Christmas Kinship, Ostend, 1969

L’épave is a bar in Ostend whose patrons wobble on a tightrope of emotion before 10pm, and, after, sink into the tragic allegory of its name — shipwreck.

Inside, disarray. The contents of a ship are literally thrown across the walls, disparately spread like the flotsam of a wrecked galleon. At the helm of the bar is a ship wheel, opposite, the painting of a Belgian tea clipper, a low beam knife of a boat racing around the straits of Malacca in the early 19th century, encased in glass between two drinking booths are the logbooks of a passenger steamboat, somehow the glass has never shattered during the bar’s rowdier nights. On those nights the owner would battle great waves at the helm of the bar, grappling with the ship wheel to steer it left and right, to-ing and fro-ing the bar’s patrons who’d permissively lean along in the game of pretending the whole bar was a ship in a storm.

Those jolly nights are the past and its patrons are mostly sedentary now, drinking themselves deeper into their seats, and rarely lifting their heads but to acknowledge the cold brine-y draught which precedes a new drinker. Let’s not forget the colour of the bar –like being inside a bottle of Amaretto. If you can imagine how the light plays between the glass, the varnished teak of the wall panels and the faux gold joinings, the bar is hued amber, and it glows like a Christmas light on an otherwise dark street in an otherwise quiet Oostende on the Belgian coast.

At 9pm tonight Audrey’s nails domino against the counter, and the whole town hears the echo of lacquer on varnish. Her nails are one of the hardest known substances on earth, harder than granite, harder than marble, softer only than diamond. She is at the only Friday evening venue she’s ever known and she’s sitting in a red dress. Her place is on a high stool at the counter. Unlike the rest of the bar, she maintains posture and attempts a dignity which is not really fitting, I suppose. She is, or, appears, well-presented with freshly curled red hair, red dress, and those red nails forged in Mount Doom. If she wasn’t there every Friday, she would be noticeable to other patrons, but they barely register her perching there, taking crisp sips from a cocktail of vermouth, whisky, Flemish sour ale and blood orange juice. The cocktail is also red and garnished with two cherries from a tin. She could well have lived a life unrecognisable to her peers in that bar or she could have lived a life shoulder to shoulder with them, causing them to wonder, if they could raise their heads from their slouch, why she routinely sat at that same stool, in that same dress, every Friday night.

1030 comes and the salty breeze ruffles Audrey’s hair. The door has been opened again. She barely notes new entrants because she’s so used to their unaffecting faces. But maybe it’s the draught lasting a bit longer this time, or maybe the Shulton Old Spice mixed with the sea air flowing in which grabs her attention and asks her to look.

The man in the doorway is scanning the room with a confidence of a newcomer who could make any room his and clearly trusts in his own natural talents. He’s not from here, but he’s wearing clothes which could be. His turtleneck is coarse enough and brings out the width of his shoulders, but a docker’s hat sits too tightly on a face which hasn’t born the brunt of Ostend’s whipping sea air for longer than a few months. Audrey’s eyes peep coyly from their sunken position — you see she wears her foundation so thick that her eyes appear quite receded.

She’s watching him a little bit anxiously, no longer the mistress of her own desire. There’s been a transatlantic change of authority and she begins to make space before she’s captured his full aspect.

And he does head towards the stool next to her. Mon dieu, his stroll is as laconic as it is performance. His trousers are corduroy and may have been picked up in London and brought to the continent — they’re not Ostend attire.

But fuck — how he’s cocksure. In the last few years, she’s hardly turned her head, let alone moved for another man. Now she’s turning the stool outward with her right foot. The Shulton Old Spice floats ahead of him on the sea breeze and laces Audrey before he’s taken a seat. If scent could weave visible tracks, Audrey is wrapped up in streams of gold. Those unfeeling eyes are finally glazed as he arrives.

“May I?”…the universal line.

“Je t’en pris”

Resting his elbows on the counter, the man pulls out a Gauloise, for which she lends her St Dupont lighter, he accepts and returns her a cigarette, eyeing her intimately. She can fully appreciate the refined structure of the man’s face: the sharpness of his brow, the cut of his beard, the strength of his jaw, but also the softness in his eyes. He for his part struggles to discern her at all, working his gaze around her Prussian blue eye liner, but no further within.

Silence between them — the awareness that he is to let flow. He sings, half giggling, clicking his fingers, raising his shoulders up and down.

“…I was a fool from the start”

“S’il te plait, non.”

Louder.

“Fooling around with my mind instead of my heart…

/ No…I was young and fine and you plucked me clean”

“Mais quoi ! Tu ne me connais pas… » She scolds.

So he stops and feigns shock.

“T’es qui, monsieur?” She knows.

“Marvin…”

“Enchantée”

“Your name miss?”

“Audrey”

“AudrEY” — he toys with the final stress and jigs up to relaunch into the next verse.

