14 - Cannes, France October 1982
A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE FROM THE CORNER OF AN EYE

The Palais des Festivals in Cannes is a giant concrete monolith which quickly became known as “the bunker”. When the “VidCom” trade fair opened the Palais was barely finished. The paint was still wet, in fact large parts of the building were still a building site and it had obviously been a mad rush to get the place ready for the show.

After the excitement of the high speed trip down the autoroute and the relief of the hire car company’s mistake with the bill, Jean-Marc was rather looking forward to the next few days. Many of his friends from all over the world would be there and, as usual, he had rented an apartment with a fabulous kitchen - he was already thinking about some menus and who to invite.

But first he needed to get the Boulevard du Crépuscule schedule organised, and this started with a visit to the Trade Show’s offices to get permits to film and “press” badges for all the team. The problem was finding the right office amidst a labyrinth of corridors and unfinished building works.

Jean-Marc turned by instinct down a long corridor, he thought it was a shortcut. There were locked doors on each side of the corridor, it was like in a film he had once seen, “maybe we could use this for the opening credits of the programme” he thought.

He pressed on, a young man was walking towards him from the other end of the tunnel, Jean-Marc thought for a moment it was his old friend Martin, but that was impossible. Indeed Martin was in a detox clinic near Coventry in England, and Jean-Marc was sure of this because he had just sent some money as a contribution towards the cost of Martin’s treatment.

“Jean-Marc, I am pleased to have found you so soon after your arrival” said the young man “I’m Stéphan, we have been expecting you. Denis will join us later but Adrienne is waiting for you now, I’ve got the car in the car park”.

Stéphan did look a little like a young Martin, he was somehow familiar in any case and Jean-Marc felt in no way threatened nor surprised, despite the unusual greeting from a stranger and the strange circumstances.

Then the corridor was gone, a door opened and they were in the car park, then they were in a car driving past Nice, then through some tunnels, they came off the autoroute just before the Italian border and headed down through the back streets of Menton.

The autumn sunlight was shining on the rooftops of the old Provençal town, it was very peaceful. Something was starting to make sense to Jean-Marc, he certainly didn’t feel as if he been kidnapped, far from it.

It must have been a good hour or more on the road, the time didn’t really seem to matter anymore, and Stéphan hadn’t stopped talking for most of the journey.

“Adrienne is so looking forward to seeing you again” .“Don’t you remember so and so”. “Denis talks of you all the time, he was there when you were born, you know...”.

Jean-Marc was uncertain about who this “Denis” was, however there were childhood memories of a Denis, “your Godfather from the West Indies” had said his mother. And a New Years Eve Party when, after a very large number of whiskies , one of the guests had shouted to the gathering “that handsome boy Jean-Marc should have been mine....” and promptly collapsed in a corner. At the age of six or seven these events had engraved a lasting memory on Jean-Marc.

At a sharp bend in the road Stéphan turned up a steep track, the car climbed up through the pine trees for two or three kilometres, for all Jean-Marc could guess they could even have crossed the border into Italy. They turned right through an imposing gateway and came to a halt in front of an large mansion built rather in the style of a roman villa.

There was a large sign: “La Domaine des Colombières”

The landscaped garden was in need of some attention but it was nevertheless a beautiful spot, there were large sculptures and statues dotted among the trees and a stream flowed down to a large pond where, at some stage, there must have been an ornamental fountain which now lay by the side of the water in a small pile of rubble. Jean-Marc stared at an old caravan down the hill - strangely incongruous. A man was sitting outside the caravan smoking, there were several empty bottles on the small table beside him.

Le jardin du Domaine des Colombiéres

“It’s a gift to be able to see the future, but the greater gift is to know that we can change the way the future grows. Destiny is never sure of herself, she needs us always.”

Jean-Marc turned to face a frail old woman standing in the doorway. She was wearing a long Indian dress and her white curly hair formed a huge mass over a shoulders. She must have been eighty or more, or less it was hard to tell.

She opened her arms for an embrace, “Jean-Marc it’s good to see you again, you don’t remember me but I remember you very well....”