‘That’s bullshit,’ bellowed Silver, shaking a finger at Fury. ‘The assassination was the demented act of a disturbed individual, the victim of a shitty upbringing.’ Rose was impressed by his acknowledgment of parental fault and nodded vigorously, but neither of them noticed. As far as they were concerned, she wasn’t there.
She went and sat in the old mother’s chair by the window, tugging at the ears of the rabbit and watching yellow sweater going in and out of the stables. She tried to put Dr. Wheeler in the yard but he stayed hidden in her head. Presently, Fury and Silver having abandoned the table in search of more wine, she got up, slid a cigarette out of the packet, pocketed the lighter and hurried out the door. Yellow sweater was standing in the open, looking up at the sky, arms outstretched.
He wasn’t easy to talk to, nor was he all that grateful when she handed him the fag. She reckoned his unease was due to him being a foreigner, and asked if he liked looking after horses so far away from home.
‘This is my home,’ he replied. ‘I came here twelve years ago, and I do more than look after horses. I am a jockey.’
‘Of course you are,’ she affirmed. She would have said more but he stared at her so strangely the words faded.
‘I rely on the ethereal guidance of Al Hilal,’ he said, and walked away; he was obviously a bit potty.
Harold didn’t get to his feet for another two hours, by which time both Silver and Fury had lapsed into a tipsy sleep. He penned them a note thanking them for their hospitality, to which Rose added her name and a row of kisses.
FIFTEEN
Leaving Santa Ana, Harold fretted over his inability to express himself. He hadn’t shone in the company of Fury and Silver. When discussing the killing of Dr. King, they’d ignored his opinion, spoke over him, which was odd seeing that in his head he’d witnessed the blood spilling onto the floor. But then, with the exception of Shaefer, he’d often been thrust aside. Complaining to his mother all those lost years ago, her hair immaculately waved, eyes scornful, she’d said it was because he wasn’t in command of his vocabulary. She was wrong because at college, sponsored by Shaefer, he’d once been up for president of the debating society.
Knowing that Wheeler would no longer be in Malibu, Harold quit the freeway and took the Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Monica. He kept the radio switched on to discourage Rose from chatting, without success. He had never met anyone so indifferent to nature. Blind to the pale blossoms of the paradise trees, the sugar-white sands edging the glitter of ocean, she fiddled with her top lip, her hair, the contents of her pockets, and gibbered mindlessly on about some medicine that had been used to combat foul language in Vietnam. She meant drugs, of course, in particular the lysergic acid which had affected the Philopsona woman.
He was annoyed with himself for having talked so freely to Fury. God knows why he’d spilled the beans about feelings for his mother, though he supposed the knitted rabbit on the chair had something to do with it. That and the drink. He’d droned on about his life before the arrival of a succession of step-fathers, the time when just the two of them had lived in a rundown apartment in Detroit, of the day when he was seven years old and she’d slapped his face because he’d left the soap in the washroom—it was communal, which accounted for his adult sensitivity to smells—and she’d feared it might get stolen. When he’d started to snivel she’d turned back and taken him in her arms. He remembered that hug because, ever after involved with men, it was the last time she’d shown him any affection. The telling of such childhood memories was embarrassing enough, but he feared he might also have gone on about Wheeler, perhaps even hinted at what he intended to do once they met.
Preoccupied, he narrowly avoided scraping the open door of a white Chevrolet, abandoned at the side of the road. Moments later he braked and got out, muttering to Rose that he needed to stretch his legs. Absorbed in the contents of her pockets, she just nodded. Stupidly, he left his hat behind and the sun was cruel on his head.
To the left of the camper, a slope led down to a small wood and as he made for its blue shadows he heard himself moan aloud. If he’d drunkenly confided in Fury and Silver, spat out his intentions, then surely they’d tell someone? He wasn’t afraid of being found out, as long as he was successful. Was it possible they’d told Rose? When he’d woken from sleep he’d heard Silver talking about violence and suffering, and she, eyes wide, had repeated the words.
