J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

I crossed the shadow-filled garden, glad that I would soon see Jane again. The water in the swimming pool was still choppy, and a pair of tights lay across a sun-lounger. After returning from her conference in Nice, Jane had stripped off and swum in the nude.

I thought of her diving through the dusty surface, her pale figure bringing light to the sombre water.

I climbed the stairs, my legs exhausted after pumping the brake and clutch pedals of the BMW. I stood on the half-landing, the tights in my hand. Jane was drying herself in the bedroom, holding the bath towel behind her shoulders, her small breasts and childlike nipples flushed from the power jet, her quiff a barely visible thread. She played the towel to and fro as she pivoted on her bare feet, a matador at a naturist corrida. As I walked into the bedroom she greeted me with a flourish, and tossed the towel high into the air.

I embraced Jane, surprised by her cold skin. Over her shoulder I noticed Simone Delage standing on her balcony, face lit by the violet light of the Esterel, her eyes staring openly at Jane's naked body.

'Paul, can we talk this through? I don't want to upset you.'

'Fire away.' Croissant in hand, I looked up from the breakfast tray. 'Do you mean last night?'

'When?' Buttoning her silk blouse, Jane stared at me as if I were one of her dimmer patients. 'Where, exactly?'

'Nothing.' I gestured with the croissant and dripped strawberry jam over the sheet. 'Forget it.'

'Jesus…' Jane pushed me aside and scraped the jam with a teaspoon. 'Señora Morales will think you've deflowered me. I have a hunch she suspects we're father and daughter.'

'Interesting.'

'Really? Now you tell me.' Jane ran a hand over my scarred knee. 'It's inflamed a little, you'll have to look after it. This thing last night. I thought we smoked a little pot, watched a blue movie and had a damn fine fuck.'

'We did.'

'Good. I waited a long time for that. Something perked you up yesterday.' Catching sight of the Delages' balcony, where a maid was wiping the table, she turned to me. 'Last night? I get it… when you came in I was having a shower. I assume Simone was watching?'

'You know she was. The only thing missing was the Toreador theme from Carmen. I hope Simone enjoyed the show.'

Jane took the croissant from me and dropped it into my coffee.

'Who are you – Nanook of the North? I'm not some eskimo squaw covered in whale oil, handed to any Inuit who drops by for the night.'

'I love whale oil…' I raised my hands when Jane threatened to punch me. 'Dr Sinclair, I'll report you to Professor Kalman. Physical abuse of the patient.'

'Don't bother. He thinks you need a lobotomy. He told me you're obsessed by car parks.' Honour satisfied, Jane smoothed her black skirt in the mirror. 'Anyway, you're right. Who cares? Sex isn't about anatomy any more. It's where it always belonged – inside the head.'

I sat on the side of the bed and held her waist. 'What is it you wanted to talk through?'

Jane stood between my scarred knees, hands on my shoulders, the scents of oestrogen and shower gel competing for my attention.

'Yesterday I spoke to Kalman about my contract. They still haven't found a permanent replacement. They're prepared to offer a relocation bonus.'

'For a further three months?'

'Six, probably. I know you want to get back to London. It's mad trying to run a publishing firm by fax and e-mail. You need to see the reps, and so on. But I've nothing to go back to. The work here is so interesting. We may be on to something with these self-diagnostic kits. The first hint of liver disease and diabetes, prostate cancer… You don't realize what a single drop of blood can say about you.'

'You sound like Adolf Hitler.' I lay back on the bed. 'Okay, then.'

'Okay, what?'

'We'll stay. Three months, six if you want to. I know how much it means. I'll sort things out with Charles.'

'Paul?' Jane sounded almost disappointed. 'You're a very sweet man. Nothing's decided yet, there are endless committees…'

'That makes sense. They don't want another English doctor running amok.'

'We'll take turns flying in and out. Say, every three weekends. That way we won't lose touch.'

'Jane…' I held her wrist when she tried to move away from me. 'I'll stay.'

'Here? At Eden-Olympia?'

'Yes. I'm still your husband.'

'As far as I know. That's wonderful, Paul.' Pleased but puzzled, Jane dipped a finger in the jam dish. She sucked it pensively, my teenage doctor again.

We walked arm in arm to Jane's new rented Peugeot, as the sprinklers circled and the scents of autumn lilac bathed the garden.

A white detergent cloud billowed across the swimming pool, watched by Simone Delage as she prowled her balcony, sun oil in hand.

'Mysterious soul,' I commented as Jane waved to her. 'Too many white Nordic nights. She's very fond of you.'

'I talked to her yesterday. She suggested we all do something together.'

'That's a breakthrough. She knows you're married?'

'I did mention it. What do you suppose she has in mind? Something deeply corrupt?'

'I hope so.'

'She thinks my striptease is a cry for help.'

I opened Jane's door and helped to stow her briefcase, guilty that I had another day of leisure to look forward to. 'Don't let them work you too hard. I hope Wilder Penrose helps out with the routine stuff.'

'He's far too busy. He sees a constant stream of high-level people. All the CEOs and company chairmen. He has them working in therapy groups.'

'Do they need therapy?'

'I wouldn't think so. They're middle-aged men with sports injuries. Your friend Zander was in yesterday. Nasty cuts over his back and shoulders.'

'S/M? Some of these powerful men like their chauffeurs to give them six of the best.'

'Not Zander. He said he'd been playing touch rugby on the beach at Golfe-Juan.' Jane closed her door and in an offhand way and said: 'You might like to know that David was treating some of the girls at the La Bocca refuge for VD.'

'Well, it was a refuge. All the same, it does give a new slant to Alice Liddell. Sitting primly in her Victorian lace, arguing with the Red Queen, while the chancres erupt and the spirochaete burrows…'

'Paul, you're sick. Talk to Penrose.'

She was gone with a wave, tooting the horn as she sped down the avenue, my doctor, wife and lover again.

The last residents of the enclave had left for their offices, and only the sprinklers played over the gardens, whispering as they moved to and fro. A brief interregnum reigned before the maids arrived, during which my mind took on an almost amphetamine clarity. I lay on the jam-smeared sheet, my head in Jane's pillow, and felt the mould of her hips and shoulders, the faint tang of her vulva still on my hands.

Looking at the sunlight, I felt as elated as the rainbows conjured into the air by the lawn sprinklers. The insane, tearaway drive along the coast in the stolen BMW, Jane's teasing strip for Simone Delage, and my encounter with Frances Baring had rearranged the perspectives of that virtual city called Eden-Olympia.

I sat at the dressing table and ran my fingers over Jane's hairbrush, breathing the sweet scent of her scalp that clung to the bristles. I opened the centre drawer, a clutter of rouge-smudged cotton-wool balls, forgotten lipsticks and a Dutch cap, now home to a foil packet of cannabis resin. I loved to sift through this familiar debris of a young wife too distracted to discard anything. The contents of a woman's dressing table were as close as a husband could ever get to her unconscious mind.

In the right-hand drawer was a leather medical valise and a copy of the Peugeot garage's rental agreement. I scanned the debit columns, checking its arithmetic, and noted that the agreement ran for a year, with the option of a further six months' extension.