The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress

by Beryl Bainbridge

  Rose tried to look interested. ‘Babylon . . .’ she murmured.

  ‘She was the first prostitute.’

  A tap dance of hooves sounded from the cobbles beneath the window, followed by a shrill whistle. Leaning out, Rose saw the young man in the sweater beckoning her to come down. ‘I’ll be back,’ she reassured the old woman.

  Fury wanted Rose to see his horses. He had, he said, been breeding them for twenty years, owing to an interest fostered in childhood by a distant relative. It was the smell of them he liked, the heady mixture of sex and speed. There was another man with him, a Mr. Silver, who had a pot belly and wore a bow tie. He acted very friendly to Rose; whenever he spoke to her his arm circled her shoulder.

  Rose reached out to touch the solitary animal. It immedi­ ately reared backwards, nostrils quivering. It was, said Fury, awaiting an injection to protect it from some horsey disease.

  ‘It sure recognises a wild spirit,’ joked Mr. Silver, pulling Rose close.

  Before they returned to the house, Fury took Harold to one side and babbled into his ear for some minutes.

  ‘He’s apologising for his wife,’ Silver told Rose. ‘She’s on the rough side.’

  ‘Rough?’ echoed Rose.

  ‘He was only eighteen when he met her. It was a love match, at first, but she’s hardly the typical lawyer’s wife. That’s why it’s convenient to have her living in Santa Ana.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ asked Rose, intrigued.

  ‘Mostly her language,’ provided Silver. ‘That and her gen­ erosity. She keeps giving money away.’

  Philopsona cooked them lunch, the ingredients home­ grown, even the chicken. The birds, she trumpeted, were her pride and joy, each one with a name and fondled from birth. She never allowed anyone but herself to wring their necks. ‘It wouldn’t be right,’ she assured Rose. ‘They need somebody they can fucking trust!’ The one they were about to devour was called Nessie.

  While waiting for the meal to be served, Rose again exam­ ined the photographs on the wall. Below, on the mantelpiece, she admired a green ornament.

  ‘It’s a frog,’ Philopsona told her. ‘My Pa liked frogs.’

  ‘It’s a toad,’ corrected Rose. ‘Frogs don’t have toes.’

  ‘What?’ said Philopsona. ‘Who gives a shit?’

  The food served, her mother, seated at the end of the table, kept picking up pieces and smashing them down with her fork.

  ‘I only like fat,’ she told Rose, ‘I need the dribble.’ At which, her daughter shouted, ‘For Christ’s sake, Ma, keep your god­ damn mouth shut.’ Seeing Rose’s shocked expression, Philop­sona patted her knee and confided that Ma was used to such treatment.

  ‘At least,’ she said, ‘she knows she’s being noticed.’

  It turned out that Mr. Silver was attached to the Senate, in an advisory post. He knew more about the current where­ abouts of the Democrats than Fury. He informed them he had held a prominent position in J.F. Kennedy’s election campaign, and been involved in the investigation into his death.

  ‘Killing,’ interrupted Harold.

  ‘I knew the Kennedy family pretty well,’ Silver boasted. ‘I stayed with them on a couple of occasions, once in Boston and another time at their place in Palm Beach. I’m not likely to forget that particular weekend . . . it could have been my last. None of us knew about it at the time, but a guy was parked outside in a car packed full of dynamite. Early on Sunday morning—we were about go off to church—Jack went out onto the balcony, followed by Jackie and the kids. But the fellow drove off. After he was caught, he said he’d changed his mind because he wasn’t into harming children. He ended up in a mental hospital. When told what he’d intended to do, Rose Kennedy didn’t bat an eyelid.’

  ‘Rose,’ echoed Rose, thrilled.

  ‘She’s a cold woman, a woman who’s never showed affec­ tion to any of her children . . . it’s what made Jack such a chaser of girls. He needed their attention, and sex was the quickest way he knew how to get it.’

  ‘She didn’t have it easy,’ Fury argued, ‘she had eight other kids . . . one of them retarded . . . and that bastard of a hus­ band.’

