R Raichev - The Death of Corinne

That Obscure Object of Desire

Peverel de Broke, Lady Grylls’s other nephew, the son of her late brother Lionel, was a year younger than his cousin Hugh. He was very tall and managed to look at once languid, athletic and rather distinguished. But for a weakish chin, he might have been thought handsome. Lady Grylls had observed that his was the kind of face that sixty-five years ago would have been considered incomplete without one of those silly toothbrush moustaches and a rimless eyeglass. The kind of man who would be equally comfortable in a dinner jacket and an old Barbour, thought Antonia. Peverel was clever, Hugh had observed, in that whimsical English way that disconcerts and misleads foreign diplomats. Lady Grylls resented what she called ‘Peverel’s tiresome propensity for meaningless badinage’. (She had been particularly annoyed by a joke Peverel had told in which somebody confuses Eton with Eden.)

Peverel’s sun-bleached hair and eyebrows in conjunction with his deep tan suggested an explorer who spent half the year in hot climes, which was not too far from the truth. He had returned from Shanghai a couple of days earlier. Peverel travelled round the globe in the capacity of a trend spotter, an unusual and, he had hinted, highly lucrative occupation, which his aunt for one refused to take seriously.

The night before, Peverel had sat explaining exactly what it was he did. He collected information for brands like Volvo, Intel, British Airways and Nestle. He diagnosed and explored trends in everyday life. (Antonia thought it all a bit obscure.) He went to supermarkets where he stopped people, pointed to items in their shopping basket and asked why they had bought them. (‘Infernal cheek,’ Lady Grylls had said.) He eavesdropped on conversations on trains, planes, buses, beaches and boats. (‘Not at all surprised,’ Lady Grylls had said.) He and his colleagues never knew when a snippet of information might prove useful. They took what was happening ‘out there’ and translated it into ‘stuff our clients could use’.

Everybody knew that Helen Fielding had dreamt up Bridget Jones, but apparently it was a trend spotter who diagnosed the single white professional syndrome first. It wasn’t a trend spotter who invented the term ‘wigger’, to describe white youths copying blacks, but it was again one of Peverel’s colleagues who introduced it to the media.

Peverel had entered the drawing room and was looking down at what appeared to be internet downloads.

‘You’d be amazed to hear that from the very start of her career Corinne Coreille’s been the object of intense prurient speculation,’ he said. ‘According to a website called Rumour Has It, Corinne Coreille had simultaneous affairs with the octogenarian Charlie Chaplin and Sophia Loren during the making of A Countess from Hong Kong, though oddly enough she rebuffed Marlon Brando’s attentions. That was in 1967. A roll-call of her alleged lovers includes Maurice Chevalier, Brigitte Bardot, Mr Lark, Alain Delon, General de Gaulle -’

Lady Grylls gave her vast explosive snort. ‘Stuff and nonsense!’

‘ – Peter Sellers, Simone de Beauvoir, a defrocked Italian priest and the teenage Prince Albert of Monaco, whose later inability to marry some have attributed to the effect Corinne Coreille had on him.’

‘This is not Corinne Coreille’s official website, is it?’ Antonia said.

‘No. Corinne’s official website is maintained by a Belgian called Bruno Van den Brande and it is bland and somewhat boring. Want to know what it says? Corinne Coreille’s career was at its zenith between 1967 and 1989. She started as a Piaf clone and a variety vedette, but evolved into an international star, part pop, part diva. She became an iconic and later a cultish figure in Latin and Germanic countries and in Russia – also, in Japan, where a Corinne doll was produced last year. In 1972 Corinne’s face became the model for Marianne, the symbol of France. She was painted by Warhol and photographed by Cecil Beaton, Horst and Norman Parkinson -’

‘Wasn’t she in some film?’ Payne interrupted. ‘Or did they only consider her for one?’

‘Well, Alfred Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut that he wanted to shoot a murder scene in a cabaret where Corinne Coreille sits and watches her doppelganger perform on stage. Bunuel did give her a walk-on part in his film That Obscure Object of Desire. She isn’t credited. She appears for about two seconds.’

‘From such trivia is fanatical cinephilia born…’

Lady Grylls rolled her eyes at Antonia as though to say, Heaven preserve me from clever nephews.

‘Quite… An independent Swiss director intended to shoot a Gallic version of The Wizard of Oz, with Corinne as Dorothy, but plans were abandoned when the L.M. Baum estate objected strongly to the script on account of the “great number of inappropriate scenes”… The proposed title was L’Histoire d’Oz… What else do you want to know?’ The sheets rustled in Peverel’s hands. ‘In her prime Corinne modelled for Yves St Laurent and Chanel, but she has a particular weakness for Lacroix. She won the Eurovision song contest in 1970. She performed songs from The King and I in French for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at a soiree at their villa in the Bois de Boulogne on 4th July 1971.’

‘Le Roi et Moi?’ Payne murmured. ‘Doesn’t sound right somehow.’

‘She sang Russian gypsy songs at the Kremlin for the Brezhnevs, “Hands Across the Sea” at the White House, for the Nixons and later for the Reagans, and “C’est Si Bon” for the whole Communist Politburo of China. In one single year she gave three hundred performances on German television. She is a member of the controversial Kabbalah movement, which promotes an ancient brand of Judaism and promises immortality. She appears on a triangular San Marino stamp and an orchid in Liechtenstein was named after her.’

‘There seem to be the devil of a lot of websites devoted to her.’

‘A reasonable number – nothing like Madonna. Most are perfectly innocent but some are unwholesome… A little too esoteric even for my understanding… We are talking fetish.’ Peverel cleared his throat. ‘Mule, Octopus, Pendragon, Elf, Pigsnout, Oedipus R, Killerbitch, Flasher, Weasel… Some of these men – I assume they are men – are interested in Corinne’s hair, others in her hands. I bet you didn’t know that the little finger of Corinne’s left hand is as long as her index finger, did you?’

‘D’you mean there are people who get a kick out of that sort of thing?’ Lady Grylls suddenly guffawed.

‘They do seem to, yes. One chap calling himself Chirophile – Greek for “lover of hands” – has written several erotic poems on the subject of Corinne’s hands. He wants to “lay a little lick” on each individual knuckle… Another website – maintained by Sniffer – focuses on Corinne Coreille’s favourite scent.’

‘What is her favourite scent?’ Antonia asked.

‘Old-fashioned violets… Footspy, on the other hand, is intensely curious about the kind of shoes she wears. There are at least – let me see – twenty pages of photos of shoes. High heels, boots, sandals… It is alleged that these are all the shoes Corinne has worn over the last thirty years. Look.’

‘Goodness. Poor child. She does seem to attract oddballs.’

‘As usual, darling, you’ve hit the nail on the head… Now, must you smoke?’ Peverel sighed as his aunt lit a cigarette. ‘You know very well what Dr Morgan said.’

‘Spoilsport,’ Lady Grylls said somewhat childishly. ‘Or wet blanket, if you prefer.’

‘D’you mean me or Morgan?’

‘You. Morgan too. But you are worse than him.’

‘Well, wet blanket would be the more appropriate expression,’ Peverel pointed out after a moment’s consideration. ‘Given your dangerous habit of leaving smouldering fags about.’