“Non. Assez. S’il te plait.»

« What’s got you cold……I’m only here for the winter…»

And she beads him one and sucks the Gauloise hard, blooding the tab with her lipstick. The arrogance of the man, the softness of the eyes though. Ol barman has cleaned the same glass for the entire conversation wondering how they understand each other.

“Oui. Je te connais, Marvin, toute la ville te connait et ta ’tristesse’… »

« I’m not sad.»

« Tu te récupères ici, et tu vas revenir aux Etats-Unis, Marvin — Ostend, c’est ton petit repos »

“We never met Audrey, did we?”

“Non”

“Listen Audrey, I’m coming across badly here. I think you know I’m new here so take this as me trying to make friends…I’m a singer, that’s how I say hello…”

A rush of wind slaps their faces, cold prologue to a new entrant. At the door is a man whose quiff edges out of a receded hairline, waxed up and over. He stands at the door shyly, suited in black and busying himself with the door handle. And he stands there in an air of anxiety and ire. He is on the verge of turning around, like he’s looked inside and seen the source of his own misery. But he doesn’t. He’d rather sit inside than face the grazing sea air again, so he feels for a space, his head barely up and the seat he lands is on the other side of Audrey, in front of the barman who helms the ship’s wheel.

She dismisses Marvin and turns to her new neighbour who is pointing to a hard spirit on the shelf. He’s not from Ostend either. Unlike Marvin who has featured in the local dailies since he first arrived in flight from the trappings of his own success, Audrey does not recognise this man at all. He wears thick rimmed glasses which aren’t altogether unfashionable, but lines on a well-worn face and a pronounced hair lip are not the features for billboards.

Audrey bites her lip and leans over to tap the slouched man. Marvin closes in behind her shoulder.

“Tu trouves ta place” she motions to the rest of the bar, slouched as he is, hunkered and hushed in their usual places, people with whom she assumes he has some emotional kinship.

He sees what she means and chuckles.

“Hey you aint from here man either — you’re like me”, there must be something in the man’s laugh.

“No mate, I’m not. You’re fucking brilliant” his accent is like granite. To someone who’d know, though, his sound is Sheffield.

Audrey slaps down on the table.

“Mon cheri, trois vodkas.” The barman still cleans that same glass. Coucou! Trois vodkas!”

“Not for me, I’m relaxing.”

Marvin pleads “come on, help me warm up here. We’re all strangers. What’s your name man?”

“Richard”

“You British?”

“Sheffield”

“I know it”

“Oooop” Audrey interrupts with the three vodka shots, pushing one past Richard’s hand into his chest.

He relents. “Oh go on then”. And soon it doesn’t take much for him to smirk as Marvin howls the final line of some verse. He lifts the mood but they are aware of how he operates one foot in, one foot-out of proceedings.

“I was a dumb little fool / But I’ll never get enough / Enough of that funky stuff”

“Assez, connard” scolds Audrey. Marvin ceases.

The three of them shot their vodka and settle into natural conversation while the barman places something scratchy on the record player — a song about a Paris metro ticket puncher.

“Comment tu t’appelles” Richard asks in plodding French.

« Audrey »

« Nice to meet you…»

« Ravi aussi — tu fais quoi ici ? »

“I caught the ferry here……my Christmas trip to the Belgian coast. I like your seaside towns — I like Knokke, I like Ostend. In France I like Dieppe. Faded glories these places. Meeting points for lovers, back when people really dressed like lovers.”

“Ostend, c’est mort”

“Oh no, Audrey, it’s beautiful. It’s like Blackpool, Margate, the stuff of dreams. Coles Corner…cold city lights glowing, traffic of life flowing, downtown where there’s music and people” and he drifts into increasingly vague imagery, certain that these images are the preserved to the seaside places he lists.

“Well Ostend changed my life…” Marvin interrupts and stubs out his cigarette. Audrey follows suits and stubs hers on his.

“I read you were escaping heartbreak and drugs” She does speak English and she speaks it well.

“Taxes and cocaine — not heartbreak baby. My spirit was low.”

“You know you can control that.” Richard holds Marvin with a grounding stare.

“You can’t control anything in the US. If you make it, you get tied down and turned whichever way the man wants.”

“I’m not known as you are, but I perform and I know the light that shines around you and you can control it.” Richard begins to chuckle, “I mean you’ve done it, you’re in Ostend…you’ve burnt the leaches off, and you’re drinking in an empty bar.”

“But I can’t go back” seated Audrey listens as Marvin moans, plucking another Gauloise from his pocket.

“Richard, I’m telling you, I got it figured here but in America that’s a jungle man for someone like me. I paid the IRS 2 million and nearly overdosed three times last year”

“And I’m telling you” Richard lecturing now “you can control that, you can stop playing up to Bertie big bollocks, still make great music and not be known”

“Are you known Richard?”

“No because my music is shit. Merry Christmas.”