  Silver agreed there’d been little sunshine in her life, Joe senior being such a hard guy, obsessed by money and power. Though bitterly opposed to the war, he’d expressed pride when his boy had volunteered to fly on bombing raids. ‘I guess,’ he said, ‘that he thought it showed the Kennedys weren’t yellow. But it near finished him off when Joe junior got blown up. Guilt mostly. He never forgave himself, or Roosevelt for that matter, who he accused of being manipu­ lated by a rotten bunch of Jews and Communists. I was present the day he attacked Truman, for backing what he called “that crippled son of a bitch who killed my son”. I remember the occasion because the sunlight was streaming through the windows and Joe’s head was circled with a halo. He snarled that if he were Roosevelt he’d commit suicide.’

  ‘Hubert Humphrey made the same mistake last year,’ said Fury. ‘Remember the photograph he had taken linking arms with that freak Lester Maddox . . .’

  ‘Humphrey loves people like an alcoholic loves booze,’ remarked Harold. Though she didn’t know who he was talk­ ing about, Rose thought that was quite witty.

  ‘Neither old Joe nor Rose shed a tear after being told that Jack had been shot,’ said Silver. ‘Nor did they ask for details. But by that time old Joe’s brain had gone.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have asked either,’ said Rose. ‘Best left in the dark.’

  ‘At least,’ Fury said, ‘it was easy to nail the guy who killed Jack.’

  ‘It sure was lucky,’ Mr. Silver acknowledged, ‘that Oswald was spotted going into a movie theatre.’

  ‘Even luckier,’ barked Harold, ‘to have Jack Ruby standing by with a gun.’

  There was a sudden silence. Rose was aware that the occu­ pants of the table, particularly Fury, had become uncomfortable. Then Philopsona, worried that her chicken wasn’t being appreciated, launched into an account of how easy it was to extinguish life.

  ‘They approach,’ she said, ‘cluck, and when seized dip down and stay mute . . . they goddamn well freeze. They know what’s going to happen.’

  ‘Unlike JFK,’ said Harold, at which Silver banged the table and proposed a toast, ‘To Robert Kennedy,’ he bellowed, ‘soon to be the great leader of a great country.’

  Harold didn’t raise his glass.

  The lunch over, Fury invited his guests to come for a ride. ‘If he suggests you break into a gallop,’ Silver warned Rose, ‘just keep a tight grip on the reins. If the horse doesn’t respond, slide off.’

  He himself wasn’t joining them, having five years before sustained a fracture of the skull after being tossed going over a gate. It had happened, he said, because he’d been brought up on a farm and been deluded into feelings of authority where animals were concerned. But it wasn’t the injury that deterred him, more that he was still smarting from the med­ ical bills he’d had to pay.

  ‘Rose can’t go,’ Harold said, holding up his hand as though directing the traffic.

  ‘But I want to,’ she protested, ‘it’ll be fun.’

  ‘You’re not insured,’ he snapped.

  ‘Then why,’ she retorted, ‘have you let me travel thousands of miles in that van?’

  ‘She can take Gingernuts,’ said Fury. ‘She’s so old she can hardly walk, let alone trot.’ Outside, the fields sparkled like glass beneath a violently blue sky. It was hard to breathe. A black woman with huge bare arms harnessed three munching horses. She had a cross dangling from a string about her neck and no shoes on her feet. Rose thanked the woman profusely for helping her into the saddle. She noticed that Fury stroked the woman’s thighs before mounting.

  It soon became apparent that Rose’s horse was indeed with­ out energy. It stopped frequently to pluck at the grass. After half an hour, by which time Harold and Fury were out of sight, it lay down, leaving Rose with her feet scraping the ground. She kicked at it, ge
ntly, but it ignored her.

  Dismounting, she wandered back over the fields, amusing herself by seeing how far she could spit. Dr. Wheeler had been tops at spitting. Once, in the churchyard, he’d spat clear over three graves. She’d tried too, but her phlegm had landed in a pot of daffodils, at which he’d tossed the contaminated soil into the pine trees. Tributes to the dead, he’d said, should be treated with respect. At the time, she’d considered coming back to the cemetery on her own and moving the pot to the tunnel on the shore, to the sandy darkness where an old man had once crouched. Governments and generals, she reasoned, were always attending memorial services to those they had pushed into death. Later she’d changed her mind—it would have amounted to theft.