He was loitering there, fingers tugging at his beard, when he heard the distinct and anguished noise of someone fighting for a last breath. He knew it was that because he’d been pres ent when Frederick Beckstein had gurgled into death. The name had remained in his mind because it belonged to his third stepfather, the one who had taught him the value of investments and left him money in his will. Without Beckstein he might have been shoved into the boredom of earning a living.
Turning, he followed the direction of the sound and almost stumbled over a sprawled figure, hands pressed to a frag ment of green cloth sticking to bloodstained white trousers. The face was as pale as the silver bead clipped to its earlobe. Harold stood there until the gasping stopped, then, waiting until his own breath slowed, knelt and placed a finger against the side of the man’s throat. There was no pulse. In standing up his left knee accidentally slid across the white trousers, pinkly smearing his shorts. Near his feet the blade of a kitchen knife flashed sunlight. Frowning, he kicked it into the undergrowth and returned to the camper. A woman was sit ting beside Rose, hands clasped as though in prayer.
‘She was hitchhiking,’ Rose told him, ‘and the man who picked her up attacked her, so she hit him and ran away. I said we’d give her a lift. We will, won’t we?’
He nodded, there being nothing else he could do. When he took the wheel the woman slumped against him, the skirt of her green dress brushing his leg. He drove off so quickly that she jerked forward, lank black hair spilling over her knees.
According to Rose, she was going to visit her brother in Newport, nine miles away. She had two brothers, the eldest of whom was away soldiering in Vietnam. The one she wanted to see—she needed to borrow money—had been born with a leg missing, which was why he was still at home. No, she didn’t want to tell either him or the cops what had happened because then there’d be questions and she’d have to relive the horror. Besides, the brother with one leg was one of those ignorants who held that it was females who were to blame for sexual aggression, that men merely responded to signals. Rose agreed that not telling was sensible and said that once, when a man had pushed her down some stairs because she wouldn’t have sex, she hadn’t told anyone either. She’d injured her knee, not badly, just limped for a few days, but on account of her childhood she’d learned never to show hurt and that when in pain it was best to smile, seeing as an emotional reaction could often provoke another attack.
Appalled, Harold switched on the radio to shut her up, and above a Deanna Durbin love song heard an excited voice bursting out with the news that some woman had shot Andy Warhol, three times. Rose, tone truculent, asked him why Yanks kept shooting each other; was it because they were all allowed to own guns? It was obvious she’d never heard of Warhol.
Newport rose above the sandy shores of the Pacific, its main boulevard lined with palm trees. Ten years before, he and Dollie had come here to see a business acquaintance of hers supposedly recovering from a heart attack, a journey that turned out to be wasted, seeing the guy was dead by the time they arrived. Dollie hadn’t cried, simply got drunk, which was O.K. by him, though she didn’t bother to shower as it made her want sex.
He asked the woman in the green dress where he should go, but she ignored him and began whispering to Rose, who presently directed him to a street with a hash house on the corner, its glass front steaming smoke yellow in the heat. A man wearing a sombrero stood outside, staring at a child who was kicking a yelping dog tied to a traffic pole.
Rose helped the woman out, and embraced her. Deanna Durbin had begun singing again and he slouched th
ere, watching as Rose smoothed down the woman’s hair, exposing a blob of blood, either her own or that of the man she had just stabbed, stuck to her cheek. He felt neither curious nor judge mental, seeing as he himself was heading towards the ultimate sin. Rose was now confronting the kid with the dog, untying its leash from the pole before she returned to the camper. The animal didn’t run off, just sat there.
The woman waved and mouthed gratitude as she climbed the steps of her brother’s house, but he knew she only saw Rose; he had become invisible, lost to all. As he reached the end of the street he looked into the side mirror and caught sight of the woman, now back on the sidewalk, scurrying in the opposite direction.
‘It was a woman who shot Mussolini,’ announced Rose, immersed as always in her own fantasies, ‘though she didn’t kill him.’
