THIRTEEN

 

 

 

 

The damage to Harold’s hand was not life-threatening, although the pain after that initial clamping was ferocious. Holding his hand up in the air was helpful, something learnt from an injury received as a child while playing basketball. It was his mother, eyes glazed, a glass of whisky in one hand, who had shoved his fingers towards the clouds.

The blood issuing from his squashed nails upset Rose; there were even tears in her eyes. He was about to reassure her that it wasn’t that bad when he realised it might be advantageous to let her think it was serious. She had been implying over break­ fast that they should bypass Los Angeles and drive straight to Malibu. He hadn’t told her that a previous telephone call made it clear that Wheeler had booked out three days ago.

Rose insisted someone should look at his hand. The man­ ager of the inn sent for a member of staff who bathed the crushed fingers in disinfectant before applying a bandage. A sling was produced but Rose objected to its use. She said he wouldn’t be able to hold the wheel, not properly.

‘I’m not thinking of driving,’ he told her, ‘not for a day or two. It wouldn’t be safe.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ll hitchhike.’

‘You can’t,’ he protested. ‘It’s dangerous.’

‘You don’t have to worry,’ she retorted, ‘I went all over England in lorries when I was a child.’

‘To hell with England,’ he shouted, ‘this is America. Set foot alone on the road and you could end up stabbed, shot, stran­ gled . . .’ He was about to add ‘raped’ when he remembered his own behaviour of the night before. Wincing, he clutched the wrist of his damaged hand. For once she didn’t argue, nor did she walk away. He reckoned she was feeling guilty at the harm she’d done.

They remained at the inn for two nights. Rose said that it would be cheaper to sleep in the van, but he argued that with the temperature now above 100 degrees it would be impossi­ ble to sleep without air conditioning; he didn’t mention that she stank of perspiration.

He insisted she come with him to see the historic railway station, Casa del Deserto, now derelict, that stood beside the line that had linked Kansas City with the Pacific. She gave him a funny look, but followed him as he strode down Main Street. Once there, she stared at the ruined facade while he explained that a century ago the region had been famous for mining gold and silver.

‘Why does everything have a foreign name?’ she asked.

‘Because most of the land belonged to Mexico before gold was discovered.’

‘The gold rush,’ she chirped. ‘I saw Charlie Chaplin in the film.’

‘When the mines went dry the immigrants moved on. That’s why there’s so many ghost towns.’

She began to burble away about the greed of people and how everyone got ruined by wealth. ‘My father,’ she said, ‘was made bankrupt in 1929. He was so into money that he didn’t think about moonlight or flowers.’

Harold turned his head away and gazed up at the sea-blue sky. He wondered how much longer he would be able to put up with her childish and ignorant pronouncements.

‘We had a rose garden,’ she said, ‘that he let die from lack of fertiliser. My mother cried.’

‘Wheeler has money,’ he interrupted, and added, ‘Me too.’

It shut her up. After all, where would she be without his own healthy investments?

On the third morning, Rose didn’t answer his knock at her door. Alarmed, he hurried into the breakfast room, then out into the street. She was sitting on the veranda of a clapboard shack, talking to herself. He rebuked her for wandering off and she told him she’d met a nice man who’d taught her a song. He pulled her upright and marched her back into the inn. She only had coffee this time and didn’t ask the usual questions about how long it was going to take to get to Malibu. She lit a cigarette, smoked half of it and stuffed the remainder into her raincoat pocket.

‘That black man said there’s been a shooting on a farm about a mile away,’ she said. ‘A woman in a wheelchair. She’s not dead.’

He remarked that shootings were commonplace; looking down at his plate he heard the increased thudding of his heart.

‘And he taught me a song,’ Rose said, and recited:

 

We grub de bread,

Dey gub us de crust

We skim de pot,

De gub us de liquor

And say dat’s good enough for niggers.

 

‘For God’s sake,’ he hissed, ‘there are riots all over the States at the moment, mostly on account of prejudiced people like you. You can’t use that word.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she faltered, looking genuinely upset, ‘I just thought it was an interesting song written by slaves. They used the word niggers . . .’

