Stars and Bars

Chapter One

Look at Henderson Dores walking up Park Avenue in New York City. ‘I’m late,’ he is thinking; and he is, late for work. He is carrying his sabres in a thin bag over his right shoulder and trying to appear calm and at ease, but that permanently worried expression on his square open face gives him away rather. The crowds of Americans – neat, well-dressed – stride past him purposefully, unheeding, confident.

Henderson walks on. He is nearly forty years old – birthday coming up fast – and just under six feet tall. His frame is sturdy and his face is kind and agreeably attractive. To his constant surprise, people are inclined to like him on first acquaintance. He is polite, quite smartly dressed and, apart from that slight frown buckling his forehead he seems as composed and as unconcerned as, well, as you or me. But Henderson has a complaint, a grudge, a grumble of a deep and insidious kind. He doesn’t like himself anymore; isn’t happy with the personality he’s been provided with, thank you very much. Something about him isn’t up to scratch, won’t do. He’ll keep the flesh, but he’d like to do a deal on the spirit, if nobody minds. He wants to change – he wants to be different from what he is. And that, really, is why he is here.

He runs a hand through his thick fair hair, short, but cut long, as it were, in the English way. To the practised observer, indeed, everything about him proclaims his Englishness. His haircut – already noted – his pale lashed eyes, the bloom on his unshaven cheekbones, his old blue suit with its double vents in the jacket, the dull worn gold signet ring on the little finger of his left hand, his navy blue ankle-length socks (only butlers and chauffeurs wear black), and his shiny, well-creased, toe-capped black Oxford shoes.

This knowledge – that he is so distinguishable – would distress him because, in fact, his grand and only dream is to fit in; to merge and blend with the identity of these earnest, enviable people on their way to work. Just another Manhattanite, he tells himself, as he transfers his sabres to his left shoulder, just like everybody else here. He frowns again slightly and slows down. This is his problem: he loves America, but will America love him back? Up ahead the lunatic is waiting.

‘The furrier at midnight thinks his hands are full of clouds.’

‘Go away, please.’

‘The furrier at midnight thinks his hands are full of clouds.’

Usually, Henderson Dores didn’t speak to the madmen. He found that by pretending the person simply didn’t exist – actually wasn’t there – it was possible to ignore the most venomous rant. It was a trick he’d first seen perfected by timid dons at Oxford whenever they were accosted by importunate drunks in narrow lanes. The fixed smile, eyes straight ahead, and – abracadabra – there was no drunk. So, with a small effort of will he cancelled the madman, set his features in the requisite mild false smile, took two paces to the left and moved off again.

The lunatic loped along at his side.

Don’t stop, that was the rule. He shouldn’t have stopped, but what this one was saying made some sort of perverse sense.

He looked about him, trying to ignore the malign companion at his side. On this bright April morning New York seemed to expand and rejoice in the thin clean air. Above, the sky was an unobstructed blue. It was what he termed a ‘meringue’ day: crisp, sharp, frangible …

A series of tugs at his elbow. You do not exist, Henderson said to himself, therefore you cannot be tugging at my elbow. His arm was gripped, uncompromisingly. He stopped. Vague fear stimulated his pulse rate. The un-deodorized lunatic wore a beige overcoat (collar up), scarf, battered trilby, sunglasses, and held an opened black umbrella above his head. Henderson saw sweat slide from beneath the hat brim.

‘Please. Leave me alone,’ Henderson said firmly.

The crowd swirled round this impediment.

‘Charming people have something to hide.’ The lunatic spoke in a sing-song woman’s voice. His face was too close; his breath smelt curiously of old lemons.

‘Leave me alone or I shall call the police.’

‘Ah fuck you, asshole.’

That was more like it. The lunatic stood back and levelled a finger at him, thumb cocked.

‘BAM!’

Henderson flinched with genuine shock, turned and strode on. ‘Bam! Bam! Bam!’ faded behind him. He shuddered. Good Lord, he thought, what a disturbing encounter. He eased the weight of his sabres and checked that the shoulder strap wasn’t creasing his suit. The furrier at midnight thinks his hands are full of clouds. That wasn’t too bad actually, for a crazy, he thought, calming down somewhat. It was like a coded spy-greeting; or a line from a better symbolist poem.

