J.G. Ballard - Super-Cannes

'Now. Today. As soon as I'm packed.'

'And where are we going?'

Jane shrugged, staring at the chaos of half-filled suitcases.

' England, London, Paris, anywhere. Away from here.'

I reached out to the radio on the bedside table and switched off the French concert commentator. 'Why? You have another six-month contract to run.'

'I'll take a week's compassionate leave. We'll simply not come back.'

'Professor Kalman won't like that. It could damage your career.'

'Staying here will finish it. Believe me, the last thing they want is another English doctor going insane.'

'Jane…' I tried to take her shoulders, but she sidestepped me, marking the pattern of her bare feet in the talc like an evasive dance step. 'Are you all right?'

'Completely compos mentis.' She stared at herself in the dressingtable mirror, jaw thrust forward. 'No, I'm not all right. And nor are you. Where's the getaway car? I don't want to drive to Calais in the little Peugeot.'

'The Jag's outside. Tell me why you want to leave. Is it anything I've done?'

'Have you done anything? I'm amazed.' Jane rolled her eyes in mock alarm. She placed her hands on my chest. 'Dear husband, you're a decent and kindly man – more or less – and I want to keep you that way. I don't know where you stay out all night and I won't ask. I hope she's sweet and appreciates you. But I'm sure of one thing – remain here any longer and you'll end up like the rest of us.'

'Jane, why now? Has something worried you – the business at the Cardin Foundation?'

'Cardin? Not my favourite schmutter. You mean the robbery at Miramar?'

'You've heard about it?'

'Simone and I saw it on the news. Alain was driving through Théoule as the gang sped off and tried to stop them. Poor man, he was covered with bruises. I had to patch him up.' She rubbed the infected needle mark on her thigh. 'Alain said he saw you later at the Villa Grimaldi.'

'A stag night, laid on by Pascal Zander.'

'Ghastly man. I'm glad I wasn't there. He invents imaginary venereal symptoms so he can roll out his big cannon. It's quite a spectacle. He's perpetually tumescent in a nasty way.'

'A good reason for leaving. So it isn't me that you want to get away from?'

'I want to get away from myself.' She sat on the bed, hands over her small breasts as if feeling her tender nipples. 'There are too many mirrors in this house and I don't like what I see in them. Outside the clinic I hardly exist. I'm tired all the time and I keep picking up small infections. For the last two months I've had swollen tonsils – if you tried to kiss me you'd never get your tongue in my mouth.'

'Have you talked to Penrose?'

'Wilder Penrose… for a clever man he has some odd ideas. He thinks we need to freshen up our sex life. How, he didn't quite say – something about prepubertal girls. I told him that wasn't your scene, you liked them a good bit older. That's why you married me. Isn't it?'

'You know it is.'

'Good…' She stared at my hands as I sat beside her, her eyes slightly out of focus. She raised my fingers to her lips, and caught a strange scent clinging to the nails. Her eyes sharpened, and she glanced at me without comment. 'Paul… you know I'm going to bed with Simone?'

'No. But I guessed.'

'I was so sleepy, it happened before I realized it. I thought we were playing girls in the dorm, but she had other ideas. You're not upset?'

'A little. We talked it through long ago. Have you…?'

'Since school? Once. Heterosexuality is hard work – men make it into a big effort. When I get back from the clinic I'm too tired for all those emotions. With Simone I can switch off.'

'What about Alain?'

'He likes to watch. Sorry, Paul… you're too sane. If we stay here any longer I'll go to bed with Alain. I don't want that to happen.'

She sniffled into a corner of the sheet. Searching for a tissue, I pulled back the dressing-table drawers, and exposed the clutch of ampoules in her valise. 'Jane… all this pethidine. How much can you take?'

'They're nothing. Better for me than too many double scotches.'

'The diamorphine? It's pure heroin.'

'I'm all right!' She closed the drawer, and then stared at me curiously. 'You never tried to stop me. Not seriously. That's a little surprising.'

'You're the doctor, you know how to handle the stuff.'

'No.' Jane took my chin, forcing me to look her in the face. 'You're keeping an eye on me, Paul. I'm your guinea pig. You want to know what happens to people in Eden-Olympia.'

'That may be true. I'm sorry, I hadn't realized it.'

'It's part of your search for David Greenwood. You're totally obsessed with him. Why? Because we were lovers once? It was a long time ago.'

'Never long enough.' I felt myself sink slightly. 'David was making a stand against Eden-Olympia. It's the proving ground for a new kind of world, and he couldn't cope with that.'

'You've been listening to Wilder. Nietzsche on the beach – Philip Glass could set it to music.'

'He's serious, but he's starting to give himself away. I need more time, Jane. That's why I'd like to stay on for a while. Let me explain it to you, and then you can decide if we leave.'

'All right…' She leaned against me, her breathing shallow, her putty skin giving off a stale odour that I had never noticed.

As I listened to her slow heartbeat I knew how deeply exhausted she was.

I cleared a space among the suitcases and laid her on the bed, straightening the pillow under her head. I sat beside her, holding her hands between mine, and thought about her affair with Greenwood, and their quick sex probably snatched at Guy's in darkened laundry rooms. Jane was fond of me, but our marriage had been the last of her hippie gestures, the belief that impulsive acts alone gave meaning to life. Sex and drugs had to be casually dispensed, as a way of defusing the myths around them.

'Paul… I'm going to sleep for a little.' Jane smiled at me as I stroked her damp forehead. Together we listened to an approaching publicity plane that climbed the valley from the coast, bringing to the business park its tidings of another marina complex or discount furniture sale. A few hundred yards from us Wilder Penrose would be standing at his kitchen window, watching the wavering pennant as he laid his own very different plans for the new Riviera.

On the roof of the Noga Hilton the samurai warrior had lowered his sword, as if unable to decide how many of the thousands of heads in the Croisette he would strike from their shoulders. His black helmet, the size of a small car, tilted towards the sea, moving jerkily as the Japanese technicians swarmed over his back, their arms deep in his electromechanical heart.

But the crowd's attention had turned to a trio of stretch limousines emerging from the drive of the Martinez. The onlookers surged against the railings, angry cries sounding a clear threat above the excitement. Hands patted the sleek roofs of the vehicles, fingers pressed at the tinted windows and left their smeared prints on the glass. A middle-aged woman in a baseball cap fired a canister of liquid confetti over the last Cadillac, entrails of iridescent air-weed that clung to the radio masts. Glamour moved through Cannes at five miles an hour, too fast to satisfy their curiosity, too slow to slake their dreams.

I sat at my table in the Blue Bar, waiting for Frances Baring to join me. After avoiding me for a week, hiding behind the answerphone at Marina Baie des Anges, she had called my mobile, a wilfully cryptic edge to her voice. She suggested that we have an early-evening drink in Cannes, though the Croisette was the last place for a secret rendezvous.

Ten feet from my kerbside table the limousines moved on towards the Palais des Festivals between the lines of police and security men.