‘Comin’ up,’ said Ranch. He disappeared through the drapes into the bedroom.
‘He’s first rate,’ said T. Bone, leaning forward confidentially. ‘Found in a carpetbag in the ladies’ conveniences at Union Station. In and out of institutions all his life. Convinced he’ll meet his mother on “the other side”, poor lamb. Tell me, Larry. Do children in England still have those little Barnardo boxes for collecting money for the orphans?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Larry, who vaguely remembered that he and Alec had once had such a box. A little yellow cottage with a slot in the roof.
‘One hopes so,’ said T. Bone, settling back and smiling from the shadows. ‘It encourages them to think of those less fortunate. There’s so little of that these days. N’est-ce pas?”
‘Last days of the Empire,’ said Larry, flippantly.
‘Oh, not yet,’ said T. Bone. ‘No. I think we’ve a little more time.’
This man, thought Larry, returning the other’s amused gaze, contained within himself such depths of fraudulence you would never come to the end of him. To look at he was a benign, slightly eccentric figure in his sixties with an uncanny resemblance to the older John Betjeman. He wore a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and, on his very white legs, some manner of surgical support socks finished off with a pair of highly polished brogues. His accent was the sort of camp upper-class English little heard since the death of Noël Coward, but beneath it, like the faint pattern of old wallpaper under whitewash, Larry detected another voice, something grimly urban, provincial and brutish, so that it was not difficult to imagine him, somewhere in the 1950s, a little slicked hoodlum in a bombed-out and rain-damaged city like Plymouth or Slough, the type of character who carried a sharpened steel comb in his pocket.
Ranch’s cool and dangerous drink arrived, blue and gin-dry and delicious. Ranch and Larry put on sunglasses, an event followed by ten minutes of small talk concerning the heat, the merits of Mexican food, the flight of the comet. Finally, after a lengthy pause during which the ice cracked and tinkled in their glasses, T. Bone said: ‘We all adored you as Dr Barry.’
‘Jesus, yes,’ said Ranch.
‘Thanks,’ said Larry.
‘They should have made more of you,’ said T. Bone, ‘but television is run by morons. Don’t you think?’
‘Morons,’ crooned Ranch, as though he were at a revivalist meeting.
‘I’m glad to be out of it,’ said Larry, watching from the corner of his eye Ranch flick peanuts into the air and expertly catch them in his mouth.
‘We have a little project,’ said T. Bone, ‘we think would be perfect for you. Nothing extreme. The kind of viewing enjoyed by thousands of healthy Americans every day.’
‘Except,’ said Ranch, resting a hand on Larry’s shoulder, ‘it won’t be Americans watching it.’
‘Just so,’ said T. Bone. ‘You would be dubbed into Portuguese and Spanish for our South American market. Sun Valley has been playing in Brazil and Argentina for months. You’re a great favourite there. Particularly, one imagines, with the dusky housewives.’
‘You got fans in places you ain’t even heard of,’ said Ranch. ‘Bacabal, Xique-Xique…’
‘We make our little productions very simply,’ said T. Bone, looking now like Sir Ralph Richardson playing a Borgia pope. ‘We remain the true auteurs. We are an industry of enthusiasts.’
‘How long would the shoot take?’ asked Larry.
‘A week,’ said Ranch, ‘two weeks max.’
‘For which we can offer you a fee of twenty thousand dollars,’ added T. Bone. ‘Naturally we’d like it to be more but these days we have to compete with the Web. However, we can arrange payment so that you need not worry about the gentlemen at the revenue.’
‘And I wouldn’t have to do anything I could get arrested for?’
‘It’s all kosher,’ said Ranch.
‘No Lolitas or animals?’
‘I am a father,’ said T. Bone, ‘and a nature lover.’
‘One more thing,’ said Larry. ‘I’m going to be in England from next week. I don’t know how long for. Not long, I think.’
‘I’ll make a note of that,’ said Ranch, flicking another peanut into the air.
Twenty-seven floors below, where Shirley Temple had once played, a lone swimmer pulled himself across the green eye of a pool. Back and forth, back and forth, like a water beetle. It was a fine day for a swim but something in the figure’s progress, or lack of it, was disturbing. Presumably he was counting off his daily quota of lengths, getting himself in shape, but it looked unprofitable, forlorn, like that Greek in hell who pushed a rock up the hill all day just to watch it roll to the bottom again.
‘OK,’ said Larry. ‘Why not? Count me in.’
‘A great day for us, Larry,’ said Ranch, clapping his hands.
‘Delighted,’ said T. Bone. ‘Happy et cetera.’
‘What now?’ asked Larry, glancing from Ranch to T. Bone, aware that something more was expected of him.
‘Ranch will take care of you,’ said T. Bone, pulling a copy of the Hollywood Reporter from under his chair. ‘Then a bite of luncheon, chez moi.’
Larry followed Ranch into the bathroom, wondering what the statistical incidence of people murdered in LA hotel rooms was. Inside the bathroom a card propped up on a shelf above the gleaming sink announced that ‘Milagros’ – the name was inked in by an uncertain hand – was the room attendant, and that she took pride in her work.
‘We’ve only seen your face,’ said Ranch, making himself comfortable on the toilet seat under the flood of panelled roof lighting.
‘Ah,’ said Larry. ‘This is the audition?’
‘It’s cool,’ said Ranch. ‘I like girls.’
‘No problem,’ said Larry. He began to undress.
11
Karol arrived at the apartment just after nine o’clock carrying a small but beautiful bouquet of coquelicots. He also brought something of the air of the streets he had been walking through, the slightly febrile atmosphere of Paris at the going out hour when the long dusk gives way to night and the lights of the great cafés begin to shine more brilliantly; a romantic hour in which it was impossible not to feel some excitement, some hope of an adventure. László hung Karol’s coat on a peg by the door, smelling in the damp fabric the impeccable scent of a rain shower, then went with Karol to the dining room where he was relieved to find the atmosphere of melodrama had dispersed. For the moment, at least, everyone was behaving quite normally.
Kurt opened a bottle of champagne, while Karol, another exile from the East – though his vintage was ’68 rather than ’56 – told a story about a vagrant on the Metro who had approached a smartly dressed young woman and pleaded with her to become his girlfriend, and how, with a charm and sensitivity admired by the entire carriage, she had regretfully turned him down. The others began their own Métro stories while László busied himself in the kitchen. Despite the ‘gun play’ the food had not been spoiled; the veal in particular, served up in the little parcels of greaseproof paper, was succulent in its juice of sweet melted Parmesan and tender shallots. They had a tarte tatin and crème anglaise to finish, then cups of fierce black coffee and glasses of Calvados. With the dishes still on the table they sat at ease in the glow of a lamp and three candles. Kurt and Laurence smoked cigarettes. László and Franklin smoked small cigars. The smoke turned in lazy circles in the candle-dark above their heads. Karol, a writer who for many years was unable to publish in his own language, and thus had something of an obsession with translation, asked László about the English-language version of Oxygène, and László told him about the young English translator, Alexander…