Harry Doing Good

by Canaway, W. H.

  ‘Wow,’ the stranger said. ‘I certainly appreciate this.’

  No one answered. Harry engaged gear and the Kombi moved off. Harry thought, Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. We’ve picked him up and that’s that. Sudden impulses. Limping, he was. No harm giving him a lift as long as he behaves himself. No smoking pot, and that.

  The stranger said, ‘My name’s Ray. Uh…?’

  Simon made the introductions, ending, ‘…And that’s Harry.’

  Ray looked at the broad, stolid shoulders above the driving seat, the hairless neck, the crop of short brown hair. Without turning, Harry barked, ‘Where you come from?’

  Ray said, ‘Ah, London. Before that, Tangier, and Tehran, and Katmandu.’

  Cheryl’s eyes opened wide, but Harry merely said, ‘No, I mean in America.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ray said. ‘Well, I was raised in Denver, Colorado. Then we moved to Venice: Venice, California. It’s a beach town, kind of a crummy place. I dropped out, but fast.’

  ‘You what?’ Harry asked, taking his foot off the throttle.

  ‘I mean, I couldn’t take it. All the guys I knew were dropping acid or speed or something, zonked out of their skulls. I mean, what can you do, man, if every guy you know is permanently wasted?’

  Harry said, ‘You mean they were taking drugs and that?’

  ‘Yessir, I surely do. So I just dropped out.’

  Harry spent some time pondering on this strange state of affairs. In his book, a dropout by definition dropped into drug-taking, not the other way round. However, he put his foot back on the throttle and picked up to forty miles an hour once again. The chap was evidently just wandering round the globe without a job, but he didn’t take drugs for all his long hair and beads and things. And there was the disability. But for the disability, he would never have stopped at all. Best to suspend judgment for a bit. The chap got in, and by the same token, he could ruddy well get out if need be.

  ‘I believe that experience should be taken straight,’ Ray said earnestly to Cheryl. ‘That way it can be analysed and organised into evaluation of upcoming experience.’

  Cheryl nodded, understanding hardly anything except the exciting impact of this stranger, who spoke English words which you sometimes couldn’t fit together into sense.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘That’s just what I think.’

  ‘It’s how I solved my identity crisis.’ Ray addressed Harry: ‘What do you think, sir?’

  ‘Identity crisis? I haven’t got an identity crisis,’ Harry said.

  ‘Surely not. But it’s different with young people.’

  Harry bristled, while Peter and Simon and the girls began to wonder. They had never considered Harry in any other light than that of older friend: older in years, certainly, but in no way essentially different from themselves except in the realisation of potentialities which they wanted to realise too — strength, goodness and kindness, a sort of loving curiosity about the country; a sense of fun. But age?

  Harry said, ‘For heaven’s sake, I’m not an old man. What do you think you’re talking about?’

  Linda’s eyes met Ray’s, and just for one moment she felt herself about to exchange with him some sign of amused complicity: a nudge or a grin. She stopped herself quickly from this betrayal, ashamed and perturbed by having begun to contemplate it. She glanced at the others. Ann was frowning, Cheryl leaning forward with real or simulated interest (but Ann didn’t really think that Cheryl understood much of what was going on), Simon looking blank. Peter sat facing forward staunchly, his expression hidden. Linda felt a sudden resentment of this stranger. What right had he to butt in on their holiday, threatening to invade the circle of the LYF?

  She said to him, ‘We’ve given you a lift and we aren’t asking you to pay for it. At least you could sit quiet instead of sounding off all the time.’

  Harry said, ‘Oh, let him talk if he wants to. He’s been standing by the road all by himself. Let him talk.’

  That’ll put him in his place, Harry thought: we won’t get a word out of him now. But to his surprise and annoyance, Ray simply said, ‘Why, thanks,’ and started an account of his travels. Simon and the girls showed interest and curiosity, since none of them had so much as left the British Isles, and Harry overheard it all with prickling annoyance. That Ray was certainly belting it out, interrupted by exclamations, gasps, giggles: the lot. He was holding the stage, that Ray.

  Harry said to him loudly, ‘Know what we are?’

