by William Boyd
“Well,” he said, stirrings of an idea beginning to shift around in his brain. “It’s your life, and you can do what you want, as they say.”
chapter fourteen
HENDERSON packed his small case with his few possessions, then went in search of Cora to tell her he would be leaving the next day. She was sitting in her room looking out over the wild garden. There were no lights on but a pink glow from the evening sun cast gauzy, kindly gleams over her and the shabby furniture.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “that it’s been such a bad time for you. I hope you get your job back.”
“Who knows? Maybe it was the wrong job.” He smiled thinly. “I don’t think I’m really suited to this place.” He gave her a brief résumé of his past fond ambitions, of his conviction that everything was going to change for the better once he arrived in America.
“How very sad for you,” she said without a trace of mockery. “Losing your hopes—that’s much worse than losing the paintings.”
He found her sincerity oddly disturbing. He didn’t know what to say. “What will you do?” he asked. “Go back to medical school?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got plenty to do. But what about you?”
He sketched out, with flimsy enthusiasm, his return to London, the flat, the book on Odilon Redon, growing steadily more downcast as he did so.
“What about your Dr. Dubrovnik?”
“I think those hopes foundered in the atrium lake.”
“Poor Henderson,” she said. “We haven’t treated you very kindly in this country, have we?”
“Could have gone better, I suppose.”
She took off her dark glasses and smiled ruefully at him. “I am sorry about the pictures. Daddy left everything to Freeborn—the pictures, the house, what’s left of the money—I don’t need to see the will. He was a firm believer in primogeniture—very English of him.”
Henderson shrugged. In the evening light her sallow skin had turned the color of a tea rose. He wondered if he should try to kiss her again. But then he further wondered why, given his past record, he should still wish to unleash more troubles upon himself. But his reluctance wasn’t due to prudence, he realized: it was that famous reserve asserting itself again. Later, he’d regret not trying, he knew. That was the great feature about reserve: it walked hand in hand with regret; left you sadder but no wiser. You never knew what might have been.
He stood up. “I’ll be making an early start.…” He held out his hand.
Cora shook it with facetious solemnity. “Jolly good luck and all that,” she said.
He smiled foolishly, looking a fool again. Perhaps he should have kissed her, after all.… He felt a vast impotence, and tears of self-pity stung his eyeballs. He edged crablike to the door, gave a resigned but reassuring grin and left her room.
* * *
That evening Henderson and Bryant sat alone in the sitting room. Cora remained upstairs, Beckman was out somewhere and Duane had not returned. The absence of Duane—and necessarily the absence of his car—was something of a nuisance but otherwise the conditions suited his plan perfectly.
A red-eyed, sniffling Alma-May provided them with a supper of pulse stew and cinnamon pear bake and they watched an hour or two of TV.
“And where is Duane?” Henderson asked casually, about half past ten.
“He’ll be back,” Bryant said. “If not tonight, tomorrow morning. He said he had a few things to finish up before we left. Said they were important too—he might take some time.”
For an instant Henderson wondered if Duane himself was having second thoughts about a lifetime with Bryant, but she seemed unperturbed by his not returning. Still, he had to press on with his own scheme. He couldn’t assume Bryant would be conveniently abandoned.
Fifteen minutes later he announced he was going to make some coffee and would Bryant like some? A glass of milk, she said, and a cookie, not taking her eyes from the screen where angry hoodlums shot at each other from speeding cars.
In the kitchen, he prepared the drinks. From his pocket he removed his sleeping pills and poured the powder from three capsules into the milk.
“Henderson?”
He looked around with a guilty start. It was Shanda. She glanced over her shoulder and toppled into the center of the kitchen on her high heels. She leaned against the table and gave her belly a heave, like a man adjusting a heavy pack.
“Whatcha doin’?” she asked
“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 supplies 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 have moved 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 windowpane 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 around unconcernedly. “Yeah? Who is it?”
“What are you doing?”
Duane peered at him. “Mr. Dores, right? 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.”
“Great.” Henderson felt untypically calm. He looked at the fire. Its fuel seemed to gleam and glint strangely.
“What are you burning?”
“Oh. Mr. Gage’s pictures.”
Henderson felt his Adam’s apple swell to block his throat. He knelt down. Testing first with licked fingertips, he slid a semicharred stick from the fire’s edge. It had been a thin, finely worked section of frame; some of the dull-gold molding was still unburned. Using it as a poker he prodded at the contents of the fire. Frames, nothing but frames. Some intact, some broken. Empty frames with a few crisp, blackened shreds of canvas adhering to them.
“Why have you burned them?” he asked quietly, not wanting to provoke or cause offense.
“He told me to.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Gage.”
“When? Why?”
Duane put his hands in his pockets and gazed at the fire. “Well, you know, after he had his kind of attack … Beckman took Monika home and went for the doc. I picked Mr. Gage up and carried him back to his room. I felt kinda bad seein’ as how he’d been shouting at me, and all. That it was sorta on account of me, like …” Duane paused.
