Chapter 16

My visit to Frankfurt was unremarkable. We landed just after eight thirty, I was out of the airport by nine, and a short taxi ride got me to the Hilton. Once checked in, I tried the TV, where the only English language channels were CNN and BBC World, so I opted to read. I’d brought Heinlein’s Stranger in a strange land with me, and opened it, then put it down and rang Cal to let her know I’d arrived.

After I’d spent ten minutes talking like a pair of babies with Cal, I rang home and let the parents know how things were going. My sister wanted to speak to me, so we spent five minutes discussing what she was doing, and she broke the news that Mum and Dad had agreed to let her start going out on dates, rather than the Friday night group outings that she’d been going on for a year now.

I asked her if there was anyone particular she had in mind, and she confirmed that there was. All she had to do, she said, was persuade him to ask her.

“It’s the twenty-first century,” I told her, “why don’t you ask him?”

“I’m interested,” she said, “not desperate.”

And on that note, we said goodnight and hung up.

I read for a little while, then went to bed. I needed to be up at seven in the morning to get breakfast and go catch my plane to New York.

It was during breakfast that I got the first real insight into how big my film debut was. I was stood at the buffet counter when I felt a tug at my jacket.

When I looked down there was a young boy of about nine, accompanied by a slightly smaller girl, maybe a couple of years younger, and just behind them two adults who I assumed were their parents.

“Pardonnez moi, monsieur,” the boy said, “etes vous Greg Paradise?”

I remembered enough of my abandoned schoolboy French to realise that he was asking me if I was Greg Paradise, to which, of course, my standard answer was no, I’m just an actor who plays Greg Paradise on screen. However my French isn’t that good. Thankfully the boy’s mother came to my rescue.

“You do not speak French, monsieur?” she asked in heavily accented English...

“Un peut,” I replied, “but very badly. I understood his question, I just couldn’t work out what the answer was in French.”

“And what is the answer in English?” she asked with a smile.

“That no, I’m not Greg Paradise, I’m just an actor that plays Greg Paradise on screen.”

She relayed this information to her son in rapid French, of which I caught about three words.

“He would like to ask you another question, if that is acceptable,” she said.

“Ask away,” I said, smiling at the boy.

“Are you going to make another Greg Paradise film?” she asked.

It was the first time I’d ever heard Star Academy being described as a Greg Paradise film, I’d always thought of my part as being just the son of the main character.

“Yes, we will be making another film, next year. In fact, I’m going to New York today, to go on television and tell people about it.”

“Do you have a camera?” I asked the mother.

“Yes, it is in our room,” she replied.

“Then when we’ve all eaten, if you’d like to get it, would the children like a photo with me?”

I assumed that the rapid French she spoke to the children and their answers were her asking and them saying yes.

“Thank you,” she said, “that’s very nice of you.”

I loaded my plate and found a table in the corner of the breakfast room to eat.

Afterwards I went back to my room finished my packing and went downstairs to check out. Just as I finished, the French family appeared and I posed with the kids for a photo.

It wasn’t until I got into my taxi to the airport, that I realised that I didn’t know their names. Ah well.

The queue to check-in at the airport was once again, thanks to a first class ticket short, and once I was through security I settled down in the first class lounge to wait for my flight to be called. The first class lounge on concourse B is excellent, there’s showers, a self-service bar and a running buffet. While there I tried soft pretzels for the first time, they were excellent. The customers were primarily middle-aged men in business suits, and some of them gave me a look that suggested that they were thinking, ‘Hey who let the kid in here.’ I didn’t care, I had my ticket just like them.

I’d been there about twenty-five minutes, when one of them decided that he was going to be obnoxious.

“Excuse me kid,” he said, in a mid-western USA accent, “where are your parents?”

“At home,” I replied, politely.

“What are you doing in the first-class lounge on your own? Do you even have a ticket?”

Now, you have to show your ticket when you walk through the door, and, if you haven’t got one, you don’t get in.

“To answer your second question first, yes, I have a ticket. Do you?”

“Hey now, don’t get fresh with me young man,” he said.

Just then I was rescued by a Lufthansa ground hostess walking up to me and asking, “Do you have a coffee, Mr. Barker, is there anything you need?”

“Thank you,” I replied, “could I have an Americano coffee without milk, please?”

“Certainly sir,” she replied, “your limousine will be here to take you to your flight in about fifteen minutes.”

