Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

I followed Nadja indoors to await her re-emergence and was quickly content. The long room always satisfied. Egg-white walls contrasting Nadja’s black piano, the strict line of discs – Bach, Teleman, Bechet, Brubeck – between slabs of books, a Juan Gris, subdued yet glowing with fruit and guitars.

The hour soon passed, we rejoined, kissing as if completing a rhyme, disproving the proverb that love is nourished by discontent. By late afternoon we were sauntering downhill. On one side the bay was greeny-blue flecked with lucid white, meeting slopes ridged with vine and olive; on the other, steeper, black pines encircled the Saracen Citadel, in the descending sun like a lion glaring at the sea. Far behind us, white-peaked mountains were very clear, promising a hot tomorrow. Nadja chuckled at an anecdote, heard at the Paris Conference, of one Dr Taut, aggrieved by the Alps’ lack of symmetry, who petitioned the League of Nations for a grant to redesign them.

‘Successful?’

‘Unsuccessful.’

‘He must have been a German.’

‘He was.’

Over the gently shuffling sea the sun was gradually splintering, irradiating the red musée tiles. A black horse-carriage with crimson wheels trundled past us, the driver apparently asleep. A few shambling hovels remained overlooked by developers, old people sunning themselves in porches and giving us friendly greetings. A cobbled lane under an arch pointed and crumbling wound towards light blue summer huts with tiny, freshly sprinkled lawns, sham-baroque lamps, gates sporting such names as Trianon, Winter Palace, Fontainebleau, Balmoral and, twice, Hairdresser’s.

At a faint moon above the furthest cliffs, Nadja remembered Scott Fitzgerald’s quip that America was the story of a moon that never rose. She pronounced ‘America’ with sceptical wonder, that country being alongside Britain in her list of opportunities lost or mistaken.

We were ascending towards the Moorish Garden, its palms, frayed by sea-wind, like witch doctors’ plumes. Giant cacti and more old folk enjoying slow, ruminative gossip. Dwellings were larger, bougainvillaea-draped chalets. We hastened past the Haylocks’ Mon Repos, the Union Jack astir, its neighbour cheaply bright though upside down, as Dick would have noticed, sourly dissatisfied. This was outpost of Lost Empire, still upholding the flag once guarded by towering proconsuls. French was little spoken, though Daisy might use alumette and Dick exclaim hélas with non-negotiable accent. Daisy, who probably regretted their move to France, moved so quickly with news from England that Nadja supposed she wore a speedometer.

Alain’s Hôtel Particulière, unable to compete with the nightclubs, Nous les Gosses, Paradiso à Go-go, Jeunesse, packed with the pigtailed, over-painted, almost nude, catered for early drinkers like ourselves. The terrace, with garish awnings and tall pots, was brilliant above the white esplanade and sandy beach, the sea grounding on clean shingle as if perpetually clearing its throat.

The place is almost empty, the English at home, finishing tea, the Americans not yet ready for martinis or bourbon. We choose to sit outside and watch camel-yellow waves, sunset and, against the horizon, a motionless warship, grey, implacable.

‘Can you believe it, Erich?’ She looks at the gulls swooping, crying. ‘The Chinese bray and shout and bang, to exhaust, then kill all birds. Each one. Transistors blaring all night!’

‘It’s part of their programme for a rosy future. The East is Red.’

She shivers. ‘Future! I am seeing only a village fair. Tall hats, yellow stockings. Queer old dances. The gypsies.’

‘Nadja and Erich!’

Alain is with us, his face under the dark toupée like damp, crumpled mackintosh, eyes Formica-black. In youth he had been a minor acrobat and heldentenor , insufficiently useful in silent cinema, though later a versatile romantic lead, once bemusing us by confessing inability to remember all his titles, until understanding that these were his movies. Gabin had said that Alain would walk sideways to show his profile. During Occupation he maintained the precarious role of court jester to Wehrmacht and Gestapo officers until Mussolini’s fate advised prudence. Retiring south, he accommodated himself to the Résistance and, at Libération , had himself photographed on an American tank, acknowledging plaudits and bouquets like a priest giving blessings. He was apt to flourish a Médaille de la Résistance with the éclat of his screen feats. However, post-war Paris studios he found dominated by what he called the Mafia, the de Gaulle–Malraux axis, then by ‘Stalinist Hoppers’. Inexorably banned, he was marooned here. A fixer, he would have introduced Lenin to Trotsky and paid the penalty.

Nadja had drawn him as a map of tangled curves: curved head, nose, back, legs. Each night, on a screen behind the bar, one of his old films blinked, its sound reduced to a twitter, so that, in double vision, drinkers saw one Alain, white-shirted, red-trousered, aged, mincing between tables like an orchestra leader expecting his flutter of applause, and the younger, sprinting from a gangster’s car, leaping between roofs, duelling with the Cardinal’s Guard.

‘Alain!’

Without much liking him, we enjoy his company. His gossip, our hotline to the coast, is automatic as smoothing a tie. We learn of presidential jewels acquired from an African grandee, followed by a promise of French Aid; of an impending Bourse inside-trading arrest, a socialite’s suicide, revelations Nadja compared with taking the pulse of a distinguished patient past her best.

With monkey-grin satisfaction, he will have news of the Villa becoming a rest home for union leaders or Corsican mobsters, asylum for vagabond artists, refuge for immigrants. He never admits ignorance. To avoid enquiring the name of the author of Lolita , he asked Nadja how she spelt it.

Always, with dramatic gestures, he enacts roles denied him in Paris, the stain on his shirt suggesting a decoration sold him by an impoverished regime. His double-smile could have been designed by Picasso. For myself, the supple condescension of an adept croupier, but, for Nadja, one glistening as if from a devoted stage-husband.

Clicking for a menial to bring the bottle, he seats himself between us. Delaying our question, we await information about Bardot, Hallyday, an unexplained crater, while a sea-path goes sallow, then gold, as the sun droops, and, from a radio in a nearby garden, an American sings.

Alain shrugs disapprovingly. We drink, we toast, we relax, surveying a poster-like South until, with overdone indifference, I mention the Villa. His face screws into a scowl, mechanically, as if I had dropped a coin into it. The black, polished eyes are censorious, from decayed, though powdered, folds. He makes an apache gesture of throat cutting. ‘New people. They pretend to be Swiss.’

Little, apparently, can be worse. He spreads his hands. ‘My friends, we have no need of any Swiss. Surplus to requirement. We in France have imperfections; I may have some myself, though I am undecided what they may be. The Marshal may have been right in teaching us how to learn from faults. France should have allowed herself more casualties. The Swiss never have any casualties, and we can all see the result.’

Nadja’s glance conveys that the Marshal’s lesson has been inadequately learnt. Alain chats on.

He pours himself more wine, for which we will overpay. His voice has trained, patriotic indignation. ‘Swiss are worse than Algerians, even Corsicans. Their country is what the respectable and well-spoken like yourselves, cool, as the Anglo-Saxons say… may deserve as a shit-house. What English call the cut-below. Swiss behaviour is food for messieurs the rats, disgusting as their fondue .’ He mouches, swallows, removes an unsavoury taste. ‘They consider a strong vault can hold the world. Aphids! Cold as their lakes. They need no bombs or satellite-stars, they merely sit, stealthy as interest rates. They’re fatter than theatre rentiers . Citizens we do not want.’