The Holiday by Guy Bellamy

Author:Guy Bellamy [Bellamy, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2020-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

The Bâteau Restaurant is a smart, low-slung craft, 36 metres long, with a restaurant, dance floor and discothèque inside, and tables and chairs in the open air above for drinks before the meal. Andrew Marner and Frances Kerwin are sitting at one of them in the company of a bottle of Dom Perignon and Frances, amazed at her audacity, is listening to a cacophony of hooters as some boats try to edge their way into the port and others try to get out. As their own begins its journey she looks round at some of the other customers. A Middle Eastern gentleman, with a woman who has very heavy legs, is enjoying a cigar as if it is his last; a black couple in expensive clothes are drinking wine; a German family are trying to appease their small boy whose pale face scowls at a waiter who is attempting to serve him with a drink.

Andrew Marner is trying to obliterate all thoughts of libel from his mind and enjoy the company that he has so cleverly provided for himself. He enjoys women and understands them. Their eyes tell him all he needs to know long before they open their mouths, and Frances Kerwin’s eyes are an invitation.

She looks at him now and asks: ‘Does Kimberley know we’re here?’

‘I don’t have to answer to Kimberley,’ says Andrew. ‘I employ her.’ He refills their glasses and then fills them again as the bubbles subside.

‘How do you mean, employ her?’ Frances asks. She imagines Kimberley Neal’s tall frame splayed naked across a bed.

‘She writes a column in one of my magazines,’ Andrew explains. ‘She’s a very ambitious girl.’

‘I sort of got that impression,’ says Frances. ‘She’s going to the top.’

‘Well, it’s the age of the woman,’ says Andrew. ‘What did Mrs Thatcher say? “The cock crows, but the hen lays the eggs”.’

‘In her case the hen crowed as well,’ says Frances, drinking her champagne.

‘How’s Bruce bearing up?’ asks Andrew, who is not keen to discuss Kimberley Neal’s role in his life. ‘Have you seen him today?’

Frances nods silently.

Her excursion that afternoon to the crepuscular entrails of Cannes Central Police Station has not been a success and she knows that she is to blame. In the mistaken belief that it would help to cheer him up, she had arrived all smiles, in the manner of a neighbour visiting a sick friend. To Bruce Kerwin, who had now established a snarling relationship with his guards and an even less friendly one with many much smaller creatures who had spent much of the night biting lumps out of his backside, her demeanour was inappropriate. He was dirty, knackered and frayed, and his grinning wife, fresh from a hair salon and wearing what looked suspiciously like a new pair of black suede boots, didn’t seem to be on the right wavelength at all.

‘What have you done?’ he had asked when they were seated face to face again at the same small table.

‘Done?’ asked Frances. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Have you found a lawyer for a start?’

‘Not yet, Bruce,’ said Frances.

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