The President's Hat Page 10

  Bernard was waiting for the lift – a Roux-Combaluzier 1911 model whose cab had recently been restored for thirty per cent less than originally quoted – when Monsieur Djian stepped out of it.

  ‘Good morning, neighbour of mine!’ Bernard greeted him brightly.

  ‘Good morning,’ Monsieur Djian replied, taken aback by such a sprightly welcome.

  ‘I wanted to thank you on behalf of the residents’ committee for the renovation of our lift.’

  ‘I had no part in it,’ objected Monsieur Djian.

  ‘Oh but you did!’ insisted Bernard, pointing his finger at him. ‘It’s thanks to you we got a fair quote, and not for the first time. You’re a real asset to the running of this old building.’

  Monsieur Djian mumbled a few words of thanks before his eyes fell on Bernard’s ‘Libé’. He was holding his own copy in his hand. ‘You read Libération, Monsieur Lavallière?’

  ‘Absolutely. And I enjoy it, too. It’s important to have a broad outlook. You really have to read Le Figaro, Le Monde and Libération to get any kind of understanding of what’s going on in the world.’

  ‘You’re right,’ agreed his neighbour, making way for Bernard to enter the lift.

  ‘Now, you were kind enough to invite us round for drinks a few months ago but I was snowed under with work.’

  ‘Aren’t we all!’ Monsieur Djian lamented.

  ‘However, now I’d be delighted to take up your offer – I don’t have much on at the moment. Just name your date.’

  ‘How about Friday?’ offered Monsieur Djian, caught on the hop.

  ‘Perfect, Friday it is.’

  Returning to his apartment, Bernard Lavallière hung up his hat and gabardine coat and, after scowling in the direction of the clock-painting, put his newspaper down on the breakfast table among the croissants. Charlotte choked on her Darjeeling; Bernard’s two sons looked at him, mystified.

  ‘What have you done with Le Figaro?’ his wife asked anxiously.

  ‘I didn’t buy it,’ he replied. ‘It’s good to have a change every now and then.’

  His family stared as he sat down, poured himself coffee and unfolded what he had hitherto referred to as ‘that leftie rag’ – a fact his eldest son, Charles-Henri, did not pass up the opportunity to point out.

  ‘Have you ever read it?’ his father asked him, lowering the paper. Met with his first-born’s silence, he declared that one ought to have some idea of what one is talking about before presuming to criticise. Then he added: ‘We’re going for drinks with the Djians on Friday.’

  Coming out of a meeting on Avenue de l’Opéra, Bernard decided not to go back to the AXA offices. Everything he was working on could be be left until the morning. It was quarter to five and after waiting out a brief storm under the entrance to the building, he told himself a solitary stroll would do him the world of good.

  His feet took him to the Palais-Royal and he found himself standing amid Les Deux Plateaux, more commonly known as Buren’s Columns. The redevelopment of the courtyard outside the Ministry of Culture had caused quite a stir in the press. Le Figaro led the pack in its condemnation of what it saw as an attack on the city’s historic monuments. The building of the columns had been the subject of several parliamentary debates and legal challenges, and had given rise to countless campaign groups and hundreds of petitions. Bernard had even signed one of them.

  The flamboyant Culture Minister Jack Lang, all wry smiles and puffy hair, had been replaced by the rather more staid François Léotard. One of his first acts at the Ministry had been to look into halting the works, but he had soon given up on the idea – dismantling them would have ended up costing far more than completing them.

  Opposed to the Buren columns on principle, Bernard had never actually seen them up close. The black and white pillars were reflected in pools of water, their varying heights creating a very attractive visual effect. So why had this work of art sparked such controversy?

  He could remember clearly what the cour d’honneur had looked like before the work had started – it had been a car park, filled with nothing but row upon row of cars. And that was what everyone had made such a fuss about?

  Children were playing on one of the lowest columns, jumping up and hopping down over and over again. Beyond them, a group of tourists stood over a metal grille, throwing coins onto the top of another column whose base, five metres down, was rooted in a strip of tarmac over which water flowed.

  A Japanese woman’s franc landed dead centre and she clapped her hands together before smiling at Bernard.

