He turned away from the view and paced unhappily about the room. Maybe he should get Melissa to summon Bryant home. Tell her that this mad Southern scientist was experimenting on her daughter in his ‘labrotory’…He sighed with exasperation. Then he realized he’d forgotten about Freeborn’s latest threat. He’d have to work on the amenable Shanda, make sure that he could phone whenever Freeborn was out of the way, and perhaps get her to relay any messages secretly to him. How typical of Loomis Gage not to allow a phone in his house! he thought angrily. It was precisely the sort of selfish affectation millionaires went in for…He told himself to calm down. He found he was still irritated by his encounter with the blind and mysterious Cora. It was lucky he was so pro-American, he reasoned, otherwise the Gage family would have given him serious grounds for a bit of Yank-bashing. But they weren’t Yanks, he realized, they were ‘Rebs’ or ‘Confeds’ or whatever they called themselves.
His complaints were interrupted by the sound of a car arriving. He wondered if it were Gage. But the blast of rock music that ensued some minutes later informed him that the driver had been Duane.
The noise forced him downstairs to the kitchen where Alma-May made him a processed cheese and gherkin sandwich for lunch. She professed ignorance to the two questions he asked of her, namely, where was Gage and when was he due back?
“Duane said your car had a flat this morning,” she said.
“I thought it was something like that.”
“Mr Gage told him to get it fixed.”
“Oh. I’m very grateful. Do you think he could put on the spare, if it’s not too much trouble?”
“I’ll tell him.”
Chapter Five
After lunch, Henderson realized there was nothing for it but to walk into Luxora Beach and post his letter. At least it was something to do.
At the front door he saw Shanda teetering around outside her mobile home on her high heels.
“Shanda,” he called softly, and went over.
“Hi. How’re y’all doin’?” She had both her hands pressed into the small of her back, her belly straining fiercely against the material of her smock. Henderson felt a little uncomfortable talking to someone who was so ostentatiously pregnant, but he persevered.
“Um, look, Shanda, I was going to ask, that’s to say I was wondering if you might just possibly see your way to doing me a little favour,” he began confidentially, but then stopped as he saw her eyes cloud with incomprehension.
“It’s my back,” she said slowly. “It’s killing me.”
Henderson pinched his nose. There was no alternative; he’d have to speak American otherwise they would be here for hours.
“Well, shucks,” he began again, trying to recall his Huckleberry Finn and Ring Lardner. “I reckon I jist plum done gone and forgit to ask you to do me a service, like, goshdarn it.” It was a little overdone, he admitted, but, like an orchestra tuning up, he had to get in key.
“Oh yeah?” Shanda’s look was uneasy and relieved at the same time, like a monoglot U.N. delegate whose malfunctioning translation machine has just been restored, only to hear news of a military coup back home.
“If’n you all done git some calls,” Henderson persevered, “could you all tell me? On the sly like?”
“Well…”
“I’d sure be mighty grateful.”
“OK. I guess.” She looked around. “I don’t know if Freeborn…” She frowned then smiled. “What the hell, he ain’t around much. He don’t tell me nothing, either. I’ll tell you when he’s away, so you can use the phone too.” She smiled again — conspiratorially — and rubbed the back of her neck with a hand.
“Thank you, Mam,” Henderson said. “Our l’il ol’ secret. Have a good day now.”
He walked off, rather impressed with his grasp of vernacular. Still, now at least the outside world would be able to make contact. One step in the right direction.
♦
It seemed surprisingly hot for April and during the trudge into town along the featureless lane he was obliged to remove first his tie and then his jacket. A mile or so up the road, Freeborn roared dustily past him in his big car, one hand high out of the window, his middle finger spearing the air. Henderson, checking instinctively that there were no witnesses, gave him a V-sign back. It all seemed a bit feeble and adolescent, but, as with Bryant, he found it no problem descending to Freeborn’s level.
Sweaty and not a little footsore he arrived some fifteen minutes later at the main street of Luxora Beach. In front of him was the railway line and beyond that the road. To his left was the shopping mall. The neon of the bar signs still burned palely in the afternoon air. The town was very quiet — in fact he could see no-one on the streets at all. Above the main street, strung on a wire cable, a set of traffic lights blinked redundantly. There were no cars to stop.
He crossed the railway and headed towards the wooden spire of the Baptist church. Down these side roads were small businesses and stores: Luxora Beach auto accessory, Luxora Beach agricultural wholesalers, electrical goods, Dr Tire, Luxora Beach Fertilizers — Herbert Hackett Last Jnr prop. “Real Manure”—Luxora Beach grain and seed merchants.
At the post office — not far from the church — a wooden building flying the Stars and Stripes, and below it the Stars and Bars, he posted his letter (express) to Irene. He noted the glass boothed public telephone outside it and wondered if he should try and call her again, but on reflection decided to let the letter do its work first.
He walked back to main street, business over. What an effort, he thought, just to post a letter. The afternoon sun was still beating down fiercely and there was still little sign of life. He stood in some shade on the raised wooden sidewalk and looked up and down the dusty road. Where am I? he thought. What am I doing in this place? He longed for a car or a lorry to drive through town. On the door of the shop next to him was a notice: “Closed Sunday. See you in church.”
He thought suddenly — illogically — of his father.
Perhaps it was because he felt as strange and out of place here as his father must have at times in the foetid jungles of Burma. From placid drizzling Hove to hot dangerous Burma…Henderson looked about him. He tried to imagine Arnold Dores standing beside him now. The thin man in his baggy trousers, his short oiled hair, his neat moustache. What would he say? What advice would he offer? Would he smile, and expose the unfortunate gap between his front teeth? “Now look, son, if I were you, I’d—” What? He exhaled. The fragile chimera of Arnold Dores disappeared.
A large maroon car started up in the parking lot in front of the mall. It drove slowly along before turning to bump across the railway tracks and wheel onto the main road. He saw that there were two girls in the front seat with blonde hair like Shanda’s and a lot of make-up. They cruised leisurely past him, staring at him with candid curiosity. They wore scant T — shirt tops, tight across their breasts. The car was battered and filthy. Old cigarette packs, magazines and handbooks were piled in a loose drift between the dashboard top and the windscreen. The car moved on slowly down the road; it seemed to trail a frisson of sexuality, like smoke — of the most tawdry and flashy sort, he conceded, but impressively potent for all that. Somewhere there was a life in Luxora Beach.
Intrigued, and smiling to himself he crossed the road. There is a look, he thought, watching the car disappear from sight, that is common to a huge proportion of American girls. It ran the gamut from Shanda to millionaires’ daughters. First there was the mane of hair or an attempt at a mane — blonde preferably, but not essential. Then there is a lot of mascara and all the rest: blusher, eye-shadow and lipstick (usually pink). And then something must glint or glisten on the head — earrings most commonly, but a necklace or hairslide would do. He added some more details to the archetype — pushed-up breasts, white strappy high-heeled shoes — as he headed for the Gage mansion road. Then he saw Beckman’s pickup parked in front of the bar with Bryant sitting alone in the front seat. He changed course.