Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries Read online

  James walks over to me: “Is it working for you?” he asks.

  “Well, it might have,” I reply, “but the truth is, I’m a journalist, so I couldn’t keep my eyes closed.”

  “Would you like me to pray for you?” he asks.

  “OK,” I say.

  James rests his hand on my shoulder. “O Jesus, I pray that Jon will receive Your wonderful spirit. God. Please come and fill Jon with . . .”

  It is not working. The spell has broken. I tell James again that I’m sorry, but I’m a journalist. (This is no excuse: The picture editor of a Sunday newspaper is speaking in tongues to my left, as is a producer of Channel 4 documentaries in front of me, for the first time in his life.) So James changes tack. “Oh, thank You, Jesus, for Jon’s wonderfully inquiring journalistic mind. . . . Please help Jon’s career . . . no, not his career . . . his wonderful journalism . . . and may his journalism become even more wonderful now he is working in Your name, Jesus Christ. . . .”

  I tell James I’m sorry and follow Alice outside, where half a dozen furious agnostics have gathered on the grass. “Why didn’t anyone tell me I’d signed up for a brainwashing cult?” says one. “I felt like I was in a pack of hyenas. I wanted someone to come up and ask me if I was OK, and instead someone came up and said, ‘Would you like me to pray for you?’”

  Alice is devastated: “I used to think Nicky was fantastic. He really gave me room to investigate my feelings about the Lord. But now I’m thinking, ‘Just get me away from these weirdos.’ I’ve been dragged all the way out here under false pretenses, and there’s no escape. I am actually very, very upset.”

  We turn out to be in the minority, and watch as the new converts file out of the chapel, red-eyed from crying or smiling beatifically. Tony is one such convert, but he is not smiling. In fact, he seems miserable. “Something overwhelmed me,” he says. “I didn’t want it to. I tried to resist it, but I couldn’t.”

  “What was it?” I ask.

  “The Holy Spirit,” says Tony.

  “What did it feel like?”

  “Like when you’re trying not to cry but you can’t help yourself. I was thinking of all the reasons why I didn’t want it to happen—you know, the Christian lifestyle—and then Nicky came over to me and started whispering in my ear.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘I sense that you have had a Christian experience in the past.’ And that rocked my world, because I have, and I didn’t tell anyone. That’s why I came on Alpha. I wanted to decide, once and for all, yes or no. And . . .” Tony sighs discontentedly. “God spoke to me just now. He said, ‘You can come back.’”

  • • •

  BACK IN LONDON the next Wednesday, Nicky’s topic is “Spiritual Warfare: How Can I Resist the Devil?” He says that the Devil’s tricks include planting doubts; I wonder if he is referring to those people, such as Alice and me, who doubted the power of tongues. Then I think, “Maybe the Devil really is planting doubts in my mind. I am becoming increasingly anti-Nicky. Is Satan working within me?” I conclude that I have been on this story for a long time and perhaps need a few weeks off. Nicky turns up the heat. He says we must not take an unhealthy interest in horror movies, Ouija boards, palmists, healers, and so on. These are the Devil’s tools.

  Later, in the small group, a woman called Suzanne asks a question. She didn’t speak in tongues in Kidderminster but she did burst into tears. “I went to a clairvoyant a few weeks ago,” says Suzanne. “That surely can’t be a sin.”

  “I’m afraid it is,” says Nicky.

  “Really?”

  “I would actually ask God for forgiveness for that,” says Nicky.

  “Oh, come on,” snorts Suzanne. “Where does the Bible say that?”

  “Deuteronomy,” says Nicky.

  “Oh,” says Suzanne.

  “Poor Suzanne,” whispers Alice to me, “being made to feel guilty about going to some silly clairvoyant.”

  The atmosphere has changed.

  “Things are coming to the boil,” says Alice. “Can’t you feel the screws being tightened?”

  “How are you feeling?” I ask her.

  “Judged,” she says.

  Annie is no longer freaked-out about speaking in tongues. She feels instead that she experienced God’s love in Kidderminster. “It was the most beautiful experience of my life,” she says. At first, she hated it, but now she realizes that her perception was wrong and that the tongue speakers are the lucky ones. Annie can now speak in tongues.

