The boy had mouthed "Ferrari". I heard the roar of the crowd in the grandstand behind me. They were calling out for the car that was coming, not the girl.
The Ferrari had exited the pit-lane and gave a little burst on the accelerator up to the first corner, then turned right into the zig-zag ascent to Casino Square. Out of Casino Square and past the grandstand roar, the road dropped again, almost as steeply as it climbed. A hard brake into a hard right, and the Ferrari was coasting towards Lowes, Monaco's famous hairpin, the slowest corner on the Grand Prix calendar. Here, during a race, cars at the back of a pack will sometimes come to a standstill as they wait for the front-runners to clear the succession of slow turns that bring the circuit to the sea-front, and the tunnel.
In the tunnel, the Ferrari had opened up, putting a little heat in the tyres, rocketing past the concrete balustrades that had killed Fagioli.
Out of the tunnel, the engine had abruptly ripped across the harbour, then faded as the car slowed for the chicane.
Around the chicane, back on the power, passing the rows of multimillion-dollar yachts and their champagne deck parties.
Left, into the swimming pool complex.
Left again, the yachts here obscured by another grandstand.
Then right.
Then left.
Short burst on the power.
Slow, for...
Rascasse!
Stirling Moss used to wave at pretty girls in pink lipstick. But the driver of the Ferrari crashed.
Monaco is full of stories.
The first winner of the race, in 1929, was entered only as "Williams". Some legends describe him as a wealthy amateur, others as a humble chauffeur. But his real name was William Grover and he drove for the Bugatti team.
Half-English and half-French, Grover enlisted as a driver in the Royal Army corps where his bilingual ability led to him being recruited by Special Operations in 1942. He was trained as an undercover agent and parachuted back into France, where he landed near the Le Mans circuit. In Paris, he set up a sabotage network and recruited two more racers, French drivers Benoist and Wimille.
In 1943 the network was discovered. Grover was tortured by the Gestapo, then executed. Benoist escaped but was recaptured in 1944, and died at Buchenwald.
I don't know what happened to Wimille.
But I did get the photo.
The girl clutches the fence with her free hand, head back, back arched. The boy half rises out of his seat. A diner looks towards the two of them as if he is only just comprehending what the girl has been doing. And another diner turns towards the foreground, where a Ferrari loses its back end in a cloud of burning rubber.
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