Rich Man, Poor Man (83 page)

‘Anything I have is yours,’ Brad said. ‘You know that.’

Rudolph swung Virginia on to the floor. She danced bridally, her hand cool in his, her touch on his back feathery, her head thrown back proudly, conscious of being watched by girls who wished they were in her place today, by men who wished they were in her husband’s.

‘All happiness,’ Rudolph said. ‘Many, many years of happiness.’

She laughed softly. I’ll be happy,’ she said, her thighs touching his. ‘Never fear. Ill have Brad for a husband and you for a lover.’

‘Oh, Christ,’ Rudolph said.

With the tip of a finger she touched his lips to silence him, and they finished the dance. As he walked her back to where Brad was standing, he knew that he had been too optimistic. Things were not going to work out all right. Never in a million years.

He did not throw rice along with the other guests as the newlyweds drove off in Brad’s car to begin their honeymoon. He was on the steps of the club, next to Calderwood. Calderwood didn’t throw any rice either. The old man was frowning, but it was hard to tell whether it was because of something he was thinking or because the sun was in his eyes. As the guests drifted back for one last glass of champagne, Calderwood remained on the steps, looking into the shimmering summer afternoon distance in which his last daughter had disappeared with her husband. Earlier, Calderwood had said to Rudolph that he wanted to talk to him so Rudolph gave a sign to Jean that he would meet her later and she left the two men alone.

‘What do you think?’ Calderwood said finally.

‘It was a beautiful wedding.’

‘Not about that’

Rudolph shrugged. “Who knows how a marriage is going to turn out?’

‘He expects he’s going to get your job now.’

‘That’s normal,’ Rudolph said.

‘I wish to God it was you riding off down to New York with her this afternoon.’

‘Life doesn’t work out that neatly most of the time,’ Rudolph said.

‘It certainly doesn’t.’ Calderwood shook his head. ‘IT don’t trust him completely,’ he said. ‘I hate to say that about any man who’s worked loyally for me the way he has and who’s married my daughter, but I can’t hide it from myself.’

‘He’s never made a wrong move since he came here,’ Rudolph said. Except one, he thought. Not believing what I told him about Virginia. Or worse, believing it and marrying her anyway. But he couldn’t tell Calderwood that.

‘I know he’s your friend,’ Calderwood said, ‘and he’s smart as a fox and you’ve known him a long time and you had enough confidence in him to bring him here and give him a big load of responsibility, but there’s something about him - ‘ Calderwood shook his big, sallow, death-marked head. ‘He drinks, he’s a whoremonger - don’t contradict me, Rudy, I know what I know - he gambles, he comes from Olkahoma…’

Rudolph chuckled.

‘I know,’ Calderwood said. ‘I’m an old man and I have my prejudices. But there they are. I guess I’ve been spoiled by you, Rudy. I never dealt with a man in my whole life I knew I could trust the way I trust you. Even when you talked me into acting against my better judgement - and you’d be surprised how many times that’s happened -I knew you’d never do anything that you thought was against my interests or was underhanded or would reflect against my reputation.’

Thank you, Mr Calderwood,’ Rudolph said.

‘Mr Calderwood, Mr Calderwood,’ the old man said peevishly. ‘Are you still going to be calling me Mr Calderwood on my death bed?’

Thank you, Duncan.’ It was an effort to say Duncan.

To turn the whole damn shebang over to that man.’ There was a cranky, aged complaint in Calderwood’s voice. ‘Even if it’s after I die. I don’t feel like doing it. But if you say so …’ He trailed off unhappily.

Rudolph sighed. There is always someone to betray, he thought. ‘I don’t say so,’ he said quietly. There’s a young lawyer in our legal department by the name of Mathers … ‘

‘I know him,’ Calderwood said. ‘Light-complected fellow with glasses and two kids. From Philadelphia.’

‘He has a degree from the Wharton School of Business that he took before he went to Havard Law. He’s been with us more than four years. He knows every department. He asks all the right questions. He’s been in and out of my office. He could earn a lot more than he does here in any one of a dozen law firms in New York, but he likes living here.

‘Okay,’ Calderwood said. Tell him tomorrow.’