  Entering the stable yard she saw yellow sweater hunched on the veranda steps, smoking a cigarette. At her approach he jumped to his feet and ran towards her. ‘The horse,’ he shouted, ‘where is your horse?’ She was surprised at how well he spoke, barely a trace of a funny accent.

  ‘It sat down,’ she told him. ‘It’ll come back, won’t it? They’re like dogs.’

  He didn’t reply, just stared at the meadow beyond, expres­ sion worried. His face was brown, though not from the sun, his hair black and curly. It was cheeky of her, but she asked if he could spare her a cigarette. ‘I’ll give you one back,’ she reas­ sured him. Reluctantly, he left off scanning the horizon and indicated the pack on the steps. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ she cried, oozing gratitude, but he had already opened the gate and was striding off into the field.

  The packet was almost full. Guiltily she removed two and, stuffing them into her pocket, scurried round the side of the house. Mr. Silver, dissolving in a pool of sunlight, was weeing through a barred gate. Philopsona sat hunched on the grass, hands covering her face. For a moment Rose thought this was to avoid the sight of private parts, but then the woman moaned loudly and beat at her eyes with clenched fists.

  She was backing away when Silver called out, ‘Wait . . . nearly done.’ Doing up his trousers. he said, ‘Don’t go, there’s things I want to know.’

  She asked, ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied, a bead of sweat bouncing from his eyebrow. Taking her arm he steered her in the direction of the house. ‘How well do you know John Fury?’ he asked. ‘When did you get together?’

  ‘We’re not together,’ she corrected. ‘I hardly know him . . . we met in a forest. I’m with Harold, but we’re not together either . . . not really. He’s just helping me find someone.’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘Is Mrs Fury sick?’

  ‘This person you’re both looking for,’ demanded Silver, ‘does she live round here?’

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘I’m looking for a man . . . he’s nothing to do with Harold, just me.’

  Reaching the house, she pulled away from him and sat on the steps to light a cigarette. He stood over her, legs splayed wide, eyes searching her face. His trousers hadn’t been fas­ tened properly, the top button left undone.

  ‘Why would Harold want to help you if you’re not together?’ he persisted.

  He wasn’t going to give up, she could tell. It was Dr. Wheeler’s opinion that those in need of answers were trying to deal with the darkness to come, Napoleon being an exam­ ple, though she couldn’t remember why.

  She said, ‘When I was a child I met a man who helped me into adulthood.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He lifted the things that weighed me down.’

  ‘What things?’ said Silver drily, lowering himself onto the step beside her.

  From the yard below came a stutter of hooves as the riders returned. The black woman came out of the stables and helped Harold dismount. He was looking directly at Rose, his face angry. ‘Where the hell did you go?’ he shouted.

  She ignored him and ran towards Fury. ‘Your wife isn’t well,’ she blurted. ‘She’s crying.’ Fury looked at Silver, who nodded and pointed towards the side of the house. Harold seized Rose and shook her. He asked her again where she had gone. ‘Don’t you realise what it looked like,’ he thundered. ‘You could have been lying unconscious somewhere.’

  ‘But I wasn’t,’ she retorted, eyeing his sunburnt nose, ‘it wasn’t my fault the horse got weary.’ He would have jostled her again if Silver hadn’t intervened; taking Harold by the elbow he propelled him up the steps.

  She loitered in the yard, remembering what Dr. Wheeler had taught her about confrontation, particularly if one was in the wrong. ‘Become forgetful,’ he’d advised, ‘especially if it’s serious.’ She stood there, the sun beating down on her head, imagining how it would be once they were reunited. Would he look the same? She stroked the photograph in her pocket, the one taken at Charing Cross station the day he’d left her. They’d shake hands, not kiss. She’d wear her polka-dot dress, even though she didn’t think he’d ever seen her in anything other than slacks and a raincoat . . . she’d stuck to these because he said they suited her. Her slacks were new, but the raincoat was the same. Once, years ago, she’d tried to press her lips to his cheek and he’d pushed her away firmly, but not roughly. He hadn’t said anything, but she’d realised she shouldn’t try that again, not ever. She’d wear her raincoat with the dress . . . just in case his expression showed disapproval.

  Fury came into the yard, his arm round Philopsona; she wasn’t sobbing any more. Neither of them looked at Rose as they crossed towards the steps. She stayed where she was, her back to the house, fingers still touching the photograph, until Mr. Silver shouted from the window that Harold was in a better mood and that she should come up.

