The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress (13 page)

 

 

 

 

I
t was so nice to be away from Harold that Rose couldn't stop smiling. She felt a touch bad about it seeing he'd been so good to her, driving her across the wilds of America, providing food and all that, but she couldn't help it. In a sense, she was doing him a favour—he was only being so obliging because he was lonely and needed someone to fill his life. She'd thought that without Harold at her side, Dr. Wheeler would start coming back to her, but he didn't, no matter how hard she concen­ trated. It might have something to do with her being out of cigarettes. Walking beneath the dripping trees, she searched for a tobacco store.

She was standing outside a bar, digging into her pockets, when she realised she'd left her purse behind. She couldn't go back for it in case Harold underwent a change of heart and wouldn't allow her out of his sight again. Dismayed, she threaded her way between the umbrella-covered pedestrians, wondering whether she dared shoplift. Twice last year, caught redhanded, she'd struck the assistants as so childlike, so full of remorse, that they'd let her off, and on a third occasion, spinning a sad story about a cancer-stricken father desperate for a last smoke, the man behind the counter had given her a packet for nothing. But that was in England and attitudes were different in the States.

She was staring into the crowded interior of a café, rain flat­ tening her hair, when she saw a man in a sports shirt striking a match. All the other tables were occupied, but he was alone, facing two empty seats. Remembering what she'd seen Mother do in Marshall's tea rooms in Southport, she entered and stood beside him, apparently intent on studying the menu chalked up on the wall behind the counter. She'd been assured that such an approach never failed, as long as the right bloke was chosen—but then Mother had only been pining for conversation.

Turning, she bumped against the man's chair and, exag­ gerating her English accent, apologised profusely. It worked and she was invited to sit down. In spite of her drowned appearance she could tell she excited him; being old and hairy, he was obviously used to women giving him the cold shoulder. He asked if he could buy her a drink and she said yes, a whisky, just a small one. Then he offered her a smoke. Rose confessed she wasn't all that keen on the habit, but she'd have one to keep him company. He had a large medal dan­ gling from a chain round his neck, but as he was constantly fingering it she couldn't see what it represented.

The man's name was Walter Fedler and he owned race­ horses. He seemed to be made of hair. It waved over his head, growing down to the tips of his ears; eyebrows, lashes, cheek­ bones, everything was dark and quivering with black wisps. He was here to meet a guy who wanted to buy a two-year-old mare. He himself hadn't got one at the moment, but he knew where he could find one. He'd met this guy by accident in Los Angeles last week, when his truck was waiting at the lights on Wilshire Boulevard. He was on the sidewalk talking to an older man, and as the lights began to change he held up a hand and asked if he could hitch a ride to the Plaza Hotel.

‘We talked about him being a jockey and having been born in Jordan, which was kind of coincidental seeing me and the wife are planning a holiday in Jerusalem. When he said he wanted to buy a mare I told him I could find him one for maybe three hundred and fifty dollars and he said three hundred was his limit.'

‘This is awfully interesting,' Rose said, ‘though for some reason it's making me want to smoke.' He handed her another one instantly.

Pleased at her involvement, Mr. Fedler continued his mono­ logue. He knew all about horses because he'd worked as a stablehand as a boy. Then he'd drummed with the Tommy Dorsey Band, only he'd had to pack it in owing to his wrists swelling up from all that thumping.

After that he'd got a job in a Pasadena bookstore specialis­ ing in occult subjects, which had led to him acquiring hypno-programming skills and treating shell-shocked veterans of the Korean War. Now he was on the board of the American Insti­tute of Hypnosis. It was an important position.

He was still involved in medical practice, instructing others. Hypnosis required concentration, self-belief. The guy he was waiting for could be put under almost instantly. ‘Tell Sirhan to do something, no matter what,' he said, ‘and he'll do it.'

‘Blimey,' said Rose.

‘I bet,' he confided, leaning close and breathing into her face, ‘I could hypnotise everyone in this place in less than five minutes.'

Gazing into his bloodshot eyes she was tempted to tell him to go ahead, but at that moment the man he was expecting arrived. It was yellow sweater, only he was wearing a black leather jacket.

