Road To The Coast

by John Harris

  ‘Well,’ she said slowly, driving the insult home. ‘From what you’ve told me tonight, I’d say you’ve never had the guts to face up to anything since they took that uniform off you. No wonder you packed up all those jobs and came over here.’

  Ash looked at her, for once at a loss for words. What she’d said had had the effect of reminding him for the first time in years that, in spite of his size and his deeds, he was still only Henry Hackforth Ash, on whom his parents had lavished all their money and affection in the hope that one day they might get a return for it; and for their troubles had had the pleasure of seeing it all come to precious little.

  He tried to conjure up the self-assertive bounce that had always stood him in such good stead at times like these, the cheerful breeziness that had bashed the life out of the knowledge that he’d failed whenever it managed to raise its head; but for once he didn’t quite manage it, and it became one of the few occasions in his life when he stopped long enough to inquire into his soul and found he had doubts about himself.

  ‘What’ll you do?’ he asked. ‘On your own, I mean.’

  ‘Whatever I do,’ she snorted, her courage reappearing, ‘I shan’t stop doing it the first time it looks difficult.’

  He stared at her, stung to anger, then he burst out again. ‘What the hell were you doing to get mixed up with this lot, anyway?’ he demanded. ‘A woman like you?’ there was indignation and admiration in his words at the same time.

  ‘Why?’ The reserve in her seemed to break at last. ‘Why? Because Alvarado was my kid sister’s husband and I couldn’t help it. That’s why. Now are you satisfied?’

  Ash gaped, all the bounce knocked out of him for a moment. ‘He was what?’

  ‘He was my kid sister’s husband. She married him before she was old enough to know better. I tried to stop her but I couldn’t. I always said he was a fly boy from the first. And so he was. Like you. Played ducks and drakes with her. She never knew what was going to happen next. Whether she’d have any money or be out on the streets.’

  The light from the fire touched the curve of her cheek and she looked younger and softer than she was, all the determination shadowed from her face. As he stared at her, she looked back at him, proud and scornful, making him feel put in his place in a way he hadn’t experienced for many years. She seemed, in face, to be the first person who had ever stood up to him and sent him off with a flea in his ear. Mostly the men who had crossed swords with him had accepted a drink in the end, a quiet word, and let it go at that, while the women had melted easily in front of his charm. But Grace had no fear of him, and not much respect, and clearly had no intention of giving way before him.

  ‘That was the one thing I hadn’t thought of,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Well, why not?’ she asked, and there was no longer any secrecy about her, just a hostility and a dislike that he could understand and didn’t like any better. ‘We were all Wops too, weren’t we? Just like Alvarado. Only we were English Wops. London Wops. People like you who weren’t Wops never let us forget about it.’

  He stuffed his hands into his pockets and stared at the fire, cursing himself for every having used the word.

  ‘My grandfather was an immigrant,’ she was saying. ‘He came from Genoa. He might have come here, in fact, instead of England, if he’d read a different folder. But at least he’d got guts. He never dodged the issue. He learned to take it on the chin, with a mouthful of shining gold false teeth he was as proud as hell about.’

  Somewhere in her words he caught an echo of the mile-long streets of London from which her family had doubtless climbed by sheer hard work and pride, all the tiny houses belching out smoke, the chalk scrawls on the walls and the gas-lamps polished by small boys’ trousers as high as they could climb, the dingy hoardings where film stars lasted only a matter of hours before their faces were marked with moustaches and their figures with even grosser libels.

  Her character was clearly inherited from some fair-thinking proud little family, sharp enough to survive but never able to give itself graces, a family who could accept anyone, high or low, so long as they remained honest and faced up to their responsibilities. He began to realize why he’d not cut much ice with her, in spite of his talk.

  ‘It wasn’t unlikely that he might meet Iris under those circumstances, was it?’ she was saying angrily. ‘In fact, he met her, Christmas, nineteen-forty-six, and married her in nineteen-forty-seven before we could stop her. We had to make the best of it then.’

