Go to the Widow-Maker (25 page)

Yelling “Ow!” automatically, she leaped to her feet, put her foot on the stool to rub the ankle, and eyes blazing almost sightlessly hollered, “You struck a woman! You hit a female! You
struck a female!”

“I didn’t!” Grant protested. He felt like wringing his hands. “I didn’t! I kicked the chair! The chair hit your ankle! But I didn’t mean for it to!” During this idiot speech he had become almost pleading.

“You hit a lady!” Carol yelled right on nevertheless, her dark eyes blazing sightlessly and insanely. “I always knew you were a mean, evil, degenerate brute!”

And at this moment Evelyn de Blystein came upon them. There was a discreet—but not so discreet as to be unheard and unnoticed—knock on the door.

“May I come in?”

“Of course!” Carol cried, still almost yelling, and sat down. The door had already opened.

“What the hell are you two doing, for God’s sake?” Evelyn said in her deep whiskey voice. She had a seamed, tough, cynical businesswoman’s face with knowing hooded lids. They made her look wryly sated as if she had seen everything and been amused by it all. And she loved that role. But if this attitude was also her act, there was enough truth behind to give her a certain style. “All that racket! Having a fight? Good! Tell me!

“I came to see how you were, dear,” she said pointedly, looking Carol straight in the eye.

“We were arguing over this man Al Bonham,” Carol said, her face still angry. “This idiot here has fallen in love with him, and I’m trying to tell him he better watch out for them. They’re going to try to take him, I’m positive!”

Grant listened, astounded. She had leaped into this consummate, absolute lie like a running broadjumper without looking back, utilizing her anger from before as if it were some kind of tool. And it appeared to be enough to convince Evelyn, the cynical Evelyn.

“Well, I don’t know him very well,” she said with a gravelly wryness. “But I can look him up. I don’t see how he can take you for much, anyway, though. Some diving equipment. Some trips. Surely you can afford that.”

“How about a share in a schooner?” Carol said.

“Ah!” Evelyn smiled. “That’s different! I would certainly look at the schooner first.
And
at the corporate structure.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” Carol said, nodding.

Grant was still flabbergasted into speechless fury. “I’m not in love with him,” he was finally able to say. He could feel how sullen his face was, but he couldn’t change it. “But I do think he is a superb diver, and I trust him. At least in diving.”

“I’ve heard that,” Evelyn said. “I know he’s pretty well liked by the local businessmen and their goddam fucking Chamber of Commerce.” Quite suddenly, she yawned. “Darling, do come back down,” she then said to Carol. “Do you feel better now? I want you to tell the Rawsons about your Little Theatre Group in Indianapolis.”

“Not me,” Grant said quickly. “I’ve got a lot of reading and studying to do if I’m going to make this trip.”

Evelyn smiled slowly at him, in silence. She hadn’t asked him. “Carol?” she said in her raspy voice.

“I think I will come down,” Carol said. She stood up, drawing herself up with brave but weary gallantry, and threw her head back. “My headache’s better. Maybe I’ll even have a drink!” she said with flirtatious gaiety.

“Good!” Evelyn growled. “I’ll even make it for you. With my own little lilywhite hands.” She looked at Ron once, a hooded, enigmatic glance.

Grant had followed them down the hall to where they turned off down the grand staircase. Neither of them had looked back, and he was supremely glad.

“You poor darling,” he heard Evelyn say as they descended. “You really do overwork yourself, you know. With all your correspondence to those Theatre Group kids of yours.”

“I know,” Carol had answered, and her voice was suddenly full of tears. “But I don’t know what else to do. They all depend on me so.”

But after he got over his fury and irritated disgust, he thought it really would be a good thing to take her. Whether she believed in her ‘last trip, parting gift’ conditions or not, he did. And taking her over there would be a good way to show her that. That he was quitting, that he was free. Whether he ever married Lucky Videndi or not. The final payoff, so to speak. The final kindness.

But how did you explain any of all of that to a man like Bonham? Grant looked over at him again at the little spoke-handled helmsman’s wheel under the cockpit cabin roof. Bonham would kick them both in the cunt and just up and walk out. Grant coughed and lit another cigarette. The big man was not whistling any more, and setfaced and flateyed was conscientiously occupying himself with the steering. They were back in the main channel now, coming up on the looming Navy tender which was still in port. Then, as Grant was looking at him, he turned his head toward Grant and smiled. Something had suddenly perked him up a little, and when he spoke Grant realized with consternation what it was.

