As Far as You Can Go (30 page)

In fact, Harold decided, he had been wrong to feel so alarmed and outraged by the party at whatever that man’s name—Robin, that was it—at Robin’s house. It wasn’t for him, Harold, that sort of party, but it made life more interesting that there were people for whom it was life and beauty and truth and all the rest of that stuff. It mustn’t be allowed to get out of hand, of course, but it was important that it should be there. He thought he would suggest some of these ideas to Eddie next time he met him, and see what he thought. Almost certainly he would hate the abstraction of what he did into ideas, but you could never tell. That was the point about the Eddies of the world: you never could tell what they would do next. They kept everyone else on his toes.

“Honey,” said Diane, slipping into the seat beside him, “what are you dreaming about?”

“Hallo, darling. I was thinking about Eddie, and how crazy he was. You should have been with us this morning. It was one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re not angry with me, Harold?” She was looking
very pretty, in the orange shirt in which he had first seen her, and a white skirt. Her eyes looked as though she was frightened of being hurt, and would try not to show it.

“No, I’m not angry,” said Harold. “What shall we do, darling? Shall we go down to the beach and lie about all afternoon?”

“I don’t have a swimsuit.”

“Let’s go and buy you one.”

She laughed suddenly, the anxiety gone from her face. “O.K.,” she said. “Let’s go to Bullock’s.”

Bullock’s was a large store in Westwood, close to the
campus
of the University of California at Los Angeles. The streets were full of young men and girls, dressed with the casual aplomb of the young who know they have several years of physical attractiveness on their side, and they don’t mind who knows it.

They bought her a glamorous bright blue bikini, and Harold flirted with the assistant while she tried it on.

“You’ve got a real case here,” said the girl, when Diane came out of the booth again, saying, “That’s fine, wrap it up, will you?”

“I’m not a case,” said Harold, “I’m a detective. I look all over the place for clues.”

“Gee, I wouldn’t mind being a clue with him for an hour or two,” said the girl to Diane. “That cute accent.”

“You’ve just lost your chance,” said Harold.

They drove to Santa Monica and Diane signed Harold into the guest-book of the Beach Club. They then went to their separate changing-rooms and met in a few minutes outside the club on the duckboards that protected bare feet from the scorching sand; They lay on the beach all afternoon, giggling and telling each other about their lives. Then they rode the big waves, Diane with skill and Harold without. After being deposited on the pebbles with what felt like several tons of sea-water on top of him, Harold staggered
ashore, but Diane dragged him back into the water and tried to teach him how to do it.

They dived through the breaking waves and got out into the clear water beyond, where they trod water.

“I daren’t do it again,” said Harold. “I feel all shaken up. Couldn’t we just stay out here and swim around?”

“There might be a shark,” said Diane, her black hair plastered down, over her face and eyes, over her shoulders. She looked like a mermaid, only mermaids usually had fair hair.

“Good God,” said Harold. “Sharks on one side, certain loss of limb on the other. Let’s just hold hands and drown.”

They held hands and kissed, their feet getting tangled as they trod water, but they didn’t drown.

“Come on,” said Diane. “Then let’s lie around a bit, and then let’s go to the movies. I told Grandma I wouldn’t be back till late.”

Treading water beside her, Harold found her immensely desirable. He put his arms around her, and pressed his body through the water against her. His desire was manifest. She smiled at him through the long wet hair, and slipped a hand between his thighs. They sank.

Choking as he surfaced, Harold said, “I think dry land is the place for that sort of thing, really, don’t you?”

She was laughing, swimming round him with strong strokes. “I feel kind of free beyond the breakers,” she said. “You know—out beyond the three-mile limit. Laws don’t apply any more. Crazy.” She swam up to him and twined her legs about his and kissed him. She tasted of salt and girl and sexuality.

“Right,” said Harold, freeing himself. “Let’s go in.”

He managed to catch the wave’s crest correctly this time, and swooped towards the beach, feeling like a bird. But at the last moment something went wrong, and he swallowed a lot of water. Diane was laughing beside him as he stood up.

“It’s not so hard, is it?”

“Hard enough. I don’t think I’ll spoil my near-success by trying again.”

“Why, Harold, and I took you for an ambitious man.”

He seized her by the waist and they rolled in the shallows, till she fought him off, and said, “Honey, in front of the best people in L.A. What will they think?”

“If I could only get you beyond the three-mile limit, but ashore,” said Harold.

“You haven’t tried yet.”

They lay close together on a towel, the sun scorching down on their backs. Then they went and changed and had a drink at the bar of the Beach Club.

“Shall we go to my hotel?” said Harold.

“Honey, we said
movies
,”
she said, her eyes wide in mock surprise.

“No, movies afterwards. I hope you have nothing against daylight. Helen always refused to do it by daylight.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not that square.”

