Peter Vansittart - Secret Protocols

Saturnine Andrejs eventually phoned. I must rush to the Villa, as soon as possible. Absolutely essential. Yes, but never disturbing Nadja at work, I hurried forth, leaving the papers still unsigned and concocting intricate, unanswerable excuses.

Arriving breathless, I found the Villa showing no signs of occupation. No response. Nothing. All in keeping with the Latvian aura.

‘Mr Blow Hard, No Get.’ Nadja laughed, though I had seen her make her own surreptitious trip to the Villa. Why? I said nothing. She kept her own time, reserve, sense of fitness.

Tomorrow, she reminded me, with what could pass for a groan, was Saturday. The Fête. European Unity at peak.

The Hôtel de Ville has staged an exhibition of Modern European Achievement: unbelievable graphs, bemusing statistics, photographs of statesmen shaking hands, giant international aeroplanes, roads, tunnels, Spain and Portugal joining the EC, NATO warships crushing the Mediterranean, multilingual transcriptions of the Single Europe Act, the London Exhibition of Contemporary European Art, posters of the Fund for Women, the Louvre Financial Accord, even a genial caricature of Mr Spender notching up another appearance, at the Congress for Cultural Co-operation.

We had deigned to attend the Fête’s opening, though contemptuous of what seemed summer-stock propaganda, a re-run of Bastille Day, papier-mâché , alarums and raucous cheers for Liberté. Today, weakly submitting to Dick Haylock, we stand on the balcony of Hôtel du Reine overlooking place de la République jammed with Fête balloons, carnival hats, bunting ribbons, bouquets, sported by what Dick calls the Native Reserve. Placards wave like demented ducks. Scrap Money, Boulez for President, Soul Responsibility, Free Brittany, Abolish Exams. Only Rabelaisian mirth suggests unity.

I am always repelled by crowds. Captious as children, they too swiftly become mobs, baying for Liberté and imagining free wine, free sex. On one terrible afternoon a seething mass of soldiery had auctioned the Roman Empire.

‘We may very probably survive,’ Nadja murmurs, ‘by drinking long, drinking deep, and – miracles have occurred – at least once, at Dick’s expense.’ Advice I am strictly obeying, so that the charades below are already hazy, in gaudy, constant dabs of pirouetting and waving. Peasant skirts, Hollywood singlets, coal-scuttle bonnets, cheap head-scarves, streamers and flags, national and departmental, flutter and, to a hush uncomfortably ambiguous, the Stars and Stripes. Once Upon a Time in the West.