  Passing through the archways of the Louvre, Bernard stopped dead in his tracks. The pyramid had sprung up from the ground. Though the Saint-Gobain glass panes were a long way off being fitted, the structure was there, and the stepped scaffolding around it made it look like one of the tombs at Saqqara.

  Bernard took off his hat, the better to see it. This was modernity, right here in front of him, and it was all down to one man, the man whose name he had defended. The mammoth building works at the Grand Louvre had uncovered artefacts dating back to the Neolithic period and, from day one, the dig had given archaeologists the chance to unearth a lost Paris.

  Who did they have to thank for it? Mitterrand, of course, and his ambitious ‘grands travaux’ building programme including the Opéra Bastille, the Louvre Pyramid and the Grande Arche at La Défense, which Bernard turned to see was nearing completion.

  François Mitterrand knew how to make his mark, earning his place in the history books as well as on the world stage. Sticking a glass pyramid in front of the Louvre, striped columns outside the Palais-Royal and a modern archway in line with the Arc de Triomphe smacked of an utterly anti-conservative, iconoclastic mentality – verging on the punk.

  The hoarding surrounding the massive building site was covered in eye-catching graffiti, the work of several artists who had come together to produce a kind of long, esoteric fresco.

  Bernard took a closer look at one of the designs, which looked more like a painting than a piece of graffiti: a pink hippopotamus with smaller hippos inside, blue ones this time. The big hippo was sticking out a kind of spiralling electric tongue; further on, the figure of a man with the head of a bird was holding a huge revolver, with a wide-eyed yellow cat perching on top.

  These were powerful, unusual, bold works of art. What creativity! What imagination! Bernard said to himself as he followed the fresco all the way round the former Cour Napoléon.

  If he spent an hour here, it would not be long enough to take in all of this long, inscrutable rebus of the modern world. He took a few steps back to look again at the enormous skeleton of the pyramid.

  ‘Isn’t it ghastly?’

  Bernard turned to find a man with a grey goatee in a camel-hair coat standing beside him.

  ‘As if we need a great big pyramid in front of the Louvre …’ the man scoffed.

  ‘Oh but we do,’ replied Bernard, struggling to contain himself. ‘We need a pyramid right here, and we need Buren’s Columns too. We need it all and you and all the rest of them just don’t get it, you haven’t got a clue!’

  ‘Oh I get it all right!’ the man cawed. ‘Look at you with your black hat and your scarf. I should have seen straight away you’re one of them. Well, good for you!’ And with that he turned on his heel.

  Bernard watched him walk away. First, there had been the sly questions: ‘You haven’t gone leftie on us, have you, old chap?’ This time, it was beyond doubt. The inhabitants of his world no longer recognised him as one of their own.

  Sometimes life carries you in different directions and you don’t even realise you’ve gone down a fork in the road; the great GPS of destiny has not followed the planned route and there has been no sign to indicate you’ve passed the point of no return. Life’s Bermuda Triangle is both myth and reality.

  One thing is certain: once you have come through this kind of turbulence, you’ll never return to the path you set out on. In the eyes of other people, he was on
the Left. ‘Hell is other people’, that great man of the Left Sartre said, and he was right: hell was the de Vaunoys, Jean-Patrick Teraille and Colonel Larnier.

  That bunch of narrow-minded parasites clinging to their convictions like mussels to their beds. The charge Bernard was leading against all the ideas he had once held, now toppling around him, was putting wind in his sails. How had Machiavelli put it? ‘He must have a spirit that can change depending on the winds and variations of Fortune.’

  As he walked briskly back under the archways of the Louvre, he could feel a profound change taking place within him. More than a change, a metamorphosis.

  He placed one hand on his hat to keep it from flying off. The harder he held it down, the freer his mind seemed to be. It was as though he had travelled back in time, back to adolescence, when life stretches out before you and everything is still possible.

  On his return to Rue de Passy, Charlotte announced that Monsieur Djian had called to cancel the drinks at his flat on Friday night. Disappointed, Bernard asked if Djian had had second thoughts.

