As Far as You Can Go

by Julian Mitchell

  “You’re about as clear as mud,” said Diane, and laughed. It was a nervous laugh, but not a false one.

  “What I mean is——”

  “I know exactly what you mean. I told you, I majored in psychology. O.K., so you’re right, I’ll get over it. But you asked me why I didn’t have a steady boy-friend. At least, that’s what you meant, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “Well, the reason is I have a block. Now you know.”

  It wasn’t, Harold felt, a very satisfactory explanation. But he hardly knew her, and even to talk about such things so early on in their relations with each other showed that they were fairly relaxed together. He put an arm cautiously round her shoulder. She snuggled into it.

  “Perhaps you need someone to help you get over that block,” said Harold lightly.

  “You want to try?”

  “I wouldn’t mind at all.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Diane, and laughed again, this time freely, happily. “You won’t be the first.”

  “Let’s hope I’m the last,” said Harold.

  “Hey,” she said, “it’s a little soon to propose, isn’t it? Gee, Mr Barlow, you Englishmen work fast.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” said Harold. “This is just a doctor-patient relationship, Miss Washburn. We haven’t reached the transference stage yet.”

  “You know something?” she said, snuggling closer towards him. “I think we’re all so goddam educated these days, we don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.”

  “You could be right at that,” said Harold.

  She directed him to a night-club where there was a jazz band playing, though most of the people seemed content to sit and listen, in fact they listened with great seriousness. Harold and Diane danced a lot, having the floor virtually to themselves.

  The musicians looked pleased to see some people dancing. There were several negroes in the club, too, as customers not waiters, and that gave him some pleasure. In L.A. your colour seemed to matter much less than anywhere else. Perhaps it was because the whole place was so new, there hadn’t been time to found any dynasties or a rigid society, and most important, even if there had been attempts to do so, they’d failed, probably because the people who came in the beginning were restless unconventional people. Not that they were these days, except for the Eddie Jackson types, but meanwhile things had changed a good deal, and wherever you came from, if you thought you were starting a new life, you probably didn’t want to have much to do with the boloney of snobbery. Of course, he might very well be wrong.

  As he was driving her home from the Strip—a mile or two of Sunset Boulevard devoted to night life—he asked her casually how long her family had lived on the west coast.

  “Grandpa was born in Chicago,” she said, “but his parents moved out to the west when he was a kid, and Grandma was born in Wyoming. So I come from real pioneer stock. Grandpa bought the plot where the house is now about fifty years ago, in fact, he bought most of the canyon. That’s why we’re so rich. There is gold in these hills if you remember to build on them instead of digging them up. Remember, Harold, always excavate with a bulldozer. I guess if we were English and had a coat of arms and all that jazz, we ought to have a bulldozer—how do you say?—rampant, is it?”

  Harold laughed. “Something like that.”

  “Does your family have a coat of arms?”

  “Good God, no. Though I suppose they’d like to. There’s a thing called the College of Heralds which invents pedigrees and coats of arms for you, if you want them. I believe they do good business with Americans, actually.”

  “I bet they do,” she said. “The Americans are the most goddam snobbish people on earth. You know, there are people who won’t speak to anyone else because they came over on the Mayflower or something? I mean, their ancestors?”

  “I thought you only had to have money,” said Harold.

  “That’s true out here,” said Diane. “But Boston, that’s the home town of snobbery. Have you ever been to Boston?”

  “Yes. I spent a couple of days there.”

  “Gee, I haven’t. I’ve never been farther east than Chicago. Would you believe that? I guess you’ve been places in this country I’ll never get to.”

  “Oh, well, that’s the way it is. You always want to go abroad for your holidays, not explore your own country.”

  “Yes, you’re right. I mean, I always dream about going to Paris and London and Rome and Athens and all those places, but I don’t want to go to New York much.”

  “New York’s all right,” said Harold.

