Cocaine Nights. J. G. Ballard

traffic scenes reversed into the courtyard of a sculpture studio. A strong-shouldered woman with Germanic features, blonde hair pinned behind her neck, supervised two teenaged boys as they began to unload butts of modelling clay.

      Within the open studio half a dozen artists worked at their sculpture tables, smocks protecting their beach clothes. A handsome Spanish youth, heavy genitals scarcely contained by his posing pouch, stood with sullen grace on a podium as the sculptors – every one an amateur, judging by their earnest manner – massaged their clay into a likeness of his thighs and torso. Their burly instructor, a ponytailed Vulcan at his forge, moved among them, tweaking a navel with a stubby forefinger or smoothing a furrowed brow.

      Estrella de Mar, I soon discovered, had a thriving arts community. In the narrow streets above the harbour a parade of commercial galleries showed the latest work of the resort’s painters and designers. A nearby arts and crafts centre displayed a selection of modernist costume jewellery, ceramic wares and textiles. The local artists – all, I assumed from their parked Mercedes and Range Rovers, residents of nearby villas – sat behind their trestle tables like Saturday vendors in the Portobello Road, their confident voices ringing with the accents of Holland Park and the Sixteenth Arrondissement.

      Everyone in the town seemed alert and confident. Customers crowded the bookshops and music stores, or scrutinized the racks of foreign newspapers outside the tabacs. An adolescent girl in a white bikini crossed the street at the traffic lights, a violin case in one hand, a hamburger in the other.

      Estrella de Mar, I decided, possessed far more attractions than I had guessed when Frank first arrived to manage the Club Nautico. The monoculture of sun and sangria that becalmed the pueblo residents had no place in this vibrant little enclave, which seemed to combine the best features of Bel Air and the Left Bank. Opposite the gates of the Club Nautico was an open-air cinema with an amphitheatre carved from the hillside. A placard by the ticket kiosk advertised a season of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy films, the very height of intellectual chic of a certain kind.

      The Club Nautico was quiet and cool, its afternoon trade yet to appear. Sprinklers rotated over the crisp lawns, and beside the deserted restaurant terrace the surface of the pool was smooth enough to walk upon. A single player was practising on one of the hard courts with a tennis machine, and the clunk-clunk of the bounding balls was the only sound to disturb the air.

      I crossed the terrace and entered the bar at the rear of the restaurant. A blond steward with a babyish face and a sail-rigger’s shoulders was folding paper napkins into miniature yachts, origami decorations for the peanut saucers.

      ‘Are you a guest, sir?’ He grinned cheerfully. ‘I’m afraid the club is closed to non-members.’

      ‘I’m not a guest – or a non-member, whatever strange form of life that is.’ I sat down on a stool and helped myself to a few nuts. ‘I’m Frank Prentice’s brother. I think he was the manager here.’

      ‘Of course … Mr Prentice.’ He hesitated, as if faced with an apparition, and then eagerly shook my hand. ‘Sonny Gardner – I crew on Frank’s thirty-footer. By the way, he still is the manager.’

      ‘Good. He’ll be glad to hear that.’

      ‘How is Frank? We’re all thinking about him.’

      ‘He’s fine. I met him yesterday. We had a long and interesting talk together.’

      ‘Everyone hopes you can help Frank. The Club Nautico needs him.’

      ‘That’s fighting talk. Now, I’d like to see his apartment. There are personal things I want to collect for him. I take it someone has the keys?’

      ‘You’ll have to speak to Mr Hennessy, the club treasurer. He’ll be back in half an hour. I know he wants to help Frank. We’re all doing everything we can.’

      I watched him delicately fold the paper yachts with his calloused hands. His voice had sounded sincere but curiously distant, lines from a previous week’s play spoken by a distracted actor. Turning on my stool, I gazed across the swimming pool. In its glassy surface I could see the reflection of the Hollinger house, a sunken fire-ship that seemed to rest on the tiled floor.

      ‘You had a grandstand view,’ I commented. ‘It must have been quite a spectacle.’

      ‘View, Mr Prentice?’ Lines creased Sonny Gardner’s baby-smooth forehead. ‘What of, sir?’

      ‘The fire at the big house. Did you watch it from here?’

      ‘No one did. The club was closed.’

      ‘On the Queen’s birthday? I would have thought you’d be open all night.’ I reached out and took the paper yacht from his fingers, examining its intricate folds. ‘One thing puzzles me – I was at the magistrates’ court in Marbella yesterday. No one from Estrella de Mar turned up. None of Frank’s friends, no character witnesses, no one who worked for him. Just an elderly Spanish lawyer who’s given up hope.’

      ‘Mr Prentice …’ Gardner tried to fold the paper triangle when I returned it to him, then crushed it between his hands. ‘Frank didn’t expect us there. In fact, he told Mr Hennessy that he wanted us to stay away. Besides, he pleaded guilty.’

      ‘But you don’t believe that?’

      ‘Nobody does. But … a guilty plea. It’s hard to argue with.’

      ‘Too true. Then tell me – if Frank didn’t set fire to the Hollinger house, who did?’

      ‘Who knows?’ Gardner glanced over my shoulder, eager for Hennessy to appear. ‘Maybe nobody did.’

      ‘That’s hard to believe. It was a clear case of arson.’

      I waited for Gardner to reply, but he merely smiled at me, the reassuring smile of professional sympathy reserved for the bereaved at funeral chapels. He seemed unaware that his fingers were no longer folding the paper napkins into his miniature flotilla, but had started to unwrap and smooth the triangular sails. As I walked away he leaned over his little fleet like an infant Cyclops, and called out to me in a hopeful voice: ‘Mr Prentice … perhaps it was spontaneous combustion?’

      Rainbows rode the rotating sprinklers, slipping in and out of the spray like wraiths leaping a skipping-rope. I strolled around the pool, whose untidy water swilled below the diving board, disturbed by a long-legged young woman swimming a crisply efficient backstroke.

      I sat down at a pool-side table, admiring her graceful arms as they cleft the surface. Her wide hips rolled snugly in the water, and she might have been lying in the lap of a trusted lover. When she passed me I noticed a crescent-shaped bruise that ran from her left cheekbone to the bridge of her strong nose, and the apparently swollen gums of her upper jaw. Seeing me, she swiftly turned into a fast crawl, hands ransacking the waves, a pigtail of long black hair following her like a faithful water-snake. She hoisted herself up the ladder at the shallow end, snatched a towelling robe from a nearby chair and set off without a backward glance for the changing rooms.

      The clunk-clunk of the tennis machine had resumed, sounding across the empty courts. A fair-skinned man in a turquoise Club Nautico tracksuit was playing against the machine as it fired balls across the net, barrel set to swing at random. Despite the screens of wire netting I could see that an intense duel was taking place between player and machine. The man leapt across the court on his long legs, feet raking the clay as he raced to return every ball. Cross-court volley, lob and backhand flip followed one another at breakneck pace. A misfire brought him skidding to the net to cut a drop-shot into the tramlines, but he ran back to reach a baseline serve with his outstretched racket.

      Watching him, I realized that he was urging on the machine, willing it to beat him, beaming with pleasure when an ace knocked the racket from his hand. Yet I felt that the real duel taking place was not between man and machine, but between rival factions within his own head. He seemed to be provoking himself, testing his own temper, curious to know how he would respond. Even when exhausted, he drove himself on, as if encouraging a less skilful partner. Once, surprised by his own speed and strength,