He trudged on up Park Avenue’s gentle slope. Younger people overtook him. A pretty girl in an elegant, mushroom-coloured silk suit walked strongly by, incongruous in her training shoes. Her breasts leapt beneath the sheen of her blouse. Her streaked blonde hair was clamped with tiny headphones. She mimed to the song she alone was hearing. Henderson wondered whether he should wish her a ‘nice day’. You could do that sort of thing here: confer cheery blessings on any passing stranger. ‘Hey, enjoy your music!’ he could shout. Or, ‘Have a great lunch!’ or even, ‘Be well!’ He shook his head admiringly and said nothing.

He increased his speed. With the palp of a forefinger he squeezed moisture from his wiry blond eyebrows. He was getting a little concerned about his eyebrows. They had been unexceptionable, inconspicuous things until recently. Now they had thickened and coarsened; certain hairs had begun spontaneously to grow and curl: they were becoming a feature. Just like his nipples, he thought … He checked himself: save the worries for the way home.

Home was a small apartment in a block on East Sixty-second between Lexington and Second Avenues. Convenient enough for the office, if a somewhat uphill hike, but the evening downhill amble was a compensation for the early morning effort. He looked at his watch again. He was late. Astonishingly and gratifyingly he had fallen into a deep sleep sometime after five a.m. and had woken at eight, his head empty of dreams. He had felt a sob of relief in his throat: perhaps, finally, it was all going to change now; perhaps this was a sign: America really was going to work …

He was keen on signs, these days; he analysed them with the assiduity of an apprentice hierophant. And at first they all seemed to bode well.

He had arrived in America, at J.F.K. airport, some two months previously. It had been raining, heavy drops slanting yellow through the airport lights. He had half-planned to kiss the ground (given a discreet moment) pontiff-like, but stepped straight from the plane into a mean corridor. He passed through surly immigration and taciturn customs in a benign trance: those drawls, those impossible names, the real gun on the real cop’s hip.

Outside, the rain had worsened. A tall, very angry black man in a glossy oilskin controlled the queue for taxis with hoarse shouts and imperious gestures. The taxis and the queue formed an obedient line. The gleaming, battered yellow cabs …

Henderson stood beside the taxi-marshal for a while, happy to wait. The man was muttering to himself under his breath. Askance, Henderson looked at his moustache, his thick curved lips, the way he seemed to keep moving even while standing still. Water dripped steadily from his cap’s peak.

‘It could be worse,’ friendly Henderson said. ‘It’s snowing in England.’

The taxi-marshal looked round, the whites of his eyes were yellow like butter.

‘Fuck England,’ he said.

Henderson nodded. ‘Fuck England,’ he agreed, nodding. ‘You bet.’

It had been an epiphanic moment, he now thought, as he waited at a traffic light to cross to the west side of Park Avenue. An omen. The traffic stopped and he hurried to the island, paused, and crossed again. He had pondered on it a long time and he had come to confer on his departure from England an importance which the ostensible and unremarkable business reasons wouldn’t at first seem to warrant. He was going to a job in New York – granted – but he was also making an escape. An escape from the past and from himself.

He strode on more speedily, the aluminium guards on his sabres clinking dully together as the bag banged against his thigh.

He had quit Britain, he had decided, in a conscious and deliberate flight from shyness, in a determined escape from timidity … A man on roller skates glided silently by him and leant sinuously through the crowd. Henderson’s admiration was immediate. ‘Enjoy your skate!’ he wanted to shout after him, but he didn’t. Why not? Because he was shy.

He was (he categorized himself with no trace of self-pity) a shy man. Not chronically shy – he didn’t stammer or spit or flinch or sweat in the manner of the worst afflicted – no, he was shy in the way most of his countrymen were shy. His flaw was a congenital one: latent, deep, ever present. It was like having a birthmark or a dormant illness; an ethnic trait, a racial configuration.

He stepped into shade cast by a tall building and gave a shiver from the sudden chill. Sunny start, rain later, the forecast had said. He had only his raincoat today, trusting the jovial forecaster. Perhaps that was a little foolhardy. He overtook two young men, strolling, talking loudly, one smoking a lime-green cigar. He screwed up his eyes as he walked through a slate-blue cloud of smoke, smelling the vomit-smell of cigars, souring the crispness of the morning.

Shy.

True, his education and his upbringing provided him with a reasonably efficient kit of tools and methods to overcome his disability. Observe him nattering at a cocktail party; see him engage his dull partner at a dinner table with conversation and one would never guess the nature of his disease. But it was there, and beneath this socio-cultural veneer he suffered from all the siblings of shyness too: the feeble air of confidence, the formulaic self-possession, a conditioned wariness of emotional display, a distrust of spontaneity, a dread fear of attracting attention, an almost irrepressible urge to conform …

He briskly turned the corner off Park, lurched and just skittered round three raw shiny steaming turds, freshly deposited in the rough environs of a sapling root. He overtook the fur-clad crone and her nasty pooch. He shot her a hostile, stern glance brimming with reproach. He longed to demand where her poop-scoop was or at least make some withering rejoinder. Only last week he’d heard of a man in the city who, confronted with the sight of a splay-legged great dane dumping its load in front of him, had removed a gun from his jacket and shot the beast there and then. A very, intrinsically American act that, he thought, as he made his way down the street towards his office. A disapproving look, a tut-tut tightening of the lips, that was the best he could manage. It was typical and it was what was wrong. And that was why he had to leave, why he had to come to America for the cure. Because, here, shyness was banned; shyness was outlawed, prohibited.

That of course was nonsense, he realized, as he steered round a postman pushing his trolley. There were plenty of shy people in America, but they were shy in a different way, it seemed, their insecurity had a different stamp to it. And if he had to be shy all his life, then he wanted to be shy like them.

He paused at the door of Mulholland, Melhuish, Fine Art Auctioneers. Brave talk, he said with heavy irony, fine words. The only problem was he kept relapsing. He had been making real progress: look at Melissa, look at Irene. But he kept falling back. Consider the run-in with the madman a few minutes ago; he had handled that appallingly.

He stepped into the entrance hall, black and white marble squares, oak panelling.

‘Good morning, Mr Dores. How are you today?’ the receptionist called from behind her desk.

Henderson, on his way past, smiled automatically then stopped. That was not the way.

‘I’m very well, thank you, Mary. Very well indeed. Thank you for asking.’

‘Oh … Oh. Good. You’re welcome.’

He entered the small lift. Elevator. He pressed ‘Door closed’. They slid to, trapping someone’s pale blue arm.

‘Yawks! Agh!’

He punched ‘Door open’ and Pruitt Halfacre stepped in.

‘Didn’t you see me, Henderson? Jesus.’

‘Sorry, Pruitt. Miles away.’

‘Jesus, God. That’s oil.’ Halfacre examined his crushed sleeve. ‘I’m going to have to charge you, Henderson.’

Was he joking or was he being serious? Henderson could never tell with Americans. He smoothed his eyebrows. They ascended.

‘Wonderful news, don’t you think? At last, at last,’ Halfacre said.

‘What?’

‘You haven’t heard? We think we may have an Impressionist sale. A chance at one anyway.’

‘Good God!’

‘Yeah. Tom has the details.’

They stepped out of the lift onto the fourth floor. After the plush of the lobby here was scarred paintwork, bright lights, worn linoleum.

‘Morning, Ian,’ Halfacre said.

‘Snap,’ said Toothe. He and Halfacre were both wearing bow ties.

‘Great minds, Ian.’

‘Bit on the late side, Henderson?’ Toothe said. ‘Naughty. You look very hot and bothered.’ Toothe was English, an English version of Halfacre. Two sensitifs of the worst kind. Henderson forgave Halfacre because he was American, but, to be honest, he disliked Toothe intensely.

‘It’s that haul up from the flat. Apartment,’ he said apologetically.

‘Getting old.’

‘Death where is thy sting,’ Halfacre said. Toothe laughed.

Henderson laughed too, waved gaily and left them in the corridor. He walked to his office, suddenly feeling angry. Getting old. Thirty-nine wasn’t old. Impudent little sod. And who was he to clock-watch? Bastard. Forty on the horizon. Prime of life … But, then again, there were these disturbing things happening to his body. His eyebrows, his nipples, his shins, his arse. Ass.

As he approached his office door it opened.

‘Oh.’

‘Hello.’ He greeted Kimberly, the immaculate Kimberly, his secretary. Eighteen going on thirty. The hair, the skin, the nails, the eyes, the clothes. Everything looked new, just on. Very spic, very span. In strong contrast to him.

