never will, but – like Malo – I was won over by his unflagging energy. In his own way, he’s looked after both of us, and now is the moment when I’m happy to return the favour.

Why? Because H, through no obvious fault of his own, has found himself in the eye of the perfect storm. First the virus in its rude infancy, which nearly killed him, and now Long Covid, which threatens to do the same thing except much more slowly. Watching him struggle to surface from months of torment has been an exercise in patience as well as all the other Christian virtues. Life never endowed me with a huge supply of the latter, and on bad days I still try and roleplay my way through the worst of the crises, but there’s no contesting the price we all have to pay.

No one could ever accuse the old H of keeping a low profile. For most of his working life, he dealt huge quantities of the marching powder, and when irritation or anger turned to violence he could be a real handful, but in our separate ways I now realize we all loved him. That love was unconditional because he had a big heart and limitless self-belief, and we all knew what to expect, but today’s H is someone else, someone new, someone different. Surprise is a word I used to love. It sustained me through play after play, film after film, relationship after relationship. Now, alas, surprise is something I’ve learned to dread. Hence my eagerness to seize Rémy’s offer of a decent bottle of wine and jump on the train to London. This will be respite care, I told myself. How wrong could I have been?

I settle on the sofa, trying to muster the energy to go through the mountain of unopened post. There’s a message waiting for me on the landline. It’s probably from Evelyn, who’s bravely volunteered to keep an eye on H while I’m up here in London, but she’s bound to have hit a reef or two and just now I can’t face the conversation. Instead, I open envelope after envelope, making a neat pile of the charity appeals, still thinking about Flixcombe, about H, about those nightmare weeks in Portsmouth last year when the two of us – Malo and I – battled to keep him alive.

Covid, coupled with the aftershocks of one of H’s long-ago feuds, took me to places even I could barely have imagined, but all the time – in the very back of my mind – there lurked a faith in a place called home. That’s where everything would settle down, come good again. That’s where we could queue up at Lost Property and reclaim the lives we’d once led. It might be Flixcombe. It might be Holland Park. It might, God knows, be a brand-new start somewhere hot and sunny and virus-free.

But none of that has happened. Instead, Covid has morphed, and morphed again, nimbler than any set of travel restrictions, more knowing than the vaccine programme, feasting on the old and the poor. Only yesterday, more than four thousand people died in India. Worldwide, that figure is way past three million. In this country, we take comfort in the vaccine roll-out, but our hapless government often seems asleep at the wheel, and in the face of a thousand unintended consequences, including H, I sometimes feel overwhelmed. A French philosophe whose name eludes me once said that we are all dust in the wind, and just now, in this exact moment in my life, I get the sense that he was right.

I finish the post and gaze at the phone. I badly need someone to talk to. It’s barely four o’clock. Rosa, if she’s working at all, might still be in her office. She answers on the second ring, and she seems pleased to hear me. Like a good agent, my tone of voice is the only clue she ever needs. Without me asking, she’s insisting on a meet, a drink, maybe something to eat. I tell her I’ll pick her up at her office. Give me an hour and I’ll be there.

‘No point,’ she says. ‘The office has gone. It’s history. I’m camping in a mate’s stationery cupboard, or at least that’s the way it feels. Long story, my precious. Prepare to be bored.’

She tells me she’s got a couple of comp tickets for a river cruise with dinner thrown in.

‘Half six at Tower Pier,’ she says. ‘They still insist on Covid spacing so the evening belongs to us.’

THREE

Tower Pier is a five-minute walk from St Katharine Docks. I arrive early, with half an hour to spare before I’m to meet Rosa, wondering whether I might tempt Rémy to join us afloat, but Caspar has gone. At the marina office they dismiss his departure with a smile and a shrug. Sure, he paid for three nights but people change their plans. The tide began to ebb a couple of hours ago and Monsieur Despret should be way down the river by now. I digest the news in the rain outside, eyeing his empty berth. What about tomorrow’s meet with his financial backers? How come he’s simply sailed away?

By the time I get back to Tower Pier, Rosa has arrived, joining a handful of fellow diners waiting for permission to file on board. She spots me at once and gives me