As Far as You Can Go (19 page)

“What a dreadful thing to say,” said Harold.

“Oh, I know it’s dreadful, but it’s true, I guess.”

They sat in silence for a while, then Harold said, “Is there anywhere we could go and dance?”

“Well, there’s a lot of clubs along the Strip, but they’re not exactly for paupers.”

“I’m loaded,” he said. “Let’s go, shall we?”

“O.K. But I have to be home not too late. Grandma makes like hell if I stay out on a date. I’m twenty-two, and she treats me as though I was fifteen or something. But I don’t have any place else to go, I reckon. And I suppose when you’re old you don’t like being left alone. I’ve lost quite a few boys that way. And if anyone gets serious about me, Grandma soon gets rid of them. I guess when the day comes that I get serious about a boy, she’ll have to change her strategy.”

Harold thought that he might easily become serious about her. As they drove to the Strip, he said, “Excuse my asking, Diane, but I really can’t understand why a girl like you, who’s pretty and alive and intelligent and things——”

“Oh, cut it out,” said Diane in a hard, weary voice, “you don’t have to go through all that routine.”

“No, I mean it. I know I’m just a stranger in town, but I don’t understand why—well, why there isn’t someone else taking you out. I mean, I wouldn’t have thought you’d have any trouble finding boy-friends.”

She stiffened in the seat beside him, then she laughed, and in laughing laid a hand on his arm.

“It’s not so difficult to see why, Harold. I guess I don’t have any difficulty finding boys. It’s the boys that have the difficulty. I’ve dated about a hundred different kids, and I’ve liked all of them, more or less. I just don’t ever catch fire with any of them.”

“Well, maybe you’re not ready for it,” said Harold.

“I’m ready all right,” she said bitterly. “Jesus, if you knew what I thought about when I was alone, the lovely little fantasies I have up there at the end of the canyon. I reckon I could make a fortune writing them down for the women’s magazines.”

“Ah,” said Harold. “You want it so badly that it can’t possibly happen.”

“I guess so,” she said. “That’s part of it, anyway. But
there’s Grandma, too, you know. I told you. She doesn’t like it when anyone gets serious about me. Maybe I don’t like it, either. Maybe I’m a hard girl.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Nor do I, really. I don’t know what it is. But if it isn’t Grandma, it’s me. I encourage a guy up to a point, then I get kind of nervous, and call it all off. People are like that, you know, scared of getting involved.”

“But why should you be scared?”

“How should I know? Why is the sky blue?”

“But that’s quite different. The sky is blue because that’s the way we see it. It isn’t really blue. But if you’re scared of getting involved with someone, it’s some psychological thing you have. You know, a block or whatever it’s called.”

“O.K. So the sky isn’t really blue, but that’s the way we see it. We have a block about it.”

“No, no,” said Harold, getting muddled. “There’s no other way of seeing it, with our optical apparatus. But there
are
other ways of seeing ourselves. And if you see yourself as scared, then all you have to do is go to someone who can make you not scared.”

“You’re about as clear as mud,” said Diane, and laughed. It was a nervous laugh, but not a false one.

“What I mean is——”

“I know exactly what you mean. I told you, I majored in psychology. O.K., so you’re right, I’ll get over it. But you asked me why I didn’t have a steady boy-friend. At least, that’s what you meant, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“Well, the reason is I have a block. Now you know.”

It wasn’t, Harold felt, a very satisfactory explanation. But he hardly knew her, and even to talk about such things so early on in their relations with each other showed that they were fairly relaxed together. He put an arm cautiously round her shoulder. She snuggled into it.

“Perhaps you need someone to help you get over that block,” said Harold lightly.

“You want to try?”

“I wouldn’t mind at all.”

“You’re welcome,” said Diane, and laughed again, this time freely, happily. “You won’t be the first.”

“Let’s hope I’m the last,” said Harold.

“Hey,” she said, “it’s a little soon to propose, isn’t it? Gee, Mr Barlow, you Englishmen work fast.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Harold. “This is just a
doctor-patient
relationship, Miss Washburn. We haven’t reached the transference stage yet.”

“You know something?” she said, snuggling closer towards him. “I think we’re all so goddam educated these days, we don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.”