‘I would prefer it if you told him, Duncan.’ Second Duncan in his life. ‘As usual,’ Calderwood said. ‘I don’t like to do what you’re telling me to do, and I know you’re right. I’ll tell him. Now let’s go back and drink some more of that champagne. I paid enough for it, God knows, I might as well drink it’

The new appointment was announced the day before the newlyweds were due back from the honeymoon.

Brad took it calmly, like a gentleman, and never queried Rudolph about who made the decision. But three months later he quit his job and he and Virginia went out to Tulsa, where Brad’s father had made a place for him in his oil business. On Enid’s first birthday, he sent a cheque for five hundred dollars to be deposited in Enid’s savings account.

Brad wrote regularly, jovial, breezy, friendly letters. He was doing very well, he wrote, and was making more money than he ever had before. He liked Tulsa, where the golf bets were on a generous Western scale and on three successive Saturdays he had won more than a thousand dollars a round. Virginia was liked by everyone and had made dozens of friends. She had taken up golf. Brad invited Rudolph to invest with him - ‘It’s like picking money off a tree,’ was the way he put it. He said he wanted somehow to pay back all that Rudolph had done for him, and this was one way of doing it.

Out of sense of guilt - he could not forget the moment on the steps of the Country Club with Duncan Calderwood -Rudolph started taking shares in wells that Brad prospected, drilled and managed. Besides, as Johnny Heath pointed out, for a man in bis income bracket, considering the twenty-seven-percent depletion tax allowance that the oil industry enjoyed, it was more than worth the gamble. Johnny checked on the credit rating of Peter Knight and Son, found it was A-one, then matched Rudolph’s investments dollar for dollar.

1965

Thomas squatted on the forward deck, whistling tunelessly, polishing the bronze spool of the anchor winch. Although it was only early June, it was already warm and he worked barefooted and stripped to the waist. His torso was dark brown from the sun, as dark as the skin of the swarthiest Greeks or Italians on any of the ships in the harbour of Antibes. His body wasn’t as hard as it had been when he was fighting. The muscles didn’t stand out in ridges as they had then, but were smoother, not as heavy. When he was wearing something to cover his small bald spot, as he was now, he looked younger than he had two years ago. He tilted the white American gob’s hat, which he wore with the rim turned down all round, over his eyes, to protect him from the glare of the sun off the water.

From the engine-room below there was the sound of hammering. Pinky Kimball was down there with Dwyer working on a pump. The first charter of the year began tomorrow and the port engine had overheated on a trial run. Pinky, who was the engineer on the Vega, the biggest ship in the harbour, had volunteered to come over and look at it. Dwyer and Thomas could handle simple repairs themselves, but when it came to anything really complicated they had to ask for help. Luckily Thomas had struck up a friendship with Kimball during the winter and Kimball had given them a hand on various things as they got the Clothilde into shape for the summer. Thomas had not explained to Dwyer why he had decided to call the ship Clothilde when they had changed it from the Penelope at Porto Santo Stefano. To himself, he had said, a ship had to be called by a woman’s name, why not Clothilde? He certainly wasn’t going to call it Teresa.

He was happy on the Clothilde, although even in bis own eyes it wasn’t one of the smartest craft on the Mediterranean. He knew its superstructure was a little topheavy and presented too much surface to the wind and its top speed was only twelve knots, cruising speed ten knots, and it rolled alarmingly in

certain seas. But everything that two determined men, working month after month, could do to make a craft snug and seaworthy, had been done to the peeling hulk they had bought at Porto Santo Stefano two and a half years before. They had had two good seasons, and while neither of them had got rich off the boat, they both had some money in the bank, in case of trouble. The season coming up looked as though it was going to be even better than the first two and Thomas felt a calm pleasure as he burnished the bronze spool and saw it reflect the sun from its surface. Before taking to the sea he would never have thought that a simple, brainless act like polishing a piece of metal could give him pleasure.

It was the same with everything on the ship. He loved to stroll from bow to stern and back again, touching the hand rails, pleased to see the lines curled into perfect spiral patterns on the caulked, pale, teak deck, admiring the polished brass handles on the old-fashioned wheel in the deck house and the perfectly arranged charts in their slots and the signal flags tightly rolled in their pigeonholes. He, who had never washed a dish in his life, spent long hours in the galley scrubbing pans until they shone and making sure that the icebox was immaculate and fresh smelling, the range and oven scrubbed. When there was a charter on board he and Dwyer and whoever they signed on as a cook dressed in tan drill shorts and immaculate white cotton T-shirts with Clothilde printed across the chest in blue. In the evenings, or in cold weather, they wore identical heavy navy-blue sailors’ sweaters.