“Trois vodkas en plus” Audrey asks the barman who has been tilting his ear into the conversation.

Three shots arrive pronto.

Marvin says something which makes Richard chuckle once more. Audrey gathers her men to knock back the shots. The men of high and low esteem turn to the lady in-between.

“So where did you learn to speak and understand English…?”

“Fin — “

Audrey puffs hard, coughs a little bit, and turns to Marvin and Richard in turn, presenting her dollish, deep-set eyes and her cracked foundation. She would seem brittle if she didn’t wear her dress and make-up like a rigid uniform. She blows the smoke out and explains in accented English.

“I was in Paris in the early 50s. I was an actress. Worked with the Jean Vigo and Alain Resnais. I was on posters — an upcoming star, I was recognised on the streets. I ate at La Mediterranee for free — chef Lamartin made soupe presidentielle for me. But that was then and this is now.”

“Now you’re here…”

“Not by choice. I loved Paris, I loved my fame. But like you Marvin it was too much — the highs too great, and the lows too hard. So, I left, and come here where my fame declined and nobody cares for talent and I have been here ever since. No more film, no more fame. But I still like my dresses…this one was from Resnais” and she runs her fingers down the stitching.

“Ouais,” she continues, “I left and I had family here with someone who I thought I loved. Now I’m here in L’épave, which I am every Friday. But it’s not as fun as it used to be. They don’t catch as many fish as they used to so they’re a bit gloomy the regulars.”

Marvin caresses her neck and Richard pats her knee. She takes both their hands in unison to her lips, kissing their knuckles, squeezing their fingers.

The song about the ticket puncher from the metro line fades and she proceeds to tell them to come with. She rises from the stool and slips into her fur coat (is it faux fur) and walks out.

Their eyes follow her snaking path. Marvin says to Richard.

“What’s your surname?”

“Hawley. I’m Richard Hawley. And yours…dare I guess?”

“Gaye. I’m Marvin Gaye”

“Well I think she means us to follow her lad”

They are still in the coats they came with and get up, shuffling after Audrey who is at the door.

It is midnight when they leave, the remaining patrons slipping further into regrets. She is walking into the wind, towards the sea front. They silently follow up the road past high rise concrete buildings and under the flapping covers of shut brasseries. They follow her outline through the night to the background noise of the surging sea. She leads them into a block of flats, and into a lift where she turns and invites them in a final beckoning. The three stand closely together and the lift shudders up to the fifth floor where still silent she leads them, the clicking and clacking of her high heeled shoes, Ford and Fitzroy, Madame Audrey, right unto her door.

Richard Hawley who is just behind her is taken by the hand across the threshold and he pulls Marvin Gaye along behind him. Was the door even locked? The flat is well lived-in but tidy. Audrey places her handbag down before lighting another of Marvin’s Gauloise which she procured herself before leaving L’Epave.

She smokes and smiles, smokes the whole cigarette while they stand at the door observing her — neither is caught up in the music of the scene nor would it be worthy of music to them. She pulls her dress straps sideways until they slide round and down her shoulders and she is just in the pearl coloured frills of her lingerie, which could well be expensive or cheap. But these are not Richard or Marvin’s thoughts, who are approaching her now.

She takes both their hands again, kisses them, squeezes their fingers and walks them down a dark corridor into her bedroom, its doors slid open. There the three of them slowly tip onto the bed where she holds them like the pantomime children they are, head to breast. Audrey is not exactly maternal though. Gaye and Hawley drift lower unprompted and begin to tongue what she affectionately calls her “moule”. She thinks of nowhere. Hawley and Gaye rise and undress themselves before merging back into her. She beckons Marvin to rise. He moves gently to every of her exhale. She thinks of nowhere but there, and they think of nothing but the act. Her body shakes to Marvin as he gives her all of him before he moves around to her front and the pitter patter of Richard Hawley resumes against her from behind, a rhythm of long and short stresses into her, communicating something unclear, some sort of remorse code to him. She receives their full weight alternately, moaning in effort and ecstasy. They continue for hours until their mouths are dry and their bodies sore and until they finish in each other’s mouths and on each other’s bodies. They lie in sequence as the night becomes its darkest. Outside the last of the bar patrons reach their doors under the glow of the town’s Christmas lights. Audrey, Richard, Marvin sleep in file, dreaming of nowhere.

In the morning, she stands over them and scrapes her nail down their bare backs until they wake. She asks them with her eyes to follow her once more, which they do, back down the shuddering lift, out of the block of flats and onto the sea front, where she takes their hands once more, squeezing and kissing their fingers. They trust her entirely for what she doesn’t say and for what she wants. She drags them over the concrete sand until they feel the shock of the tide lapping up over their knees. At this point she takes their bodies close to her own, and washes their bodies, cleaning off the night in harsh salt water, causing them to gasp and giggle like the pantomime children they are.

Merry Christmas