The Saint in the Sun (5 page)

“Do you water-ski?” Simon asked, as they watched.

“I’ve tried it. But I don’t much like being whipped around like the tail of a kite, wherever the boat takes you. If someone would invent a way of steering the boat yourself while you’re skiing, it might be fun.”

“Water-skiers must be the worst kind of exhibitionists. Haven’t you noticed that their whole fun is in showing off? If they just enjoyed water-skiing for its own sake, they could do it all over the ocean without bothering anyone. But no. They always have to work as close as they can to what they hope is an admiring audience, and half-swamp anyone who’s only trying to have a quiet peaceful time on the water.”

“But the girl who’s skiing isn’t doing that,” Maureen pointed out. “It’s Undine who’s driving.”

“Using her to get more attention.” The skier fell off then, trying to jump the wake, and Simon sat up with a short laugh. “What a pity that wasn’t him! But I’m sure he wouldn’t ski himself and risk anything so undignified … Come on, let’s forget him for a while and have a dunk.”

She swam well and with surprising endurance for her slight build, not with the brief burst of speed fizzling out into breathlessness that he would have expected. He followed her for about five hundred yards, and when they turned around she seemed quite capable of making it five kilometers.

“I won all the athletic prizes in school,” she said when he complimented her. “That’s probably my trouble, being the good sister instead of the home-wrecker type.”

“If I treat you like a brother,” he said, “it’s only because David stuck me with it.”

After the sun had dried them again she said: “I don’t want to spoil your day, but I’m not tanned like you are, and it might ruin everything if I meet Undine this evening looking like a raspberry sundae.”

“It’s lunch-time, anyway. I have an idea. Let’s drive up to Ramatuelle. There’s a little restaurant there, Chez Cauvičre, where they make the best paella this side of the Pyrenees and perhaps the other side too. Then I’ll take you back to the hotel for a siesta, and by seven o’clock you’ll feel fit to cope with a carload of Undines-if you can stand the thought.”

The ambrosial hodge-podge of lobster, chicken, octopus, vegetables, and saffron-tinted rice was as good as he boasted; the unlabelled rosé of the house was cool insidious nectar; and by the end of the meal they were almost old friends. He felt an almost genuinely brotherly concern when he left her and had to remember that all this had been only an interlude.

“Is there anything else I can do?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it. Do you suppose you could come by the cafe about eight o’clock, and say hullo to me? Then if it seems like a good idea by that time I can make like we had a date. It might get me out of something. Even just as a card up my sleeve, it’d do a lot for my morale. That is, if you aren’t already tied up-“

“I can’t think of anything better,” he smiled. “You can count on me.”

She had already told him which cafe was referred to. The quais which face the harbor of St Tropez are lined almost solidly with restaurants and cafes, where everyone who knows the routine turns out in the evening to be seen and to see who else is being seen; but ever since “Saint-Trop” became known as the rendezvous of a certain artistic-bohemian set for whom the Riviera westward from Cannes was either too princely or too bourgeois, “the” cafe has always been the Sénéquier, and the others have to be content with its overflow-which is usually enough to swamp them anyway. Although many of the original celebrities have since migrated to less publicized havens, the invading sightseers who put them to flight continue to swarm there and stare hopefully around, most of the time at each other. But even in this era a permanently reserved table at Sénéquier was still a status symbol which Sir Jasper Undine would inevitably have had to display, whatever the price.

Simon strolled slowly along the Quai Jean-Jaurčs a little before eight, allowing himself a leisured study of the scene as he approached.

It was impossible not to spot Undine at any distance: he stood out even amidst the rainbow patchwork of holiday garb on the terrace with the help of a blazer with broad black and yellow horizontal stripes, which with the help of his oversized sunglasses’ made him look something like a large bumblebee in a field of butterflies-if you could imagine a bumblebee wearing a red and white checkered tam-o’-shanter.

