As Far as You Can Go (13 page)

“I have always wanted to have a Reynolds,” he wrote, “and now I have the chance to discover one, as it were, I have every intention of making the fact known.”

There was a good deal more in the letter, of which the most important part was an order for Harold to take a long trip to Texas and California and Colorado. But the emphasis was on California.

“You know how much I wish to recover the miniature,” wrote Dangerfield. “And in spite of your doubts, in spite of the unanswered letters, I wish you to go in person to
investigate
Mr Washburn or what remains of him. I have been looking at a map of the United States. It seems to me that you could well make a round trip—going to California via Texas, and coming back via Denver. Or vice versa, as you wish. In any case, I do not wish to hear from you again until you are west of the Mississippi. Keep a careful record of all that you see. It has long been my ambition to visit the Grand Canyon. Please write to me at length about its size, the impression it makes on your mind, its colouring and history. Do not fail to go down it, as I believe is possible. Surely there are mules in America? You should also see the Deep South, but you are not to get involved in any politics. I do not wish to be responsible for your death by lynching.”

The last sentence was, Harold decided, an
acknowledgment
from Dangerfield that it was all right to be left of centre: it implied that the middle-aged were prepared to sympathize with the young without actually understanding or sharing their beliefs. At any rate, Dangerfield seemed to have realized that Harold wasn’t exactly a Tory, and didn’t mind. This was something of a relief, for at times Harold had felt he was cheating Dangerfield, using him and his money and his family portraits as an excuse to get out of the tedium of Craxton Street.

He wrote to Mrs Bannister of Denver, saying that he hoped to be there some time in May. It would be nicer to
go South for the spring. And anyway, Mr Connor, of Austin, Texas, sounded an extremely tough nut to crack, while Mrs Bannister sounded quite easy.

He set off in the middle of March to explore the Deep South. He liked New Orleans and the huge Southern
mansions
, he liked the great swamps, and the Spanish moss hanging from the trees, but he couldn’t bear the defensive way all the white people spoke to him, at once cringing as though expecting a blow and defiant of the slightest liberal opinion. He was intensely aware of his foreignness,
something
he had begun to forget while living in New York. And seeing the tumbledown shacks beside the road, from which either white or negro people might emerge, seeing the
agricultural
poverty, he realized not only that he did not know the country well enough to praise or damn, but also that the facile European assumption that the problem was purely and simply racial was absurd. A more obvious economically created situation seemed hard to find: but he began to distrust his own eyes and judgment, horrified at his own ability to accept the grossest simplifications about things he knew little about.

He did not stay long in the South. Within a fortnight of leaving New York he was in Austin, Texas.

James Connor, a big wheel in insurance of some kind, lived in a house which did not look pretentious at all. There was a lot of glass about, obviously, and the style was what social critics of architecture sneered at as “Dude Ranch House”, but it seemed no more ostentatious than other houses that Harold could glimpse along the winding road just outside Austin. It was not until one was inside that one saw why a rich man had chosen it: it perched five hundred feet above the river, with a sheer drop out of the
drawing-room
window. The whole of the house facing over the cliff was of glass. To the left one could see a reservoir and a huge dam, to the right the city of Austin, with at least one tree for every house.

“Not bad, eh?” said Connor.

He was small and trim and had short black hair, and Harold was depressed to be reminded of Blackett at
Fenway’s
, a man he had not thought about for several months.

“Everything in this room is genuine,” said Connor, a big hand with pudgy fingers waving grandly round.

Harold was not sure what this meant, but he smiled.

“Every
single
thing,” said Connor, in a warning voice.

Harold got down to the matter in hand, thinking that it might be helpful to appear on genuine business.

Connor was not impressed.

“You tell me why I should sell,” he said. He used his pencil as a threat, jabbing it at Harold across the desk to emphasize the word “sell”.

“I should have thought Mr Dangerfield’s reasons for wanting to recover the portraits of his ancestors were obvious enough,” said Harold. “You may call him sentimental, but there is such a thing as family pride.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Connor. “I see his reasons. But what about my reasons? I bought the picture, didn’t I? It has sentimental value for me, too. That was one of the very first purchases I made, Mr Barlow. And now the Connor
collection
is famous all over the country. People come to see me and my pictures from all over. From all over, Mr Barlow. I’m proud of my collection.”

“You have every right to be,” said Harold.

The collection contained many pictures of great beauty, and several of still greater monetary value. Mr Connor
believed
, it seemed, in buying at the top of the market as far as pictures were concerned.

“I don’t want to part with a single goddam picture,” said Connor. “It’s a great collection, and they’re all great
pictures
. I have experts come to see me. There was one last week from New York. You know what he told me? He told me, Mr Connor, he said, every single one of your pictures is
a great work of art. I don’t want to lose one of them, Mr Barlow.”

“I can see that,” said Harold. He had never understood why rich men always congratulated themselves on their riches, as though they couldn’t ever quite believe that they were so rich. “Your collection is one of the finest I’ve ever seen, Mr Connor. But surely the basis of your collection is the Impressionist group you have? Your six Renoirs and your four Cézannes—all masterpieces, all nineteenth century. The Dangerfield portrait is the only seventeenth-century picture you have. Some people might feel it was out of place here.”

“Some people might,” said Connor, grinning. “But some people don’t run this collection,
I
run it.”

“Of course.”

“It’s my collection, and my taste, and I don’t give a damn what the experts say. They can say what they like.”

Harold felt that this was not true, but refrained from saying so.

“I’m a collector, Mr Barlow. You may not like it, but one of the joys of being a collector is that you have something someone else hasn’t got. Now give me one
good
reason why I should part with that portrait.”

“Money?”

“Money! What do you think, what does Mr Dangerfield think,
I
want with money? I’ve got so much money I’ve had to start my own bank to look after it all.” He laughed deeply at his own joke. “I don’t need money, Mr Barlow.”

Harold named the largest sum that came into his head.

Connor laughed.

“Now see here, young man,” he said, “I’m not going to part with that picture. Let’s not waste each other’s time.”

As he showed Harold to the door (even the richest Texans seemed to live without any servants) he said, “This is a young man’s country, Mr Barlow. What are you doing going round it for an old man?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t give me that. What’s a young man like you doing without a job of his own? Are you so rich you don’t have to do real work?” He went on without pausing, “No one’s that rich.”

“No,” said Harold. “I’m seeing the world, Mr Connor. I think real work is strictly for squares.”

This phrase, which Harold had picked up from listening to disc-jockeys on the radio of his car, seemed to amuse Connor.

“Well, well,” he said. “You Britishers
are
on the
downgrade
if you have to use American slang to hide the fact you don’t like working.”

He was laughing as he shut the door.

Harold supposed that that was what was called a brush-off. He left Austin that afternoon, heading south towards the gulf.

And now he was in Mesquite, Nevada.

He said the name over and over again to try and make it sound real. It didn’t.

It was real enough, though, when he stepped out of his room into the sunlight. The motel was set slightly back from the road, but already the noise of passing trucks must be stirring the heaviest sleepers. It was eight-thirty.

He walked to the road and looked for the diner he’d seen the previous night. He had eaten at the Cactus Restaurant, and he always made a point of trying as many places as possible. The road ran absolutely straight to the west, curving at the eastern end of the town towards the mountains. He counted six gas-stations, fourteen houses, and two restaurants. The one he was going to breakfast in was called Brady’s.

He walked up the road to it, feeling the sun hot on his back. Inside it was cool, and at a long counter with stools sat two truck-drivers, drinking coffee and staring at the wall.
Coca-Cola
signs, beer advertisements, an orange-drink cooler,
tables and chairs: it was every restaurant on every American road. He sat at the counter and listened to the pop-song coming from the enormous garish juke-box of chrome and flashing lights. He felt happy.

