The Last Ship (62 page)

“Let us leave that matter aside.” I waited a moment. “In letting the women decide, as planned, the nature of the arrangements, some usual restrictions as to the matter of sexual practices will quite possibly go by the board.” I turned and looked straight at him, feeling an almost malicious pleasure in confronting him with that. “If you—or God—has objections in that area, I would like to hear them stated now.”

His smile actually soft; part the ridiculousness of my thinking he was in any way to be shocked; part his invincibly resourceful way of dealing with anger: Don’t even recognize its presence. He spoke with an almost impudent delight.

“The Church is marvelously adaptable, Captain, even versatile. Hence its endurance. So was our Lord. It was He who spoke of the ox in the ditch on the Sabbath.”

I could play that, too. I had not been a missionary’s son for nothing. “Also I hear there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage in heaven. Mark 12:25.”

He gave me a half-arch glance. “Have we arrived in heaven?”

He went on quickly to something that obviously had been on his own mind. “Captain, I have to say this. There are some—there are more than a few who . . . knowing that whatever the arrangements, they will have to be . . . let us say, different . . . are beginning to question the morality of it.”

“The morality?” The word shot out of me.

I knew at once I had been given access to his confession box—no names . . . thus okay . . . valuable information . . . his trying to prepare me. I led him on.

“Did you say the
morality?
”

“To the extent some might choose to abstain altogether.”

The idea was instantly disturbing; the implications all too clear. The idea of a divisiveness wherein one portion of ship’s company, themselves forgoing, looked upon another portion of it as engaging in immoral practices. Nothing could be more dangerous to our community.

“I don’t like it,” I said. “It would be absolutely unacceptable.”

“Maybe I can do something there,” he said quietly. That was a gift.

“It would be greatly desired if you could.”

Something told me not to pursue it, to let it rest exactly there. I turned away from it.

“As you know, Girard and the women will presently come up with . . . whatever they come up with.” I had sensed, as noted, a certain rising tension between himself and that officer . . . its source uncertain to me, but my speculations defining it as something rather precisely having to do with what was in progress at this very moment between ourselves: the women. Girard’s influence with them, over them: the priest’s influence with them. I felt I needed to know more as to the reality of such a possible conflict. Furthermore, a reminder might be in order that there were other forces at work, perhaps as strong as his own, in this area we had been discussing. Maybe as well a touch of baiting in my intention. “How lucky we are to have Lieutenant Girard. A smart, capable officer. Sometimes, forgetting gender, I think the smartest we’ve got aboard.”

He said nothing. I said, “Or do you disagree?”

“Oh, no. Doubtless an accurate evaluation. Captain, may I say something?”

We were somewhat back again, fortunately—if not completely so—to our more customary, emotion-excluding tone of discussion. “Could I stop you?”

He grinned. “Just this. Lieutenant Girard is all you say and probably a good deal more. She is a great asset to this ship’s company. Her gifts are numerous. I’d say she’s quite aware of them—not at all necessarily a negative quality; in fact, on the whole I think a favorable one: Modesty is a much overrated attribute. Unless I’m badly mistaken, she has another. I risk the sin of redundancy in telling you something you surely already know. She has a hunger for power.”

“Quite possibly true. With the undertakings that are about to come to pass, that could work to our advantage—maybe make all the difference. Assuming her decisions and judgments are the right ones, the best ones—I lean heavily to the side that they will be just that—she can lead the women to her will. And, of course, if she—or they—venture into areas not their prerogative: I am still captain of this ship.”

Somehow, perhaps because of that last expression, it came then, my entering his confession box as I knew all along I would at some point do. Speaking with the quietness one does then, half to myself, half to him.

“Starting over,” I said. “I have no illusions, Father. However good a ship’s company, this is something new, different. Something men and women, at least men and women of this kind, have not tried. Only a fool would predict what will happen. I’ve lived all my life with sailors. I wouldn’t choose any other men in the world above them. One doesn’t have to sanctify them but I know for a fact that sailors have more caring for the man alongside than . . . well, than any other collection of people I’ve ever run into or heard about. Will that hold on land? Will it hold with the women business? Aye, there is my concern, Father. And it seems—well, that only the question of the women stands between us and every chance at making a good life on this island. And that, now, we’re about to begin. The men—the women . . .”

