Go to the Widow-Maker (92 page)

“I hear you,” Grant said. “How did you know Bonham was fucking Cathie Finer?”

“How did you know it yourself? I’ve got eyes too. I’ll tell you something else. You used to fuck her yourself. Didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did as a matter of fact,” Grant said and grinned. He could feel it was not a pleasant grin. “A long, long time ago. You’re complaining?
You
?”

“No,” she said, and grinned herself, an equally unpleasant one. “I’m not complaining. I’m just pointing it out to you that I’m not the stupid broad you think I am.”

“I don’t think you’re a stupid broad,” Grant said thinly, “far, far from it.”

”And just what do you mean by that?”

“Take it any way you like,” he said.

“And I’m telling you once again. No, I didn’t fuck Jim Grointon! And that’s all I’ll ever tell you: No. No, I didn’t fuck Jim Grointon.”

“I hear you,” Grant said, and rolled over.

That ended it for that night. And he still didn’t know. Maybe he would
never
know. What a thought. But the next morning, early, while Lucky slept on obliviously and once again back in her own big bed, Grant was up early and downstairs, where he called Bonham at the boat yard.

“I want to see you, Al,” he said authoritatively, “and I want to see you right now. Here.”

“Hey, hey,” Bonham said calmly from the other end. “What’s up?”

“You may not have any goddamn cruise, that’s what’s up. And if you don’t have any cruise, you don’t have any mortgage from me, that’s what’s up. Now damn well get in here.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, it seemed to go on and on. “All right,” Bonham said calmly, finally. “I’ll be right there.”

When he arrived, in his paint-spattered working clothes, Grant took him into the deserted bar for a morning drink.

“I don’t know what’s up with you,” he said, “and it’s none of my business—”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s up with me’?”

“With you and Cathie Finer, that’s what I mean. But that’s none of my business. What is my business is that you’re not getting the schooner ready, and you should be. If the schooner isn’t ready to pull out of here by tomorrow or next day at the very latest,
I’m
pulling out of here for New York. And if I pull out of here, Ben and Irma will pull out of here with me. And all you’ll have left of your cruise is your surgeon friend and Cathie Finer.” At the very last moment he decided, he did not quite know why, not to mention the threat of the mortgage again.

Bonham stared at him, rather coolly Grant thought, for a long moment. Then he took a slow drink from his glass. Grant had never spoken to him this way before, and it was clear to Grant that it was unexpected. “It must be pretty important,” Bonham said coolly, “whatever it is, to make you suddenly decide to leave like this so quick.”

“Why I want to leave is my business and nobody else’s,” Grant said, and watched Bonham’s level cool look turn into a shrewdly speculative one, but he went right on. “You’ve been neglecting getting that work done on the ship, I think. For whatever reasons of your own. If we can’t leave here day after tomorrow at the latest, I’m through. Don’t forget, I’ve got play rehearsals I’ve got to look after in New York,” he added, just to confuse.

Bonham waited again, coolly, a long time before he answered. He took another slow thoughtful swallow of his drink. Grant had never spoken to him so. Up to now Grant had always deferred to him. Sam the bartender had tactfully faded away out of earshot. When Bonham did finally speak, it was in a voice of decision. Of cool decision. “All right We can leave here tomorrow. But late. We’ll leave at dusk, just before dusk, and make it a night sail. We should make the Nelson by 2:30
P.M.
the next day and we can look Georgetown over and start diving that afternoon. Is that okay? That okay by you?”

“That’s fine,” Grant said crisply. “But I wish you’d said that two days ago.” He added hastily, “Or three.” Then added again, to further confuse, “Or four.”

Bonham looked at him again for a long time. “We’ve had a lot more interior work to do than I expected.”

“I don’t care,” Grant said. “As long as we can get out of here according to the way you’ve just said.”

“We can,” Bonham said. “Is that all you wanted to talk about? I better be gettin back to the ship.”

“Yes, that’s all. So long, Al,” Grant said, relenting a little. Bonham did not seem to accept this yielding.— “See you later on,” he said laconically.

