The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress

by Beryl Bainbridge

  It was Jesse Shaefer who suggested that Rose should stay the night. He reckoned Harold wouldn’t care to leave the camper unattended in the underground garage, not if there was stuff on the roof, but there was no need for Rose to lose out on a proper bed. His wife agreed. Harold just nodded.

  At some point of darkness candles were lit, sending shadows fleeing across the ceiling. Harold began a story about a man who was responsible for someone’s death, even though his finger hadn’t been on the trigger. Rose couldn’t see his whole face, only his lips spitting words above the fuzz of his beard.

  ‘Mrs Stanford,’ she interrupted, ‘was very discreet. She never mentioned her dead husband.’

  Mrs Shaefer escorted her to a room with a poster on the wall depicting a boy with very little hair playing baseball.

  ‘I’m not myself,’ Rose confided. ‘It’s being away from home. And Harold’s not easy. I’m not even sure he likes me.’

  ‘You’ll feel differently in the morning,’ George said. ‘Sleep solves most things.’

  ‘He’s very bossy,’ Rose insisted. ‘Very sure of himself.’

  ‘Strange you should think that,’ said George, pushing her on to the bed. ‘A man more unsure of himself would be hard to find.’

  ‘I can’t undress,’ Rose protested, tugging off her shoes and scrabbling under the sheets. ‘I’m shy with strangers. We never undressed at home.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Mrs Shaefer.

  ‘That lady in the short trousers,’ Rose murmured, grazing sleep, ‘she said she knew Dr. Wheeler.’

  ‘We all did,’ responded Mrs Shaefer, heaving the counterpane into place as though it were a shroud.

  Harold woke early and took one of his tablets to be on the safe side. His belly pains had miraculously disappeared when he’d met Dollie, and returned once she’d left. His mother, a strong woman, hadn’t believed in stomach disorders. Such malfunctions, she reasoned, originated in the brains of those unwilling to face reality; her first husband had developed colitis after the crash of 1929.

  He checked that the tarpaulin hadn’t been tampered with. As a precaution he dug out the cardboard box and, removing it from its pillowcase, thrust it under the driving seat. His hand touched paper; it was the news cutting previously pinned to the back of his bedroom door in Baltimore. Stuffing it into his pocket he went upstairs to the apartment. Rose was still asleep.

  Jesse cooked him breakfast. Both he and George voiced concern at what he intended to do. They said it was a pity the confrontation couldn’t take place in Washington, where the two of them might be of help. Three heads were better than one. After all, nearly five years had passed, and it hadn’t all been Wheeler’s fault. There were wrongs on both sides.

  ‘You could at least stay a couple of nights more,’ said George. ‘It’s my birthday on Thursday.’

  ‘She’s forty-six again,’ said Jesse.

  ‘I have to see him,’ Harold protested. ‘There’s things I have to say.’

  It wasn’t the truth. There were no words left and even if he could find them they would stick in his throat. Before meeting Dollie he’d been a reasonable sort of man, to the point of dullness. He had no illusions in that regard. As a boy he’d been described as reserved, which was a kinder way of putting it. Dollie’s involvement with him had astonished everybody, himself most of all. They had tried to warn him. Bud had taken him aside that time in the men’s room of Monticello’s restaurant and asked him, tactfully enough, if he knew what he was getting into. He’d shouted he didn’t care and Bud had cautioned that passion was a two-edged sword. It could pierce the mind as well as the heart.

  Jesse, planting a plate of fried eggs on the table, said it was odd that Wheeler hadn’t written the girl a proper letter, merely supplied an address. It was as though he was playing a game.

  ‘When did he ever do anything else?’ remarked George.

  Neither of them could fathom Wheeler’s friendship with Rose. She was far from his usual type of female. George thought she was verging on the simple.

  ‘The British have a different approach to things,’ defended Jesse. ‘I come across it all the time. I guess it has to do with a culture founded on isolation . . . the isolation of an island people.’

  ‘She told me,’ George said, ‘that her father had ruined her life and that her mother had died from injections usually given to horses.’

  Jesse argued it was the gin. And Rose was very young, hardly more than a child.

