William Boyd - Stars and bars

“Whacha doin’?” she said.

“Milk. For Bryant.”

“Oh.” She paused and flicked her wings of hair with the backs of her fingers. “You leaving tomorrow? Going to New York, Alma-May said.”

“That’s right.” He stirred Bryant’s milk as if that were what one always did with milk.

“Can I come with you?”

The clatter of the teaspoon against the glass rang like an alarm bell. Milk slopped onto the table.

“ What?! ”

“I have to get away, Henderson,” she said in a rush. “I can’t stand it here. I got to get far away. Someplace like New York. I want to go along with you.” Shanda said this fast but tonelessly, staring at the savage points of her high-heeled shoes.

“Good God, Shanda,” he blustered, appalled at this notion. “Don’t be absurd. I–I—I…I mean, of course you can’t come away with me.”

“Of course I kahn? ” Her eyes widened with hope.

“Can’t, kahn’t . You kahn’t .” Desperation. “ Kent . You kent come with me. You kent .”

“ Please , Henderson. I hate Freeborn. I hate the trailer, I hate the fuckin’ medical wadding all over the place. I hate the smell of mouthwash. I hate the—”

“But-Jesus-what about the baby?”

“I don’t care,” she said darkly. “I’m not happy here. That’s all that matters.” She touched his arm. “Please!”

“No, Shanda. No, no, no.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. No way.” He picked up his coffee and Bryant’s spiked milk. The irony did not escape him: drugging a reluctant companion, spurning the eager.

“Just think about it, please? Think about it some more? I just have to get far away, that’s all. You’re the only person I know who lives far away.” She followed him to the door. “Don’t say anything now. I’ll talk to you in the morning.” She clattered off back to her trailer.

Thank Christ, he thought, I’ll be long gone. He felt a thrill of excitement about his planned abduction. He went through to the sitting room and told Bryant of Shanda’s request.

“She’ll do anything to get away from Freeborn.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“God, does she hate that guy.” She took a large gulp of her milk. “Mng. Is this fresh?”

“From the carton.”

“Probably yak milk or something.” She drank the rest and munched her biscuit. A few minutes later she looked at her watch. “I guess Duane’s not coming tonight. I was hoping you and him could have a talk. So you could tell Mom more about him.”

“Shame. Perhaps I’ll catch him in the morning.”

“Yeah, well I’m sacking out.” She got up. “See you.”

“Sleep well.”

♦

After she had gone he sat on in front of the television. He wrote a brief note to Cora explaining his hasty and unorthodox departure and giving her his New York address, should she ever feel inclined to visit, while he was still in the country.

After midnight, he switched out all the lights and went softly upstairs. He slipped the note beneath Cora’s door. He paused outside Gage’s rooms. One last look at the paintings. He tested the door. Locked. Freeborn had secured his property already.

He crept around the passageway. Beckman was away too. He went into Bryant’s room. She was snoring slightly, her mouth slack, drool dampening the pillow.

In his own room he made sure everything was ready for a prompt departure and lay down fully clothed on his bed to wait. For once insomnia proved a blessing; there was no danger he would fall asleep.

He felt strangely calm. The act he was about to commit did not appear so outrageous in the setting of this bizarre household— de rigueur rather, almost run-of-the-mill. Everything had gone wrong, but from somewhere he seemed to be deriving the capacity to act .

The hours moved by with their usual heel-dragging lethargy. He watched a wand of moonlight move across the wall and transform itself into the replica of a window, widening slowly, and then slowly begin to thin again. He got up for a drink of water and listened to the dark house, replete with night noises: clicks, creaks, the settings and stirrings of old timber. A platoon of burglars could move about without fear of detection.

He paced about his room in stockinged feet trying to imagine the future and confer on its prospects some dim allure. There was — surely, certainly, incontestably — room for another monograph on Odilon Redon? Time indeed for a reassessment of this exotic minor artist, with his fantasy and sentimentality. Sentiment was in vogue again, he thought he remembered someone saying, or about to be in vogue. If he could tap that vein…?

When he got back to New York, he told himself, lying again on the bed, supine, head resting on the cradle of his interlocked fingers, he was going to be quiet and dignified. People — Beeby, Melissa, Irene — could rail at and abuse him as they saw fit (he checked his watch, just after three) and he would smile sadly and keep his own counsel. He would not be provoked; he would remain grave, sober, sagacious…The star and moonlit replica of the window pane had acquired a faint peachy hue in the bottom two quadrants. A prefiguring of dawn. The light seemed to flicker and shift. He rubbed his eyes. A faint but sinuous ripple appeared, as if a muslin curtain had been stirred by a breeze.

Curious, he got up and went to the window. At the very foot of the silver garden a bonfire was burning. Quite a large fire too, he saw, gilding the trees and bushes with highlights of orange. He couldn’t hear the noise of the fire and for a moment all he registered was the scene’s strange and disturbing beauty.

Then he saw a broad-backed figure move in front of the flames: a thickset, masculine shape. Then, his eyes beginning to ache from the effort of focusing, it seemed to shimmer into a slim elfin one. He caught another glimpse of the wraith before it retired to the shadows. Henderson felt suddenly frightened. What the hell was going on? What was burning there?

He pulled on his shoes. He had to investigate, if only to see whether this worrying bonfire and its attendant might prove any obstacle to his own plans, due — he looked at his watch again — to be set in motion very shortly. He crept out of his room: all was dark, and, if not silent, as inactive as before.

He stepped carefully through the kitchen and out onto the back porch. Now he could hear the faint crackle of the flames. Allowing his eyes to become adjusted to the dark he waited some thirty seconds or so before advancing into the garden. The nail sickle of a new moon and the congregation of stars obligingly lit his way. He edged tentatively along an overgrown alley, pausing from time to time to listen to other noises, staring at the flickering flames to see if the mysterious stoker still tended his pyre. All he could hear apart from the- electric trill of the crickets was the sound of his own breathing and the endless surge and flow of the blood in his ears.

He crept closer, moving from bush to shrub, from tree trunk to tree trunk. Then he saw a tall oddly pear-shaped figure step in front of the fire. Henderson hid some twelve or fifteen feet away. The flames illuminated a heavy expressionless face. Henderson knew instantly who it was. He stepped casually out of the bushes.

“Hi there, Duane.”

Duane turned round unconcernedly: “Yeah? Who is it?”

“What’re you doing?”

Duane peered at him. “Mr Dores, yeah? Hi.” He had dark hair, parted in the middle and falling to his collar. His face had a stubborn, prognathous — but otherwise inoffensive — aspect. He was carrying a lot of extra weight, but his height and big frame compensated for the excess.

“Good to meet you, sir. An’ hey, listen. I’ll get your car tomorrow. I promise.”