William Boyd - Stars and bars

He stopped suddenly. A small light glowed on the stereo’s console. The turntable was revolving. A record was playing soundlessly. He could feel the echo of his heart beat rebound from the roof of his mouth. His startled eyes followed a wire which led from the stereo set across the littered carpet and onto a divan tucked into a far corner of the room. Someone was lying on it.

“Who’s that?” a woman’s voice said. “Duane? Keep your fuckin’ hands off of my records.”

Thick-throated and trembling, Henderson stood to attention.

“Ah, no,” he said. The person lay on her back, as far as he could see, and had made no move to turn round.

Henderson began to talk. “Terribly sorry to wander in — name’s Dores actually looking for Mr Gage’s paintings, um…” He took a pace or two forward. He started explaining again. Now he could see that the person lying on the divan was a very small young woman — Cora Gage, doubtless. Henderson stopped talking because he realized she couldn’t hear him. She wore headphones and very dark round sunglasses. She sat up, removed her headphones and turned her sightless eyes in his direction.

“If you’re not Duane who the hell are you?” Her voice had the faintest of Southern accents. She expressed no surprise at a stranger walking, uninvited, into her room, her tone was weary and dry.

“The name’s Dores.” Henderson explained again who he was and why he’d made the mistake of coming in. He held out his hand then snatched it back, realizing she couldn’t see the proffered gesture. He could hardly say ‘shake’ like some cowboy in a saloon.

“He hangs his paintings in his own rooms,” she explained. “Across the corridor. But he keeps them locked up. So Freeborn and Beckman can’t get at them.”

“Ah.” This made no sense, but, then again, that was hardly surprising.

“ Awe .” She imitated him. Henderson charitably ignored this. Blind people were preternaturally sensitive to noise, he knew; she was probably savouring the timbre of his voice, as if making some sort of a sonic filing card for her memory, as sighted people might make a note of a face or a view. She was wearing jeans and a man’s shirt. She swung her legs off the divan and sat on the edge. She was very small and thin, not much more than five feet, he guessed. She had a pale, sallow face and wispy untidy brown hair scraped into crude bangs on either side of her head. In the blurry light, with her round opaque lenses, she looked like some mutant night-creature, some lemur or potto.

“I assume you’re English,” she said, looking straight in front of her. Her hand groped along the coverlet and came in contact with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She lit one with only the briefest of hesitations.

“That’s right, yes,” he said, in the eager respectful tones he used to all cripples, deformed or socially disadvantaged people he met. His voice said: “You have been born with a handicap but I am not shocked or repelled. On the contrary, I respect and admire you for your efforts in overcoming it and will treat you exactly as if you were normal and entire.”

“I have an illogical but profound dislike of the English,” she said.

Henderson laughed. A come-on-you’re-joking chuckle.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. I—”

“Why did you laugh, then?”

Henderson looked about him as if calling on an invisible audience for support.

“Well, because I assumed you were joking, I suppose.”

“Why?”

“Well…” Good God! “I suppose because one just doesn’t say that sort of thing in all seriousness to someone one’s just met moments before.”

“Oh, doesn’t one? But I do. I hate the English.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.” He sensed a hot pelt of embarrassment cover his entire body. He backed off a couple of steps and waved his hands about.

“Perhaps if I, if we, were to get to know each other I might, um, be able to — ha ha — persuade you to, to, reconsider. Or at least exclude me from the general slur.” Somehow he had reached the door. He wished he hadn’t given that little laugh.

She puffed on her cigarette and made no reply.

“Well, I won’t disturb you further. Sorry to have—”

“Goodbye, Mr Dores.”

“Bye.”

He shut the door and walked slowly down the corridor. He understood what Shanda meant. What an astonishing woman, he thought. What a…bitch, there was no other word for it, blind or no. He shook his head in sagacious sorrow. He wondered what had brought it on. Had her blindness been caused by a crash in an English make of car, a Jaguar or Aston Martin, say? Or had she been a forceps delivery handled by a clumsy and strong-fingered English gynaecologist? He turned the corner realizing with some distaste that his armpits were moist and squelching. No, there was something deeper there: that sort of aberrant hate — if he was any judge of human nature — was to do with affairs of the heart turned sour. Unrequited love. Probably ditched by an Englishman for a girl who could see. Some right-thinking, sensible, sane, pragmatic Englishman. Turned her into a bitter, chainsmoking, reclusive anglophobe. He trotted down the stairs, feeling marginally reassured by his armchair psychology, and saw Freeborn come in the front door. He resisted the temptation to check his watch.

“You still fuckin’ here?” Freeborn said pointing at him. “You got about a hour and a half.”

Henderson slowly arrived at the foot of the stairs.

“Look, I might as well tell you,” he said nervously, “that I’m not leaving here until I have completed my business with your father.”

Freeborn, who had been heading across the hall in the direction of the kitchen, abruptly changed course and strode powerfully over. Henderson raised his hands to chest level, then tugged at the loose skin on his neck.

Freeborn put his huge face with its dense, neatly clipped beard very close to Henderson’s.

“Listen, you English fuck. You ain’t gonna do no business with my father. It’s been done, see? Those pictures are sold already. He’s a old man. He don’t know what he’s been talking about, so get yo’ shit out of here.”

“Your father has asked my company to do a valuation on his paintings and I don’t intend to leave until he tells me to.”

Freeborn looked at him. “You been warned, man.” He spread his hands reasonably, “I can’t say fairer than that. Just don’t fuck with me.”

“The last thing on earth I want to do is ‘fuck’ with you,” Henderson replied bravely. “I suggest you take the matter up with your father if you’re unhappy about my being here. I’m simply doing my job.”

“Yeah, and look, keep away from Shanda, heah? I catch you messin’ with her, boy and you—”

“I was only making a telephone call, for God’s sake.”

“That’s my fuckin’ phone, man. You keep yo’ chicken-shit hands off of it, no good English mofo.” With that he turned and marched off into the kitchen.

Henderson went slowly back upstairs to his room. This sudden hostility from all quarters left him feeling weak and thoughtful. He wondered, once again, if Beeby knew what he was talking about…And what, moreover, had Freeborn meant by the statement that the pictures had been sold already? Or was that all his clenched fist of a brain could come up with as a ruse? Like a lot of people, Freeborn could at times give the impression of being astonishingly stupid, but it was too risky an assumption to elevate into a truth. He resolved, for what seemed like the hundredth time, to quit the Gage mansion the minute his evaluation was done.

Feeling sorry for himself in this way made him think of Irene, his comforter. Perhaps he might just still manage to entice her south after all if he wrote to her. She might not answer the phone but surely she’d open a letter. After he had finished here — if all went well — he could justifiably claim a couple of days off. Irene might relent at the prospect of a weekend in Charleston or Savannah…