  Nicky asks Tony to tell the group what happened to him in Kidderminster, but he quietly replies, “No comment.”

  Then Alice confronts Nicky. She tells him she felt trapped in Kidderminster. “It was group pressure. I am very, very upset. I know that you’re looking at me like I’m a failure.”

  Nicky smiles. “Nothing could be further from the truth. We simply want to create a nonthreatening, nonjudgmental environment.”

  “Judged is what I feel,” says Alice.

  “Then we have failed,” says Nicky.

  Later that night, Nicky holds me back for a moment. I think he’s concerned about how I responded to the tongues. After my Joel mini-testimony, I presume he hoped that I, too, would speak in them.

  “Some journalists miss the story,” says Nicky. “Lots of journalists miss the story. But you haven’t. You’ve got the story. I knew it from the beginning.”

  “What is the story?” I ask Nicky.

  “That something amazing is happening,” he says. “Something incredible. All over the world. In a hundred and sixteen countries.”

  “I thought it was a hundred and twelve countries,” I say.

  “That was a month ago,” says Nicky. “Now it’s a hundred and sixteen countries.” We laugh. “I would feel absolutely awful about Alice,” he says, “but I feel completely free from responsibility.”

  “Do you?” I ask.

  “I’m not hypnotizing anybody,” he says. “I don’t know anything about hypnosis.”

  It is getting late. Tomorrow is the start of the Alpha international conference. There will be much good news to report. Alpha is up 156 percent in New Zealand; one-third of all churches there now run the course. My personal experience with Alpha finishes here. I miss the last few weeks because I have to travel to America. In my group, of those who lasted the course, about 70 percent were won over.

  Alice leaves some messages on my answering machine. She says I have missed some incredible things. I call her and ask what happened.

  “It was just amazing,” she says. “Nicky did a session on healing.”

  “Healing?”

  “Healing by prayer. He started saying, ‘I sense someone here has a lump on their left breast that they’re very concerned about.’ There were maybe twenty-five of these, and he got it right every time. People were standing up and everyone prayed for them. And then I asked them to pray for my horse, who’s ill, and the horse got better. And I had a terrible pain in my left side and I didn’t mention it, but Nicky said he sensed it and everyone prayed for me and now the pain is gone.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “Nicky was gutted that you missed it,” says Alice.

  “You sound like you’ve changed your mind again,” I say.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” says Alice. “All I can say is that my horse got better and the pain has gone from my left side.” She pauses. “For all my problems with Kidderminster, I’ve got to say that Nicky is quite brilliant. He’s wonderful.”

  And I have to admit that, for all my problems with Kidderminster, I can only agree with her.

  PART TWO

  HIGH-FLYING LIVES

  “Their eyes met and exchanged a flurry of masculine/feminine master/slave signals.”

  —Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

  The Name’s Ronson, Jon Ronson

  This is the centenary month of Ian Fleming’s birth. There’s an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum dedicated to Bond aesthetics. It’s all a myster
y to me. His expensive cars and elegant suits leave me cold. In fact, I’ve only ever been in a Bond-type car once, many years ago. It was a Porsche. The owner—the comedian Steve Coogan—pointed at a button. “Press that,” he said. I did. The lid of the ashtray whirred gracefully open. “Did you see the smoothness of that action? Do you see how the ashtray just opened?” I looked mystified at him and at the ashtray.

  Am I missing out on something? I hate not understanding things.

  I phone Zoe Watkins at Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, the literary estate. She’s known within Bond circles for having an encyclopedic knowledge of the books.

  “I want to re-create a great Bond journey,” I say. “I want to take a passage from one of the novels and assiduously match Bond, car for car, road for road, meal for meal, drink for drink, hotel for hotel.”

  “What a wonderful idea,” she says. “But which journey do you want to re-create?”

  “I dunno,” I shrug. “One in Moonraker?”

  “Moonraker is basically a drive from London to Margate,” Zoe says. “Fleming’s fans were disappointed by the absence of exotic locations.”

  “Goldfinger?” I say.