What auspices to be starting a week or ten days’ cruise under! And in close quarters yet! Hell, he thought suddenly, they couldn’t even make it ten days now, if that surgeon had to be back in GaBay on the eleventh. What must that Bonham be
thinking
about? Grant had himself another drink and then went back upstairs where he found Lucky up and just dressing. There didn’t seem to be much to talk about, so he didn’t talk.— “No, I didn’t fuck Jim Grointon!” Lucky said, bitterly. —“We’re leaving tomorrow evening for the Nelsons,” Grant countered.— “At night!” Lucky said. “A night cruise, or sailing, or whatever they call it? Jesus! And on that old uninsurable tub! With all those big freighters and ships all out there?”— “Bonham knows his business,” Grant said shortly.— “God! I hope he does. I sure hope he does,” Lucky said viciously. But when they went downstairs to see the others she suddenly became her old loving self of yesterday again with him. She sat by him, she clung onto him, she kept touching him. Lucky had changed again. This was not like last night, and not like those days and nights before. She had just changed again, that was all. Why? The image of the faceless man and her rose up again. What if she had really done it? What would he do? What could he do?

He insisted on going out in the catamaran again that afternoon after lunch. Ben and Irma, when they learned departure was tomorrow night, did not want to go out and wanted to stay in instead and work on their packing, choosing what to take, what to send on ahead back to New York, since
Naiad
would not come back here. They had bought a lot of stuff down here. So once again it was the three of them, the three of them alone, himself and Lucky and Jim, out on the boat. And once again they went down to the place near Morant Bay, shark-fishing, although this time, though they put out good bloody baitfish and the same outgoing tide had hardly changed but a few minutes since two days ago, they saw nary a single shark. In spite of that it seemed to Grant, the whole thing, crazily, as if it were some perpetual experience he might have to go through forever, some perennial penance, like Sisyphus and the rock, that he would never again be released from: himself and Lucky and Jim, only just the three of them alone on the boat, going down near Morant Bay, shark-fishing.

The new change in Lucky manifested itself on the boat equally as much as it had back at the hotel, when they had come down into and amongst the others. On the catamaran with just the three of them alone she was just as loving, just as solicitous, kept touching him just as much, even clung to him a little bit, like kissing him on the shoulder once or twice, whenever they moved the boat about to try slightly different places. When he would come back on board from a dive, she always had a towel ready for him, even lovingly dried his back for him. She got him beer whenever he wanted it, or poured him coffee from the thermos if he preferred that. This time he drank more coffee than he did beer, for some reason. But Lucky’s ministrations knew no limit. A couple of times he wanted to slap her; and a couple of times he wanted to kiss her. But he did neither. He accepted all her attentions in silence and with a loving smile, into which he tried to put a faint overtone of amusement, male amusement, of cynicism even. If there was any interior effect upon Jim Grointon, either pro or con, by these actions of Lucky’s, it was certainly not at all visible anywhere on his normally amiable and workmanlike exterior.

But her attentions did not stop there, with the boat, or with the bar where they had a couple of celebratory drinks with the others to libate their final trip on the catamaran. It did not, in other words, stop when the presence of others was removed. Because when they went up to rest, bathe and dress for The Dinner, she lay down nude on the two big beds and stretched her arms deliciously as far as she could reach above her head and those delicious breasts and smiled, “Wouldn’t you like to make love to me?”— “I would,” he said; and did. Her way. First. He did not mention whether she had fucked Jim Grointon, and she did not mention whether she had fucked Jim Grointon. She just had changed. She had just changed, that was all. But once again, Why? was what he could not help thinking. And the faceless spectre, with the somewhat short, somewhat Irish-cop’s build—the image of the spectre and her together—rose up again. Christ, he was getting so he almost couldn’t tell which one he was, himself Grant, or the spectre. How did you kill a spectre? He knew how to fight men, fairly well. But how did you beat up, left hook and cross the right on, a spectre?