  Ray broke off his description of the carved projecting balconies of Katmandu, and said politely, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t read you?’

  Harry thought, What does he think I am, a book? and said, ‘I said, do you know what we are? What we call ourselves. The LYF, that’s what we call ourselves.’

  ‘LYF?’

  ‘It’s like a club, see? Ell, wy, eff.’

  ‘Sure,’ Ray said. ‘Like phi beta kappa.’

  Peter said, ‘That’s some university thing you have. I saw a picture where they had that. Funny how you get these foreign initials like that.’

  ‘LYF isn’t foreign,’ said Cheryl.

  Ray was interested.

  ‘So what does it mean?’

  Harry said sharply, ‘Never you mind what it means. That’s between us lot, and it’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Okay, I’m not about to pry. I just think it’s interesting, is all. Lyf means “life” in Middle English — you know, like Chaucer wrote in The Canterbury Tales. You spell it the same.’

  ‘Go on,’ Harry said, intrigued despite himself. ‘Life?’

  ‘Sure. Does that have any relevance to your thing? To this LYF thing? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’

  Harry said, ‘We’ve never thought about it because we didn’t know. And we’ll have to think it over, talk about it. But I must say, you do surprise me — knowing Middle English, whatever that is. I’d never even heard of Middle English.’

  Ann said, ‘I have, at school. It’s what happened after Old English, and before Modern English like we speak.’

  ‘Right,’ Ray said. ‘I don’t know all that much, but I had two years’ college, and I studied literature. I know enough to know your LYF could mean “life”.’

  ‘Well,’ Cheryl said, ‘fancy that! Here you are, a perfect stranger, and you come along and tell us that. We’d never have known if it hadn’t been for you!’

  Ray looked thoughtful, working over what Cheryl had said, perhaps looking for hidden sarcasms.

  Linda said to him, ‘It’s all right. She means what she says, Cheryl does. And I think it’s great.’ She leaned over to Harry.

  ‘Harry, can we tell him?’

  ‘There isn’t any point,’ Harry said. ‘What is it to him? We’ve never told anybody else about it, so why start now?’

  Ann said, ‘Go on, Harry. Nobody just walked in and told us that, but he did.’

  Harry said, ‘No.’

  Simon had been listening quietly. Now he tapped Ray on the shoulder and said, ‘Look, Ray. Do you believe in loyalty, youth, and friendship?’

  ‘Simon!’ Harry said in a loud voice. ‘I said no.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Simon said. ‘But I’m just asking him that one question… Ray?’

  Ray nodded emphatically and said, ‘I certainly do.’

  ‘Then that’s all you need to know,’ Simon said. ‘We believe in them too.’

  ‘Okay, then, no sweat. I’ll say yes to life,’ Ray said with a pleasant smile and a glint of brilliant teeth, captivating the young ones and leaving Harry without a leg to stand on. And as he drove, Harry began to think that perhaps he had been needlessly severe. This young American looked and dressed like some drug-sodden hippy, but he didn’t seem to think like one, or like Harry’s idea of one. He ought to be persuaded to settle down and take a job, like the LYF — with the exception of Simon, who understandably found it difficult to hold down a job once people learned about his malady. Mind you, this Ray seemed a bit too brigh
t for his own good, but he was American, after all, and you had to make allowances. Soon he would drop off, or out, of the Kombi, and that would be the last they’d see of him: a brief if intriguing and piquant interlude on their path to adventure.

  *

  In the early afternoon they entered a gloomy valley, flanked claustrophobically by great, bare crags. The valley floor was seamed with rivulets among rough pasture and reeds, and thin white threads of water hung from the shoulders of the jagged peaks which rose into cloud. Ray was puzzled when he was told that these bare and forbidding towers were only upwards of three thousand feet high. Raised in mountain country and accustomed to the vast sweep and scale of American mountain horizons, he found these different and fascinating, and said so.

  Harry said, ‘That’s where we’re going,’ pointing upward and ahead. ‘Up on to a big plateau.’ He added defensively, ‘At least, you wouldn’t call it big, but we think it is.’

  ‘It looks like nowhere on earth,’ Ray said. ‘I’ve seen the Himalayas, and they’re bigger than the Rockies, but these are so small, and yet so… I don’t know.’

