Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York (29 page)

‘Would you like to live in America?’

Little Henry had the right answer here too. ‘Cor,’ he said, ‘ ’oo wouldn’t?’

‘Do you think you could learn to play baseball?’

Apparently little Henry had been experimenting in Washington. ‘Ho,’ he scoffed, ‘anybody who can play cricket
can ’it a baseball. I knocked one for six - only you call it a ’ome run ’ere.’

‘Say,’ said Mr Schreiber, now genuinely interested, ‘that’s good. Maybe we can make a ball player out of him.’

It had taken slightly longer, but there was that wonderful pronoun ‘we’ again. Mr Schreiber had become a member of the firm. He said to the boy, ‘What about your father? I guess you’re pretty anxious to find him, eh?’

To this little Henry did not reply, but stood there silently regarding Mr Schreiber out of eyes that only shortly before then had reflected little else than misery and unhappiness. Since he had never known a real father he could not genuinely form a concept of what one would be like, except that if it was anything like Mr Gusset he would rather not. Still, everybody was making such a fuss and trying so hard to find this parent that he felt he had best not be impolite on the subject, so instead of answering the question he said finally, ‘You’re OK, guv’ner, I like you.’

Mr Schreiber’s round face flushed with pleasure and he patted the boy on the shoulder. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to see what we can do. In the meantime you can stay here with Mrs Harris and Mrs Butterfield.’ He turned to Mrs Harris, ‘Just how far have you got locating the boy’s father?’

Mrs Harris told him how, foolishly, Mr Brown of Kenosha, Wisconsin, had been the only egg in her basket, and now that it had been broken she was at a loss as to how to continue. She showed him her official letter from the Air Force demanding to know which George Brown she referred to of the 453 who at one time or another had been in the Service, and asking to know his birthplace, birthday, serial number, date of enlistment, date of discharge, places of service abroad, at home, etc.

Mr Schreiber looked at the formidable document and scoffed, ‘Huh, those guys couldn’t find anyone if he was right under their noses. Just you leave it to me. I got a real organisation. We got distribution branches in every big city in the U.S.A. If we can’t turn him up for you, nobody can. What did you say his name was? And have you got any other dope on him - where he was stationed, maybe, or how old he was at the time of his marriage, or any other thing that would help us?’

Mrs Harris shamefacedly had to admit that she could offer no more than that his name was George Brown, he had been an American airman stationed at an American air base in England sometime in 1951, and that he had married a waitress by the name of Pansy Cott, who had borne him little Henry, refused to accompany him to America, was divorced by Mr Brown, had remarried and vanished. As she revealed the paucity of these details, Mrs Harris became even more aware and further ashamed of the manner in which she had let her enthusiasm carry her away and handled the affair. ‘Lumme,’ she said, ‘I’ve played the fool, ’aven’t I? Wicked, that’s what I’ve been. If I was you I’d send us all packing and ’ave done with it.’

Mrs Schreiber protested, ‘I think what you’ve done is absolutely wonderful, Mrs Harris. Don’t, you think so, Joel? Nobody else could have.’

Mr Schreiber made a small movement of his head and shoulders which indicated a doubtful but not antagonistic ‘Well,’ and then said, ‘Sure ain’t much to go on is there? But if anyone can find this feller, our organisation can.’ To little Henry he said, ‘OK, sonny. Tomorrow is Sunday. We’ll get a baseball bat, ball, and glove and go in Central Park and see if you can hit a home run off me. I used to be a pretty good pitcher when I was a kid.’

I
T
was shortly before one of Mrs Schreiber’s social-business dinners that Kentucky Claiborne definitely set the cap on to the loathing that Mrs Harris had come to entertain for him and made it an undying and implacable affair.

He had arrived, as usual, unkempt and unwashed in his blue jeans, cowboy boots, and too-fragrant leather jacket, but this time he had turned up an hour before the scheduled time, and for two reasons: one was that he liked to tank up early before the drinks were slowed down to being passed one at a time, and the other was that he wished to tune up his guitar at the Schreiber piano, for Mr Schreiber was entertaining some important distributors and heads of television networks and had persuaded Kentucky to sing after supper.

Kentucky was a ‘Bourbon and Branch’ man, and very little of the latter. After four tumblersful of ‘Old Grand-pappy’ that were more than half neat, he tuned up his instrument, twanging a half a dozen chords, and launched into a ballad of love and death among the feudin’ Hatfields
and McCoys. Halfway through he looked up to find himself being stared at by a small boy with a slightly too-large head and large, interested and intelligent eyes.

Kentucky paused in the midst of the blow-down of a whole passel of Hatfields at the hands of McCoys and their rifles and said, ‘Beat it, bub.’

Little Henry, surprised rather than hurt, said, ‘What for? Why can’t I stay ’ere and listen?’

‘Because I said beat it, bub, that’s why.’ And then, as his ear suddenly reminded him of something, said, ‘Say, ain’t that Limey talk? Are you a Limey?’

Little Henry knew well enough what a Limey was, and was proud of it. He looked Kentucky Claiborne in the eye and said, ‘You’re bloody well right I am - and what’s it to you?’

‘What’s it to me?’ said Kentucky Claiborne with what little Henry should have recognised as a dangerous amiability. ‘Why, it’s just that if there’s anything I hate worse than nigger talk, it’s Limey talk. And if there’s anything I hate more than niggers, it’s Limeys. I told you to beat it, bub,’ and he thereupon leaned over and slapped little Henry on the side of the head hard, sending him spinning. Almost by reflex little Henry released his old-time Gusset wail, and instinctively, to drown out the sound, Kentucky launched into the next stanza in which avenging Hatfields now slaughtered McCoys.