  ‘No wonder the kid looks like you.’ Ash’s voice was low. ‘It had me fooled properly. I heard he was married to an Englishwoman. Everybody talked about it when she died. I was in Mendoza at the time.’

  Then it all came out, in short angry sentences as she tried to contain her indignation. Alvarado had had an unimportant job at the embassy in London and had transported his family home only two years before, anxious not to miss his share of the pickings in the topsy-turvy world that had risen round the dictator.

  ‘And you’ – Ash gestured – ‘you were visiting when the flap started?’

  ‘Visiting!’ The word was full of scorn. ‘I wouldn’t visit him if he were the last man on earth. Not after what he did to my sister.’

  ‘Did to your sister? What did he do to your sister?’

  ‘Women. There were women. There were always women.’

  ‘Oh! That!’ Ash nodded vaguely, trying to look sympathetic.

  That was only part of it. Perhaps it didn’t mean much to him but it did to Iris. She was English and she hadn’t been brought up that way.’

  ‘Well, why the hell didn’t she divorce him?’

  ‘We’re Catholics.’

  ‘Oh!’ He felt vaguely as though he were barging in on something private.

  ‘God knows,’ she said, ‘I’m not a good one. I’ve never seemed to have had the time to be, but I’m a good enough one still not to believe in that.’

  Ash felt curiously subdued, as though he ought to have guessed. ‘What the hell were you doing out here then?’ he asked slowly.

  ‘I came because Iris wrote and asked me to take the kid home. When she was dying. She knew him. She knew him only too well. I said I would. The kid’s English,’ she pointed out, her words full of conviction. ‘She’s as English as you and me. No matter what her passport says or what her father is. She never saw enough of him to become anything else.’

  She faced him, her eyes flashing, clear and devoid of secrets at last, and he found himself capitulating and anxious to regain her confidence. He was still lost in the ramifications of the situation, however, and he groped blindly for further explanation.

  ‘But, hell,’ he said slowly, ‘you can’t just run off with a bloke’s family like that, whatever he is, whatever he’d done.’

  ‘Can’t I? When a man shows no interest in his own child from the day she’s born, he’s no right to claim any affection from her!’

  ‘What does she think about it?’

  ‘She hardly knows him. He was never at home. Always on the prowl somewhere, or busy with one of his appointments. He just liked her to be on show. So that it looked right. I don’t think she could care less. She’s certainly never shown much grief at the prospect of going back to England.’

  ‘Won’t he come after her?’

  ‘I don’t suppose he’ll even miss her,’ she said flatly. ‘He never did. Though I suppose I’m the only person in this damn country who knows it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He kept up a good front. The family’s still everything in a Catholic country.’ She spoke slowly, as though she were trying to drum something into a stupid child. ‘You ought to know. You’ve been here long enough. But she never meant anything to him. He was a government official though, and it had to look good. Whatever else happened. He once told me so.’

  She sighed. ‘Now, thank God,’ she concluded, ‘he appears to have renounced all right to her. I don’t suppose he’ll ever trouble to get her back. I�
�ll be able to take her where she’s got a chance – where she’ll have some future, some security, someone to give her some affection.’

  ‘And where is he now? Hidden somewhere?’

  ‘That’s what he said he was going to do.’

  ‘Where’s he heading for? Paraguay? That way?’

  ‘I suppose so. With one of his fancy women. I don’t know. Maybe he’s out of the country already.’

  ‘Would he show up if the kid were caught?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘You picked yourself into a nice party, didn’t you? You couldn’t have picked a better one. The place’s stiff with people like him. Germans. Italians. Spaniards–’

  ‘Englishmen,’ she said pointedly.

  He shrugged, accepting the rebuke without anger. ‘OK. Me, too. But I’m no Alvarado. His name’s got slime on it.’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know? He was married to my sister, wasn’t he?’