Besides the ginger-haired young man who had served as mate on the speedboat in the morning, and two of the shapely playthings they had picked up (or two almost indistinguishable chippies off the same block), Sir Jasper’s entourage had been augmented not only by Maureen Herald, who had been privileged to sit on one side of him, but also by a reddish-blonde young woman with a voluptuous authority that made the starlet types look adolescent. As he came closer, Simon recognized the sulky sensual face as that of Dominique Rousse, a French actress whose eminence, some competitors asserted, was based mainly on certain prominences, which contrived to get uncovered in all her pictures on one pretext or another. On her other side was a black-browed heavy-set individual who seemed to be watching and absorbing everything with brooding intensity but to be deliberately withholding any contribution of his own.

As Simon came within earshot, Undine was saying: “… and rub his nose in it. The banks don’t make any loans on artistic integrity, and a producer who isn’t as tough as a bank better learn to print his own money. I know what I can do for anyone and I figure what they’ve got to do for me to pull their weight in the package, or I’m not interested-“

He broke off, cigar and goatee cocked challengingly, as the Saint stopped at the table.

Maureen Herald’s face lighted up momentarily, and then masked itself with a kind of cordial restraint.

“Oh, hullo, Simon,” she said, and turned smoothly to the others. “This is Mr - Thomas.” The hesitation was barely perceptible. “Sir Jasper Undine. Mr & Mrs Carozza-that is, Dominique Rousse.” The dark withdrawn man, then, was the lush actress’s husband. “I’m afraid I didn’t get all the other names-“

Undine did not bother to supply them. He stared at the Saint steadily. The impenetrable sunglasses hid his eyes, but at this range it could be seen that his nose was fleshy and his mouth large-lipped and moist.

He asked brusquely: “Any relation of the Thomas brothers—Ralph and Gerald-the directors?”

“No,” said the Saint pleasantly.

“Not an actor?”

“No.”

“You can sit down, then. Get him a chair, Wilbert.”

The carroty young man gave up his own seat and went looking for another. He was the only customer in the place who was wearing a tie, and even a shiny serge jacket as well. They were like symbols of servitude amid the surrounding riot of casual garb, and obviously defined his part in Undine’s retinue.

“There’s nothing wrong with actors except when they’re trying to get a job, and then there’s a limit to how many you can ‘ave around at the same time,” said Sir Jasper. His origins revealed themselves in his speech more consistently through its intonation and subject matter than by the dropping of H’s, which he did only occasionally. “One day somebody ‘ll make a robot that you just wind up and it says what you put on a tape, and then they can all butter themselves. Get him a drink, Wilbert.”

“And who would make the tape recording?” Simon inquired mildly.

“The writers would be glad to do that themselves. They always know ‘ow their precious lines ought to be spoken better than anybody else-don’t they, Lee?”

The taciturn Carozza, whose profession was thus revealed, gave a tight-lipped smile without answering. Now the Saint remembered having seen his name in print as one of Europe’s avant-garde new dramatists, but was vague about his actual achievements. It was not a sphere in which Simon Templar had more than a superficial interest.

“These brainy chaps can do anything,” Undine pursued. “Look at him. There’s Dominique, who gets made love to by all the matinée idols-on the set, of course-and papers her bathroom with mash notes from millionaires, and I could go for her myself, but she falls for his intellectual act. He’s hired to work on my script, and she wants to play the lead in it, but he goes and marries her. That’s what you do with brains.”

“You promised me the part before that,” said Dominique Rousse sullenly.

“I said you were the best bet I’d seen. But what am I betting on now? All you’ll be thinking about is what Lee wants, not what I want. I’m kidding, of course.”

If he was, it was with a touch that tickled like a club.

“Does that mean you were kidding when you asked me to come here for an interview?” Maureen Herald asked.

“Get me another cigar, Wilbert.” Undine brought his opaque gaze back to her. “Listen, you remember in ‘Ollywood about six years ago, right after the premeer of your first picture, which I saw-I was giving a party, and I sent you an invitation, but you didn’t come then.”

“I’d never met you, and I happened to have another date.”

“I knew it couldn’t ‘ve been because you felt too grand for the likes of me. After all, you came all the way here this time, didn’t you?”

“So all this was just your way of getting even?” she asked steadily.

