William Boyd - Stars and bars

“Henderson. How’s it going?”

“Well, up and down, Pruitt.”

“You know that painting, the allegory? I’ve been doing some work on it; it could be Demeter and lambe.”

“Good God, you’re right.” Henderson was very impressed.

“But it’s not.”

“No?”

“It’s Demeter and Baubo. Very unusual.”

Pruitt told him it was a variant myth. After Persephone had been stolen by Hades, Demeter had wandered the world, crushed by her grief over the loss of her daughter. However, in Eleusis she had been jolted out of her sorrow, and had broken her fast, by a serving maid, either called lambe who, in one version, told her dirty jokes or, in another, called Baubo, who made Demeter laugh by raising her skirts and exposing her genitalia. After that Demeter ceased to mourn for Persephone and the world got its harvests back.

“The fascinating thing is you only find that myth in the Songs of Orpheus and Protrepticus by Clement of Alexandria.”

Henderson wrote it all down. “Pruitt,” he said, “I’m phenomenally impressed. Great help.”

“Who’s the painting by?”

“I don’t know. But it’s no good. It was just the myth that floored me.”

“It is a little arcane, for sure.”

“Absolutely. Listen, Pruitt, do you know a New York gallery by the name of Sereno and Gint?”

“Never heard of them.”

“I thought so.” He said goodbye and put down the phone. He took out his polaroids and looked at the painting again through his magnifying glass. He put the magnifying glass down and thought about what he had told him. Odd myth. It made no sense. He phoned Melissa.

“Henderson! At last, when are you coming home?”

“Very soon, I hope,” he said with feeling.

“How’s Bryant? She sent me a postcard. She seems to be having a good time.”

“She is.” He swallowed. “She’s made friends with a…a very nice girl called Shanda.”

“Oh good. Darling, I’m so grateful to you, honestly. You’re sure she’s no trouble.”

“No. Not at all.”

“Baby, I’ve got to run. Dying to see you. Irving sends his love.”

She hung up before Henderson could send his love back to Irving. He felt suddenly uneasy about the barriers of deceit he was erecting. To Beeby about Sereno and Gint; to Melissa about Duane; to Irene about their planned holiday…

Beeby phoned back. How much did Gage want for the Dutch paintings? Henderson repeated the Sereno-Gint estimates.

“Good Lord,” Beeby said. “But if they’re so mediocre how can he ask so much for them?”

“He’s a shrewd old devil. He knows we want the others.”

“All right. Go to $50,000 each. But he must pay for insurance, printing the catalogue and advertising. We might just break even. Let’s pray one of the others comes good. The Sisleys are fine, you say?”

“Yes. I’ll do my best, Tom.”

“I’ve never done this before, Henderson. It goes against the grain. We must have a date for the auction soonest, too. When will you be back?”

“Monday or Tuesday,” he said without much confidence.

He hung up. He passed both hands over his face, tugging at his features, pulling his eyelids down, flattening his cheeks. He felt disturbed and unsettled but not just because of the farcical events on the atrium lake. They were deeper qualms he was suffering: more spiritual and metaphysical. His self-doubt, his lack of faith in his own capacities, always considerable, had grown these last few days like a tumour. He was beginning to feel unable to cope. The struggle to fit his personality to his new environment, to emulsify with his chosen culture like oil and vinegar, just wasn’t happening. It was too unyielding; he and America just weren’t creating the harmony he had expected. It simply wasn’t enough, clearly, to be keen, to wish earnestly for something to happen. Perhaps all marriages were made in heaven, he thought glumly. He had an awful foreboding nothing was going to work out.

And what then? Back to England? But he had been miserable there. All his hopes resided here. To fail to find himself in the U.S.A. didn’t bear contemplation. He felt, for the first time in his life, slivers of black despair begin to insert themselves into his spirit. Like the first pins in a voodoo doll. What was it Gage had said? “We all want to be happy and we’re all going to die.” It didn’t leave you much.

He heard the sound of footsteps in the corridor and immediately recognized their weight and cadence as Irene’s. He ran joyfully to the door and threw it open. Across the corridor the general did the same. They both looked at the astonished face of a black maid.

“Mo’ towels, sir?”

Henderson and the general sheepishly accepted a towel each. Henderson noted that the general was in mufti.

“I thought,” Henderson began, smiling.

“I’m expecting someone,” the general said. He was wearing loud checked trousers of the sort favoured by champion golfers, a short-sleeved shirt and a silk scarf tied at his throat. It looked incongruous beneath his hard taut face and cropped grey hair. Out of uniform he had lost all his confident authority. Just another man. He raised a palm and stepped back inside.

Henderson called the front desk and asked where the best reference library in Atlanta was and, after a brief pause, he was given the relevant information. He heard more footsteps in the corridor — not Irene’s, he was sure — followed by a knock on the door. He got up and opened it.

“Room service, sir.” A white-jacketed waiter carried a tray holding champagne in an ice bucket and a large plate of smoked salmon and brown bread.

“There must be some mistake.”

“This is 35J?”

“Yes.”

“And you are General Dunklebanger?”

“No. I think you’ll find him in there. In 35 K. K not J.”

By this time the general had come to his door.

“General, I think this is for you.” Henderson was amused to see the embarrassment on the general’s face.

“Oh yeah. Yeah, I guess…Just take it right on in. Sorry to bother you,” he said to Henderson.

Henderson shut the door, and smiled. He doubted somehow that the champagne was for Mrs Dunklebanger. Mind you, he thought, it’s not such a bad idea. He phoned room service and ordered the same for him and Irene. The episode — a glimpse of the human face behind the military machine — had cheered him up somewhat. He went back into the bathroom and ran his electric razor over his chin once more, concentrating on the skin round the lips, until it was completely smooth. Irene often refused to kiss him if there was a hint of bristle. “What do you think it’s like for me?” she would say. “You try rubbing your face with sandpaper, see how sexy it is.”

The phone rang.

“Henderson?” It was Irene. “I’m at the airport. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll see you downst—” But she had hung up.

He felt hollow-chested with pleasant anticipation. He shut his eyes and tried to conjure up Irene naked. The broad shoulders, the low flat breasts with their tiny nipples, her unshaven armpits, the black dense hair on her cunt, her strong legs…He took a deep breath. God, how he had missed her.

On the way down in the scenic elevator he scanned the canoes plying back and forth but none of them contained Irene. He debated whether he should meet her at the front desk but decided not to deny her the pleasure of seeing and experiencing the atrium and its marvels herself. It was certainly busier than when he had arrived. The cocktail archipelago were fully populated and noisy. All the canoes seemed to be in demand.

He went into the bar area. The wigwams were in fact canopies over private booths. Vegetation grew lushly everywhere. The tables and chairs had a rough-hewn makeshift aspect and the long bar looked like a reconstituted corral. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see a few ponies tethered here and there. At the bar the barman sported a feather head-dress, wampum beads and buckskin. He raised his hand and said, “How.”