By The Sea, Book Three: Laura (9 page)

"Thank you. I'll make a note of it."

He chose not to use the boarding steps, but
instead swung himself over the bulwarks, landing softly on both
feet. Laura decided he was no more than thirty-five, still young
enough not to need to ration his energy.

He hooked his thumbs in his hip pockets and
took one last sweeping look at the
Virginia,
no longer
young; at Billy, altogether too young; at Laura, a woman in a man's
domain.

"One thing," he added. "Who's the
captain?"

Laura's cool composure collapsed like a
pierced balloon. Her eyes opened wide and she said, "
I
am.
Who did you think I was—the secretary?"

He shook his head. "Definitely not. I don't
see you behind a desk. Good afternoon."

Billy paused on his way below decks to stare
down the wharf at their departing visitor. "Does that mean he
thinks you're too stupid to type?" he asked indignantly.

"Oh, shut up, Billy!"

****

When Neil returned an hour later it was to
his favorite lunch: canned beans spiced with lots of molasses and
mustard, and cornbread. It was part of his mother's effort to make
up for having hurt him. He understood that; in fact, he was
counting on it. Because he'd done something wrong on his little
half-holiday. He'd broken his word to her. But if his mother was
feeling guilty herself, she might not get too angry about it.

He shoveled the beans into his mouth with a
spoon so that he wouldn't miss any of the sweet juice, and studied
his mother as she climbed up into the pilot berth to paint the
underside of the starboard deck. She was wearing his father's pants
and had her hair bound up in a red kerchief, but she looked pretty
anyway. Probably it was her eyes: they were slanted and very
bright. They seemed to invite you to join in a special secret, only
he never could figure out what the secret was. Once his mother had
whispered that she was part Sioux Indian, only not to tell. With
his blond hair and blue eyes, Neil himself didn't look anything at
all like an Indian. Maybe that was why he could never understand
the secret.

They talked back and forth about the
Rainbow
for a bit, but his mother seemed to want to change
the subject, though Neil couldn't understand why. It was the most
important thing in the world. And besides, he still had to confess
about having gone aboard it.

"Mama," he began cautiously, "Dad says to
keep supper warm for him tonight."

His mother paused mid-stroke in her painting
and looked at him. "When did you talk with your father?"

"I saw him when I got kind of near the
Rainbow,"
he said, pressing a cornbread crumb into his
forefinger and licking it carefully clean.

"Just how near the
Rainbow
were you,
exactly?"

"Well, sort of on it."

"I don't believe it!" she said, shocked.
"What did your father say?"

"He didn't yell or anything. He just said,
have supper warm."

"But he isn't free until Sunday. Did he say
why he was coming tonight?"

Neil made an odd, nervous little smacking
sound with his lips. "I think to talk about the trip."

His mother's dark eyes glittered. "Neil! You
didn't tell him!"

"I didn't mean to, Mama. Honest. It just
slipped out."

Her face was flushed and angry. "Oh, never
mind. It was absurd to entrust something like that—"

Dismayed, he seized on the word. "You can
trust
me, Mama. You always can trust me! You know you
can!"

"Oh, yes," she said dryly. "You've just
proven that." And she went back to her painting in stony
silence.

He wanted to point out that he hadn't said a
word about the horrible dance party on board, but then he would be
breaking his promise not to mention it. How unfair could you
get?

That night he went to bed when it was still
light out, claiming that he didn't feel well. He heard a school of
snappers jumping madly around the boat, but he wouldn't have
ventured out of his berth even if it meant filling the whole
cockpit with them.

Eventually he heard his father's voice:
"That's too much. I'm not hungry. Give me half that."

There was a pause and then his father said,
"Well? What are you up to now?"

And then Neil heard his mother's voice, low,
indistinct, the tone she used when she did not want him to hear.
She knew how to speak some French, and some Swedish, and even a
little Polish. But none of them did her any good in keeping things
from Neil, because his father only understood English. Most of her
English, anyway.

