William Boyd - Stars and bars

“Christ!”

“You OK?”

They had stopped on a deserted stretch of the road. There was no moon yet, but a clear faint light from the stars. The crickets breeped steadily about them. Henderson knew, with sudden insight, both what he was about to do and all the good and strong reasons why he shouldn’t. These crisis points had occurred before: he recognized the right path, recognized the wrong, and chose the wrong. Sufficient to have stood but free to fall. It was, he felt, an understanding periodically offered him of a certain truth about the human condition. But perhaps, he thought, as he bent down to kiss Cora, that is a little grand. Not the human condition, then: the Dores condition.

His pouting lips met mid-air. Cora had stepped back. He clumsily reached out for her but she batted his arms away.

“What are you trying to do , Henderson? God . Bug off, will you?”

“I thought—”

“I don’t want to kiss you, Henderson. What makes you think I do? Why do you have to try and kiss me?”

He was glad the night hid his knotted, boiling face.

“Jesus,” he began. “Misinterp. Look, I…Christ.”

“I like you, Henderson. You’re a nice guy. It’s a big asset. But I don’t want to make it with you.”

He swallowed. “A ghastly misunderstanding. Misreading. I got carried away. I’m terribly, terribly—”

“Relax.” Her voice was softer. “It’s no big deal. Now we know where we stand.”

He nodded wordlessly.

They set off again, walking up the road in silence. Cora gave a little chuckle and from time to time looked over at him. Fool, he said to himself, fool fool fool FOOL . They turned a corner and the house was in front of them. Lights shone from all the windows.

“Looks like everybody’s home all of a sudden.”

They walked across the park to the front steps.

“Listen, Cora,” Henderson started, dry-throated, but was interrupted by the front door being flung violently open. It was Alma-May, weeping piteously.

“Cora, baby! Cora, darlin’! Your Daddy’s dead, baby. Your Daddy’s dead!”

“Your father promised me — we shook hands on it — just minutes,” Henderson cleared his throat to rid his voice of the tremble, “just minutes before he…passed away — literally minutes — that Mulholland, Melhuish were to auction his pictures.”

“Fuck you,” Freeborn said. “You’re lying, you bastard. Jesus, you don’t expect me to believe this shit? You fuckin’ English dork!”

“Mr Dores,” Sereno said. “We have only your side of the story. Well, it’s not enough, I’m afraid.”

“Look, I told Cora—”

“He did,” Cora said. “That’s true.”

“So fuckin’ what? It’s just words. Ain’t no proof. I say we take Ben Sereno and Peter Gint’s offer now, ‘stead of waiting for some pissant faggot auction in New York.”

“These people,” Henderson said, with genuine anger, indicating the two gallery owners, “are total frauds. I wouldn’t trust them an inch.”

“There’s no call for such accusations,” Sereno said, quite untroubled by the slander.

“Shut yo’ fuckin’ mouth,” Freeborn said to Henderson, pointing a finger at him. “They’re my pictures now an’ I says they go to Sereno and Gint.”

“One minute, Freeborn,” Cora said. “There’s Daddy’s will. Beckman and I may have some say.”

“I’ll go along with Freeborn,” Beckman mumbled. “Just as long as I’ve got my labrotory.”

“Anyway, that will ain’t read for two fuckin’ weeks.”

“Look, do you think we might conduct this discussion without constant profanities?” Henderson said.

“Fuck yo’ ass, English shitbird!”

Freeborn, Beckman, Cora, Henderson, Sereno and Gint were in the sitting room. Across the hall in the dining room on the long table lay Loomis Gage, cold in his coffin.

Half an hour after Henderson had left him and Monika, Duane had returned to the house and had duly switched on his music. According to Beckman, who was passing through the hall, his father — wearing a dressing gown — had appeared at the top of the stairs and had bellowed furiously, “ Duane, turn that damn music down! ” Then he had shuddered, gone white, twitched and fallen over. Duane came running out of his room, picked Gage up and carried him back to bed. Beckman, with rare spirit of diplomacy, drove Monika Cardew home and collected the local doctor. By the time they got back, Gage was dead, and Duane — who was sitting impassively beside the body — said it had happened only moments before. Freeborn, Sereno and Gint had returned from whatever carousing or plotting they had been engaged in five minutes prior to Henderson and Cora’s fateful arrival at the front steps.

All that night there had been a hectic traffic of doctors, undertakers and the — happily innocent — T.J. Cardew. Loomis Gage’s instructions had been for a quiet family funeral. There seemed no purpose in delaying further and the service was scheduled for the next afternoon, four thirty.

And here they all were, Henderson thought, bickering about the spoils with typically wicked speed. Talk about funeral baked meats furnishing forth marriage tables…He felt a shocked sadness at Gage’s sudden demise. The family — with the exception of Alma-May — seemed to have accepted it with easy stoicism. He had liked the sprightly old man, more than he had realized. He remembered their last conversation with regret: Gage had offered him his affection but he had been too reserved or too tramelled up in securing the paintings to respond. What had he said? “Thank you very much.” He was disgusted with himself, but then that was always the way, he reflected bitterly, you always leave things too late. As for old Gage, it might have been more apt if he had died some minutes earlier in the arms of Monika Cardew— petit mart suddenly grand — rather than through the effort of shouting at a parasitic lout to turn his rock music down. But the ‘grand design’, he was aware, was very proficient when it came to faulty timing.

He felt too, along with his sadness, the bitter certainty of what he knew would be eventual defeat. Freeborn had assumed an air of swaggering authority, of the sort favoured by junior officers who have just led a successful coup d’etat . Cora alone could do nothing to counter her brother’s new sway; and the full effect of Beckman’s deluded craven apathy was more than apparent. He had been so close, he thought with a surge of harsh selfishness. If only Gage had died a few days later…

He slumped in his chair for a moment, the utter waste of all his efforts confronting him. He made one final desperate, futile try.

“Mr Gage,” he said seriously, mustering all his formality and gravitas. “Mr Sereno, Mr Gint. As far as I am concerned, Loomis Gage and I had made a binding agreement. If you proceed independently I have to warn you of potential legal—”

He leapt from his chair as Freeborn sprang across the room after him. Sereno, Gint and Beckman held him back.

“You say you had an agreement,” Sereno said coolly, once Freeborn’s lurid oaths had subdued.

“There must have been,” Cora said. “He told me. He wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise, would he?”

“Did you witness any agreement?” Sereno asked Cora, as Freeborn was resettled in his chair.

“No.” A glum, sidelong look at Henderson.

“Did anyone witness it?” Sereno asked.

“No. But—”

“You’re welcome to take us to court, Mr Dores,” Sereno said. “But I don’t think you’ll get very far.”

They all looked at Henderson. He stood up.