“Well, hello,” said the waitress. She was pretty and young, and smiled.

“Hi,” said Harold, rather selfconsciously. The West was famous for its welcome, and he still hadn’t got used to being treated as though the restaurants actually wanted to serve him. His “Hi” was an attempt at anonymity. An English accent sometimes brought on a whole family history, and always the question “How do you like America?” He didn’t know how he liked America yet, he’d been too busy. He thought he liked it very much, but he wasn’t quite sure. He always said, “It’s a great country,” but though this was meant to come out loud and strong, he usually found himself whispering it, while the barman or waitress smiled
patronizingly
. “Sure is,” they’d say. “Pretty big,” was another favourite reply, said slowly with a grave nod, and Harold could never think of anything to say to it. He would nod gravely, too, and pick up the menu.

He ordered scrambled eggs, orange juice and coffee,
refusing
the fried potatoes he was offered, without his accent attracting any attention. The second cup of coffee came free, another example of western hospitality. As he drank it he looked at his map. Death Valley was off the route, but he very much wanted to see it. He wondered whether he could spend another day searching the desert for whatever it was that attracted him. Then there was Las Vegas, too.

He paid for the meal, and the waitress said, “You’re English, aren’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“I could tell there was something funny with your accent.”

“It exposes me everywhere.”

“You been here long?”

“About three months.”

“How do you like it?”

“It’s a great country.”

“Sure is. You going to stay?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll look around a bit more before I decide, I guess.”

People became so hurt if he said he was going home in another month or so that he always told a lie, adding “I guess” as a concession to Americanism, not often appreciated.

He went back to the motel and packed his case. Then he stood outside in the hot morning sun and smoked a cigarette and thought about America. He’d been travelling too fast, he decided, he was seeing without absorbing. Some nights, after a long drive, he couldn’t sleep, for the moment he closed his eyes he was back in the car and the road was swooshing towards him, the fences were flicking silently past, and the middle distance was creeping up, only the far
horizon
seeming to stand still. It was an unpleasant sensation, like being drunk. The images swept through his dazed brain, sharp, bright, dancing, as in an alcoholic pillow-spin. He was doing altogether too much too quickly: yesterday, for
instance
, he had seen three of the world’s great natural wonders —the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert and Zion National Park. And what remained of their astonishing colours and shapes today? A jumble of starkly beautiful images, like a series of colour slides. Yet he felt he should have stayed, should have lingered in that hostile desert country. It was strange how powerfully the American desert could work on a European mind. It would be good to stop for a while and let things settle down: to reflect and ponder and consider. In a few months he had seen so much, such a wide variety of people and places, that he was, he thought with a smile, exactly like one of the American tourists in Europe whom all Europeans joined to mock for his presumption in hoping to “do” Europe in three weeks.

He put his case in the car. His Chevrolet was white, with automatic transmission, and he loved it as he might have loved a dog. It didn’t go very fast, but then you were never allowed to go more than seventy or so, so it didn’t matter. It was comfortable and large and had plenty of leg-room, and was generally so unlike the miniature cars of England that he felt like a millionaire every time he sat at the wheel. That it was one of the cheapest cars on the American market was a matter of complete indifference to him. He was
particularly
glad that it was white: whiteness was right for heroes, white chargers in the old days, white Chevrolets for today. It had a radio and a heater, its wings were swollen with luxury, its engine was fairly quiet. Only in Texas, where he had been given a ride in an air-conditioned Cadillac, did he feel there was another car on the road to match it. In fact, of course, there were several hundred thousand, if not millions, of identical Chevrolets on American roads, but Harold was uninterested in facts about his car. His was the best of its kind, and since he drove it, everyone knew it.

He turned the key to start the engine, roared it in a friendly way to let it know he was back, turned on the radio, lit a cigarette from the dashboard lighter, put on his dark glasses and set off.