  There were three bottles of wine on the table, two of them empty, and a packet of cigarettes nudging a silver lighter. There were no glasses, only tea cups. Harold was slumped in his chair, eyes shut. Philopsona wasn’t there, nor the old mother, just the woolly rabbit, glass eyes ablaze under the window sunlight. Fury and Silver were talking about some man who had been murdered. Lots of people had been upset. Silver maintained that the dead man was a secondary rather than a primary target of a plot aimed to cause unrest. Colour, he asserted, didn’t really come into it.

  ‘We learned about that at school,’ interrupted Rose. ‘The first attempt didn’t work and the chap who fired the gun gave up and sat down on the pavement.’

  They stared at her. She thought they must be impressed by her knowledge of history.

  ‘Then, owing to some pile-up in the traffic, the car came back and the next shot worked—on the wife as well. They were archdukes. The Pope fainted when he heard the news. It turned out that the killer was backed by a secret society known as the Black Hand.’

  Silver giggled. Fetching a cup, he poured her some wine. Fury rose and said he ought to see if his wife was all right. When he’d gone, Silver asked Rose if she was curious to know what was wrong with Philopsona. She said that she wasn’t, that it was none of her business. He took no notice and launched into an explanation, not much of which she could follow. It had to do, he confided, with a substance, a kind of medicine which was pretty much in demand in the 1950s—underground, that is. MK-Ultra, the code name for a secret CIA interrogation project he’d been involved in, had planned to use it on the communists of North Korea who, backed by Russia, were advancing on Seoul. ‘It would have been dropped from the air,’ he said, ‘a method of attack far less expensive than sending in troops. The Chinese and North Koreans were already using their own mind-control techniques on US pris­ oners of war and something was urgently needed by way of retaliation . . .’ The substance had been tested on jailbirds and prostitutes, not that they knew it—here Silver smiled, the smile of a man recalling happier times. It didn’t harm them, he reas­ sured her, merely rendered them incapable of doing much more than singing and reciting poetry.

  ‘Poetry,’ echoed Rose.

  ‘Personally,’ Silver said, ‘I’m glad they abandoned the idea and resorted to killing the bastards.’

  ‘I took part in a r
ally two months ago,’ she recounted, ‘in Trafalgar Square, in support of North Vietnam. Three hundred people were arrested. I don’t remember any poems.’

  ‘Fury,’ Silver said, ‘being that sort of guy, had some of the stuff in his desk and unfortunately Philopsona, having heard how it reduced stress and violence in those exposed to child­ hood suffering . . .’

  ‘Childhood suffering . . .’ echoed Rose.

  ‘. . . tried it. It had the opposite effect and for a time she was subject to fits, which only gradually subsided. For the past three years they’ve not been so regular.’

  Rose wanted to ask if it was the medicine that caused Philop­sona to swear and give away money, but at that moment Harold opened dazed eyes and murmured that he was sorry . . . very sorry.

  ‘We ought to leave,’ she urged, tapping the table. ‘We’ve got to get to Malibu.’

  He nodded and dozed off again.

  Silver said he understood that the guy she and Harold were searching for would probably be staying at the Ambassador Hotel. ‘I guess it won’t be easy to gain entry,’ he told her, ‘not with the Kennedy entourage waiting to hear the results of the primary.’

  He was very kind. He promised he’d arrange to get them a couple of passes, either before they left or via Fury, who by that time should be back in his office.

  When Fury returned from seeing to his wife he said he would be in Los Angeles on the fifth, Philopsona being on the road to recovery.

  ‘Goody, goody,’ cried Rose.

  Then a heated discussion began between the two men to do with Israel and the Arabs. Fury said that the Jews were out to extend their borders by force, that they wanted to unseat a man called Nasser because he was a lightning rod for Arab unity, and that they wanted the Cold War to con­ tinue. It was Israel who had killed President Kennedy, because nothing could be achieved as long as he remained in the White House.

  ‘Oswald wasn’t a Jew,’ shouted Silver.

  Rose said, ‘My dad hated Jews . . . and Catholics . . . and the Salvation Army.’

  ‘The Senate is riddled with Jews, as you well know,’ Fury persisted.