“I just had an idea. I think I’ll dock her at the Yacht Club again tonight and then we can have a few gins at the bar to celebrate.”

Coldbloodedly and implacably, he was going to get every bit of good and valuable publicity out of his playwright and his playwright’s ray that he could get. And before Grant could say anything, or protest, he had swung the little boat in that way, cutting back the throttle.

Why, then, didn’t he protest? Bonham would have, if he felt anything that strongly. They could still have come back out, and gone on to the small-boats, fisherman’s dock. But Grant didn’t. Why? Well, for one thing he knew that Bonham needed the publicity, or anyway could use it. Who knew, it might get him another customer or two? But he had not anticipated that Bonham would actually go through with the whole Big Deal production routine of it.

Bonham did, however. The Yacht Club veranda was quite crowded, with both members and tourists. And when they saw the big ray, they all began to pour down onto the dock. Bonham made sure that they did. After docking, he got a gaffhook lashed to a quarter-inch manila line into the ray’s chin, and carried it all the way up the dock on his back to the hanging rack where they hung the marlin during the marlin fishing tournaments. He said not a word, didn’t grin, and—at least to Grant’s eye—appeared to stoop under the weight of the fish a little more than was absolutely necessary. And when the crowd began to mill around them, he answered their questions matter-of-factly and laconically. In the end Grant posed for about twenty photographs with it.

“Yes,” he could hear Bonham say over and over. “Yeah. Speared it, killed it, and brought it in. All by himself. What? Three days. Three days’ diving, with me. Yeah. That’s right.”

Once he managed to get in a flat-eyed, conspiratorial wink at Grant when nobody was looking. Grant could have killed him. While enjoying a certain small fame and notoriety as a wellknown and successful playwright, he had never had the opportunity to complain about the kind of fame that goes with being a movie star, say, or a politician, and he did not have the professional knowhow, nor was he used to posing for photos. Some were tourists who knew his name and were also somewhat skittishly interested in skindiving. Others were Club Members who wanted him and the ray to add to their albums that they kept of the marlin tournaments each year. You couldn’t really be angry about it. But it embarrassed him.

As the spectators continued to mill around, Bonham got out the official Club scales, had the results witnessed, got the thing down flat on the wood jetty, and began fileting out the wings. The meat was beautiful. And there was more than enough for all three of them. Ali who hated rays unfileted turned out to love their meat. Bonham gave him ten pounds to take home to his family of six. Grant got eight pounds and refused more, and there was still more than ten pounds for Bonham himself. And with Grant’s permission he gave five pounds to the Club Secretary.

In the end there were many gins consumed at the bar, and for once Grant could not pay. It seemed everyone in the place wanted to buy them a drink. So he was a little loaded when Ali in the old station wagon dropped him off at the grand porte-cochère of the villa.

He went straight to the kitchen. Bonham had thoughtfully, with no more communication between them than a wry knowing look, sliced up Grant’s chunks, utilizing the grain of the meat, to look like snapper filets. In the kitchen, where the French chef (“Lucky Pierre,” he was called by Evelyn and Paul) was waiting for him, he formally and dramatically turned over the fish with a somewhat malicious pleasure in the coup he and Bonham were putting over on the silly females—and silly males—of this ritzy household. Lucky Pierre assured him they would have it for dinner this night.

Hunt and Carol were out on the big side veranda which overlooked the bay and harbor on the left of the point where Evelyn’s private beach lay below the smaller front veranda.

Hunt, in a wicker chair, was holding a drink, a large highball glass, and staring pensively and rather sadly out over the harbor toward the big black hill in the west behind which the sun had by this time disappeared in a golden haze. What was he thinking about? Grant wondered suddenly, was he wondering, or worrying about, all this trouble that was going on? His square-topped grizzled head with its thinning hair turned in the chair as Grant came out, and he looked up with a warm smile. Carol was reading and did not look up.

“Was that your boat we saw? The little white one that came in a while ago?” Hunt asked.

