Early on Sunday morning the phone rang. Trev. He could hardly speak because his ribs hurt so much, he said. And I should see his face. One eye was closed, he had a deep gash across his forehead and a chunk had been taken out of the top of his nose. But how had it happened? One minute he was walking home alone from the disco, and the next he’d woken up in bed and found himself in this terrible state. Did I know what had happened to him? And where did I disappear to, anyway? One minute I was there, he said, next to him on the dance floor, and the next I was gone.
I’d left early to catch the night sleeper to Paddington, then the Heathrow Express to Terminal 1, I said. I was sorry, I said, but I had absolutely no idea what had happened to him. I last saw him on the dance floor, throwing shapes.
‘So where are you now?’ he said. I looked out of the train carriage window at the spark-ling blue lake and the mountains beyond. ‘Lake Geneva,’ I said. ‘Oh. Right,’ he said. He sounded disappointed. ‘Where’s that?’ ‘Switzerland,’ I said. ‘Oh,’ he said.
Three hours later our travelling party was having lunch outside a wooden 18th-century farmer’s hut in a sunny meadow overlooking Gstaad. Our hosts were Andrea and Laura Scherz, owners of the Gstaad Palace hotel. The hut’s interior was equipped simply and cosily as a kind of romantic hideaway available to their hotel guests.
The conversation was lively and gay in the thin air. Mrs Scherz was funny, describing a visit with her young children to a pop concert at the O2 stadium last October, while all manner of meats, hot and cold, were deftly forked on to our plates by an Italian waiter wearing a smock embroidered with meadow flowers; then we helped ourselves to local cheeses, pastries, ice cream and strawberries. I could have drunk the light white wine all day long.
So did they know Taki, I said? (Taki has a home in Gstaad.) The Scherz’s handsome faces lit up with sheer delight at the mere mention of the name. Why, yes indeed, of course they knew Taki. He is a very fit, very active man, they said. He is a tennis player and keen hill walker, and presenter each year of the Taki Cup for the fastest ascent of Wasserngrat (the steepest mountain in Gstaad) on snowshoes. But above all Taki is a fun person, they said. And there was a brief pause as the gates of a magnificent treasure house of Taki-inspired anecdotes stood open before them, and they hardly knew where to begin.
Did I know, for example, that Taki was the first in Gstaad to own one of the new Mini Coopers, said Mr Scherz? Taki drove it around Gstaad drawing universal admiration until he drove it one afternoon into a tree in the town centre. (Mr Scherz demonstrated with his hands the girth of this tree.) Taki of course had had a sherbert or two and so smartly absented himself from the scene.
As a great believer myself in doing a runner from these kinds of situations, I murmured strong approval. Mr Scherz’s answering smile was not disapproving either.
And where did Taki go? Where else but to the Gstaad Palace, said Mr Scherz. However, word quickly got out that the outlaw had sought refuge in the Palace lounge and a policewoman celebrated locally for her great beauty was dispatched to apprehend him. She marched in, spotted him immediately, and as she was about to feel his collar, Taki made two last requests. One was that he be allowed five minutes alone with her upstairs wearing only her boots. The other that he be permitted to bring his bust of Mussolini with him down to the nick for moral support.
We laughed and laughed in the warm Alpine sunshine. And it was really quite something to see their faces alight with affection and pleasure as they recalled the escapade of a much-loved neighbour. And Taki, I’d like to add my own affectionate wishes to those of Andreas and Laura Scherz for your speedy recovery from last week’s infirmity.
After lunch my phone rang again. Trev — his breathing laboured. After he’d rung me earlier, he gasped, he’d noticed that he was wearing a hospital wristband. So that must mean he had been seen by a doctor. If he can walk, said Trev, he planned to return to the casualty department and try to find out what has happened to him.
I was sure I didn’t know anything? Quite sure, I said. And what was that noise in the background, he said? Cowbells, I said.
‘Oh,’ he said.
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