Atlantic High (7 page)
Authors: Jr. William F. Buckley
Six weeks after Fiji came Christmas-cruise time. Dick Clurman advised me, over the phone, in clipped accents, that he and Shirley would meet us at JFK rather than attempt the trip to the airport in a single motor vehicle with twenty-six pieces of luggage. This detail is not entirely extraneous to ocean sailing. The summer before, I had sailed the Aegean and one of the company, whom I had known since college though he is a few years my junior, arrived with a single moderate-sized duffel bag plus a wafer-slim briefcase good for one issue of the Paris
Tribune
and maybe three paperbacks. Every day of the week he was with us he turned up in serviceable but modish costume, and at night there would be a fresh shirt and colored pants or white ducks. Dick (Coulson) had sailed competitively since he was a boy, and twice he raced the Atlantic aboard a boat whose skipper is notoriously demanding. His disposition is quiet, he is organically unexcitable, and when he goes cruising he sees no need for chestloads of gear. If he finishes the books he brings, there are always others on board. If his laundry gets scarce, he washes it and it is dry the next morning. He has hisown foul-weather gear and one extra pair of Topsiders, and doesn’t go to sea other than to go to sea.
Clurman and I are gadget-minded. He, for instance, even brings along his own voltmeter. He has, usually, three radios, and the paraphernalia that go with them. Then there is the fishing equipment. If he could catch a single fish per snare or hook he brings aboard, he would empty the Caribbean of underwater life. And now that we are onto scuba diving, there is that inventory. He reads at the rate of a book a day (I saw him begin Herman Wouk’s
Winds of War
one morning and finish it at noon the next day). And mind you he does not do all of this in Carthusian circumstances. He talks at least three times as much as the rest of the crew combined, though he is always available to undertake any chore; he receives, transcribes and analyzes the news for us, explores the lives and problems of the crew, expresses his preferences on a) where we should sail to, b) when we should eat, and c) what we should eat. Then of course there are the magazines to catch up on—about forty, and they range from
Playboy
to
American Scholar
. He is perhaps happiest on the radiotelephone, calling his endless list of friends, discharging his responsibilities as a counselor to them all. No doubt he came to the habit of being constantly in touch with all points of the globe during his long tenure as chief of correspondents for Time Inc. The world is dotted with former employees, associates, and acquaintances whom Dick has helped. On one of our trips he had with him David Halberstam’s new manuscript. The next trip out he brought along a copy of the published book for me to read. It was inscribed “Dick: I wanted you to have the earliest copy of your book which I took the liberty of writing.”
I go in for navigational gear. Nowadays I regularly bring aboard the tables, the almanac, my own set of dividers and parallel rules, paper clips and rubber bands, plotting sheets, notebooks and logbooks, three computers, and two, sometimes three, sextants, plus books and unrequited correspondence. I leave the packing of my clothes to my wife, and she regularly sends me off with three sets of foul-weather gear and approximately four times as many shirts, pants, undershorts, sports shirts, sweaters, blazers, and shoes as I will need. Then, of course, I must have my peanut butter and my Swiss cyclamate. My happiest superstition is that if I take saccharine in my coffee, I can have hot-fudge sundaes for dessert.
Some women associate cruising with fashion, and aboard at night, for them, every day is Easter Sunday. On one jaunt, in May a year before the crossing, we had on board Jeff Hammond, the yachting editor, whose dress was generally ascetic, his interest being in photographs (add one aluminum bag for photographic equipment). But also we had Aileen Mehle, best known to a vast public as “Suzy,” the name under which she reports, in her distinctive style, the affairs of society. I had that spring written a novel and was depressed, on going over it, that my women were inevitably dressed in “a white pleated skirt,” or in “a blue cotton shirt,” or in “a long, strapless red velvet gown.” To my dismay I discovered that my vocabulary, in describing clothes, is positively primitive. Since Aileen is required by her profession to describe in detail the dress of the ladies she mingles with night after night, I thought I would take some instruction. I required her to describe what Pat and Shirley and she wore every night, and sought ambitiously to expand my sartorial vocabulary.
At the end of the eight-day sail I resolved to impose on myself a written examination. I set out to write a newspaper column after the fashion of the famous syndicated “Suzy” in order to exhibit my newfound knowledge. So at cocktail time I typed out and handed around a piece which the beautiful and amusing Aileen has never seen fit to publish as a guest column. Accordingly, I immodestly present it here:
SUZY says …
St.
Martin
. You know the famous line about the greatest concentration of brains that ever sat in the White House since Jefferson ate there alone? That was the charming toast by Jackie O’s First, when he gave that unforgettable dinner for all the Nobel Prize winners. Well, I thought of that the other day. Where have the beautiful people gone, in the great May diaspora? The heaviest concentration of them is on a boat. A big boat? No, dear, a little eensy-weensy boat, which is what makes it all so, well you know—unique?
It’s a dear little boat, though. It would have to be, to attract the people on it. You’re getting impatient? Wait, just wait. It’s worth waiting for. The boat is the kind of thing you put in little Johnny’s bathtub and blow, and he giggles and giggles. Anyway, take that boat and magnify it twenty or thirty times, and what you have is—the yacht
Sea-lestial
. Clever? There’s no stopping American ingenuity, and I hope some Russians are listening (I know there are. Don’t ask me how I found out. Do you think they would send me to jail? I know my friends would let me pick out the jail, and Françoise de la Renta said she and Mica Ertegun would stop everything and decorate it for me. I think it would be fun to have pictures of all the famous killers, don’t you? Caligula, Genghis Khan, Jack the Ripper, Three Mile Island …).
You thought I had forgotten about
Sealestial?