"Are you daft?" shouted his father in
response. "I said
we'd
go back to hauling, not
you'd
go back."

His mother again, low, urgent.

And then his father: "I don't give a rat's
ass if he
can
hear me! He
should
hear this. God knows
it affects him. If you think you're going to go sailing off with
my
son and
my
boat—"

In a voice goaded into combat, his mother
interrupted.

"Our
son,
our
boat. Half of
this boat is mine, paid for fair and square. You accepted my
inheritance easily enough—"

"And the reason your brothers bought out
your share of the farm is clear as rain to me: you're like a mare
that won't train to harness, a boat with fierce weather helm. You
won't be steered nohow!"

"Why should I be steered? I've paid my half,
in money and in sweat. Why can't I make a decision once in a while?
You didn't ask me whether you could sign on as one of Mr.
Vanderbilt's 'black gang'—you just went and did it, because we
needed the money and because you knew it would be exciting for you.
And I understand that; that's what life is all about. Well, my
motives are exactly, exactly the same. There's no difference."

Neil heard a fist come down on wood. "There
is
a difference—you could lose the boat!"

"The boat can take it, we both know
that."

"It can't take a hurricane, and we're in the
thick of the season for 'em."

"We won't sail offshore; we'll follow the
coast down—"

"Who 'we'? You, my brother, and the boy?
Don't make me laugh."

"I ... I've lined up a first mate; he's
sailed around the world on a three-master, and he comes highly
recommended, and he's a mechanical genius—"

Neil sat up in his berth. His mother never
told him about any geniuses.

"Hold on, now," said his father in the voice
that Neil dreaded. "You mean to say you've already taken on a
crewman?"

"No, of course not. I'm just trying to see
what's out there."

"There's nothing out there!" his father
shouted. "Just a lot of water! No jobs, no future, no money! Get it
through your head!"

Neil held his breath during the long, deadly
pause that followed. Then he heard something slap on the table and
slide across it. His mother's voice was calm but very clear, the
voice of triumph: "There may not be a future, but there
is
a
job, and there's definitely money. Open it."

Neil heard his father fumble with the
wrapping. "Holy—!" he said. "How much is in here?"

"A thousand dollars. There's another two
thousand waiting for us in Pineapple Cay when we deliver."

"Deliver what? The King of England? No one
pays that kind of money for a few hundred board-feet of lumber and
some sinks and toilets."

"I don't know and at this point I don't
care. Do you?"

There was silence.

"I haven't spent a penny of it," his mother
continued, "because I've been waiting to hear what you had to
say."

After a little pause his father said, "What
can I say?"

After that Neil couldn't make out anything,
only low murmurs and a kind of nervous excitement. And after that
he heard nothing at all, so they must have gone into their sleeping
cabin.

For a long, long time he did not sleep but
lay in his berth, listening, thinking; excited and afraid.

The deal that Sam and Laura struck was this:
Laura obviously would not leave until the
Rainbow
had been
officially chosen to defend the America's Cup (the racing so far
was very even; nothing was certain). Then, if Sam could not sail
with her, he had the right to look over the first mate and decide
for himself if he was competent. Laura had to promise to reduce
sail every night and under no circumstances to press the boat to
its optimum, day or night. If she discovered anything fishy and
illegal during the course of loading the cargo in Connecticut, the
delivery was to be called off (and with any luck the deposit held
onto).

Laura was ecstatic, but Sam went back to the
Rainbow's
crew quarters aboard the depot-boat in Brenton
Cove that night profoundly troubled. In the space of an hour his
wife had dragged him through an emotional wringer: she'd angered
him, frightened him, threatened him, tempted him, and just plain
dazzled his pants off. She was too damn smart by half, and too
quick to change moods; he was always a step behind her, and that
put him at a loss when they didn't see eye to eye.

