William Boyd - Stars and bars

Then, with a cry of pure rage, the general surged out, fingers closing round Henderson’s throat and they fell grappling to the floor. The man was wiry and tough, but Henderson — strengthened by his own urgent needs and panic, and his body brimming with adrenalin — struggled free.

The general was on his knees, panting hoarsely.

“Leave me alone, you mad bugger!” Henderson shrieked. The lift doors were still open. The general got to his feet, adopting a shaky wrestler’s stance and began to advance on him again.

“She got the wrong room number, you bloody cretin!” Henderson yelled in frustration. “It’s not my fault!”

The general paused, then folded to the floor in a heap, making childlike crying noises. Henderson jumped over him and into the lift. The doors slid to. Henderson punched button number one.

As he emerged high in the bright space of the atrium, he peered out hopefully at the scene below. There was Irene. Just getting into a canoe. The lift came to a halt, and Henderson ran out. “Irene!” he called. “Wait!”

The atrium floor was busy with people. Henderson dodged his way through the crowd to the canoe embarking point. Some child shouted “Look, mom, that man’s only got one shoe!”

A small queue had formed at the lakeside, all the canoes were in commission. Henderson pushed his way to the front.

“Excuse me, sir, but would you wait in line? It’ll only be a couple of minutes.”

Henderson saw Irene approaching the far bank.

“Irene! Wait!” he bellowed plaintively across the water. Everybody looked around. Except Irene.

“Give me a canoe!” he begged.

“Sir, please! Two minutes.” The cowboy’s strong arms held him back.

Henderson looked at the lake. He could see the bottom clearly through the dancing water. Eighteen inches down, two feet at the most, he calculated.

He jumped in.

He went in up to his waist, gasping at the shock of the cold water. “ Waist deep! ” he exclaimed with mad outrage. “That’s dangerous. What about safety regulations?…”

He began to slosh his way heavily across to the far shore, arms above his head, a creaming bow wave at his waist, like a determined marine invading some Pacific island. There were shouts, laughs and a few screams from onlookers and hotel staff, but he was possessed with unfamiliar singlemindedness. He forged on through the water. Canoes took avoiding action. “Irene, wait!” he cried again. To his dismay he saw her get out of her canoe and march into the forest.

“Stop that woman!” he bellowed hoarsely. “She’s sick. She’s forgotten her medicine.”

Willing hands reached out to help him as he reached the far bank.

“Life or death,” he gasped. “Matter of.” And stumbled into the trees.

He broke out into the lobby and limped-ran — clunk-splat, clunk-splat — across to the main doors, leaving a trail of wetness like a slug. A taxi pulled away into the main street. Another rolled up promptly to take its place at the foot of the steps. The driver leapt out at the sight of the distraught and dripping Henderson.

“Follow that cab,” Henderson croaked.

“Hey, man, no way.” The taxi driver was fat and needed a shave. He blocked Henderson’s access to the car, short stubby fingertips laid gently on Henderson’s heaving chest.

“Look, it’s a matter of life and death, for God’s sake!”

“Sure it is. That’s what they all say, bub. But no way you gettin’ in my cab like that, man. Soakin’ wet, only one shoe. No way.”

“I’ll give you a hundred dollars!”

“Let’s see your money.”

Henderson wrestled with his sopping hip pocket and produced his wallet. He opened it up: an anthology of credit cards, two tens and three singles.

“You don’t got no hundred bucks, man. You just better go on back inside, dry yourself off.” The taxi driver considerately helped him back up the steps to the lobby, Henderson suddenly as quiescent as a chronic invalid being ushered back to bed. “Go on now, man. You go on change your clothes. Then I’ll give you a ride.”

♦

A dark listless resignation had settled on Henderson as he was paddled back across the atrium lake. A large and curious crowd watched him disembark, Sereno and Cora amongst their number.

“Is Dr Dubrovnik all right?” Sereno asked.

“That was some display, Mr Dores. Most impressive,” Cora said. Her lips weren’t smiling, but her dark lenses obscured eyes bright with amusement, he felt sure. But he was too weak and overcome to make any riposte. He limped off towards the scenic elevator and his lonely room.

Predictably, Henderson slept briefly and uneasily, troubled by violent dreams, that night. But in the morning found, to his surprise, that his mortification and embarrassment did not reach the zenith he might have suspected. Too many potential disasters lay ahead, with hectoring claims on his attention. And besides, there was nothing he could do about Irene now, he realized. It would have been utterly pointless to have followed her to Atlanta airport and attempt to engineer a reconciliation in the departure lounge. That would have to await his return to New York, whenever that might be.

As he lay alone in the big bed, he thought back over his manic wade through the atrium lake more with astonishment than shame or self-rebuke. He tried to recreate the thought processes that had led him to behave in such a rash and wildly conspicuous manner, but in vain. It was as if the semi-shod, disappointed lover bellowing his anguished pleas across the crowded pond had been another person, such was the uniquely strange nature of the act. He had, he realized, for the first time in his life, given absolutely no thought to the reactions of others. He hadn’t cared; he had been totally indifferent to opinion. He frowned.

The one meagre consolation of the whole saddening business was that he was now freed to concentrate on securing the pictures for Mulholland, Melhuish. Beeby’s new offer on the Dutch pictures, some judicious hope-raising on the prospective auction prices of the Sisleys…Gage needed money; money would have to be the spur. Publicity, prestige exhibitions in London; they carried no weight.

He got out of bed. Then there was Bryant and Duane. He got dressed. He hoped desperately that a firm talking-to and reminders of Melissa’s monstrous displeasure might make the girl see sense. He couldn’t imagine what had got into her head. Duane, a thirty-four-year-old layabout with a liking for loud music and a chronic incapacity to fix cars…what could a pretty, privileged girl like Bryant see in an almost mythically disfavoured human being like that?

He ordered breakfast from room service. He felt also, if he were honest with himself, a certain amount of jealousy. If she could want to marry a lout like Duane, why was she so hostile to him? Good Lord, he thought, I’m beginning to sound like Pruitt Halfacre. But this morning, awash with self-pity and hurt, he needed to be liked by someone.

His breakfast was wheeled in. Coffee and orange juice in a sunny chair. He was still unsettled, he realized, by one of his dreams which had been unusually virulent and detailed. It was about Irene, and in the dream she had cut his head off with a small, not very sharp knife. He had felt no pain and managed to protest throughout his decapitation, seeking some explanation for this hostility. Irene — her breasts bare, as they had been the night before — said only one thing: “Because you’re weak, weak, weak,” and then renewed her efforts with the knife to the rhythm of her words.

As he sipped at his orange juice he squirmed anew at the phantasms of his unconscious mind. Irene’s erode violence, her breasts swaying and bobbing as she sawed, gouts of his own blood fountaining up from his torn throat and severed windpipe. It was lucky, he thought, that he was no Freudian, otherwise he’d be in a bad way: rather a lot of guilt and self-contempt swilling around. Just as well, he reflected, that his art-historian training provided him with the reference and he didn’t need to go poking around in his id…It was all clearly derived from Judith and Holophernes by Artemisia Gentilleschi…or by Jakob van Hoegh.