“You could be right at that,” said Harold.

She directed him to a night-club where there was a jazz band playing, though most of the people seemed content to sit and listen, in fact they listened with great seriousness. Harold and Diane danced a lot, having the floor virtually to themselves.

The musicians looked pleased to see some people dancing. There were several negroes in the club, too, as customers not waiters, and that gave him some pleasure. In L.A. your colour seemed to matter much less than anywhere else. Perhaps it was because the whole place was so new, there hadn’t been time to found any dynasties or a rigid society, and most important, even if there had been attempts to do so, they’d failed, probably because the people who came in the beginning were restless unconventional people. Not that they were these days, except for the Eddie Jackson types, but meanwhile things had changed a good deal, and wherever you came from, if you thought you were starting a new life, you probably didn’t want to have much to do with the boloney of snobbery. Of course, he might very well be wrong.

As he was driving her home from the Strip—a mile or two of Sunset Boulevard devoted to night life—he asked her casually how long her family had lived on the west coast.

“Grandpa was born in Chicago,” she said, “but his parents moved out to the west when he was a kid, and
Grandma
was born in Wyoming. So I come from real pioneer stock. Grandpa bought the plot where the house is now about fifty years ago, in fact, he bought most of the canyon. That’s why we’re so rich. There is gold in these hills if you remember to build on them instead of digging them up. Remember, Harold, always excavate with a bulldozer. I guess if we were English and had a coat of arms and all that jazz, we ought to have a bulldozer—how do you say?—rampant, is it?”

Harold laughed. “Something like that.”

“Does your family have a coat of arms?”

“Good God, no. Though I suppose they’d like to. There’s a thing called the College of Heralds which invents pedigrees and coats of arms for you, if you want them. I believe they do good business with Americans, actually.”

“I bet they do,” she said. “The Americans are the most goddam snobbish people on earth. You know, there are people who won’t speak to anyone else because they came over on the
Mayflower
or something? I mean, their ancestors?”

“I thought you only had to have money,” said Harold.

“That’s true out here,” said Diane. “But Boston, that’s the home town of snobbery. Have you ever been to Boston?”

“Yes. I spent a couple of days there.”

“Gee, I haven’t. I’ve never been farther east than Chicago. Would you believe that? I guess you’ve been places in this country I’ll never get to.”

“Oh, well, that’s the way it is. You always want to go abroad for your holidays, not explore your own country.”

“Yes, you’re right. I mean, I always dream about going to Paris and London and Rome and Athens and all those places, but I don’t want to go to New York much.”

“New York’s all right,” said Harold.

They were coming to the top of the canyon, and he was wondering whether or not he should kiss her. It seemed pretty definite that he should. After all, he’d taken her out pretty handsomely, and she was holding his arm as he drove, and snuggling up against him. The trouble was that you couldn’t tell. She might be delighted, shocked or merely
expecting
it without either enthusiasm or distaste. He decided to try it, and be damned. The miniature of a dead man wasn’t worth the kiss of a live woman.

He stopped the car and turned towards her in the darkness. There was always something wrong: now the bloody
steering-wheel
was in the way. He put an arm round her shoulders and said, “It was a lovely evening, Diane. Can we do it again some time?”

“Sure we can,” she said. She seemed very light-hearted suddenly, and pulled his head down and kissed him on the cheek, saying, between pecks, “Sometimes you Englishmen are too polite.”

He managed to get his other arm free of the wheel and kissed her back. They held the uncomfortable pose for a moment or two, then she said, “Why don’t you come in and have a drink?”

“O.K.”

They stood for a moment outside the door while she fumbled for her key. The moonlight made everything seem very ghostly, the scrub on the other side of the canyon like a lurking army, about to charge over the hilltop. There were several cypresses in a garden just down the road, and their heads swayed very slowly.

She opened the door. The lights were all on, and she said, “Grandma must still be up.”

“There you are, child,” said Mrs Washburn. She was
sitting
on one of the sofas. “I thought you were never coming home. Where have you been?”

“We went dancing, Grandma,” she said, throwing her head back and spreading out her hair with her fingers. “We had a ball.”