  George said, ‘Her father knew Wheeler and called him a crook. Apparently they lived in the same street. They almost came to fisticuffs once, something to do with a seat on a train. She came out with this cockamamie story in the middle of a discussion with Bob about Johnson ordering more troops to Vietnam.’

  ‘She’s older than you think,’ said Harold. ‘She’s nearly thirty.’

  He discussed the route to Wanakena. It was his intention to make for Jersey City and then follow the line of the Hudson River through Poughkeepsie, Rhinebeck, Ravena; at Corinth he’d stop off to see Chip Webster. Jesse expressed surprise that he was still in touch with Webster. He hadn’t realised they were that friendly.

  ‘We’re not,’ Harold said.

  George thought it a pity he was going to bypass New York. Think of the girl coming all this way and then to miss out on Ellis Island. The British were suckers for the past.

  Harold said, ‘I doubt Rose has ever heard of Ellis Island. The only past that interests her is her own.’

  When Rose joined them, he was taken aback by her appearance. Though her clothes were even more creased, her face had altered. It wasn’t that she had become pretty, just that he hadn’t noticed until now the arch of dark eyebrows beneath her fluff of pale hair.

  She said, addressing George, ‘I want to apologise for the way I behaved last night. I was out of order.’

  George waved a dismissive hand. ‘Not as wayward as Bud,’ she said. ‘He threw up in the elevator.’

  ‘I had a strange dream,’ said Rose, ‘about Dr. Wheeler. He was walking through a cemetery, writing down names.’

  There was no response. Jesse fiddled with the coffee percolator. Harold stared down at the road map; he was remembering a morning in high summer, birdsong in the trees, the flicker of insects above a lake glossy under sunlight. ‘I do love you,’ she’d protested and, sick with fear, he’d told her that love was not the problem. Love dropped out of the sky, unsought, unearned. He had loved his mother. It was liking somebody that was difficult.

  George asked, ‘Does Wheeler know you’re travelling with Harold?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Rose. ‘I did write to tell him I’d met a nice American, but I didn’t give a name because Harold never mentioned he knew him, not until much later. And by the time he did, Dr. Wheeler had left Chicago. I don’t think he could have got my next letter.’

  ‘It’s an interesting fact,’ George said, ‘that if you want to know your real opinion of anyone you should notice the impression made by their handwriting on the envelope.’

  ‘Time’s getting on,’ Harold interrupted, folding his map.

  George asked Rose what she wanted for breakfast. She said, ‘Nothing, thank you, not after last night’s huge meal.’ Jesse handed her an apple, large and red, which she bit into boisterously.

  During the goodbyes, Rose kissed George Shaefer’s cheek. Lifting the hem of her apron, George dabbed it away. Jesse, walking his guests to the elevator, urged Harold to keep in touch. ‘Phone any time,’ he insisted, embracing him. Harold hugged him back, which surprised them both. ‘There, there,’ Jesse muttered, patting his shoulder.

  Approaching the camper, Rose hurled her half-eaten apple across the garage floor. Its bounce echoed from the concrete walls. Harold clenched his fists but said nothing. He had a picture in his head of abandoning her at midnight on some deserted highway; increasing speed, he’d watch her image dwindle in a mirror bright with moonshine.

  Before leaving Washington he drove along Wis
consin Avenue where, years before, he had shared a two-roomed apartment with Chip Webster. The house looked much the same, save that the branches of the once newly planted maple tree now swayed above its roof. He told Rose he had lived on the ground floor, and she asked if he had been happy there. ‘Happy?’ he repeated, as though it was a word in a foreign tongue. Then she explained that she had thrown the apple away as she wasn’t used to fruit, on account of rationing in her childhood. He was taken aback; it amounted to an apology.

  FOUR

  They travelled along what Harold referred to as an interstate highway. Rose, aware that her apple throwing had annoyed him, told him how much she’d liked the Shaefers. She thought it would please him if she praised his friends. ‘It was nice,’ she enthused, ‘the way they didn’t flare up when drink was spilled or ash got flicked onto the carpet.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself,’ Harold retorted. ‘Disorder brings Jesse out in a rash. The poor guy probably spent half the night tidying up the mess.’