  “Well,” Zoe says, “in Goldfinger, Bond drove an Aston Martin DB3 from London to Geneva. He stopped at the Hôtel de la Gare in Orléans, had dinner, drove the next day to Geneva, checked into the Hotel des Bergues, and then the journey ended with him getting captured and tortured by Goldfinger’s henchman, Oddjob, in a villa near the hotel.”

  “It’s perfect!” I say.

  “Great!” Zoe says. Then she turns serious. “For copyright reasons,” she says, “it’s essential you make it clear you’re following in the footsteps of James Bond and you aren’t actually James Bond.”

  “I’ll make that clear,” I say.

  I buy the novel. The journey seems even better once I read the ins and outs. Bond was trailing Goldfinger and had planted a tracking device in the boot of his Rolls-Royce. So Bond’s life was out of his hands. He had to go wherever Goldfinger went. This frustrated Bond, especially when he spotted a pretty woman in a passing Triumph. Under normal circumstances, Fleming wrote, Bond would have pulled her over to have sex with her, but he couldn’t because “today was for Goldfinger, not for love.”

  My journey, too, will be out of my hands. I’ll have to go wherever Bond went. I wonder how many passing women I’ll decide not to have sex with en route to Geneva. Probably loads.

  I telephone Aston Martin. They enthusiastically offer me an Aston Martin Vantage for three days. They love the Bond association.

  “How much would the car normally cost?” I ask Matthew, Aston Martin’s press officer.

  “Eighty-two thousand pounds,” he replies. “Plus I’ve put in about nine thousand pounds of extras.”

  “Like an ejector seat?” I say.

  “Extra-soft leather,” he replies. “And a connection to plug in your iPod.”

  “Oh, REALLY?” I say. “An iPod connection?”

  The Aston Martin was Bond’s car of choice because he knew that if he lost Goldfinger’s scent, “he’d have to do some fast motoring to catch up again. The DB3 would look after that. It was going to be fun playing hare and hounds across Europe.”

  On Wednesday a very elegant man called Hugh delivers the gleaming silver Aston Martin to my house. “Wow!” I say, politely. But I don’t feel it. I’m like a sociopath when it comes to expensive cars. I feel no emotion.

  Hugh shows me the interior. The leather is soft and red and hand-stitched. The dials are silver. The speedometer goes up to 220 mph. And there’s the connection for the iPod! I’m going to really catch up on podcasts on this journey, I think.

  Hugh is like Q, running through the gadgets. He shows me the button that turns on the sensor that bleeps when you’re reversing and you’re about to hit something. Then he shows me the button that turns the sensor off “if it gets annoying.”

  “How would that ever get annoying?” I wonder. “Unless you’re reversing for miles. But who does that?” And suddenly I feel ever so slightly Bond-like. These gadgets are mine now. According to Aston Martin’s website, it took one hundred people one hundred days to build this car. There’s a gang of boys watching us. I only half notice them because I’m lost in my unexpected Bond reverie. But then one of them crosses the road and leans in through the window. He looks about twelve.

  “Do you know what happens to people who drive cars like that around here?” he says.

  “I have no idea,” I reply in a voice that sounds half Bond-like and half petrified. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “They get hurt,” he says.

  There’s a silence. “Oh, really?” I say.

  “Yes,” he says.

  I turn away from his stare and look straight ahead.

  “What would Bond do in a situation like this?” I think. He’d probably stab him in the face.

  “That was a terrible indictment of our country,” Hugh says, after the boy leaves.

  “Wasn’t it?” I say. And then—with a roar of the engine—I set off for Dover and the P&O ferry.

  James Bond did not take the car ferry to France. This is the one part of the journey where my plans must diverge from his. He headed instead for Lydd Ferryfield Airport, in Kent, where he drove up a ramp and straight into a Bristol plane bound for Le Touquet. This used to be a regular practice for the rich until the hovercraft killed off the business in 1970.

  I haven’t yet got used to the Aston Martin. I’m finding it overpowering. I embarrassingly judder to an unexpected standstill on Upper Street, Commercial Road, and the A258 in Dover town center. Passersby shake their heads witheringly at me. I think they’re mistaking my ineptitude for arrogance. Were I in my customary crappy car, they’d understand my stalling for what it is. Instead, they’re seeing a fabulously sleek Aston Martin braking abruptly, then revving like a lunatic. They probably think it’s my sick, slightly odd way of conveying superiority over them.

