William Boyd - Sweet Caress

‘She’s married to this Tayborn Gaines,’ I said. ‘Or so they both claim.’

‘I can find out in an hour or two.’

‘It would be good to know for sure,’ I said, feeling a little queasy. Then something else struck me. ‘Gaines says he was in the Eighty-Second Airborne Division, Third Brigade. But I’m not sure I believe him.’

‘I can check on that, as well.’

‘Thank you, Cole.’ I thought further. ‘Is there any way we can get the police involved?’

‘We’d need a reason.’

‘What if I say I think she’s being held against her will?’

‘Sounds to me like that won’t fly. Especially if she’s married the man.’

‘It just seems wrong, somehow. The whole place seems sort of fake.’

‘Nobody’s complained, that’s our problem. Everyone who’s there wants to be there, I guess.’

‘So what can we do?’ I asked, more plaintively than I meant.

‘Why don’t I come on up there tomorrow, talk to the sheriff in Bishop and see what I can set up. Any sign of Bellamont?’

‘No. I didn’t see him. I think he must have gone.’ I had studied Bellamont’s mugshot and I would have recognised his slumped resentful handsome face — long fair hair, with a General Custer blond moustache — had I seen it.

‘Well that may help — could be our pretext,’ Cole thought out loud. ‘We could ask the police to locate Bellamont. Say he’s stolen your daughter’s money, or something. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mrs Farr. Don’t worry, don’t do anything, we’ll figure this out.’

I hung up and closed my eyes. Trying not to think of Blythe in her grubby ‘3’ T-shirt and her filthy feet. What had happened to my little Blythe? What had led her down this road? I began to blame myself. Why had I gone off to Vietnam? Why had I thought only of myself? Stop. Think. Your children are free individuals — they can decide to become anyone they want and you can’t prevent it. And she was twenty-one. It was no comfort.

I went into Bishop that night and found a diner where I ate half a plate of meatballs and spaghetti. I pushed it away; I wasn’t hungry. I bought a pint of Irish whiskey in a liquor store and took it back to my room where I watched television in an aimless unfocussed way, changing channels back and forth whenever the advertisements appeared, sipping my whiskey from a tooth-glass. There was nothing I could realistically do, I just had to wait for Cole Hardaway to call back.

I was a bit drunk and unsteady by the time I took to my bed but I wanted unconsciousness and could hardly rebuke myself after what I’d witnessed today, so I reasoned. I lay in bed letting the room tilt and fall, listening to the hum of the air conditioner, and thinking how perplexing and strange life was, how complicated it was in the way it suddenly threw you these ‘curveballs’, as the GIs used to say in Vietnam. Sometimes it seemed to me as if my life had been made up entirely of curveballs and unwelcome surprises. No daughter expects her father to try and kill her by driving the family car into a fucking lake. No young photographer expects to be prosecuted for obscenity — or beaten half to death by fucking fascists. . I ranted on profanely in my drink-fuelled, self-pitying outrage, railing futilely against all the injustices; the mistakes I’d made and mistakes that had been thrust upon me. .

I had fallen into a blank, dreamless sleep, thanks to my whiskey overdose, but I woke abruptly, fully alert, when I heard the rattle of the doorknob being turned. Thank God I had locked it and fitted the security chain. My head started to ache as I slipped out of bed — I was in my pyjamas — and, going to the window, pulled back the curtains an inch and looked out over the parking lot at the rear of the motel. The few arc lights dotted here and there cast a cold white gleam over the rows of cars and, as I peered out, I thought I saw a figure flit through the dark shadows. I pulled on my shoes and my cotton dressing gown, unlocked the door and stepped out into the warm, dry night. I walked away from my room heading towards where I had seen the figure, my eyes slowly growing accustomed to the gloom of the night.

‘Blythe?’ I called out, perhaps foolishly, but I was hoping she had come to me, had escaped from Tayborn Gaines, somehow. I ranged around the car park for another minute calling Blythe’s name quietly but the place was empty, just the sleeping metallic herd of motor vehicles. I walked back to my room — the door had definitely been tried but it was probably just some tipsy late-homecoming motel guest mistaking the number.

I wandered back along the pathway to my room, feeling tired all of a sudden, pushed the door open and stepped in. It was completely dark and, as I felt for the light switch, I knew there was someone else in the room with me. I could hear breathing.

I clicked the light on.

Blythe was sitting on the end of the bed.

‘Hello, Ma,’ she said. ‘I thought we should have a little talk.’

She was wearing a denim jacket and black jeans and tennis shoes on her feet. Her hair was pulled back in a loose bun, strands hanging down in front of her ears.

I gave her a kiss and sat down in a chair opposite her, my hands shaking, a feeling of breathlessness almost overwhelming me.

‘You haven’t a cigarette, by any chance, have you?’ she asked.

‘Of course.’ I fetched my packet, gladly, taking time to rummage in my handbag, finding my lighter, telling myself to calm down, and offered her one. We both lit up and I sat down again.

‘Tayborn prefers me not to smoke,’ she said.

‘Right. Well, he won’t like me much, then.’ I stood up again and went for my bottle of Irish whiskey. ‘What’s his position on drinking?’ I said as I poured an inch into my glass.

‘He’ll have a drink from time to time. Just beer, though.’

‘Thank God for that. Is he religious?’

‘In his own special way. He believes in Jesus, but not really in God.’

‘Fair enough.’ I looked at her and felt my eyes fill with tears.

‘You’re not taking drugs, or anything?’ I asked carefully.

‘What? No, of course not.’

‘Are you sure? You don’t look very well, darling. You seem different, somehow.’

‘Because I am different. I’ve changed.’

‘You’re not actually married to him, are you?’

‘Yes. I love him, Ma — he’s a wonderful, strong, fascinating man. Wait until you get to know him properly. He was a soldier, just like Papa.’

I suddenly remembered something my father used to say: ‘We all see the world differently from each other; we all have unique vision.’ I looked at my daughter and felt a bizarre pang that she’d never known Beverley Clay, her grandfather. I had a feeling they would have got on inordinately well.

And then I began to understand what had happened — or understand some of it — as she talked with a strange quiet passion about Tayborn’s life as a soldier and the horrible things that he had seen, done and experienced in his Vietnam tour of duty and how it had altered him forever, made him see clearly how the world and its workings were; how it had made him hate the war and the forces that waged the war, the politicians, the industrialists, the generals. I thought about my father and Sholto and wanted to say, no, darling, your Tayborn Gaines is nothing like those men. But now I was beginning to feel slightly queasy and so forced myself to sit quietly and appear to listen to Blythe who was now going on about Tayborn’s ambitions to make a new life, a new sheltered environment where people ‘could see clearly’ and so he had moved to Willow Ranch and created the Willow Ranch Community.

‘But how did you ever wind up there, darling? I thought you wanted to be a singer, write songs, play your music. What happened to your boyfriend, Jeff Bellamont? You were living together in London, for heaven’s sake — where did he go?’