  Then he told her, politely enough, to keep quiet, that he needed to concentrate. She said she quite understood, the traffic being so dense, and he said it wasn’t the cars, more that he had a lot on his mind.

  She didn’t mind not talking; it wasn’t as if he understood what she was on about. She filled her mind with images of Dr. Wheeler, hand beginning to rise, the day they had said goodbye at Charing Cross train station.

  After a while, two hours perhaps, the cars thinned out and they drove through countryside, the fields stretching to the horizon and a tractor, bulky yellow, going up and over a brown hill. They sped past houses with verandas with chairs set out, washing stiff on a rope between trees, sun reflecting silver bright off the tin roof of an outhouse, and a dream sequence flash of a family leaning on wooden railings, Ma, Pa and idiot daughter, head as big as a pumpkin. Next came a sign indicating the New Jersey Turnpike and later a bridge. Now Harold slowed down. It was very hot; when he shook his head sweat sprayed the window glass. Then he brought the van to a halt. Looking up she saw a landscape of blackened warehouses, set amidst rubble speared with electric pylons, cables sagging below the sky. There were cranes and bulldozers without any workers. Beyond the bonnet of the van a rusted army truck lay on its side, jolted seats splaying prehistoric wings.

  ‘It’s like the docks at Liverpool,’ she said, ‘when the war was over.’

  ‘It’s in the process of regeneration,’ he said, and urged her out. He said they were in Caven Point Road and he needed to show her something of importance. She had to do what he wanted because without him she wouldn’t find Dr. Wheeler.

  There was a breeze coming from somewhere ahead, which must have made him feel good because he linked arms with her as though they were pals. She felt a bit awkward trying to keep in step, but was relieved things were getting better between them.

  Stealing a sideways glance at the shine of his balding head, his boy’s face with its inappropriate beard, it struck her that he was in disguise. All his fussing over baths and toothbrushes was a front to hide the real Harold, the one she hadn’t yet discovered. It was his much-married mother, she reckoned, who was the cause of the problem.

  Often, when she had whinged about Father, Dr. Wheeler had quoted lines written by a man called Pound, something to do with a family unable to have order if the father had not order within him. It was supposed to be a poem, but it didn’t rhyme.

  All children were the product of domination by their parents, girls as well as boys, although she herself was an exception. She never had been, not even when threatened. Once, when Father had sworn at her, she’d waited until he retreated into the scullery, then leapt on his back, arm about his throat, and wrestled him to the ground. She’d known how to do it from seeing commandos in action in war films.

  They walked up a slope of ground to where, so Harold informed her, the Upper Bay met the Hudson River. Across the swollen water reared a shimmering giant, one arm scraping the heavens. Harold said it was the Statue of Liberty and that the blurred outline behind was Manhattan Island.

  That night, they stayed in a camping area near a lake. According to Harold the site wasn’t typical of its kind, having degenerated into a permanent home for migrant workers laid off years before over some dispute to do with steel production. There were places like this all over America, he said, mainly to do with the decline in farming and a subsequent mass exodus to the cities. Trailers propped on bricks and patrolled by skinny dogs occupied most of the spaces. Alongside a lean-to shack selling strong drink, firelighters and logs, there was a hut with toilet facilities.

  Harold ordered her into the encircling trees to gather twigs; he didn’t approve of firelighters, not when he was rubbing shoulders with nature. She hadn’t minded; woods were a habitat she felt comfortable in. From the lake beyond came the squawking of wild geese.

  Earlier that day he had bought slices of steak from a shop called the Darling Boy Diner. When the fire had caught, he impaled the meat on a spit and instructed her to keep turning it while he went off to the washroom. He came back in striped pyjamas, under a dressing gown with his initials embroidered on the breast pocket.

  When she’d eaten, Rose followed his example. The bulb in the washroom ceiling was faulty and there were dead insects splattered across the concrete walls. Washed all over, she scurried back in her nightgown and raincoat to find an agitated man talking to Harold. Their conversation was difficult to follow because the man kept coughing and hawking up sputum. Harold nodded a lot and said little beyond interjecting that time had a way of slotting things into perspective. Rose thought he was talking rubbish. The man had no teeth and a glob of congealed blood on his temple. Before staggering off he tried to kiss Harold’s hand. Harold backed away, as if in touch with leprosy.

