Islands in the Stream (23 page)

Thomas Hudson went on working.

Roger was dressing David’s feet when she came in sight walking up the beach. She was barefooted and wore a bathing suit with a skirt of the same material over it and she carried a beach bag. Thomas Hudson was glad to see that her legs were as good as her face and as good as her breasts that he had seen under the sweater. Her arms were lovely and all of her was brown. She had no make-up on except for her lips and she had a lovely mouth that he wanted to see with no lipstick on it.

“Hello,” she said. “Am I very late?”

“No,” Roger told her. “We’ve been in but I’m going in again.”

Roger had moved David’s chair out to the edge of the beach and Thomas Hudson watched her as she bent over David’s feet and saw the small upturning curls at the nape of her neck as the weight of her hair fell forward. The small curls were silvery in the sun against her brown skin.

“What happened to them?” she asked. “The poor feet.”

“I wore them off pulling on a fish,” David told her.

“How big was he?”

“We don’t know. He pulled out.”

“I’m awfully sorry.”

“That’s all right,” David said. “Nobody minds about him anymore.”

“Is it all right to swim with them?”

Roger was touching the worn places with Mercurochrome. They looked good and clean but the flesh was a little puckered from the salt water.

“Eddy says it’s good for them.”

“Who is Eddy?”

“He’s our cook.”

“And is your cook your doctor, too?”

“He knows about things like that,” David explained. “Mr. Davis said it was all right, too.”

“Does Mr. Davis say anything else?” she asked Roger.

“He’s glad to see you.”

“That’s nice. Did you boys have a wild night?”

“Not very,” Roger said. “We had a poker game and afterwards I read and went to sleep.”

“Who won in the poker game?”

“Andy and Eddy,” David said. “What did you do?”

“We played backgammon.”

“Did you sleep well?” Roger asked.

“Yes. Did you?”

“Wonderfully,” he said.

“Tommy is the only one of us who plays backgammon,” David told the girl. “It was taught him by a worthless man who turned out to be a fairy.”

“Really? What a sad story.”

“The way Tommy tells it, it isn’t so sad,” David said. “There wasn’t anything bad happened.”

“I think fairies are all awfully sad,” she said. “Poor fairies.”

“This was sort of funny though,” David said. “Because this worthless man that taught Tommy backgammon was explaining to Tommy what it meant to be a fairy and all about the Greeks and Damon and Pythias and David and Jonathan. You know, sort of like when they tell you about the fish and the roe and the milt and the bees fertilizing the pollen and all that at school and Tommy asked him if he’d ever read a book by Gide. What was it called, Mr. Davis? Not
Corydon.
That other one? With Oscar Wilde in it.”

“
Si le grain ne meurt
,” Roger said.

“It’s a pretty dreadful book that Tommy took to read the boys in school. They couldn’t understand it in French, of course, but Tommy used to translate it. Lots of it is awfully dull but it gets pretty dreadful when Mr. Gide gets to Africa.”

“I’ve read it,” the girl said.

“Oh fine,” David said. “Then you know the sort of thing I mean. Well this man who’d taught Tommy backgammon and turned out to be a fairy was awfully surprised when Tommy spoke about this book but he was sort of pleased because now he didn’t have to go through all the part about the bees and flowers of that business and he said, ‘I’m so glad you know,’ or something like that and then Tommy said this to him exactly; I memorized it: ‘Mr. Edwards, I take only an academic interest in homosexuality. I thank you very much for teaching me backgammon and I must bid you good day.’ ”

“Tommy had wonderful manners then,” David told her. “He’d just come from living in France with papa and he had wonderful manners.”

“Did you live in France, too?”

“We all did at different times. But Tommy’s the only one who remembers it properly. Tommy has the best memory anyway. He remembers truly, too. Did you ever live in France?”

“For a long time.”

“Did you go to school there?”

“Yes. Outside of Paris.”

“Wait till you get with Tommy,” David said. “He knows Paris and outside of Paris the way I know the reef here or the flats. Probably I don’t know them even as well as Tommy knows Paris.”

She was sitting down now in the shade of the porch and she was sifting the white sand through her toes.

“Tell me about the reef and the flats,” she said.

