The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘I won’t be a moment,’ Rose said, and left the table. At the door she paused, tilting her head to catch the dying whine of the singing glass.

  The lobby of the Ambassador Hotel was panelled in dark wood set with mirrors. The lamps were lit and whichever way she turned she caught her reflection fleeing across glass. The dazzle obscured the crumpled state of her polka-dot dress.

  Yesterday, Washington Harold had booked them into a motel in Santa Monica to have a bath, only there wasn’t one, just a shower. She couldn’t abide showers; the water was either scalding or icy and standing up was a daft way to get washed. When he saw her emerge he’d said it was odd that her hair wasn’t wet and she’d said it dried very quickly. She knew he knew she was lying, but no longer cared. It wasn’t her fault they came from different backgrounds.

  There was an iron in the room and if Harold hadn’t been so impatient to get to his breakfast she might have attended to her dress. He’d ordered three eggs, a double portion of ham and a mound of fried potatoes. He cut up the ham and then did away with the knife and speared everything with a fork, the way children did. Although she was hungry she only asked for two slices of toast; she was determined not to cause him further expense.

  After breakfast they’d got into the camper again and drove to Malibu. It was the place where John Fury had last seen Dr. Wheeler. It was windy and the waves bounced towards the clouds. Harold changed into bathing trunks and trotted down to the gusty sea on tiptoe like a bandy ballet dancer. From a distance he looked less podgy, more in proportion with the sky. He hadn’t asked her if she would join him; by now he knew what her answer would be.

  The beach was deserted save for some children and three men, one of whom wore bathing shorts and proceeded to chase the shrieking youngsters across the sand; leapfrogging into the furled waves, they dipped and rose like skimmed pebbles. Dressed in city suits, the two onlookers paced up and down, passing each other, sentry fashion.

  Rose watched them rather than Harold; deep down she wished him drowned. Suddenly a wave spiralled up, sub­ merging one of the children, at which the suited men ran forward waving their arms and hollering. The buoyant adult plunged downward and scooped up the endangered water­ baby in one fist. Tossed on shore, the small figure was engulfed in a towel and slapped vigorously on the back. It wasn’t cuddled.

  When Rose, voice quivering, told Washington Harold what she’d seen, he said it didn’t do to focus on what might have happened, better to rejoice at a fortunate result. Most deaths, he opined, were accidental, even the vicious ones. He’d then spent some minutes, all the time energetically towelling him­ self, relating the fate of a child in Chicago who was in the habit of ringing doorbells and then running away. Mrs Fantano, a widow, had been subjected daily to this annoyance by a nine-­ year-old girl living in the apartment above. One teatime Mrs Fantano had lain in wait, and, opening the door the instant the buzzing sizzled the air, had seized the delinquent by the hair, at which the child turned blue in the face and expired. Terrified, Mrs Fantano had inserted a broom handle into the girl’s anus and dragged the body onto the fire-escape. She hadn’t known the offender had a weak heart.

  Rose would have liked to ask questions, but the word anus put her off. It was just like Harold not to refer to that part as a bottom.

  She was thinking about words while standing in the lobby of the hotel, in particular ‘Cocoanut Grove’, the name of the famous nightclub she’d been told had real palm trees growing between the tables and stuffed monkeys hanging from the branches. The interior had been used by James Cagney in the film Lady Killer. ‘I hate him,’ she said out loud, but she was thinking of Harold; she liked Cagney, even though he was undersized and frowned a lot.

  She asked a bellboy to show her the entrance to the club. There was a stout man shouting into a walkie-talkie outside the glass doors. ‘Please,’ Rose said, ‘I want to see the ceiling embedded with stars.’

  He said, ‘Come again?’

  ‘I’m from England,’ she elaborated. ‘I’ve just come to peep at the monkeys.’

  ‘No can do,’ he said, and turned his back on her.

  She retreated into the nearby powder room and attempted to comb her hair. The sea air that morning had made it sticky. She was tugging away when two women entered; one wore a cheeky boater encircled with a band of stars and stripes, the other clutched a bald baby. Posturing at the mirror, a licked finger moistening an eyebrow, the boater woman said, ‘I guess he’s home and dry, Connie,’ to which the other retorted, ‘It don’t do to get too confident. Time sure has a way of altering things.’ Wide-eyed, the baby stared at Rose, waiting for a smile of love. She turned away.

  When the women had gone she looked at her face in the mirror, at the tear balanced on her cheek. I won’t always be unhappy, she reassured herself, and flicked it into the basin. Soon Dr. Wheeler would take care of her, and then everything would be different.

  Washington Harold was no longer at the table when she returned to the Colonial Room. He was standing in a crowd of people massed outside the propped-open doors of the ball­ room. Above the noise of the banjos, voices were screaming, ‘We want Bobby . . .’ followed by tumultuous applause and the deafening shrill of whistles.

  John Fury joined her. He looked buoyant. ‘He’s in,’ he said. ‘Time for a new America.’

  Fury was a good man; it was he who had located Dr. Wheeler and confirmed that he was part of the Kennedy entourage. He’d even discovered that Wheeler had spent the previous night in the house of a film man called Frankenheimer, who was entertaining Robert Kennedy to dinner.

  The man in the yellow sweater had leapt onto a chair, the better to see over the heads at the door. Rose took her shoes off and did the same, and watched as a youngish man with floppy hair mounted the steps onto the stage. He patted the air with his hand in an attempt to quell the noise and spoke into the microphone, to little effect. The crowd screamed even louder. ‘You can’t hear,’ he shouted. ‘Can we get something that works . . . Can we . . .’ Now his voice became stronger, though he had to bellow to be heard above the continuing uproar. Often his words were lost.

  ‘What I think is . . . what I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis . . . the violence, the disen­ chantment with our society . . . the division, whether between black and white, between the poor and the . . . over the war in Vietnam . . . We are a great country, a compassionate . . . and I intend to make that my basis . . . we can start to work together.’

  Harold moved away from the door and gestured to her to get off the chair. She hadn’t the confidence to defy him. He held out a hand to help her, but she wouldn’t give him the sat­ isfaction. Without his beard he lacked authority. Abruptly, he told her to stay where she was and not to follow him. He had something important to do; he wouldn’t be long. Then he leaned close to John Fury and whispered something in his ear.

  She sat very still and watched him go. He turned back and clumsily patted her shoulder. He said, ‘You look really great in that dress. Did I tell you that?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘you didn’t.’

  ‘Really great,’ he repeated, and then, fingers piercing her arm, hissed, ‘I’m only doing what’s best. We’re all looking for something.’ Then he walked in the direction of the service doors to the left of the ballroom.

  ‘Or someone,’ she murmured. A star of blood, delicate as a snowflake, melted upon her upper lip.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Beryl Bainbridge was the author of seventeen novels. The Dressmaker, The Bottle Factory Outing, An Awfully Big Adventure, Every Man For Himself and Master Georgie were all finalists for the Booker Prize, and Every Man For Himself won the Whitbread Novel of the Year Prize. The Guardian includes The Bottle Factory Outing on their list of the 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. An Awfully Big Adventure was adapted for a film starring Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman.

  Beryl Bainbridge died in July 2010.

    Beryl Bainbridge, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress