Go to the Widow-Maker (67 page)

But what if Bonham didn’t see him? What if Bonham went right on working till he ran out of air and went up topside for another bottle? How in the name of fucking Christ could he get himself into these things? Who the
hell
wanted to be a diver anyway? God
damn
!

There was no real reason why Bonham should try to look for him. Who could get in trouble over a flat sand and rock bottom in fifteen feet of water? Only Ron Grant, that’s who! He had started out by looking over the pipeline installation, had watched Bonham start the torch with the lighter, had studied how he went about making his first cut, then had motioned he was going to go off and explore around. There was no reason for Bonham to think he wasn’t perfectly safe around here.

Carefully, trying to keep his breathing from getting faster, he worked his right hand which was still trapped along his thigh around to the back and rapped on his tank with his knuckles. The sound was so feeble he could hardly hear it himself, and a tendril of panic crept through him accelerating amazingly his need to breathe faster. He concentrated on his breathing, trying to slow it down, stop gulping air. He had nothing else of metal to tap with, and no way of getting hold of it if he had. There was nothing else but to lay here, trussed up like a beef for the slaughterhouse, and hope that Bonham would think to look for him. From time to time he could see the light of the torch reflected on Bonham’s mask as the big man turned his head, but he could not see Bonham himself at all and so was sure the big diver could not see him. Christ! He could see the New York
Daily News
headlines now. BEAUTIFUL YOUNG ACTRESS WIFE MARRIED AND WIDOWED IN SAME WEEK BY DIVING ACCIDENT TO PLAYBOY PLAYWRIGHT!

He knew he had enough air for about fifteen minutes. And Bonham, working, would almost certainly need air before he did—unless of course Grant himself panicked. And Bonham might then go back to the boat and find he had not returned and come look for him. But, by then, how the hell would he know where to look? And Grant wasn’t even sure how much time he had left since his watch was on his left wrist, trapped against his leg.

A sort of marvelous stillness came over him as the idea came to him. He thought about it for maybe twenty full seconds. Watch. Aha!
And what would you do, Mr. Interlocutor, in my situation?
Then carefully he began working his left hand back around his thigh picking carefully with his fingers under the mesh. When he had it beside the tank and could feel the tank with his fingers, he made a cone with all his fingers in the little free angle between the tank and his back until he could twist his arm and turn his wrist over, and then he rapped with his metal watch against the tank.

Almost immediately he saw the head turn, changing the reflection on the mask. He rapped again. The torch went out. Grant rapped and kept rapping, and in a moment Bonham appeared in front of him like some huge cyclopean walrus and he was never so glad to see anyone in his life. Shaking his head, the diver looked him over. It was only a matter of a couple minutes to cut him loose, then Bonham motioned toward his empty leg scabbard. Grant pointed down. The diver descended, looked around, apparently saw a glint of it, retrieved it and handed it to him. Then he motioned upwards with his thumb: did Grant want to go up?

That was exactly what Grant was thinking, but after a moment he shook his head. Together they gathered up the dangerous net, hacked it into small pieces and stuffed it into the silt under the pipeline. Later Bonham explained why he did that instead of taking it up: he hadn’t wanted those in the boat to know about it. It was only a matter of five minutes to finish up his job and then when they went up he motioned Grant to the anchorline, instead of swimming to the stern like normal. As soon as their heads were out, he dropped his mouthpiece and said in a low voice, “I wouldn’t say anything about that to Lucky. Or anybody. What they don’t know won’t hurt them, and it would only make them nervous—mistakenly, and for no good reason.”

Grant nodded, and they swam to the stern.

Once back in the boat Bonham began to eat, since the two of them had not taken any food before the dive. But Grant didn’t feel much like eating. Instead he sat in the stern by himself. He wasn’t scared any more, but the somber thought of what actually
could
have happened was a little sobering. He could really have got deaded, as the kids used to say. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up and saw it was Lucky. She did not take the hand away.

“What happened?”

“What do you mean what happened?” he said.

“Something happened. I don’t know what. I can just tell.”

“Oh, I just got caught in an old net some idiot threw overboard.”

“Was it dangerous?”

“No. It could have been. But Bonham was right there,” he lied.

