1985 - Stars and bars (27 page)

‘What are you trying to
do
, Henderson?
God
. Bug off, will you?’

‘I thought—’

‘I don’t want to kiss you, Henderson. What makes you think I do? Why do you have to try and kiss me?’

He was glad the night hid his knotted, boiling face.

‘Jesus,’ he began. ‘Misinterp. Look, I…Christ.’

‘I like you, Henderson. You’re a nice guy. It’s a big asset. But I don’t want to make it with you.’

He swallowed. ‘A ghastly misunderstanding. Misreading. I got carried away. I’m terribly, terribly—’

‘Relax.’ Her voice was softer. ‘It’s no big deal. Now we know where we stand.’

He nodded wordlessly.

They set off again, walking up the road in silence. Cora gave a little chuckle and from time to time looked over at him. Fool, he said to himself, fool fool
fool FOOL
. They turned a corner and the house was in front of them. Lights shone from all the windows.

‘Looks like everybody’s home all of a sudden.’

They walked across the park to the front steps.

‘Listen, Cora,’ Henderson started, dry-throated, but was interrupted by the front door being flung violently open. It was Alma-May, weeping piteously.

‘Cora, baby! Cora, darlin’! Your Daddy’s dead, baby. Your Daddy’s dead!’

‘Y
our father promised me—we shook hands on it—just miputes,’ Henderson cleared his throat to rid his voice of the tremble, ‘just minutes before he…passed away—literally minutes—that Mulholland, Melhuish were to auction his pictures.’

Tuck you,’ Freeborn said. ‘You’re lying, you bastard. Jesus, you don’t expect me to believe this shit? You fuckin’ English dork!’

‘Mr Dores,’ Sereno said. ‘We have only your side of the story. Well, it’s not enough, I’m afraid.’

‘Look, I told Cora—’

‘He did,’ Cora said. ‘That’s true.’

‘So fuckin’ what? It’s just words. Ain’t no proof. I say we take Ben Sereno and Peter Gint’s offer now, ‘stead of waiting for some pissant faggot auction in New York.’

‘These people,’ Henderson said, with genuine anger, indicating the two gallery owners, ‘are total frauds. I wouldn’t trust them an inch.’

‘There’s no call for such accusations,’ Sereno said, quite untroubled by the slander.

‘Shut yo’ fuckin’ mouth,’ Freeborn said to Henderson, pointing a finger at him. ‘They’re my pictures now an’ I says they go to Sereno and Gint.’

‘One minute, Freeborn,’ Cora said. ‘There’s Daddy’s will. Beckman and I may have some say.’

‘I’ll go along with Freeborn,’ Beckman mumbled. ‘Just as long as I’ve got my labrotory.’

‘Anyway, that will ain’t read for two fuckin’ weeks.’

‘Look, do you think we might conduct this discussion without constant profanities?’ Henderson said.

‘Fuck yo’ ass, English shitbird!’

Freeborn, Beckman, Cora, Henderson, Sereno and Gint were in the sitting room. Across the hall in the dining room on the long table lay Loomis Gage, cold in his coffin.

Half an hour after Henderson had left him and Monika, Duane had returned to the house and had duly switched on his music. According to Beckman, who was passing through the hall, his father—wearing a dressing gown—had appeared at the top of the stairs and had bellowed furiously, ‘
Duane, turn that damn music down!
’ Then he had shuddered, gone white, twitched and fallen over. Duane came running out of his room, picked Gage up and carried him back to bed. Beckman, with rare spirit of diplomacy, drove Monika Cardew home and collected the local doctor. By the time they got back, Gage was dead, and Duane—who was sitting impassively beside the body—said it had happened only moments before. Freeborn, Sereno and Gint had returned from whatever carousing or plotting they had been engaged in five minutes prior to Henderson and Cora’s fateful arrival at the front steps.

All that night there had been a hectic traffic of doctors, undertakers and the—happily innocent—T. J. Cardew. Loomis Gage’s instructions had been for a quiet family funeral. There seemed no purpose in delaying further and the service was scheduled for the next afternoon, four thirty.

And here they all were, Henderson thought, bickering about the spoils with typically wicked speed. Talk about funeral baked meats furnishing forth marriage tables…He felt a shocked sadness at Gage’s sudden demise. The family—with the exception of Alma-May—seemed to have accepted it with easy stoicism. He had liked the sprightly old man, more than he had realized. He remembered their last conversation with regret: Gage had offered him his affection but he had been too reserved or too tramelled up in securing the paintings to respond. What had he said? ‘Thank you very much.’ He was disgusted with himself, but then that was always the way, he reflected bitterly, you always leave things too late. As for old Gage, it might have been more apt if he had died some minutes earlier in the arms of Monika Cardew—
petit mart
suddenly
grand
—rather than through the effort of shouting at a parasitic lout to turn his rock music down. But the ‘grand design’, he was aware, was very proficient when it came to faulty timing.