He had learned to mix all sorts of drinks and serve them frosty and cold in good glasses, and there was one party, Americans, who swore they only took the ship for his Bloody Marys. A pleasure craft on the Mediterranean going between one country and another could be a cheap holiday for a drunkard, because you could take on case after case of dutyfree liquor and you could buy gin and whisky for about a dollar and a half a bottle. He rarely drank anything himself, except for a little pastis and an occasional beer. When charters came aboard he wore a peaked captain’s cap, with the gilt anchor and chain. It made his clients’ holidays more seagoing, he felt.

He had learned a few words of French and Italian and Spanish, enough to go through harbour-master formalities and do the shopping, but too little to get into arguments. Dwyer picked up the languages quickly and could rattle away with anybody.

Thomas had sent a photograph of the Clothilde, spraying through a wave, to Gretchen and Gretchen had written back that she kept it on the mantelpiece of her livingroom. One day, she wrote, she would come over and taken a trip with him. She was busy, she wrote, doing some sort of job at a movie studio. She said that she had kept her promise and had not told Rudolph where he was or what he was doing. Gretchen was his one link with America and the times when he felt lonely or missed the kid, he wrote to her. He had asked Dwyer to write his girl in Boston, whom Dwyer still said he was going to marry, to try to go down to the Aegean Hotel when she had the time and talk to Pappy, but the girl hadn’t replied yet.

Some year soon, no matter what, he was going to go to New York and try to find his kid.

He hadn’t had a single fight since Falconetti. He still dreamed about Falconetti. He wasn’t sentimental about him, but he was sorry Falconetti was dead and the passage of time hadn’t persuaded him that it wasn’t his fault that the man had thrown himself overboard.

He finished with the winch and stood up. The deck was promisingly warm under his bare feet As he went aft, running his hands along the newly varnished mahogany-coloured rails, the hammering below stopped and Kimball’s flaming red hair appeared, as he came out of the saloon and on to the deck. To get to the engine-room, you had to pick up sections of the floor from the saloon. Dwyer appeared after Kimball. They were both wearing oil-stained green overalls, because there was no keeping clean in the confined space of the engine-room. Kimball was wiping his hands on a piece of waste, which he threw overboard. That ought to do it, mate,’ Kimball said. ‘Why don’t we give it a spin?’

Thomas went into the pilot house and started the engines while Dwyer and Pinky cast off from the dock and clambered forward to bring up the hook, Dwyer working the winch and cleaning off the harbour muck from the chain with the hose before it dropped into the well. They had a lot of chain out, for stability, and the Clothilde was almost in the middle of the harbour before Pinky gave the sign that they were clear and helped Dwyer bring the hook on board with the gaff.

By now Thomas was skilled at handling the ship and only when he was coming into a very crowded harbour, with a bad wind blowing, did he hand over the wheel to Dwyer. Today, he turned the bow towards the harbour entrance and, keeping the speed down until they were outside, chugged beyond the

fishermen with their rods at the end of the rampart and around the buoy before he increased speed, turning towards the Cap d’Antibes, leaving the fortress of the Vieux Carre on its hill, behind them. He watched the gauges of both engines and was relieved to see that the port engine wasn’t heating up. Good old Pinky. Through the winter he must have saved them at least a thousand dollars. The ship he was on, the Vega, was so new and so pampered that there was almost nothing for him to do when they were in port. He was bored on it and delighted to be able to putter about in the Clothilde’s cluttered, hot, engine-room.

Kimball was a knotty Englishman whose freckled face never got a tan, but remained a painful hot pink all summer. He had a problem with the drink, as he put it. When he drank he became pugnacious and challenged people in bars. He quarrelled with his owners and rarely stayed on one ship more than a year, but he was so good at his job that he never had any trouble finding other berths quickly. He only worked on the very big yachts, because his skill would be wasted on smaller craft. He had been raised in Plymouth and had been on the water all his life. He was amazed that somebody like Thomas had wound up the owner-skipper of a ship like the Clothilde in Antibes harbour, and was making a go of it. ‘Yanks,’ Kimball said, shaking his head. ‘They’re fucking well capable of anything. No wonder you own the world.’