The Seersucker Whipsaw (11 page)

Sitting there in the bar of the Prince Albert hotel, another bench mark came on and I knew that ten years from then, or twenty, I would remember that bar, that drink, and the number of rings the glass made on the dark wood. And I would remember Anne Kidd who walked into the middle of it.

She wore a pale yellow dress that hung straight down and ended just above her knees. It was sleeveless. She wore short white gloves, carried a white purse and had on white shoes—pumps. There was a strand of pearls around her neck. She moved gracefully onto the bar stool and the bench mark ended.

“You look a bit odd,” she said.

“Admiring your dress.”

“Thank you.”

“What would you like?”

“A martini will be fine.”

I ordered the drink. “Something happened this afternoon,” she said. “To me, I mean.”

“I know.”

“I never felt like that before with anyone. I liked it. I was afraid you wouldn't be here tonight.”

I kept staring at her hair where the light caught it and made it shine like new honey. “It usually happens when you're fourteen or fifteen.”

She smiled at the Australian as he served the drink and he smiled back. “He approves,” I said. “My masculinity is confirmed. After we finish this we'll stroll past the local gas station so the lads can make a proper appraisal.”

“Did you ever do that? Parade your girl friends before the boys at the corner garage or drugstore?”

I shook my head. “The corner garage and drugstore were out by the time I reached puberty. By then it was the drive- in and you showed around ten p.m. in the family sedan. Or in your own car, if you were affluent.”

“Were you?”

“Affluent?”

“Yes.”

“Sure. He made it off wheat.”

“Was he a farmer?”

“Is. No, he owns an elevator.”

“Where?”

“In North Dakota.”

“Do you like him?”

“He's okay. He likes North Dakota. That pretty well sums him up, except for his wife. His second one. She's what I think they used to call a stepper.”

“You like her?”

“Yes. She's fine.”

“Now I know all about you.”

“There's a bit more, but not much.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“Minnesota.”

“English lit—right?”

“Wrong. Letters.”

“Letters?”

“As close to a classical education as Minnesota got that year. It was an experiment. A little Latin, and less Greek. It was to produce the well-rounded man. I think they abandoned it in favor of something called communications shortly after I was graduated.”

“A wholesome background,” she said. “All Midwestern and chock full of wheaty goodness.”

“There are a few edges that still need sanding.”

She told me about herself—the bare outline of a life in Florida with parents who were moderately wealthy and moderately young and who got along with each other most of the time. There had been no traumas—her life had run smoothly through high school and college and then into the Peace Corps after eighteen months with a social welfare agency in Chicago.

“It's not much of a life, is it?”

I smiled at her. “It still has a few years to go.”

The voice that came over my shoulder was smooth and polished and when I turned to see who belonged to it I wasn't disappointed. He was about six-feet-one, tall for an Albertian, and he carried it straight up and down. The gleam of the leather of his Sam Browne belt matched that of his custom calf-length boots. The crowns on his shoulder said that he was a Major and the uniform I took to be that of the Albertian army. His voice, deep, mellow and smooth as warm grease, had said: “Good evening, Miss Kidd.”

She turned, looked at him, and smiled. I envied him the smile. “Major Chuku,” she said. “It's nice to see you.”

“I didn't know you were in Barkandu.”

“I came down two days ago—to see the dentist.”

“A smile so lovely should receive every care,” said the Major—a slick article, I decided.

“Major Chuku, I would like you to meet Peter Upshaw.”

“How do you do?” I said, and we shook hands. He had the weight and the breadth of hand, but he didn't press his advantage. It was just a firm, normal shake.

“You are down from London, Mr. Upshaw?”

“Yes.”

“On business or pleasure?”

“Business, I'm afraid.”

“I hope then that it will be profitable.”

“Thank you.”

“Major Chuku commands the battalion in Ubondo,” Anne said. “You may be seeing something of each other. Mr. Upshaw is down for the campaign.”