  They were coming to the top of the canyon, and he was wondering whether or not he should kiss her. It seemed pretty definite that he should. After all, he’d taken her out pretty handsomely, and she was holding his arm as he drove, and snuggling up against him. The trouble was that you couldn’t tell. She might be delighted, shocked or merely expecting it without either enthusiasm or distaste. He decided to try it, and be damned. The miniature of a dead man wasn’t worth the kiss of a live woman.

  He stopped the car and turned towards her in the darkness. There was always something wrong: now the bloody steering-wheel was in the way. He put an arm round her shoulders and said, “It was a lovely evening, Diane. Can we do it again some time?”

  “Sure we can,” she said. She seemed very light-hearted suddenly, and pulled his head down and kissed him on the cheek, saying, between pecks, “Sometimes you Englishmen are too polite.”

  He managed to get his other arm free of the wheel and kissed her back. They held the uncomfortable pose for a moment or two, then she said, “Why don’t you come in and have a drink?”

  “O.K.”

  They stood for a moment outside the door while she fumbled for her key. The moonlight made everything seem very ghostly, the scrub on the other side of the canyon like a lurking army, about to charge over the hilltop. There were several cypresses in a garden just down the road, and their heads swayed very slowly.

  She opened the door. The lights were all on, and she said, “Grandma must still be up.”

  “There you are, child,” said Mrs Washburn. She was sitting on one of the sofas. “I thought you were never coming home. Where have you been?”

  “We went dancing, Grandma,” she said, throwing her head back and spreading out her hair with her fingers. “We had a ball.”

  “Huh,” said the old woman. “Good evening, Mr Barlow.”

  “Good evening, Mrs Washburn.”

  “Well, you brought her back safe and sound, anyway. I expect you’ll be wanting to go to bed, now, like me.”

  For a moment Harold thought she meant he wanted to sleep with Diane, and in that moment knew that he did. He looked at her, yawning now, smiling at him, saying, “I just offered him a drink, Grandma. It’s not late. Only twelve.”

  “Quite late enough,” said Mrs Washburn. “But get him a drink. Any man that’s prepared to make you happy de serves a drink, at least. How did you find her, Mr Barlow? She’s pretty, of course, but she’s no sense, like her father.”

  Harold disliked her habit of talking about people who were in the room in the third person. He said, “It was a most enjoyable evening.”

  “You hear that, child,” said Mrs Washburn, a great smile breaking across her face, “do you hear what the Englishman says? He says it was a most enjoyable evening. My, my, that must mean something, coming from an Englishman.”

  “Have you got anything against Englishmen in general, Mrs Washburn?”

  “No, Mr Barlow, I don’t have anything against Englishmen. I don’t have anything against anyone. I just happen to prefer Americans to most other people, but I guess that’s because I’m an American. Maybe you prefer English people.”

  “No,” said Harold, “not particularly. Diane was telling me that you were born in the west, Mrs Washburn, that you’re a real pioneer. What was it like in those days?”

  “I’m no pioneer,” she said, but she seemed ple
ased to be asked. “My father was, though, he was a real pioneer. Came all the way to Wyoming from Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife and children, and made his living there, running cattle, and trading with the Indians. I was born just after he settled there.”

  “Really? Indians? Dangerous ones?”

  “You don’t have to believe everything you see in the movies, son.” Harold felt he was making good progress for her to stop calling him Mr Barlow. “No, I never saw a scalping, and I never saw the United States Cavalry go by to get their man. But the Indians used to come to the door and trade with us. Skins, you know, furs. Ornaments, too. We’d be sitting having our dinner, and then we’d look up and see them, maybe two or three at a time, squatting down by the door, waiting for us to finish. And we’d never hear them or see them coming. They’d be there when we looked up, was all. My father, he always said they were no trouble, it was the white men was the trouble. But he was always in trouble himself with the other ranchers. That’s why he moved on out here when he got too old to bother. I came here when I was a girl of twenty or so, lived in San Gabriel. And then I met my first husband, did Diane tell you that? I was married twice? He was a good man, and a good business man. We lived in Seattle, then, and after he died I moved back to San Gabriel to be with my mother. She lived a long time, too. We don’t die young in my family, not the women.”

