1985 - Stars and bars (3 page)

H
e was still feeling pleased with himself an hour later when Pruitt Halfacre came into his office.

‘Free for lunch?’ Halfacre asked. Today Henderson’s benevolence knew no bounds.

‘Grand news about this Gage collection,’ he said as they walked down Madison.

‘Oh yes. Yes,’ Halfacre agreed. He seemed a bit woebegone.

‘Anything wrong?’

‘We need to talk, Henderson.’

‘Well, sure. What about?’

‘Can we save it till lunch? I’d like that.’

They walked down some steps into a pale honey and li, me-green restaurant. The bar area at the front was full of brilliant women and tall, broad-shouldered men. Everyone spoke in loud firm voices and seemed laughingly at ease. Sadly, as he knew it would, Henderson felt his own confidence begin to ebb away. There must be some law of Newtonian physics to explain this phenomenon, he considered; something about the power of a superior force to sap and drain energy from an inferior one of the same type. He looked about him at the fabulous lunchers. Pruitt shouted clear strong welcomes to people he knew. I want to be like you lot, Henderson thought, as he felt his shoulders round and his chest concave; I want your confidence and purpose, I want your teeth and tans, he pleaded, stepping out of the way and apologizing to a waiter. It’s not fair.

They shouldered their way to the bar, Henderson slipstreaming Halfacre. He caught gusts of a dozen different scents. Jasmine, rose, nectarine, musk, civet. Gems flashed demurely, expensively.

‘Henderson, may I be totally honest with you?’ Half-acre said in a deep voice at his ear. Henderson looked round in astonishment. ‘Can’t we get a drink first?’

A film-star barman approached.

‘Morning, gentlemen. What is your need?’

‘Dewars on the rocks,’ Halfacre said. ‘With a twist. Henderson?’

‘I’ll have a Budweiser, please,’ Henderson said. ‘Straight up.’

The barman was not amused. He dipped a glass in a crunching, glistening coffer of ice and filled it to the brim. He sloshed copious amounts of whisky into it, pinched a twist of lime and dropped it in. How can they do that to perfectly good whisky, Henderson thought? Ice and limes in everything. A profligacy of ice in this country. Immense wealth of ice. He drank some of his beer.

‘You were saying,’ he turned to Halfacre, ‘something about total honesty.’

‘Pruitt, your table’s ready.’ It was the waiter.

‘Thatcher, hi.’ Halfacre and Thatcher hugged manfully, with much clapping of hands on shoulders. ‘I heard you were here. How’s it going?’

‘Not so bad. I’m working on a novel.’

‘Great!…Hey, Jesus. Sorry about Muffy. I heard. I guess she couldn’t hack it.’

‘You win some—’

‘You lose some. Bastard, man.’ Halfacre spent a second deep in thought. ‘Thatcher, this is a colleague, Henderson. Thatcher and I were at school together.’

‘Good to know you, Henderson.’ Thatcher’s grip was knuckle-grinding.

‘How do you do?’ Henderson muttered, entirely unmanned by now. Thatcher led them through the shining throng to their table. Henderson felt as if his neck had disappeared and his shoulders were about to meet in front of his chin. He sat down with a sigh of relief. Halfacre seemed to have forgotten about their projected conversation so Henderson happily let it ride for a moment. He studied the menu and studied Halfacre above its uppermost edge. He looked at Half acre’s plain, lean face, his sharp jaw, his short hair, his—just donned—modish tortoiseshell spectacles. He considered his Harvard Ph. D., his ‘old’ family, his modest but comfortable private income. Here was the paradigm, the Platonic ideal. American man, late-twentieth-century model. Look how easily he wore his clothes, how at home he was in this smart restaurant. Consider the masterful aplomb with which he could initiate and terminate casual conversations. Listen to the rigidity and reasonableness of his opinions. What was more, this man was engaged to an intelligent and beautiful girl. And what was even more, Henderson thought, this man is eleven years younger than me.

Thatcher reappeared to take their orders.

‘Chicken omelette,’ Halfacre said. ‘Grilled plaice, side salad, no dressing. Sancerre OK for you, Henderson?’

‘Lovely.’ Henderson’s eyes skittered desperately over the menu searching first for something he liked, then for something he recognized. Halfacre’s requests didn’t even seem to be listed here. This sort of man ordered what he wanted, not what was offered.

‘I’ll, um, start with the, ah,
crtvettes fumees aux framboises
. Followed by…’ Jesus Christ. ‘Followed by…Filet Mignon with butterscotch sauce.’