“Did he ask you not to tell me?”

“No,” he lied again. “Why should he? Christ, it wasn’t anything.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why should I? Anyway I was going to,” he lied a third time. “Later.”

She looked deep into his eyes, and there was no more anger in her blue ones. “Oh, Ron, we’ve got to stop this.”

“I know it,” he said. “I told you, it wasn’t anything.”

“The babes in the woods,” she said. She looked out across the harbor at the Palisadoes. “If we lose each other, we’ll both have lost just about everything.”

“I know that, too,” he said. Doug and Françoise, and René and Lisa, were all talking to Bonham in the tiny cabin. Since Jim Grointon had declined to come, Bonham had to do it all himself, and he had started the motor, steering with one hand while he ate a huge ham sandwich with the other. Lucky turned from the Palisadoes and looked up that way. “Even diving, and Bonham, aren’t worth that,” she said.

Grant took her hand. “Of course they’re not. Nothing is.”

“I can’t be responsible now for everything I did before I met you,” Lucky said conversationally.

“I know that, too,” he said.

“Don’t you want to eat?” she said conversationally.

“I will in a minute. I’m a little tired.”

“I’ll get you a sandwich and a beer,” she said.

“Okay.”

Back at the hotel he told her about the salvage job as he should have done before, the twelve brass cannon, and that he wanted to do it. “Then we’ll be through. We’ll go back north, to New York. Until they’re ready to make the maiden cruise on the schooner.” They had just finished making love and he had gone down on her to give her an orgasm in perhaps the best performance he had ever achieved. They were lying side by side across the sheeted, unblanketed, pushed-together twin beds.

“And we can stay at Evelyn de Blystein’s and kill two birds with one stone,” he said.

“But this uh this ‘salvage operation’ is the main reason we’re going back there, is it?” she asked.

“Let’s say it’s one of the main reasons. That guy Heath stopped me—
accosted
me—again today.”

And Bradford Heath had. He had stopped him on the porch after they had come home from the combination picnic-dive, and he had been particularly nasty, even for Heath.

“Oh, hello there, Grant,” was the opener. And he placed himself squarely in front of Grant so that he had had to stop. “Well, I guess it looks like your older lady friend aint gonna talk. And I guess I can’t get the truth out of you, can I?” He smiled his sick smile.

It was more than Grant could stomach. “Mr Heath, why should I tell you the truth?” he smiled. “Why should I tell you the truth about anything? If you want to know about my life, read my plays. It’s all in there. Now if you’ll excuse me.” He had stepped around him. “As a matter of fact,” he said as a parting shot, “my wife and I are going up there to visit the Countess and Mrs Abernathy in a few days when we leave here.”

“It certainly won’t hurt us to make a little show of friendship,” he said now to Lucky after explaining. “And I think she’ll probly be all right. It’s to her benefit to be.” Then he wondered. Was Bradford Heath really the motive? Did they really have to go because of Bradford Heath? Or was there some other, deeper motive pulling him back up there? Subconsciously maybe? Subconsciously for a showdown. Maybe. “Don’t you think?” he said.

“All right,” she said calmly. “If that’s what you think. I know I can handle that mother shit all right.” She paused. “All I really want is a chance to love you.” She smiled, and then actually blushed a little. “You really did me beautifully today,” she smiled. “To love you, and to help you do the work you want to do. Have to do, maybe.”

Grant had cupped a hand over her nearest breast. “As a matter of fact,” he said slowly, “I have got a new idea for a play. But it’s only a dim idea. I don’t really fully understand it yet.”

“What’s it about?”

“Diving.
Skin,
not muff.” Then he shrugged. “I’ll tell you more about it when I know more.

“Of course,” he added, “I got a dozen others too. This is just one more to the pile.”

I
T WAS AMAZING
how much time was required just to go through the mechanical processes of loaning a man forty-five hundred dollars. The whole next day was spent on business. Grant and Bonham spent most of the morning at the Royal Bank of Canada in Kingston, proving Grant was Grant, proving Bonham was Bonham, getting the money transferred from Grant’s name on the cable draft to Bonham’s Kingston account. And as soon as this was done, Bonham had to go round to the boatyard’s little business office in town and turn over a check for a thousand dollars to get them back to work on the schooner. The afternoon was spent drafting and signing with René’s lawyer a First Mortgage agreement for forty-five hundred dollars on the schooner. René signed as witness.