I’m just increasing the suspense. All aboard one boat. It has, for the nautical buffs out there who are interested in particulars, two sails and an engine, and the most
divine
steering wheel, with four sterling silver spokes, positively fit for framing.
Who do you suppose is on board this unobtrusive, inconspicuous, anonymous little sailboat? To begin with,
Aileen Mehle
. I know, I know, all you Mehle-experts will write to me (sorry, darlings, I just can’t answer my mail; not even presidents get acknowledgments) that Aileen—known to a few dozen million people, plus the few hundred who really count, as “Suzy”—doesn’t travel on eensy-weensy sailboats. What you
don’t
know is that Aileen comes from pioneer stock. Her great-grandfather discovered El Paso. His great-grandfather discovered Mexico City (she speaks Spanish like a native: Aileen,
¿Tu sabes cómo te quiero?—that’s
a private message, and you naughty voyeurs—wonderful word, but be sure, darlings, to pronounce it correctly—it’s
vwa-ytrs—
are invited to glide right by that little—shall I throw you off the track by calling it a
graffito?)
. And
his
great-grandfather discovered the Inquisition.
His
great-grandfather (no slouch) converted the Khazar Jews;
his
great-grandfather—but you have the idea, anyway; so are you surprised now that Aileen Mehle was spending a week in an eensy-weensy boat with sails?
Every night she would appear at dinner in something—special. Even the blasé guests on board (just wait, just wait) couldn’t suppress that little gasp of true astonishment. I can’t begin to give you an inventory. But let me tell you about last night, when the
Sealestial
was moored at a remote little harbor in St. Kitts, known for the savagery of its native population, surrounded by a stretch of brown-white sand, well over a hundred yards from David Rockefeller’s little beach house. Well, she wore tulle dungarees, with a voile blouse, positively streaming with scarlet ribands that rustled with the wind in the cockpit, over dyed Chinese characters that everybody on board spent hours trying to decipher, everybody agreeing that the key to the Chinese puzzle (Aileen just smiled and smiled when asked directly what it was) lay somewhere south of her nose (I’m using navigational language, darlings, but so would you if you had been where I have been this last week), north of her feet, southwest of her chin, and northwest of her navel. She looked ravishing with her swishy blond hair held down by a babushka, but complaining (it was her only complaint, all week long) that her hair wouldn’t stand up under the typhoon for more than one hour. (The captain didn’t think it was a typhoon, he thought it was a
hurricane
, but then he doesn’t come from adventurist
stock
. All
his
great-grandfather discovered was his great-grandmother.)
Now: What would bring Aileen out to such a boat, in the remote Caribbean? Well, for one thing, Jeff Hammond. Jeff, although he wears one of those beards, is a real softie. But that isn’t how they think of him at the Hearst Situation Room, where they track him as one of the jogging juggernauts (I like that, and I hope
you
do, my darlings; because I like
you
, as
you know)
who are headed for the big time. Jeff is the editor-in-chief of
Motor Boating & Sailing
, and it was
he
who told me that the
Sealestial
was a boat! You can’t put anything over on Jeff, he’s too smart, so don’t try. He wore khaki shorts and a T-shirt with
Charisma
written over the vest pocket. But he didn’t have to do that, because we
all
know that Jeff was
born
with charisma!
Next? Would you believe, Dick and Shirley Clurman? They decided—they are so wonderfully sentimental—to celebrate the third week following the
22nd
anniversary of their marriage, and
they
were the people who put together this whole marvelous experience. Dick was chief of foreign correspondents for Time-Life. But, as we all know, he was just warming up. He’s been all kinds of things since, and if you wake up one day and find out he’s President of the
United States—
just don’t forget, you had a vaticinator (????—see below, and you won’t be surprised) aboard the
Sealestial
. And Shirley—her best friends call her Shirleykins, and she roars with laughter every time—is as smart as her husband, and as accomplished. Beautiful Shirley was dressed last night in tapered white suede pants with a mauve shirt with pouch pockets studded with mother-of-pearl. Why? Because—
only Shirley Clurman would think of this!
Today was Mother’s Day. No wonder she has served as adviser to the high and mighty. If Dick goes All The Way, Shirley will be the very best FL since JO, though of course we’ve had some darlings in between, haven’t we, darlings?
Then to cap it off, Pat and Bill Buckley. Pat is as much at home on the water as she is on her beautiful estate in Connecticut, and apartment in New York. She is famous as one of the best cooks in the world—but, darlings, you should see her shinny up the mast to turn the boat around, or whatever it is they do up there. You’re sitting there, talking to her about
The World According to Garp—a
trashy little novel we all decided to read, just to keep in touch with the people we all love—and suddenly she’s gone—right to the top of the mast. You will ask, what is she wearing? You are right to ask: The last time she went up, she was wearing a hoopskirt (only Pat, who has an incomparable sense of humor, would do that, you know) of green chiffon, laced with a gold trim that would have knocked out the Incas themselves—but Pat Buckley didn’t even seem to notice, though she wasn’t in a position to talk about it, what with that nasty old big black wrench in her mouth.
And dear Bill. Yes, you guessed,
he
was the one who came in with “vaticinator,” which is someone who predicts who will be President: the roots of the word are Persian, like the Shah. Well, Bill was busy with Jeff, all day long, doing celestial navigation. I’m telling you, Bill can do
anything
. Yesterday, while we were at St. Bart’s harbor, he proved to us—I mean, he is so
persuasive
, you wouldn’t begin to
dare
to disagree with him—that we were really in Antigua. As he put it, a computer
cannot
lie. Dick Clurman, who is so clever, said something about, What do you do when liars program a computer? But Big Bill disdained that comment, because, you know, he rises above everything. Well, tra-là. We’ll be back soon, and if you feel New York is jumping again, you’ll know that
Sealestial’s
loss was the Big Apple’s gain!