She disappeared to get my drink, leaving the man staring open-mouthed at me. I just smiled and winked at him.

I drank my coffee and just had time to grab another pretzel when the hostess came back to collect me for my ride to the plane. We exited the terminal through the private gate and I got into the back seat of a Mercedes, with the hostess.

“Is this your first time flying with Lufthansa?” she asked.

“No I flew back from LA with you last year,” I replied.

“You were on holiday?”

“No, I’d been there making a film,” I said.

“Oh, you are an actor?” she asked, “what were you in?”

“Star Academy,” I said.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “you are that David J Barker. You were very good.”

“You’ve seen the film?”

“Yes, twice,” she said.

“Did you like it?” I sked.

“Very much,” she said, both times, “did you?”

“Can you keep a secret?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” she replied.

“I’ve never seen it finished,” I said, “I saw a rough cut with no visual or sound effects and without the music, but I’ve never seen the final version.”

“Didn’t you go to the premiere?” she asked.

“Yes, but I walked out after about eleven minutes.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I discovered that I really don’t like watching myself on screen.”

“I’ve never heard that one before,” she said, “we get a lot of actors through here, and usually they like nothing better than looking at themselves.”

“Not me,” I said, “I have enough trouble looking at myself in the bathroom mirror.”

She laughed at that, and the car stopped at the doorway to the jet bridge.

I thanked her as I got out of the car, climbed the steps up to the jet bridge and entered the plane.

When I arrived I was the only passenger on board and I took my allocated seat, 1A, at the front of the first class compartment. Within a few minutes I was joined by six others, so, unless they started upgrading Business class passengers, there’d be five spare seats.

They did bump five Business class passengers, which led to the only incident of the flight, when a loud voice complained that he hadn’t been upgraded, but the cabin staff handled the man diplomatically, and soon we were all strapped in, and we got pushback.

It took ten minutes for the plane to manoeuvre its way round the airport taxi ways and another five in the queue before we felt the big 747 surge forward down the runway and we were airborne.

The next eight hours were, quite frankly, eight of the most boring of my life. There was nothing available to watch that I had any interest in, so I took out my copy of Stranger in a strange land and started reading.

By the time we touched down in New York, I had read over half of the book’s six hundred and fifty five pages, and was still wondering where the story was going.

Getting through customs and immigration was, as usual anywhere in the USA a nightmare, an hour and a half it took. Admittedly this was JFK, where the queues they say are just naturally longer, even with the visa waiver programme.

Once out there, I looked around for anyone who might be carrying a placard with my name on it, and eventually saw him. He was big, but not fat, just big, he was also very, very black.

I walked up to him.

“I’m David J. Barker,” I announced, and he looked at me in puzzlement.

“Sorry, sir,” he apologised, “you took me by surprise.”

“Expecting someone older?” I asked, pleasantly.

“Yes, sir, I’m sorry, but could I see some ID?”

I showed him my passport.

“Sorry about that sir,” he said as he handed it back, “I just wasn’t expecting...”

“A kid?” I prompted, “don’t worry, nobody expects a kid.”

“Monty Python?” he queried, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition?”

“That’s it,” he agreed, “I love those old Python shows.”

“Me too,” I replied, “it’s a pity there are so few of them.”

We walked out to the short stay car park while we spoke and he opened the door for me to get into a huge black car while he put my bags in the boot. The drive into Manhattan was long, it was over an hour from leaving the airport car park and pulling up outside the Conrad on Manhattan’s lower west side.

Three days and two TV talk shows later, I was back at the airport, this time it was La Guardia, heading for Chicago.

Once I was through baggage claim, I arrived in the Arrivals hall and looked around for my driver, unsuccessfully. Ah well, no doubt Chicago traffic was just as bad a New York, so I set off in search of a coffee, and was disappointed when the only place I could find was a Starbucks, but it was coffee, so in I went.

I got one and found a seat by a window, so that I could see when my driver turned up.

I didn’t spot my driver, but I did see something that intrigued me. Across the arrivals hall there was a family, nothing unusual about that, except that the distinguished looking man, with a goatee beard was stood holding hands with two of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, and that were surrounded by six kids, ranging from a boy around my age, maybe a year or so younger, who was obviously their son. There were three other boys, and a couple of young girls. I sat there watching them interact for a while. They were obviously family, but it intrigued me, why would the man be holding hands with both women? One of them, obviously was his wife, but who was the other one, the darker haired beauty?