Rich Man, Poor Man (84 page)

He and Thomas had been friendly from the beginning, greeting each other as they passed on the quay or buying each other beers in the little bar at the entrance to the port. Kimball had guessed that Thomas had been in the ring and Thomas had told him about some of his fights and what it was like and about the win in London and the later two dives he had had to take and even about the last fight in the hotel room with Quayles in Las Vegas, which had especially delighted Kimball’s belligerent heart. Thomas had not told him about Falconetti and Dwyer knew enough to keep quite on that subject

‘By God, Tommy,’ Kimball said ‘If I knew I could fight like that I would clean out every bar from Gib to Piraeus.’

‘And get a knife between your ribs in the process,’ Thomas said.

‘No doubt you’re right,’ Kimball agreed. ‘But man, the pleasure before!’

When he got very drunk and saw Thomas he would pound the bar and shout, ‘See that man? If he wasn’t a friend of mine, I’d drive him into the deck.’ Then looped an affectionate

tattooed arm around Thomas’s neck.

Their friendship had been cemented one night in a bar in Nice. They hadn’t gone to Nice together, but Dwyer and Thomas had wandered into the bar, near the port, by accident. There was a cleared space around the bar and Kimball was holding forth, loudly, to a group that included some French seamen and three or four flashily dressed but dangerous looking young men of a type that Thomas had learned to recognise and avoid - small-time hoodlums and racketeers, doing odd jobs along the Cote for the chiefs of the milieu with headquarters in Marseilles. His instinct told him that they were probably armed, if not with guns certainly with knives.

Pinky Kimball spoke a kind of French and Thomas couldn’t understand him, but he could tell from the tone of Kimball’s voice and the grim looks on the faces of the other patrons of the bar that Kimball was insulting them. Kimball had a low opinion of the French when he was drunk. When he was drunk in Italy, he had a low opinion of Italians. When he was drunk in Spain, he had a low opinion of the Spanish. Also, when he was drunk, he seemed to forget how to count and the fact that he was alone and outnumbered at least five to one only spurred him on to greater feats of soornful oratory.

‘He’s going to get himself killed here tonight,’ Dwyer whispered, understanding most of what Kimball was shouting. ‘And us, too, if they find out we’re his friends.’

Thomas grasped Dwyer’s arm firmly and took him with him to Kimball’s side, at the bar,

‘Hi, Pinky,’ he said cheerfully.

Pinky swung around, ready for new enemies. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re here. I’m telling these maquereaux a few home truths for their own good.’

‘Knock it off, Pinky,’ Thomas said. Then, to Dwyer. ‘I’m going to say a few words to these gentlemen. I want you to translate. Clearly and politely.’ He smiled cordially at the other men in the bar, arranged now in an ominous semicircle. ‘As you see, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘this Englishman is my friend.’ He waited while Dwyer nervously translated. There was no change in the expressions of the faces lined up around him. ‘He is also drunk,’ Thomas said. ‘Naturally, a man does not like to see a friend damaged, drunk or sober. I will try to prevent him from making any more speeches here, but no matter that he says or has said, there will be no trouble here tonight I am the policeman tonight in this bar and I am keeping the peace. Please translate,’ he said to Dwyer.

As Dwyer was translating, haltingly, Pinky said, disgustedly, “Shit, mate, you’re lowering the flag.’

‘What is further,’ Thomas went on, ‘the next round of drinks in on me. Barman.’ He was smiling as he spoke, but he could

feel the muscles tightening in his arms and he was ready to spring on the biggest one of the lot, a heavy-jawed Corsican in

a black leather jacket.

The men looked at each other uncertainly. But they hadn’t come into the bar to fight and while they grumbled a little among themselves they each came up to the bar and accepted the drinks that Thomas had bought for them.

‘Some fighter,’ Pinky sneered ‘Every day is Armistice Day with you, Yank.’ But he allowed himself to be led safely out of the bar ten minutes later. When he came over to the Clothilde the next day, he brought a bottle of pastis with him and said, Thanks, Tommy. They’d have kicked in my skull in the next two minutes if you hadn’t come along. I don’t know what it is comes over me when I have a few. And it’s not as though I ever win. I’ve got scars from head to toe in tribute to my courage.’ He laughed.

‘If you’ve got to fight,’ Thomas said, remembering the days when he felt he had to fight, no matter whom and for no matter what reason, ‘fight sober. And pick on one man at a time. And don’t take me along. I’ve given all that up.’

