“Wouldn’t risk the beach today, would you, old dear?”
“Not likely — not with all those storms about. But there’s always tomorrow.”
Hugh shakes his head solemnly. “Not tomorrow, dear — you’re getting your hair done.”
But what of Jennifer and John? Bliss looks along the promenade. “Are you expecting the others?”
“Wouldn’t know,” says Mavis, with unconcealed chagrin. “They can do what they want. They don’t have to ask us. Do they, Hugh?”
“Of course not, dear.”
I guess they went to the beach, then, Bliss figures, but sees no point in asking.
Jacques is also conspicuous by his absence, just like his wind — la tramontane. What a day, thinks Bliss, wondering if any other relationships have been destroyed by contrary meteorological conditions, and he sets off along the promenade, determined to extract some information from Marcia’s husband in the first stage of his plan to uncover the truth — the whole truth.
The evening’s breeze dies, and the moon — another full moon — picks its way across the harbour, highlighting the masts of yachts while perfectly mirroring the vessels in the still water. Bliss sits in a comfortable canvas chair opposite L’Offshore Club readying himself to ambush Greg the potter when he has finished his work for the day.
Midnight on the quayside and the families start thinning, leaving little gangs of girls flaunting their sexuality like gaudy fluorescent signs while fending off those attracted with a nasty glare. The body allures — face repels. This is the game — this is not a game — this is war. If you don’t know the rules of engagement — you’re dead.
Will I ever learn the rules? wonders Bliss, his mind returning to the sensual woman on the jetty.
The crowds may be winding down, but the pots keep coming; Greg is having a heavy night. How can you not be busy when you have nothing to sell? thinks Bliss, realizing the prospect of receiving something for nothing, even something as useless as a wet clay pot, turns almost everyone into a child.
The menfolk, standing back, or wandering to a nearby bar, scowl at the delicate pots won by their womenfolk, and laugh, mockingly. “And just how much did you pay for that?”
“Absolutely nothing — the nice man just gave it to me.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“Well, I did tip him a few euros,” they admit under continued scorn.
“A few euros’ tip for two cents worth of cheap clay — une merde!”
“But you don’t understand ...” they complain, and they’re right.
“Want a beer?” asks Bliss, apparently catching Greg’s eye by chance. “Burbeck,” he adds, holding out a hand at the passing man. “Dave Burbeck.”
“Greg Grimes,” the potter replies, but waves off the handshake, his hands still caked in clay.
Promenaders still toting their pots nudge each other as if they’ve spotted a film star as they pass. “That’s him — that’s the potter,” they whisper, just loud enough for him to hear.
“You’re something of a celebrity around here,” says Bliss, grateful for an opening gambit.
But celebrity is not on the potter’s mind as he mocks the stupidity of gullible foreigners. “There are a thousand potters better than me up there,” he says, giving a nod to the wooded hillsides shrouded in darkness above the port. “Picasso himself lived up there — did you know that?”
“I saw a sign,” admits Bliss, “but I thought he was a painter, not a potter.”
“He was an artist,” screams Grimes, his hands clenched in passion. “Painters slap whitewash on walls — artists create masterpieces.”
Bliss drops the temptation to say he’d visited the Picasso exhibition in Antibes at which he personally thought whitewash slapped on walls would have been an improvement.
“Picasso was a master in ceramic art,” continues Grimes, winding down. “He lived and worked up there in the hills after the first war.”
“Oh …”
“And did you know,” he goes on with reverence, “that he used to eat just over there — in Le Bistro?”
“Imagine that,” replies Bliss, turning to seem interested as he tries to come up with a way of levering the man away from the Master.
Playing him along until he can throw in the hard questions, while fearing Marcia might show up any minute and put a spoke in his wheel, Bliss chats of England, beer, football, and the monarchy, without comment or dissent from Grimes, although the mention of marriage clouds his face, and the question of children only makes things worse. “I used to have a daughter,” he grieves, staring out over the harbour to the distant bay.
“Odd reply,” suggests Bliss, knowing it isn’t at all odd, considering the plight of so many parents whose children’s lives have been stolen by drugs, but Grimes catches him unawares with his response.
“Yeah.... She ran off with an asshole.”
That’s interesting, thinks Bliss, as he takes a few seconds over his drink and notices that the wayward Jacques has been blown off course and is having a nightcap in the next bar. The fisherman looks away as Bliss tries to connect; too embarrassed, assumes Bliss, and he turns back to the potter, wondering why he’d not mentioned the heroin. “Asshole?” he queries, opening a chink, and Grimes heads for it full throttle.
“Morgan fuckin’ Johnson,” he spits, asking, “Have you heard of him?”
“No.” Bliss lies, but Grimes isn’t listening as he rants.
“Big-shot fuckin’ bastard. He’d pinch the scum off a cesspit if he thought he could make it smell sweet enough to flog.”
So what about this Johnson? Who is he? What is he? Where is he? Bliss desperately wants to ask, but doesn’t dare for fear of alerting Grimes to his mission. When Marcia told him she’d lost her daughter to Johnson, he assumed she meant through drugs, not physically. Now he has to string her husband along for the rest of the information. “So — how old?” he asks, showing a glimmer of interest.
“Eighteen.”
“No — Johnson.”
“Buggered if I know. Fifty-something, probably — slimebag.”
“I can see why you’d be upset,” sympathizes Bliss, but it backfires as Grimes lets off a broadside.
“You have absolutely no idea. You don’t know the half of it — not a fraction of it.” Then he clams up.
“What about you — what are you doing?” Grimes asks when he’s calmed.
“Holiday,” says Bliss, adding, “I write a bit.” It is a shot in the dark — based on what Samantha told him — but he carries on: “Actually, I’m researching for a book about expatriate villains who rip off British investors and bunk off to Shangri-la.”
Grimes’s face lights up knowingly. “You’ve come to the right place then,” he says. “This joint is full of them.”
“You think so?” asks Bliss, then he enquires with the innocence of an incognizant, “And Johnson — is he one of them?”
The potter’s watchful stare probes Bliss’s eyes inquisitively as the mind behind them seeks to connect — telling him what? Bliss wonders, maintaining the stare. An opportunity to get something out in the open, perhaps? Marcia had that same look, leaving Bliss with the feeling that both husband and wife were ready to explode with information, but for some reason were keeping it in.
“You’d