“Yeah. We put in to the Yacht Club,” Grant said.

“That’s the one! We saw it come in. It looks pretty seaworthy.” A ridiculous phrase, but the crowsfeet around his eyes were wrinkled with affection and interest. Hunt knew nothing about boats.

Grant shrugged. “It’s a good little boat.”

“So? How did it go?”

Grant shrugged again. “Pretty good. I speared a sting ray. And some snapper for dinner.” He gave him an affectionate little slap on the shoulder. “But I’m still scared.” He turned away.

“Shit, I’d be terrified!” Hunt Abernathy called after him, pride in Grant in his voice.

Carol hadn’t moved or looked up, and from over his shoulder Grant said shortly, “Oh, by the way, Bonham says it’s all right about the trip to Grand Bank,” and went to wash up for dinner.

I
T WAS A TRIP
marked for disaster from the start, and Bonham was right. But it did not seem so the morning of its beginning, as the little eight-passenger seaplane whirred in from Kingston in the joyous sub-tropic sunshine and bright blue sky, landed on the sparkling waters of the bay, and taxied over toward the Yacht Club where the four passengers were waiting for it on the veranda. It was such a beautiful day to be going anywhere. And the barometer was up and still rising Bonham said, which would mean good sun and quiet water in Grand Bank for spearfishing.

It was nine-thirty when the plane arrived. Bonham had arranged for a Club dinghy to row them and their gear out to the plane, and the four of them stepped into it lightly, happy and laughing in the manner of carefree people anywhere going on vacation, waving gaily to Hunt up on the veranda who had come to see them off, as the Club’s peon rowed them out.

Grant and the Abernathys had risen early and breakfasted on Evelyn’s terrace in the fresh early-morning sun. When Hunt had gone to get the car, Carol in her gentlest and saddest mood had made Grant a secret little speech. She understood that of course he had a right to marry; anybody of his choosing. She had always expected it would happen someday, had anticipated it, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. It was only fair to Grant. And now she meant to make this last trip together, even though they weren’t lovers anymore, something they would both remember with fondness and lasting friendship. What she hoped to accomplish by this, Grant didn’t know. But the result of it though he hid it was to irritate and nettle him exceedingly, especially since Hunt reappeared just then with the car so that he was unable to make any satisfactory reply. But she appeared to mean just exactly what she said. At the Club, where they met Bonham and William, the five of them had played the European-type pool game awhile, laughing and roaring over Carol’s inadequacy at it, then had sat on the veranda in the sun, Grant, Hunt, Bonham and William the underwater-casemaker drinking Bloody Marys on Grant’s tab, Carol a British bitter lemon. She could be witty and great fun when she chose to exert herself at it, which had been less and less over the past years, and she made quite a thing over her awkwardness at the pool game. Too much, perhaps. But she was being a top sport, and thus Grant’s legitimate pity for her and his guilts over her both increased. He needn’t have worried himself, though, because on the plane, once they were aboard, everything changed.

Even before they were strapped in, she appeared to have suddenly taken a peculiar and personal dislike to Bonham, which she manifested by seating herself as far away from the big man as she could get, and then just sitting there with an air of tacit disapproval for Bonham which made itself felt all over the plane. After they were airborne, racing and bumping over the quiet bay to get the lift, and had unstrapped themselves so they could move around, she ostentatiously hauled out two of her mystical books from her big catchall purse, and stayed in her rearmost corner seat studying them. Grant, who had felt it was only polite to sit with her during the takeoff, now felt obscurely irritated and moved forward with the two men. There was no rational explanation for her to change so suddenly. Irritably, Grant stayed forward with the men and left her alone.

Bonham, who with his animal sensitivity felt the change too, countered in his own way, which was to pull out a bottle of gin, laughing and roaring in a deliberately vulgar way.

The tiny plane (actually it wasn’t so tiny; it only seemed so after the big jets everybody was so used to seeing and riding) of course had no stewardess. But Bonham was prepared for that too, and when he hauled forth his gin—a bottle for which, surprisingly, Grant had not paid—he also brought out of his faded duffel bag several bottles of Schweppes. “We aint got any ice!” he shouted ebulliently. “But what the hell! We can all pretend we’re British!”