‘Even the names of hills and rivers that once contained the word have been changed,’ he told her. ‘That’s how unusable it is.’

‘But we passed through a place called Nigger Creek . . .’

‘Leave it,’ he said, but she wouldn’t.

‘It’s no different from you being called a Yankee,’ she shouted, ‘you’re all American.’ Then she rambled on about an English politician who had apparently got into trouble for saying there were too many coloured people coming into Great Britain. ‘It was only a couple of weeks ago,’ she said. ‘He warned that if it carried on we’d see the Thames foaming with blood.’

Curtly he told her to collect her belongings, and strode out to the camper.

 

Los Angeles was ninety-three miles away. Harold avoided Route 66 and chose deserted country roads. There was noth­ ing to be seen from the window but farmland edged by the swooning blur of sun-drenched mountains. After an hour, he came to a halt. Now that he was near the end of his jour­ ney, his elation was mixed with fear. It would have helped to confide in his travelling companion, but that’s all she was.

Rose asked what was wrong. He thought of saying they were out of gas. Looking at her face—her pale lips appeared to be quivering—for one crazy moment he felt it might be possible to tell her the truth. But that was out of the question. She would hardly allow him to harm her precious Dr. Wheeler.

He said, reaching under the seat, ‘I need a drink. My hand hurts.’

She said, ‘Go ahead. It’ll do you good.’ She even unscrewed the top for him and would have held it to his mouth if he hadn’t snatched the bottle away. He was aware she was watching him, her mouth curved in a patient smile. ‘Does drink help?’ she asked.

‘Nothing helps,’ he snapped. ‘How could it?’

Reluctantly, he offered her the bottle but she said she didn’t really need it, that she had funny enough thoughts as it was. She lived, she confessed, mostly in the past. The here and now meant little to her; it was what made her so unusual. That struck him as comic, she being so unaware of the impression she gave, but he didn’t laugh.

‘I wouldn’t have taken you for a drinker,’ she said. ‘You’re not the type. You don’t have things that torment you.’

Gazing out of the open window, he saw an image of Wheeler in an invalid chair float across the blinding sky.

Rose was talking to herself again. Seeing his look, she told him she was arguing with her father. She said she often did this because, being dead, he couldn’t answer back. He didn’t comment; he was trying to work out where and how he might confront Wheeler. If Wheeler was involved in the Democratic presidential campaign he’d hardly be found wandering around on his own. Ideally, their meeting needed to be in a solitary place, somewhere so isolated that they wouldn’t be seen, otherwise there was the danger that someone might come up with a description . . . even a snapshot. Perhaps he should shave off his beard.

‘Funny thing is,’ Rose said, ‘although he was a bully, he was a terrible crybaby. Once, he went all over Southport pressing sixpences into the hands of those he called our gallant boys in blue . . .’

It might, he thought, be a good idea to telephone John Fury.

‘They were soldiers from the new hospital down by the promenade. My father told them that he was proud of them, that they were the walking wounded . . .’

Fury, Harold reasoned, would know where Kennedy and his gang were likely to be.

‘Afterwards it turned out there was nothing wrong with them, nothing wounded that is. They were soldiers all right, Mother said, but they’d all caught a nasty men’s disease from being in the army.’

He pictured Wheeler’s face, his expression, the image sear­ ing into his mind.

Rose said, ‘I’m scared about seeing him. It’s been so long. What if he’s not the same person?’

It jolted him, her having the same thoughts as himself.

Thirty minutes later he parked in a campsite off the San Bernardino Freeway. Clutching his hand he said he needed to rest, but first he must make a telephone call. Rose objected, on the grounds that he should stop thinking about stocks and shares and concentrate on his health. ‘My health,’ he retorted, ‘is dependent on money.’

A woman answered his call and informed him that Fury would be back the following day, the second of June. He could be reached at his Santa Ana address. On his return, he was astonished to find that Rose had unfurled the mattress and hung up the mosquito net. As she was being so helpful he decided to tell her what he planned to do the next day. He assured her that Los Angeles was pretty close to Santa Ana and that the sooner they made contact with Fury and got to know the exact location of Senator Kennedy the sooner they’d track down Wheeler. Rose made no comment, just pulled a face.