THE MARCHIONESS

Before I worked in advertising, I used to know a musician named Finn Barber. He'd had a minor hit early on in his career in some rockabilly outfit but now toured the UK and Europe in a twelve-piece rhythm & blues band playing lead guitar. Seven or eight years older than me, Finn had a knack for always finding the zeitgeist, the moment. He was an unlikely champion for Drum & Bass and an early advocate for ecstasy, passions he shared freely alongside real-ale and the novels of Raymond Chandler.

Once, in a very spur of the moment way, Finn invited me up to his flat to hear a new record he feverishly exclaimed was the best single since Bowie's Life on Mars.

'Just wait, you're going to love this Guy, trust me.'

I waited for the record-player's needle, already certain Finn had something new and seismic that was sure to blow my mind.

He played Animal Nitrate by Suede three more times to make his point, then suddenly announced he was going for a shower and then getting changed.

'Help yourself to drink and make yourself at home, I'll be ten minutes.'

He shared his apartment with his French girlfriend Sophie, they'd been together years judging by the collection of photo-booth strips in the kitchen. I took a can of Stella from the fridge and went back to the lounge. The room was pleasantly unfashioned I recall, like a long dining table laid out with mismatched china-plates and cutlery.

A couple of Moroccan rugs lay across the bare wooden floor with a saggy brown corduroy sofa that looked as if it had put up more than its fair share of bassists and drummers over its long years. An Art Deco lamp with a green globe perched itself on a tall and elegant round chrome and glass table, scattered with blue Rizla papers and video-cassette rentals, seemingly screened on a tiny portable TV next to the stereo. Two guitars hung like paintings above it with a framed film-poster of Alex Cox's 'Sid and Nancy'.

An overcrowded bookcase was the only item in the room that appeared to be in any random order, it had a philosophy and modern art section which I took to be hers and a crime fiction shelf that started at Sherlock Holmes and ended at James Ellroy.

I don't know why but the spine of Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22 caught my eye on the shelf above. Pulling it out, I glanced at the reviews on the back cover before reading the green ink inscription at the front. 'To F, in case you ever get caught! Love E xx'

I wish I'd put the book back but I didn't, I flicked through the thick tome like a phone-directory and in the middle page, found a fresh Fifty Pound note winking at me.

'Have you read Joseph Heller's Catch 22?' I eventually plucked up the courage to ask Finn outside the pub on the riverbank we often met in.

He pondered my question for a few nervous seconds and then shook his head. 'No, I don't think I have. I saw the film once, it's not very good, I seem to remember Orson Welles is in it. Why do you ask?'

'I studied it for A'Level, it's a good book.'

Finn seemed to approve my recommendation and convinced me he knew nothing of the money inside it or anything about F and E. It was a worn old copy he'd probably picked up in a church jumble-sale or a book one of his guests had left behind. We all had a Catch-22 or something like it on a shelf at home, a story recommended but never read.

'Did Heller write anything else after that?' He inquired.

'I'm not sure, I think he was a bit of a one-hit wonder.' I said as I took our empty glasses and suddenly realised how crass my answer might have sounded to him. 'Can I get you another Finn?'

I had decided to come clean about the book after I came back, it was nagging me not telling him the truth.

'No, it's my round, you got the first two.' Finn got up from his seat and when he returned a while later with our pints, Sophie was at his side.

'Finn's been telling me all about Catch 22, it means it's a dilemma, is that right?'

'Yes, an impossible situation where there's no way out.'

'No way out?' She repeated as she tilted her glass of red wine to her lips. 'There's always a way.' Sophie announced as if I were her only audience.

She was very attractive in that confident French way and quickly made me feel less so around her. Tall and elegant, like that chrome and glass table-stand back at the flat, she had a glow to her which instantly drew me and I imagined many others before me in.

She worked in fashion, Finn had told me, regularly flying to Paris and Milan through her job. They'd met at art school, I remembered, were soulmates, long before they were lovers, 'Like Simone de Beauvoir and Paul Satre' Sophie said.

'Right Fig, we better go or we'll miss our boat.'

'Fig?' I questioned.

'All my close friends call me Fig,' Sophie casually explained. 'It's a name my Papa gave me when I was a little girl growing-up in the Provence.'

'Fig's from quite an aristocratic family, she grew up in a chateau, not like you or I.'

'Don't listen to him.' She protested to me in mild amusement.

'Why Fig?'

She glanced at the the Roman numerals on the small rectangular face of her wristwatch, it looked expensive, like her and I couldn't help think that together, the pair of them seemed as mismatched as a silver fish knife and a wooden spoon.

'In France, we had a huge fig tree in the garden that bore wonderful fruit every summer. When I was small, my parents told me that I was always picking them off the leaves, even though the only figs I could reach at that age hadn't ripened and made me sick when I ate them. I didn't learn, it seems.'

I liked her story and that vague cut-glass French accent that seemed to go straight through my heart. 'Was I fig to her?' I wondered, an unripened fruit waiting to be picked off and devoured or spat-out on the grass.

'Did you remember to get Eleanor a card Fig? Perhaps I should sign it too.'

'I've already signed it from both of us Finn, I'm afraid the envelope's sealed.'

I sneaked the corner of a small red envelope tucked into her shiny-black purse. Was F really Fig and the mysterious Eleanor E? 'To F, in case you ever get caught! Love E, kiss-kiss.'

'Why doesn't your young friend come with us if he likes. I'm sure we can get him aboard. We're going on a river boat, it's a birthday party for someone I work with, it might be fun for you.'

I wanted to accept her invite then and there but found myself waiting for Finn's approval. He hid his immediate thoughts behind a pair of black plastic Ray-Bans, the ones he always wore whether it was day or night, sunny or grey.

'I'm sorry Guy but Fig didn't get back from Italy until yesterday and I'm going up to Liverpool on Sunday with the band, you understand don't you?'

'Sure.' I pretended. 'I understand Finn, I'd just be a gooseberry anyway.'

My farewell to Sophie felt platonic rather than a passionate embrace but I had a feeling I'd see her again. I couldn't have been more wrong sadly, that Friday evening on the River was the last time I saw her again.

I heard about the tragedy on the radio the next day. The pleasure boat where the party was held had been hit by a Thames dredger, causing the boat to break-up and sink shortly afterwards. Many of the young party-goers were trapped below decks or drowned waiting to be rescued from the water. Of the 131 people counted for, 51 people died that summer's night as I slept soundly through their screams and shouts for help.

A week passed before I read that the body of a French heiress had been found near Blackfriars Bridge, 'Aged 29, she worked in fashion and was unmarried.' the paper ambiguously reported. It turned out that Fig had quarreled with Finn after they left me and for whatever reason, boarded the boat on her own.

I found him outside the same pub about a month later but I doubt he even noticed I was there on the riverbank with him or heard me when I told him how very sorry I was to hear about Fig. I wanted to tell him that I'd lied that evening too, 'I've never read Catch 22 either Finn.' but it didn't matter then or now.

"It was an impossible situation, there was no way out for her, none at all." I heard Finn say again and again, like a scratched record left spinning on a abandoned deck.

The Marchioness is a short story by Tim Synge of Old Coves

Portrait of Guendolen Cleaver by Glyn Philpot