“It’s better if I show them to you,” David said. “I’ll take you out in a skiff on the flats and we can go goggle-fishing if you like it. That’s the only way to know the reef.”

“I’d love to go.”

“Who’s on the yacht?” Roger asked.

“People. You wouldn’t like them.”

“They seemed very nice.”

“Do we have to talk that way?”

“No,” Roger said.

“You met the man of persistence. He’s the richest and the dullest. Can’t we just not talk about them? They’re all good and wonderful and dull as hell.”

Young Tom came up with Andrew following him. They had been swimming far down the beach and when they had come out and seen the girl by David’s chair they had come running on the hard sand and Andrew had been left behind. He came up out of breath.

“You could have waited,” he said to young Tom.

“I’m sorry, Andy,” young Tom said. Then he said, “Good morning. We waited for you but then we went in.”

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“You’re not late. We’re all going in again.”

“I’ll stay out,” David said. “You all go in now. I’ve been talking too much anyway?”

“You don’t have to worry about undertow,” young Tom told her. “It’s a long gradual slope.”

“What about sharks and barracuda?”

“Sharks only come in at night,” Roger told her. “Barracuda never bother you. They’d only hit you if the water was roily or muddy.”

“If they just saw a flash of something and didn’t know what it was they might strike at it by mistake,” David explained. “But they don’t bite people in clear water. There’s nearly always barracuda around where we swim.”

“You can see them float along over the sand right alongside of you,” young Tom said. “They’re very curious. But they always go away.”

“If you had fish, though,” David told her, “like goggle-fishing and the fish on a stringer or in a bag, they’d go after the fish and they might hit you by accident because they’re so fast.”

“Or if you were swimming in a bunch of mullet or a big school of sardines,” young Tom said. “They could hit you when they were slashing in after the school fish.”

“You swim between Tom and me,” Andy said. “Nothing will bother you that way.”

The waves were breaking heavily on the beach and the sandpipers and Wilson plover ran twinklingly out onto the hard new-wet sand as the water receded before the next wave broke.

“Do you think we ought to swim when it’s this rough and we can’t see?”

“Oh, sure,” David told her. “Just watch where you walk before you start to swim. It’s probably too rough for a sting ray to lie in the sand anyway.”

“Mr. Davis and I will look after you,” young Tom said.

“I’ll look after you,” Andy said.

“If you bump into any fish in the surf they’re probably little pompanos,” David said. “They come in on the high tide to feed on the sand fleas. They’re awfully pretty in the water and they’re curious and friendly.”

“It sounds a little like swimming in an aquarium,” she said.

“Andy will teach you how to let the air out of your lungs to stay down deep,” David told her. “Tom will show you how not to get in trouble with morays.”

“Don’t try to scare her, Dave,” young Tom said. “We’re not big kings of underwater like he is. But just because he’s a king of underwater, Miss Bruce—”

“Audrey.”

“Audrey,” Tom said and stopped.

“What were you saying, Tommy?”

“I don’t know,” young Tom said. “Let’s go in and swim.”

Thomas Hudson worked on for a while. Then he went down and sat by David and watched the four of them in the surf. The girl was swimming without a cap and she swam and dove as sleek as a seal. She was as good a swimmer as Roger except for the difference in power. When they came in onto the beach and came walking toward the house on the hard sand, the girl’s hair was wet and went straight back from her forehead so there was nothing to trick the shape of her head and Thomas Hudson thought he had never seen a lovelier face nor a finer body. Except one, he thought. Except the one finest and loveliest. Don’t think about it, he told himself. Just look at this girl and be glad she’s here.

“How was it?” he asked her.

“Wonderful,” she smiled at him. “But I didn’t see any fish at all,” she told David.

“You probably wouldn’t in so much surf,” David said. “Unless you bumped into them.”

She was sitting on the sand with her hands clasped around her knees. Her hair hung, damp, to her shoulders and the two boys sat beside her. Roger lay on the sand in front of her with his forehead on his folded arms. Thomas Hudson opened the screen door and went inside the house and then upstairs to the porch to work on the picture. He thought that was the best thing for him to do.

Below on the sand, where Thomas Hudson no longer watched them, the girl was looking at Roger.

“Are you gloomy?” she asked him.

“No.”

“Thoughtful?”

“A little maybe. I don’t know.”