The Dinner was magnificent. It would be their last dinner at the Grand Hotel Crount, since
Naiad
would be pulling out at evening, although they’d have the whole day and lunch there tomorrow, and René actively and frenetically outdid himself. He planned it, supervised it, stood over his chefs with it, even cooked part of it himself. And it was all on him. Everything was on René, and the entire gang was there—all of them as René’s guests. All because of Lucky, mainly, their Lucky, and her husband Ron, who had been
married
in his place and who now had the Ron Grant Honeymoon Suite named after them, and of course for Ben and Irma too, who had stayed with him so long. But mainly it was Lucky, their old Lucky, and the marriage. “We nevair forget him zat, my Ronnie.” he said as he clapped him on the back and tears came into his expressive Gallic eyes. “Nev-
air
!” Bonham and Orloffski were there from the ship, and Bonham’s surgeon and his girl, Cathie Finer, Jim Grointon (and a handsome lovely Jamaican girl he had brought for the occasion), Paule Gordon the black swan, the Spicehandlers, the Grants, the Halders and all three of the kids. He even threw in the movie star and his wife and a couple of other of his more special couples. All on him, all on René. The long table extended from one end of the long room of the bar fully to the other end. René’s celebrated fish soufflé first (that was the part he actually cooked himself), then huge platters of golden fried fish served with frenchfries, fish of the most superior type in a place where good fish was commonplace, and after that duck à l’orange that actually physically melted apart in your mouth before you could begin to chew it, then cheeses, all his best imported reblochon, pont l’éveque, camembert, brie, all exactly perfectly aged, and finally ices, ices made on the premises, mirabelle and cassis, made from syrups especially imported to him from La Belle France. The long table groaned with it all, and so, finally, did the guests. Lucky sat on his left at the head end and Ron on his right, and René led off each apéritif, wine and liqueur served by a huge standing toast to the pair of them, to the
Mariage,
pronounced the French way. And after this, after The Dinner, the drinks at the bar were also on the house, on René, for the evening. And it was a long evening.— “Eet eez al-most im-poss-ible, Ronnie, almost im-poss-ible to see you go, toi et elle,” René told him with his arm around him at the bar later on, much much later on. Tears ran unashamedly down the sides of his sharp Gallic nose on his round face. “But you come back. Eez certain you come back, hein? We always ’ave ze Ron Grant Honeymoon Suite ready for you, h’any time. H’any h’any time.”— “Sure,” Grant said. “Of course we’ll come back, René. How could we not come back?” Like hell, he thought, brutally. Like hell we will. As long as you got that fucking skindiver hanging around your place to catch his customers. Like hell. And then suddenly like a small silent explosion in his drunken mind, he thought of Raoul, Raoul-the-South-American, and that—whatever his name was —he couldn’t even remember his name now—that Jacques Edgar. And how Raoul-the-South-American had whisked Lucky out of here and back to New York so fast. The thing, the very thing that he Ron Grant had said he would never permit himself to do, never permit his pride to
allow
him to do.

When they finally got to their room, their suite, at what hour nobody even knew, Lucky stretched out lazily, sleepily, on the two big beds for him again. “I couldn’t come,” she whispered. “I couldn’t possibly. I’m far too drunk. But maybe you could?”— “I can sure as hell give it a try,” Grant heard himself say. He did not ask. She did not offer. Ask any questions, offer any answers.

After the packing, most of the next day—by just about everybody—was spent lying around the pool trying to get over the night before. Then at around three-thirty Bonham came to collect them—in Cathie Finer’s rented car—and the exodus began. The great party of René had to a large extent removed the onus feeling about the cruise for Grant, but when he saw Cathie Finer installing her gear and herself in the little rented car with Big Al Bonham, the bad feeling came back.

They made quite a caravan. There was Cathie’s car with herself and Bonham, Jim Grointon’s jeep, the hotel jeep, and because Lisa and Ti-René and the littler kids wanted to go down too the hotel’s big car, and finally two more cars of hotel guests who wanted to see the ship off just for a lark. One of these included (with his wife) the movie star, who had taken a great shine to Grant since the serious commencement of the shark-shooting. Grant had asked René that he and Lucky ride in the hotel’s jeep (“I think we ought to ride with old René, don’t you?” was the way he explained it to Lucky), so Irma and Ben rode with Jim. Lisa and Ti-René and the other kids came, with a good deal of the luggage, in the big car with a driver, since Lisa couldn’t drive and Ti-René was still too young to. Bonham led off, and at the rear came the two extra cars of the hotel guests. They had to go all the way in on the spit and around the Windward Road to the anchorage, in convoy. From both of the open jeeps, and from the windows of the two guests’ cars, bottles were occasionally brandished at passersby and at the traffic.