  Although she spoke slowly, there was a genuine enthusiasm, Harold thought, or maybe it was just nice to have a new audience. But he did notice what Diane had warned him of, a small rim of black which clearly wasn’t flesh and wasn’t brassiere, protruding where her left breast ought to be.

  “My father was a Mormon,” she said, nodding her head as though he would appreciate this piece of news. “But the family don’t stay long with a religion.” Behind the glasses her eyes were sharp, he thought, watching his reactions, judging him.

  “I don’t go to church myself,” he said.

  “No more do I,” she said. “And not that Mormon lot, those last of all. You know they want a tenth of everything you’ve got, a tenth of your income? Money, that’s what they want. Money in the name of God.”

  “If you’re interested in religions,” said Diane, giving him a whisky and soda, “you sure came to the right place. I guess there’s a church and a pastor for every soul in L.A., huh, Grandma?”

  “She’s not far wrong. And twenty or thirty of those pastors get to find themselves in jail every year.”

  “Few things give me more pleasure,” said Harold, “than the thought of wicked pastors. I have a passionate ambition to be responsible for the unfrocking of a bishop. A cardinal, even.”

  “My,” said Mrs Washburn, and she laughed. “Well, Diane, you certainly picked yourself a beau with spirit.”

  “I didn’t know admirers were called beaux anywhere except the South, Mrs Washburn.”

  “Oh, I use the words I used when I was young. People don’t have respect for the old customs any more. When a young man wanted to walk out with me, he asked my father first. I guess a beau was kind of official in these parts.”

  Harold began to see more in the old woman than a possessive matriarch. He had thought her refusal to let him see the miniature probably came from a refusal to think about the time when it would, inevitably, pass out of her possession once and for all. He imagined that when you became very old your possessions became very precious to you, they meant you were still alive. And though this could be a damnable nuisance, it was understandable, too. After all, what did you have to show you weren’t dead but your own private things? You probably lived in someone else’s house—your son’s or your son-in-law’s, say—and depended on the someone else to feed you and look after you and send for the doctor when you were ill, and, eventually, to bury you. No wonder you wanted to have a few relics of your own existence, your own identity. But Mrs Washburn didn’t, it seemed, ever let such petty thoughts enter her head. She knew she was old, she even boasted about it, and if she knew she was old, then she knew she hadn’t got much longer to go: she probably just wanted to enjoy her things while she was still alive. And then she had this really very interesting past, what with two husbands and Red Indians and all the rest of it. He looked at her with new respect. She was, after all, a human being and a lively one, not just an obstacle in his way. If he was ever to get the miniature, he might as well start taking her seriously now. Besides, human beings usually had weaknesses, while obstacles often didn’t.

  But now was not the time for further investigation. She got up, and tucked at her false breast openly in front of him, and said, “Well, I shall go to bed now, young people. It was nice meeting you again, Mr Barlow. Don’t you be too late now, Diane. You’ve got to get up in the morning.”

  “O.K., Grandma. Good night.”

  “Good night, Mrs Washburn.” Harold watched her climb the stairs, slowly, it was true, but without any appearance of effort. Then he decided to take a risk. “Mrs Washburn, are you sure you won’t reconsider letting me see the miniature?”

  She stopped and looked down at him, her hand fingering her pearls. She looked rather triumphant, he thought.

  “I might yet, Mr Barlow,” she said. “It depends how the mood takes me. Good night.”

  She went into her bedroom.

  “Was that a silly thing to say?”

  “I don’t know. Grandma’s funny. She seemed to take it all right, though. She may decide she likes you.”

  “Why does she sleep upstairs, when it would be easier for her, at her age, to sleep in that room by the kitchen?”

