WISH YOU WERE THERE!
Jantallian
A Letter Home
SS - JH
The next day, Jess utterly refused to get up. Considering that he had snored blissfully through the night with complete disregard for Slim's slumbers, there did not seem to be any reason for this other than a prolongation of his usual refusal to face the morning. Unless, of course, it was vanity – despite the effectiveness of the salve, the cuts and bruises on his face did nothing to improve it.
Slim once more gave up on this intransigence and intercepted Anna-Maria on his way to breakfast. Assuring her that their patient was sleeping peacefully, Slim was able to persuade her to eat with him and after that, to show him the parts of San Francisco that the Barbary Coast did not encompass. Their perambulations led naturally to having lunch together and then the afternoon was pleasantly spent viewing the boats in the harbour.
It was, therefore, early evening, before they returned to the hotel. Anna-Maria had, out of the kindness of her heart, refrained from enlightening Slim any further about its true nature. She had never before met anyone who was so kind and friendly and honest and entirely without an insight into the seamier side of life. It would have been a pity to spoil it. They were met by a harassed receptionist, who immediately demanded to know why the stair-carpet was being worn out with visitors going to and from Slim's room.
"Mostly wimmin!" the clerk added morosely, regarding Slim with a jaundiced eye as if he were personally responsible for what went on in his absence. Slim would probably have accepted this responsibility, had not Anna-Maria pointed out that Jess had a lot of friends in the theatrical line.
"I just hope they're not all still there," Slim said as they ascended the staircase. The carpet seemed to have born up remarkably well.
Contrary to his forebodings, they found no-one in the room and Jess peacefully sleeping exactly as if he was still in the early hours of the morning. This appearance was belied by the presence of a great many flowers, the remains of a substantial meal and several assorted bottles which had contained alcohol at some time in the not so distant past.
"Wake up!" Slim poked him unkindly in the ribs and was rewarded with a yelp of pain and a snarl. "It's nearly sundown. Get up!"
Jess attempted to pull the bedclothes over his head but Slim foiled this in the same way he had on a previous morning, with the threat of the water ewer. Jess sat up reluctantly, rubbing his eyes and scowling. "Coffee!" he demanded belligerently.
"Only if you get up first!"
"There's a lady in the room. I ain't getting out of bed and dressin' –"
"You said she'd seen everything. And if she can buy you silk underpants, I don't see that you've got anything to be so modest about!"
Anna-Maria solved this neatly by giving Slim a chaste kiss on the cheek, thanking him for a lovely day and departing to her duties at the theatre. Slim folded his arms and waited in what he hoped was a sufficiently threatening manner. Jess found some clean clothes and got into them reluctantly. Then he looked at himself in the mirror and groaned. "I sure hope the Reverend is worth all this trouble!"
"You've only yourself to blame," Slim told him firmly. "Your ideas about finding him haven't exactly worked out so far, have they?"
"Neither have yours!" Jess retorted. "An' it was your job to find him, not mine. I'm just the shotgun guard, remember?"
"Yeah, I'll remember next time someone picks one of us up by the collar!" Slim agreed. Then he added in weary and puzzled tones: "I can't see why we can't find him."
"Are you sure you got the directions right?" Jess was moodily poking about the room, looking for something to drink, since coffee did not seem to be forthcoming.
"Miss Rachel gave me the letter. See for yourself. Mind you," Slim added, "his handwriting is nearly as bad as yours."
Jess took the piece of paper and moved out onto the balcony, where the light was better. He stared at it. Slim was used to the fact that Jess was not a fast reader and did not register this for some moments. Jess went on staring at the letter. Slim strolled across and looked over his shoulder. Jess silently pointed to a particular sentence.
"Oh no!"
"Oh yeah! You know what this means?"
"I'm guessing. And I think it's something else that I don't want to know!"
"Well, it would've helped some if you'd known this from the start. We're in the wrong place."
"We are?"