And in the pantry where Mrs Harris was helping to lay out
canapés
, the little char could hardly believe her ears, and for a moment she thought that she was back in her own flat at number five Willis Gardens, Battersea, listening to the wireless and having tea with Mrs Butterfield, for penetrating to her ears had been the caterwauling of Kentucky Claiborne, then a thump and the sound of a
blow, the wailing of a hurt child, followed by music up
forte crescendo
. Then she realised where she actually was, and what must have happened, though she could not believe it, and went charging out of the pantry and into the music room to find a weeping Henry with one side of his face scarlet from the blow, and a laughing Kentucky Claiborne twanging his guitar.

He stopped when he saw Mrs Harris and said, ‘Ah tol’ the little bastard to beat it, but he’s got wax in his ears, so Ah had to clout him one. Git him out of here - Ah’m practisin’.’

‘Bloody everything!’ raged Mrs Harris. And then picturesquely added thereto, ‘You filthy brute to strike an ’armless child. You touch ’im again and I’ll scratch yer eyes out.’

Kentucky smiled his quiet, dangerous smile, and took hold of his instrument by the neck with both hands. ‘Goddam,’ he said, ‘if this house just ain’t filled with Limeys. Ah just tol’ this kid if there’s anything Ah hates worse’n a nigger it’s a Limey. Git outta here before I bust this geetar over yoh’ haid.’

Mrs Harris was no coward, but neither was she a fool. In her varied life in London she had come up against plenty of drunks, ruffians, and bad actors, and knew a dangerous man when she saw one. Therefore, she used her common sense, collected little Henry to her and went out.

Once in the safety of the servants’ quarters she soothed him, bathed his face in cold water, and said, ‘There, there, dearie, never you mind that brute. Ada ’Arris never forgets. It may take a week, it may take a month, it may take a year - but we’ll pay ’im orf for that. ’Ittin’ a defenceless child for being English!’

Had Mrs Harris kept a ledger on her vendettas it would have been noted that there were none that had not been
liquidated long before the time she had allotted. Kentucky Claiborne had got himself into her black book, for, in Mrs Harris’s opinion, the crime was unpardonable, and he was going to pay for it - somehow, sometime. His goose was as good as cooked.

U
P
to this time, due to business in hand, worry over little Henry and the Marquis, and the exigencies of her duties, namely to help Mrs Schreiber put her house in order and get it running properly, Mrs Harris’s vista of New York after those two breathtaking approaches was limited to the broad valley of Park Avenue with its towering apartment houses on either side and the endless twoway stream of traffic obeying the stop and go of the red and green lights day and night. That, with the shops a block east on Lexington Avenue, and one trip to Radio City Music Hall with Mrs Butterfield, had been the extent of her contact with Manhattan.

Because she was busy and preoccupied, and everything was so changed and different from what she had been accustomed to, she had not yet had time to be overwhelmed by it. But now all this was to be altered. It was the George Browns who were to introduce Mrs Harris to that incredible Babylon and Metropolis known as Greater New York.

It came about through the fact that there was now an interim period of comparative peace, with little Henry
integrated into the servants’ quarters of the penthouse while the far-flung network of the branch offices of North American delved into the past of the George Browns of their community in an effort to locate the missing father.

Although he slept in the room with Mrs Harris and took his meals with her and Mrs Butterfield, little Henry was actually a good deal more at large in the Schreibers’ apartment. He was allowed to browse in the library, and began to read omnivorously. Mrs Schreiber every so often would take him shopping with her or to an afternoon movie, while it became an invariable Sunday morning ritual that he and Mr Schreiber would repair to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park with ball, bat, and glove, where little Henry, who had an eye like an eagle and a superb sense of timing, would lash sucker pitches to all corners of the lot for Mr Schreiber to chase. This was excellent for Mr Schreiber’s health, and very good for his disposition as well. Afterwards they might feed the monkeys in the Zoo or roam through the Rambles, or engage a rowboat on the lake and paddle about. Man and boy quickly formed an engaging friendship.

Thus relieved of most of the actual care of the boy, and with more time on her hands since she acted now more in an advisory capacity to the staff she had helped Mrs Schreiber carefully to select, Mrs Harris came to the sudden realisation that she was no longer pulling her weight in the search for the father of little Henry.

It was all very well for Mr Schreiber to say that if the man could be found his organisation would do the job, but after all the main reason for coming to America was to conduct this search herself, a search she had once somewhat pridefully stated she would bring to a successful conclusion.

She remembered the massive conviction she had felt that if only she could get to America she would solve little Henry’s problems. Well, here she was in America, living off the fat of the land, and slacking while somebody else looked to the job that she herself had been so confident of doing. The least she could do was to investigate the Browns of New York.

‘Go to work, Ada ’Arris,’ she said to herself, and thereafter on her afternoons and evenings off, and in every moment of her spare time she initiated a systematic run-through of the Geo. and G. Browns listed in the telephone directories of Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond.

Although she might have done so and saved herself a lot of time and energy, Mrs Harris refused to descend to anything so crude as ringing up the scattered Browns on the telephone and asking them if they had ever served in the U.S. Air Force in Great Britain and married a waitress by the name of Pansy Cott. Instead, she paid them personal visits, sometimes managing to check off two and three in a day.