Outerbridge Reach (15 page)

Duffy turned out to have worked on the long-lost
New York Journal-American.
He had a wife who was chronically ill. The previous week he had taken her for a drive up the Hudson to Boscobel mansion and it had been very pleasant. Halfway up the stone steps that led to the club's front door, he turned to them breathlessly.

“You two stay close together. We want Anne in the pix.” Southchester's club was set on a bluff over a salt marsh, an enormous timbered Tudor manor attended by ancient, wind-stripped sugar maples. Candles were burning in its windows. Voices and music drifted down from inside.

They found the club premises a mob scene. Bars had been set up; the place smelled of whiskey, perfume and leather. Owen and Anne followed Duffy across the trophy room through the press of the crowd. At the door of the club library, a tall man with a graying nautical beard appeared to be expecting them. Duffy briefly attempted to make introductions but the bearded man paid no attention to him.

“Browne, is it?” he asked Owen. “I'm Captain Riggs-Bowen, club secretary.” Browne shook his hand. An aged man in a blue blazer appeared and was introduced as Mr. Whitney, the club commodore. Members of the press had begun to shout questions at Browne. Duffy interposed his person.

“If you have questions about Mr. Matthew Hylan,” he announced at the top of his voice, “let me have 'em. Mr. Browne has no information for you.”

About two dozen reporters followed Duffy into an adjoining room. Riggs-Bowen, who had come alert at Anne's presence, conducted the Brownes to the back of the library where the three other entrants in the race were waiting. They lounged somewhat defiantly in captain's chairs beside an antique oak table on which stood an enormous vase full of daffodils. Everyone stood up as the Brownes approached.

Ian Dennis was a foxy-faced, introverted Australian who had set his name to a book that recorded his adventures during sixty-seven days adrift in a rubber raft. He was in the United States to promote it and was attempting to do so in nearly total silence.

Patrick Kerouaille was an amiable Breton schoolmaster and also an author. Kerouaille's books were written by himself and recorded the mystical ruminations toward which life at sea inclined him.

The third sailor was the Virginian, Preston Fowler, who had a reputation as a shady character and a soul-withering false smile.

“How's business?” he asked Browne.

“Things are tight,” Browne told him. “What with the market.”

“Where's your big boss at?” Fowler asked. “Ever hear from him?”

“Nope,” Browne said.

“I didn't know you were a single-hander, boy,” Fowler said. He winked at Anne. He had a pug-dog face with a faintly swinish turned-up nose. “When'd you take it up?”

“I've been single-handing for years,” Browne told him.

“I never knew that,” Fowler said.

“Sure,” Browne told him. “A couple of trips to Bermuda. And the Azores. A couple of transatlantic deliveries.” He felt Anne kick him in the ankle.

Fowler laughed. “Hiding your light under a bushel, were you, Owen? And you call yourself a salesman.”

“Selling's an art, Preston,” Browne said. “Sailing's recreation.”

Riggs-Bowen began to shepherd them toward the trophy room for pictures. As they went, Anne grabbed his arm.

“How could you say that?” she whispered urgently. “I've never heard you not tell the truth before.”

“I don't really understand it myself,” Owen told her. “At that moment—it was what I wanted to say.”

She looked around the room in sudden alarm.

“Good God,” she said, “will it all be like this?”

“Yes, I think so,” Browne said.

S
TRICKLAND
moved alertly among the salty revelers with a smile for everyone. Attempting invisibility, he had sought to disguise himself as a sort of waterman, in a blue windbreaker and Topsiders. As it happened, most of the people at the press party were wearing dark suits.

Strickland's attention was taken by the richly tanned young persons in tuxedos who functioned as menials at the party. Male and female alike, they exuded vitamins and sunshine. Their cheeks were smooth and their teeth bright; they were the club's children. So taken was Strickland that he could hardly conceal his interest. When a young person's gaze met his, Strickland held it until the poor creature looked away in confusion. Their untroubled faces represented a newfound land for him.