The Major's eyebrows arched politely and his forehead took on a few interested wrinkles. “Are you one of the Americans whom we're importing to bring us abreast of the latest political tactics, Mr. Upshaw?”

“Yes.”

“Do you happen to be associated with my good friend, Padraic Duffy?”

“I work for him,” I said.

“Then we must have a drink together,” the Major said firmly. “Surely you will be good enough to be my guest?”

“That's very kind,” I said.

We left the bar and found a table. The Major sidled around and held Anne's chair for her. At least it looked like a sidle. He had a round smooth face with a sharp straight nose and small ears that almost came to points. His hair seemed to lie in neat black ringlets around his head. His mouth was big and wide and he wore it in a darting white smile for company, but when he ordered the drinks from the waiter it straightened itself out into a firm enough line. He had that look of command that you usually find only in experienced kindergarten teachers or general officers.

When the drinks came, the Major insisted on paying. I let him. “Now tell me, Mr. Upshaw. How is my good friend, Padraic? The last time I saw him he was trying to convince me that I should invest heavily in cocoa shares. Sometimes I think I should have followed his advice.”

“You met him down here?”

“Yes, when he first came down on the Cocoa Board thing. Chief Akomolo was responsible for Padraic's introduction to Albertia. Do you know the Premier well?”

“We've only met socially.”

“An interesting man,” the Major said. “And an ambitious one. It was at his house that Miss Kidd and I met. He was entertaining the first members of the Peace Corps to arrive in his region.”

“Are you following the political campaign closely, Major?” I asked.

He laughed and made it sound as if he had heard a joke. A funny one. “I have enough difficulty in keeping up with the intramural politics of the army. No, I do not follow governmental politics, only the politicians.”

“There is a difference?”

“Of course. Let us say Mr. X is this particular politician of this particular party, while Sir Y is a politician who owes allegiance to another party. I'm really not at all interested in what either Mr. X or Sir Y says, does or promises. I'm only interested in what happens to them. To put it yet another way: I am not interested in whether the jockey stands up in the stirrups on the back stretch—but only if the horse he rides comes in first.”

“You give the winner a name?”

The Major smiled. It was the disarming smile of a man who seems to have nothing to hide. “Sometimes,” he said, “the winner is called ‘Liberty Bell.' Sometimes it might run under the name ‘Africa Mine.' Most lately, it's been using ‘Martial Air.'”

“I'd put two pounds on the last one if the odds were right.”

“I don't gamble, Mr. Upshaw. I prefer the security of flat certainty. Perhaps that is why I have been so unsuccessful with the ladies.”

“I'm afraid you're also something of a liar, Major,” Anne said. “Your name is often mentioned at Ubondo's hen parties. And it's usually accompanied by a friendly warning, and giggles.”

“At the earliest opportunity I should like to demonstrate what lies they tell about one. Especially in a place such as Ubondo. I assure you, Miss Kidd, I am completely harmless.”

I tried to remember where I had heard the Major talk before. It wasn't the sound of his voice; it was the faintly archaic phrasing, the almost mannered structure. It all sounded like one of those interminable novels about India or Malaya where the bright young native barrister takes tea with the pretty little thing just out from England and shocks hell out of the crowd at the club.

The Major talked as if he had read the same novels. But he had a look about him which made it obvious that he was out after more than just a cup of tea and a chocolate bickey. As far as I was concerned, he had “Let's Screw, Honey” tattooed right across his forehead.

He turned to me again. “Tell me, Mr. Upshaw, do you really believe that this country of mine is ready for representative democracy?”

“I don't know if any country is ready, except Switzerland.”

“I'm really curious, you know. You haven't the air of a chap who'd try to flog a candidate—merchandise him much as one would a motor car or a particular brand of cigarettes. And from my knowledge of Duffy, I doubt that he would be so crass. Just what does a political manager actually do? Mind you, I'm merely curious.”

“You'll have to ask Mr. Shartelle,” I said. “He's the political expert. I'm just the writer—the phrasemaker. The hack.”

