Bobby's Girl

by Catrin Collier

  As there were no windows in the room it was impossible to gauge whether dawn had broken or not. The two children on the woman’s lap woke. Their eyes opened but they didn’t make a sound. Only clutched her dress tighter.

  Footsteps echoed. They stopped outside the door. It opened. An officer stood, dwarfed by the massive figure of George.

  Bobby moved his arm, rose from the bench and went to the door of the cage. ‘George?’

  ‘Mr Bobby, what are you doing in there?’ George walked over to him.

  ‘Researching a thesis on life in a Hyannisport holding cell,’ Bobby answered sourly.

  The officer at the desk joined George and the officer who’d escorted him in. ‘You know that man?’

  ‘I sure do. He’s Bobby Brosna the Fourth.’

  ‘He’s really Bobby Brosna?’ The officer clearly didn’t want to believe it.

  ‘Sure is,’ George confirmed.

  ‘We picked him and the girl up skinny-dipping on the beach in the early hours.’

  ‘I told you it was a private beach,’ Bobby reminded.

  ‘You were breaking the law on two counts. You were on a beach after 6.00 p.m. and you were in a state of indecency.’

  ‘You want me to apologise after you locked me and my girlfriend in here all night?’ Bobby’s voice had changed to imperious. Yet again Penny was reminded how little she knew him.

  ‘I suppose we could let you go with a caution,’ one of the officers demurred.

  ‘And, I suppose if I felt magnanimous, I could decide not to complain about the treatment we received.’

  Bobby’s threat was enough. The officer manning the desk fetched the keys and unlocked the cell. Bobby offered her his hand. She took it and moved slowly upright waiting for the circulation to return to her limbs.

  ‘You here to fetch us, George?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘No, Mr Bobby. I didn’t know you were here until I walked in.’ George drew closer to where the woman with the children was sitting behind bars. ‘You called your cousin last night, ma’am?’

  ‘I did,’ she answered.

  ‘She sent me to get you and the children.’

  A tear rolled down her cheek.

  ‘Here, let me help you with the little ones.’ George stepped inside the cage and took one of the children from her lap. Paul lifted the other.

  ‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance of you getting Mary out of here, Bobby?’ Paul asked. ‘I don’t mind for myself but this is no place for a lady.’

  ‘Why did they pick you up?’

  ‘Vagrancy. We could only raise three bucks between us. We came to town hoping to find live-in jobs.’

  ‘There’s a couple of cottages free, isn’t there?’ Bobby turned to George.

  ‘Only one, Mr Bobby sir, after this lady and her little ones move in.’

  ‘One is all they need.’ Bobby looked at Paul. ‘We can help you with accommodation.’

  ‘I just said we have no money …’

  Bobby lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Neither have we. What the owner doesn’t know isn’t going to upset her. Just keep the place clean.’ He turned back to the officer. ‘Can we take …?’

  ‘Paul Smith and Mary Night,’ Paul said.

  ‘Can we take them to the Brosna Estate?’

  ‘You’ll vouch for them, sir?’

  The elevation to ‘sir’ surprised Penny but not Bobby.

  ‘I’ll vouch for them,’ Bobby answered.

  ‘Although the girl is Native American?’

  ‘Makes no difference to me,’ Bobby said coldly.

  ‘Take them away.’

  ‘We should arrest you every night, Mr Brosna,’ the overweight officer joked. ‘You have a way of cleaning up the holding cell in the morning.’

  ‘What about us?’ one of the thin girls asked.

  ‘Transsexual soliciting. You need more than a Brosna to get you out of that one. You need a good lawyer,’ the officer barked.

  She was dreaming that she was rocking in a boat on the sea. The rocking grew wilder, more violent …

  ‘Wake up, sleepyhead.’

  She opened her eyes. Bobby was shaking her.

  ‘Don’t you dare suggest another swim,’ she warned.

  ‘We have to be at work in an hour. I thought you’d want time for a shower and a meal.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She snuggled back down in the bed and held out her arms.