  ‘Deadly,’ Peter said. ‘At three thousand feet in winter, you’re in the Arctic. Even now we could have snow when we get up on top of the plateau.’

  ‘Gee.’

  Harry was thinking. For the past hour he had been listening to Ray, and had found him pleasant and easy in his manners. He had come to the conclusion that what Ray needed was some exposure to the ways of the LYF. It would do him all the good in the world to spend a little more time in the healthy atmosphere of their circle. He had said nothing yet, but had determined to invite Ray to spend a couple of nights with them before resuming his journey to wherever he was bound. They had had a small amount of initial misunderstanding, but that was to be expected when two similar, but very different, cultures touched however evanescently. Two or three nights and days might make a world of difference to Ray, Harry thought. He might even go back home and talk about the LYF…

  This started a spellbinding vein of speculation and fantasy in which the LYF grew from its little beginnings into a world-wide, supranational organisation, with clubs in every town, all over the place. They might even put up statues to him, with inscriptions and all: Henry Eckington, founder of LYF. But then he brought himself up short. That sort of thinking wouldn’t do. Go on like that and you’d end up like Hitler or one of that sort. He stopped the Kombi where a side road led up to the right, and said to Ray, ‘Listen, Ray. We turn off the main road here. What are your plans?’

  Ray said, ‘My granma was Irish. I thought I’d get to Holyhead and then over to Ireland, bum around over there a little, you know, like that might be kind of a fun scene.’

  ‘In a hurry, are you?’

  ‘Why, no. I’m not going to a fire. Not going to Northern Ireland either. I’ll just stay in the south, away from your little private family quarrels.’

  Harry said, ‘As far as I’m concerned they can stick a dirty great outboard motor on that island and shift it over to New York harbour, but that is by the way. What I was going to say was this: how would you like to come up there with us? Just for a night, kind of thing.’

  Excited, Cheryl said, ‘Yes, why not? Go on, Ray, tell him you’ll do it.’

  Peter said, ‘We might find treasure.’

  ‘Treasure?’ Ray said. ‘There’s some treasure up there? You know there’s treasure?’

  Harry said, ‘No. We’re not certain, but there could be, easy. We’re going to have a look, anyhow.’

  He explained to Ray about the metal detector and the vanished Roman legion, while Ray looked at him with a new interest and the others urged Ray to join them. Not one of them consciously entertained the thought — and Harry least of all — that inside the Kombi Ray had dominated the group, whereas up on the plateau he might well prove a fish out of water, in need of their help and care.

  Linda said, with a glance at Harry to see how he would react. ‘We might make you a temporary member, if Harry agrees. Of LYF, I mean.’

  Ray said, ‘Uh, well, that’s a private thing. Guess I’ll take a rain check.’

  ‘I think that’s a lovely idea,’ said Ann, misunderstanding.

  Harry thought, Give them an inch and they take a yard. But what’s the odds when you reckon it all up? If the LYF were to grow and prosper — with none of that Hitler nonsense, mind — this was how they would have to begin. See how the lad shaped up, and if all went well then he could leave as a full member and start an LYF group over in the States. He suddenly felt elated and expansive, quite the old Harry, whereas during the past couple of hours he had suffered occasional qualms; nothing you could put your finger on, just something in the air. He decided.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said to Ray. ‘Come with us as a temporary member. What do you say?’

  Ray said, ‘Okay, and thanks. But tell me one thing, huh?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘This LYF. What does it really stand for?’

  ‘Why, Simon as good as told you. The Loyal Young Friends. That’s who we are.’

  Ray stared.

  Harry said, ‘Look, you qualify. Understand that, and it’s half the battle.’

  And Ray thought, Jesus, what have I got myself into now? Loyalty, youth, and friendship, okay; but the Loyal Young Friends! Holy Jesus, this is unbelievable.