  ‘If only,’ his wife replied. ‘He’s invited us to Jacques Séguéla’s instead.’

  Monsieur Djian had got his dates mixed up. Of course he wasn’t free on Friday; that was the night Séguéla was throwing a huge party to celebrate the arrival of his portrait by Andy Warhol.

  The painting had been held up at The Factory in New York since the artist’s death earlier in the year. The publicist had just retrieved it and this was cause for celebration. The thought of putting off his neighbour, now that he had finally agreed to drinks, had been bothering Monsieur Djian for much of the afternoon when he had a brainwave: he could ask to bring his guests along. Séguéla would not turn him down.

  This generous idea went on to spark what might be classed as a domestic incident two floors up.

  ‘If you think I’m going to go sucking up to a roomful of leftie upstarts, you’ve got another thing coming,’ Charlotte fumed. ‘You go and have fun with your new friends without me.’

  Charles-Henri, the eldest son, asked if he could go instead, only to be reminded sharply by his mother that he had a society ball that evening.

  Nobody brought it up again until the Friday. Under his wife’s disapproving glare, Bernard put on his Prince of Wales suit jacket, slipped on his Burberry mac and donned his black felt hat.

  ‘I’m off,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  Charlotte lowered her book and watched him leave without a word. Bernard walked down two flights of stairs and rang on the doorbell of the Djian residence.

  ‘My wife is a little under the weather,’ he announced.

  The Rolls convertible sped along the avenues of Paris. Sitting in the back with her hair blowing in the wind and a far-off expression on her face, Madame Djian reminded him of those stunning, unobtainable Italian film stars of the 1960s. Monsieur Djian inserted a silver disc into the car radio. Digital audio. The strains of an electric guitar and synthetic harpsichord rang out inside the Rolls.

  ‘This is a group called Images. They’re friends of my daughter’s, my eldest. It’s at number one,’ he said, chewing his cigar.

  The Rolls swerved, jumping a red light, and Bernard began to laugh in surprise and amazement, as he had not done in decades – or perhaps ever before. ‘They’re taking me right through the night/ The demons of midnight,’ sang the group whose name he had already forgotten, though every apartment block and even the starless sky of Paris rocked to their beat. Monsieur Djian bobbed his head in time to the music and it felt to Bernard as if the Rolls had lifted up off the tarmac; even the headlights of passing cars seemed like little flickers of joy shining out from the darkness.

  It was one of those nights that take you back to the magical nights of youth, filled with fun, freedom and boundary breaking – the kind of nights that naturally exist only in your imagination. The makers of this track were at the top of the charts, he was riding in a Rolls-Royce to meet the high priest of publicity and the man behind the wheel could knock any price down by thirty per cent. Winners, all of them.

  As they drew closer to the party venue, the cars they passed began to change, as if the elegant town house had a magnetic field around it which made every vehicle in the neighbourhood morph into a Porsche Carrera, Rolls Silver Spur or Lamborghini.

  Two men on the door politely asked to see their invitations, crossed their names off the list and opened the gate. In the marble hallway, they handed their coats to some girls with incredible legs and followed the music: rock, or maybe it was pop, the words spoken off-beat in German with a chorus that went ‘Rock me Amadeus’, as far as Bernard could tell.

  Inside the vast reception room, there must have been at least three hundred people engaged in loud conversation, each holding a glass of champagne. Two saxophonists in black glasses and white silk suits were standing on gold cubes riffing on the song, while a disco ball the size of a planet rotated above them. Waiters wearing red shell suits of the kind worn by garage attendants handed round trays of canapés.

  ‘I’ll introduce you,’ said Monsieur Djian as they entered the fray.

  The girls, who had blue streaks in their mane-like hair and mostly wore a single earring, were swaying from side to side like seaweed. Many of the men had their hair tied back in ponytails and some sported the anti-racism yellow hand symbol on their jackets.

  Suddenly Jacques Séguéla appeared before them. He was with the sculptor César, who looked even smaller in real life and had such a bouncy beard he must put rollers in it.