  He was sobered by her story. It made his own sound silly and selfish. ‘It’s a hell of a way to come,’ he said.

  ‘And I walked right into it. They were charging up and down the high street with tanks when I arrived. Somebody’d been throwing bombs about. They weren’t going to let me land, but I had a letter from Fred to a man he knew.’

  ‘Good old Fred.’

  ‘They got me ashore, this man and his wife, and into their house. I’m damned glad they were there, believe me. I was so scared I could have passed out. I couldn’t speak the lingo. I didn’t know where to start. And then that lot. They told me I ought to go home.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  She looked at him scornfully. ‘My name’s not Harry Ash,’ she snapped. ‘I didn’t travel all that way just to go home again. I just sat down and waited till it was all over. Fred’s friends were damn good. They let me stay there. They even found me a job for a couple of weeks. Nice people, they were. Better class than me. But they didn’t let it make any difference.’

  ‘Why should it?’ he said impulsively. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’

  She looked at him quietly for a moment, then she shrugged. ‘Come off it,’ she said. ‘I know what I look like and where I belong. By the time I got to Córdoba, I’d run out of funds. But he took me in. Alvarado, I mean. I had to stay there for a bit because he wouldn’t let the kid go. He was all right about everything else – money and so on – but not that. In the end, when this lot started, I didn’t wait any more, I just got on the train with her and here we are.’

  ‘You’re going to have a job, aren’t you, when you get back? Getting her into the country?’

  ‘I’ll fix it somehow.’

  ‘By God, I believe you will.’

  He paused before he spoke again. ‘Look,’ he said slowly after a while, trying to make amends for his earlier anger. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you here.’

  She didn’t receive the announcement with any visible show of gratitude.

  ‘Well, thanks,’ she said. ‘That’s a relief. Why not?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’ He gestured vaguely. ‘Scout’s honour. One good deed a day. Stand up on a bus when a lady gets on.’

  ‘That’s not why you picked me up in Flores,’ she snapped. ‘I know what was in your mind. I’m no fool and I’ve seen that look before. You’ll be telling me next it was because you were brought up to be a little gentleman.’

  ‘At least,’ he said soberly, ‘I’m not just going to dump you both. I’m not that sort of clot.’

  ‘You can do as you please.’

  ‘OK.’ He shrugged his big shoulders as he replied, accepting her lack of forgiveness. ‘But for the time being, I suggest you get some sleep. It’ll all seem different in the morning. You’ll feel better then.’

  Without looking at him, she turned towards the car and he held open the door to the front seat for her.

  ‘You’ll be snug enough in there,’ he said.

  As he moved round to the driver’s side, she slipped to her own end of the seat, her back hard up against the closed door, and he stood staring at her in the dim glow from the fire for a moment.

  ‘You going to sleep like that?’ he asked. He knew from her eyes she wasn’t afraid of him, but there was something about her that held him at his distance.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said.

  ‘You look it. You’re nearly climbing up the wall.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’ she retorted. ‘Lean on you?’

  ‘You could if you wanted.’

  He stood with one hand on the steering wheel, looking down at her. ‘You’ll wake up with a neck feeling as if it’s broken and eyes like holes in snow,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I’ve done it before. I had to travel a long way to get here.’

  Ash went on staring at her, trying to be friendly again, trying to break down the antagonism, in her.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Up to now you haven’t given me much cause to.’

  He studied her a while longer, trying to think of something convincing to say that would placate her, then he shrugged and closed the door again.

  ‘OK,’ he said, making up his mind calmly and without spite, ‘You win. I’ll sleep on the ground.’

  Seven

  Ash was standing by the remains of the fire when Grace climbed out of the car the following morning, stiff and sore, her eyes still angry from the argument of the previous night.

  ‘There’s a tin of meat opened,’ he said. ‘And there’s some wine left if you want a drink.’ He seemed cheerful enough, and managed to look spruce and even appeared to have shaved.