‘What are you doing here, sir?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The ten o’clock flight to Boston? The man with the Winslow Homers?’

‘Oh Jesus.’ Henderson remembered. ‘Oh, look, phone him up and postpone. Tell him I’m ill. I’ll come tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow’s Saturday.’

‘Monday, then. God,’ he rubbed his eyes. ‘I overslept. Clean forgot. Sorry Kimberly.’

‘There are messages.’

‘Already?’ He looked at his watch. Nine forty-five.

‘A Ms Dusseldorf and Mrs Wax.’

‘Fine.’

Kimberly left. Henderson propped his sabres behind the door and sat down. He could see a section of Central Park through his window. The plane trees were just coming into leaf; the sun on the smooth hillocks made it look vernal and fresh.

Ms Dusseldorf. That was Irene. It was a code he insisted on: she had to use a pseudonym – a city – whenever she phoned. The last time it had been Pnom Penh.

He wondered whom he should phone first. His ex-wife or his mistress. He should phone Melissa, he knew, she liked her calls returned. He phoned Irene.

‘Hello, Irene. It’s –’

‘Tonight, don’t forget, that’s all.’

‘I’ll see you there. I haven’t forgotten. Christ, I asked you.’

‘Don’t be late. I’ll give you fifteen minutes then I’m gone.’

‘I won’t. Bye.’

Henderson stood up and took off his jacket. He moved to the door to hang it up and paused there for a moment, his jacket in one hand, his square jaw in the other. He stroked his jawbone gently, like a man coming round after a novocaine jab. What on earth was he doing, he asked himself, getting more deeply involved with Irene when what he really wanted to do was re-marry Melissa? He shook his head. This too was typical: a clear and predetermined course of action had become complicated by his own maverick and wayward desires and his seeming inability ever to resist them. Now he was being driven to the brink of having to make a choice. The worst possible state of affairs.

As he fitted his jacket onto the coat hanger he saw the envelopes in the inside breast pocket, and among them the red and blue flashes of the airmails. Rushing out of the apartment that morning he’d snatched up his post without looking at it.

He laid the two airmail envelopes on his desk, feeling sensations of reverence and trepidation behind his rib-cage. They were from Britain; his own handwriting was on the envelopes – he always sent stamped, addressed envelopes to ensure prompt replies. On one the postmark said ‘Northampton’. With a blunt thumb he ripped it open.

Dear Mr Dores,

Thanking you for your letter of the 7th March. I remember Captain Dores well. He was my company commander during the operations around Inchon in ’43. He was a fine and fair man and popular with the other lads.

I am sorry to say that I was taken ill with cerebral malaria and sent back to India where I spent three months in hospital. By the time I rejoined the unit your father had died six weeks previous, and there was not much left of the company I’m sorry to say as we had seen a lot of action.

I suggest that you write to the following who were in the company when your father was killed. Pte David Lee, Royal British Legion, 31 Hardboard Road, Chiswick, London and L/cpl Campbell Drew, Royal British Legion, Kelpie’s Wynd, Innerliethen, Peebleshire. I last saw these chaps at a regimental reunion in 1967 so cannot vouch as for their being still about.

As I said, Capt. Dores was respected by all the chaps. It was a great sadness to us all to hear of his death at the time.

Trusting I have been of some assistance.

    Yours sincerely,

    Sgt (retd) Graham Bellows

    2nd Btn Loyal West Kents.

Another blank, but at least he had another name to write to. He had already written to Drew. He looked at the postmark on the other letter – Galashiels – and this, doubtless, was his reply.

Drew’s handwriting was large and jagged; he clearly pressed down very hard on his biro.

Dear Sir,

With reference to your letter about your father. I was in the company near Inchon when he died. It was a very difficult time for us all, operating as we were behind enemy lines. We had fatalities almost every day from disease, enemy action and even accidents. Your father was a good man and a good officer. It was a great blow to us all when he died.

Yours faithfully,

Campbell Drew

Henderson smoothed Drew’s scored crisp page flat on the desk. He sat back and exhaled. At last. Someone who had been there. But the letter was maddeningly obtuse and uncommunicative. What exactly had been going on that day – 21st March 1943 – in Burma? More precisely what were the circumstances of Captain Dores’s death? How, where, when and by whom? He felt a sudden envy for this heavy handed Scot. Drew had known his, Henderson’s, father; had served under him and conceivably joked and suffered with him; shared a kind of intimacy, in short, that had been denied his son.