  *

  Harry took the Kombi up the narrow side road, which twisted and climbed; they splashed through a ford, then met the same stream almost immediately. A few hundred yards farther on, beyond one of the innumerable bends, they came to a little clearing, and Harry stopped the vehicle, while they all stared. In the clearing a big truck was parked beneath an old aerial ropeway, which snaked up out of sight over the bracken and heather and bilberry shrubs, among the bare outcrops of rock. The truck had a sign painted on its sides:

  FARMFRESH

  OVEN-READY CHICKENS

  ‘Good job we didn’t meet that thing on the road,’ Harry said.

  Peter said, ‘What’s it doing here? It’s new, or almost. Who would put it in a place like this?’

  ‘I know,’ Harry said. ‘Think it out, that’s all you’ve got to do. Where’s the driver and his mate? Up the hill, having a nice little walk? No, they’ll be in that pub we passed a couple of miles back on the main road, having a nice pint or two. The truck’s right out of the way, they’ll have a good old afternoon session and an evening one as well, and tomorrow they’ll do a day and a half’s work to make up for it.’

  Simon said, ‘Oh, and I was thinking they were out after wild chickens.’

  As Harry started the Kombi and drove on, Ray said, ‘We see any wild chickens, I’m ready for them.’

  If any of the others thought at all of this remark, they must have taken it as a reference to Ray’s appetite; at all events, nobody commented on it. Eventually Harry pulled off the road, stopped the Kombi again, and switched off the ignition.

  ‘This is where the bus stops,’ he said. ‘Now break out the old cider, quick, somebody. I’ve got a thirst like a whole squadron of camels.’

  They all got out of the Kombi and stretched their legs, then Peter and Simon fetched mugs, and a gallon container of cider.

  ‘Are we going up there today?’ asked Ray, gesturing into the air with his mug.

  Harry said, ‘No. It’s too late. We’ll get an early night in, and make an early start in the morning. This is Base Camp, see? Tomorrow we’ll take up enough food and stuff to last three days, and then on Tuesday morning I’ll come down with somebody else and we’ll have to go shopping for more supplies.’

  ‘And post my card,’ Peter said. ‘I’d forgotten all about it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll do that. Don’t you give it another thought.’

  *

  The base camp was at an altitude of about 1,300 feet, high enough to be chilly at night, though there was little wind that day — just a slight updraught blowing towards the plateau and bringing to the campe
rs far-off traffic noise from the main road. Harry, Peter and Simon set up their one-man bivouac tents in the small clearing behind the Kombi, and were agreeably surprised when Ray produced a nylon pup tent from his rucksack: each had been wondering who would have to squeeze Ray in with him that night. Harry got to work with a little spade, dug a pit, and set up a latrine tent at a discreet distance from the sleeping quarters, then handed the spade to Peter. Peter dug the wet pit, passed the spade to Simon, who dug the dry pit, explaining to Ray what they were doing. Meanwhile the girls took out the camping gas stove, with two burners and a grill, and a big gas cylinder. They cooked ham, eggs and chips, then all sat down to the meal and washed it down with more cider.

  Ray had been wondering about the sexual relationship among the members of the LYF. There were three men and three girls, but try as he might, he could not hazard a guess at who would pair off with whom, except that he believed he had noticed glances of tender complicity passing between Peter and Ann. Perhaps he had been mistaken, though. In any event, if any relationships existed — and he could scarcely envisage their not existing — these British would be likely to conceal them for the duration of the American’s stay in their company. They were so square they were cubic, but kind of cool too. Unpredictable. For all he knew, they might begin to ball later on, AC-DC in any kind of permutation, or straight, or whatever, and they might invite him to join in. He felt he would like to score with the Cheryl chick, hand or no hand. And that reminded him. He sat down and fished in his rucksack, bringing out his built-up boot and changing it. Then he got up and walked almost normally round the clearing.

  ‘Great!’ he said, as the others watched.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Linda said. ‘Why didn’t you wear that before, down on the road?’

  Ray said, ‘Easy. The big sympathy scene. You see a gimp and you feel sorry for him, so you give him a ride and it gives you a lift, helping — ah, the halt and the lame.’

  Linda frowned and said, ‘You don’t feel that’s a bit dishonest, playing on people’s feelings like that?’

  ‘Hell, no. Just standing by the road trying to bum a ride is playing on people’s feelings. This thing, why, it’s like false teeth or something. You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.’