  ‘If I get down there with you, I won’t get up again this side of sunset.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘If it wasn’t our second day in the job, I’d agree with you and spend the afternoon sleeping on the beach.’

  ‘Don’t mention the word “beach” to me ever again.’

  ‘Not until after our shift,’ he joked. ‘Come on, sleepy. We can’t let Cosmo down.’

  She reluctantly forced herself to sit up in the bed. ‘Five minutes I’ll be with you.’

  ‘I’ll be in the garden with Sandy and Kate.’

  When she emerged freshly showered with wet hair, dressed in jeans and T-shirt, Kate pointed to the washing line. ‘I washed your uniform and apron.’

  ‘Thank you, but how did you know I hadn’t done them?’

  ‘Because we saw them on the floor of your bedroom when we looked for you this morning. They should be dry.’

  She felt them. ‘Thank you. They are.’

  ‘Hi, Brits.’ Marion opened the gate and walked into the garden with a handsome young Hispanic in tow.

  ‘Joe. You’re looking good. Great to see you.’ Sandy left his chair and hugged the young man.

  ‘I don’t know who you are but put the love of my life down,’ Marion ordered Sandy.

  ‘Nice to meet you guys.’ Joe shook hands all round.

  Like Sandy, Joe was tall, dark and very handsome, with a Clark Gable moustache and long dark hair.

  Marion hugged Penny and Kate.

  ‘How did you know where to find us?’ Kate asked.

  ‘We didn’t. We came here to see George. He told us Sandy was staying here with Bobby and two Brit girls,’ Marion divulged.

  ‘Are you in one of the cottages?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘No freebies for us, unfortunately. We’re renting a room the other side of town. Joe has a friend who works at the Melody Tent and can get half-price tickets for concerts that aren’t sold out and hard-to-get tickets for those that are. We brought round two for the Joan Baez concert that George ordered. He offered us a cup of coffee and we got to talking. He told Joe that Sandy was here. I mentioned the Brits I’d met yesterday in town and he said two Brits were staying here. I wondered if you were the same ones. And you are.’

  ‘Can you get us half-price tickets for the Joan Baez concert?’ Sandy asked eagerly.

  ‘I might be able to get tickets, but not half price, not for Joan Baez,’ Joe warned. ‘Last time my friend looked there were only half a dozen left.’

  ‘Before you buy any tickets we have to square time off with Cosmo,’ Bobby reminded, ‘and speaking of Cosmo, we have to leave for work in five minutes.’

  Penny took her uniform and apron from the line, dived indoors and changed. When she came out Sandy and Kate were making arrangements to visit Marion and Joe when they came off shift.

  ‘We’ll know then when we’ll have our evening off and will let you know about the tickets,’ Sandy told Joe.

  Joe noticed Bobby’s guitar propped against a chair. ‘You play as well as Sandy?’

  ‘He thinks he’s better than me,’ Sandy winked at Joe.

  ‘Bring them. Marion has a good voice and we have music most evenings.’

  ‘Thanks, we will.’ Bobby walked them to the gate.

  ‘That should keep you and Bobby off the beach and out of mischief in the early hours.’ Sandy waved Marion and Joe off as they left on Joe’s motorcycle.

  ‘And there was me looking forward to another swim.’ Bobby opened his car door. ‘Work everyone.’

  ‘Not until we’ve packed a change of
clothes. There’s no way I’m going to any party in a waitress uniform.’ Kate ran back into the house and Penny followed.

  * * *

  None of them expected a gathering the size of the one outside the white clapboard house where Joe and Marion were renting a room. The yard was crowded. More than a dozen people were roasting franks and marshmallows on sticks over a campfire. Even more were clustered around a makeshift bar set up on crates from which Joe and Marion were dispensing drinks. A sign pinned to the tree above it, said ALL DONATIONS GRATEFULLY IMBIDED.

  ‘Glad you could come.’ Marion handed Penny and Kate glasses as soon as they walked through the gate. ‘Cold white wine, the only way to drink it.’

  ‘Sandy, Bobby, you’ve brought your guitars, great. Over here with them.’ Mark, the sous-chef from Cosmo’s waved to them.