“He was, ah, you know, breathin’ all sorts of wheezes and gasps, and he says, ‘Duane, you got to do one thing for me.’ I says, ‘Sure thing, Mr. Gage, what’s that?’ An’ he says, ‘You gotta take those paintings off of the walls and burn ’em. Burn ‘em all. And don’t let Freeborn or Cora or Beckman see you doing it. Don’t let anybody know.’ So I said, ‘O?, good as done.’ And then he said, ‘Swear.’ So I swore on the Bible and my mother’s head. He told me to do it as soon as I could.…” Duane kicked aimlessly at a jutting frame.
“And then, I guess, he died. Though I couldn’t be sure. Then Beckman and the doc came in.”
Henderson picked up another section of frame. Holding it to the fire he could read the careful copperplate of its inscription. ÉDOUARD VUILLARD (1886-1940). He tossed it back on the fire. So much for the Gage collection. Smoke and cinders.
“But why did he ask you to burn them?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Mr. Dores. Maybe he didn’t have any more use for them seein’ as he was dying. Maybe he didn’t want for anybody else to have them. They were his own, sorta thing. Not anyone else’s.” Duane spread his hands. “Listen, I’m just doing what he told me, you know? I swore I would.”
“I suppose so.” Henderson rubbed his forehead.
“Mr. Dores?”
“Yes?”
“Did, uh, Bryant like kinda say anything to you? About us? … Not you an’ me. Me an’ Bryant. I’d sure like to talk with you—”
“Let’s talk about it in the morning,” Henderson said. He was suddenly reminded of his kidnapping plans. He had to keep Duane out of the way.
“I think I’ll get back to bed,” he said cautiously.
“I’ll just stay on here. Make sure it all burns away. Check it don’t spread, sorta thing.”
“Good idea. In fact you’d better make absolutely sure. Be very careful.”
“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll make sure.”
“See you in the morning.”
“Sure, and hey, I’ll get your car back. Sure thing. Nice talkin’ to you, Mr. Dores.” Duane held out his big hand. Henderson shook it, smiled and walked quickly back into the house. In his room, when he bent down to pick up his bag, he thought he would faint. He paddled air onto his face with stiff hands. He felt as though some tiny but vicious fist were pounding him repeatedly in the chest. His legs trembled dramatically. Easy, boy. He summoned up one of Eugene Teagarden’s breathing drills, flaring his nostrils, voiding his lungs. Nymphs and shepherds. In, out. Come away. Inhale. Exhale. Cough. Come come come co-ome away.
Then, marginally composed, he crept into Bryant’s room.
Speed was crucial now. He switched on the light. Bryant slept on, mouth open, still snoring. Her clothes lay scattered all over the room. He thought of trying to gather them into her suitca
se but decided there wasn’t time. Anyway, the girl had enough clothes as it was. He picked up a pair of green jeans and a yellow sweat shirt. He would simply pull them on over her pajamas.…
He knew, or rather he thought he knew from their effect on him, what the consequences of taking three sleeping capsules were. One was not comatose and could be woken. And from there one could stay awake with some prompting, could walk, even talk a bit, just like someone who—logically enough—had been roused from deep sleep. The difference was that the sensation of bleary baffled consciousness never departed, as it did from a normal sleeper, normally roused; rather it prevailed for a further twenty-four hours. Or at least that had been his experience. He remembered his own stumbling, blunt day after he had taken the pills. His head turned quicker than his eyes. His hands were composed of ten calloused thumbs. His bottom lip grew oddly heavy, irresistably inclined to hang free from its partner. Saliva pooled in every oval cavity, causing embarrassing spillage, or else constant loud draining noises. After he had spent a couple of hours in the office like this, Beeby had ordered him home. Now Henderson was counting on Bryant’s being similarly inconvenienced.
“Bryant,” he hissed, and whipped the sheet back. He whipped it up again and turned away, one hand on his mouth, one across his forehead. The fist started punching again. He looked stupidly about the room. She was naked.
Bloody thoughtless bitch! he swore petulantly. He saw her pajamas crumpled by the bed. He rubbed his hands across his face as if he were washing it. His palms were warmed by the heat of his brow and glowing cheeks. There was nothing for it. He prayed Duane was still diligently supervising the fire. He pulled down the sheet again.
He felt guilt and shame swill through his body as—despite stringent moral injunctions to the contrary—he stared at Bryant’s nude body in fascinated curiosity. The firm pointed breasts, the soft pale nipples, the skin stretched tight over the staves of her rib cage, the etiolated trace of a bikini bottom, the oddly touching, thin vertical stripe of pubic hair … He had to wake her up. He sat beside her. But first—evil Henderson—he covered a breast for a second with a hot shivering palm.