J.G. Ballard - Cocaine Nights

'Are you a guest, sir?' He grinned cheerfully. 'I'm afraid the club is closed to non-members.'

'I'm not a guest – or a non-member, whatever strange form of life that is.' I sat down on a stool and helped myself to a few nuts. 'I'm Frank Prentice's brother. I think he was the manager here.'

'Of course… Mr Prentice.' He hesitated, as if faced with an apparition, and then eagerly shook my hand. 'Sonny Gardner -I crew on Frank's thirty-footer. By the way, he still is the manager.'

'Good. He'll be glad to hear that.'

'How is Frank? We're all thinking about him.'

'He's fine. I met him yesterday. We had a long and interesting talk together.'

'Everyone hopes you can help Frank. The Club Nautico needs him.'

'That's fighting talk. Now, I'd like to see his apartment. There are personal things I want to collect for him. I take it someone has the keys?'

'You'll have to speak to Mr Hennessy, the club treasurer. He'll be back in half an hour. I know he wants to help Frank. We're all doing everything we can.'

I watched him delicately fold the paper yachts with his calloused hands. His voice had sounded sincere but curiously distant, lines from a previous week's play spoken by a distracted actor. Turning on my stool, I gazed across the swimming pool. In its glassy surface I could see the reflection of the Hollinger house, a sunken fire-ship that seemed to rest on the tiled floor.

'You had a grandstand view,' I commented. 'It must have been quite a spectacle.'

'View, Mr Prentice?' Lines creased Sonny Gardner's baby-smooth forehead. 'What of, sir?'

'The fire at the big house. Did you watch it from here?'

'No one did. The club was closed.'

'On the Queen's birthday? I would have thought you'd be open all night.' I reached out and took the paper yacht from his fingers, examining its intricate folds. 'One thing puzzles me – I was at the magistrates' court in Marbella yesterday. No one from Estrella de Mar turned up. None of Frank's friends, no character witnesses, no one who worked for him. Just an elderly Spanish lawyer who's given up hope.'

'Mr Prentice…' Gardner tried to fold the paper triangle when I returned it to him, then crushed it between his hands. 'Frank didn't expect us there. In fact, he told Mr Hennessy that he wanted us to stay away. Besides, he pleaded guilty.'

'But you don't believe that?'

'Nobody does. But… a guilty plea. It's hard to argue with.'

'Too true. Then tell me-if Frank didn't set fire to the Hollinger house, who did?'

'Who knows?' Gardner glanced over my shoulder, eager for Hennessy to appear. 'Maybe nobody did.'

'That's hard to believe. It was a clear case of arson.'

I waited for Gardner to reply, but he merely smiled at me, the reassuring smile of professional sympathy reserved for the bereaved at funeral chapels. He seemed unaware that his fingers were no longer folding the paper napkins into his miniature flotilla, but had started to unwrap and smooth the triangular sails. As I walked away he leaned over his little fleet like an infant Cyclops, and called out to me in a hopeful voice: 'Mr Prentice… perhaps it was spontaneous combustion?'

Rainbows rode the rotating sprinklers, slipping in and out of the spray like wraiths leaping a skipping-rope. I strolled around the pool, whose untidy water swilled below the diving board, disturbed by a long-legged young woman swimming a crisply efficient backstroke.

I sat down at a pool-side table, admiring her graceful arms as they cleft the surface. Her wide hips rolled snugly in the water, and she might have been lying in the lap of a trusted lover. When she passed me I noticed a crescent-shaped bruise that ran from her left cheekbone to the bridge of her strong nose, and the apparently swollen gums of her upper jaw. Seeing me, she swiftly turned into a fast crawl, hands ransacking the waves, a pigtail of long black hair following her like a faithful water-snake. She hoisted herself up the ladder at the shallow end, snatched a towelling robe from a nearby chair and set off without a backward glance for the changing rooms.

The clunk-clunk of the tennis machine had resumed, sounding across the empty courts. A fair-skinned man in a turquoise Club Nautico tracksuit was playing against the machine as it fired balls across the net, barrel set to swing at random. Despite the screens of wire netting I could see that an intense duel was taking place between player and machine. The man leapt across the court on his long legs, feet raking the clay as he raced to return every ball. Cross-court volley, lob and backhand flip followed one another at breakneck pace. A misfire brought him skidding to the net to cut a drop-shot into the tramlines, but he ran back to reach a baseline serve with his outstretched racket.

Watching him, I realized that he was urging on the machine, willing it to beat him, beaming with pleasure when an ace knocked the racket from his hand. Yet I felt that the real duel taking place was not between man and machine, but between rival factions within his own head. He seemed to be provoking himself, testing his own temper, curious to know how he would respond. Even when exhausted, he drove himself on, as if encouraging a less skilful partner. Once, surprised by his own speed and strength, he waited for the next ball with a dazed schoolboy grin. Although in his late twenties, he had the pale hair and youthful looks of a subaltern barely out of his teens.

Deciding to introduce myself, I made my way through the courts. A skied ball sailed over my head and bounced across the empty clay. I heard him slam heavily into the side netting and, a moment later, the sound of a racket slashed against a metal post.

He was leaving when I reached the practice court, stepping through the wire door by the opposite baseline. Surrounded by dozens of balls, the machine stood on its rubber wheels, timer ticking, the last three balls in its hopper. I crossed the court and stood among the skidmarks, the choreography of a violent duel, of which the machine had been little more than a spectator. Tossed aside, the broken racket lay on a linesman's chair, its shaft a mass of splinters.

I held the racket in my hand, and heard the whipcrack of the tennis machine. A heavy top-spin serve swung across the net and bit the clay a few inches inside the baseline, swerving past my legs to rebound against the fencing. A second ball, faster than the first, clipped the top of the net and stung the ground at my feet. The last ball bounced high at my chest. I flailed at it with the damaged racket and sent it over the netting into the next court.

Beyond the tennis machine the wire door opened briefly. A raised hand saluted me, and above the towel around the player's neck I saw a wry but cheerful grin. Then he strode away, slapping the netting with the vizor of his cap.

Nursing the torn skin on my hand, I left the court and strode back to the club, in time to see him disappear through the rainbows that swayed across the lawn. Perhaps the tennis machine had malfunctioned, but I guessed that he had reset the mechanism when he saw me approach, intrigued to know how I would react to the vicious serves. Already I was thinking of the testing games that this high-strung man would almost certainly have played with Frank, and of the luckless machine now summoned to take my brother's place.

Estrella de mar was coming out to play. From the balcony of Frank's apartment, three floors above the swimming pool, I watched the members of the Club Nautico take their places in the sun. Tennis players swung their rackets as they set off for the courts, warming up for three hard-fought sets. Sunbathers loosened the tops of their swimsuits and oiled themselves beside the pool, pressing their lip-gloss to the icy, salty rims of the day's first margaritas. An open-cast gold mine of jewellery lay among the burnished breasts. The hubbub of gossip seemed to dent the surface of the pool, and indiscretion ruled as the members happily debriefed each other on the silky misdemeanours of the night.