I paused, sea-listening, went on. Came to the point that was the chief author of my anguish.

“‘The men will be better for having the women.’ There is a trap in the truism. Whatever the women come up with, given the mathematics of our situation, the men are not going to have them at will; any time they want it. Far from it. At the very best a tough rationing system.”

It was almost as if this problem had not occurred to him, something I did not for a moment believe.

“Any priest knows that full-time celibacy is far easier than not-often-enough fornication.”

He gave a mordant laugh. “Sex!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Everything connected with it. Causes more problems, people spend more time thinking, worrying, agonizing over it than all the rest of the woes of man put together. Of all the verbosity I’ve listened to in confession . . . nothing so drives people—men, women—off the rails. The presence of it, the absence of it: Which of those two did more so I never could decide. If it were not heresy to suggest, I would sometimes think God had begun to doze, was excessively fatigued, hadn’t worked it out properly, when he put that part in place . . . Forgive the homily, Captain. But Christ, how sick I used to get hearing it sitting in that box! Strictly in confidence, this.”

“I shall keep my vows not to tell anybody.” I sat, amused, and something else: speculating that that outpouring might well be a halyard signal of his own not fully vanquished carnality. I returned to course.

“Men are possessive of their women,” I said. “There’s my great fear.”

“It’s not the men I’m worried about.”

I turned to him. “Then you’re worried about something. What is it?”

He looked out to sea, speaking as he did, myself sharply surprised at the rather hard, wheel-over degree turn our dialogue now took, a matter obviously for some time of urgent concern to him; his more formal tones.

“You won’t mind, sir, if I repeat what I remarked to you a while back; and amplify a little? ‘You regard women too highly,’ I put it then. In what you say I perceive that I may have been in error.” He gave a nonchalant shrug. I recognized that circuitous gentleness which he quite often employed with me, invariably undergirding a most firmly held point. “Also I may not have been sufficiently precise then. What I meant to say was that I thought you may fail to recognize their capabilities when possessed of power—true of all of us human creatures to be sure. Accented in their own special ways in the case of women. Women aren’t very polite.”

So it was that; I could not have understood better what he, to be sure in his Jesuitical way, was getting at. I returned his own tone.

“What an interesting way to put it. Yes, I recall those helpful strictures. What you said is the case. You were perfectly right. I’ve been at sea most of my life, as I pointed out. I don’t know women, that’s true. I couldn’t be more aware of that regrettable deficiency in my character. But I think I know human beings reasonably well; not from possessing any especially percipient powers myself, but simply from being longtime a sailor and a sea captain; shipboard life I’ve always felt exposes every strength and every weakness present in a man in a way no other life does. You will forgive these banal reflections, Chaplain, while I’m sure agreeing with them.” I found myself actually enjoying this wonderful speech. “And if you’ll allow a novice’s observation, I’m not at all convinced there are all that many differences, aside from the obvious one. In fact I have grave doubts as to some of those that have been for so long alleged. I remember one in Henry James, otherwise a great favorite of mine. You familiar with James, Chaplain?”

“Intimately.”

“James says somewhere, ‘A woman in any situation is an incalculable factor.’ Pronunciamentos like that—so facile, so fashionable for so long, many of them propagated I have a notion by women themselves: I am deeply suspicious of them. Take that one, for instance: I have seen no evidence of it. I haven’t found it so, differences, in sailors—women sailors; almost indistinguishable from men sailors, I would say, in our ship’s company at least, in all the qualities that count: dependability in doing a job, courage, thoughtfulness as to shipmates, their sailor’s word good as any man’s.”

“Do you know what you’re overlooking, Captain?”

“No. But I’m sure you are about to tell me.”

“The women will presently cease to be sailors. They will commence being women.”