Her return plane ticket was in his wallet. He must remem ber to give it her before they reached the hotel. She mustn’t be with him when he encountered Wheeler . . . he had to be alone when the man who had ruined his life turned to face him, cold eyes flashing recognition . . .
Telling her he needed a drink, he drove until he came to a sign advertising beer. Sitting at the bar and observing her reflection in the mirror, eyes puffy, mouth tight, he said, ‘Sorry to be irritable. I guess I’m tired.’
‘It’s normal,’ she replied, ‘for people who come from dif ferent backgrounds to find it difficult to get on. It’s because we’re programmed by the people who brought us up.’
It was disconcerting the way she often came out with an intelligent observation, and irritating when, as always, she quickly ruined it, suggesting that if they were squirrels, the very first ones without parents, knowing how to find nuts would be a matter of luck, not inheritance. ‘If we didn’t see our mothers scrabbling beneath a pine tree, how would we know what to do?’ she enquired absurdly.
He ordered a large gin and concentrated on how to lose her when the opportunity came. As Wheeler was the only reason they were together she would obviously kick up a fuss if he stopped her accompanying him to the Ambassador Hotel. Worse, if she was in one of those moods which enabled her to see things clearly, she might interfere with his plans. They’d be in Los Angeles in two days’ time and it sure would be easier if she got into the habit of going places on her own.
He said, ‘I guess I’ve kept you on a leash, haven’t I? I’ve been a shade controlling.’
She said, ‘A shade, yes.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s a rather interesting museum not far from here. You could go there on your own, if you want.’
She frowned at the word museum, until he explained that it wasn’t the usual sort, that it had a large section on the lives of authors and painters.
‘Which authors?’ she asked.
‘Robert Louis Stevenson, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Raymond Chandler . . .’
‘Steinbeck,’ she cried, ‘I like him . . . I’ve read Tortilla Flat. What did the Chandler man write?’
‘Crime novels,’ he told her. ‘He turned to writing when booze got him sacked from his job as an oil executive.’
‘Drink,’ she said, ‘is a necessity for people who write. It makes the words come.’ She then launched into a story about a woman she’d known who had always drunk whisky before writing short stories, but as she’d never got them published she’d turned to stealing library books, hundreds of them, which she sold to secondhand bookshops. It was very prof itable and gave her a good life.
‘I guess she ended up in jail,’ he ventured.
‘No,’ she said. ‘She ended up in a mansion in Somerset.’
After a second gin he escorted her round the block and gave her instructions on how to find the museum. She needn’t hurry as he had some phone calls to make. He’d be in the bar in roughly an hour.
‘Goody, goody,’ she said, and ran off.
Returning to the camper, he wrote a letter to Shaefer express ing gratitude for his friendship and enclosing the address of the lawyer in charge of his will. Reading it over he tore it into pieces and penned another that didn’t mention money.
Then he began scribbling a note to Polly and Bernard to thank them for introducing him to Rose, but he abandoned it halfway through the first sentence, irritation at the mere inking of her name drying up the words. And fond though he was of her, he didn’t think it would be a good idea to write to Mirabella—plunged into depression, she’d wish him in hell for being the cause.
There being nobody else in his life who warranted either a goodbye or gratitude, he pocketed the pen and began to fold up the newspapers strewn across Rose’s seat, at which he uncovered a bag with a broken zip. Stuffed inside was a grey jersey, a spotted dress, a pair of soiled panties and a purse con taining two English pound notes and four dollars. Beneath was a lipstick, a toothbrush still in its wrapping, and a pocket diary without entries until the middle of May, and then each page blank but for the word ‘Soon’ written with a capital S. Blank that is, save for one line on March the twenty-eighth, ‘Washington Harold is a very kind man,’ and ‘God how much longer,’ on the thirtieth. As he dumped the bag under the seat, a cigarette lighter fell to the floor. It was made of silver and engraved with the initials JF.
He felt he deserved another drink. As he pushed open the camper door a blast of hot air took away his breath. Above him, a sweep of black cloud swallowed the blue of the sky. By the time he had a glass in his hand the world had turned dark and thunder cracked overhead.