“Huh,” said the old woman. “Good evening, Mr Barlow.”

“Good evening, Mrs Washburn.”

“Well, you brought her back safe and sound, anyway. I expect you’ll be wanting to go to bed, now, like me.”

For a moment Harold thought she meant he wanted to sleep with Diane, and in that moment knew that he did. He looked at her, yawning now, smiling at him, saying, “I just offered him a drink, Grandma. It’s not late. Only twelve.”

“Quite late enough,” said Mrs Washburn. “But get him a drink. Any man that’s prepared to make you happy de serves a drink, at least. How did you find her, Mr Barlow? She’s pretty, of course, but she’s no sense, like her father.”

Harold disliked her habit of talking about people who were in the room in the third person. He said, “It was a most enjoyable evening.”

“You hear that, child,” said Mrs Washburn, a great smile breaking across her face, “do you hear what the Englishman says? He says it was a most enjoyable evening. My, my, that must mean something, coming from an Englishman.”

“Have you got anything against Englishmen in general, Mrs Washburn?”

“No, Mr Barlow, I don’t have anything against
Englishmen
. I don’t have anything against anyone. I just happen to prefer Americans to most other people, but I guess that’s because I’m an American. Maybe you prefer English people.”

“No,” said Harold, “not particularly. Diane was telling me that you were born in the west, Mrs Washburn, that you’re a real pioneer. What was it like in those days?”

“I’m no pioneer,” she said, but she seemed pleased to be asked. “My father was, though, he was a real pioneer. Came all the way to Wyoming from Baltimore, Maryland, with his wife and children, and made his living there, running cattle,
and trading with the Indians. I was born just after he settled there.”

“Really? Indians? Dangerous ones?”

“You don’t have to believe everything you see in the movies, son.” Harold felt he was making good progress for her to stop calling him Mr Barlow. “No, I never saw a scalping, and I never saw the United States Cavalry go by to get their man. But the Indians used to come to the door and trade with us. Skins, you know, furs. Ornaments, too. We’d be sitting having our dinner, and then we’d look up and see them, maybe two or three at a time, squatting down by the door, waiting for us to finish. And we’d never hear them or see them coming. They’d be there when we looked up, was all. My father, he always said they were no trouble, it was the white men was the trouble. But he was always in trouble himself with the other ranchers. That’s why he moved on out here when he got too old to bother. I came here when I was a girl of twenty or so, lived in San Gabriel. And then I met my first husband, did Diane tell you that? I was married twice? He was a good man, and a good business man. We lived in Seattle, then, and after he died I moved back to San Gabriel to be with my mother. She lived a long time, too. We don’t die young in my family, not the women.”

Although she spoke slowly, there was a genuine
enthusiasm
, Harold thought, or maybe it was just nice to have a new audience. But he did notice what Diane had warned him of, a small rim of black which clearly wasn’t flesh and wasn’t brassiere, protruding where her left breast ought to be.

“My father was a Mormon,” she said, nodding her head as though he would appreciate this piece of news. “But the family don’t stay long with a religion.” Behind the glasses her eyes were sharp, he thought, watching his reactions, judging him.

“I don’t go to church myself,” he said.

“No more do I,” she said. “And not that Mormon lot,
those last of all. You know they want a tenth of everything you’ve got, a tenth of your income? Money, that’s what they want. Money in the name of God.”

“If you’re interested in religions,” said Diane, giving him a whisky and soda, “you sure came to the right place. I guess there’s a church and a pastor for every soul in L.A., huh, Grandma?”

“She’s not far wrong. And twenty or thirty of those pastors get to find themselves in jail every year.”

“Few things give me more pleasure,” said Harold, “than the thought of wicked pastors. I have a passionate ambition to be responsible for the unfrocking of a bishop. A cardinal, even.”

“My,” said Mrs Washburn, and she laughed. “Well, Diane, you certainly picked yourself a beau with spirit.”

“I didn’t know admirers were called beaux anywhere except the South, Mrs Washburn.”

“Oh, I use the words I used when I was young. People don’t have respect for the old customs any more. When a young man wanted to walk out with me, he asked my father first. I guess a beau was kind of official in these parts.”