The Devil's Bargain

It was the morning of 13 March 2022 and as the sun rose over Monte Carlo, two Englishmen had risen from their beds many hours earlier than the rest of the population of the principality famously described by another Englishman – a distinguished writer who went by the name of W. Somerset Maugham - more than a century earlier as “a sunny place for shady people”. Many thousands of miles away in the Albert Park, Melbourne, Australia, engines were being revved up for the start of the Australian Grand Prix, one of the most beautiful motor racing circuits on earth; and one from which both men were absent.

The first of the two to rise was a shambling old man of no more than five feet in height, who was labouring through his ninety-first year of life. With trembling hands, he reached for his zimmer frame and edged his way to a seat conveniently positioned in the balcony outside his bedroom from which he could stare beyond the many yachts moored in the harbour, to the shimmering Mediterranean Sea beyond. He sat motionless for a very long time, lost deep in thought. At last, he sank his head into his hands.

“It was a deal with Lucifer himself,” he cried, “and what has it brought me but heartache and misery?”

Only the day before, Bernard Charles Ecclestone had sailed from Monte Carlo to Nice to visit his daughter, Tamara, at the psychiatric hospital in which she was confined. The wretchedness of his beloved daughter’s state had so moved the old man that he sank into the chair provided for him and wept without restraint as he contemplated her shrivelled, unkempt appearance. Her face was pockmarked and extraordinarily filled with premature wrinkles. Her complexion was sallow and her eyes were sunken and vacant. The once beautiful features of his treasured daughter were gone for ever. Burdened from a tender age with more money than could be spent in five lifetimes, the girl had run out of ways of dissipating her vast wealth and ultimately debased herself to insanity. There was never going to be any possibility of a normal life for her. If she was not going to be confined in a mental institution she would have to be kept under close guard on one of Ecclestone’s lavish estates. She was only 38.

A few houses away, the second of the two Englishmen was languidly stirring a cup of coffee. He had celebrated his 38^thbirthday two months previously in Los Angeles, California among people who oozed falsity from every pore. People had oohed and aahed, blown air kisses at him and declared “I love you, Lewis daaahling” and then scuttled off after only five minutes at his insufficiently glamorous party in a location where the “lovely people” did not dare to be photographed. Never aware of his own celebrity and desperately anxious to be included in the circles of those whom he considered to be really worthy, Lewis Hamilton had courted high society with a vehemence which had astounded all whom he had known.

Like a dog yearning to be loved by its master, he had attached himself to a second-grade American singer because she had been part of a world to which he desperately wished to belong. Ignoring signs dangled by young women of stunning beauty at Formula One circuits round the world declaring “Lewis, you can race me whenever you want” or “Drive me all night, Lewis, I’m yours!” Lewis Hamilton had married Nicole Scherzinger. Now, having neglected his driving career and stood by the sidelines as it disintegrated, he was holed up in a simple flat – at least by the standards of Monte Carlo – unnoticed by the many millionaires resident there.

After two stunning debut seasons in Formula One as a McLaren driver, Hamilton had gone on to become the first ever black Formula One champion in 2008. But that, sadly, had been the zenith of his driving achievement. After four successive seasons of decreasing driving performance, Hamilton had been shown the door by McLaren at the end of the 2012 season and had thenceforth left the world of motor racing for ever and a day. He had departed McLaren with a few million in the bank but this was mostly spent now and he and his American wife were reduced to living off the paltry royalties of a song called Don’t Cha which his wife had performed in 2005.

“Man, the devil must have worked on my stupid head something rotten back then,” he mused to himself out loud as he looked at the blown up photograph on the kitchen wall of him holding the F1 world championship trophy aloft at the end of 2008.

His reminiscences were interrupted. “Lewis!” came a voice from the rear of the flat, “can I have a drink, please.”

“Coming darling,” said Hamilton as, with a heavy heart, he reached into the cupboard for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. His wife was a morbidly obese, barren and overly-demanding alcoholic, drug-addled woman; but he was stuck with her. He had made his bed.

Each of the two Englishmen had cut a Faustian deal with the devil and lived to regret it. For Ecclestone his desire was more money than Croesus. For Hamilton it was the love of a woman and acceptance into her society. With every opportunity available to do things differently, they had made the wrong choices. To paraphrase Maugham, they had sought the lost sixpence at their feet and failed to see the wondrous moon above them. They were both now at leisure to suffer the consequences of their lunacy.

The events detailed above came to me in a dream last night. As it always is before the start of the first Formula One race of the year (at least when the start of the season is in Melbourne and not that God-awful desert folly, Bahrain) my mind is filled with thoughts of the season ahead for much of the day and night. Although whimsical, there is no gainsaying – at least in my opinion – that the events I have described could well be the future of the two gentlemen.

Enough of Ecclestone and Hamilton.

The engines will be fired up in anger in Australia tomorrow for the first time since November 2011. I have grown up a lot since I started doing these commentaries and refuse to make any predictions at a point when nothing is known about any team or driver’s performance relative to the others. This is why I always feel myself tingling with excitement on the day before the first race.

All will be clear on Sunday. It behoves me to wish you an enjoyable weekend and hope that you will,

Enjoy Melbourne!

Gitau

16 March 2012