  Séguéla was wearing a purple jacket over a thin black polo neck. Standing behind César with both hands placed on his shoulders, he was midway through the story of how the sculptor had compressed his collection of branded food tins and turned it into art, when he turned to Djian.

  ‘You made it,’ he said with a smile that puffed out his tanned cheeks, ‘and here’s the fairest of them all,’ he added, leaning in to plant a lingering kiss on Madame Djian’s neck.

  ‘Monsieur Lavallière,’ said Djian.

  ‘Welcome!’ replied the man behind the Citroën ads. ‘You don’t have a drink … Champagne!’ he cried, and one of the red garage attendants came running.

  ‘I’ll be right back. Look after my wife for me,’ said Djian, but she had already drifted off to join another group.

  This is where it’s all happening, Bernard said to himself, and I’m right here, in the heart of it. A splash of champagne spattered his blazer.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Bernard Tapie, brushing his shoulder. ‘It won’t stain. Cheers!’ he added, smiling broadly.

  Bernard clinked glasses with this other Bernard who had had stints as a racing driver, singer, businessman, manager of a cycling team, manager of a football club and TV presenter, and was set to try his hand at politics next. Lavallière could not have felt more out of place – it was as though he had been teleported in from another era – but he pushed further into the thick of it, having given up all hope of finding Djian.

  ‘Pretty cool to have your portrait painted by Warhol, eh?’ The man, who wore a black T-shirt under his suit and held a cigarette in his fingertips, looked familiar – he had probably seen him on TV – but Bernard could not for the life of him put a name to the face. He had a schoolboy haircut and a strange, fixed smile.

  ‘Yes, it’s a great privilege,’ Bernard replied soberly.

  ‘That’s exactly what it is, a great privilege,’ the man replied. ‘I’ll remember that.’ He walked away.

  ‘You know, it’s a great privilege to have your portrait painted by Warhol,’ he regurgitated immediately to a fellow wearing his white hair in a ponytail, who nodded in agreement.

  The Warhol was mounted on a velvet-covered pedestal and was protected by a layer of bulletproof glass. The publicist’s face appeared four times in the picture, highlighted in orange and white. Red and lilac geometric patterns were layered up to create a rather pleasing prism effect.

  ‘Not another Warhol fanatic, are you?
’

  Bernard turned to face a slender man with a salt-and-pepper beard so short it was like sandpaper. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, taking another look at the painting. ‘Warhol’s had his day really, hasn’t he?’ he declared, trying to sound as if he knew what he was talking about.

  The man seemed interested by this, so Bernard went on to tell him about his discovery of Buren’s Columns, the pyramid at the Louvre and the graffiti on the hoardings, all those new shapes, that hippopotamus. He surprised himself by frequently using the word ‘radical’.

  ‘I intend to carry out some grands travaux of my own,’ he concluded as he polished off his third glass of champagne.

  ‘Basquiat’s your man,’ the man with the stubble pronounced with great solemnity. ‘Do you know the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat?’

  Bernard shook his head.

  ‘It’s still affordable. Here’s the number for my gallery.’

  ‘Not going on about Basquiat again, are you?’ They were interrupted by a man, then swiftly joined by another who was swilling his wine with an air of irony.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of them; they’re museum types.’

  The conversation was lively, from what Bernard understood of it. An exhibition entitled ‘The Era, the Fashion, the Morals, the Passion’ was due to open at the Pompidou Centre, highlighting the international art movements of the 1980s, yet no one had thought to include the works of this Basquiat chap.

  ‘Shame on you!’ said the man with the sandpaper beard.

  Leaving the three of them to squabble over this mysterious painter, Bernard picked up another glass of champagne and turned his mind back to his ancestor. Charles-Édouard was a shrewd character, no doubt about it, but in common with many of his peers, the Impressionists had completely passed him by. A single Monet, a single Renoir – not to mention a Gauguin or a Van Gogh – would now be worth a hundred times the legacy he had built up over his lifetime. The Lavallières had displayed a dubious penchant for paintings of ruins – as far as romantic landscapes went, they had it covered – but had never had the sense to invest in anything of artistic worth. A repulsive image came into his mind: the little landscape painting with its broken clock.