Although he neither looked at Rose nor addressed her directly, she knew he recognised her. He was, she reasoned, immensely shy of women on account of being from Arabia. Arabic men were taught that women were inferior and only important on account of sex, and being religious they had to avoid contamination. Not that he talked much to Fedler either, merely nodded a lot as the old man rambled on about the con­ dition of the mare and what it was worth. When Fedler left to go to the toilet, yellow sweater began drumming his fingers on the table.

‘It was kind of you to give me a cigarette the other day,' Rose said, hoping he'd offer her another one. He didn't, nor did he reply, just went on tapping in that agitated way he had. She smiled at him, but he was leaning back in his chair, star­ ing up at the ceiling. The silence continued; she fidgeted, searching for something to say. Suddenly he sat up straight, moistened his lips and asked, ‘You have been here before?'

‘No,' she said. ‘Not here I haven't.'

‘You have much money?'

‘No,' she said. ‘Hardly any.'

‘You are content with your holiday?'

‘It's not a holiday,' she corrected. ‘I'm searching for some­ one.'

‘They owe you money?'

‘No,' she said, ‘he's not like that.'

‘They have seen much of you?' he persisted.

She said, ‘Not for years, but it doesn't matter because he understands me.' She would have elaborated further if Fedler hadn't returned.

The two men left almost immediately, Fedler being in a hurry to show yellow sweater the mare. Rose thought of fol­ lowing them, but changed her mind. It would look as if she was desperate for company, which she wasn't. What she needed was somewhere quiet, a place where she could con­ centrate on what was going to happen when she was reunited with Dr. Wheeler. She asked the waitress if there was a church nearby and was told to turn left past a white truck parked down the street.

The church was small, huddled between a funeral parlour and a furniture showroom. Above the door hung a plaster statue of Our Lord, the toes of his left foot broken off, holding up his hand in a gesture of blessing. It was a pity there wasn't a graveyard outside, like the one she and Dr. Wheeler had strolled through all those years ago. In the presence of the dead, he'd said, one was more conscious of being alive.

The inside of the church was empty, save for a man on his knees and a woman with a beehive hairstyle lighting a candle beneath an image of the Virgin Mary. The praying man had a bad cough. Rose had once been picked up in a church. When she'd told Dr. Wheeler about it he'd laughed and said the man must have thought his prayers had been answered.

Rose didn't kneel, just slouched, gazing at the altar. Thoughts and questions tumbled through her head. If, when she got back, Polly and Bernard asked for her impressions of America she wouldn't find it easy, the miles having cascaded past in a swirl of sun-scorched days. She supposed she might waft on about Mr. Nixon and how unfair it was that Mr. Kennedy, the JFK one, had cheated him out of the presidency because he was so rich, but she wasn't sure she'd get the facts right. She could come up with a few place names . . . Chicago, Yellow­stone Park, Wanakena . . . and that town where Harold had wet himself in the bank, but not much else. No point men­ tioning the gun held to her head, they'd only accuse her of lying, like the time she'd told them about Father hanging her out of the window because she'd called him a bugger. What would happen when she got to Los Angeles . . . how would Dr. Wheeler react? What if he suggested she should stay and get a job, or even work for him, offered to fix her up in a nice flat, one with its own bathroom? Of course she wouldn't let him pay for it, that would be wrong, even though he could afford it. With her English accent she could find employment in a bookshop . . . she'd be good at that. She wasn't sure what work Dr. Wheeler did, but she could be a sort of hostess when he gave a dinner party . . . or just someone who opened the door and took coats and hats . . . she'd need another dress . . . and proper shoes, scarlet ones with high heels . . . She'd jump at the chance of staying, there being nothing much to go back for, no one she really cared about—apart from Bernard's boxer dog—no future that really mattered . . .

The praying man stood up and made for the door. She fol­ lowed him because he was digging into his pocket and she thought he might be reaching for a cigarette, but the beehive woman barred her way, clutching her arm and asking if she knew where the priests lived. Her husband had left her, she wailed, and she'd just found out she was pregnant; she needed money.

‘Wait here,' Rose said, ‘my father will have some.'

