A Clean Pair of Hands (11 page)

George was genuinely stunned. He had some difficulty responding to this blow. He stopped and turned to face his new friend, placing his hand gently on Philippe’s arm. “Oh Philippe, I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m amazed at your equanimity. I have really enjoyed your company and our conversation. Could we stay in touch?”

They exchanged telephone numbers, and George accompanied Philippe as he loaded his case into the car on the gravel forecourt of the hotel, which was by this time lit by huge glass spheres. They said goodbye, shook hands and never spoke again. George heard from Charlotte that autumn that Philippe Bouvet had died peacefully in hospital. When she went to see him in the last days of his life Philippe said, “Remember me to George, I liked him.”

After the party at the Bodins' house on the Cote D'Azur, a crisis developed there which was only explained in full much later. Michel told Thérèse that he was having trouble with his Moroccan caretaker, Mohammed, who lived on the estate in a large cottage with his wife and children. Mohammed was supposed to take care of the grounds and his wife acted as housekeeper. At first, this arrangement seemed to work well, but, according to Michel, after the summer period, Mohammed was reluctant to work, and did not inform Michel as to what was going on. This culminated in the whole central heating system freezing during the extraordinarily cold winter of 1997, and Michel having to take a team from Paris to cut out over thirty radiators and frozen pipework before they thawed. Mohammed had to go, but it was nearly another year before he was extracted from the cottage, and by then Michel had had enough and so sold the whole property.
George and Thérèse could not understand the sudden change of plans when the Bodins had only owned the property for less than five years. It was a secondary home and the tax on the sale would have been punitive. What could be the reason behind the sale? Had the Bodins over-extended themselves financially? There was no sign of that, thought George. Another mystery!

Towards the end of 1998 Charlotte and Thérèse were discussing their plans for Christmas and the New Year. Charlotte and Michel were going to Bali with Johnny and Ayida Mendes in January. Thérèse restrained herself from commenting, believing she had made her thoughts clear enough on that subject. Charlotte was concerned that her sister Sandrine, Philippe Bouvet's ex-wife, now widow, was currently steeped in more misfortune. After the loss of Philippe in the previous autumn, her new partner had been taken into hospital for intensive treatment of a serious kidney disease, and was not expected to recover. His family didn't want Sandrine around, understandably detesting her because her partner had left his wife and two children to live with her, so she and her teenage son Christian were faced with a miserable year-end at home. Charlotte left the idea dangling that someone might like to invite them for a short break. Thérèse and George were planning to spend Christmas at home in Ireland and had invited Charlotte's youngest daughter Lydia to join them in mid-December. After Christmas, they would travel to Branne, where they had invited an older aunt, Fleur Rocha, to be with them for the New Year.

Knowing something of Sandrine's past depravities, Thérèse was not excited by the prospect of inviting her to spend the New Year at Branne and exposing George to the charms of a woman with such a reputation. But she
relented, and after sharing the news with Fleur Rocha, who knew almost nothing about Sandrine's tumultuous past, invited Sandrine and Christian to spend a few days at Branne.

When Sandrine arrived in an elderly, battered lime green Renault Twingo, George was surprised to observe that she had nothing of a sex bomb about her. She was poorly, probably cheaply dressed, in an ill-fitting cardigan and large dark-coloured skirt. She looked about six to ten kilos overweight. Her face was pale and pudgy, and once elegant features were now less distinct. Her short unkempt dark hair, now with some grey flecks, hung in untidy strands around her plain features. To cap it all she had a bad cold, giving her a red nose and streaming eyes. George found the transition from topless bathing belle to this hapless character in eighteen months hard to believe, and reflected that Sandrine was unlikely to take her clothes off now.

Years earlier, this woman had been a middle-ranking executive with the Europe Number One radio station and subsequently moved to television to head up a department responsible for liaison between artists and programme directors. That was where she had introduced Johnny and Ayida Mendes's erotic dance routine to a television programme planner. But Sandrine was still only in her early thirties when her career began to unravel under the influence of alcohol and drugs and the pressure of life in the sleaze lane, both at work and extramurally with Michel Bodin, Johnny and Ayida actively promoting further debauchery in her leisure time.

As the holiday progressed and passed through the period of condolences and sympathy with Sandrine's misfortunes, the Miltons discovered her to be a more interesting, cultured and observant person than they anticipated.
One afternoon as the daylight began to fade early and they sat by the wood-burning stove after a late and lingering lunch, the Miltons asked Sandrine about her career and shared other thoughts about French life and culture that drove Fleur Rocha to take a siesta and Christian to take Fleur's dog for a walk, leaving the three others alone to talk.

Although Sandrine was never at a policy-making level, she had a lot to say about the relationships between the media and politicians. Thérèse commented that there were more women journalists and senior media executives nowadays. Sandrine explained, “That's because most politicians are men and it was a matter of policy to use attractive young women journalists to develop relationships with potential sources of information and opinion. Paris is sexualised to a point of depravity, so that's how the media gets closer to power. In France you haven't got the same powerful media blocs that command attention, as in the UK, so we have to do things differently here.”

“What do journalists and media people do about that position then?” asked George. “They are not noted for their compliance with authority.”

“Most of them are controlled by indecent levels of entertaining and presents.”

“And what does the French public think of that?” ventured George.

“You would think they are easily angered when you see street demonstrations against the government, but those are mainly set pieces orchestrated by interest groups such as trade unions, who believe they look after their own interests by fighting change and above all, to win further favourable concessions. No, the majority of the French public have only crushing apathy as their reaction, even when something smells rotten. Let me give you an example
of something you know about. Do you remember the sinking of the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, in New Zealand by the French Intelligence Service?” The pair of listeners nodded.