And she was too damn beautiful, he decided,
moving his great bulk through the drunks and hookers on lower
Thames Street. She was sexier than any tart, but in a wholesome
kind of way. He supposed that was how they were made in the
Midwest. Suddenly he laughed out loud, causing passers-by to turn
and stare. What would Laura say if she knew that he'd never had
another woman since the day he'd first set eyes on her? She
wouldn't believe him, naturally; he'd taken care of that, with all
his bragging and innuendo.

He felt a surge again just thinking of
her.

But he was old, old, old. Compared to
her—God, her energy—he was old. He could see sixty not so far away
and beyond that, death. Well, he'd accepted that. Everything ends.
It was unseemly to struggle against it like a rabbit in a trap. It
just made everything hurt more. He planned to go down at sea, and
when he did he hoped he would do it with dignity.

Besides, he'd had a good life, starting with
his early years on the Gloucester fishing schooners, racing home
from the Grand Banks with the day's catch. How many years ago? Too
many. And now the age of working sail was over—except for the
Virginia,
slogging away toward the mid-century mark. And he
was in command.

Almost
in command. Why did the girl
always want to stick in her two cents? Didn't she understand that
one yea and one nay equaled a tie? That there can only be one
captain on any vessel? Ah ... but he'd given up his command, hadn't
he, for the summer. Jumped ship, so to speak.

And even he didn't know why. Flattery was
part of it; he'd pumped up like a puffer-fish when Vanderbilt made
the offer. Money, of course, was part of it; they had none. But
there was more, something he found impossible to put into words for
Laura. It had to do with living on the edge, pushing himself and a
boat to the brink. He didn't dare risk his beloved
Virginia.
But somewhere, in a dusty, forgotten part of his soul, was a need
to see if he could excel.

Harold Vanderbilt's
Rainbow
was his
ticket to that knowledge. The competition so far had been fierce,
beyond his wildest dreams. Vanderbilt and the
Rainbow
crew
were a real team of real men, with none of the ego problems he had
expected to find. All eyes were on their goal: a big, homely silver
pitcher with no bottom that he'd only seen in pictures. There was
something about losing himself in a common quest that was humbling,
that was unique. He couldn't give it up now.

But the experience cost him: everything in
the world he valued might be leaving in the next few days, and
wouldn't be back for six weeks or more.

****

Colin Durant traveled light: he showed up
for the job on September 2 with a duffle bag of olive drab slung
over one shoulder and a pair of rubber sea-boots and a set of
oilskins under his other arm. He was wearing a wool navy blue watch
cap, and when Laura expressed surprise that he'd wear such a warm
garment in the heat, he said, "You sail your way; I'll sail mine."
He hadn't bothered to shave or to change into clean clothes.

All things considered, Laura would have
crossed the street to avoid him if she came upon him after dark.
Colin Durant seemed more surly than before; or maybe she'd begun in
her own mind to believe the lies she'd told Sam about him. Surly or
not, he was the most qualified man she'd interviewed, and Sam
himself had said he'd do. In any case, Laura had no choice. The
Rainbow
had indeed been selected to defend the America's
Cup. In the last week she beat her rival
Yankee
by one
second.

One second had made the critical difference
in Laura's life.

Laura led the
Virginia's
new first
mate belowdecks, through the cargo hold and forward to the cramped
forecastle, where Neil and Billy had cleared away their belongings
to free up a pipe berth for him. The bunk was the least comfortable
of the crew berths. To Laura the entire forecastle looked suddenly
shabby and austere, despite her efforts over the years to make it
pleasant for Neil. The underside of the decks was peeling, and the
cabin smelled dank and confined. How had she never noticed it
before?

"I think I warned you that we're not a
yacht," she said, ashamed of her
Virginia
for perhaps the
first time.

"You've never been in the crew's quarters of
a 'yacht,' I take it," he said, ducking to go forward and slinging
his duffel onto the empty pipe berth. "There's not much
difference." He turned and caught Laura peeling away a long strip
of paint from overhead.

She smiled nervously and dropped the strip
into her pocket. "A woman's work is never done," she quipped.