The cawing of the birds, returning from sea, fussing stridently at us for daring to park so near their nests, startled us, silencing all else, all human intercourse. Just as well. The truth was, I not just understood his presentiments, his forebodings, and where they were directed; I in considerable part harbored them myself. I was fearful, perhaps in a way only another sea captain could have understood, that to admit these conjectures into the realm of potential validity would be to increase the likelihood of bringing them about; myself absolutely convinced that above all the women must be given every chance. We had come very near. I was grateful to the birds. I started to stand up.

“Time to climb down. Oh, by the way. As to that other matter . . . the question of reproduction,” I said, as simply as that. “I’ve decided. That also I will leave to the women.”

His answer, so assured, surprised me. “Captain, I shall be perfectly content with that. Tom.”

Something in his voice. He had turned facing me.

“I think the time has come to tell you something that might not show up in my service record. Have you ever wondered how I got here?”

His tone was quiet, unemotional. I said: “As a matter of fact I have. Now and then.”

He gave a small, wry laugh. “Because of what we’ve been talking about. The women. One woman in fact. A student of mine, of all banal things. The Church knows how to handle such matters. Put temptation beyond reach.”

I spoke as quietly. “How odd. The thought had crossed my mind a couple of times. I don’t know why. Perhaps . . . men who like women and whom women like: I always thought you could tell.”

He laughed softly again. “I don’t know about that. The irony, of course, was that the impressment to the fleet was arranged before there were women on ships. The Navy played a trick on the Church.”

“I’m immensely glad. Tom, I don’t have the slightest idea why you’re telling me this. It doesn’t make a particle of difference in anything, of course. Besides, celibacy in priests: I never had a strong position on that.”

“I had. I have.”

I decided to put it straight. “Will you participate in whatever the arrangement turns out to be?”

“Not in a thousand years. Can we get along now?”

As we rose, he suddenly seemed to wobble on his feet, teetering straight in the direction of the cliff’s edge, feet away. My arm flung out, seizing him around the waist. I had a glimpse over his body of the huge jagged rocks seeming to reach up to us from their clusters far below . . . yanked him back, our two bodies collapsing together closer than I would have liked to the cliff’s edge. We crawled back, myself half pulling him. We straightened up.

“My God, Tom. Are you all right?”

I was shaking; he seemed as calm as if celebrating Mass.

“I’m fine. I don’t know what that was. A sudden dizziness. Maybe we sat too long.”

This was ridiculous: He was in much too good shape to have been affected by that.

“You haven’t been ill, have you?”

“Nonsense. I’m the best man on this island.”

“I’m going to check with the doc.”

“Feel free to do so,” he said, almost curtly.

I looked out and over that prodigious drop; scary. “Christ, we could have both gone over.” I glanced down at the rocks. “Not even a chance to swim away. There are better ways to go.”

He laughed shortly. “Sorry, Captain. I wouldn’t have wanted to take you with me. I feel very bad about this. All the same, thanks for grabbing me.”

The thing was, he didn’t seem to feel bad at all. He seemed to find it almost comical. I was more than irritated.

“I guess there are tropical angels,” I said. “Let’s go down.”

As we came down the hill the island’s gentle rain made its daily appearance and we stood under the trees and waited for it to finish. I had not realized we had been so long away.

“I wonder if He’s made up His mind.”

He had spoken as if to himself. I turned sharply in the eerie shadows, uncertain of what I had heard.

“What?”

“Assuming the women go along—I feel perfectly confident as to that, Captain, you’ll see . . . women want babies . . . I was thinking of the problem you mentioned . . . Whether we are in truth to be the last . . . or . . .” Light and shadow seemed to flicker across his face in the darksome surroundings where we stood . . . It was almost as though those embowered shadows had become a chapel, freeing him up to use religious terminology he felt it would be excessively pious to employ outside of churchly walls . . . “if we have others present in us . . . That will be the true and only test, won’t it . . . of what we’ve been talking about . . . your most interesting proposition, hypothesis . . . whether man was a mistake or not . . . Yes, I wonder if He’s made up His mind. Whether to give us a second chance.”