He felt too, along with his sadness, the bitter certainty of what he knew would be eventual defeat. Freeborn had assumed an air of swaggering authority, of the sort favoured by junior officers who have just led a successful
coup d’etat
. Cora alone could do nothing to counter her brother’s new sway; and the full effect of Beckman’s deluded craven apathy was more than apparent. He had been so close, he thought with a surge of harsh selfishness. If only Gage had died a few days later…

He slumped in his chair for a moment, the utter waste of all his efforts confronting him. He made one final desperate, futile try.

‘Mr Gage,’ he said seriously, mustering all his formality and gravitas. ‘Mr Sereno, Mr Gint. As far as I am concerned, Loomis Gage and I had made a binding agreement. If you proceed independently I have to warn you of potential legal—’

He leapt from his chair as Freeborn sprang across the room after him. Sereno, Gint and Beckman held him back.

‘You
say
you had an agreement,’ Sereno said coolly, once Freeborn’s lurid oaths had subdued.

‘There must have been,’ Cora said. ‘He told me. He wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise, would he?’

‘Did you witness any agreement?’ Sereno asked Cora, as Freeborn was resettled in his chair.

‘No.’ A glum, sidelong look at Henderson.

‘Did anyone witness it?’ Sereno asked.

‘No. But—’

‘You’re welcome to take us to court, Mr Dores,’ Sereno said. ‘But I don’t think you’ll get very far.’

They all looked at Henderson. He stood up.

‘You’re making a terrible mistake,’ was all he could think of to say.

The afternoon sun warmed the pates of the large crowd of mourners in Luxora Beach’s small, uncrowded cemetery. Henderson stood with the Gage family who were ranked behind the Reverend T.J. Cardew. Across the grave on the other side was a group of some forty or fifty local people. The Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars on the post office flagpole flew at half mast. The streets were empty, shops were closed, even the neon beer signs in the bar windows had been extinguished. Hender-son looked around for Bryant, but she didn’t appear to be present; neither was her beau or her future mother-in-law. Shanda had said she thought they were making their own way to the cemetery, but Alma-May had been so stricken with grief it wasn’t clear if she would have been able to stand the strain.

Henderson hadn’t felt like coming at all, but considered he owed it to old man Gage. He had been transported to the cemetery in a car containing Sereno, Gint, Cora and Shanda (Freeborn and Beckman were coming behind with the other pall-bearers) and had had to maintain the control over his disappointment and bitterness for another hour or so. Sereno had offered him his hand and said, ‘No hard feelings.’ Against his better wishes, Henderson had shaken it.

All around him now was the sound of discreet muffled lamentations as Loomis Gage’s body was strenuously lowered into the ground. Henderson looked dry-eyed at the cross atop the wooden spire of the Baptist church. Gall and wormwood, he thought, goats and monkeys. Someone up there is having fun at my expense. He tasted ashes in his mouth.

Then, as if in a dream, he heard his name being called. He looked around with alarm to discover he was the cynosure of all eyes. T.J. Cardew was pointing at him and talking in the loud overstressed voice preferred by preachers and soap-box orators.

‘…yes, Mr Henderson Dores, of London, England, was an inspiration to me. It was his words that came instantly to mind when I heard of the death of my dear friend Loomis Gage. His innocent and yet profound words. Tell them what you said, Henderson, tell our good friends, the good people gathered here today.’

Henderson took a frightened half-pace to the rear. What on earth is the man talking about? he asked himself in quickening panic. What was he meant to say? Should he fall on his knees perhaps? Dim memories of revivalist meetings capered through his mind. Play for time: cry ‘Hallelujah’?

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, fingers on the knot of his tie. ‘I don’t, um…’

‘Those simple words, Henderson, when we first met,’ Cardew prompted with a sad smile.

‘Oh.’ He racked his brains.

‘What you said to me—a question—at our first meeting. Remember? The question you asked me?’

‘Oh yes…Got you.’

‘Go on, Henderson. Repeat your question.’

‘How is Patch?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘How is Patch? That’s what I said. When we met.’

‘No, sir.’ A slight tautening of irritation sent Cardew’s smile momentarily awry. A mutter of curiosity passed through the crowd, like a cough in an auditorium.