He stared at the reproduction of a Monet landscape which Mulholland, Melhuish had sold in London in 1963 for £45,000. The colours shifted. He let his eyes cross and attempted to go into a brief trance, hoping to expunge the sadness that seemed to brim in his body. It didn’t work. Why didn’t he feel more tired, he wondered? As a chronic insomniac surely he had a right to feel permanently exhausted?

Kimberly buzzed him.

‘Mrs Wax, sir. Line one.’

With only the briefest pause, Henderson picked up the phone.

‘Melissa,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Just got your message.’

‘You haven’t forgotten, have you?’

‘Of course not.’ He wondered what he hadn’t forgotten. Everyone reminding him today.

‘See you later, then.’

‘Exactly.’ He fenced. ‘What time did you say again?’

‘About seven. Bryant’s looking forward to seeing you.’

‘Likewise. Seven it is.’

Mrs Wax hung up. He thought he heard a spat kiss come winging down the wire. That was something, he reflected, with dubious pleasure. He frowned. One of the most onerous of the multitude of conditions Melissa had laid down – before she would even consider the thought of them getting together again – was that the children of her second marriage should ‘learn to love Henderson as a father’. Henderson, for his part, was so eager to please that he agreed to anything, including the rather staid ban on pre-remarital sex. Hence this meeting tonight. He remembered: it was Bryant’s birthday, and Bryant was his step-daughter to be. He did some computing. Melissa’s at seven. He was meeting Irene at nine, in the bar of a restaurant in Soho. He should make it all right. Now all he had to do was buy the girl a present.

Henderson looked at his in-tray: three letters. With some guilt he realized it was only now that his mind was turning to his work and he had been in the building an hour. His own private concerns, as ever, took up an increasing portion of his day … He forced himself to concentrate.

Business couldn’t be said to be booming at Mulholland, Melhuish. Which was precisely why he’d been brought out from England: to get things moving, whip up some trade, start making a name for the firm. He thought suddenly of Pruitt’s news: prospects of an Impressionist sale. He winced; he should really be finding out more, exhibiting some curiosity, instead of reading letters and phoning girlfriends. After all, it was his area.

Mulholland, Melhuish had needed an ‘Impressionist man’ and accordingly had sent for him. For some reason, the key factor in establishing an auction house in America was a large Impressionist sale. Only then did you seem bona fide; only then did you acquire a reputation. Or so the pattern had proved in the case of the New York offices of the other famous London auction houses. Little real, profitable business was attracted until there had been a significant Impressionist sale. It was a rite of passage. Why this should be so wasn’t exactly clear; it was just one of the illogical rules of the game.

He drew concentric circles on his blotting pad. Mulholland, Melhuish had opened their New York office eighteen months ago. Since that day there had been no significant Impressionist sale. He had been brought over as a final gamble. As an authority on late-nineteenth-century French painting, his expertise, his academic contacts, his knowledge of the private collectors were meant to lure and instil confidence in potential clients.

At first – another sign, another omen – it had gone gratifyingly smoothly. In the first fortnight he had acquired for sale a large Berthe Morisot. Morale was raised; relief and hope became an almost palpable presence in the offices. But since then, nothing.

He drummed his fingers on the desk. This news of Pruitt’s was a company triumph, but something of a personal failure for him. He just hadn’t been working at it hard enough, he realized. His personal life and its problems were taking up too much time. If only Melissa had been more tractable. If only he hadn’t met Irene …

He got up and looked at the crammed shelves of heavy art books, thumbed catalogues, sale-room records. He wandered through into Kimberly’s tiny office. She was typing, her gleaming nails snicking off the typewriter keys. Did they ever chip, he wondered? Did she ever get worried, break into a sweat? He ran his fingers through his thick hair and hitched up his trousers. He smiled aimlessly at Kimberly’s curious glance. He really should go and find out about this sale, otherwise people would think he was sulking.

A head came round the door.

‘Good Lord, I thought you were in Boston.’

It was Thomas Beeby, his boss. Beeby was very tall and thin and would have looked like a classically distinguished English gentleman had it not been for his surprisingly plump rosy cheeks, which gave him the disconcerting look of a superannuated cherub.