They went to the hotel. Her body was small-boned and yet hard, a young girl’s body. She was very responsive: very ticklish, too, it seemed, particularly just beneath her arms. She laughed and held his hands tight against her ribs. There was nothing withheld.

Afterwards, Harold said, “Have you slept with a lot of men?”

“Two,” she said. Her eyes were shut, her face calm. When she opened her eyes the pupils were large, soft, beautiful. “But it was different, then. I was trying so hard to feel things I didn’t feel. Trying to love. The boys seemed to enjoy it, though. I did, too, I guess. But it wasn’t what I was hoping for. Maybe the squares are right, honey. Maybe it is worth waiting for the man you love.”

“Maybe,” said Harold. “I wouldn’t have thought it did any harm to keep in practice, though.”

“And they say the English are reserved,” she murmured.

They had dinner on the Strip, then went to an Elvis Presley movie, which made them both feel sexy again, so they went back to the hotel.

Harold was almost asleep, when she shook him gently and said, “I have to get home, honey.”

“Ah,” he said, rolling on to his back. “Life always pokes its ugly snout into happiness, doesn’t it?” He felt sad and sated. He wanted to go on holding her all night, to feel her breath against his cheek, her body stirring, her pulse against his ribs. He did not want to take her home.

“When we’re married,” he said, “we’ll be able to sleep together every night of our lives. I always wondered why people got married. I thought it was in order not to have to do the washing-up. But it’s to be able to sleep together all night, and the hell with the rest of the world.”

“Yes,” she said.

She got up and began to dress. He watched her small
movements
, the body disappearing beneath the clothes.

“I love that orange shirt,” he said. “You were wearing it the day you opened the door and I walked into your life.”

“Corny,” she said. “Get up.”

As they drove to San Domingo Canyon, he said into her hair, “When shall we go to San Diego, darling? I want to meet your mother so much.”

“We can go tomorrow,” she said, sitting up. “I’ll fix for a neighbour to look after Grandma. I can be at the drug-store around ten. It’s quite a way. We want to have plenty of time. I’ll call Mom as soon as I get back.”

“Marvellous,” said Harold. It would be, too.

She settled against him again.

“Why don’t you have a car, Diane? It’s absurd, living up here at the end of the canyon, not to have one.”

“I don’t know. Grandma’s too old to drive, I guess. And she never got around to thinking of letting me drive her.”

“But you can drive?”

“Oh, sure. But we get along. Getting down doesn’t take long. It’s getting back up that’s hard. And there are buses running along Sunset. People give me rides on the way up. And Grandma always takes a taxi. She says it’s cheaper than owning a car. And she doesn’t like to leave home much, I reckon.”

“And not having a car makes it difficult for you to leave, too, whether you like it or not.”

“That’s true, too,” she said softly. “But don’t think of her like that, Harold.”

“I’ll think kindly about her when I know she’ll let you go. Not till then.”

“It’s my decision,” she said.

“I’m glad you feel like that about it, darling.”

“I’ll feel happier when I’ve seen Mom,” said Diane.

They had reached the house.

“I love you, Diane.”

They kissed reflectively, then said good night as though they were simply old friends. He watched her enter the house, her silhouette small and black against the light. As he started the car he wondered when and how she was going to break the news to her grandmother.

It was not yet midnight when he got back to the hotel, to his surprise. He felt it was much later. He was tired and happy and went straight to bed. He was just about to turn out the light when there was a knock at the door. He thought for a moment of not answering, but the knocking was
repeated
, louder, and he got out of bed, shouting, “Just a moment.”

He slipped on a pair of trousers and a shirt, and it wasn’t till he had opened the door that he realized he must look rather foolish in bare feet. But a look at his visitor made him forget his own appearance.

It was Chuck. He was wearing his usual hotel uniform, but
he was very pale, and he seemed to be holding to the door to keep himself upright.

“What’s the matter?” said Harold.

“Can I come in for a moment?” said Chuck. He didn’t wait for an answer, but shut the door behind him and sat in one of Harold’s chairs.

“It’s about Eddie,” he said.

“Yes, what about Eddie?”

“He’s dead.”

“He’s
what
?”
said Harold.

“He’s dead, he’s dead,” said Chuck. “I heard it on the radio, and then I went to identify the body, and it was him.”

“But how? How did it happen?”

“I was just sitting around,” said Chuck, “just sitting around waiting for someone to ring the goddam bell, and listening to the radio, and they said there’d been this accident. And I knew, I just knew as I was listening, that it must be Eddie.”

He looked younger than Eddie, about twenty-five, and he had a crew cut and blue eyes. He looked like every American boy of twenty-five, except he was wearing the hotel uniform.

“Wait a minute, Chuck. Let me get
you a drink.”