‘What would you have done, Tommy, boy,’ Pinky said, ‘if they’d jumped me?’

‘I’d have created a diversion,’ Thomas said, ‘just long enough for Dwyer to get you out of the saloon, and then I’d have run for my life.’

‘A diversion,’ Pinky said. ‘I’d pay a couple of bob to have seen the diversion.’

Thomas didn’t know what it was in Pinky Kimball’s life that changed him from a friendly, amiable, if profane man, into a suicidal, fighting animal when he got a few drinks in him. Some time, perhaps, he’d have it out with him.

Pinky came into the pilot house, looked at the gauges, listened critically to the throb of the Diesels. ‘You’re ready for the summer, lad,’ he said. ‘On your own craft. And I envy you.’

‘Not quite ready,’ Thomas said. ‘We’re missing one in crew.’

‘What?’ Pinky asked. ‘Where’s that Spaniard you hired last week?’

The Spaniard had come well recommended as a cook and steward and he hadn’t asked for too much money. But one night, when he was leaving the ship to go ashore, Thomas had

seen him putting a knife into his shoe, alongside his ankle, hidden by his pants.

‘What’s that for?’ Thomas had asked.

To make respect,’ the Spaniard said.

Thomas had fired him the next day. He didn’t want anybody aboard who had to keep a knife in his shoe to make respect. Now he was shorthanded.

T put him ashore,’ Thomas said to Pinky, as they crossed outside the bay of La Garoupe. He explained why. ‘I still need a cook-steward. It doesn’t make much difference the next two weeks. My charter just wants the boat during the day and they bring their own food aboard. But I’ll need somebody for the summer.”

‘Have you ever thought about hiring a woman?’ Pinky asked

Thomas grimaced There’s a lot of heavy work beside the cooking and stuff like that,’ he said.

‘A strong woman,’ Pinky said.

‘Most of the trouble in my life,’ Thomas said ‘came because of women. Weak and strong.’

‘How many days a summer do you lose,’ Pinky said ‘with your charters grousing that they’re wasting their valuable time, waiting in some godforsaken port just to get their washing and ironing done?’

‘It is a nuisance,’ Thomas agreed. ‘You got somebody in mind?’

‘Righto,’ Pinky said. ‘She works as a stewardess on the Vega and she’s pissed off with her job. She’s crazy about the sea and all she sees all summer long is the inside of the laundry.’

‘Okay,’ Thomas said, reluctantly. ‘I’ll talk to her. And tell her to leave her knives at home.’

He didn’t need a woman aboard as a woman. There were plenty of girls to be picked up around the ports. You had your fun with them, spent a few bucks on them for a dinner and maybe a nightclub and a couple of drinks and then you moved on to the next port, without complications. He didn’t know what Dwyer did for sex and thought it better not to ask.

He turned the Clothilde around, to go back to the harbour. She was ready. There was no sense in using up fuel. He was paying for his own fuel until tomorrow, when the first charter began.

At six o’clock he saw Pinky coming down the quay with a woman. The woman was short and a little thick in the body and wore her hair in two plaits on either side of her head. She had on a pair of denim pants, a blue sweater, and espadrilles. She kicked off her espadrilles before she came up the gangplank in the stern of the ship. In the Mediterranean harbours most of the time you tied up stern to the quay, unless there was room to come alongside, which there rarely was.

‘This is Kate,’ Pinky said. ‘I told her about you.’

‘Hello, Kate.’ Thomas put out his hand and she shook it. She had soft hands for a girl who worked in the laundry room and could do heavy work on deck. She was English, too, and came from Liverpool and looked about twenty-five. She spoke in a low voice when she talked about herself. She could cook, as well as do laundry, she said, and she could make herself useful on deck, and she spoke French and Italian, “not mightily,’ she said, with a smile, but she could understand the meteo on the radio in both languages and could follow a charted course and stand watches, and drive a car if ever that was necessary. She would work for the same salary as the Spaniard with the knife. She wasn’t really pretty, but healthy and buxom in a small, brown way, with a direct manner of looking at the person she was talking to. In the winter, if she was laid off, she went back to London and got a job as a waitress. She wasn’t married, arid she wasn’t engaged and she wanted to be treated like any member of the crew, no better and no worse.

‘She’s a wild English rose,’ Pinky said. ‘Aren’t you, Kate?’