‘Postponed, Tom,’ Henderson said. ‘Seems the man’s sick.’ Kimberly’s nails rattled on without a pause.

‘But that’s wonderful. You’ve heard the news?’

‘About the sale? Yes, I was on my way –’

‘Seems we may have the Gage Collection.’

‘Oh?’ Gage, Gage. The name rang no bells as a patron of the arts. ‘Gage.’

‘Come along, I’ll tell you all about it. Thank God you’re not in Boston.’

He followed Beeby along the corridor to his office. From the floor below came the sound of the sale-room filling up. Porcelain today. A deferential Toothe eased by to take it.

‘It’s all right, Ian,’ Beeby said. ‘Henderson’s not in Boston. He can go now.’

Go where? Henderson thought.

‘Oh. Right you are,’ Toothe said, failing to keep the disappointment out of his voice. Henderson felt a brief elation. The little swine, he thought, never told me about this Gage collection, wanted to sneak off and keep it for himself.

Beeby put his hand on Henderson’s shoulder.

‘This is it, Henderson,’ he said. ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for.’

They entered Beeby’s office, slightly larger than Henderson’s but no less functional. It had a better view of Central Park, however. The sun still shone on the trees, a distant honking rose up from Madison Avenue. Beeby lit a cigarette. Henderson could sense his excitement and he felt a sudden generous warmth towards the tall man. It was Beeby who had brought him to America, who had pulled the strings and created the job, and for that Henderson would be forever grateful.

‘Loomis Gage,’ Beeby began. ‘Reclusive, Southern millionaire. An old man with a small but very select collection. Some seventeenth-century Dutch – “school of” stuff – rather dull, nothing significant. But. But. Two fine Sisleys – ’72 he says – two van Dongens, a big Derain, a Utrillo, a small Braque and two Vuillards.’

‘Well!’

‘I want you to get down there, Henderson. Check it out and then get it for us. Go straight for no seller’s commission. Promise him a full colour catalogue. Exhibition in London if he wants it. Anything.’

‘Right.’ Henderson began to share Beeby’s excitement. He started adding up rough sums in his head, computing the ten per cent buyer’s commission Mulholland, Melhuish would charge. They would do very nicely, thank you. More importantly it would signal their arrival in the New York auction house world … However, one aspect of this miraculous opportunity perplexed him.

‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, Tom, but – purely personal curiosity this – what made him bring the paintings to us?’

‘Sheer good fortune. He claims to have known old man Mulholland in the twenties. Asked to speak to him. When I told him he was dead he almost hung up. Then I said I was Archie Melhuish’s son-in-law and he cheered up again. Stroke of luck, that’s all,’ Beeby smiled joyfully. ‘Trumps came up.’

Henderson smiled with him. Good old Tom, he thought, nice to see him looking happy for a change.

‘I want you to get down there by Monday.’

‘Monday?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of course.’ Henderson kept smiling. ‘Where is it? Exactly.’

‘He lives in a place called Luxora Beach.’

‘One of those purpose-built condominium things?’

‘Actually I’m not all that sure.’ Beeby frowned. ‘It’s in Georgia, I think. Or Alabama. Somewhere like that. All I know at the moment is you’ve got to be in Atlanta on Monday.’

‘Bit vague, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. But deliberately. He’s concerned about his “pryvacy”. Hasn’t even given me his phone number yet. He’s calling back this afternoon with the details. Anyway, sew it all up as quickly as possible.’

‘Right you are.’ He had an idea. ‘Wonderful news, Tom,’ he said to the beaming Beeby. ‘Very pleased. Congratulations.’ Impulsively – unusually – they shook hands.

Back in his office Henderson got Kimberly to phone Irene.

‘Ms Dusseldorf?’

‘OK, Henderson, what is it?’

‘Do you fancy a few days’ holiday? Starting tomorrow?’

‘I don’t know. Where are we going?’

‘The South.’

Chapter Two

He 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 lime-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?’ Halfacre 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 Halfacre’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, crevettes fumées 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. Henderson’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 he 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. Henderson 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 p.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. ‘In-secure. 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.

William Boyd

STARS AND BARS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Contents

STARS AND BARS

THE BEGINNING

Part One

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS IN NEW YORK

Chapter One

Chapter Two