  I reach the ferry. I wind down the window. “It’s not my car!” I shout gaily at the immigration officer.

  He stares askance at me. “In that case, sir,” he says, “please park it over there and step out of it.”

  “No, no, no!” I say. “I—”

  “Sir,” he says, “park the car over there and step out of it.”

  “It’s not my car because Aston Martin has lent it to me!” I yell.

  “Oh,” he says. “OK. Sorry for the confusion. We’re on the lookout for a stolen Maserati. I’m an idiot. I saw the Aston Martin and thought Maserati.”

  “No probs,” I say.

  “Have a good trip,” he says.

  “Thanks,” I say, and roar off.

  I was expecting the hostile glares from passersby to continue into France, but once we reach Calais everything changes. I’m still getting constant looks, but now they are looks of adoration. For the first time in my life I am interesting to Frenchmen. They’re finding me mysterious and fascinating. Frenchwomen, however, don’t seem attracted by me. I’d have assumed from the books that they’d all want to have sex with me the minute they saw the car, but they don’t seem to notice me. It’s the men and the adolescent boys who are smitten.

  It’s a long six-hour drive to Orléans, a place Bond had never cared for: “A priest and myth ridden town without charm or gaiety.” I head, as Bond did, for the Hôtel de la Gare: “When in doubt, Bond always chose the station hotels. They were adequate and it was better than even chances that the buffet de la gare would be excellent. And at the station one could hear the heartbeat of the town. The night-sounds of the trains were full of its tragedy and romance.”

  The Hôtel de la Gare annoyingly doesn’t exist. So, instead, I check into the Hôtel Terminus, on the edge of the railway station. Le Cosy is the nearest restaurant. It is 11:00 p.m. Usually I don’t eat after 7:00 p.m., but tonight I make a rare exception. I order everything Bond ordered—two œufs en cocotte à la crème, a large sole meunière, an “adequate” Camembert
, a pint of rosé d’Anjou, a Three-Star Hennessy, and coffee. It is all incredibly delicious. I get drunk.

  I am a happy drunk. The car is parked outside. I watch contentedly as a stream of adolescent boys stare adoringly and take pictures on their phones. Then my happy drunkenness turns to maudlin drunkenness. I’m sick of being the center of attention. Having an Aston Martin is, I reflect, like having a face made of gold. Some people are awed, others hate you and want to hurt you. And there’s nothing you can do to get rid of it. I can’t help thinking that an Aston Martin would be a liability for a spy.

  The coffee and the Camembert and the wine and the brandy swirl toxically inside my now churning stomach. I stumble back to the hotel and to bed. At 3:56 a.m. I awake with a confused shriek, grab my notepad, and scrawl, “3:56 a.m. Hair triangle horse chest,” and then fall asleep again. I do not know what “hair triangle horse chest” means.

  Bond awoke the next morning, fresh as a daisy, had breakfast and a double coffee at the railway station, and then jumped in his car to continue his pursuit of Goldfinger, motoring “comfortably along the Loire in the early summer sunshine. This was one of his favorite corners of the world.”

  I awake the next morning feeling unbelievably nauseous and constipated, and stumble blearily across the road for breakfast at the railway station. If there ever was a restaurant here, there isn’t now, just a vending machine selling crisps and Twixes.

  Had this been the case in Bond’s day, would he have eaten a Twix for breakfast? I wonder. Probably, judging by his constant desire to fuck up his body. I eat a Twix and begin to hate James Bond.

  I check the novel and read to my disgust that there’s a lot more eating and drinking to be done today. Bond had a big boozy and meaty picnic in the foothills of the Jura Mountains, followed in Geneva by a boozy dinner of Enzian liquor, “the firewater distilled from gentian that is responsible for Switzerland’s chronic alcoholism”; choucroute; a carafe of Fondant; a glass of Löwenbräu; a slice of Gruyère; pumpernickel; and coffee. I feel envious that Bond ended his journey inside Goldfinger’s villa. Being tortured is the only time during the entire trip he’d have managed to use up any calories.