There was a bottle of bourbon that he’d had sent up while Diane was there. He fixed two strong drinks and added ice from the little refrigerator that was fitted in every room.

“Here,” he said, giving Chuck the drink. “Now say it all again, slowly. From the beginning.”

“I tell you,” said Chuck. “I was just listening to the radio, and they said there’d been this terrific smash, and kids lying dead all over the place. And then they said there’d been this one guy who couldn’t be identified who’d been driving in the wrong lane at terrific speed, and he’d smashed into these teenagers, and there were seven people dead, the six
teenagers
and the one guy. And I just knew that it must be Eddie.”

“Where was all this?”

“Mar Vista. On the San Diego Freeway. You know where National Boulevard is? Right by the exit there. The guy they couldn’t identify, that’s Eddie, he was being chased by the cops. He was in a stolen car. They saw him heading along Venice Boulevard, and he saw them chasing him, and he turned on to the Freeway going up the exit, and they didn’t dare to follow him. I guess he just panicked. Maybe he did it deliberately. Goddam it, I know he did it deliberately. He got on that Freeway, and then he just put his foot down till he hit something. He must have gone nearly a mile before he hit this car with the teenagers in it. Six of them. On their way to a drive-in movie. Four boys and two girls. The cops say he must have been doing over a hundred. It was a
Cadillac
, a white Cadillac convertible. He was going about a hundred and the kids were doing about seventy, and there was one hell of a crash. One
hell
of a crash.”

“How awful,” said Harold.

“I just knew it was him. He’d been seeing that girl, that Lou. I told him he’d get into trouble if he hung around her any longer. Her brother, Pete, he just hated Eddie.”

“I know. I dropped Eddie off there this afternoon.”

“You did? Well, he’d’ve gone there anyway. You couldn’t stop him. He was real mad at those kids, at Pete and that gang of kids. He said he’d show them.”

“The Pirates,” said Harold.

“Yeah, that’s right, the Pirates. Well, I called the cops and I said maybe I could identify this body, it sounded like a friend of mine, and they said come on over. So I went on over. And they have this morgue place, you know? Real grisly, stiffs on ice.” He looked up and said, “I guess I don’t have to tell you this part, do I?”

“Just as you like,” said Harold.

“You were a friend of his, though, right? He kind of liked you, you know that? He thought you were kind of different.”

“Oh, yes,” said Harold. “I was the Englishman, you see. Everyone else around L.A. was American.”

“Yeah,” said Chuck, “but he liked you, he really did.”

“You may as well tell me,” said Harold. “If it’ll make you feel any better.”

“Well, it was like this. I went into this morgue place, and there was this one guy with me, no, two guys. A cop and this other guy, the guy who runs the place. He must be nuts, I guess. Some kind of pervert, looking after stiffs all the time. Anyway, this guy, he took me down a long row like a row of drawers, maybe, and then he yanks open one of the drawers, and there’s this white sheet over someone. And then the cop says, ‘Wait a minute, Joe’, and Joe says, ‘Yeah, I forgot’, and the cop says, ‘How well did you know this guy, Friedricksen?’ and I said I knew him pretty well. And then the cop says, ‘Did you ever see him in the shower or anything?’ and I said, ‘Sure, I saw him without his clothes.’ And I was getting kind of scared, I’m telling you, all these questions in that place, and I didn’t know what was going on. I mean, you know what cops are like, they might be trying to send me to jail for sleeping with Eddie, but I didn’t care, I said, ‘Sure, I saw him without his clothes, hundreds of times.’ And the cop says, ‘Was there any distinguishing mark on him, Friedricksen? Like, maybe, a mole or something?’ and I said, ‘Listen, show me the body and I’ll tell you if he’s my friend or not. What is all this, anyway? And the cop says, ‘O.K., if that’s the way you want it, Friedricksen, but this stiff doesn’t have any face left’, and then the other guy, the one in the white coat, he pulls back the sheet, and there’s just a mess, just a bloody mess of flesh and bits of bone sticking out all over the place. It was terrible, it was just terrible. And then the guy in the white coat pulls off the rest of the sheet, and you know what, Harold? He was nothing above the waist, just pulp, but he wasn’t touched below, not a scratch that I could see, and I looked at his knees and I said, ‘Yes,
sure that’s him, that’s Eddie Jackson.’ And the cop says, ‘Are you sure?’ and I said, ‘Sure I’m sure, those scars on his knees’, because he did that when he had a crash a year ago before he went off round the world again. ‘Sure I’m sure’, I said, and then I felt sick, and I was just turning away because that wasn’t a pretty sight, believe me, when the guy in the white coat says, ‘Did you see this, Dave?’ and he flips Eddie’s—you know, his penis—and I turn around and someone’s castrated him, there’s a sort of mess of blood, but his balls have gone, and then I pass out.”