Sandrine went on, “Back in 1985, Greenpeace had been trying to disrupt French nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific, so the French government sent a covert operations team to blow up their ship while it was in port at Auckland, which they did, killing one man who happened to be aboard. As a result, two of the French team were caught and sentenced to ten years in prison in New Zealand, but only served two. Why? Because the French government threatened a trade embargo on New Zealand. The rest of the team escaped to Australia and because the Australian government invoked rules of limitation they were released after a short period of detention. The French Defence Minister, Charles Hernu, and the Head of Security, Admiral Pierre Lacoste, were fired, probably more for incompetence and being caught than for acting illegally, and Mitterrand ordered his Prime Minister Laurent Fabius to carry out an enquiry. Who knows what that revealed? It certainly didn't dig into the widely held view that the order for the attack came directly from the President. There were no other consequences; no pressure from the French public for Mitterrand's rotten government to resign. The journalists who tried to open up the debate were made to look like traitors.” Sandrine sighed deeply. “There are lots more cases where journalists and others who reported abuses were simply not backed by public opinion or by the judiciary. They don't take to the streets for that kind of injustice.”

“Is it worse here than anywhere else?” asked Thérèse.

“From what I have seen on business trips and read about the UK and the USA, sure, there are cases of abuse
and dishonesty there too, Nixon and Clinton for example. Nobody's perfect, but the difference is that they are more likely to be exposed, and when they are there is a massive public debate, judicial proceedings follow and heads roll, and there is a rush to tighten the rules. Here there is no fuss and although we have mostly the same rules as you do, the first requirement is that the hierarchy should follow them, but there is no will at the top to do so. When the judiciary could no longer ignore his abuses, Mitterrand got the members of parliament to vote an amnesty for themselves against prosecution, ‘in the national interest'. That vote was easy to secure because so many deputies had their snouts in the trough. Control of press by government is deemed normal here. There is strong centralised power and control of the media. When I was in television, the most important jobs went to trusted friends rather than more competent, but lesser known alternatives. By trusted, I mean they could be relied upon not to spill the beans on crooked dealings. If you consider that most senior people in politics, political journalists and judges all come from the same educational background, you can guess that they come with an existing network of people who have the same shared ethics and culture. That may simply sound like good personal marketing and it is up to a point, but here, journalists and judges are influenced by the need to act within their cultural mould and they are careful about what they say and don't say. It's a closed shop, so you don't comment adversely on those you rely on for your livelihood or do something that will surely stop your career in its tracks.

“There are a few critical newspapers;
Le Canard Enchainé
is always entertaining and satirical, and
L'Express
, and maybe
Le Monde
, and there are a few brave independent journalists, like Jean Montaldo, but they have unusual
courage and systems of protection that shelter them to some extent from threats, and they are tough enough to withstand the nasty personal attacks that come from little nobodies who have probably been paid by others who remain concealed, but it's not easy when family and friends' interests can be threatened. France is not a good place to be a victim, hence the expression, ‘better to be a wolf than a sheep'.”

“So are you saying that the French public will never be entitled to challenge government and openly discuss the sort of questions you hear in the American and British media without that kind of hostile treatment?” queried George.

“I'm not saying it's impossible. I hope and pray that one day soon there will be such an awareness of what is happening that the public will force government and the judiciary to act differently, but at this time, and as things are today, the media, with a few exceptions, will only attack a severely wounded animal; otherwise no, never. These people are all mates. Leading journalists who use ‘
tu
' in normal conversation with a minister as you do with your mates and family, revert to ‘
vous
' when they try to take some distance in a televised interview. It's all an act.”

The subject of discussion moved to the role of women in the media and the fact that several top women journalists and political news show presenters were wives or partners of senior politicians. Was there no conflict of interests there? Sandrine smiled weakly. “The words ‘conflict of interests' have no currency here. When moral turpitude is an acceptable habit and improper relationships are part of doing business, there is no way out. The people in places of power believe that what they want to achieve takes precedence over the law. I know. I've been
there and lived in that community. Although I was only an observer at first, it sucked me in and wrecked my life. My husband Philippe was a decent man and I could still be living a decent life, with a decent family and a decent job, but I found rubbing shoulders with powerful people to be exciting and eventually got drawn into their lifestyle. God, I'm not going to tell you about that, but I immersed myself in the culture of immorality up to my neck and lost everything in the belief that I could do anything I pleased without consequences.”

Sandrine sniffed loudly, wiped her nose and contemplated what she had said before continuing, “Actually, it's not true that I would still be in a good job. The number of journalists and the number of media people supporting them has fallen considerably, so I probably wouldn't still have a job there. A lot of that work has been taken over by government media generators who cook up news and serve it, ready to eat, to journalists who gobble it up without question. Those people are absolutely barefaced about manipulating the news and using so-called experts to distort public opinion. For example, they will describe a commentator on the economy as an independent financial advisor, when he is actually a director of a bank. I've been present in conversations where they had to recreate the description of somebody as part of programme preparation, to increase the credibility of what they wanted to say. Then you have weak interviewers failing to penetrate the defences of criminals who are protected by their status as ministers or senior government or party officials.”

“Doesn't that happen elsewhere, though?” queried George.

“Not to the same extent. For example, I've watched a BBC television interviewer put a British Prime Minister on
the spot and press him to answer difficult personal questions about his honesty and good judgement. Viewers were left to decide for themselves how credible his answers were.”

As usual, it was Thérèse who asked the penetrating question. George thought she would have made a good investigative journalist. She leaned back and looked at Sandrine. “What changed for you exactly, and why?”

Sandrine thought for a moment, uncertain as to how to summarise the complexities of how her life had decomposed and how much she could reveal.