‘Vegetables, sir?’

Henderson looked. Salsify, fenugreek, root ginger. What were these things? He saw one that was familiar. ‘Braised radishes.’

The menus were removed.

‘Sorry, Pruitt,’ he said, flapping out his napkin. ‘There was something you wanted to talk to me about.’

Pruitt was drawing furrows on the thick white linen of the tablecloth with the tines of his fork.

‘That’s right.’ He paused. ‘How would you react, Henderson, if I said…if I said that the one word I associate with you is ‘hostel’?’

‘‘Hostel?’

His mind raced. ‘As in ‘Youth Hostel’?’

‘No, for God’s sake. As in hostel aircraft, hostel country, as in ‘The Soviets are hostel to American policy’.’

‘Oh. Got you. We say ‘style’. ‘Hostyle’.’

‘Why,’ Pruitt now held his fork with both hands as if he might bend it, ‘why do you hate me, Henderson? Why do I sense this incredible aggression coming from you?’

It took the whole of the unsatisfactory lunch (Henderson had been agog at his lurid shrimps and managed one mouthful of his candied steak) to convince Halfacre that, far from disliking him, Henderson on the contrary both admired and respected his colleague. That he was,, moreover, an ideal confederate and a brilliant mind. Halfacre took twenty minutes to travel from scepticism through grudging apologies to overt gratitude. Hender-son’s quizzing established that the misconception had arisen a week before when Halfacre had called a greeting down a corridor and Henderson—so Halfacre had thought—had rather curtly returned it.

‘And you thought it meant I disliked you?’

‘God, Henderson, I just didn’t know. It was so…you know, implicit with…with…What was I meant to think?’

‘You said: ‘Hi there, Henderson’ and I said: ‘Hello’ back?’

‘But it was the
way
you said it.’

‘Hello.’

‘Hello.’ There is only one way.’

‘There you go again. ‘
Hler, hler
.’

’

‘But that’s the way I
talk
, Pruitt.’

‘But I felt that you- Look, OK, so I’m a little paranoid. I know. I’ve got problems of self-alignment. I worry about these things. The aggression in this city, Henderson. The competitiveness…I mean, there are guys I was at school with, guys I grew up with—dentists, brokers—earning twelve times what I do.
Twelve
.’ He went on listing his complaints and fears. Henderson watched him light a thick cigar to go with his ‘black tea’, and wondered what Halfacre really had to worry about. If only
be
had Halfacre’s problems…Then it struck him that perhaps all that was important to the Halfacres of this world was actually to be in a state of worry—about something, about anything. I worry,
ergo sum
.

‘I think it’s good for us to talk this way,’ Halfacre said round his cigar. ‘You know if we—you and I—can get that sort of supportive holistic flow,’ pushing motion with both hands, ‘God, could we generate and strengthen…We internalize, Henderson. I internalize. All the time, I know. It’s my fault. My
hamartia
, hah.’ He frowned. ‘And that can’t be good, can it?’

‘Well, no. I suppose. But on the other hand—’

‘You’re right. You’re so right.’

They walked slowly up Fifth Avenue, the huge Park on their left, back towards the office.

‘I’m very grateful, Henderson,’ Halfacre said.

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘I want you to know how I value our friendship. How much I admire your books, and your learning.’

‘Don’t give it another thought.’ Henderson broke out in a sweat of embarrassment.

‘No, I feel—’

‘Let’s go to the Frick,’ he said suddenly, inspired.

They paid their dollar each and entered the dim cool gallery. The splash of water from the courtyard, the solid grey stone and marble and the immaculate plants exuded a green tranquillity and worked their usual spell. Henderson relaxed. If only I could set my bed up here, he thought, I know I could sleep.

They moved slowly through a roomful of Goya, Lorrain and Van Dyck, then into another large room. Halfacre was silenced at last, looking at the paintings. Henderson’s mind wandered, pondering the logistics of his trip South. He decided to drive, spend a couple of days on the road. See Kentucky, Virginia…one night in Washington, perhaps. Irene could give him a guided tour round the capital. He smiled at the prospect. Stay in really nice hotels. Find somewhere near this Luxora Beach. Irene could swim and sunbathe while he worked at the Gage house during the day. Spend the evenings with Irene, just the two of them, Melissa and his conscience back in New York.

