William Boyd - Stars and bars

He walked back to main street, business over. What an effort, he thought, just to post a letter. The afternoon sun was still beating down fiercely and there was still little sign of life. He stood in some shade on the raised wooden sidewalk and looked up and down the dusty road. Where am I? he thought. What am I doing in this place? He longed for a car or a lorry to drive through town. On the door of the shop next to him was a notice: “Closed Sunday. See you in church.”

He thought suddenly — illogically — of his father.

Perhaps it was because he felt as strange and out of place here as his father must have at times in the foetid jungles of Burma. From placid drizzling Hove to hot dangerous Burma…Henderson looked about him. He tried to imagine Arnold Dores standing beside him now. The thin man in his baggy trousers, his short oiled hair, his neat moustache. What would he say? What advice would he offer? Would he smile, and expose the unfortunate gap between his front teeth? “Now look, son, if I were you, I’d—” What? He exhaled. The fragile chimera of Arnold Dores disappeared.

A large maroon car started up in the parking lot in front of the mall. It drove slowly along before turning to bump across the railway tracks and wheel onto the main road. He saw that there were two girls in the front seat with blonde hair like Shanda’s and a lot of make-up. They cruised leisurely past him, staring at him with candid curiosity. They wore scant T — shirt tops, tight across their breasts. The car was battered and filthy. Old cigarette packs, magazines and handbooks were piled in a loose drift between the dashboard top and the windscreen. The car moved on slowly down the road; it seemed to trail a frisson of sexuality, like smoke — of the most tawdry and flashy sort, he conceded, but impressively potent for all that. Somewhere there was a life in Luxora Beach.

Intrigued, and smiling to himself he crossed the road. There is a look, he thought, watching the car disappear from sight, that is common to a huge proportion of American girls. It ran the gamut from Shanda to millionaires’ daughters. First there was the mane of hair or an attempt at a mane — blonde preferably, but not essential. Then there is a lot of mascara and all the rest: blusher, eye-shadow and lipstick (usually pink). And then something must glint or glisten on the head — earrings most commonly, but a necklace or hairslide would do. He added some more details to the archetype — pushed-up breasts, white strappy high-heeled shoes — as he headed for the Gage mansion road. Then he saw Beckman’s pickup parked in front of the bar with Bryant sitting alone in the front seat. He changed course.

“Have a nice day?” he asked caustically.

“Oh hi. Yeah, it wasn’t bad. He’s not so weird as I thought. He’s weird, but not that weird.”

“In future do you think you could possibly let me know when you’re going on an outing?”

“I was just keeping out of the way. I thought you’d be pleased.” She picked at the material on her trousers. “Seen the paintings?”

“No. Gage has been away.”

“Beckman says they’re already sold.”

“Well he’s wrong,” he said impatiently. “Where is he anyway?”

“In the bar.”

“Right. I’ll ask him.”

Henderson paused at the door, second thoughts crowding in on him. Then he pushed through the door.

For four o’clock in the afternoon the bar was astonishingly busy (so this was where everybody was) — and very dark. There must have been two dozen men in the long, thin room. As his eyes grew accustomed to the murky atmosphere he saw that they were all white, all wearing work clothes, and all more or less drunk. Tentatively, he approached the bar. In addition to purveying alcohol it also sold, he noticed, handkerchiefs, a range of pens and combs. All the fitments and plastic advertisements for beer were decades old.

“What’ll it be?” the pasty-faced, oily-haired barman asked him. No Southern courtesies here.

“I’m looking for Beckman Gage.”

“BECKMAN!” the barman shouted down to the end of the room. There, Henderson saw an ancient mechanical skittle machine and Beckman bent over it.

Beckman gave up his game and wandered over, beer bottle in hand. He wore similar clothes to the men in the bar — denim and a checked cotton shirt. Odd garb for a laboratory, Henderson thought, but then again, he probably swabbed the floors.

“Hi,” Beckman said. “Beer?”

“Please.”

Beckman’s longish, straw-coloured hair gave him an initial appearance of youthfulness, but when his face was scrutinized its lines and wrinkles were more apparent. Henderson guessed he was in his mid-thirties — far too old for Bryant, he reassured himself.

A long-necked beer bottle was banged down on the bar and its top flipped off with an opener.

“Could I have a glass, please?” Henderson said without thinking. The barman looked at him with heavy suspicion — as if he’d just asked for the ladies’ room — before raking around on some shelves beneath the bar and presenting him with a thick, finely scratched and semi-transparent glass.

“Cheers,” Henderson said. Beckman smiled, his eyelids fluttering like an ingenue’s. He seemed to blink about two times a second, Henderson calculated: it must be like seeing the world lit by a stroboscopic sun. To his alarm he sensed his own blink-rate going up in sympathy.

“Thanks for taking Bryant to your, ah, lab.”

“Hey, a pleasure. Nice kid. Sure talks a lot.” Blink-blink-blink-blink.

Pause.

“She’s my step-daughter. Or soon will be.”

“I know. Congratulations.” Bat-bat-bat-bat.

Henderson turned away and forcibly held his own fluttering eyelids steady with thumb and forefinger. Making eye-contact with Beckman was instant conjunctivitis. He addressed the beer in his glass.

“What is it exactly that you do at your lab?”

“Well, I’m what’s known as an elementary particle physicist. You know, quarks, neutrinos, anti-matter — that sort of thing.”

“An elementary particle physicist?” Henderson strained to keep the laughing incredulity out of his voice. The poor guy. “Fascinating.”

“I think so.”

There was another pause. Then Beckman said, “Listen, please don’t worry about my blinking. It happened in Nam. I nearly got blown away.”

“Really? I hadn’t actually noticed…I thought…” Henderson changed the subject. “Bryant said something about the paintings — your father’s paintings — already being sold.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Some months ago. Freeborn sold them.”

Henderson felt a twinge of alarm. “Are you sure?”

“I guess so.”

“There must be some mistake.”

“You tell me.”

“Who did he sell them to?”

“Some guy called Sereno. I don’t know. Maybe you’d better ask Freeborn.”

I’d better ask old man Gage, Henderson thought, I’m sure he’ll be fascinated.

“Can I hitch a ride back to the house?”

“Surely. Let’s go.”

They went outside and got into the pickup, Bryant sitting between them. She had put on sunglasses — maybe to hide her blinks, Henderson thought. She seemed very at ease and unconcerned.

They bumped off down the track.

“When I was in Nam,” Beckman began, unprompted, “‘68, Dac Tro province. No, it was Quang Tri. They called an airstrike on this hostile ville. ‘Cept the fuckin’ airforce dropped the bombs right on our fuckin’ platoon. Three dead, six injured. I woke up two days later in a hospital, not a scratch, but just blinking like shit. Haven’t stopped since.”

“God,” Bryant said in awe. “You’ve been blinking like this all these years?”

“You got it.”