William Boyd - Stars and bars

He took a writing pad and envelope from his case and sat down and wrote her a letter to this effect, well larded with apologies and excuses for his craven behaviour on the night of the ‘mugging’, and concluding with as overt a declaration of love and affection as he had yet allowed himself (“with absolutely all of my love, H.”). He was wary of sentiment. Or rather he was all in favour of sentiment but uncertain, not to say ignorant, of how best to express it.

As he sealed the envelope it prompted thoughts of the last letter he had written. He wondered vaguely whether lance-corporal Drew would be able to enlighten him about his father’s death…And what would his father have made of his son’s current predicament, he asked himself? Perhaps the saddest and most lasting consequences of Captain Arnold Dores’s death in the Burmese jungles in 1943, Henderson thought, was that he, his son, had no vision of the man, no personal private image to cherish or be consoled by aside from purely fanciful or wishful ones. Such photographs that the family possessed were almost counter-productive. In blurry black and white they showed a neat, thin man in baggy flannels with a small moustache and very short hair. Even the more professional shots were undermined by a forced and unnatural smile that exposed the rather wide — and to his son’s eyes, unsightly — gap between his father’s front teeth. These second-hand images were further disappointing in that they confirmed the distressing fact that Henderson drew most of his features — his square face, his rather small nose — from his mother. He didn’t look like his father at all.

If the only sort of immortality we are guaranteed, he thought, going to the window and looking out at the wilderness of the back garden, is the image of ourselves that lives on in the minds of those who survive us, then his father had been singularly unfortunate. He tapped the edge of the envelope against his thumbnail. Even his widow’s reminiscences were commonplace and uninspiring. “A charming sweet man,” was the last verdict his mother had passed, when questioned by her son; but she said that about everyone she didn’t actively dislike. Perhaps she’d forgotten, he thought. But that made him angry: people had a duty to remember. Friends and family ought to talk and gossip about the dead as if they were alive…

He turned away from the view and paced unhappily about the room. Maybe he should get Melissa to summon Bryant home. Tell her that this mad Southern scientist was experimenting on her daughter in his ‘labrotory’…He sighed with exasperation. Then he realized he’d forgotten about Freeborn’s latest threat. He’d have to work on the amenable Shanda, make sure that he could phone whenever Freeborn was out of the way, and perhaps get her to relay any messages secretly to him. How typical of Loomis Gage not to allow a phone in his house! he thought angrily. It was precisely the sort of selfish affectation millionaires went in for…He told himself to calm down. He found he was still irritated by his encounter with the blind and mysterious Cora. It was lucky he was so pro-American, he reasoned, otherwise the Gage family would have given him serious grounds for a bit of Yank-bashing. But they weren’t Yanks, he realized, they were ‘Rebs’ or ‘Confeds’ or whatever they called themselves.

His complaints were interrupted by the sound of a car arriving. He wondered if it were Gage. But the blast of rock music that ensued some minutes later informed him that the driver had been Duane.

The noise forced him downstairs to the kitchen where Alma-May made him a processed cheese and gherkin sandwich for lunch. She professed ignorance to the two questions he asked of her, namely, where was Gage and when was he due back?

“Duane said your car had a flat this morning,” she said.

“I thought it was something like that.”

“Mr Gage told him to get it fixed.”

“Oh. I’m very grateful. Do you think he could put on the spare, if it’s not too much trouble?”

“I’ll tell him.”

After lunch, Henderson realized there was nothing for it but to walk into Luxora Beach and post his letter. At least it was something to do.

At the front door he saw Shanda teetering around outside her mobile home on her high heels.

“Shanda,” he called softly, and went over.

“Hi. How’re y’all doin’?” She had both her hands pressed into the small of her back, her belly straining fiercely against the material of her smock. Henderson felt a little uncomfortable talking to someone who was so ostentatiously pregnant, but he persevered.

“Um, look, Shanda, I was going to ask, that’s to say I was wondering if you might just possibly see your way to doing me a little favour,” he began confidentially, but then stopped as he saw her eyes cloud with incomprehension.

“It’s my back,” she said slowly. “It’s killing me.”

Henderson pinched his nose. There was no alternative; he’d have to speak American otherwise they would be here for hours.

“Well, shucks,” he began again, trying to recall his Huckleberry Finn and Ring Lardner. “I reckon I jist plum done gone and forgit to ask you to do me a service, like, goshdarn it.” It was a little overdone, he admitted, but, like an orchestra tuning up, he had to get in key.

“Oh yeah?” Shanda’s look was uneasy and relieved at the same time, like a monoglot U.N. delegate whose malfunctioning translation machine has just been restored, only to hear news of a military coup back home.

“If’n you all done git some calls,” Henderson persevered, “could you all tell me? On the sly like?”

“Well…”

“I’d sure be mighty grateful.”

“OK. I guess.” She looked around. “I don’t know if Freeborn…” She frowned then smiled. “What the hell, he ain’t around much. He don’t tell me nothing, either. I’ll tell you when he’s away, so you can use the phone too.” She smiled again — conspiratorially — and rubbed the back of her neck with a hand.

“Thank you, Mam,” Henderson said. “Our l’il ol’ secret. Have a good day now.”

He walked off, rather impressed with his grasp of vernacular. Still, now at least the outside world would be able to make contact. One step in the right direction.

♦

It seemed surprisingly hot for April and during the trudge into town along the featureless lane he was obliged to remove first his tie and then his jacket. A mile or so up the road, Freeborn roared dustily past him in his big car, one hand high out of the window, his middle finger spearing the air. Henderson, checking instinctively that there were no witnesses, gave him a V-sign back. It all seemed a bit feeble and adolescent, but, as with Bryant, he found it no problem descending to Freeborn’s level.

Sweaty and not a little footsore he arrived some fifteen minutes later at the main street of Luxora Beach. In front of him was the railway line and beyond that the road. To his left was the shopping mall. The neon of the bar signs still burned palely in the afternoon air. The town was very quiet — in fact he could see no-one on the streets at all. Above the main street, strung on a wire cable, a set of traffic lights blinked redundantly. There were no cars to stop.

He crossed the railway and headed towards the wooden spire of the Baptist church. Down these side roads were small businesses and stores: Luxora Beach auto accessory, Luxora Beach agricultural wholesalers, electrical goods, Dr Tire, Luxora Beach Fertilizers — Herbert Hackett Last Jnr prop. “Real Manure”—Luxora Beach grain and seed merchants.

At the post office — not far from the church — a wooden building flying the Stars and Stripes, and below it the Stars and Bars, he posted his letter (express) to Irene. He noted the glass boothed public telephone outside it and wondered if he should try and call her again, but on reflection decided to let the letter do its work first.