In the center of the library, three bearded young men in striped jerseys were playing jigs and hornpipes on a banjo and tin whistles. Strickland sauntered up to the service bar, where an icecream-blond girl was waiting to take his order.

“You a sailor?” he asked the girl as she prepared his vodka and soda. She had large friendly brown eyes.

“Yeah,” she said. “I teach at the sailing school during the summer.” She laughed a toothy mock-rueful laugh. “But today we're all serving.”

“You're n . . not . . .”

She waited politely on his stammer.

“You're not old enough to fix drinks,” he managed to tell her.

Her smile became slightly fearful.

“Just kidding,” he assured the youngster.

As Strickland stood drinking beside the bar, a tall, good-looking man in a Brooks Brothers suit approached for service. The man had a long youthful face and hair that appeared to be prematurely gray. His eyes were mild. He ordered two glasses of white wine and a Coke.

“Hey, Mr. Browne,” the young bartender chirped happily, “the Coke for you?”

The man only smiled. A second tuxedoed young woman of similar appearance came down the bar for a look at Mr. Browne.

“You in training for the race?” the bartender asked.

“That's right,” Browne said.

“Yeah?” the young woman said. “Too bad.”

The other girl laughed explosively at her friend's effrontery.

Browne gave them a sad smile and went off with the drinks.

The barmaid made a show of calling after him. “Hey, Mr. Browne! You're jammin'!” In fact she called only loud enough for Strickland and her friend to hear. The two girls laughed together.

“Like him?” Strickland asked.

She acted out a moment's reflection.

“Uh, yeah,” she said, and laughed with her friend. Then the other girl went back to her serving station and she was alone with Strickland.

“Think he's going to win?”

“Definitely,” she said.

“Why?”

“Well,” she said, “because I like him.”

“Because he's jammin'?”

“That's right,” she said.

“You mean,” Strickland asked, “you find him attractive?”

The corners of the young woman's mouth began to turn down.

“How'd you like to be in a movie?” he asked her. “A movie about the race.”

She looked at him unhappily without answering.

“What's your name?”

The girl swallowed and, under his stare, recited her name, which was Carol Cassidy.

“Stay loose, Carol Cassidy,” Strickland said. “This summer we'll be filming and I'll come back and we'll talk some more, O.K.?”

The girl nodded.

“Now tell me,” Strickland said, “who's in charge of all this?”

“Well,” the girl said, “Captain Riggs-Bowen, I guess.”

“And which one is he?”

A reporter with a plastic press card hung around his neck came up to the bar. Carol Cassidy took a quick look around and started making the reporter's drink.

“I don't see him,” she told Strickland. “But you'll find him. He's English. And like very distinguished?”

Setting off around the room, Strickland regretted not having brought his camera. As it stood, he would have to retain the essence of the place in his mind's eye. But surely, he thought, there would be other such scenes.

The single-handed sailors had been gathered for photographs in the middle of the trophy room. Amid the buzz, Strickland detected a Briton's upscale, mellow tones. Homing in on the signal, he saw a man he presumed was Captain Riggs-Bowen in conversation with two admiring ladies. He stood by until the ladies drifted off.

“Excuse me, Captain?”

Riggs-Bowen turned an insolent stare on him. He had a brick-red blood-pressure mask around his eyes, which resembled those of a raptor. The irises were light blue and oyster-shaped. Gotta get him in the flick somehow, thought Strickland.

“Who's g . . going to win?”

“Well,” the captain said, “we don't know, do we? They'll race and we'll see.”

“Any favorites?”

Riggs-Bowen scanned Strickland's person for some clue to his identity. Strickland wore none.

“Press, are you?”

“Media. Will it be close?”

“Hard to say,” Riggs-Bowen said. “Impossible.”

“Are they all good?”

“Not necessarily. We don't vet them, you know. If they have a sponsor, they're in.”

“How about Browne? What do you think of him?”

“Nice fella. As far as I know.”

Strickland looked at the posing sailors.

“Who are the two people with him?”