‘None of your jokes, Pinky,’ the girl said ‘I want this job. I’m tired of going from one end of the Med to the other all dressed up in a starched uniform with white cotton stockings, like a nurse, and being called Miss or Mademoiselle. I’ve been taking a glance at your snip, Tom, from time to time, as I’ve passed by, and it’s pleased me. Not so big to be hoity-toity and British Royal Yacht Club. It’s nice and clean and friendly looking. And it’s a dead sure thing there won’t be many ladies coming aboard that need to have their ballgowns pressed all one hot steaming afternoon in Monte Carlo harbour for a ball at the Palace that night’

‘Well,’ Thomas said, defending the elegance of his clientele, ‘we don’t exactly cater to paupers.’

‘You know what I mean,’ the girl said. I’ll tell you what. I don’t want you to take a pig in a poke. Have you had your dinner yet?’

‘No.’ Dwyer was down in the galley messing around desolately with some fish he’d bought that morning, but Thomas could tell by the sounds coming from the galley that nothing of any importance had as yet been done.

‘I’ll cook you a dinner,’ the girl said, ‘Right now. If you like it, you take me on, I’ll go back to the Vega and clear out my things tonight and come aboard. If you don’t like it, what have you lost? If you’re hungry the restaurants in town keep open late. And Pinky, you can stay and eat with us.’

‘Okay,’ Thomas said. He went down to the galley and told Dwyer to get out of there, they had a cook from the Cordon Bleu, at least for a night The girl looked around the galley, nodded approvingly, opened the icebox, opened drawers and cupboards to see where everything was, looked at the fish that Dwyer had bought and said he didn’t know how to buy fish, but that they’d do in a pinch. Then she told them both to get out of there, she’d call them when dinner was ready. All she wanted was to have somebody to go into Antibes to get some fresh bread and two ripe Camembert cheeses.

They ate on the after deck, behind the pilot house, instead of in the little dining alcove forward of the saloon that they would have used if there had been clients aboard. Kate had set the table and somehow it looked better than when Dwyer did it. She had put two bottles of wine in an icebucket uncorked them, and put the bucket on a chair.

She had made a stew of the fish, with potatoes, garlic, onions, tomatoes, thyme, a lot of rock salt and pepper, and a little white wine and diced bacon. It was still light when they sat down at the table, with the sun setting in the cloudless, greenish-blue sky. The three men had washed, shaved and put on fresh clothes and had had two pastis apiece while sitting on deck, sniffing the aromas corning from the galley. The harbour itself was quiet, with just me sound of little ripples lapping at hulls to be heard.

Kate brought up a big tureen with the stew in it. Bread and butter were ready on the table, next to a big bowl of salad. After she served them all, she sat down with them, unhurried and calm. Thomas, as Captain, poured the wine.

Thomas took a first bite, chewed it thoughtfully. Kate, her head down, also began to eat. ‘Pinky,’ Thomas said, ‘you’re a true friend. You’re plotting to make me a fat man. Kate, you’re hired.’

She looked up and smiled. They raised their glasses to the new member of the crew.

Even the coffee tasted like coffee.

After dinner, while Kate was doing the dishes, the three men sat out in the silent evening, smoking cigars that Pinky had

produced, watching the moon rise over the mauve hills of the Alpes Maritimes.

‘Dwyer,’ Thomas said, leaning back in his chair and spreading his legs in front of him, ‘this is what it’s all about.’

Dwyer did not contradict him.

Later, Thomas went with Kate and Pinky to where the Vega was berthed. It was late and the ship was almost dark, with very few lights showing, but Thomas waited some distance away while Kate went on board to collect her things. He didn’t want to get into an argument with the skipper, if he happened to be awake and angry about losing a hand on five minutes’ notice.

A quarter of an hour later Thomas saw Kate coming noiselessly down the gangplank, carrying a valise. They walked together along the fortress wall, past the boats moored one next to another to where the Clothilde was tied up. Kate stopped for a moment, looked gravely at the white-and-blue boat, groaning a little while with the pull of the water against the two lines that made it fast to the quay. ‘I’m going to remember this evening,’ she said, then kicked off her espadrilles, and holding them in her hand, went barefooted up the gangplank.

Dwyer was waiting up for them. He had made up the extra bunk in Thomas’s cabin for himself and put clean sheets for Kate on the bunk in the other cabin that he had been living in alone. Thomas snored, because of his broken nose, but Dwyer was going to have to get used to it. At least for a while.