  ‘You were nasty,’ Rose protested. ‘Couldn’t you see he was in pain?’

  ‘Who isn’t?’ he snapped.

  Interrogated, he said the poor man was depressed, short of money. He hadn’t given him any, it would have only gone on drink. Rose thought this was stingy, him being so rich he didn’t even have to work. She knew that from George Shaefer who, when prodded, had told her she was mistaken in thinking Harold was a psychologist. He was interested in that sort of thing, she’d said, for obvious reasons, but his money came from investments.

  They remained beside the fire until midnight, facing each other through the cascade of sparks spat from the burning wood, listening to the sudden furious barking of dogs and the intermittent drumming of cicadas.

  She needn’t have worried about lying down next to him in the darkness of the van. He’d slept with his back to her, and once, when she’d turned over and her body brushed against his, he’d immediately twisted away.

  The following morning Harold went for a swim in the nearby lake. He wanted her to join him, but she told him she couldn’t swim. She could tell from his expression that he didn’t believe her. She started to tell him about the time she’d been shoved into the pond in the school playground, but he walked off in the middle. When he was out of sight, she climbed into the van and ferreted inside the cardboard box under the driver’s seat. She didn’t touch the gun, just looked at it.

  When Harold returned he changed into shorts. They were quite long and baggy but when he sat down at the wheel she saw the freckles on his knees.

  After two hours they drove into a rural landscape with mountains, damson coloured, rolling against the sky. Some­times the road was cut out of rock splashing metallic blue in the sunlight. At a turning near a house without a roof they almost ran over a large hen which Harold identified as a wild turkey. It wasn’t scared, just stood there gobbling outrage.

  That evening they struck camp on the outskirts of an oak wood. This time there was a proper café and Harold, confessing he was too tired and dehydrated to mess about with fires, insisted they should eat there. Rose made excuses, protesting she wasn’t hungry, but he took no notice. Gripping her elbow he marched her through the doors. Earlier that day he’
d asked if she wanted to buy anything and she’d said she needed stamps for the postcards she’d bought in London. When she handed him some money he wouldn’t take it. She felt bad; she didn’t like sponging off him, not when she wasn’t going to give him anything in return.

  While waiting for the meal to be served she took one of the postcards out of her handbag, a portrait of Queen Elizabeth and her sister Margaret taken when they were children. Both of them had hair screwed up into curls. She’d chosen it because it had reminded her of the day she’d defied Mother and refused point blank to go to Mrs Formby’s shop in the village to undergo a permanent wave. From the age of five Mother had been trying to make her look like Shirley Temple. Never again, she’d shouted, would she submit to those heated canisters that belched smoke and singed her hair into sausage shapes. When it rained she knew she smelt funny. The girls at school said she ponged like someone dragged from a bonfire.

  Harold asked if she had something to write with. She said, ‘Yes, thank you,’ and took a long time over Polly and Bernard’s address. Then she scribbled, Lovely weather . . . America is amazing. She couldn’t write down her real thoughts, not when Harold might want to read them. As the waitress delivered the food to the table, he said, ‘That pen . . . where did you get it?’

  She replied, quickly enough, ‘It was my father’s. It was presented to him when he retired from the Corn Exchange, in recognition of his allegiance to commerce.’

  She ate looking out of the window because Harold was a messy eater. He munched even his potatoes to a pulp, as though in danger of choking. And he flicked his tongue in and out of his teeth.

  Later, he busied himself fitting up a mosquito net so that they could sleep with the doors open. It was still very close and Rose could feel her hair sticking to her scalp. She climbed into the front seat to fetch her towel and bottle of shampoo. Harold’s jacket was draped over the steering wheel, a fold of paper sticking up from the pocket. Telling him she wouldn’t be long, she went to the shower room attached to the café. Hair washed, she walked into the shade of the oak trees and crouched there, head between her knees, towelling it dry.