“God!” She looked genuinely irritated. Touche, at last, he thought triumphantly, smiling to himself. She couldn’t take being denied.
♦
After dinner Bryant went back to the junior suite complaining of a headache. Henderson walked down another quarter of a mile corridor to the bar. It was called The Barbary Coast but for the life of him he could see no thematic reflection of this motif in the place’s wholly unremarkable decor. It was filled with grim curtain-wallers who were being entertained by a haggard country and western chanteuse seated at an electric organ on a small dais at the end of the room. Two bored waitresses in very short beige satin dresses ferried drinks to and fro.
Henderson sat at the bar, sipped at a large Scotch and thought about phoning Irene in an attempt to rebuild a few of the burnt bridges. Unaccountably, as he sat and drank, he found himself getting more and more dejected and heavy hearted. He looked suspiciously at his whisky. He felt an immense weariness of spirit descend on him, as if some deity had personally and unequivocally confirmed that all the follies and inexplicable cruelties of the world were man’s lot, and that attempts to ameliorate them were utterly vain and futile.
He looked around him. The curtain-wallers’ faces were slumped with a similar bitter wisdom. Was it something to do with the Scaggsville Motor Hotel itself, he asked himself? Some curse on the hapless building? Some maverick charge in its static electricity? He wondered if he had been drugged…Then he realized what the source of the universal tristesse was.
The haggard chanteuse had a repertoire consisting solely of the most morose country and western numbers in the songbook. She set her Japanese electric organ (thin as an ironing-board) to plangent, and sang heartrendingly of suicide, abortion, adultery, desertion, mental and physical cruelty, alcoholism and terminal illness. Her own face, pale and scored beneath dyed blue-black hair, seemed to testify to first hand experience of these various afflictions — but perhaps that was merely the side-effect of singing that type of song each evening.
The tune she was currently playing seemed vaguely familiar; a recent or current hit, Henderson thought. He listened to a verse.
Each gnat she cooked me a fan dinner,
Each gnat I throwed it on the floor,
Then I took my sailf to town,
Till the mornin’ come aroun’
Drinkin’, gamblin’ ‘n’ sleepin’ with some whore
She switched her machine to ‘soughing violins’ for the chorus (“I was the happiest, meanest, full-time, sigried-up sinner”) but Henderson decided that he’d had as much as he could take.
He walked down the endless corridors feeling markedly more happy with every step he took away from the mournful saloon. Some convention, he thought. He had heard they were usually an excuse for a riotous booze-up. The curtain-wallers would return home to their wives shriven and repentant.
He let himself quietly into his room. The lights were out, Bryant seemed to be asleep. He went softly into the bathroom. The basin area was scattered with pots and tubes, grips and make-up. Long fair hairs clung tenaciously to the wet enamel.
He confirmed that the door was locked and took off his clothes. His body had a yellowish whiteness under the lights. He swiftly checked out the crisis areas. His nipples, once neat buttons beneath a shading of chest hair, had grown into wide pink coarse teats. Always rather hefty, he had never worried unduly about putting on weight: he ate and drank as he wished and carried the usual penalty padding as a result. But now he had critical weight loss: his buttocks were disappearing. They were shrinking. His trouser seats, usually stretched and shiny, were now loose and flapping. He turned sideways and looked in the mirror. A good kilt-wearing arse, a Scottish girlfriend had once complimented him. If he wore a kilt now its rear hem would hang inches lower than its front — be brushing the backs of his calves. And, talking about legs, his legs were going bald. Normally covered in a springy furze, his legs, from the knee down, had gone smooth and shiny. And yet all this extra hair was sprouting from his ears and nostrils…He wondered if some backstreet trichologist would transplant his nasal and aural growth; re-sow it on the desert slopes of his shins.
He stepped into the shower. For getting on for thirty years he’d never considered his body. It did its job; it looked fair enough; its distribution of muscle and hair was unexceptionable. But now it was saying ‘hold on a moment’, ‘hang about, friend’. It was getting tired of staying in shape, it was getting clapped out, the first signs of four decades of wear and tear were manifesting themselves. It was getting old.
He plunged his head beneath the powerful jet of the shower, trying to forget. Even in the crummiest motel you got a decent shower. He remembered the shower he had had installed in his London flat. It had a weak, two-inch spread. It pattered feebly on one shoulder when you stood beneath it; it took five minutes to dampen your hair. Getting the temperature right required meticulous hairfine adjustments of the taps — you needed the touch of a safe-cracker.
After he had dried himself he wondered what to do about getting into bed. He normally slept naked but realized that, tonight, probity demanded he make a change. He pulled on his underpants and stepped quietly into the bedroom.
Bryant sat up in bed smoking, her bedside lamp on. She was wearing pale blue cotton pyjamas, monogrammed ‘B. W: Henderson stood there, suddenly conscious of the crammed codpiece of his Y-fronts, his hairless legs, his fat nipples. He slid into his bed between the crackling nylon sheets.
“You shouldn’t smoke in bed, you know,” he grumbled. “With the static in this place we could be vaporized in a white flash.”
Bryant ignored him.
“And you left the bathroom in a mess.”
“Mom wants you to call her, I phoned while you were out.”
“Oh. Right.” He felt pleased. He prodded New York. As he was waiting for Melissa to answer, Bryant leant forward to stub out her cigarette. As she stretched for the ashtray he got a clear view down the front of her pyjama top. Her small firm breasts with small, odd, domed nipples. He felt embarrassment and shock clog his throat.
Melissa answered.
“Melissa? It’s Henderson.” His mind skittered about. My God, he thought, my hands are shaking.
“Henderson, darling, thank you. It’s so kind of you. I really want you to know that I appreciate it, darling. I really do.”
“Don’t mention it.” So American: all this sincere gratitude for a returned call.
“Are you sure it’s not inconvenient?”
“No, no. Not at all. Quite the opposite.”
“God, you are wonderful. I’d forgotten. You lovely man, you. There aren’t many men who’d do this, I know. I want you back here quickly.”
Doubt began to seep through his body.
“Well, it’s not much—”
“Modesty. Come on, Mr Englishman. I love it! No, darling, I just wanted to tell you myself that I think it’s so kind of you to ask her. And you know it’ll be interesting for her too: see you at work, learn about—”
His scalp crawled with a horrible sick alarm as he suddenly realized what she was talking about. Melissa nattered on about how she’d phoned Grandma Wax and explained the new plans. Henderson turned and looked at Bryant. She had snuggled down in her bed and was smiling innocently at him. He felt a rush of loathing for this premature adult as he muttered assurances into the phone. He said goodbye.
“That is one of the most scheming, most disgraceful acts of…lying I have ever witnessed,” he began, his voice shaking with rage.
“God, Henderson, I won’t get in the way.”
“I don’t care, it’s pure bloody selfishness.”