Wheeled floats are huge, to military music, operatic music, rock music, tussling with shouts, whistles, shrieks. On stage are near-naked girls upholding commercial logos, fairyland animals, fanciful emblems of Common Market, World Health, Exchange Rate Mechanism. Monetary Union is represented by a dwarf cackling atop a giant rolling franc: children in striped trousers and top hats display inflated yellow envelopes, ‘European Commission’, attracting cat-calls. Uproar dwindles again at a cardboard banner, Groupement de Recherches et d’Etudes pour La Civilisation Européene . Likewise unpopular is Brussels, an inflated Rubber Stamp. Geniality is restored by a huge walking toothpaste tube (Sweden), a pyramid of spaghetti (Italy), German tankard, gilded Belgian chocolate box, carried by six chocolate cuirassiers, followed by a traipsing question mark, tall, red and white, attached to a donkey dangling milk bottles and controlled by a scarlet Foreign Legionnaire. To hilarious curses, surging cheers, raised fists, the Fête panorama is unflagging. JFK with teeth columned as the Parthenon; Margaret Thatcher with elegant hair and furious eyes dangling a handbag marked Michelin , then Mon Général , greeted less fervently than Le Maréchal , whose white gleaming moustaches advertise soap powder. To groans and whistles, Pierre Laval, smirking in some obscure pun, exhibited the Pill on his vast white bowtie. Much applauded is Elizabeth II, with lustred crown and wide pillar-box smile. Pol Pot, mouth dripping blood, evokes another hush, from nerves bruised by French defeat in Asia. Foliage of red-tipped barbed wire precedes la Bombe Americaine , surrounded by more children, sedate, in communion white, holding hyacinths. From roof gardens, windows, pavements, Gastons and Anne-Maries cheer as they would for Nero, Mirabeau, ‘Charlot’, for La Bohème and Carmen . The past was now, a guitar strummed by Dr Miracle. A new tableau struck frenzy, live effigies of Jeanne Moreau, Françoise Sagan, a clothed Bardot, Montand, Loren, Mickey la Sourise, Johnny Hallyday, Cary Grant, M. Hulot, Jackie O and moonwalkers chatting with hairless, glassy Space Aliens. Riotous acclaim for an unclassifiable hat inscribed with red, white and blue V, over a suet-pudding face, a cigar like a pier, a brandy bottle, comic, yet formidable as a tank in a lane. Applause, too, for children beneath UNICEF pennants. A man-sized sieve, Common Agricultural Policy, was hooted more good-humouredly than a fleshy, hook-nosed, frock-coated manikin astride a bulging chest labelled, in blinking lights, International Monetary Fund. Artificial birds whirring on poles are Air Bus Industrie, a lurid Thieves’ Kitchen, the Council of Europe. Through the haze is a display of the colours of centuries – the alcohol is working – metallic greys and browns of Richelieu’s and Wallenstein’s troopers, blacks and crimsons of the Great Wrath, nuanced blues and pinks of Versailles satins, scarlet of Revolution, tropical blaze of Empire, soot-black of factory and railway.

Beside me, in long maroon outfit, Nadja is alarmingly gracious, as though comforting Daisy for morning rudeness from a lapwing or commiserating Ray Phelps for accusation of unnatural offences, and prepared to stroke Alain on news that he has incurable disease. Better that the Ulmanis had been engulfed by a landslip.

Dick nudges me, pointing at an excited young couple on the adjoining balcony. ‘Free spirits. Plighting their troth with a eucalyptus for witness. Fair blossoms in a dark world.’ He pats Nadja’s arm. ‘Well, there you are. As indeed are we all, dowsed in champagne, cigarette fumes, some of us probably on smack.’ Then, nudging Dick aside, Ray, baldness worn like a helmet, risks linguistics. ‘Pourquoi?’ and gurgles into his glass, Dick resuming behind us. ‘Flying Scots at Twickers’, telling a boring story, promising one ‘still funnier’, then motioning at clowns below.

Drink, uproar, darting flushes of colour further blur my vision. Another face, perspiring ham, swims at me. Voice treacly. ‘If one hears aright, Erich, you’ve penetrated the mysteries of la belle Florentine .’ Nadja’s amused. ‘He thinks you are a Sûreté inspector, which I am almost certain you are not.’

Phelps asks Haylock if he could get him a brioche. ‘Ray, I could, but I won’t.’

‘OK, old chap. Each man for himself. Women and children nowhere.’ Manly grin, confidential wink.

Children in white, flossy as egrets, scamper in and out of lavish sheen of movement. Three-legged teams scuttle like crabs. Mauve shorts, black berets. Elvis gyrations, flames in high wind. Kites jigging, soaring, swerving, with purity free of dust and clamour. The Herr General had controlled my demented box-kite like an army manoeuvre, convincing me of eternal comradeship dedicated to mighty deeds. More children, twirling hula-hoops, dangling yoyos; sharp sprigs of Europe glistening before harvest. The masked and caped lurch forward on stilts, caricatures, perhaps, of British foreign policy. A champion bull, beflowered, bemedalled, led by a bare-torsoed, velveteen-breeched matador stamped with purple artificial bruises. Youths, or would-be youths, doubtless Matelots du Roi, march in poor step, yell ringside expletives, matched from the streets by a chant of ‘Ho Chi Minh’. Bikinied girls move daintily, each displaying a letter collectivized into ‘Dubonnet’. From Dick, ‘Tartlets!’ Others, frilled in damson, on a wheeled, beflowered terrace, perform cancan. Southern frolic.