Friday August 20th
I listen to friends’ stories and my own and realize that tripping and falling become the part of some people’s life as we age. I certainly have done my fair share, although I know that thirty minutes a morning on my yoga mat, doing lower back exercises, would send all the tripping away.
Forty years ago I practiced my first fall in grand style. I had flown from Sydney to Paris via Singapore and Bahrain, an almost twenty-four-hour journey. No matter how convinced I was I could get off the plane and go straight to work, I was wrong. I had made a date to have a drink as soon as I arrived in Paris with a friend and colleague whom I would miss otherwise. He was waiting in the lobby of the Hotel Bristol in Paris as I arrived on a hot summer’s evening. I asked if he would mind coming up to my suite and order us a drink, while I took a fast shower and put on some clean clothes. He was talking to me as he opened a bottle of wine, through a partially open bathroom door, which meant I had to leave the shower door ajar so I could hear him. The white marble floor was wet as I got out. I slipped and fell, and landed with my legs up the wall, stuck between the toilet and the bidet. Red marks were flowing down the wall and I wondered if someone had been shot. I called out to my friend to come into the bathroom, please. I could feel his hesitation, why would I ask him to do this? Finally, he opened the door and walked in. The floor was covered in blood from a long gash in my head. I couldn’t move, and I suspect I was crying, at least moaning.
He pulled me out, found a pile of wonderful thick white hotel towels, and wrapped my head and body. I slowly stood up. I was still alive. He went to the phone and in rapid French called the hotel doctor who had to be found at home The doctor arrived thirty minutes later. ‘You will have to go to the American Hospital on the outskirts of Paris and get this sewn up’ he said. I looked at my friend and assumed he would take me. The doctor closed his bag and left. Yves explained that he couldn’t take me as he was having dinner with the President of France, who lived just down the road. Certainly, not something one cancels for a personal emergency as silly as mine. I was stunned. Was he just going to leave me here? In true Gallic fashion he called the housekeeper and told her to bring a pile of fresh white towels and to send a maid to clean the bathroom immediately. And with that, he left.
I remember opening my suitcase and taking out a cream silk suit and putting it on. My head remained wrapped in a thick white towel and I phoned the front desk for a car and driver to find the hospital for me. Ten minutes later I sat in the back seat and was driven to the outskirts of Paris. The hospital was dark when we arrived, and I wondered if it was even open. The driver, who spoke no English and my French not up to begging him for help, sat stolidly in the car. I walked towards the entrance and life was transformed. A German nurse appeared from nowhere, ‘I have a hole in my head’ I managed in French. Her perfect English took over. She unwrapped my towel, took my arm and said gently, ‘come with me’.
Within minutes I was on an operating table, still in my silk suit, but surrounded by staff and a young Welsh doctor who talked to me in a soft voice as he explained what he was going to do. He put many stitches in my head and finally we were done.
‘You can’t be alone for the next twenty-four hours’ he said, looking into my eyes. I must have been as high as a kite from the anesthetic, and I asked him if he would like to come with me. ‘My wife wouldn’t like it’ he grinned back at me. They made sure I was safely back in the car and directed the driver back to Hotel Bristol.
Back in my room I was ravenous. It was two o’clock in the morning. I ordered a French version of a club sandwich that arrived in minutes. It was three miles high. Knowing that I shouldn’t be alone, I interpreted as not going to sleep, so I took out a mini-series script – that later became a huge hit – and started to read.
I was due at a meeting in Cannes the next day and had an early plane to catch. I don’t remember much about flying to Cannes or being driven to the Hotel du Cap but, five days later, when my office, and my housekeeper and children in Sydney couldn’t reach me, the hotel staff entered my room. I had apparently passed out, not realizing the days were going by. I missed the Film Festival altogether and, while a bit thinner, was fine. It was time to fly to London and get to work again.
