Грэм Мастертон - Famine

Granger murmured, ‘You’re a very lovely, magnetic person, Season. You have an aura about you which makes you both attractive and sympathetic. I don’t think in my whole time in the service of Our Lord that I’ve ever come across anyone with whom I felt so close so quickly.’

Season opened her eyes. Granger was staring at her through the cage of his upraised fingers. The pupils in those washed-out irises of his were contracted almost to pinpoints.

‘How do you feel?’ he asked her, lowering his hands.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Better, I think.’

‘Isn’t he marvellous ?’ enthused Vee.

‘Well, I certainly feel less harassed,’ agreed Season, brushing back her blonde hair with her hand. ‘Are you staying to dinner. Granger?’

Granger shook his head. ‘I regret not. I have a meeting tonight. Even a church has to be run like a business these days. I have to fill out Form One-o-two-three for the IRS with my accountants.’

‘Didn’t Jesus throw the money-changers out of the temple?’ asked Season.

‘He certainly did,’ agreed Granger. ‘And one day, I hope I can do the same. That’ll be a miracle worth praying for.’

They saw Granger to the door. Carl had already taken Sally upstairs to her bedroom in the extension, and they could hear her giggling and screaming as Carl chased her across the landing with a Cookie Monster glove-puppet Granger stepped out on to the elevated wooden porch, and looked out over the warm twinkling Los Angeles night.

‘Thank you for your hospitality, Vee,’ he said. ‘And thank you for introducing me to Season. You take good care of her while she’s here. She’s a very special person.’

‘It was good to meet you,’ said Season. Granger took her hand, and gave it a quick, affectionate squeeze.

They both stood by the railing as Granger walked around to the car port at the side of the house. A few moments later, he reappeared in a glossy black Eldorado, booped the horn a couple of times, and drove off down to the road. They watched his tail-lights disappear through the leaves.

‘Well,’ said Vee. ‘What do you think of our spiritual leader? Quite miraculous, isn’t he?’

‘He’s good-looking. Maybe a little theatrical.’

‘Theatrical? Well, he may be theatrical by Kansas standards, but by Hollywood standards he’s positively normal. You ought to see the guru that Marjorie Newman goes to see. Hairy, and yukky, and not too particular about the condition of his loincloth, either. I think Granger’s a doll. If I wasn’t so much in love with Carl, I think I might be tempted to test his spirituality for weak spots.’

They went inside, and the screen door banged behind them. ‘You must come and see the extension,’ said Vee. ‘First we had fires, then we had a mudslide, but somehow we managed to survive long enough to finish it off. Thank God we don’t have any more disasters on the slate.’

‘I ought to call Ed and tell him we’ve arrived safely,’ said Season. ‘Is there a phone in my room?’

‘Oh, sure. Listen – let’s go upstairs and I’ll show you around. Then you can come down and have something to eat. Mind you – the way prices have been shooting up around here, we’re lucky to have half a tomato to nibble on.’

‘There’s been some kind of trouble with the vegetable crop here, hasn’t there?’ asked Season. ‘Some tomato grower was talking to me on the plane. And trying to make a pass, I might add. At least until Sally came walking along the aisle, calling me “mommy”.’

‘I don’t suppose it’s anything as bad as that wheat blight you’ve had in Kansas,’ said Vee, leading Season up a curving wooden staircase to an oak-panelled passageway. ‘But you have to do your marketing pretty early in the day if you want fresh lettuce and celery. By mid-morning, most of the stuff’s gone. Still – they say it’s just a “temporary shortfall”.’

‘You should have seen the farm,’ Season said. ‘The wheat was all black and drooping for miles. Poor Ed was absolutely heartbroken.’

‘I expect Ursula was, too.’

Season raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Don’t talk to me about Ursula. She’s like one of those terrible women in an Edgar Allen Poe story. She’d have me beheaded if she thought it would help South Burlington Farm.’

‘This is your room,’ Vee told her opening the door of a wide, airy, studio with a sloping dormer roof and a polished wooden floor. ‘You wait till you wake up in the morning. There’s a beautiful view of the canyon. Your shower’s through there, and your telephone’s right over on the desk.’

‘Vee, it’s beautiful,’ said Season. ‘I just know that we’re going to feel right at home here.’

Vee held her arm. ‘You’re okay, aren’t you? I mean, Ed didn’t take it too bad?’

Season lowered her eyes. ‘He didn’t want me to go, if that’s what you mean. He was more upset than he was saying. But he knows I have to get away from Kansas, even if it’s only for a week.’

‘What about your marriage?’

‘Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to see how I feel. Ed doesn’t want to give up the farm and I don’t want him to give it up, either. If I took South Burlington away from him, just for my own selfish reasons, it would be like castrating him. He’s a farmer, Vee, and when I married him I never even realised. But whether I can face up to going back to Kansas or not…’

Vee ran her hand through her sister’s blonde hair. ‘It’s that bad, huh?’

Season nodded. ‘It’s wheat and it’s sky and that’s all.’ Vee kissed her. ‘You wash up, get yourself ready. Carl will take care of Sally. And listen. Season, whatever happens, just remember we love you.’

Season’s eyes filled up with tears. She held her hand over her mouth and the tears slid down her cheeks and clung on her fingers like diamonds. ‘I’m sorry, Vee,’ she said. ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

‘Sure,’ said Vee, hugging her. ‘I’ll see you in a while.’

Della McIntosh walked through the terminal at Wichita Mid-Continental Airport at two thirty the following afternoon, dressed in a white cotton skirt and a midnight-blue T-shirt that had more than one of the good old Kansas boys on the baggage-collection carousels taking long and considered looks.

Her red hair was fresh-washed and shining, her sunglasses were propped up in her hair, and if this had been any place in the world except the depths of the American Mid-West, she would have been taken for a very high-quality whore.

Ed was waiting for her outside, standing by his Caprice stationwagon, smoking a small cigar. When she came through the doors and hesitated, looking this way and that for somebody to help her, he stepped forward, tipped his hat, and said in an exaggerated drawl, ‘Mrs McIntosh? Mrs McIntosh from Washington?’

She blinked at him, grinned, and then offered her hand. ‘You must be Mr Hardesty. Well, how do you do? You’re a lot smarter than I thought you were going to be. I expected somebody with chaff in their hair.’

‘Oh, no, ma’am,’ said Ed, taking her suitcase. ‘Having chaff in your hair is illegal in Kansas these days. You can serve three-to-five for actually looking like a hick.’

‘Senator Jones was right,’ said Della. ‘He said you’d make a good figurehead for our Blight Crisis Appeal, and I believe you will. Mind you, I haven’t really heard you speak yet.’

‘As long as I don’t have to come out with all that sincere young farmer bit that Peter Kaiser was trying to lay on me, I don’t mind what I do,’ said Ed. He ushered Della around the car and opened the passenger door for her. She said, ‘Thank you,’ as she sat down, and he couldn’t help noticing the way her skirt rode up over her long legs, and the full curves of her breasts. He closed the door, walked around the front of the car, and climbed in next to her.