  She crossed to the boot of the car and as she cut a few thick slices of meat for herself and Teresa with Ash’s penknife, she was quiet and uncommunicative in a way that told him she had been doing a lot of thinking during the night.

  The previous day, in spite of her secrecy, she had chattered about people and things as though she didn’t know the meaning of loneliness and he believed she liked having a man around to make decisions for her. But at the moment there was nothing in her face that indicated she was prepared to see eye to eye with him about anything.

  As she and the child sat down to eat, he moved to the car and switched on the radio and an announcer came on immediately, interrupting a programme of heart-breaking tango rhythms to announce that bombs had been dropped near the aviation school in Córdoba and that fierce fighting was taking place near Río Santiago.

  ‘Fierce!’ Ash said cynically, half to himself. ‘They don’t know the meaning of the word. My old bunch would have cleaned this lot up in half an hour.’

  ‘Gracie’ – Teresa looked up for a second at his face and spoke in a whisper – ‘is Mr Ash still going to find that ship he promised? The English ship?’

  ‘Yes,’ Grace said. ‘He’s going to find it.’

  ‘Only he seems a bit strange this morning, that’s all. Have we done something to make him change his mind?’

  ‘No,’ Grace said firmly. ‘He hasn’t changed his mind. He’s still going to help.’

  She had already made up her mind about that. She was going to permit no backsliding. He had offered to help and she was determined that he should. The previous night, for the first time since the train from Córdoba had been stopped by soldiers and she had been forced to continue by bus, she had realized that the task she had set herself was going to be more than merely a test of her ingenuity and patience. When the bombing had started in Flores she had understood it was going to try her courage, too, but since the argument with Ash she had become aware that it was not impossible that she might find herself in prison into the bargain and forced to endure humiliation for herself and the child.

  She started at Ash shrewdly, trying to make him out. In spite of his background, in spite of the various kinds of roguery that doubtless lay behind him, she guessed that if anyone could get them to safety, he could, and she found herself quite prepared to come to ter
ms with her conscience to see that he achieved that end. She had spent half the night thinking about it.

  He was listening to the wireless again, his head cocked, his eyes a little anxious, for in spite of the announcer’s elated tones and the insistence that the government troops outnumbered the rebels, it was obvious that the revolutionary forces were gaining more and more ground. Even as the announcer went off the air, the opposition radio in Puerto Belgrano broke in triumphantly with the news that the police headquarters in Córdoba had surrendered to the rebels after thirty-five minutes of artillery bombardment, and that the capital was now blacked out and the rumble of tanks had been heard in the streets. The sound of the tinny detached voice in the stillness served only to emphasize their loneliness in that vast wide land by the river.

  It was as they were throwing their few belongings into the boot of the car that Grace managed to get Ash quietly on one side.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘What are you intending to do?’

  ‘What about?’ he asked.

  ‘About us. I want to know.’

  He looked down at her, still patently admiring her. He had recovered his poise and all the look of the punished schoolboy had gone.

  ‘What do you think I should do?’ he asked.

  She regarded him coolly, in no mood for banter. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I’m not such a fool as to imagine you’ve not been up to something you want to keep to yourself.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I’ll make a point of remembering it. I’m not a spiteful woman but I might even enjoy making it hot for you – if you left us behind, that is.’

  She tried to look certain of herself, but he grinned unexpectedly and she knew he’d seen at once through the threadbareness of the threat behind her words, had guessed it long before she’d framed it into sentences.

  ‘I see,’ he said, still smiling. ‘And you’re suggesting that if I leave you here, you’ll put the police on my trail? Blackmail, eh? I wouldn’t have thought you were capable of it.’

  She grew angry at the word, which when she thought about it in the clear light of day, sounded more ugly than she had imagined it could. He seemed to be teasing her and was still shamelessly admiring her. She began to grow flustered as she found herself disarmed, and she wanted to hit back at him.