Chapter 16
GRAY DIDN ’ T MOVE FROM the sunbed all afternoon. Every few minutes, Jamie would run upstairs to peer at him from the window on the first-floor landing and report back to the kitchen, even though Maggie told him not to.
‘He’s having another cigarette!’
‘He’s not eating any lunch.’
‘He’s on the phone!’
‘He’s asking Audrey for something!’
It turned out to be a double whisky.
Maggie shrugged when Audrey queried this. Gray was a guest; he could drink whatever he liked. So Audrey poured him a double whisky from the dining room bar. Then another. And another.
‘ More? ’ Maggie said, when Audrey threw back the kitchen door and announced that Gray wanted a fourth double whisky but the bottle was finished.
‘He says ’e wants it in his room but is so drunk ‘e cannot stand up. Also, ‘e ’as started singing.’
‘Perfect,’ sighed Maggie, pushing away the cookbooks in front of her. ‘A pissed Hollywood star doing karaoke by the pool just before the photographer arrives.’ She looked at the clock. Julian was due at the hotel in ten minutes and she’d had Mungo on the phone roughly every half hour that morning, reminding her to move the cars, open the shutters, turn all the lights on, put flowers in the bedrooms and so on.
‘That might actually help to sell the place, if he gets a photo of him.’
‘Jamie …’
Jamie’s eyes lit up. ‘Or, we get a photo of him pissed by the pool, sell it for millions and you get to keep this place?’
‘Jamie …’ Maggie sighed. ‘No photos. OK, what do we do?’ She looked helplessly from him to Audrey. At least Chloe and Leonard had gone to Saint Tropez for the day to celebrate and Liz and Tina had left to have lunch at a local vineyard, so the Hollywood star had been able to smash through a bottle of whisky by the pool without being noticed.
‘I can help,’ Jamie offered quickly.
‘How?’
‘I can lift him.’
‘Jamie, the heaviest thing you ever lift is a fork to your mouth.’
‘Not true, I went to the gym last week, look.’ He pulled back the sleeve of his t-shirt and flexed his arm.
‘Nice work, Popeye. I still don’t think you can lift him. He’s the size of a Viking, and also potentially violent.’
‘ Violent? ’
‘He punched that other guy.’
‘Oh.’ A ripple of doubt swam across Jamie’s face. ‘Maybe it was a one-off? He doesn’t look very violent, and I don’t mean actually lift him, I’ll just put his arm around my shoulder and heave him upstairs. Done it to loads of drunk guys before. How else do you think I get them in my apartment?’
‘Jamie!’
‘Kidding. I always get their consent.’
‘We haven’t got time for this.’
‘I vote get him upstairs. We can’t let him lie by the pool, Mags. What if the photographer paps him? Or … what if he falls in and dies? We’d be the centre of the biggest celebrity death since Princess Di.’
‘Jamie …’
‘He’s trending on Twitter. Imagine if the internet knew the number one trending topic was lying beside the pool here, so bladdered he can’t stand up, singing!’
‘All right, all right, OK. Get him upstairs. Audrey, keep your eyes peeled for the guests.’
Maggie followed him to the pool, where Gray was lying on his back, empty tumbler in hand. His eyes were half closed; his head lolling towards his chest.
‘Ifyoulikepinacoladas …’ he slurred.
‘Definitely not violent,’ Jamie muttered quietly, ‘but he must weigh over fifteen stone. It’s going to be like getting the Hulk into bed.’
Gray’s head lifted. ‘The Hulk? I was going to play the Hulk once …’ His eyes swung from Jamie to Maggie as they stood over him. ‘You’re the scary lady. Matilda! No, that’s not it.’ He held up an unsteady finger. ‘Melanie!’
‘Good guess,’ Maggie told him, before turning at the sound of a car on the drive. ‘Jesus, it’s the photographer. Jamie, get him out of sight.’
Jamie took the tumbler from Gray. ‘Come on, pal. Let’s go. Up we get.’
Maggie walked round to the front steps and watched the photographer climb out of his car.
‘Julian? I’m Maggie,’ she said loudly, waving.
‘Oof, what a voyage,’ Julian replied, in a heavy French accent, before placing his hands on his knees and leaning over them.
‘Everything OK?’ Maggie checked, before turning to look around the side of the chateau where she could see Jamie trying to heave Gray to his feet.
Julian groaned and stood up. ‘ Non ! That road! I thought maybe it was the end.’
‘It is the end, you’re here.’
‘ Non , not the end of the journey. The end of my life.’
‘Oh, well, you survived,’ Maggie said brightly, ‘and here it is!’
She followed the photographer’s gaze as he took in the hotel’s exterior. ‘It isn’t ’ow I imagined.’
‘You can make it look like Versailles, right?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. But this view …’ Julian swung his head from side to side, taking in the hills, dark that afternoon against the sky’s sapphire-blue brightness. ‘This view I can work with. It is almost worth dying for, this view.’