The storm had completely gone (though the last seas from its winds were still slowly running down) and the heat in the sundrenched, dusty, unkempt streets of the town was fierce. There was one rather elegant air-conditioned bar on Tower Street (or was it Barry Street?), and Grant and Bonham (and in the afternoon, René) routed themselves on their journeys afoot about the business section so that they passed it every time, both coming and going. The popular drink of the moment was something called a Bullshot—vodka in a small glass of icecold consommé—and long before lunchtime Bonham and Grant had already more than consumed their lunches in the form of cold bouillon soup.

And while they (and later René) were ramming around the town in the heat, Lucky played by the pool and held small court for Doug and all her newfound friends, which by now included Jim Grointon. It was becoming increasingly clear that Grointon was fascinated by Lucky in a way he had never been fascinated by a woman before—at least, not at the Grand Hotel Crount, so Lisa said. He was known to have had (or rather, was
suspected
of having had) several affairs among René’s clients, so Lisa said, and had certainly had one they knew about because the irate husband (fortunately a client of another hotel) had threatened to shoot him (again fortunately, the husband had hustled his wife back to New York instead). But none of these ladies had ever so much as ruffled one feather of Jim’s, and certainly none had ever affected him as Lucky did, so Lisa said, with a sly grin, and she thought it was about time he got some of his own back. He simply could not stay away from Lucky, it appeared. Wherever she went he appeared or followed, and sat around with his slow smile, blushing, while she teased him with her outspokenness about sex and men and herself. Anyway he certainly wasn’t like Bonham, was he? Lisa giggled to Lucky.

Bonham wanted to buy them all dinner that night when with Grant he returned from town a now affluent man. But Lucky begged off on the grounds that she had drunk too much champagne at the pool, was sick, and did not want any dinner. She would take to her room. Bonham affluent to her came on even worse than Bonham broke. “But Ron can if he wants to,” she said holding her head with more tenderness than was strictly necessary.

But Grant did not want to either. “I’d better stay with her if she feels that bad,” he said dutifully. He was wise to the fact that she had had about as much of Bonham as she could stomach, at least for a while. And he was counting on her to make the maiden cruise of the
Naiad
with him. On the other hand he did not want to become categorized as a “dutiful husband,” either: the kind he detested back home in Indianapolis. In front of Bonham or anyone else. Today when Bonham had told him he was heading back to Ganado Bay tomorrow and would they like to take the same flight with him, then they could get started on the salvage job, he had answered that they wanted to stay on down here for three or four days more of honeymoon before coming up, because he knew Lucky would have detested making the flight up with Bonham. Probably his discomfort had showed on his face then, this morning. Probably it showed now, as he turned down the dinner. Anyway, Bonham did not press. Well the hell with it! he never had been a good liar. Bonham had received no answer from his wire to Orloffski in New Jersey, but he had had a wire from the new proprietor of Orloffski’s sporting goods shop that Orloffski was already en route down the inland waterway with the cutter.

On their way to their suite Lucky squeezed his hand. “We’ll phone René on the sly and have him send us up a sumptuous spread and stay in!” she whispered, and Grant reflected that if he had appeared too “dutiful” just now, it was well worth it.

“Stay in and play?” he whispered back.

“Stay in and play
dirty!”
Lucky whispered.

It was just then that they ran into Mr Bradford Heath, coming down the big, long porch.

Only this time Mr Heath turned away, to make it appear he had not seen them. With Lucky on his arm, Grant hailed him. “Oh, Mr Heath,” he smiled.

“Oh uh yes. Hullo there, Grant,” Bradford Heath replied, turning round. “Beautiful sea tonight, eh?”

Grant halted. “I just wanted to ask you how long you intended to stay down here now?”

“Oh, a week or ten days, I guess,” Heath smiled. “If they can spare me Up There. Why?”

Grant smiled back. “Because my wife and I are going up to GaBay for a week or so, and we wanted to be sure and leave for there before you left. On the other hand, we wanted to put in three or four more days of honeymoon here before we left.”