“Now why would I go to all that trouble? I’m reminding you, that’s all. I didn’t let it make any difference when I told my lawyers to go ahead and draw up a contract with everything your agent was able to get out of me. I rang ‘em up this afternoon and they said they’d already sent it off. It should be here in the first post tomorrow. Then all I got to do is make up my mind to be big-‘earted and sign it.”

“But if—”

“Who said you and Dominique couldn’t both be starred? There’s two female parts in the script that could be built up equal, if we can stop Lee trying to give all the best of it to his wife.”

“I’m sorry,” Carozza said, speaking at last. “But I don’t see that.” He had only a trace of accent, which was as much Oxford as Latin. “Unless Messalina dominates everything-“

Sir Jasper clutched his temples.

“There ‘e goes. Just like I told you.” He turned to Maureen again, and dropped a heavy hand on her knee. “But don’t worry -he’ll come ‘round when he thinks about all that lolly I could stop paying him every week. So let’s you and me go to dinner and talk about this part.” He stood up, royally. “Wilbert, order one more round and pay the bill. So long, everybody.”

Simon met Maureen’s eyes as they looked at him, letting her take the cue, and they said as plainly as if she had spoken: “Forgive me, but I guess I am stuck with it. What else can I do?”

The Saint smiled his understanding, and said: “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He accepted another Peter Dawson without compunction, and made it a double just to reciprocate the courtesy with which it had been offered. The Carozzas also shrug-nodded acceptance; but the two starlet types, after ogling the Saint speculatively and receiving little encouragement, twittered obliquely to each other and took their leave.

While Wilbert (whether that was his first or his last name, it fitted his function and personality like a glove) was twisting one way and another trying to flag down a waiter, Dominique Rousse exploded in a furious aside to her husband which was pitched too low for any other ear; but Carozza silenced her with a warning down-drift of his brows. He was studying the Saint now with the undeviating concentration which he seemed to aim at its objects like a gun.

“Did I hear Miss Herald say you were Mr Simon Thomas?” he inquired.

“You did,” Simon replied easily.

“I was wondering if it should have been Simon Templar.”

“Why?”

“You have a great resemblance to a picture I saw once-of a person who is called the Saint.”

“Have I?”

“I think you are being modest.”

The Saint grinned at him blandly and indulgently, and drawled: “I hope that’s a compliment.”

The ginger-haired Wilbert had finally accomplished his assignment, which had kept him out of this exchange, and now as if he had not heard any of it he pulled a notebook and a ballpoint pen from his pocket and leaned towards the Saint like a college-magazine reporter.

“What hotel are you staying at, Mr Thomas?”

“I’m staying in a friend’s apartment. He lent it to me while he’s away.”

“Would you give me the address? And the telephone number, if there is one?”

The Saint was mildly surprised.

“What ever for?”

“Sir Jasper will expect me to know,” Wilbert said. “If he wanted to get in touch with you again for any reason, and I didn’t know where to find you, he’d skin me alive.”

With his jug-handle ears and slightly protruding eyes and teeth, and the complexion that looked as if it had been sandpapered, he was so pathetically earnest, like a boy scout trying for a badge, that Simon didn’t have the heart to be evasive with that information. But in return he asked where Undine was staying.

“He has a villa for the season-Les Cigales,” Wilbert told him. “You take the Avenue Foch out of the town, and it’s three or four kilometers out, on your left, right on the water. Sir Jasper has had signs posted along the road with his initials, so you won’t have any trouble finding it if he invites you there.”

“Thanks,” murmured the Saint. “But I hardly think we’ve struck up that kind of friendship.”

Carozza was still scrutinizing him with unalleviated curiosity; and to head off any further interrogation, Simon deliberately took the lead in another direction.

“What is this epic you’re working on?” he asked.

“Messalina,” Carozza said curtly. He was plainly irritated at being forced off at a tangent from the subject that intrigued him.

“Based on the dear old Roman mama of the same name?”

“Yes.”

“I can see why it would be difficult to build up another female part and make it as important as hers.”

“With any historical truth or dramatic integrity, yes. But those are never Sir Jasper’s first considerations.”

“His first being the box office?”

“Usually. And after that, his personal reasons.”

“This Maureen Herald,” Dominique Rousse said. “She is a good friend of you?”