"Yeah. This don't say 'Barbary Coast', it says 'Santa Barbara on the coast'!"
"And that is …?"
"Three hundred miles south of here!"
Ten days and two hundred and something miles later, they came to a secluded bay below the coastal road. It was possible to get down to the beach and the temptation was too much. The stunning beauty of the coastline had been with them all the way. The sight of the ocean was something completely new to Slim and entirely enchanting, despite Jess's cryptic moans about ships and sea-sickness. Both of them were hot, tired and saddle-weary. The lure of the cool blue water was irresistible.
Tethering the horses they had hired, they scrambled down the cliff and onto the sand. Moments later, there were two piles of clothes on the rocks – one tidily folded and the other dropped in a heap. Jess added the towel he had fished out from his bag to his piled clothing and looked at his disconcerted companion in surprise: "You ain't brought a towel? I don't believe it! You even carry a clean handkerchief."
"Yeah, but I can't dry on that!"
"Guess you'll have to let the sun do it for you then!" Jess sprinted down the beach and took a header into the waves, once again ignoring his companion's packing dilemma. Slim shrugged and followed him rather more cautiously. And immediately after that, there was a great deal of splashing and horsing about in the surging surf.
"It's salty!" Slim sounded astounded. "I mean, I've read about it, but it really is salty!" The wonder in his voice was, as always, totally endearing, but that did not stop Jess from splashing a great sweep of the stuff into his face and then letting the surge of a wave carry him racing back towards the beach. If he had hoped to escape a ducking for this, he was out of luck and shortly afterwards came up spitting salt water and sand.
When playing in the waves had been explored enough, they both swam out into calmer water and floated, admiring the view of the magnificent cliffs towering above them. A flight of pelicans skimmed low over the shallows and then lifted gracefully towards the headland.
"What's that?" Jess pointed towards a shelf of rock, on which there appeared to be a number of moving boulders. Slim squinted against the sun and then said: "I think they're sea-lions." *6
"They look on the large side. I just hope they're aimin' to stay where they are!"
"Don't worry – you're too big for them to try to eat."
Thus reassured by Slim's apparent knowledge of coastal ambience, they found the rocking of the waves and the relaxation of their bodies extremely peaceful after the hazards of the drier Barbary Coast. There were still things puzzling Slim's logical mind, though, and after a while he asked: "Why is she Aunty Mae?"
"It's a universal term."
"And you really aren't related?"
"Are you crazy?" Jess gave a sigh and decided, for the sake of a quiet life, to give in to Slim's curiosity. "I worked for her once."
"You did?"
"Yeah, I was part of the knife-throwing act."
"I see. Well, you do throw accurately enough to be an asset."
"I was the target!" Jess looked as though he would like to sink, but not if it meant drowning.
"She threw knives at you?"
"Yeah." After a bit, the ex-assistant added, "It wasn't bad money and easy work, just standin' around. You were safe enough if she was drunk."
"You mean if she wasn't drunk?"
"No. She's deadly accurate when she's drunk, 'cos she knows she needs to concentrate. But rehearsals were hell! I've still got the scars!"
They were silent for a while, then Slim enquired: "How's Julie?"
A look of chagrin clouded Jess's face. "She's gettin' married!"
There was another pause. "You could look on it as a lucky escape," Slim suggested.
Jess thought about this a little, after which he said in tones of resignation: "Maybe. But I never did figure that woman out!" Then he decided that Slim had asked quite enough personal questions for one day and rolled over, intending to swim back to the shore. Slim followed suit.
It was several minutes before Slim ventured: "Jess, do you think we're getting anywhere?"
"No!" Jess said shortly. They were both strong swimmers but no matter how much effort they put into it, the shore got no nearer. In fact they were moving southwards, along the coast, much faster than they were going inshore.
"I think we must be caught in a sea current," analysed Slim the knowledgeable.
"No kiddin'? An' y' wait till now t' tell me!"
"There's no point in fighting it. We'll just have to hope it will bring us back to land eventually."