William Boyd - Stars and bars

He stepped into the shower. For getting on for thirty years he’d never considered his body. It did its job; it looked fair enough; its distribution of muscle and hair was unexceptionable. But now it was saying ‘hold on a moment’, ‘hang about, friend’. It was getting tired of staying in shape, it was getting clapped out, the first signs of four decades of wear and tear were manifesting themselves. It was getting old.

He plunged his head beneath the powerful jet of the shower, trying to forget. Even in the crummiest motel you got a decent shower. He remembered the shower he had had installed in his London flat. It had a weak, two-inch spread. It pattered feebly on one shoulder when you stood beneath it; it took five minutes to dampen your hair. Getting the temperature right required meticulous hairfine adjustments of the taps — you needed the touch of a safe-cracker.

After he had dried himself he wondered what to do about getting into bed. He normally slept naked but realized that, tonight, probity demanded he make a change. He pulled on his underpants and stepped quietly into the bedroom.

Bryant sat up in bed smoking, her bedside lamp on. She was wearing pale blue cotton pyjamas, monogrammed ‘B. W: Henderson stood there, suddenly conscious of the crammed codpiece of his Y-fronts, his hairless legs, his fat nipples. He slid into his bed between the crackling nylon sheets.

“You shouldn’t smoke in bed, you know,” he grumbled. “With the static in this place we could be vaporized in a white flash.”

Bryant ignored him.

“And you left the bathroom in a mess.”

“Mom wants you to call her, I phoned while you were out.”

“Oh. Right.” He felt pleased. He prodded New York. As he was waiting for Melissa to answer, Bryant leant forward to stub out her cigarette. As she stretched for the ashtray he got a clear view down the front of her pyjama top. Her small firm breasts with small, odd, domed nipples. He felt embarrassment and shock clog his throat.

Melissa answered.

“Melissa? It’s Henderson.” His mind skittered about. My God, he thought, my hands are shaking.

“Henderson, darling, thank you. It’s so kind of you. I really want you to know that I appreciate it, darling. I really do.”

“Don’t mention it.” So American: all this sincere gratitude for a returned call.

“Are you sure it’s not inconvenient?”

“No, no. Not at all. Quite the opposite.”

“God, you are wonderful. I’d forgotten. You lovely man, you. There aren’t many men who’d do this, I know. I want you back here quickly.”

Doubt began to seep through his body.

“Well, it’s not much—”

“Modesty. Come on , Mr Englishman. I love it! No, darling, I just wanted to tell you myself that I think it’s so kind of you to ask her. And you know it’ll be interesting for her too: see you at work, learn about—”

His scalp crawled with a horrible sick alarm as he suddenly realized what she was talking about. Melissa nattered on about how she’d phoned Grandma Wax and explained the new plans. Henderson turned and looked at Bryant. She had snuggled down in her bed and was smiling innocently at him. He felt a rush of loathing for this premature adult as he muttered assurances into the phone. He said goodbye.

“That is one of the most scheming, most disgraceful acts of… lying I have ever witnessed,” he began, his voice shaking with rage.

“God, Henderson, I won’t get in the way.”

“I don’t care, it’s pure bloody selfishness.”

“What’s so selfish? Why can’t I come? I won’t get in the way. You’re the selfish one. You don’t want me to come. Why not? What’s so wrong with me being there?” Her tone was injured, a wronged child’s voice full of that hectoring self-righteousness which appears when children know they’ve got an adult on the run.

He ranted on for a while, but he knew it was too late now. What was worse, he knew she knew.

“I can’t understand why you’re so fired up,” she said with arch, false innocence. “Look how pleased Mom was. Don’t you think that’s nice?”

She was right, but he didn’t admit it. Perhaps it was a sign: that he should concentrate on Melissa, forget Irene…

He lay awake for hours, itchy between the nylon sheets of the Scaggsville Motor Hotel. He ran through the burgeoning options that had suddenly appeared in his life. The road ahead had seemed so straight and sure; now he faced a fan of avenues. He fretfully pondered the alternatives as the cold drinks dispenser shuddered dismally outside his door and the ice-machine’s thin lonely rattle punctuated the very slow progress of the night.

Interstate 85 carried them safely through the Carolinas. The weather had grown steadily warmer as they drove south. Now, in Georgia, the late-afternoon sun burned down from a clear blue sky and Henderson switched on the air conditioning in the car. They motored along, windows up, in a chill cell. Outside the country was — to his eyes — surprisingly, but monotonously, wooded, with a tough-looking breed of average-sized pine predominant. The highway cut straight through this consistent greenery, the only variation coming with the thin towering signs of the gas stations, roadside motels and supermarkets at junctions and intersections. Holiday Inn, Omlette Shoppe, Cowboy Barbeque, Bi-Lo, Starvin’ Marvin’, Food Giant, Steak and Ale, Wife-Saver. These signs, a hundred feet high, like enormous cocktail stirrers, loomed over the forest.

On the drive south from Skaggsville Henderson had remained terse, resolutely maintaining his anger. But Bryant seemed not to care: indeed, she was almost cheerful, singing along or beating out a rhythm to the songs — now exclusively country and western — that came over the radio. Henderson had traversed every wave band in fruitless search for music that wasn’t gravid with sentiment, but in vain. The only alternatives were religious stations offering prayer-ins, waterproof bibles (“for pool-side reading”) or ghastly homilies.

“Don’t you like country and western?” Bryant asked.

“I loathe it.”

“I like it. It’s sort of…true.”

“My God,” Henderson said, “if that’s your version of ‘true’ then I feel sorry for you.”

“OK. So what’s not true about them?” Bryant persisted.

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it,” Henderson said. “It’s bad enough having to listen to that…that pap , without having to indulge in close reading of the lyrics.”

Bryant shrugged, and found a new station. Henderson looked at her thin arm with its shine of blond hairs as she twiddled the dial. He felt edgy and uncomfortable beside her now. He was almost sure, moreover, that she wasn’t wearing a bra. He wished devoutly that he hadn’t caught a glimpse of her breasts last night. It was curious the changes it had wrought in his view of her: no longer a petulant minx whom, for the sake of her mother, he had to tolerate, the ‘glimpse’ had introduced new ingredients into her personality — femininity, nubility…sex.

♦

They saw Atlanta from a long way off, the towers of its downtown district silhouetted against the sinking sun, a few small, bruise-coloured clouds dawdling above the city.

“We’d better phone now, I suppose,” Henderson said.

“Do you think it’s far away?”

“What?”

“Luxora Beach.”

“Well, it’s one hell of a drive to a coast, that’s for sure.” The same thought had occurred to him earlier.

“Maybe it’s on a lake.” She was looking at a road map. “There are a lot of lakes around here.”

“Maybe.”

They pulled off the freeway at the next junction. Henderson found a phone booth while Bryant went in search of a ‘comfort station’, whatever that was.