“You're far too modest, I'm sure. But I would like to ask him. Perhaps you would have dinner with me in Ubondo this week—Friday?”

“Fine. I'll check with Shartelle.”

“Good. And you'll be joining us, Miss Kidd, of course.”

She didn't pause or hesitate. “I'll be delighted.”

“Splendid,” the Major said and rose. “Till Friday then.”

“Friday,” I said, half rising.

He made a short bow and left. He walked tall and perfectly straight and the heads in the bar turned to watch his progress as he moved through the room.

“He's not real,” I said. “They cut him out of an old copy of
Cosmopolitan
and pasted him into my African scrapbook.”

“He's real all right,” Anne said. “Maybe one of your first jobs should be to find out just how real.”

Our dinner at the Prince Albert was less than a success. The steak was stringy and had been tenderized to mush by being soaked in papaya juice. The fried potatoes were done to a high cholesterol turn and the salad had been drowned by someone who had inverted the Spanish admonition to be a miser with vinegar, a profligate with oil. I shoved the food around in circles, dumped something brown and nasty-looking from a Heinz bottle on the steak, gave up, and settled for coffee, a cigarette, and a glass of brandy.

Anne ate hungrily, apparently unmindful of the horror that squatted on her plate. She packed away the steak, the potatoes, the salad, and even the villainous brussels sprouts that she had ordered as an afterthought.

“What do you eat in the Peace Corps?” I asked. “They send you CARE packages?”

“We cook for ourselves. Buy meat and tinned stuff at the local supermarket—they have one, you know. It's not exciting. Just plain British food—”

“Nothing's plainer.”

“I'm a good cook,” she said. “If you're nice, I'll invite you over. You bring the groceries. I can't afford it.”

Somehow we drifted into a mild argument about martinis. Anne claimed that the best were made from Beefeater gin and California's Tribuno vermouth. I argued that it was a New York fad, circa 1956, that was still making the rounds and that gin was gin, especially to gin heads. We found common ground in our conviction that Americans ran the Germans a close race as the world's most unloved tourists, with the English not far behind. We also, for some reason, established a mutual dislike for coconut but parted company over anchovies. I was in the affirmative. We decided we were both against wiretapping in any form and that Jimmy Hoffa was vastly underrated as a natural wit. We split over Bogart. I said he added up to nothing more than a couple of unforgettable scenes in
The Maltese Falcon
and
Beat the Devil
. She said what about
The African Queen
and I said that he should have had his teeth capped and taken his thumbs out of his belt in just one scene or two. We gleefully slandered Dean Rusk, Walter Cronkite, Sonny Liston, and the Johnson daughters. Kind words were said by one or the other of us in memory of the dead, the missing and the neglected: Hart Crane, Ezra Taft Benson, Night Train Lane, Kenneth Patchen, Lana Turner's daughter, Cheryl, Johnny Stompanato and Billy Sol Estes.

“You're fading,” Anne said. “I can't go back to World War II. I don't remember anything before 1950.”

“Nobody's that young.”

“I am.”

“I know some guys who were always too young. They were born around 1936.”

“That makes them thirtyish. Middleaged.”

“Right. Middleaged. They can remember World War II—the eat, drink and be merry
Gemütlichkeit
. But they missed being in it because they were too young. They say it was the last good war. They were also too young for Korea, and although that wasn't such a hot war, they're still sorry they missed it. They say. So they mutter into their Scotch about never having the chance to test their courage truly and well under fire.

“Now there happens to be a very fine war going on in Asia—as sticky a mess as one could hope for. But it doesn't have the clear-cut issues for the lads who were always too young. Besides, they're thirty or so now and their careers have called and the mortgage is due. So, they'll never have that one, right, nice little war with the sides all carefully drawn—good on the left, wrong on the right. They think it will haunt them, but it won't.”

“Why?”

“They'll become authorities on World War II and know all the battles and the regiments and the corps commanders, but stay politely silent when the potgutted drones start talking about Guadalcanal and Anzio and Eniwetok.”