  A few moments later the sound of Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ was being belted out by an improvised choir and half a dozen guitars.

  Penny and Kate sat between Bobby and Sandy. Someone handed her a hot dog. Every time she set her paper cup on the ground it was refilled, so she clung on to it.

  Six Dylan songs in, Bobby started playing ‘The Times They Are a-Changin”. Penny left the circle round the campfire and went in search of a bathroom. She was leaving the house when she noticed a man sitting apart from the others. He looked lost and lonely, although she couldn’t have said with any certainty why.

  She walked over to where he was sitting, leaning against a tree, brown paper bag in hand, and offered a tentative, ‘Hi.’

  He lifted his hand in acknowledgement but didn’t say anything.

  ‘You OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Nope, but I’ll be better when they stop playing that,’ he muttered. The song had changed to ‘With God on Our Side’.

  She opened her bag, took out a pencil and artist’s block and sat on the grass. ‘Mind if I sketch you?’

  ‘What do you want to do that for?’

  ‘I’m studying art. And there’s something about your face …’ She was already making broad outline strokes on the paper.

  Joe brought her a fresh cup of wine and looked over her shoulder. ‘That’s good.’

  She glanced up. ‘It’s very rough, but thank you.’

  ‘You’ve met my brother, Eric?’

  ‘We haven’t been formally introduced.’ She smiled at Eric. ‘Hi again, Eric.’

  Eric nodded.

  ‘Eric, this is Penny, she’s a Brit and a friend of Marion and Sandy. He worked with us last season, remember?’

  Eric lifted his hand again and gave another perfunctory wave.

  ‘Eric’s back from his first tour in ’Nam,’ Joe confided loud enough for Eric to hear.

  ‘And returning as soon as I’ve had the regulation dose of R&R prescribed by the shrink.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she sympathised.

  ‘Why? You didn’t send me there.’

  ‘I’m sorry that anyone has to fight a war. It’s such a horrible concept. Two armies of men lined up and ordered to kill one another.’

  ‘It’s not a concept when you’re there. And the armies aren’t facing one another. It would be a cleaner fight if they were. We’re fighting the whole goddamn population.’ He looked at her. ‘You really are sorry, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wish I’d met you before I got my draft papers.’

  ‘I have a boyfriend …’

  ‘I’ve a girlfriend. She’s a nurse in Mexico City. I didn’t mean it that way. If you’d invited me to stay with you in England, I could have become a draft dodger like the rich kids.’

  She carried on sketching. ‘What’s it like over there?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  She longed to reach out to Eric, offer him more than sympathy, but as she couldn’t even begin to imagine what he’d experienced, she didn’t know where to start.

  ‘I have to talk about it soon,’ Eric murmured. She had the feeling he was talking more to himself than her. ‘I promised to visit my buddy’s wife.’

  ‘You OK, Pen?’ Bobby joined them. There was a suspicious look on his face that she would have liked to interpret as jealousy.

  ‘This is Joe’s brother, Eric. He’s a soldier, back from Vietnam.’

  ‘Is it as bad as they say over there?’ Bobby sat beside them.

  ‘As I don’t know what they’re saying I can’t answer that.’

  Eric was so offhand she said, ‘Eric was telling me he has to visit his buddy’s wife.’

  ‘You have a message for her?’ Bobby lifted his guitar from the grass on to his lap.

  ‘The kind no one wants to deliver.’ Eric flipped open a pack of cigarettes and pushed one between his teeth. ‘He gave me his last letter.’

  ‘He was killed?’

  ‘Drowned along with everyone in our platoon, except me. We were in a waterlogged paddy field for a week. There was nothing to cling to. Lost six the last day. The lucky ones went sooner. I watched them go under. When they fished me out they thought I’d gone the same way as the others. But,’ he grimaced, ‘as you see, I made it.’

  She was too shocked to say a word.

  ‘Where does your buddy’s wife live?’

  ‘About sixty miles from here. Figure I’ll be spending most of tomorrow hitch-hiking there and back.’