“On a day like this it’s nice not to think at all.”

“All right. Let’s not think. Is it all right if I watch the waves?”

“The waves are free.”

“Do you want to go in again?”

“Later.”

“Who taught you to swim?” Roger asked her.

“You did.”

Roger raised his head and looked at her.

“Don’t you remember the beach at Cap d’Antibes? The little beach. Not Eden Roc I used to watch you dive at Eden Roc.”

“What the hell are you doing here and what’s your real name?”

“I came to see you,” she said “And I suppose my name is Audrey Bruce.”

“Should we go, Mr. Davis?” young Tom asked.

Roger did not even answer him.

“What your real name?”

“I was Audrey Raeburn.”

“And why did you come to see me?”

“Because I wanted to. Was it wrong?”

“I guess not,” Roger said. “Who said I was here?”

“A dreadful man I met at a cocktail party in New York. You’d had a fight with him here. He said you were a beachcomber.”

“Well it’s combed pretty neatly,” Roger said looking out to sea.

“He said you were quite a few other things, too. None of them were very complimentary.”

“Who were you at Antibes with?”

“With mother and Dick Raeburn. Now do you remember?”

Roger sat up and looked at her. Then he went over and put his arms around her and kissed her.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

“Was it all right to come?” she asked.

“You old brat,” Roger said. “Is it really you?”

“Do I have to prove it? Couldn’t you just believe it?”

“I don’t remember any secret marks.”

“Do you like me now?”

“I love you now.”

“You couldn’t expect me to look like a colt forever. Do you remember when you told me I looked like a colt at Auteuil that time and I cried?”

“It was a compliment, too. I said you looked like a colt by Tenniel out of
Alice in Wonderland
.”

“I cried.”

“Mr. Davis,” Andy said. “And Audrey. We boys are going to go and get some Cokes. Do you want any?”

“No, Andy. You, brat?”

“Yes. I’d love one.”

“Come on, Dave.”

“No. I want to hear it.”

“You are a bastard for a brother sometimes,” young Tom said.

“Bring me one, too,” David said. “Go right ahead, Mr. Davis, don’t mind me at all.”

“I don’t mind you, Davy,” the girl said.

“But where did you go and why are you Audrey Bruce?”

“It’s sort of complicated.”

“I guess it was.”

“Mother married a man named Bruce finally.”

“I knew him.”

“I liked him.”

“I pass,” Roger said. “But why the Audrey?”

“It’s my middle name. I took it because I didn’t like mother’s.”

“I didn’t like mother.”

“Neither did I. I liked Dick Raeburn and I liked Bill Bruce and I loved you and I loved Tom Hudson. He didn’t recognize me either, did he?”

“I don’t know. He’s strange and he might not say. I know he thinks you look like Tommy’s mother.”

“I wish I did.”

“You do damned plenty enough.”

“Truly you do,” David said. “That’s something I know about. I’m sorry, Audrey. I ought to shut up and go away.”

“You didn’t love me and you didn’t love Tom.”

“Oh yes, I did. You’ll never know.”

“Where’s mother now?”

“She’s married to a man named Geoffrey Townsend and lives in London.”

“Does she still drug?”

“Of course. And she’s beautiful.”

“Really?”

“No. She really is. This isn’t just filial piety.”

“You had a lot of filial piety once.”

“I know. I used to pray for everyone. Everything used to break my heart. I used to do First Fridays for mother to give her the grace of a happy death. You don’t know how I prayed for you, Roger.”

“I wish it would have done more good,” Roger said.

“So do I,” she said.

“You can’t tell, Audrey. You never know when it may,” David said. “I don’t mean that Mr. Davis needs to be prayed for. I just mean about prayer technically.”

“Thanks, Dave,” Roger said. “What ever became of Bruce?”

“He died. Don’t you remember?”

“No. I remember Dick Raeburn did.”

“I imagine you do.”

“I do.”

Young Tom and Andy came back with the bottles of Coca-Cola and Andy gave a cold bottle to the girl and one to David.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s wonderful and cold.”

“Audrey,” young Tom said. “I remember you now. You used to come to the studio with Mr. Raeburn. You never talked at all. You and I and Papa and Mr. Raeburn used to go to the different circuses and we used to go racing. But you weren’t as beautiful then.”