By the time she stepped outside the man had disappeared. She walked back to where she had left Harold. He wasn't in the bar, nor the van. She sat on the running board and waited. A quarter of an hour went by until she spied him at the top of the street. When he saw her he broke into a run. She prepared herself for a ticking off for being away too long, but when he drew level he pulled her upright and hugged her fiercely. She could feel his beard tickling her neck. When he let go and stood back she noticed his eyes were watering. Surprised, she asked him what was wrong.

‘The museum's on fire. I was afraid you were inside.'

‘I never got to the museum,' she said. ‘I got involved with a pregnant woman.'

He seemed in such a good mood that when they got into the van she was daring enough to light a cigarette. Again, he surprised her by saying how much he liked the smell of tobacco, on account of it bringing back happy memories of col­ lege days with Shaefer. She was warming to him when, about to start the engine, he said, ‘I need to give you your plane ticket, in case we lose each other, and money for a cab. I guess it'll be pretty crowded in the hotel with Kennedy in town. We might get separated.'

‘I'm not sure I'll need it,' she told him. ‘Dr. Wheeler may ask me to stay on.'

‘Take it,' he ordered, face tightening. ‘One never knows what could happen. There might be a disturbance.'

‘Disturbance?' she echoed.

‘The Republicans will be there in force. There could be a full-scale riot.'

He plonked the ticket and some dollars into her lap. As she attempted to stuff them into her pocket he seized her arm and demanded she put them somewhere safe. His tone was so authoritative that she ferreted under the seat for her bag and did as she was told. Inwardly she cursed him for being so bossy.

‘That zip doesn't work,' he snapped, taking a length of string from the shelf beneath the dashboard. ‘Use this to tie up the top.'

She felt there was something bothering him, bigger than the possible loss of a ticket. Several times on the journey he'd com­ plained of a dicky tummy; maybe it was playing up again. Even so, he had no right to treat her like a child. She slumped back and fiddled with the piece of string. As he drove off she pushed the bag under her feet, then, greatly daring, asked him how long it would take them to reach Malibu. He said they weren't going to Malibu, not tonight. He was too tired, and in any case he needed to go to Santa Monica. He had something important to do.

‘But you promised.'

‘I'd have gone there yesterday,' he told her, ‘if you hadn't got us mixed up with that woman who'd had a fight in the woods.'

They drove through a mist, salt-laden, borne upwards from the sea, and suddenly he asked if she'd been telling the truth when she'd said Dr. Wheeler had a wife. It was an unexpected question. Again she described the woman on the bicycle she'd seen when visiting the chip shop as a child.

‘I've heard all that,' he interrupted. ‘I want to know how old she was, what nationality . . . did you ever hear her called Mrs Wheeler?'

‘Lots of times. The man in the chippie knew her, and so did my dad.'

‘But it could have been his sister,' he argued, ‘she could have been a Miss not Mrs.'

So she told him about the time she'd spied on Dr. Wheeler through the lounge window of his house and how she'd seen the two of them writhing about on the couch, she with her knickers around her ankles and he with his bottom in the air. That shut him up. She didn't tell him that she'd stayed there, watching as Dr. Wheeler poured himself a drink, watching as his wife, skirt pulled down, sat on the couch with a magazine on her lap, lips moving as she read, sandalled feet planted firmly on the carpet. There'd been no change in the woman's sensible face, no transfiguration of joy or bliss, and the eyes Dr. Wheeler turned to the window were empty and dry.

They parked in an area of ground above a beach. As it was dark she could see nothing beyond a chain of bobbing lights, which she reasoned must belong to fishing boats anchored in the bay. When she licked her lips she tasted the sea. She wanted to ask if they were still in Newport, but he looked so severe she didn't dare.

It was a posh campsite, each plot separated from the next by a row of trees, and each illuminated by a lamp on a pole. Nearby was a wooden gate leading to a provision shop and a row of washrooms. She'd reckoned Harold would want to start cooking right away, seeing as they hadn't eaten since Mrs Fury's chicken; instead he muttered that he wasn't hungry and was going straight to bed. She supposed she'd been right about his stomach. For once he didn't change into his dressing gown and march off with towel and toilet bag, just tossed his shoes out of the van and half closed the doors. She could hear him talking to himself. Walking away, she listened to the sounds filling the shadows, a tinkle of radio music, the smack of an axe chopping wood, the hum of the sea as it danced across the sands.