  ‘I’ll give you a lift. But it would have to be early. I have to be in town at two o’clock for work.’

  Eric narrowed his eyes. ‘Why would you do that?’

  Bobby shrugged. ‘Giving you a ride is no big deal.’

  ‘You want to watch her pain?’

  ‘I’m not a voyeur.’

  ‘Then it’s guilt. You won’t be going to ’Nam yourself.’

  ‘Do you want the ride or not?’ Bobby countered.

  ‘Hell, yes. I’m not too proud to take it and not dumb enough to turn you down. Pick me up here at seven.’

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘Bring your girlfriend, she talks real pretty.’ Eric took another swig from the bottle in the brown paper bag before passing it to Bobby.

  ‘No thanks,’ Bobby refused. ‘I have to drive in a couple of hours.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Dawn had broken; the light was grey and clear when Penny and Bobby left the Beach House early the next morning and drove through the town. Assistants from the twenty-four-hour bars and restaurants were cleaning windows and clearing litter from outside their premises. Store workers were sweeping the sidewalks in front of their doors and hauling out their stands.

  Eric was waiting for them. He dropped his bag into the back seat of the car, climbed over the side and sat beside it.

  Bobby turned his head and said, ‘Good morning, Eric.’

  ‘Morning,’ Eric growled, as taciturn as he’d been the night before.

  ‘I’m happy to drive you but I’d like to know where we’re going.’

  Eric delved into the pocket of his jeans and produced a crumpled piece of paper. He handed it to Bobby.

  Bobby looked at it. ‘I know the town. Can you direct me from the centre?’

  ‘Never been there. Gerry told me if you enter from the south side and head up Main Street towards the shopping mall, turn right at the mall and follow the road for five miles, you’ll come to his house on the left. He said you can’t miss it. It’s the only house on that road for two miles and it’s painted yellow.’

  ‘Gerry gave you directions to his house while you were in Vietnam?’ she asked in surprise.

  ‘We talked about home.’ Eric pulled his cap down even lower and closed his eyes, ending the conversation.

  After they left the interstate, their progress was slow because they were frequently delayed by slow-moving agricultural vehicles. The directions Eric had given Bobby were good, but when they reached the house, she suspected Eric’s buddy hadn’t really looked at his home in years. The only evidence of yellow paint was in the shreds of faded colour under the eaves and the shards below
the rotting window frames.

  The house was massive, its clapboard walls weathered a dull grey. Three storeys high, the dozen windows at the front were hung with curtains so faded it was impossible to determine their original colour. All were laced with cobwebs. The building and barn behind it were marooned in an undulating sea of scrap metal. Abandoned cars, refrigerators with their doors removed, broken stoves, battered kitchen appliances and pieces of rusting agricultural machinery were piled high, spilling over on to what might have once been a drive.

  A woman dressed in a calico overall was pegging washing, one-handed, on to a line while cradling a baby in the other. Her face was lined, her grey-streaked black hair tied back with twine. Two toddlers were playing in the dirt at her feet. She watched the car approach. As soon as Bobby parked in the road, Eric picked up his bag and climbed out of the back.

  ‘Mrs Buckley? Mrs Gerry Buckley?’

  She dropped the washing she was holding back into her basket and moved tentatively forward. ‘You’re Eric, Gerry’s buddy from ’Nam.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Gerry sent me a photograph. There were six of you in a bar.’

  ‘Gerry gave me a letter. He asked me to give it to you if anything happened to him.’

  ‘And you brought it all this way. That is kind.’ She remembered her manners and dropped the peg she was holding into her pocket. She wiped her free hand on her overall, shifted her baby and held out her right hand to Eric. He shook it.

  ‘Bring your friends inside. I’ll put coffee on.’

  Bobby left the car and stretched. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Buckley. I’m Bobby, this is my friend Penny. We’d like to walk around for ten minutes or so after being cooped up driving.’

  ‘We’ll see you later, Bobby, Penny. Come on, kids, let’s go in the house.’ She pushed open the side door and revealed a room as chaotic as the yard, with dirty dishes heaped on every surface and trash scattered over the floor.