The rain being heavy he expected Rose to be delayed, even though she permanently wore that crumpled raincoat. Then, as the downpour ceased and a further hour went by, he became uneasy. It was now eight o’clock and the museum was most likely shut. Hurrying along the damp sidewalk he began to cough from an inhalation of smoke, and on the next block encountered a noisy crowd halted by a line of policemen erect ing barriers. The distant heavens were still dark, but now streaked with orange flame. A man tugged at his arm, looked into his face, asked if he knew what was burning, and for a moment he felt a surge of exhilaration at being noticed. Then an image of Rose, mouth open in a scream, shocked him into trembling reality.
SIXTEEN
It was so nice to be away from Harold that Rose couldn’t stop smiling. She felt a touch bad about it seeing he’d been so good to her, driving her across the wilds of America, providing food and all that, but she couldn’t help it. In a sense, she was doing him a favour—he was only being so obliging because he was lonely and needed someone to fill his life. She’d thought that without Harold at her side, Dr. Wheeler would start coming back to her, but he didn’t, no matter how hard she concen trated. It might have something to do with her being out of cigarettes. Walking beneath the dripping trees, she searched for a tobacco store.
She was standing outside a bar, digging into her pockets, when she realised she’d left her purse behind. She couldn’t go back for it in case Harold underwent a change of heart and wouldn’t allow her out of his sight again. Dismayed, she threaded her way between the umbrella-covered pedestrians, wondering whether she dared shoplift. Twice last year, caught redhanded, she’d struck the assistants as so childlike, so full of remorse, that they’d let her off, and on a third occasion, spinning a sad story about a cancer-stricken father desperate for a last smoke, the man behind the counter had given her a packet for nothing. But that was in England and attitudes were different in the States.
She was staring into the crowded interior of a café, rain flat tening her hair, when she saw a man in a sports shirt striking a match. All the other tables were occupied, but he was alone, facing two empty seats. Remembering what she’d seen Mother do in Marshall’s tea rooms in Southport, she entered and stood beside him, apparently intent on studying the menu chalked up on the wall behind the counter. She’d been assured that such an approach never failed, as long as the right bloke was chosen—but then Mother had only been pining for conversation.
Turning, she bumped against the man’s chair and, exag
gerating her English accent, apologised profusely. It worked and she was invited to sit down. In spite of her drowned appearance she could tell she excited him; being old and hairy, he was obviously used to women giving him the cold shoulder. He asked if he could buy her a drink and she said yes, a whisky, just a small one. Then he offered her a smoke. Rose confessed she wasn’t all that keen on the habit, but she’d have one to keep him company. He had a large medal dan gling from a chain round his neck, but as he was constantly fingering it she couldn’t see what it represented.
The man’s name was Walter Fedler and he owned race horses. He seemed to be made of hair. It waved over his head, growing down to the tips of his ears; eyebrows, lashes, cheek bones, everything was dark and quivering with black wisps. He was here to meet a guy who wanted to buy a two-year-old mare. He himself hadn’t got one at the moment, but he knew where he could find one. He’d met this guy by accident in Los Angeles last week, when his truck was waiting at the lights on Wilshire Boulevard. He was on the sidewalk talking to an older man, and as the lights began to change he held up a hand and asked if he could hitch a ride to the Plaza Hotel.
‘We talked about him being a jockey and having been born in Jordan, which was kind of coincidental seeing me and the wife are planning a holiday in Jerusalem. When he said he wanted to buy a mare I told him I could find him one for maybe three hundred and fifty dollars and he said three hundred was his limit.’
‘This is awfully interesting,’ Rose said, ‘though for some reason it’s making me want to smoke.’ He handed her another one instantly.
Pleased at her involvement, Mr. Fedler continued his mono logue. He knew all about horses because he’d worked as a stablehand as a boy. Then he’d drummed with the Tommy Dorsey Band, only he’d had to pack it in owing to his wrists swelling up from all that thumping.
The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress Page 13