‘I refer,’ Cardew continued, ‘to that simple and touching inquiry you made of me. ‘Tell me, T.J.,’ you said, ‘tell me, T.J. How do you explain the ‘Beach’ in Luxora Beach?’ Do you remember now, Henderson?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t actu—’

‘And I said,’ Cardew turned back to the crowd. ‘I said to Henderson. Henderson, I said, ‘Why, Henderson, I do not know, Henderson.’ And friends, I didn’t know. And yet
I’ve
lived among you now these last eleven years. And I thought of Henderson’s simple, childlike words—‘How do you explain the ‘Beach’ in Luxora Beach?’ when I was brought the news of my good and dear friend Loomis’s untimely sleep in the Lord. I thought, simple Henderson here, a visitor to our town, asks an obvious, very simple question, to which I cannot reply. And I bethought to myself, T.J., I said, T.J., how little we know of the good Lord’s will, how much we take unthinkingly for granted when a simple almost foolish question can reveal—’

‘Excuse me, TJ.’ A tall old cadaverous man held up his trembling hand. ‘But everybody knows why Luxora Beach is called Luxora Beach. It’s because the early settlers done planted a grove of beech saplings they’d brung from Europe. ‘Cept they all died the first summer-the saplings that is. It should be Luxora Beeches—B, E, E, C,H,E,S.’

‘Well thank you kindly, George, thank you. As I was saying, friends, Henderson’s childish, ignorant question—’

‘Hold on there one second, T.J.’ a plump red-faced man interjected. ‘George is wrong. See, time was, the Ockmulgokee river took a mighty swerve hereabouts and threw up a perfect crescent of white sand on the bank. When the first settlers arrived they found sand dollars on the beach. Now, Luxora was the name of the first mayor’s wife. The town used to be called Luxora’s Beach.’

‘Well, thank you, Willard Creed. Henderson’s thoughtless, stupid question—’

‘Willard Creed, that ain’t true, an’ you know it.’ A thin old lady with pale blue spectacles stepped forward shakily. She addressed her remarks to Henderson. ‘You see what happened was that the first trading posts here were set up by the Luxora Bleach company of Montgomery, Alabama in 1835. The store had a big sign up saying ‘Luxora Bleach’ and folks kinda like the sound of—’

‘THANK YOU, MY FRIENDS!’ yelled Cardew over the hot debate that had sprung up. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Amen.’

Henderson walked listlessly back through the town with Cora.

‘I think somehow Cardew blames me,’ Henderson said. ‘He refused to shake my hand after the service. He seemed terribly upset.’

‘I think that’s the kind of funeral my father would have enjoyed.’

‘Really?’ He looked at her. He dropped his voice. ‘Listen, Cora, I haven’t had a chance…I’m terribly sorry about last night…I got carried away.’

‘Eoh, don’t mention it,’ she said in her English accent.

‘Pride comes before a fall,’ he said, as they walked past the post office. ‘Better get it over with, I suppose.’ He paused by the phone box. ‘I wonder what Beeby will say?’

‘I want your resignation on my desk tomorrow morning,’ Beeby said in a tense furious voice. ‘How could you let me down in this way, Henderson? How could you?’ He slammed down the phone. Henderson gently replaced the receiver and stepped numbly out of the box.

‘How was it?’

He screwed up his eyes. ‘Pretty bad. He’s just fired me.’

‘My God! But it’s not your fault.’

‘Oh, he’ll come round. I hope. Just a bit steamed up at the moment.’

He was surprised at his comparative equanimity—until he realized it was false and that in reality he was in mild shock. Beeby had been beside himself, mad. Very badly let down, he had said, very, very, very disappointed. Henderson had never heard him speak with such icy purpose, not like his usual self at all.

They went over to the car. Sereno and Gint were in the front, Shanda crying softly in the back. Henderson slid in beside her. Cora liked to be next to a window so she could smoke.

‘A very moving service,’ Gint said softly, craning round.

Henderson patted Shanda’s shoulder and said, ‘There, there.’

They drove back to the Gage mansion in silence. Henderson suddenly felt oddly calm. Everything had gone so wrong that, for the first time in ages, he experienced some sort of certainty about the future. When all hopes are dashed, life becomes simply a matter of getting through the hours and days, he reasoned. With no ambitions or aspirations, a banal and docile survival is all that is required. Melissa outraged, Irene estranged, the pictures gone, jobless…all the various enterprises and schemes that had dominated his waking moments for the last few weeks were no more. Time stretched ahead for him empty and unalluring.