Maggie could still hear Gray singing. ‘What about a coffee?’ she offered.
‘ Oui . And then I will walk around, see the rooms, and the jardin and the pool.’
‘Why don’t we start in the kitchen? I’ll make the coffee and tell you about the place.’
He picked up his camera bag and followed Maggie through the reception as Jamie’s voice, straining with the effort of holding Gray upright, floated through from outside.
‘Come on, mate, one foot forward, then the next foot. Help me out here, Gray, I’ve seen you kill gladiators. You’ve got this.’
While Julian sat at the kitchen table, unpacking camera lenses, Maggie explained why her aunt had bought the chateau (quite slowly, so Jamie had enough time to get Gray upstairs), plus the story of the heartbroken Duc de Miradoux that Phil had told her all those years ago. ‘So she could afford to buy the ruin because some people said it was haunted.’
‘Haunted?’
She shrugged. ‘Some say the duc’s ghost roams the place, but I’ve never seen him. And it became a sort of commune in the Nineties while my aunt renovated it, and Taylor Jackson did the pool. Have you come across him? I guess probably if you’ve photographed houses on the coast?’
He nodded. ‘ Oui , many of them.’
‘Oh, my phone’s ringing, it’s Mungo. He’ll want to know if you’ve arrived. Do you mind?’
‘ Bien s?r . I will take a look around.’ Julian stood and made his way towards the door, mug in one hand, camera in the other.
Maggie hurried after him. ‘Hi. Yes, he’s here but …’
Moving to the hallway, she heard Jamie and Gray on the landing above them. ‘Yes, OK, no, yes, yes. Mungo, it’s fine . He’s here, the sun’s out. No, that’s just Jamie singing. Yes, I moved the car. Don’t worry, I’m sure he will. Sorry, Julian?’ She lowered the phone to her chest. ‘How long will it take to turn the pictures around?’
Julian shrugged. ‘ Peut-être … three days.’
‘Mun, did you hear that? Three days. Yes , I’ll ring you later. OK, sure, bye.’
She hung up and tried not to feel a spasm of irritation at her husband’s bulldozing, and the speed with which he wanted to move with the sale. He was only trying to help.
From above them came the slam of a bedroom door, then Jamie’s voice. ‘Good lad, stay there. Have a little lie-down.’
She smiled quickly. ‘My friend’s son is staying at the moment, needs a nap in the afternoon.’
Julian shrugged again and pulled his camera off his shoulder to take a photo of the staircase.
Three hours later, Maggie felt like she’d been through a war. Julian had taken nearly four hundred shots: inside and outside, of (some) bedrooms, of the dining room, of the pool, of the drive, of the garden and, finally, the avenue of plane trees leading to the chateau. He’d demanded that furniture be moved in every bedroom, that the sunbeds beside the pool be perfectly aligned next to each other, that the shelves in the kitchen be tidied and each dining room table be laid (Audrey took this very badly).
He’d also demanded fresh flowers in every room, so Maggie followed him around with a vase of poppies and twigs of bright-yellow broom hastily cut from the garden.
Now they were outside again, as Julian took sweeping shots of the hotel from halfway down the drive. The cicadas had started up in the long grass and, above them, swifts were diving in the dusky light.
‘If you take it from there, from that first tree,’ she said, pointing down the avenue, ‘you’ll get a bit of the pool and the house against the sunset. It’s one of my favourite views.’
‘What about those little horses?’
‘The donkeys? I can shoo them away if you like.’
Julian squinted through his lens. ‘ Non , pas de problème . I cannot see them from ’ere.’
She sighed. Jamie was inside, making a start on dinner. Chloe and Leonard had returned and were in their room, as were Liz and Tina. Gray, fortunately, hadn’t reappeared downstairs.
‘ Alors , I think I ’ave everything I need,’ Julian declared, lowering his camera.
‘Great. Brilliant. I’d offer you another coffee but I need to get going on dinner so …’
‘ Non , non , I need to drive back on that terrible road. But like I say, I will edit these and send them in the next few days. Should I send them to you or to your ’usband?’
‘Could you send them to both of us? Have you got my email address?’
Julian typed it into his phone and said goodbye, before he climbed back into his car and Maggie hurried inside.
‘All good?’ she asked, pushing open the kitchen door.
Jamie was sitting at the kitchen table behind his laptop; Audrey was outside smoking.
‘All hunky-dory.’
‘You haven’t heard from …’ Maggie pointed at the ceiling.
‘No, I don’t think we’ll be hearing from him for a while.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Gave him a Xanax and said it was a paracetamol. He’ll be out for a few hours.’
‘Jamie, what ?’
‘Chill out, Mags. He’s from Hollywood. He’s taken way worse.’