He paused. That was not exactly the sort of attitude one should develop towards one’s future wife. He grimaced slightly. He wondered why he persisted in being so divided, so untrue to his best instincts, so wayward in regard to his duty? Perhaps Pruitt would say that was his tragic flaw…

He looked round. Halfacre had gone on ahead. Hen-derson wheeled left and cut across the courtyard into another room. On the walls were Romneys, Gains-boroughs and Constables. For an instant he felt a tremor of homesickness for England. He thought dreamily of English landscapes, the reality behind the images hanging there. Now it was April the leaves would be well advanced, and in the fields…The enormous, hedgerowless fields would be loud prairies of brutal shouting yellow; some Common Market incentive having encouraged the farmers to sow every available acre with rape. And then in the autumn it was like driving through a wartorn country, vast columns of smoke from the burning stubble rising into the sky, the sky itself finely sedimented with flakes of ash. One weekend last summer, sitting outside a friend’s cottage in the Cotswolds reading the Sunday papers, he was driven indoors by a fragile rain of cinders that drifted softly but steadily down upon him from an apparently clear sky.

In this mood of harsh realism he turned to ‘Richard Paul Jodrell’ by Gainsborough. There was the supercilious, self-satisfied face of England. And in ‘The Mall in St James’s Park’ were the smug English belles, unchanged in two centuries. He could imagine the conversation; hear the very tones of their lazy voices. He peered closer. To his vague surprise one of the women looked remarkably like his mother.

He thought of her now, a sharp-nosed, well-preserved sixty-five-year-old, living in her neat ‘villa’ in Hove. Her over-made-up face, her grey hair cut in a youthful bob, her deep, unshakeable and unreflecting conservatism. She spent a lot of time with her grown-up nieces and their young families, a rich and popular visitor to their green-belt homes. Henderson was her only child, and they gamely maintained an appearance of filial and maternal affection that on the whole effectively disguised mutual disapproval.

Henderson strode urgently out of the room. This was what he was escaping; that was his past, now behind him forever, he hoped. He slowed down and strolled through a roomful of frothing pastel Fragonards. No Halfacre. He retraced his steps.

Halfacre seemed hardly to have moved. He was standing in front of a Vermeer, ‘Mistress and Maid’. Henderson looked at him more closely. Tears ran down his face. His chest and shoulders twitched with little sobs.

‘Pruitt,’ Henderson said with alarm. ‘What’s wrong?’ Had he somehow caused further offence?

Halfacre gestured at the painting.

‘It’s so true,’ he said. ‘It’s so true.’

Henderson suppressed his automatic sneer. That’s the difference between us, he thought sadly. An immense unbridgeable gulf. We’ve both made art our careers, but he can weep in galleries. I would rather die.

Henderson moved away, somewhat disturbed. He had no idea what to say and was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the progress he still had to make before he felt at home in this country.

Look at the paintings he told himself. He obeyed. ‘The Deposition’, by Gheerhart David. ‘The Painter’, by Franz Hals. ‘Judith and Holofernes’, by Jakob van Hoegh. He paused by this one, vaguely shocked by the relish of Judith’s expression as she hacked her way crudely through Holofernes’ neck. Judith had a pert, small-chinned face, heart-shaped. Holofernes’ tongue, livid purple and foam-flecked, stuck out a good three inches.

‘Pruitt, come and have a look at this,’ Henderson said. That should stop him crying.

Later that afternoon Beeby looked into the office with Gage’s telephone number and the instructions about where and when to meet up. They were quite simple. When Henderson arrived in Atlanta he was to phone the given number between four and five a.m. He would then be told where to proceed.

‘Is that all?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘It’s a bit cloak and dagger, isn’t it? Is it all really necessary?’

‘You know these types,’ Beeby said solemnly. ‘Insecure. Jealous of their solitude. He was absolutely adamant on proceeding this way. Adamant. We’ve got to respect it, Henderson. Can’t afford to give offence.’

‘Softly, softly.’

‘Exactly.’ Beeby screwed up his eyes and waggled a hand. ‘He sounds a bit of a dodgy number. I think we’ll have to go very carefully.’

Henderson walked with him to the door. Beeby fiddled with his signet ring.

‘Good luck,’ he said, and patted Henderson on the elbow. It was an expression of genuine affection and concern.

‘Don’t worry,’ Henderson said, his fingers brushed Beeby’s sleeve, expressing his affection in return. Whole paragraphs of information and sentiment had been conveyed in the four words.

‘I’ll give you a phone once I’ve made contact. And, Tom; it’ll be fine.’

‘I know. See you next week.’

Henderson watched Beeby’s tall figure amble down the corridor. He felt his eyes moist. He’s relying on me, he thought. Like a father. Almost.