“His wife,” Riggs-Bowen said, “and his press agent.”

“Really?”

Riggs-Bowen assumed the patient, patronizing tone with which he was most comfortable.

“It's not unusual for them to have press agents, you know. Sometimes they have literary agents as well. That's how these things are today.”

“His wife is nice looking,” Strickland said. The captain's keen glance widened slightly. “And,” Strickland went on, “he has the eyes of a poet.”

Riggs-Bowen favored him with a dark smile.

S
TRICKLAND
introduced himself to the Brownes over the telephone. It was arranged that he would join Owen and Anne on Steadman's Island for a brief weekend.

He arrived early Saturday morning by chartered plane from New York. He brought along videotapes of two of his films:
Under the Life,
which was about a prostitute named Pamela Koester in New York, and
Kid Soto,
which recorded the morning, afternoon and fight night of a club boxer in Riverside, California. While the Brownes watched his documentaries, Strickland prowled the house and the grounds outside. Once Anne came out and found him examining the bookshelves. Most of the books in the summer house were naval histories or travel narratives.

The film maker took lunch with them but he had little to say. Strickland believed in withholding himself from the subjects of his films, at least at the outset. Eventually, he reasoned, they came to you.

Over coffee on the porch, the Brownes sought to bring him forth a little by talking about the films.

“I never thought,” Owen said, “that people like that could be so sympathetic.”

Anne joined in. “Really! They're so funny! You feel for them.”

“Oh,” Strickland said haltingly, “thanks. They're just folks.”

He had brought a small Olympus camera with him and over the afternoon he took a lot of photographs. The idea was partly to accustom them to the sight of him with a camera, partly to collect their images and pin them to his walls. Every time Anne turned around, she seemed to find him there, at an odd angle to the place she occupied, commanding a long view.

Once she was bold enough to ask him, “Have you always stammered?”

He showed her a sunny, forgiving smile.

“Since I was eleven. There was a kid in sixth grade who stuttered. I was imitating him. Making fun of the kid. They told me it would stick. And it did.”

“Oh no!” Anne cried. “Really?”

“I wouldn't make it up, would I?”

“Well, I don't know,” she said. By then she obviously regretted the question and was trying to keep it light and distant.

He took a great many pictures of Owen working in the study, assembling charts, making lists. Anne lent him some family snapshots. Shortly before dinnertime he announced his intention to go back to New York. Owen was upstairs in the shower. Anne had opened a bottle of wine.

“Oh dear,” Anne said. “I was counting on your staying for dinner.”

He was uncertain whether she was relieved or disappointed. He suspected something of both. In any case, she made no immediate move to drive him. Owen Browne came downstairs in a bathing suit and T-shirt. He was well built, long-legged, with big shoulders and without flab. It was a conscientious preppy's body.

“Didn't you make a picture about the Vietnam War?” Owen asked Strickland.

Strickland nodded quickly.

“What was it called?”

“
LZ Bravo”
Strickland said.

“I haven't seen it,” Browne told him. “I've heard about it.”

“What have you heard?”

Browne was embarrassed. “To tell you the truth, I can't remember. Only that I've heard of it.”

“One time I'll run it for you,” Strickland said to them.

“Good,” said Owen.

“Owen was there,” Anne said.

“Yes,” Strickland said, “I know he was.”

It turned out that Anne drove Strickland to the small island airport. She had taken three glasses of wine and she watched the yellow line with her jaw set.

“So,” he asked her. “Why's he doing it?”

She laughed and tossed her head. Proud of her old man, Strickland thought. It would be necessary to record that one.

“Don't you know why?”

“I don't sail,” Strickland informed her.

“Imagine what kind of a feeling it is,” she said to Strickland. “Making your way across all that ocean. Making your way across the whole world. All on your own savvy and endurance.”

“Sure,” he said. “I guess I can understand that.” He sneaked a look at her and saw that she was basking in the glow of her own words. Her eyes were bright. “You'd like to do it yourself, wouldn't you?”