  “She always has slept up there. The day Grandma can’t climb the stairs, that day she’ll die. And I guess she likes to be near the front door, so she can hear when I get home, and when my goddam beau goes away again. We have about ten minutes before she comes out again and asks me to bring her a glass of water.”

  “Diane, will you think it very rude of me if I leave before ten minutes is up? I do very much want to see that miniature, and I don’t want to put her against me.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Diane. But she moved away from him.

  “Look, I couldn’t have enjoyed this evening more. You will come out with me again, won’t you, Diane?”

  “That depends whether I think you’re more interested in me or that picture.”

  “Oh, I prefer life to art any day.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “Make sure it stays that way, then.”

  He went over to her and kissed her rather more passionately than he had meant to. Somehow things seemed to get rather out of hand when there wasn’t a steering-wheel in the way.

  “There’s one thing,” she said, freeing herself.

  “Yes?”

  “I hope you’re on the level, Harold Barlow. I mean, if you’re making up to me just to get round Grandma, I don’t want any part of it, you understand? I don’t give a damn about any goddam miniature. But I think you’re kind of nice.”

  “I think you’re absolutely splendid,” said Harold.

  “Well, bear it in mind. I’m telling you, I’ve some experience in judging a boy’s motives.”

  He looked at her, at the long black hair and the tight blue bodice, and the slim legs and elegant ankles, and he said, “Diane, you’re quite right about my motives. But I promise you that I’m not that dishonest. At least, I don’t think I am. I don’t mind admitting that I do very badly want to see, and if possible buy, that miniature. I’m not really sure why. The man in it is no relation of mine at all. Perhaps it’s your grandmother—her obstinacy. She interests me, I admit. But all that has nothing to do with you and me.”

  “Well, and what about you and me?”

  “I really don’t know yet. I mean, we’re not exactly teenagers, are we? Do we have to be definite and all that right away?”

  “No,” she said, and smiled. “Not if you don’t want to be. I like you, Harold. And I even believe you. Some of it, anyway.”

  They kissed again, less passionately, more thoughtfull
y, less like teenagers. It was really just as good that way.

  “If you don’t want Grandma out here for her glass of water,” said Diane, “you’d better make tracks.”

  “O.K.,” said Harold. He gave a quick good-bye kiss. “It sure was swell.”

  “A most enjoyable evening, Englishman.”

  “Good night.”

  She said good-bye at the door, loudly, making gestures at her grandmother’s door, and smiling.

  Harold drove away feeling thoroughly happy. She was a real girl, beautiful, vivacious, undemanding. He wondered if he was deluding himself. He was beginning to feel certain tremors and shakings which might mean anything, flu, a cold, love, lust. They were exactly the same for Diane, assum ing them to be either love or lust, as they had been for Helen, and for Ann Killian, and for a good many girls in between. How did you tell which was the real thing? And was there a real thing? Or was it all a fraud, like God? But even supposing it was a fraud, it might still work, the way people got kicks out of religion in spite of the fact that it was fraudulent, not to say farcical. If you believed in Rain Gods you got a kick and occasionally some rain: if you believed in love you got a kick, and maybe one day you might actually feel what your imagination had set up as the ideal. Not for long, perhaps, but it might be worth it. All of which left the question exactly where it was: how did you tell the difference between the real thing and the thing for Ann Killian and Helen Gallagher?

  Musing happily about such things, he had a drink in the bar of the hotel and went to bed. Ever since he had arrived in Los Angeles he had stopped dreaming of the fire. Tonight he dreamed a mixture of happiness and fear, waking to wonder what it was that had woken him. There had been something about a woman with only one breast—that’s origin was clear enough. And there had been another woman, a girl. But the faces vanished even as he was waking, and he was soon asleep again.

  Four

  A FEW DAYS LATER Harold received two letters from England. The first was from Dennis Moreland and went: