The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress (5 page)

That night she'd come back from the shore, he'd been sitting in the dark listening to the Saturday night play. He'd wedged the blue satin cushion on the floor beneath the window, in case of sabotage to the wireless balanced on the narrow shelf above. There was an aerial strung between the house wall and next door's fence, and often Mother forgot what the wire was for and slung the string mat over it before washing out the scullery. Then the wireless would leap off the ledge and Father, ranting and raving, would get out the sticky tape. She was pushing past his chair to go into the hall when he said, aping surprise, Good heavens! If it isn't the Constant Nymph. She replied, coldly enough, Could be . . . you never know who'll pop in, and was turning the handle of the door when he sat upright and said, Wait on, I want a word. She slouched against the door and avoided looking at him; he was wearing his Home Guard beret. I've been thinking, Rose, he said, what to get you for your birthday. Is there anything you really want? She said, Not really, which was a lie. She would have liked a watch with a strap made of crocodile skin.

Harold said, ‘Wheeler was very keen on Paris. He even talked of us both going there some day. He'd once lived for a year in a room in the rue Jacob. Did he ever talk of Paris to you?'

Your mother, Father said, and cleared his throat as though the word had caused an irritation, mentioned a charm bracelet. That was last year, she told him. I'm off charm bracelets now. Well, give it a thought, he said. Humiliated, he leaned forward and kicked the coals into flame.

‘He was a great man for firing the imagination,' said Harold. ‘Not good, however, at following things through. All sound and no impact.'

The blast of a gunshot followed her down the hall, then a thin scream. Someone always died in the Saturday play, and never from natural causes. She hadn't bothered going into Mother's room to say goodnight. She wouldn't be back yet. She was down at the railway station reading her library book by the fire in the waiting room; it was where she went every night until Father returned to normal.

Rose went to bed before Washington Harold. From the trees beyond came the sound of barking. Bernard and Polly had a boxer dog, and as she sank into sleep it leapt up to lick her hand.

At some hour in the darkness she was conscious of Harold patting her back; deep down she knew that he wasn't trying to wake her, simply imitating her heartbeat to be of comfort.

 

 

 

 

 

T
hey were driving along a deserted highway some miles beyond Poughkeepsie when Harold became aware of a rattling sound. It wasn't thunderous, more like dice being shaken. He couldn't locate where it came from and prodded Rose to find out if she too could hear it. As usual she was slumped in her seat, eyes hidden behind her sunglasses.

‘Hear what?' she asked.

‘Something rattling . . . or shaking.'

‘I wasn't listening . . . I've been trying to remember a poem.'

He applied the brakes and climbed out to look under the hood. He could see nothing wrong save for a weak spiral of steam, but then he knew little about engines.

As soon as he drove on the rattling began again. ‘Can't you hear it now?' he demanded.

‘No,' Rose said. ‘It's possibly an interior disorder . . . in you, I mean. Or maybe a fly has flown into your ear. It happened to me once, but it was a wasp.'

He told himself that if he wanted to avoid slapping her he must bear in mind that he was dealing with a retard. The sun was now at its height and there was no breeze to cool his face. Sweat ran down his forehead. Seeing a blur of trees on the horizon he increased his speed; the rattling increased in volume. Half an hour later he drew into the shadows of a wood.

‘Before him like a blood-red flag, the bright flamingoes flew,' Rose intoned as she stepped out after him.

He unlocked the back of the camper and climbed inside to examine its contents. Everything appeared secure. Out of breath, he lay on his stomach, chin resting on his folded arms, watching Rose as she lolled against a pine tree, a cigarette between her fingers, hair clinging damply to her neck. At last he said, ‘You must have heard something? You did, didn't you?' As always when he wished to assert himself, his tone of voice was plaintive.

‘Yes,' she replied, ‘I did. But vans always rattle. Besides, I knew you were getting upset.'

Any day now, he thought, he'd show her what upset really meant. Soon after, the heat must have put him to sleep. When he woke it was almost dark, but that was because the mosquito net had been lowered to protect him from the sun. It was considerate of Rose to have done that.

They were passing through the village of Rhinebeck when she shouted for him to stop. Harold thought she'd noticed the Victorian-style houses, but she said she'd spotted a church and that she felt like praying. Bemused, he watched her running back down the sidewalk.

The night before, he'd commented on the way she drummed her fingers on her knees when listening to the radio and she'd said she'd been good at playing the piano, until her mother had battered her knuckles with a spoon whenever she struck a wrong note. That, he'd said, sure was a dumb way to encourage a love of music, and she'd retorted that piano lessons cost a lot of money, and anyway she preferred the ukulele. He couldn't make out her attitude to her mother, or to anyone else for that matter. Later, she came out with a confusing story about being off school for a week and how, by way of excuse, she'd told Miss Albright, her teacher, that there'd been a tragedy in the family, that her mother had committed suicide. ‘Oh God,' he'd cried, the insect bite on his cheek flaring up and his heart missing a beat. And then, seeing the expression on his face, she'd said that her mother hadn't done any such thing and that she'd fibbed on account of Miss Albright having just lost her sweetheart in the Battle of Britain. ‘Something,' she said, ‘was needed to take her mind off things.'

He wanted to tell Rose she needed a psychiatrist, but the wine had addled him. When he got into bed he'd tried to wake her by tapping her back. He would have climbed on top of her, more out of spite than desire, but the crackle of burning wood distracted him. It wasn't wise to leave the fire unattended.

When Rose returned from the church, he foolishly asked if she was religious and she snapped that she could be if the place was right. He didn't understand what she meant until she moaned about the absence of candles and proper statues. He was about to remind her that such fripperies had nothing to do with belief, but thought better of it.

Stopping the camper on the outskirts of Corinth he sat in silence, tapping the steering wheel with his fist. He'd visited the town once before, as a child. He had no pictorial memories of the place, merely sounds, that of raised voices accompanying an abrupt departure from a house as the sun was climbing to destroy the darkness.

Presently Rose nudged his arm. She asked if he'd lost his way. He told her that his stepfather's sister had once lived nearby. ‘There was an argument,' he said. ‘I was asleep. Back then, I didn't understand what it was about.'

Rose asked if he'd been frightened, shaken from his bed without explanation. She herself, she said, had spent most of her childhood crouched on the stairs listening to her parents calling each other names. ‘It was scary,' she said, ‘but it made me strong.'

He couldn't agree with her. ‘This aunt was six foot,' he confided, ‘with eyes the colour of steel.'

‘So what?' she replied.

‘It shattered me,' he blurted, and instantly regretted his choice of words. He didn't want her to think of him as a man in pieces.

Chip Webster's house was on a tree-lined street with white flowers wilting on the porch. Next door, a woman with red hair stood on tiptoe pruning a rose bush. Harold sat for a long time, staring at a dog sniffing at a newspaper on the sloping lawn. For once, Rose kept her mouth shut. Minutes passed, and then the door opened and a man sprinted down the steps and approached the mailbox. He was barefooted and wearing nothing but a bathrobe. His neighbour nodded at him and he shouted something, at which she clicked her fingers to entice the dog back into her house. It took no notice.

‘That's him,' Harold said, and stayed put.

‘It would be best,' said Rose, ‘if you stopped thinking of how it used to be and just concentrated on the now.'

She was right, of course, but then she didn't know about his particular past. ‘Stay here,' he said, and climbed out.

Chip Webster was about to slam the door behind him when Harold mounted the steps. Chip said, ‘Long time no see,' and added, looking at the camper, ‘bring her in.' It was obvious Jesse Shaefer had telephoned ahead.

Reluctantly, he beckoned for Rose to follow. She bounded onto the sidewalk, flinging her raincoat behind her, breasts jiggling.

The front room needed a coat of paint. Damp mutilated the left-hand wall. Above the mantel of the open door, leading onto a back porch, hung an enlarged photograph, its frame garlanded with long-dead flowers. There were two plates on the table, one messy with the remains of a meal, and a torn loaf next to a joint of meat perilously close to a ginger cat slurping liquid from a soup bowl. A woman sat on the stairs, rocking backwards and forwards; she was either humming or sobbing and wore men's pyjamas. The big toes of her bare feet were painted scarlet. Harold made a move towards her, from politeness, but her eyes, outlined in smeared mascara, were full of hostility.

Webster didn't bother to introduce her, just came out with the usual remarks: pleasant journey, changeable weather, how they were all getting older. Looking at him, Harold could see little truth in that last observation. Webster's hair was as dark as it had always been, his gaze as penetrating. He showed no signs of unease at this sudden, if forewarned, visitation. When he sat down, his bathrobe didn't quite cover the bulge of his testicles. A man so sure of himself, reasoned Harold, was incapable of feeling exposed.

From day one, Webster had known what Wheeler was up to, had lied on his behalf. Once, coming out of a bar in downtown Washington the worse for drink, he'd gone halfway to spelling out what was happening. But then, despite prodding, he'd clammed up. Later, it became obvious that he'd been a willing go-between, had even allowed his address to be used for letters. Worse, when that final act of abandonment was attempted, it was Webster who was informed of its awful conclusion.

Webster and Rose hit it off immediately. He told her to help herself to food; twice, stepping over the humming woman, he went upstairs, first to fetch a bottle of wine, then a bottleopener. He mustn't have been concentrating because there was a corkscrew next to the bread.

Rose hacked at the meat and tugged clumps from the loaf as though she was starving. They had stopped an hour before in order to eat, but she'd insisted the piece of fried bread she'd consumed earlier was quite sufficient. When she'd gobbled herself to a halt she took one of Webster's cigarettes and they both sat there, blowing smoke at the stained ceiling. The cat had taken a fancy to her; it curled round her shoulder, one paw against her throat. Once again, as in days gone by, Harold felt he was invisible.

Webster asked Rose if she'd found the journey across the state exciting, stimulating. She didn't lie. She said she wasn't interested in landscapes or towns, that she hadn't noticed where she was, only paid attention to what was going on in her head. She'd been trying to recall a piece of poetry she'd once learned, about a coloured man who was having a dream of the life he'd led before becoming a slave; Webster grimaced, but she didn't notice. She did remember passing through a place with houses outlined in fairy lights, like it was Christmas, and hadn't seen the point of that, seeing it was summer. Webster thumped the table with his fist and shouted she was right . . . she was right. He struck so violently that the cat leapt off Rose and fled in terror. Suddenly the woman on the stairs laughed, shrill as glass breaking.

For a moment no one spoke, then Webster got up from the table and hauling the woman to her feet propelled her up the stairs.

‘Trouble at mill,' whispered Rose obtusely.

Harold studied the photograph within the faded flowers. It portrayed Bud Holland, Webster, Bob Maitland and Jesse Shaefer kneeling, youthfully grinning, on a baseball pitch. He himself, as always, stood in the background, face bereft of expression.

‘Are you in that?' Rose asked.

‘Not that you'd notice,' he said, and walked out onto the porch. Ahead of him, across a wooden fence, a small boy encased in diamond sunlight knelt beside a toy truck. A little girl skipped towards him carrying a bucket and, tripping, sloshed water over the boy's knees. He jumped up and shoved her to the ground; face crumpled, she let out a wail of despair.

Hearing voices behind him Harold went indoors. Suddenly he knew it wouldn't do any good to stir up the past, certainly not in front of Rose. Nothing would bring Dollie back.

Rose was sitting at the table, gazing up at Webster, mouth open. He was squeezing her shoulder and looking serious. Harold said, ‘Everything all right?'

‘Nothing I can't handle,' said Webster.

Small talk followed, mostly about the route they should take towards Saratoga Springs, and then Rose mentioned that the van was making a funny noise. Webster offered to take a look at the engine. Harold protested that it wasn't necessary, that he'd find a gas station, but already Webster was opening the door.

The dog was still on the lawn, scrabbling at the grass with its paws. Head under the hood of the camper, Webster said, ‘Shaefer's worried about you, you know.'

‘He's a good friend,' Harold replied.

‘We both think you're a fool to go to Wanakena. It won't solve anything.'

‘So what?' he said, kicking the gravel and wishing it was Webster.

‘Have you forgotten what happened when Bud took on his Pa?'

Harold did remember. Bud had been left a large sum of money by his mother. His father had contested the will on the grounds that his son was too young for such wealth and would probably drink himself into the grave. Bud won. His father, hopelessly in debt, threw himself from the twenty-ninth floor of the SunLife Insurance building. After that Bud drank like a fish.

Harold said, ‘I have to see Wheeler.'

‘It won't do no good.'

‘Lots of things don't do no good,' he retorted. ‘Including the part you played.'

Webster shot up and slammed the hood down. ‘Anyone else,' he shouted, ‘unless fucking blind and deaf would have known what was going on.'

‘You were my friend too,' Harold said, and heard the whine in his voice. The dog bounded towards them, barking.

‘Fuck off,' bawled Webster; he wasn't talking to the dog. Seizing Harold by the shoulders he sent him sprawling. A bunch of keys jerked onto the grass.

What happened next was embarrassing. Rose ran down the steps and, enfolding him in her arms, shouted at Webster to go away. Her lips were on his cheek, breath musky with tobacco smoke. She wriggled two fingers behind his ear, scrabbling at his skin as though it was the cat she held. Cradled there, Harold reminded himself that women were programmed to show sympathy, not rationally, merely from need.

After a conciliatory handshake with Webster, he strode towards the camper, followed almost immediately by a hasty return and an undignified crawl on all fours in search of the spilled keys.